Showing posts with label Caste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caste. Show all posts

Monday, August 13, 2007

Social conditioning and Identity

A lot of one's identity is conditioned by the environment (family, society) in which a person grows. A friend of mine had posed an interesting question to me, quite a while ago.
Assume that there is a person who is brought up in an environment that says that his/her own race (caste/religion/language) is superior to that of others' and the person is also a proponent (subconsciously or vocally) of that creed. Now if it is revealed to that person that (s)he is indeed a person belonging to the others' race/caste/religion/language, how would that person react?

Mosilager sent me this link, Reflections of a Queer Dalit; though not an exact fit to the situation above, it does have elements of similarity. It highlights the problems faced by people who don't fit into the hetero-patriarchal order. It analyzes the different axes of discrimination and their inter-connectedness. A very well articulated post.
Another post by the same author relevant to this topic - My Gender Dangles On The Margins.

* About the author - Sumit Baudh works on sexuality and law. His areas of interest include the human rights of queers, dalits, and undocumented migrant workers in India. Sumit obtained his LLB from the National Law School of India University and his LLM from the London School of Economics. An Advocate (Delhi Bar), and a non-practicing Solicitor (England and Wales), he has worked with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and the AMAN Trust, both NGOs based in India. Sumit is presently located at the South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality, in Delhi. He self identifies as a Queer Dalit Buddhist.