Scroll.in has an article titled
‘A celebration of Dalit women’s ideas’:
Mayawati is a Dalit woman. Her ideas made her Chief Minister of India's biggest state. Padmashree awardee, Kalpana Saroj is a Dalit woman. Her ideas made her a very wealthy entrepreneur. These are the sort of ideas which are worth celebrating for Indian people. However, in America, where there is a danger that a woman of Brahmin ancestry might become President, only the ideas of a very stupid and ignorant Dalit woman are worth celebrating.
Shailaja Paik, first Dalit winner of a MacArthur Fellowship
‘The sexual and gendered arrangements of the caste system to oppress Dalit Tamasha women remained unexamined,’ said Paik who has written a book on the subject.
If such women were 'oppressed' there would be either not 'Tamasha' or Dalit females would be excluded from this lucrative profession.
Historian Shailaja Paik has become the first Dalit person to be awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Known as the “genius grant”,
It was. They now say it is no such thing. Also they embrace 'Diversity and Inclusivity' and hence give money to diverse shitheads. Not a single one of their 2024 awardees are smart. Apparently, Americans think 'diversity' means stupidity.
the fellowship comes with a “no-strings-attached” award of $800,000 – a little over Rs 6.5 crore. To put the achievement and the term “genius” in perspective, since its inception in 1981, the fellowship has been given to only 1153 people.
It used to be given to smart people. That's why it gained some prestige. It has none now. To be fair, smart people get tens of millions in funding from the private sector. MacArthur money is peanuts in comparison.
Among its recipients are literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, poets AK Ramanujan, Adrienne Rich, John Ashberry and Claudia Rankine, novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, jazz violinist Regina Carter, and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. It is a list of the best minds at work in the United States.
It had to start off by giving money to smart people. Now, it can focus on idiots.
From growing up in a one-room tenement in Pune, Paik won major academic accolades
in shit subjects.
and is now a professor of history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati, US.
that's a shit subject. How come men don't have to sit down to pee? That's totes unfair.
She works at the intersections of caste, gender and sexuality,
i.e. low-caste female lesbians
building on the existing groundwork of Dalit feminism to broaden the scope of the questions that can be asked
e.g. why do low-caste female lesbians have to sit down to pee? That's totes unfair.
and finding new sources that can lead us to fresh answers.
Modi has a penis. So does Joe Biden. That's why women have to sit down to pee. If penises were banned everybody could pee standing up without soaking themselves in urine.
Paik’s first book Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination, is the story of the struggles Dalit women underwent to secure educational rights in India.
They didn't struggle at all. There are no 'educational rights'. Sadly, you actually have to study STEM subjects to become educated. Doing non-STEM subjects makes you stupid and useless.
Her second work, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India,
did you know that upper castes don't like kissing? They are trying to get Dalits to give up this practice.
traces the history and present of Maharashtra’s tamasha dancers, women invariably from marginalised castes sexualised for their performances, at once considered objects of desire and shame.
They are good entertainers. That is why they get paid.
Paik has been charting the story of Dalit women’s resistance
in which case she would be studying Mayawati's political strategies not writing nonsense about burlesque dancers- some of whom are now upper-caste men.
and the meanings and possibilities these offer up to emancipatory thought.
What fucking emancipation has this cretin achieved?
In this conversation, Paik reflects on the significance of her achievement and what it means for her work.
She is a token hire from a shithole country. She is getting some prominence now because it will be useful for White men to denounce Kamala as a Brahmin. Trump already denies she is Black or has African heritage. His people say she is faking her accent.
Congratulations Shailaja – it’s an honour to be your publisher.
So this is a puff piece, not an objective journalistic interview.
What does this grant mean to you, and to the world of Dalit women?
It means this cretin is being put in a position where she can be used to attack Kamala.
To be a Dalit, is to be born Dalit, into a caste system that brands Dalits as impure, polluted, and hence Untouchables.
To emigrate to the US is to choose to join a society which practiced slavery and genocide against darker skinned people. Shailaja's function is to show that Indian-Americans, no matter how smart or successful, are 'slum-dog millionaires'.
Historically,
under British rule
even the shadow of Dalits, was deemed to be polluting and dominant castes did not allow Dalits to access knowledge or any form of learning, access public places, carry an umbrella, wear clean and new clothes, stand upright, build two-story houses, build taller doors in their house, or even wear footwear.
the Brits decided to ban Mahars from employment in the Army. Then they saw they could use Dalits, like Ambedkar, against the Indian freedom struggle. Churchill was incessantly gassing on about the injustices done to them... under British rule.
To be a Dalit woman is to be doubly oppressed,
who was oppressing Mayawati when she was Chief Minister?
that is both by the politics of caste and gender.
Mayawati knows politics. This silly bint does not.
To be a Dalit woman is to be the “Dalit of the Dalit, slave of the slave.”
because Dalit men are the true oppressors of Dalit women.
I am ecstatic, exhilarated by this highest honour, to be named a MacArthur fellow.
But the other awardees are equally stupid and useless if not more so.
The foundation has recognised my hard work over many years and the impact of my work – educational, social, and legislative.
She had not impact on India. Perhaps, she thinks the Americans have passed laws reserving seats for Dalits, women etc.
This fellowship is a celebration of the enormous contributions of Dalits, especially Dalit women’s ideas, actions, history, and fight for human rights.
Some Dalit women do 'tamasha'. What an enormous contribution that is!
It is a reminder of the contributions of Dalit studies,
which is zero. These nutters are pissing off everybody. I bet Dalits will lose reservations in Jan. 2030.
which includes my own labour as a Dalit woman scholar,
If that is 'labour', idleness is better.
to different fields of knowledge.
She means paranoia.
After experiencing caste-, gender- and race-based discrimination,
she could only have experienced that last in England or America.
I have worked my way up and out with grit, determination, and hard work.
Which is why she is now a millionaire like Kalpana Saroj or, like Mayawati, is the head of the biggest state in the US.
Dalit women shared their lives with me and I am indebted to them as well as to my advisors, mentors, colleagues, and friends who were a part of this journey.
But Dalit women in India aren't indebted to you at all. You have done nothing for them.
I hope this achievement will strengthen the fight of Dalits and non-Dalits against caste discrimination in and beyond South Asia.
e.g. in Pakistan?
At a time when the Indian establishment shies from caste
It doesn't. Caste is used to catch votes. Paranoid Ambedkarites are pissing off everybody. In 2030, there may be no Modi capable of renewing reservations for another ten years.
and clamps down on researchers
i.e. India won't give money to Dalits to go abroad to research Dalits in India.
looking at issues like caste and discrimination, how will the MacArthur grant alter perceptions?
It won't. All the other awardees are shit. It would look odd if they didn't have at least one Indian-American who was shit.
I hope the MacArthur fellowship’s recognition of the impact of history, humanities, and Dalit studies will help deepen conversations on caste social inequities, strengthening anti-caste, anti-race, and anti-patriarchal work.
Sadly, people in India who hear about this will look at this silly woman's books and realize she is as stupid as shit.
The caste system pervades Indian society, politics, and economy.
The shitty parts of Indian society maybe. But there are plenty of fields where Ambedkarite nutters are absent.
Nobody can shy away from this fact.
Nor can they shy away from the fact that this woman is stupid and ignorant.
High-caste elites love to pretend that caste does not exist,
because it doesn't- for them. There may be people who eat their own shit but we are welcome to pretend they don't exist while at a dinner party. It is not the case that the hostess is obliged to inquire if her guests would prefer to squeeze out a turd and to dine upon it.
but they are oblivious to the casteist horrors of contemporary reality.
just as they are to the plight of those who eat only their own shit but are currently suffering from constipation.
The fellowship’s recognition of my work underlines the need to focus on the monster of caste,
The guys running the MacArthur foundation are welcome to focus on monsters or vampires or ghouls of various descriptions. The plain fact is, all the 2024 awardees are shit.
how it has operated over centuries,
Kamala's maternal grandparents were Brahmins. They must have been oppressing the fuck out of Dalits- right? Shailaja could come in useful to attack Kamala who currently looks as though she may be a two term President.
and continues to manifest itself in different forms to privilege those who are positively advantaged
e.g. Kamala. Her mother was a 'Scientist'! Science is very evil. Did you know that scientific advances can create lots of wealth in the 'Knowledge Economy'? Brahmins go in for 'Science'. Look at Vivek Ramaswamy!
and disempower the oppressed, marginalised, and vulnerable.
not to mention those who eat only their own shit. Did you know Kamala refuses to feast upon her own turds? She even refuses to force Biden to eat her faeces. I tell you, Trump is right! She isn't 'Black'. She is Indian and 'high caste' to boot!
The foundation says the grant is given to a select few American citizens who “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work”.
At one time, this may have been true. It isn't any longer.
So, what are you going to do now? Does the grant free you from teaching work and help focus on writing?
If it frees her from teaching, maybe it isn't wasted money.
The grant is given to American residents and citizens. I am currently working on my third monograph and two co-edited volumes. The fellowship will help me focus on my research and writing and continue my contribution to anti-caste, anti-patriarchy, and anti-race work.
Sadly, even she won't write about anti-eating-your-own-shit bigotry.
What is your next book going to be about?
My next book will explore the “sex-gender-caste” complex, as I call it, in 20th-century India.
Rahul should become a 'tamasha' dancer. He should marry a nice Dalit homosexual. Then he can travel back in time to the 20th century and become Prime Minister.
I have discussed some aspects of this work in my book The Vulgarity of Caste. I am also working on two co-edited books – one is on caste and race and the other is a Dalit reader.
Both will be shit.
Will you consider writing a book for a wider general readership?
I hope to do so!
I hope she gets a good editor or better yet a ghost-writer. Surely a book about her parents would be popular and serve a good purpose.
The last decade has seen the strengthening of new solidarities between Blacks and Dalits.
let them unite against Kamala.
How much do academic books, which are not widely read, impact this?
I agree that academic books have a narrow circulation, though they can be very impactful, if carefully and strategically advertised beyond academic fora. Alongside academic explorations, non-academic workshops, conferences, and public discussions will help strengthen new solidarities.
Sujatha Gidla's 'ants among elephants' did have an impact. But she was a STEM savant- a literal rocket scientist- before she went into FinTech.
Tell us a bit about what drew you to Tamasha artists.
Tamasha is a popular form of public theatre practised predominantly by Dalits.
Talented ones. But it did not originate amongst them.
It is considered traditional Dalit cultural performance art
in so far as they excel in it. But gay dudes have gotten into it and are making good money.
– a secular travelling public theatre that involves music and dance. It is often branded ashlil (vulgar) by the larger society. I grew up watching Tamasha, and even danced to and sang some of its songs. However, as a child, I had no idea about the inherent politics of caste, gender, and sexuality.
Because her parents were smart and hoped their kids would learn something useful in skool. Her dad saved up money and graduated in Agricultural Science.
It was in 2003 while I was conducting interviews with a range of Dalit women, that I first encountered Tamasha artists. I was always intrigued about them because I had always watched them on local TV but I hadn’t talked to them in real life. After I finished my first book, I decided to devote my attention to understanding the lives of Tamasha women and how they were tied to male leaders, poets, and state patronage and regulation, which disproportionately affected them.
You have to have talent to do well in the entertainment industry. Highlight the discipline, dedication, and ability to innovate of such entertainers by all means. Explain how and why 'tamasha' was able to cross-over into Bollywood. Unlike the Madras cinema industry, Bombay cinema was dominated by people from Peshawar or Calcutta. 'Tamasha' was one of the routes by which it acquired a more earthy flavour.
Scholarly and popular treatments of Tamasha have rarely commented on the conditions of disempowerment, poverty, and caste violence under which women performed.
Because everybody in all industries operated under the same conditions. Why not write a book on the injustice done to women workers in the FinTech industry by the fact that they have to sit down to pee?
These studies have perpetuated Tamasha’s reputation for sexual innuendo and moral depravity, displacing Tamasha women from the centre of their commentaries and reducing Tamasha women to objects of pleasure that serve only to corrupt men and shape Touchable men’s subjectivity.
Did you know that Dalit men think their women are very ugly and thus refuse to have sex with them?
Tamasha is thus looked at as a commodity through which men’s emotions and masculine fantasies are created, circulated, and regulated.
But nothing of the sort actually happens. Lots of men refuse to spend money watching burlesque shows. They are no different from other men. It isn't the case that the Taliban has given up sex because Afghanistan lacks 'tamasha' dancers. If this cretin is right about High Caste men's heterosexual desires being 'created' by Dalit tamasha dancers, surely the best thing to do- if you are against male heterosexuality- would be to ban that type of industry?
Everybody praises high-caste poets, writers,
if they are good- sure. But only good tamasha dancers are well paid.
and details abound of the music and musical instruments. The sexual and gendered arrangements of the caste system as they operated to oppress Dalit Tamasha women remained unexamined.
Did you know that many female, Dalit, tamasha dancers don't have a penis? Why has this not been studied properly by learned Professors?
These are the reasons I chose to study Tamasha as a microcosm of how caste domination operates.
Though it is the one field where there may be 'reverse discrimination'. Women get paid more than male female-impersonators. High caste men don't object to low-caste women being entertainers though they may kill a high-caste woman who takes up that profession and 'brings shame to the community'.
I have written in detail about my focus on Tamasha and my new methods in my book The Vulgarity of Caste.
It is foolish. Dalits are a hardworking, pious, community. They don't approve of vulgarity. However, there always have been 'vulgar' spectacles which are linked to the fertility of the soil or the marriage season. It is merely an appearance not the thing in itself just as an action film which displays lots of fighting and killing does not actually involve anybody getting hurt.
Your work breaks new ground compared to the work of researchers, both Savarna feminists and Dalit men, in framing how the freedoms of Dalit women, especially Tamasha artists, have been contained and limited.
It hasn't. Talented artistes make money and invest in property and education for family members. Some 'cross-over' into the mainstream and get State level or National awards.
You’ve also been critical of Dr Ambedkar’s thinking in this regard.
He married a Brahmin.
What do you hope the impact of your intervention is in how we think of gender and sexuality in its intersection with caste in our daily lives?
She hopes people will think she is smart. But she isn't at all. Still, some Dalits studying worthless shite will start writing worthless PhD theses even more illiterate than hers. But will America reward them with tenure? That is the question.
I have made critical interventions in how we think about caste oppression as it intersects with gender and sexuality in our daily lives.
No. She says she will do so, but never does so because she is too stupid.
For example, I have theorized about the “sex-gender-caste” complex, by which I mean the sexual and gendered arrangements of the caste system as they oppress Dalit Tamasha women.
Her theorization consists of saying 'I have theorized 'sex-gender-caste'' but she has never actually done so.
The control of sex and female sexuality leads to the social reproduction of caste.
Nope. Lack of such control may 'reproduce' a class of low-born people who will inherit nothing from unknown fathers. But drug addiction would have the same result as would military conquest and enslavement.
Women are to be regulated in terms of sexuality because any transgression would threaten caste hierarchy.
Nonsense! If some chick fucks a whole bunch of dudes and ends up with a baby, there is no threat to anybody. She is welcome to earn her bread as a prostitute or a beggar or a low paid drudge. On the other hand, if she has talent and rises economically by her own efforts, she can employ muscle-men to beat the fuck out of anybody who taunts her. At that point, everybody becomes very fucking polite to her.
The sex-gender-caste complex cunningly amalgamated a range of dancers, singers, and Tamasha women into the category of “prostitute”.
No. Some such women made money by doing sex work. But so did some men. Currently, on Netflix there is a drama series about a Chartered Accountant who has to become a male escort for financial reasons. I may mention, the film 'Pretty Woman' was based on my own experiences as an articled clerk. Julia Roberts had hired me for the night but I burst out crying and told her my tale of woe. She returned to Hollywood and made a high grossing film about it. Sadly, she didn't buy me a nice outfit before decamping.
The caste-based feudal agrarian slavery limited Dalit freedom to act, speak, think, dress, and have honour, virtue, education, and wealth – dominant and high castes forced them to follow prescribed occupations not of their own choice. By studying these arrangements, I hope to show how such inequality continues into the present.
It doesn't. Still, if High Caste 'post colonial theorists' can pretend Whitey is still running things, why not let this stupid darky pretend that Brahmins are filling her head with shit because they don't want Dalit savants to say anything useful or sensible? Also, Kamala could be a two-term POTUS. Just as Obama was actually born in Kenya, so too Kamala isn't 'Black' at all. She is a Brahmin just like Vivek Ramaswamy. Her claim to be 'middle class' is completely bogus. -
From the Round Table Conferences in the 1930s
which failed-
to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001
which was hijacked by the anti-Israel lobby
to you being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, marginalised communities in India have often found themselves gaining recognition abroad that is seldom available in India.
Because Indians actually know about India.
How do you reflect on this pattern, and what does it say about Indian society?
It says that Indians know Indian society. Americans don't.
I am happy the MacArthur Fellowship has recognised my unique contributions and the impact of history, humanities, and Dalit studies.
She is happy that they are recognizing the unique contributions of diverse shitheads.
Over the last 25 years, I have also received many fellowships to support my research and writing, including the Frederick Burkhardt fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Stanford Humanities Center fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities – American Institute of Indian Studies senior long-term fellowship, the Ford Foundation fellowship, the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center fellowship, the Luce Foundation fellowship, among others.
All of which may have started well but now are shit.
My research and writing have made deeper impacts – educational, social, and legislative – and my books and articles are read by academics and non-academics in different parts of the world.
They are laughed at.
Activists have used my scholarly writings to initiate change.
This is true. The State legislature of Wisconsin is planning to reserve seats for Lesbian Dalit tamasha artistes.
The MacArthur fellowship celebrates my outstanding contributions to the global conversation on anti-race, anti-patriarchal, and anti-caste movements and transnational feminism as well as has provided me an opportunity to strengthen this even further.
And yet, the first female POTUS will be of Brahmin, not Dalit, descent. The US Constitution must be amended so only disabled Dalit Lesbians, provided they are married to a goat, can hold high office.
The answer to this last question you raised, lies in the statement you made earlier that the Indian establishment “shies away from caste
There is a massive caste based affirmative action program.
and clamps down on researchers looking at issues like caste and discrimination.”
Nonsense! GoI won't pay for people to go abroad to research stuff about India because the relevant information is available only in India.
I hope reviewers (and the Indian society at large) recognise the value of excellent scholarly contributions and the significance of new perspectives, unique methods, and the creation of new knowledge that is important to bring about change.
She got a scholarship to go abroad just about the time Mayawati became CM of UP for the first time. Mayawati changed things in India. This cretin has achieved nothing. Still, if she gained affirmative action so as to teach nonsense to other victims of affirmative action- why should we grudge her some modest financial success?
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