Identify your privileges. Its about time

I would start this write up with a mail that I had once written to The Telegraph in response to a column by a certain Ms Singh who ridiculed the idea of tribe groups protecting forests. She compared forest dwellers'claiming the land they have been living-in, with Waqf board claiming Taj Mahal. Laughable as it may seem now, for me, who was then working with the groups that were fighting for the passage of Forest Dweller's bill, it was enough to sit down and write a scathing letter to the editor and my boiling blood (which is colder by 10 years now!) made me make two "personal" comments. I said probably the author's limited exposure to the tribal and forest villages had led her to believe forests can not be protected in presence of human inhabitants living there whereas history shows in India, communities were brought-in, to protect forests (Van Tongiys for example). And I made a reference to her privileged upbringing. The editor of the news paper thankfully omitted this second point from my letter that was published, but when I read the column next week, the columnist was burning in rage and instructed me to burn in hell for making a reference to her privilege! The editor as I could understand, had shared the unedited letter with her. She told me in no unclear words that the forefathers in her marital family have taken great risk to reach the position they had in society, which mere mortals like me would not understand and hence erroniously referred to that as elite privilege. 

The fact, that she got intensely angry due to the reference to her privileges is the central point of today's note. I have seen this often. People often get angry if I refer to their privileges. 

We love to portray ourselves as self-made. We love to talk about our struggles. We love sharing both the real version as well as the "glorified" version. We intensely dislike any reference to our privileges. What is even more dangerous is that we don't even recognize our privileges. I once had an angry colleague sitting next to me in the same car for 2 hours when I made him count his privileges. He was an upper caste man from a family with large land that got tilled by lower caste people who sent their "share" to my colleague's house every year, diligently. Therefore, my colleague's family mostly never bought cereals and pulses from market. They lived in the state capital and not where the land was beng tilled. Does it get difficult to believe that he did not recognize his privileges? However, he also had some compelling logic. His father died early in life. His mother took care of the children living in state capital without any male member's help. He was the first one of his family to travel to Delhi and living on his own to further study and work. He used no connection. He had none, and worked hard to earn his living and fair amount of respect as a thorough professional. He therefore, concluded that poor were basically lazy and they did not want to take up challenges of life, hence they remained poor. If they only had been as industrious as him, they could have succeeded. If they only could take the challenge of leaving the comfort of their village, they could have come out of poverty. We had a heated debate about physical labor that villagers put in and how they are not paid what they should be paid given more worker. Of course he agreed with another colleague who said, markets should decide the wages and there should be no minimum wages. See there! We not only like to enjoy our privileges and deny having any, we constantly try to increase our privileges by ending other's basic rights. This colleague by the way, is a very nice man whom I dragged to some of the most difficult locations and he was ready to examine his thinking. Not all do.

When I say, we need to identify our privileges, it does not mean that we did not have our share of problems, as individuals. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you would have easily noticed the difficulties I faced growing up as a factory laborer's daughter  (http://ladybugfieldnotes.blogspot.in/2014/07/growing-up-in-industrial-township.html) who studied in a Bengali medium government aided school. At the same time you would notice that I mentioned that in Durgapur, we did not practice caste-ism in the staff quarters. It was only much later in life that I started adding a rider to it. I now say, " My father, who never went to college and did not have fancy degrees to show, was strongly against practicing of caste; and as we were from a higher caste family anyway, it might be why I did not notice practice of caste-ism in Durgapur steel township." I hope you have started counting my privileges by now. I had an exceptionally progressive father and I was from the highest caste which is not discriminated against in majority Hindu India. I grew up in a household that did not think girls should get married as soon as possible. I grew up in a household that did not have to stop children from going to school in want of money or due to strong discrimination children faced at school. I am a cisgender female. I did not have to face a dilemma regarding my sexual identity. Beyond being taunted for my dark skin by relatives who were perpetually worried about how would my father get me married, I have not faced many barriers due to my skin color. It was much later on that I had to try hard to fit into the "class" that most of my classmates in the post graduation course belonged to. Some of them found it funny that I could not speak English as a native speaker and made regular fun of me. And yes, I have been discriminated on the basis of my gender but as all the other factors worked in my favor, I could fight. That fight is still on. And will be there. However, there is no denying the fact that I am privileged. Especially now. And I consciously use my privileges of being a fluent English speaker, well-traveled, well-dressed, smart, urban woman with a job in a respected company to further the agenda of those who are not so privileged. 

If you are a urban adult cisgender male, higher caste Hindu, native English speaker and hold a degree in medicine or have a job in a  big multinational company, in India, can you imagine your privileges? If you are a male, Sunni Muslim, Sayyad, moneyed with enough land in Bhawalpur and live in Islamabad and have a degree from some prestigious university in your country or abroad, can you please start counting your privileges? You two are the equivalent of "moneyed-white-straight male of USA" of our subcontinent. 

If we still can not count our privileges, a quiz from buzzfeed will help you understand, step by step, how privileged you are. Check for "how privileged you are" in google. 

Oh! By the way, did I tell you, that certain Ms Singh was married in the one of great rich families of Delhi, there are areas that are named after her family-members, and our colonial rulers got some particularly great service from them? Of course she denied any privilege. It was sheer hard work! :)