New Delhi: An anti-caste-discrimination organisation comprising students, staff and faculty from the US’ University of California has released a statement in support of Dalit author Yashica Dutt, who has been at the centre of a controversy on account of her award-winning 2019 book ‘Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir’.
The University of California (UC) Collective for Caste Abolition — a group that describes its cause as “pushing for caste abolition in, and beyond, the UC system”, has said it is “alarmed by the criticisms” of Dutt by “some scholars and organisers hailing from the Dalit community and their savarna accomplices”.
“Attacks on Mx. Dutt and others are not just against individuals, but against the historical and political locations of the Dalit body which is differentiated through class, religion, sexuality, gender, caste, and citizenship status,” the statement, dated 2 February, says.
Dutt’s book is an account of her publicly embracing her Dalit identity after years of “passing” as an upper caste.
However, she was accused last year of appropriating the idea of ‘coming out as Dalit’ from queer Dalit academic Sumit Baudh. Dutt has also been criticised over the use of the phrase “coming out” — used by the queer community to describe the process of making their sexuality/gender identity public — in the context of caste.
The controversy started when Dutt sought credit from the creators of the 2023 show, Made in Heaven Season 2, for an episode whose main character appeared similar to her. As the controversy raged, she came out as queer, and blamed this admission on the hate lobbed at her for allegedly appropriating Baudh’s work as a heterosexual woman.
Speaking to ThePrint last year, she termed the controversy an “episode of how caste operates in our communities”.
The UC collective’s statement comes on the heels of an open letter written by a group of queer and/or Dalit people, including writers, editors and activists, that called for the publishers of Dutt’s book to review the title before its revised edition, slated to come out soon, is published.
The UC Collective for Caste Abolition statement says “racism, casteism, misogyny, queer and transphobia are just as prevalent in marginalised communities as they are in dominant ones because we live within structures and systems that are meant to dismantle our sense of self, our communities, and our sense of belonging to them”.
It refers to the “charge that Mx. Dutt mobilises the language of ‘coming out’ while not being queer (enough)”, and adds that “queer theory clearly teaches us that queerness is not about policing sexuality to determine who has the right fractions to claim non-heterosexuality”.
“We understand queerness as more than simply non-het or non-cis identity but an abolitionist posture that challenges all forms of carcerality embodied by normativity, power, and hegemony,” it reads, adding that Dalitness is queered in itself.
The UC collective statement says attacks of the kind directed at Dutt “are not isolated incidents of hate or anger towards specific Dalit women, but are part of the larger structures, languages, and politics from which they derive”.
“These Dalit women are not considered Dalit enough, and consequently not even human enough because of class capital, family genealogies, or some perceived contradictions to dominant understandings and mistaken assertions of Dalitness as always damaged/broken,” the statement adds, alleging “constant efforts to ‘break’ these powerful Dalit folks… sometimes from within the community itself”.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
Also Read: Letter to publishers of Yashica Dutt’s ‘Coming out as Dalit’ seeks review of title in new edition