I conveniently forgot the last name my grandfather dropped to allow him to pass, almost 60 years ago – Nidaniya. For many of us, coming-out as Dalit has been more difficult a journey than. I cared enough to lie about my caste and to create elaborate backstories to protect that lie. Caste is everywhere, recalls Grace Banu, a Dalit-transgender activist. The ones who did (a friend who along with her parents witnessed my first public admission of being ‘low-caste’ at 15) stopped being in touch. ‘This time, they’ll find out’, I had thought when the undergraduate college I attended tucked my name under the SC/ST quota or when I submitted my birth certificate for my first job at an ad agency. But I couldn’t fool the shame that spread my face each time someone mentioned ‘caste’, ‘reservation’, ‘bhangi’ – the common slur, which loosely translates to a human scavenger and the name of my exact caste. “Beta, what caste are you from?” “Aunty, Brahmin.” A lie I spoke so often and with such conviction, that I not only fooled my friends’ mothers but even myself. My convent school education, a non-Dalit sounding last name, and a skin color that was ‘dusky but still not dirty’ eased my passing as a non-Dalit. I was born in a Dalit family in Ajmer, Rajasthan.
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