Am I incapable?: Caste in Educational Spheres

Caste, often portrayed as a relic of the past, remains pervasive in modern life, though it has become more subtle and invisible. Today, caste manifests in essential areas of human life such as food, education, relationships, and workplaces, taking forms that are harder to recognise. In particular, educational institutions, where individuals spend much of their formative years, become major mediums for social interaction, making caste discrimination even more difficult to identify in spaces where equality is assumed.

Sometimes, caste is evident through direct and visible discrimination, while at other times, it can be more subtle, such as when a student remains silent in the classroom. Both forms of discrimination lead to further struggles for students, prompting a need to achieve social capital, intellectual equality, and acceptance. This paper explores how the struggles faced in educational spaces are not due to personal inadequacies but are rooted in the larger societal issue of caste. By using my own caste as a lens to examine these experiences, I aim to shed light on how the hierarchical nature of caste, operating through power dynamics, leads to individual struggles.

Keywords: caste, social capital, knowledge and power, autoethnography, classroom dynamics.