Facing Caste: Engaging with the Privileged - Sujata Noronha and Beena Choksi

The findings revealed under-representation of Dalits in the texts and a complete absence of Dalit characters in the literature texts of Classes 4, 5, 6 and 8, which an editorial in The Telegraph (2021) describes as ‘an institutionalised distortion of the facts of Indian social existence’. [...] Alongside the school and the community, we recognise the liberator force of the space of the library. [...] Three of the ten LEs dropped out of the project: one in the first phase of the project due to a personal crisis and two in the second phase of the project on account of health reasons which made it difficult for them to cope with the rigour of the project. [...] In pursuing the goal of social justice and anti-caste education, LEs—or for that matter, all educators with privilege—choose to talk about oppression with the oppressed and disadvantaged communities despite the total absence of any lived experience of it or the examination of privilege as part of the oppressive systems in society. [...] We recognise that many of the LEs we work with may be increasingly identifying with the cause of the oppressed, and in doing so, we may be in danger of what Allen (2002) refers to as the ‘delusional space where everyone is the oppressed and no one is the oppressor’ (p.