From the slum to Harvard

As a child, the West as a concept never existed in my worldview because I grew up in the Dalit community, a caste formerly known as the “untouchables”. If you grow up in a slum it’s your whole world. It’s a pond and you are a frog in that pond.

The caste you are born into affects your chances in life and your vocation. My father worked as a lower-class employee, as a watchman. He hardly slept and our family had scant resources. The biggest cities on my horizon as a child were Bombay or Delhi. I barely heard Western music. The only Western movies I was aware of were fantasy films, dubbed into Hindi. 

When I was growing up, the slum was violent and I was a bit of a gangster. I’d never heard of a university called Harvard, but because of the British colonial influence, I knew of Cambridge and Oxford. My upbringing meant I was not equipped to understand Western modernity. I lacked all the reference points. When I started to study, I hadn’t heard of the singers and pop groups that other students were attuned to. Everyone was talking about “Friends” on tv but I didn't know it. I only caught up with everything much later, thanks to technology.

Dabbling in two worlds is not easy: You have to learn the codes

I left my pond thanks to the state government. Maharashtra, where I come from, offers a full scholarship for Dalit students to pursue studies abroad. Without this support, there would be no Dr. Suraj Yende today! I’d be in India doing some clerical job, attending to my basic needs and caring for my family. It's like a wheel was spinning and I just fell out of it — but I can still see that spinning wheel. I feel humbled by this and sometimes anxious, because dabbling in these two worlds is not easy. You have to learn the codes.

I  went to Harvard, got a PhD from South Africa, a second PhD from Oxford, and even so I still sometimes feel like I’m in the wrong place. It hits me, say, as I’m about to enter a room full of academics. Should I go in? Do I even belong? I remember watching a dear friend of mine, a French scholar, how she had so much confidence moving around in these environments. She was part of it, it was hers. 

For much of the world today, “the west” is an aspirational a category. I've traveled the globe, visiting around 50 countries, and the west remains a key reference point. In India, the middle class may criticise the West but at the same time they want to go there, educate their children there, and benefit from links to the Western economy.

Things are different among India's elites. Many of them have been to the West and then come back to India with a good degree. They have good reason to return: If you come from an upper middle class in India, you have inherited wealth, you can access many more luxury than would be available to you in the West. India offers you people who work for you, cook for you, as well as a family system that is intact. Western life, in contrast, is individualistic, in fact it can be aggressively autonomous. So the elite use their privilege to access both worlds. They can code-switch, they have relatives in the west, they can jump on a flight when they want to.

But for poor and suburban classes like me, there's nothing back home. When I got a scholarship, my first thought was to build a home with the money I was given. After all, my mother lived in a tin shack with a leaky roof – and that shaped my priorities.

India’s focus on caste might be ebbing, but it’s still there

Arriving in the UK to study, I was very fascinated by the people I met there. Because of the colonial influence, we were brought up to think the British are superior. Even now in India, if you are going to sell a pair of shoes manufactured in the local neighbourhood you can sell them more easily if you label them “London shoes”. If you call them “neighbourhood shoes”, they’ll stay on the shelf! It's a case of national imposter syndrome.

As a newcomer in the West you must harden yourself to the environment. Oftentimes, it's lonely, it's emotional. You get enraged because there are certain vulnerabilities that people press on. They comment on how you look, you speak, your grammar. And it’s not just outside India that people voice racist or colonial attitudes, they’re just as widespread among the Brahmins, India's dominant caste. These people are the embodiment of white superiority. In India, people still focus more on someone’s background than on who they are as a person.

In part, that’s why I’m not immediately planning on going back to India. The national focus on caste might be ebbing, but it’s still there. I have some status in my country now: My books and writing are known. People recognize me and elite spaces are now accessible to me. But in India, my caste still comes banging at my door.

At the same time, as an academic and author means that I need cultural capital. In my profession, cultural capital comes via elite institutions in the West. When I’m abroad, I often meet Indians who look down on me and my work. They’ll be from a higher social rank/class than me and they’ll say, they don't believe in caste, adding that they’ve never personally experienced it. But the reality is, Indian society still doesn’t fully accept me and I’m better off writing what i'm writing from the west.

As told to Jess Smee