This from @varungrover is an important read.

He says Equal and fair representation of Dalits is the only way out of this fractured existence.

I concur.

A thread https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/reservation-vinod-kambli-dalits-varun-grover-6501257/

A fracture runs through India’s soul. Most of us who can fix this choose to live in denial or have made peace to uphold the status quo.

It was in the winters of 1993 when a crack in this carefully constructed matrix of denial revealed itself to me for the first time.

A three-day game between Indian Board President’s XI and the visiting England cricket team was scheduled at Lucknow’s K D Singh Babu stadium between January 8 and 10. What I witnessed here forever changed how I looked at caste and its implications in India.

It opened a door to understanding the much-debated policy of constitutionally-mandated reservations in education and jobs for the scheduled castes and tribes in India — a policy of affirmative action that not only angers most of us savarna Hindus in India...

but is also used as an excuse for furthering caste-violence and oppression.

India batted first & Kambli was in great flow, hitting cover drives with an elegance only left-handed players possess.

the real shock was yet to come. Vinod Kambli took a rising ball on his right arm and had to be retired hurt because of a fracture. As he walked back to the pavilion, in frustration after scoring a fluent 61, a section of the crowd erupted in a volley of abuses directed at him

They called him lazy and useless followed by caste-names used as slurs. The most-promising player of the most-elite club of our own country was reduced to his assumed (‘lowest’) caste identity by a crowd of ordinary men who derived this power from the accident of their birth.

It didn’t matter that Kambli was an accomplished cricketer...

Any fair evaluation of ‘merit’ requires a level playing field. A Dalit kid from an underprivileged family with no access to clean water or regular electricity or healthcare, constantly living in fear of their identity being disclosed at school, or being bullied...

or discriminated against by their classmates and teachers could not be expected to excel in an academic system conflating merit with cramming skills.

Merit is a flawed argument also because it shapes perceptions not by any rigorous studies but by confirmation bias. A savarna person failing an entrance exam (lakhs of them fail IIT-JEE every year) is not seen as a defining trait of their castes

but a similar failure by a Dalit person reinforces the negative perception about their lack of merit.

Another simple experiment to see how confirmation bias works is if you do a google search of cases of medical negligence in India. Run a caste-study on these negligent doctors.

Many, if not most, names that turn up are of private hospitals owned and populated by savarna doctors.

Does that mean most of the meritorious savarna doctors are incompetent? Absolutely not. But you have been constantly fed the idea that all Dalit doctors lack merit...

by anecdotally citing cases of incompetence by them.

A popular myth substantiating in savarna circles is that Dalits can graduate even after scoring a zero. Absolutely false.

Reservation means a lowered cut-off only in entrance exams and once inside the college, all students have the same grading system and pass-percentage, irrespective of their castes.

Of course Dalit students still have to face the extra-burden of harassment, as reported regularly in various suicide cases at India’s premier medical and engineering colleges.

The second argument against reservations — that rich Dalits shouldn’t get it or it should be based only on financial status — is also flawed.

Reservations aim to bring something much more valuable than financial status — they bring dignity and representation.

Vinod Kambli in 1993 and the scores of Dalits are not discriminated against because of their financial status but because we live in a society that allows a caste-based power-dynamic to exist.

All fields — from media, cinema to governance to judiciary to even our leftist parties — are studded with savarna Hindus holding powerful positions. To dissolve this skewed power-dynamics by bringing representation to Dalits —

even if that means a third-generation rich Dalit using reservations — is the unstated but definitive aim of quota policy.

Equal and fair representation of Dalits is the only way out of this fractured existence.

Reservations enable this journey to earning dignity. The journey which may just be a small walk from the pitch to the pavilion but has taken centuries.