Week #3: Lacking a Ladder
“[T]he labour class in India (as you’re about to find out with your summer internship) is completely disorganized, and function by no rules even though they are the poorest of the lot (my understanding is, this is their way of saying F*** y** to being born in an ‘unfair’ life) – in short, they unconsciously create chaos – and simply cannot be relied upon!” This is how the Indian working class was portrayed to me by an acquaintance living and operating in Delhi before I arrived in the city. It’s not a particularly sympathetic account of the capabilities and work ethic of those of lower socio-economic means residing within the country; still, it represents her truthfully felt account born of a lived experience whose proper context I have been trying to understand in the weeks that have passed since it was uttered to me. To do this, it merits a brief discussion of India’s caste system, or rather the remnants of India’s caste system which permeate into the modern day; it all depends on who you ask.
I had been taught in my ninth-grade world history class that there were four subdivisions of the Indian caste system: the Brahmins (teachers and intellectual leaders representative of the Hindu god Brahma’s head), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers representing Brahma’s arms), Vaishyas (traders representing Brahma’s legs), and Shudras (the infamous “untouchable” class tasked with performing only the most menial of jobs who collectively represent Brahma’s feet). The lived reality of India’s caste system is infinitely more complex; in actuality, there are roughly 3,000 castes scattered throughout the country, which can themselves be broken down further into 25,000 different sub-castes. To say that modern-day India still operates under a caste system is a controversial position, to say the least. At my office, I asked several attorneys I greatly respect about their thoughts and attitudes regarding this particular aspect of Indian culture. Some seemed slightly affronted, arguing that there is no caste system in today’s India; others smiled at me before attempting to place the concept of “caste” in its proper socio-political context, arguing that while the effects of the caste system reverberate into today’s Indian society in ways that are difficult for Westerners to comprehend, the idea of caste no longer holds the exalted position that it once had. Officially, discrimination based on one’s caste has been outlawed in India by the country’s constitution adopted nearly seventy-five years ago. Additionally, mandatory quotas for specific public jobs have been provided for scheduled castes and tribes lower on the caste hierarchy by the Indian government since 1950, something that many Indians are rightfully proud of.
However, despite any official protection afforded to those of lesser means, markers of one’s social status remain all too pervasive in India, a fact which I became painfully aware of on my first day in Delhi during two distinctive encounters. The first of these occurred upon my meeting Rahul; arriving at the Airbnb I would be living in for the next ten weeks, I was greeted by a young man in his late twenties wearing a slightly worn t-shirt and a pair of slacks who I knew to be my apartment’s live-in housekeeper. Despite seemingly comprehending everything that I say to him with substantial accuracy, I have found Rahul’s English somewhat difficult to understand at times; conversation between the two of us is limited and typically involves at least one instance of my misinterpreting what he has been trying to tell me and having to awkwardly pivot and course-correct to make my meaning clearer to him. Rahul’s meaning was plain, however, in our very first encounter when I tried to (helpfully) carry my own large and heavy bags up the three stories to my apartment, an action which he curtly refused. I felt bad about this during the days and weeks that followed, believing myself to have made a poor first impression. I had simply feared my becoming a burden to Rahul so quickly, but I think that I had inadvertently insulted him without meaning to in the process.
This run-in stands in stark contrast to another which occurred a mere two hours later when I contacted the host of the Airbnb, an incredibly helpful and accommodating woman of sufficient means named Nithya. Knowing that I would need to accustom myself to travel around Delhi very soon, I inquired to Nithya via Whatsapp whether she happened to know the going rate of an auto (an affordable – read “lower-class” – means of transportation in India resembling a cross between a jeep and a children’s big-wheel tricycle). While well-intentioned, Nithya’s response to me was particularly telling: “Hmnnn, honestly I wouldn’t know. But [I know] they are available at the end of the road. I’ll ask Rahul to walk you till there and speak to the auto guy about the charges.” Subsequently asking her about how I might go about purchasing more Indian currency, Nithya very kindly offered to lend me her own personal driver to take me to an exchange, a gesture that I greatly appreciated but one which I also found to be starkly revealing about the city that I would be living in over the course of the next two and a half months.
Markers of class are far less easily discernable amongst the clients that our office at the Migration & Asylum Project represents. One of the first things that I learned coming to MAP is that there is no singular type of “refugee.” The disasters and conflicts wreaking havoc on our world appear to affect everyone, if not exactly equally, then at least indiscriminately - old and young, man and woman, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, the persons seeking refugee status here in India come from all walks of life. Demonstrative of this point, the very first client’s case that I helped review was that of a nuclear technician in her home country of Yemen. She came to India after a militant and rival sect took control of the area that she had lived in her entire life and tried to forcibly compel her fourteen-year-old son to fight in their wars. When the family refused, their son was taken, beaten, and very nearly left for dead. I directly followed this case up this past week by working to get a Somali fruit vendor fleeing forced recruitment by Al-Shabaab recognized as a political refugee; right now, my supervising attorney and I are optimistic that the facts of his case will be enough to convince UNHCR (the international body responsible with determining who qualifies for refugee status here in India) that he is deserving of a coveted refugee card.
Successfully obtaining a refugee card obviously does not automatically make life perfect for an applicant, but it can certainly help to make one’s living situation a whole lot easier. Without it, displaced persons in India are unable to access government services like healthcare or establish accounts with national banks. They are often forced to work in the most menial jobs, live in conditions that might generously be described as squalor, and face the constant threat of harassment, exploitation, or deportation by the Indian police. In many cases, being able to possess a refugee card is the difference between life and almost certain death for applicants. In writing this, I appear to be reflecting in real time on how comparative it all is; those aspects of life that seem meager to some would often be considered comically bountiful to others. I am intellectually aware, at least, that such is the case just about everywhere in the world, and maybe it’s simply because I remain a stranger in a strange land, but things seem heightened to me here in India. The affluent of India seem to be mired in affluence, with the reverse seeming just as true to an extent that I have not personally witnessed living in the United States. “[The Indian working class] unconsciously create chaos[.]” That was what my acquaintance had said to me, but it seems to me just as plausible that chaos is a creature of the head, not the legs or the feet. I find it all just particularly peculiar.
- Tyler Brooks, 06/14/2024
Update on my experiences with the FRRO
Last week, I chronicled my experiences conducting a righteous battle against the FRRO, the government body in India dedicated to “assisting” foreigners with residency materials and requirements. This week, I received a rather alarming text from Nilam (an attorney at MAP who has been assisting me in dealing with the FRRO’s supposed assistance) asking me: “Are you
free this afternoon? The FRRO has requested that we come into their office today.” Apparently, the FRRO required all of the documents I had submitted to them electronically last week to be submitted to them in person as printed copies – this is at least what they had told Nilam, who suspected their true intention was to interview me. This hunch ended up proving correct.
After driving the half-hour from MAP’s office to the FRRO’s headquarters in New Delhi, Nilam helpfully told the government official sitting at the front of the office that we had arrived. “Ok,” the officer responded, barely glancing up from his phone, “It’ll be five minutes.” Twenty-five minutes later, Nilam inquired again how much longer we might be made to wait. “Oh, another five minutes,” the officer responded, clearly now playing a game on his cellphone. Twenty minutes later, we were finally afforded the opportunity for an interview. Speaking entirely in Hindi to Nilam, my interviewer seemed not to have a whole lot to gripe about with the quality of the documents that I had submitted, save for the fact that nowhere on the documentation that I and MAP had submitted did it explicitly say that I was a “law student” (this despite that fact that in multiple places my status as a “student intern from the College of William and Mary” had been made clear to them). On a crappy piece of printer paper that just happened to be lying around, my interviewer had me write out the following:
“Dear sir,
My name is Tyler Brooks. I am an American law student at William and Mary Law School. I am not getting paid by the Migration & Asylum Project.
Sincerely,
Tyler Brooks”
This was the only thing of substance that our being dragged over to the FRRO accomplished for the Indian government. Tune in next week where I am asked to recite the American Pledge of Allegiance for a disgruntled bureaucrat trying to determine whether or not he should stamp an obscure (and possibly made-up) form on my behalf.