#adivasis

Savarnas often ask ‘would you go for treatment from a doctor who got medical seat using reservation?’ The whole narrative rests on testimonial injustice where the expertise of a DBA individual is discarded, despite having the degree and experience. Interestingly this argument will never be used for doctors who used EWS reservation or even paid management seats. The use of ‘Merit’ against reservation to undermine the intellect and capabilities of DBA community is the most popular example of epistemic injustice done on the community.

reminder that the name of india's first tribal president, and also the second female president, is Puti Tudu, and not Draupadi Murmu.

okay, for all my RamBheem loving desi bitches, PLEASE REMEMBER.

When knowledge becomes an exclusive product under savarna domination, it creates an unjust system of power hierarchy where knowledge produced and communicated by DBA communities are either discarded or delegitimized without a second thought. The injustice done to a person in their capacity as a knower (producer and communicator of knowledge) is called Epistemic Injustice. This is a concept in social epistemology that refers to the unfair distribution of knowledge, credibility, or intellectual resources when someone is denied access to knowledge or is not believed, despite having relevant knowledge or expertise, because of their social identity, such as their race, caste, gender, class, or disability. The term was coined by a British philosopher, Miranda Fricker.

Hermeneutical injustice operates in caste through the lack of available language or conceptual frameworks to describe and articulate the experiences of people from DBA communities. Dominant cultural narratives and discourses do not have adequate means to capture their experiences and this makes it difficult for them to express themselves or be understood by others. Also, most of the scholarship on caste oppression is mostly written by the oppressor castes with a savarna gaze that portrays the oppression in a completely different light. The knowledge and cultural practices of oppressors are always considered classical, and the cultural and artistic products of DBA are relegated to the bottom. The discomfort and suffocation that a DBA individual feels when they enter savarna dominated spaces like academia or media is mainly due to the erasure of identity and cultural shock they experience by not being able to connect or articulate in the language or assimilate into the culture of savarnas. The way to battle hermeneutical injustice is by questioning the language, culture and scholarship created by savarnas, and expanding the vocabulary to be able articulate the experiences of DBA by more inclusion of marginalized groups into academia, media, journalism, law etc.

From 1947-2010, 65 million people in India were displaced from their indigenous dwellings on account of 'development' projects. Every year, this number grows by another million. 75% of those displaced are either tribal people (Adivasis) or Dalits.