Opinion: I was born into India’s lowest caste. But nothing will stop me from embracing my joy

Editor’s Note: Shreeja Rao is a law student and journalist whose writing has appeared in The Guardian and The Times of India among other media outlets. She is also an incoming participant in the US Department of State’s Madeleine K. Albright Young Women Leaders Program. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

I come from India’s Dalit community of some 200 million people, a community that suffers the worst health outcomes, lacks access to clean water and sanitation and has been deprived of educational and occupational opportunities for centuries. Dalits were once contemptuously dismissed as “untouchables,” a term which today is understood to be a slur.

My community of Dalit women are doubly oppressed by caste and gender. Women in my community are the most vulnerable to sexual violence in India, for example. But to say that we are only limited by our misfortunes would be misguided, and far too reductive. The Dalit woman’s experience is unique. In our daily lives, and in myriad ways, we also embrace joy.

Our reality is far more complex and encompasses much more than the casteist gaze that fetishizes our pain and reduces our culture to our oppression. Dalit women like me are bound together by a sense of sisterhood woven with each other for as long as anyone can remember, and long before that. While cruelties continue to be perpetrated on us as part of India’s age-old hierarchy, we refuse to be defined by pain and oppression alone.

“You don’t look Dalit” is something that I and many accomplished women from my background have heard at least once in their lives, a clueless statement fueled by the caste-influenced thinking that Dalit women are defined — even in how we look — by an eternal state of oppression. Too often, social media and news stories focus only on violent atrocities against my community. Dalit women’s achievements, success and joy are achingly sidelined.

Yes, there are tragic stories about Dalits, but there are other stories about us that deserve to be told — stories about Dalit women becoming lawyers, journalists, policy analysts, engineers, athletes, fashion models, writers, civil service officers and musicians. These stories have changed my life as a young woman by offering examples of a way up and a path out, in the process altering my own trajectory.

I think of my mentor, Beena Pallical, who made history by becoming the first Dalit woman to address the UN General Assembly. She has long been a role model and inspiration. Pallical is the foremost policy expert on gender equity and caste justice in India. She once told me she feels joy when she hears about the impact of her work not just on big stages like the UN.

She also deepens her bonds within the community by welcoming the occasional supporter — perhaps a new mother who may stop by her office, baby in tow — or by taking a Dalit protegee like me under her wing. She is a consummate example of how Dalit women lean on each other and the mutual care and support that we give each other and take from each other to keep moving forward. And she is a reminder to me of something else a Dalit woman can be — a world beater and achiever, not just a victim of our identity.

While cruelties continue to be perpetrated on us as part of India’s age-old hierarchy, my community refuses to be defined by pain and oppression alone. Although gaining the constitutional right to equal education and employment has led to significant victories and more freedom than ever before in India’s caste-tainted history. Despite harsh realities faced by the people in my community, many have defied the odds and have overcome their struggles.

I cannot help thinking, as India wraps up its general election, about the ways that we’ve gained via the political process, through anti-discrimination laws that have opened up new possibilities in work and education. But even these victories have come at a significant cost. The ignorant debates that continue to be spewed against affirmative action label us as undeserving. But these advances have led Dalit women to significant victories and more freedom than ever before in India’s caste-tainted history.

After centuries of oppression and subjugation, such inroads will never be enough. Maybe there have been some promises that have been fulfilled by politicians seeking our votes. At least as often, there have been promises broken, a reminder that in the end, as we have always done, we need to fend for ourselves and lean on each other.

Without the accomplishments of other Dalit women exemplars, I would not have dared believe that I could achieve what I have early in my career, getting into law school, becoming an activist, journalist, a perhaps a future diplomat. Maybe one day, a Dalit girl or woman will take heart from my example and find the strength to keep pushing forward in her goals too.

Here’s what leaning into joy as a Dalit woman looks like: Sitting in my grandmother’s lap as a child, as she moved mountains with her storytelling. Seeing the only Dalit woman hockey player score a hat-trick at the Olympics, becoming the first Indian woman to do so.

Joy is ranking number one in my exams toward the dream of becoming the first lawyer in my family. Joy is also going to the Buddha Vihara to give thanks the day my best friend gets a job. It is dancing in a sea of blue, with a crowd of women I have never met before, on Ambedkar Jayanti, the holiday celebrating the birthday of India’s revered Dalit constitutionalist leader. Joy is also singing Bhim Geet, the folk songs of praise for our leader on the way there.

And there is joy in seeing the women of my community represent us on global stages and being inspired by their courage, because who I am today would never be a reality without the sisterhood I inherited from my community.

Dalit women insist on moving past the societal conditioning that defines my community only by our suffering. We want to be seen as multifaceted individuals with a full palette of human experience and emotion, heard for our struggles, but also celebrated for our achievements. Watching the women of my community find their joy in this makes all the difference.

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