Facebook group takes on casteism in India with Bollywood memes

Just Savarna Things is a page on Facebook that talks about caste The page has garnered over 4000 followers in a month and a half This surprising juxtaposition of the two facts has been made possible by a team of 10 young people who met on social media and decided that the hypocrisies of the upper caste liberals have enough material for endless jokes For this they used stills from cinema as a communication medium and started making memesAlso readPolice charge Malda incident accused with attempt to rapeThis meme was a fan S Anis contribution to the team of Just Savarna Things JST Neither Guru Dutt nor Pyaasa the still is from the movie had anything to do with the recent violence in Malda The page uses this grab from the classic to comment on how the Malda incident would be brought up to brush aside any other issue The members of JST say that after the incident whenever they would bring up caste issues they were criticised for not talking about Malda Pic courtesy Just Savarna ThingsJust Savarna Things uses a Shashi Tharoorinspired meme to expose the doublespeak of the privileged elite The back story was that a while ago social media was abuzz with news that Tharoor had appeared in Andaz Apna Apna where he denied it leading to much amusement Though this points at the Tharoorrsquos argument from raparations at Oxford the use of the picture is to allude to supporters of such reparation who are against reservation PICS courtesyJust Savarna ThingsOne of us started a thread with the hashtag JustSavarnaThings The thread went viral and we were excited beyond measure because it was probably the first time we were specifically targeting the hypocrisy of the liberal savarnas Sanskrit upper caste Now itrsquos easy to mock the extremeright wingers but what often goes unexposed is the hypocrisy of the selfproclaimed liberals says Gaurav Somwanshi representing the teamldquoWestern feminism had its Peggy McIntosh a white woman to point out how White Privilege works to exclude women of colour from feminist discourses sadly itrsquos the opposite in an Indian scenario The savarna feminists also indulge in savarnawashing of mainstream feminist discourses even if it means exploiting the knowledge and experience of Dalitbahujanadivasi women themselvesrdquo mdash Gaurav SomwanshiAlso readNow a storm over Beyonces cameo in Coldplays Hymn for the WeekendThis one came after the lsquocultural appropriationrsquo row over Coldplayrsquos latest single shot in India and which featured Beyonce in Indian attire Also readColdplays new music video featuring Sonam Kapoor and Beyonce sparks Twitter debateAn IIM Lucknow graduate Somwanshi is a Dalit but the team is composed of people from diverse backgrounds We are a team of six men and four women Six of us are Dalits one is OBC one is Muslim and two are uppercastes with one being a Brahmin and other a Lingayat prominent uppercaste from Karnataka Somwanshi reveals He feels that the omnipresence of Bollywood in Indian imagination gives the added punch to their lines and also indirectly is a commentary on the castedenying narratives of Bollywood Is there any enquiry on the castedominance in Bollywood just like there is a lot of awareness about issues such as Oscars lacking people of colour he asks The group has a Twitter handle and plan to move to Instagram and Tumblr soonAlso readWill Smith boycotts Academy AwardsJust as one starts lsquotchtchingrsquo about the Oscars Academy Awards not having adequate representation from people of colour this meme asks us to look at the caste scenario in Indian film awardsAlso readHugh Jackman debates Oscars diversity issueWhere JST takes the knife to drawing room liberals who casually practice everyday casteism Despite being a page that comments on caste JST has been silent on the suicide of Rohith Vemula which has led to student unrest in different parts of the country This Somwanshi says is because they think the gravity of the situation is too much for the satirical page We have been actively engaged with the movements and have been writing in personal capacity on different platforms he says Somwanshi is also the coauthor of a book Hatred In The Belly on caste hypocrisy in India which has contributions from 37 other anticaste writers