“Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?”
- Malcolm X.
My first ever conscious experience of racism was at a sports club in Chigwell in 2004. I was 15 and had scanned my membership card at the entrance barriers. They opened and I went through but the receptionist angrily called me back, “That is not your card!” she said, and put out her hand, demanding that I hand it over to her. I complied with this authority figure and upon reading the foreign sounding name Isuru Perera, she handed the card back and acted as if nothing had happened. This event planted the seed in my mind for a few sentiments that would become recurrent themes in my conversations with family and friends and in my SOAS Radio interviews with people of colour;
1. That as people of colour, we are assumed to be criminals unless we can prove otherwise.
2.That we are perceived to be less than full citizens in society.
3.That we are also perceived to be less than human.
In 2013 I attended the Wireless Festival in London and witnessed A Tribe Called Quest’s first UK Show in 20 years. Q‑Tip in a traditional Dashiki shirt grabbed the mic and said “This one is for Treyvon Martin!” to rapturous applause. He would then make a speech during the set about race relations in America and the countless racially motivated killings in its history.
Origin is a 2024 American film from writer and director Ava DuVernay. It is based on the 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by the American author and journalist Isabel Wilkerson, who was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1994 and who also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the 2010 book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.
The main hypothesis in Caste is that slavery in America was not do to with actual beliefs of racial superiority, that was the propaganda, but rather it was a caste system in which black humanity was known by the oppressors but violently subjugated.
It is important to note that Wilkerson is not saying that racism doesn’t exist but that it is not the same as caste and not the primary lens through which we should understand slavery and discrimination. Wilkerson acknowledges that both caste and race co-exist and often support each other. She points to the structural power which can manifest in society and oppress people regardless of race; “Racism is not the same as caste as race does not matter in order for the system to function.”.
Wilkerson looks towards the treatment of Dalits in India, a marginalised community who are seen as a lower caste (Or even sub-caste) and are deemed as untouchables. There is a system of segregation and apartheid in which Dalits are not allowed to integrate with the rest of society. They have to live on the outskirts of villages and towns and are unable to use public facilities such as wells. They are also made to clean toilets and septic tanks with their bare hands and do the other jobs which are considered too unclean for members of the higher castes (Such as Brahmins) to do.
Wilkerson sees a parallel between the treatment of Dalits in India and the treatment of black people in America and Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Wilkerson’s character in the film, researches the plight of the Dalits and states that it couldn’t have been about race because; “They were all brown, they were all Indian.”
She asks whether caste is a better way of understanding the situation in American than race and then transposes the caste system of India onto the history of America and onto Nazi Germany and ultimately the entire world throughout human history.
The film which is a dramatization and artistic interpretation of the book, has Wilkerson’s character explaining the reasoning for her hypothesis by paraphrasing an idea from Toni Morrison, “Why would you let your children be raised by people that you believe are animals?” explaining to her sister that “They knew we weren’t inferior.” That the belief of racial superiority was a lie used to justify the oppression.
The caste system of ancient India was a stratification of society based on hereditary relations. It dictated the vocations of those born under it and was also intertwined with a perceived proximity to Brahman (or God) and a belief of cleanliness and pollution. The Brahmins or priests were at the top, the Kshatriyas or warriors/kings were second and the Vaishyas or craftsmen were third. The Shudras or slaves were at the bottom. The Dalits were considered to be even below the Shudras and were referred to as untouchables, based upon the notion that were a member of a higher caste to touch them, it would be considered a polluting action. The ancient system is still existing in Indian society today.
The caste system takes its authority from various Hindu scriptures, the oldest being the Rig Veda in its hymn of the cosmic man which outlines the mythical arising of the castes from the body of a primordial man;
The brahmin was his mouth. The ruler was made his two arms. As to his thighs—that is what the freeman was. From his two feet the servant was born.
- Rig Veda Book X Hymn 90 Verse 12 translated by Brereton and Jamison.
Scholars have pointed out that this hymn may be a later interpolation into the scripture, but regardless of its authenticity, the caste system continues to be a dominant force in Indian society dictating jobs, marriages and causing discrimination and violence. This system is also prevalent in wider South Asia and even amongst the wider South Asian diaspora. One only needs to look at the matrimonial notices in the South Asian newspapers of the western world and the campaigns in the US and UK to make caste a protected characteristic in anti-discrimination legislation to see evidence of this. A movement which has been brought by members of the South Asian diaspora, often Dalits living in the west but still having to face caste-based discrimination from their employers.
The experience of Dalits features heavily in the film with Wilkerson visiting India and meeting the academic and activist Dr.Suraj Yengde who wrote the 2019 book Caste Matters. Dr Yengde’s work was very influential to Wilkerson and Dr Yengde appears in the film as himself. He gives Wilkerson insights into the caste system, the discrimination faced by Dalits and the work of the leader of the Dalit rights movement Dr B.R. Ambedkar.
Dr Ambedkar was born in India in 1891. He was a Dalit who attained two PHDs from London and New York, led the committee for the drafting of the Indian constitution and served as a government minister. Dr Ambedkar also founded the Neo Buddhist movement, declaring the end of caste and the non-existence of Hindu Gods. He also critiqued the Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita for what he believed to be its glorification of violence. Dr Ambedkar however did not appear to look at the issues of caste and violence which were and still are present in Buddhism.
Wilkerson’s hypothesis is interesting and innovative. Critics have mainly praised the work for its questioning of the centrality of race in the understanding of slavery and discrimination and her exploration of caste as being in fact the main (If often overlooked) factor. Criticism has come from Tunku Varadarajan who argues that Wilkerson, though highlighting the importance of caste, does not demonstrate why caste is more central than race and Hope Wabuke who wonders why Africa was virtually absent from Wilkerson’s study. Other criticisms have been whether Wilkerson’s focus on caste downplays the role of race and whether race or colourism was in fact the basis of the Indian Caste system and the idea of Caste in its manifestations in other societies. Discussion of the North Indian Arya and South Indian Dravidian cultures also seem to be absent from Wilkerson’s analysis.
Caste was adapted into the film Origin directed by Ava DuVernay. DuVernay was the first black woman to win the Directing Award for U.S Dramatic Film at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her film Middle of Nowhere which was released that year. She was also the first African American woman to receive a Golden Globe nomination. She started her career as a journalist covering the OJ Simpson trial and her films and documentaries have covered race issues and civil rights in America such as Selma of 2014 based on a march lead by Dr Martin Luther King Jr that her father had witnessed and 13th, a 2016 documentary about the 13th amendment that (Mostly) outlawed slavery. Origin is her fifth narrative film.
The opening scene features a young black teenager paying for some snacks at a convivence store. The framing of the scene gives a sense that he is being watched which is a recurring motif in the film. He leaves the store, talking to his girlfriend on his phone. The fairly everyday and relatable conversation makes the film feel like a romcom, but it takes a sinister turn when the teenager realises that a car seems to be following him.
We then cut to a scene featuring an older mixed-race couple. A white man is caring for his elderly black mother-in-law as his wife watches. The mother-in-law talks about how her husband fought for America in WW2, a tribute to the black soldiers of WW2 whose presence is still largely unacknowledged in the real world and in cinema. The mother-in-law is being placed in a care home and her daughter is conflicted about this. Pointing to a divide between Western and Non-Western views about independence and family, particularly the care of the elderly. The woman and her husband argue about this. The Mother-in-law tells her daughter about how she can see strange shapes in the clouds, a swimming pool and a little league team. The daughter laughs and brushes this off as her mother’s overactive imagination. The woman then travels away for work and says goodbye to her husband.
We then cut to a scene from Nazi Germany in 1936. The first of many jumps in time and space that will occur in the film. A crowd of workers are in a shipyard, attending a launch ceremony. The woman narrates “A Nazi party member fell in love with a Jewish Woman.” The scene is based on a famous real-life photograph from the Blohm and Voss shipyard. The photograph features a crowd of workers doing the Nazi salute and one man identified as August Landmesser defiantly not doing it.
“Why was he the only one who chose to not go along that day?” the woman asks,
The woman is revealed to be Isabel Wilkerson, and she is delivering a lecture about her book, The Warmth of Other Suns. After the lecture she is informed of the shooting of Treyvon Martin, the young man from the film’s opening, by her editor Amari Selvan who appears to be a fictional character created for the film. Wilkerson is asked by Selvan to cover the story and he passes her the 911 tapes of the incident.
As Wilkerson listens to the tapes, we see the shooting from the point of view of Martin’s killer George Zimmerman. The film pulls no punches in its re-enactment of the shooting.
Wilkerson is moved to ask “Why does a Hispanic man shoot a black man to protect a white neighbourhood?”
Selvan asks Wilkerson to explore the questions, that the shooting is bringing up for her to which she retorts “I don’t write questions, I write answers.”
The answers end up informing an entire book; Caste, and Origin is about Wilkerson’s writing of the book and the personal tragedies in her life during that time.
The main crux of both the book and the film is Wilkerson’s observation that “Racism as the primary language to understand everything isn’t sufficient.”
We cut to Wilkerson’s mother reflecting on the shooting “I wish he answered him…you have to act in a way to keep you safe, he was too young to know that… you can’t be walking on a white street at night and not expect trouble, that intimidates whites.”
Her sentiment echoes the idea of many first generation immigrants in the UK. As new arrivals, they kept their heads down and quietly accepted the status quo and the ill treatment. The difference is that Wilkerson’s mother and many black people of her generation were not immigrants but citizens in their own country.
Wilkerson reads more and more about race relations with book titles like Deep South and Man’s Most Dangerous Myth appearing in shot. Books and their titles will be another recurrent motif in the film.
We then cut to 1933 for a scene in the Berlin Library. A Black couple want to take out All Quiet on the Western Front, the 1929 book by Erich Maria Remarque, describing his experiences in WW1. They are directed to the clerk who greets them coldly and unusually asks them for their passports. They are being spied on by another library user as Wilkerson narrates; “They witnessed events that would change the world.”
We then cut to the first tragedy in Wilkerson’s journey, her husband Brett’s unexpected death. A sequence of Wilkerson lying in autumn leaves (Which will become another motif) follows and another tragedy strikes soon after as Wilkerson also loses her mother.
The next scene features a literary party. Wilkerson stands in front of a painting of a knight next to a fallen horse. She discusses Heather Hyer, the victim of Charlottesville car attack of 2017. Hyer was killed when a man deliberately drove his car into a peaceful protest that she was a part of. Wilkerson talks about how Nazi symbols and KKK imagery were seen in Charlottesville in the counter protest on the day of the attack and in the protests prior to it against the planned removal of a confederate monument there.
Wilkerson mentions a Dalit professor named Dr Suraj Yengde whose work she has been reading, and how the plight of Dalits based on caste seems to be similar to the plight of Jewish people in Nazi Germany and of black people in the US. Wilkerson remarks “There is a connected tissue here, [I want to] build the thesis showing how all of this is linked.” The next seen features Wilkerson reading a 1933 list from the Nazi’s of books to be destroyed.
We return to the couple from the Berlin library, the man spying on them is an ally and he asks them to leave for their safety. “How long have you been in Berlin?” You have no idea what is happening?” The couple then walk through a scene featuring shots of a Nazi march accompanied with Wagnerian music and book burning and the Nazi Propaganda minister Goebbels, encouraging the crowd to keep burning the books by reciting some racist stereotypes regarding Jewish intellectuals. Wilkerson visits Germany to do more research where she visits the Empty Library monument from 1995 by Micha Ulman. The sculpture is of empty book shelves and has a plaque reading “That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.” A phrase that is still pertinent in today’s climate of rising intolerance and suppression of free speech from all sides of the political spectrum. Wilkerson then has dinner with a German couple and they discuss gun control in America and the swastika ban in Germany. The discussion takes a turn when one of the German hosts suggests differences between the Holocaust and Slavery;
“American slavery found a supply chain used for capitalism…Germany was about extermination.” Wilkerson objects to this statement as it appears to downplay the brutality of slavery and the racism within the system but it gets her thinking about the various axioms and lenses which scholars have often taken for granted.
We then cut to the first meeting between Wilkerson and her husband Brett, a light hearted everyday scene which again takes us into the territory of romantic comedy. This is juxtaposed with the next scene that features Nazi ministers quoting the Jim Crow laws from America and taking inspiration from them. Wilkerson narrates that laws were composed to create distance and superiority and one such law was for the prevention of sexual mixing.
The couple from the library are revealed to be the Alison and Elizabeth Davis. They escaped Berlin and moved to Mississippi and with a white couple, the Harvard Anthropologists Burleigh and Mary Gardner, authored the book Deep South in 1941.
We then see shots of the research for that book. The couples pair into mixed race groups and enter shops together, being watched by shop keepers with suspicion and have secret meetings to discuss their findings. Wilkerson narrates the danger in their work as “Mixing of races was not allowed publicly in any form except subservience.”
The oppressive nature of the time is illustrated in a scene where Alison Davis states, “We call them sir, they call us boy or girl.”. The revolution would come through music when black Blues and Jazz artists started refereeing to each other as man in defiance of this, making Muddy Waters refrain of “I’m a man!” and the history of that phrase in black American music all the more powerful.
Next is a scene featuring a friendly neighbourhood sheriff greeting everyone in the town, waving and smiling at everyone he passes until he passes the black people who also live there and his smile turns into a menacing stare.
We cut back to the present day for a scene where Wilkerson goes to a family BBQ, an American institution that has also had its black history erased. She talks to her sister about the criticism she got for marrying Brett from her own family and how they would always say “When will she leave him and find a black man?”. It is during this conversation that she outlines her thesis and what her book will be about.
“Labels, categories, I think that’s what my book is about…caste is the phenomenon of placing one group above another group, a hierarchy… [I want to] consider oppression in a way that does not focus on race.”
She starts to interview her friends and what follows is a powerful scene where she interviews her friend named Miss. Who received racial abuse from a teacher. Wilkerson also confides in her friend about the guilt she felt the night Brett died and how much she misses him, we see shots of Wilkerson and Brett, a mixed-race couple walking down the street, waving to their neighbours.
Wilkerson then decides to travel to India to meet with Dr Yengde. She says goodbye to her sister who is sick and is having to breathe through an apparatus, an echo of George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe.” that became a rallying call in the aftermath of the 2020 killing.
India is portrayed as more bustling compared to the US. Gods abound as the name Krishna appears on a shop front and an image of Shiva appears on a wall. One wonders why the role of religion in the caste system isn’t discussed in the film.
We then have a scene featuring Dr Yengde and Wilkerson standing in front of a statue of Dr Ambedkar that is inside a cage and some shocking statistics about the rapes of Dalit women. Dr Yengde tells Wilkerson that, “His statue is an affirmation of our existence.” And that it is also the “Most vandalised statue in the country.”
We then see the Ambedkar Museum which is designed to look like an open book. A contrast to The Empty Library monument and then a powerful flashback to Dr Ambedkar as a child being kept away from the other children due to beliefs around pollution, not being able to touch the things his friends touch, not being allowed to sit at a desk, and having to sit on the floor in class.
Wilkerson meets a student who is writing a thesis on Dr Martin Luther King’s visit to India which he discusses in Ebony Magazine in 1959. During the visit Dr King is introduced as “A fellow untouchable from the USA.” Dr King is at first surprised to hear this but then acknowledges that black people are seen as untouchables in his society. We also see a young Ambedkar walking through the streets of London and New York as a student and seeing the treatment of black people in those countries first-hand.
A powerful moment in the film is when Dr King’s voice comes through with a line from a sermon that he delivered about his time in India. A line that mentions black hands holding white hands, a prominent symbol of the Civil Rights movement and one that Dr King would say again in the I Have a Dream speech of 1963.
We then cut to a bar in Nazi Germany where German men are flirting and dancing with Jewish women. Soldiers appear and a man is warned to escape as “They are looking for artists and people who like Jazz.” Wilkerson narrates about Endogamy, the system’s prohibition of marriages between people in separate categories. “Segregating love, it built a firewall between people.”
A powerful montage then follows featuring harrowing scenes on a slave ship in the Middle Passage and in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Wilkerson’s narration explains the dehumanisation required for the system to function,
“Shaved heads, became a single mass that the SS soldiers could distance themselves from.” and
“Their bodies did not belong to them, they were no longer people but numbers.”
We then see a Dalit wearing only shorts dive into a septic tank to clean excrement.
A scene in which Wilkerson finds an old newspaper cutting in her mother’s house brings the film full circle and we cut to black and white. It’s 1951 and we are told the story of Al Bright. To say anymore would spoil one of the most iconic sequences in the film.
Wilkerson interviews a friend of Al Bright about the bizarre spectacle that occurred that day and the gross unfairness he and his friends felt about the situation even as children.
Wilkerson narrates some of her conclusions and we then cut to the present day as she finishes the book and mentions the current state of affairs, namely the election of Donald Trump and the George Floyd killing which to her are all symptomatic of the caste system.
Watching the film was a powerful experience and caused me to reflect on the moments of discrimination and prejudice that I experienced in my life and how ideas of superiority have had devastating consequences throughout world history. I also really felt the shock of how artificial and hollow constructs such as race and caste can affect the material world and suppress and kill countless people if subscribed to by a majority or a minority with power. Historical accounts of ordinary people being moved to become barbaric killers based on these baseless ideas and of the way in which these ideas spread through society have been a far too common and repeating occurrence.
Ultimately Origin is a love story. Shots of Wilkerson and Brett’s first meeting and their subsequent domestic life as well as shots showing how they navigated being a mixed race couple in modern day America are relatable and show the everyday human story within the sweeping historical one. A shot of Wilkerson and Brett walking through the neighbourhood is contrasted with the Davises walking through theirs. Origin is a film about the transcendental power of love and how her husband Brett a white man defied the system.
I sat down with Dr Suraj Yengde to ask some questions about his work and the film.
Could you tell us about the plight of the Dalits and your book Caste Matters?
The existence of the community concerned is quite traumatic and quite backward. They’ve been striving to reclaim their human rights and there’s a majority of them still who occupy the rural hinterlands and their condition is not very promising. That being said, we also have several active social and political movements, cultural movements but they tend to be subsidised by the dominant culture, the dominant castes… so my book looks at the life of caste and I just don’t look at the life of Dalits but I look at the condition of people who are inter-caste, I look at Brahmins and other castes as well to try to give a composite picture of the caste system in India.
How did you meet Isabel Wilkerson?
There was a Dr Ambedkar Conference at UMASS, either we met there or at Harvard, I hosted her at Harvard for a lecture. I don’t remember because they were close times. I just don’t have the proper recollection.
Do you think she successfully showed that American slavery and discrimination was about caste rather than race?
I think that is what most of the people have not completely underscored or fathomed what she was trying to say. Race or caste, they operate in different tangents but they are not purely identical, but also they are not that different. So Isabel basically brought out the positive narrative of what the system of caste does, positive in the sense of not the positivities but the positive connotation of what caste can do and I think she did a really good job. She’s a journalist so she gives a lot of case studies to back her broader arguments.
What was it like playing yourself in the film Origin?
If you see the movie, you will see that I’m not even acting, because the director Ava she is so incredible, she is a master of this field. She just did what she had to do. You know many of the dialogues that I am giving are impromptu, they are ex tempore, I was just doing myself. There was some occasions where she gave me some acting skills but other than that it was just be yourself, so people who know me, see me in the movie and say you are just being natural and I think that is a true assessment.
Could you sum up the work of Dr Ambedkar for someone who doesn’t know?
Dr Ambedkar is one of the 20th century’s preeminent human rights champions in the world. He is someone who gave identity, recognition, status and rights all in one life, which is incredible. You will see people struggling to regain their identity and one generation has gone and you will see people trying to gain respect and status and that struggle again is gone, so there are various phases of struggles but Dr Ambedkar is someone who offered identity, who made sure they got the status, who ensured that they got their rights and by doing that he brought them into mainstream. That’s an incredible achievement in the 30 and half year long career of Dr Ambedkar. We look at the scale of his work, to lead a mass of 300 million people out of the caste system, poverty and deprivation and that is an incredible feat. I myself am one of the beneficiaries of his movement I got an education and the reservation system supports me and there is an active political movement around it so he is the modern prophet for Dalits and the companion of them. He is the social, cultural and political guardian and also he is a spiritual respect for many.
Did Dr Ambedkar every address the caste issues within Buddhism?
That’s a very interesting question. He talks about the Buddha’s radical intervention in that is there are no castes, basically the Buddha he talks about is the Buddha that is challenging the caste system, that is fighting against Brahmanism. Now as to your question I know that there is an issue especially within the Sinhalese Buddhist practices about certain castes that exist, but I am not aware of what Dr Ambedkar says on this. My reading on that part is limited and I may have to take a rain check on that question.
Could you tell us about Dr Martin Luthor King’s visit to India?
MLK went to Kerala and the audio clip you hear in the film is him giving the Sunday sermon and explaining his India trip where he was juxtaposed as an untouchable of America, he doesn’t like it but there is a whole history, in fact when his son MLK Jr. III came to Bangalore, I gave him all these documents. I did significant research on that trip and you will see how thick that archive is and how powerful those stories are. I think that’s what makes the topic of such a common interest. People are not aware of so many Interconnected issues Including black people including Dalit people.
Has the film already had an impact in India and amongst Indian academics?
The film is not released in India so it’s only the diaspora, what you call the Desi diaspora, that includes India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal. They’ve been hyped about it. What we see is people in America in cinemas making videos of the scenes and posting them on social media so that is circulating, but the movie has not been released yet. I think it will have an extremely powerful response. Even in the UK there is a huge Dalit community and if the PR people mobilise it properly they are up for some grabs.
What projects are you working on at the moment and what are your future plans?
I’m writing a book now, Caste a New History of the World. technically I should not be in Bangalore but in back Massachusetts writing it but I’ve been delayed, that should be finished soon. I’ve started a website www.surajyengde.com where I’ve created an online resource of Anti-caste literature.
I want to start an online Dalit biographies project, where I want to put Dalit people. Many of them are not on Wikipedia including myself. Many of them are not digitally accessible. I want to make sure I give a digital unique ID for those incredible pioneers and individuals in the Dalit community and create an online database. Once I settle down somewhere I will work on that.
All quotations from the film are taken from memory and notes made at the screening.
‘ORIGIN’ is out now in Cinemas
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