The reactions were of shock and complete horror, and that made me realise that the life I have been living is not normal-hiding my identity was a burden that I had to carry for no fault of my own. I wasn’t worried that if somebody found out I was Dalit, I would be persecuted or discriminated against. There I told everybody because there were mixed-race people, mixed nationalities and mixed genders. In Columbia, I was able to get a distance from all of that and I spoke about what I went through as a Dalit person in one classroom. The fear of being found out was doubly painful. When I started learning about identity, race and politics and how they are interconnected, especially in Columbia, I started thinking about caste a lot. It was a journey of acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with my caste. This write up does not follow strict rules of book review if any. Yashica Dutt: The transition seems a bit drastic-from being super scared to now being so open with my life-but it was a full arc. These opening lines from Coming out as Dalit written by Yashica Dutt, published by Aleph, capture the angst and identity crisis resulting from denying the history of one’s own and pretending to have one that is nonexistent. How did you arrive at the decision to write a book that weaves together your personal struggles? What was your experience of exploring the autobiography form as a writer? In a conversation with the journalist Bhumika Popli, Dutt recounted being ashamed of her caste as a child, the trauma that was an offshoot of hiding her identity and how she began taking pride in being Dalit.īhumika Popli: In your book, you wrote about how you decided not to involve yourself in discussions about caste-based reservations, because, among other things, you were wary and worried about people finding out your identity. Her autobiography Coming Out as Dalit was published in February this year. But, shockingly, for some, even that failed to rescue me from discrimination.”ĭutt, a 33-year-old, worked as a fashion and culture journalist in Delhi, and then pursued a Master’s in arts and culture at Columbia University. Subsequently, in a story about a few adverse responses that her post received, Dutt wrote, “I am privileged to have had the opportunities I enjoyed – in education and in my professional life. A few days after Rohith Vemula’s death, Yashica Dutt, a journalist, penned a post on Facebook stating her decision to come out as a Dalit.

Coming out as dalit book