{"id":4816,"date":"2016-05-22T17:42:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T12:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4816"},"modified":"2016-05-22T17:42:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T12:12:32","slug":"prayaag-akbar-leila-upper-caste-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4816","title":{"rendered":"What Prayaag Akbar’s Leila Says About the Caste-Illiterate Upper Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span>lmost a month before the release of Netflix\u2019s <\/p>Leila<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Payal Tadvi<\/span><\/a>, a 26-year-old MD student from Mumbai committed suicide. A government-appointed panel says that Tadvi was <\/span>ragged<\/span><\/a> and not discriminated against because of her caste, but horror stories have emerged of how she was harassed because she belonged to an Adivasi community. <\/span>\n\nBased on Prayaag Akbar\u2019s eponymous novel, <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i> begins with Shalini, a mother lighting a candle in the memory of her daughter who was separated from her 16 years ago. Though it is set in the future, the complications of <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i> responds to the current times, which seamlessly dissolves Shalini\u2019s agony and Tadvi\u2019s suffering. Despite the differing position they occupy in the ladders of social <\/span>heirarchy<\/span><\/a>, they\u2019re tied together by the oppression they face: while the former gradually experiences discrimination, the latter most likely lived with it since birth. Even though the story centers around a mother\u2019s search for her missing daughter, what it really focuses on is eking out the grim, yet honest map of a country that has cut itself into pieces. It is a map traced by our everyday prejudice, a map that Akbar believes, mow exists to a point beyond denial. <\/span>Leila\u2019s<\/span><\/i> world is here in the vacuum left by each breath Payal Tadvi could not take. <\/span>\n\nLeila<\/span><\/i> follows Shalini, an elite, well-to-do woman who marries Riz, a man from a different religion \u2013 a thought that causes some discomfort in most geographies and communities even today. In the book\u2019s \u201cdystopian\u201d universe, segregation is the only constitution: the privileged live in walled cities that are categorised by community, religion, or caste. The elite prize here, is \u201cpurity\u201d, a vague form of political identity that they claim, preserve, and extract through the militant violence of men known as \u201crepeaters\u201d. After Shalini moves in with Riz, they shift to a society for \u201cmixed\u201d\u2019 couples and she gives birth to Leila. On her third <\/span>birthday<\/span><\/a>, however, Leila disappears in the midst of a raid which also results in Riz\u2019s death. In the aftermath, Shalini is ostracised to \u201cThe Towers\u201d, a purity camp designed to resuscitate obedience for the need of \u201cpurity for all\u201d in the \u201csocial rebels\u201d. <\/span>\n\nThe world of <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i> is naturally reminiscent of Margaret Atwood\u2019s <\/span>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/span><\/i><\/a> and the surveillance politics of George Orwell\u2019s <\/span>1984<\/span><\/i>. Its borderlines, however, are entirely made in India, a country obsessed with the matrices of religion and caste. In the country, religion is an abreast identity, often the prefix of one\u2019s lifetime. But beneath religion, there is a sophisticated mesh of caste, class, creed, and community that often dictates functional realities. One\u2019s identity then, is a pre-declared socio-political position at birth. Here before you learn your blood type, you learn your caste and religion. Naturally, <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i> sees its walls erected in the imagined hierarchies of the mind, before they appear on land itself. Like <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i>, in the real world, purity is the preserve of the caste or the community elite; the ones who exercise free will while others merely answer to the call of their racial identity.<\/span>\n

Our societies may look shinier, the walls taller, but inside, the minds are crippled, ignorant, and worse, in denial.<\/blockquote>\nTo understand the essence of <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i>, it is perhaps essential to read Akbar\u2019s essay on <\/span>caste<\/span><\/a>, where the author mentions the various ways in which <\/span>upper-caste<\/span><\/a> Indians have deluded themselves into believing they are not casteist. \u201cCaste has proved itself a resolute, nimble institution, surviving the dramatic political and economic transformations of three millennia. There is no question of it having disappeared from either the rural or urban context,<\/span>\u201d he writes. It\u2019s this privilege of the upper-class that Akbar unrelentingly attacks through Shalini in <\/span>Leila<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>Although personal, Shalini\u2019s journey, echoes the social deafness of most privileged men and women in India. People who over-elaborate their progressiveness but remain blind to the segmentations that widen due to their choices. Our societies may look shinier, the walls taller, but inside, the minds are crippled, ignorant, and worse, in denial. <\/span>\n\nIn the book, Shalini refuses, initially, to register the decadence around her. Her father dies berating the inequality surrounding them, in vain. In a passage, she compliments the \u201cfine system\u201d that allows her boyfriend Riz to hire a 13-year-old cook from the slums to cook kebabs for them. The couple move into the \u201cEast End\u201d, a plush sector of the city where affluent liberals throng swimming pools and parties, while the world outside suffers from drought. Though Shalini is discomforted when told about the plight of her domestic help\u2019s living conditions \u2013 no water for three years \u2013 she remains unchanged. Until <\/span>tragedy<\/span><\/a> comes knocking at her door. It\u2019s only later, while mopping floors in exile that she is eventually forced to contemplate why she never cared enough to buy her maid a \u201clong-handled broom\u201d. <\/span>\n\nShalini\u2019s social illiteracy mirrors that of most well-healed liberals who continue to drown their ignorance in <\/span>privilege<\/span><\/a>. Their blindness is premised on the idea that because they can afford to raise visual barriers around them, the view on the other side neither deteriorates nor affects them in any way. But while optical insulation works for the mind, it doesn\u2019t as much for the body. The body is religious, even if the mind isn\u2019t. Shalini is always destined for the Towers even though she assumes the paradisiacal East End will be her refuge. Later, in the book, she meets an old neighbour who has, with time, accepted the inevitable. \u201cWe have to bring up girls the right way,\u201d she tells Shalini. <\/span>\n\nThis statement rings a bell. Powerful men do not hesitate to morally castigate women, <\/span>even their opponents<\/span><\/a>, like we saw during our election campaign this year. Women have been picked at for laughing loudly and <\/span>rapes<\/span><\/a> have been blamed on everything from jeans to chow mein. Because there are many who believe that the girls haven\u2019t been raised right. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nLeila <\/span><\/i>need not be called fiction then; it need not even be declared <\/span>futurist<\/span><\/a> or prophetic. It exists now, in your society, in mine, or at least within a few miles around us. <\/span>Leila\u2019<\/span><\/i>s greatest prophecy is not the imagination of a future, but the articulation of denial and ignorance that prevents us from accepting that it is already here.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Prayaag Akbar\u2019s Leila, now adapted into a Netflix series, the journey of its protagonist Shalini, echoes the social deafness of most privileged men and women in India. People who over-elaborate their progressiveness but remain blind to the segmentations that widen due to their choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":4817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[2282,8465,4627,8466],"class_list":["post-4816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-caste","tag-leila","tag-privilege","tag-upper-class"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Prayaag Akbar's Leila Says About the Caste-Illiterate Upper Class<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Prayaag Akbar\u2019s Leila, now adapted into a Netflix series, the journey of its protagonist Shalini, echoes the social deafness of most privileged men and women in India. 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