Ashwini K.P. first Dalit woman to be appointed as Special Rapporteur to United Nations

Report- Ritwik

Ashwini K.P. is the first Dalit woman to be appointed as a special rapporteur in the United Nation. Being born In the Kolar District of Karnataka she speaks about her journey as a Dalit woman and her lived experiences. She is recently appointed as a contemporary rapporteur on racism, and racial discrimination and Most of her schooling was around Karnataka as she talks about her father being in the Karnataka Administrative services.

She did her M-Phil and Ph.D. from JNU, where her M-Phil was on South-Asian studies and her Ph.D. on Dalit Human Rights, The case study of India and Nepal.

She worked with Amnesty and several other grassroots civil society organizations working mostly working around Dalit, and Adivasi organizations.

Dr. K.P talks about how her experience working with movement-based organizations has helped her grow both professionally and personally.

The lived experience and the realities are much more different, particularly in grassroots organizations where she mostly worked in the business and human rights department where her work was around Adivasi people and illegal land acquisitions.

As she speaks about her major experiences working in the field and the work involving real-life experiences of people.

Talking about her experience she also speaks about major loopholes in the organization is the lack of inclusive space and representation of communities.

According to her, most working spaces are extremely elite and are not inclusive, and lack diversity leading to failure in bringing issues faced by marginalized communities.

While being asked if she always wanted to join the UN, she quotes, "I didn't particularly aim for United Nations however, the position quite resonated with the kind of work that I do."

How was your experience as a woman and a Dalit person?

She also states, "It is like you are oppressed twice." "Talking about feminist movement spaces, and anti-caste movement spaces which are mostly run by the privileged section of society with a lack of representation of people from the margin," she adds.

In the UN, despite efforts being taken to bring in representation in terms of class, caste, geography, race, and religion, still it is a long route to sway. However, there are some finest academicians, writers, and activists who are being the spokesperson of the community although it has taken a lot of trouble for them to reach such a position.

Modern Narrative around caste

It is essential as a first step for abolishing caste is to acknowledge their presence in lives.

As a part of the modern narrative, it is often believed that the caste system doesn't exist anymore leading to a lack of awareness, the lack of sensitivity towards caste-based discrimination and violence faced by the oppressed.

This is why it is essential to understand and become more aware of the caste existence deeply rooted and be a part of social movements against such social divides.

Media's Role in bringing those Stories

One of the major concerns in the media's role around caste is the representation of people working in media which is very disproportionate. Secondly, media channels also lack knowledge about the functionality of caste in India's social-political dynamic.

The representation around rape, sexual harassment, and violence has not been sensitively addressed which forbids disclosure of the violence faced by Dalit and Adivasi communities.

Most of the time, media channels disclose personal pictures and photos of women who are from marginalized communities without their consent on platforms. This is rarely seen in the case of elite savarna women.

The news covering sexual violence itself is very problematic.
There is a huge lack of representation of success stories, contributions, and recognitions of marginalized communities in terms of different frameworks of society.

Appropriation of stories has mostly been acquired and consumed by savarna people, so it is majorly important that most stories of the DBA community should be spoken by the community people.

However, several journalists and writers are still willing to work and put efforts into bringing those stories out to the people. This leads to still a thin ray of hope that media still has the potential to grow together and bring more righteousness to their work.

Any advice for the youth coming from an oppressed section of society?

Perhaps, she also mentions at the end how caste should be looked at from the lens of class, race and gender. More often the limited conversation around caste restricts the conversation within the map of larger society without pushing engagement around different genders.

A gender that doesn't only dissolve around men and women. So following Babasaheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar and his perspective of seeing gender like no other person, it is highly important to make every space inclusive and we cannot hold space and term it inclusive without engaging in context with different castes, classes, races and religions.