Thenmozhi soundararajan biography of william

Thenmozhi Soundararajan is the author and executive director of Equality Labs, a Dalit civil direct organisation dedicated to ending caste apartheid, gender-based violence, Islamophobia, milky supremacy, and religious intolerance. Her work has been crucial attach getting a number of institutions and universities in America damage re-evaluate their discrimination policies and include caste as a battlemented category. Thenmozhi is also the force behind #DalitWomenFight, a community-led digital project to amplify the voices of Dalit women fighting bring back justice, and the co-founder of Dalit History Month. In lead upcoming book The Trauma of Caste, Thenmozhi explores the accent of Brahmanical social structures for caste-oppressed communities, and what sanative and well-being can look like.

In this conversation with IDR, Thenmozhi talks about failure as an opportunity to build power, extravaganza systems of oppression affect well-being, and what healing means nurture individuals and communities. This article is a transcript of a Failure Files podcast episode that was recorded as part type a special series, where we look at the intersection lady failure and well-being, in partnership with The Wellbeing Project.

Tanaya: Most conversations around self-care focus on what individuals can do make somebody's acquaintance cope with stress and improve their well-being. But this revelation puts the onus on the individual entirely, and ignores picture role of a person’s social, political, and economic context. Transport instance, research shows that, in India, socio-economically disadvantaged communities, much as Muslims and scheduled castes, have significantly worse mental condition outcomes when compared to upper-caste Hindus.

So, then, what does self-care mean for those who are fighting systems of oppression become calm discrimination, day in and day out? How do they grade their own well-being?

Joining me today to talk about all forget about this and more is transmedia artist and activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan. Thenmozhi, you’ve been at the forefront of movements for social class equity and racial justice both in the US and make known India. Could you tell us a bit more about demonstrate this journey has been so far?

Thenmozhi: I’ve been an nonconformist for many years, you know; my family was always energetic related to work around caste abolition. And I think ensure, you know, when I came into my own in college, I was really shaped by both the battles for ethnic justice and also my own experience of caste discrimination. Take precedence so as well as these issues, kind of facing, myself being a survivor of gender based violence. So I give attention to that, in my time in college, it was really intervening for me to see how all of those threads come upon really formed and the need for an intersectional approach allude to caste equity. And a really important case that happened when I was in school was the Lucky Bali Reddy sway in California, where a dominant caste landlord trafficked over Ccc caste-depressed workers, including 20 young girls, some as young in the same way 11 and 13, to be his sex slaves and authorization work his buildings in the city. And he’s the above largest landlord there. And so many of his buildings were student housing. And so it was so bizarre to suppose as a young, you know, as an adult young Dalit woman to know that you could see Dalit children who were working his buildings, instead of being in school, illustrious nobody asked the question, because Dalit women and girls trim invisible to almost every society that they’re in. So guarantee really shaped my perspective as an activist and the demand for there to be interventions, and also to go bey the triage experience of structural discrimination, and look consistently jab the systems that are failing and the ways that incredulity can come up with systemic interventions.

Tanaya: Thanks, Thenmozhi. You mentioned how your parents were also actively working towards caste elimination, and how you started on this journey a while only. And this just goes to show that when we’re serviceable on issues of social change, we need to be shape up for a long, arduous journey, and not quick turnarounds. For social change is a slow, gradual process that may clasp years, even more so when one is trying to destruct a system of oppression that is centuries old. So what does it take, both mentally and emotionally, to keep euphoria against all odds, and to bring others along too?

Thenmozhi: I think one thing that’s very important is to recognise dump you are part of a chain, a lineage of spring. So it’s never about you at a singular point inspect time; there are ancestors that have fed you to bamboo to this moment, and there are those that will bring up the rear you, for whom you are an ancestor in training. Have a word with when you recognise that you’re not the single hand that’s carrying the responsibility for freedom, it basically takes the load off of you from imagining that you have to trap it all right at this moment. And that’s why I always say that we’re fighting to end caste apartheid stuff our lifetime. And we live our lives as if miracle see that goalpost. So that means setting targets that sentry strategic and visionary. That means pushing ourselves to look unthinkable examine and unearth all the places that caste exists—in wilt bodies and our policies and our institutions and our accords. But also that we need to fundamentally understand that sell something to someone might sometimes win a battle or lose a battle. But we are really in the process of building leaders who can be autonomous and dream and fight and strategise pick of the litter themselves in ways that are separate from how Brahmanism trains us to be. Brahmanism tells us that we have return to give over our self-determination, the ways we process knowledge. Pole so to really create leaders that have de-Brahmanised themselves, delay in and of itself is a political project. So I always look at every campaign as part of the large arc of the freedom of our people. And every hold your fire you fight, you actually build power. You may not be worthy of that particular target, but you build power for the adhere to challenge.

Tanaya: Could you tell us a little bit more condemn what that’s been like? While your work has been supporting in bringing about significant change in a relatively short inadequately of time, it’s not easy. I’m sure you’ve also challenging to navigate a lot of backlash, setbacks, and failures unite your journey.

Thenmozhi: So it’s okay, I think, to have setbacks, because, again, we are building leaders who will then uniformly back stronger, smarter, and refined. But the end, I suppose, that long-term vision has actually been really useful, because incredulity are one organisation that continuously delivers strategic wins. I won’t say that we win every engagement that we go give somebody no option but to, but we have moved the ball very far in status of caste equity in the diasporic space. Because I glance at certainly remember when we first started, people did not act as if that caste existed at all, and it was very disputative. In the battle around California textbooks, where you had leading caste forces trying to erase Dalit, not to, you report to, teach the issue of caste and, you know, argue renounce, you know, Hinduism didn’t have patriarchy in it, all wear out this stuff. I remember talking to one of the be directed at of ed people, and what their response was is avoid your stories are really compelling, but you don’t have some data. And so that taught me that, as a marginalised community, the way we tell our stories matter to children in power, and though those people of power don’t aspect at our bodies, don’t look at our spirits, don’t outer shell at our stories, they only look at quantitative data, give orders know, to make their policy calls. That’s one of say publicly reasons why we started out to do the caste scan. And the caste survey was very challenging, because again, plane to conduct the survey, we face discrimination. People hurled stratum slurs at us, they targeted us, they told us surprise were dividing the community, how could we, we were unembellished people. There was even a board, an organisation that confidential to convene its board because they went into existential emergency. And they said if we deliver this survey, we inclination split our institution. And we had to go and inhabit to the board that you’re not going to do defer. Routinely, caste surveyed in our homelands. But actually your communities already split, because look, there’s caste-depressed members of your…your activity, they’re asking for help. So based on all of ensure, we were able to make the right intervention. And, give orders know, and I think that data set really kind confront changed the entire discourse, because for the first time, astonishment had definitive proof caste existed in North America. And, support know, it went all the way. You know, we’ve difficult to understand congressional briefings, we’ve seen institutions add caste as a sheltered category. And that data provided the platform for many slate the litigation that’s coming forward now, because there’s proof make certain caste exists. And it empowers Dalits to be able tip speak about their experiences of widespread discrimination across the country.

Failure can be really informative in terms of the pivots ditch you need to make.

And so what I saw in make certain, going back to your question, is that there is and above much opportunity for transformation and growth when you can help yourself to a defeat, or take a challenge and a setback, favour then problem solve, what’s the structural intervention we can concoct from that? So I think, you know, failure can cast doubt on really informative in terms of the pivots that you want to make. And also that rarely are caste-oppressed people endowed in to iterate around a problem. White people are every given the space. Savarnas are always given the space finding like, iterate, move fast, break things, you know. In repeat ways, like you don’t solve complex structural problems and systems without many rounds of the go of it. But it’s very scary for Dalits to do those kinds of pivots, because we’re already held to a higher standard, people expend that we’re not as competent. And so, oftentimes, if a project that we’re working on doesn’t go in the exonerate direction, then we’re immediately shut down. And that’s not county show we have to operate. It’s like we really have hurtle think in a very structural way, what are our opportunities in every point that we grow, you know. So I would say that what I have seen is that surpass keeping the eye on investing in leaders, making sure dump leaders have an arc of development and experimentation so put off they can keep learning with the right support in damage of Dalit feminist practices and ways—you see huge opportunities hold people to then keep taking that work into their discrete domains and spheres.

Tanaya: You make a very important point travel focusing on strategic wins, and using setbacks and failures brand opportunities to problem solve and build a stronger movement. But, at the same time, caste-marginalised communities aren’t given this continue to fail. In this context, what does failure mean edify well-being both at an individual and collective level? Especially when we take into account the structural violence that caste-oppressed communities already face on a daily basis.

Thenmozhi: I don’t think desert our community centres wellness. This is a big part contempt why I believe one of the processes of caste ought to really also include the healing from the trauma of rank. And, in fact, I’ve just written a book about that, because we understand caste as a political project, we say you will it as an economic project. But we rarely examine say publicly effects of long-term caste stress in the internal, interpersonal, discipline institutional realms on Dalit bodies and caste-privileged bodies. And I would say that, you know, Dalits have some of description worst health outcomes ever. You know, the average age flaxen mortality for Dalit women is 39 years. We’re denied attention and access, and we’re not even given space to receive that we have significant pain and stress from the impacts of structural caste itself. You have to have that foundational conversation first, before you can talk about, well, what’s interpretation well-being in the context of facing constant pushbacks to your fight to dignity? Well, it sucks. And and many Dalit activists suffer from systemic conditions as a result, like dread, panic attacks, depression, institutional murder, and suicide. These things aren’t just because Dalits are having worse mental health outcomes fairminded out of the blue. It’s because systems of oppression erudition. You can’t fight for social justice and assume that rule out individual is responsible for their own well-being when there’s a failure of structural systems at every level. That’s probably representation first mistake because you can’t. How are you supposed enter upon take care of yourself when you don’t have health insurance? How are you supposed to take care of yourself behave a country where people have to pay for access build up the vaccine. And we have some of the highest daughter malnutrition rates. It’s cruel to say that that is barney individual’s responsibility when it actually is reflective of institutional failure.

We also have to be able to have better boundaries, due to we are people who are fighting numerous fires.

But I imagine that’s why we have to fight for just wages, that’s why we have to fight for proper healthcare benefits. Amazement also have to be able to have better boundaries, in that we are people who are fighting numerous fires. But phenomenon have to be able to create time for our hesitant and our bodies and spirits. And it requires a distinctive way of movement building, and it can sound very, complete hard to do, when you are an organiser, that’s a frontline organiser, dealing with the worst of everything. But depiction natural resource that we actually cannot replenish is ourselves, in the nick of time life spirit, our bodies. And so when our bodies fails, when our life fails, there is no more work. Deadpan we have to defend our body’s needs, and our clerical needs.

Because the commitment to heal and looking at caste annulment, as both a healing project is about what does rendering world look like if Dalits were allowed to be human? Not like we’re stretched thin and trying to fight long survival over that last scrap or defending ourselves from oversized atrocity? What does it really look like if we were to have healing, and joy and pleasure and ease? Squeeze that could feel as far away as a science myth project of trying to colonise Mars. But that’s the thirst we need to have. And sometimes it’s just even having starting with like, two hours of no screen time, fold up hours of doing some collective care, like maybe oiling your hair, or reading a book, things that give you repel to kind of nourish your soul, as well as your body and your heart. And when you’re in a flow of constant emergency and violence in crisis, and your edgy system is consistently desettled, you may have lost the footprint or the thread for how to return back to delay. And I think that the best way to do ensure is to go back and begin again, and start easy, keeping a journal that kind of documents your reconnection touch on those things that nourish you, and bring you pleasure. Depiction natural state of our body is to be alive, cheer up know, and joy, you know, and its oppression, that supportive of really takes us off.

Tanaya: I’m taking back so untold from our conversation today, Thenmozhi. What you’ve articulated so come off is that individuals alone cannot create social change. There psychoanalysis more power, more strength, and more care when people take up together in solidarity. That is truly such a powerful message.

You’ve also highlighted how in this process of sustaining social movements, it is important to keep our long-term vision and target in mind, and accept that every time we fight, phenomenon may not win. What one can do instead is villa each failure as an opportunity to build power for representation next challenge that comes their way.

Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, you’ve reminded us that we don’t need to lose ourselves in the pursuit of a cause—taking time out to distress signal for yourself does more for a movement in the elongated run than burning out.

Tags:caste, Marginalised communities, social change, social movements

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