Casteism, children, and education: short film review
- Mita
- Apr 7
- 3 min read
Children deserve childhood. When discrimination exposes them to violence, childhood becomes plagued with pain and trauma that evolve into ill health throughout the lifecourse. In India, the deep-rooted legacy of caste-based discrimination drapes a long shadow over child health, perpetuating inequities that begin before birth and extend throughout a child’s life. Caste-based discrimination is “based on the division of people into social groups (or castes) in which the civil, cultural and economic rights of each individual caste are pre-determined or ascribed by birth and made hereditary”. It is a form of separation and categorisation that leads to differences in health, education, and employment along caste-based lines.
“We are made to sweep the entire playground. They never ask the high caste kids to do it, only the low caste kids will do that.” – Interviewee, Discrimination in Education
The short film Discrimination in Education by Dr Nidhi Sabharwal and her colleagues at the Institute of Dalit Studies demonstrates how children experience caste-based discrimination in school. This short film guides the viewer through various interviews with children from scheduled caste communities and their teachers. Children recount the violence and isolation they face in school, showing how discriminatory norms are reinforced by everyone around them. Teachers separate the classroom, either by their own accord or at the request of parents; children from scheduled caste communities are less likely to receive government distributed educational materials such as textbooks, and parents will even deny lower caste children from entering their homes.
“When we complain to the teacher that the other children call us untouchable, the teacher says, ‘you are untouchable, how else should they call you?’” – Interviewee, Discrimination in Education
Children learn the rules of casteism at a young age: lessons on who deserves less, what work is “appropriate” for which caste, and how to treat Scheduled Caste communities start with parents teaching their children. The documentary also highlights how parents play a key role in perpetuating casteism. One interviewee describes her experience visiting a non-Scheduled Caste child’s home, where the mother cleaned everything that the interviewee touched; a teacher explained that children even separate themselves by caste despite the teacher’s efforts to promote mixing.
“When I go to school, they all say, ‘You are untouchable, go sit in the back’” – Interviewee, Discrimination in Education
Casteism is a structural issue. Its long history has woven this form of discrimination into the fabric of life across the Indian sub-continent, and beyond. These structural issues determine people’s access to core life resources. Such disparities in access have been linked to lower life span, childhood stunting, and poor mental health in children from Scheduled Castes. These outcomes are the byproducts of long term community disinvestment, intergenerational and structural poverty, discrimination in government resource distribution, and interpersonal discrimination. This also means that these alarming child health inequities are preventable but
requires structural change: Mechanisms that hold the government accountable to the outlawing of caste-based discrimination, led by people who experience casteism; institutional resources reserved specifically for children of Scheduled Caste backgrounds; and greater support for the abolition of untouchability by the Indian government and the international community, to name a few. Complemented by cultural changes and efforts from local leaders to prevent caste-based discrimination can help return childhood to children from Scheduled Caste backgrounds.