00:00:00.200Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with
00:00:07.500Thanmari Sondararajan. It's not accidental to me that we see a rise of polarization
00:00:14.540and anti-democratic forces at a time when the earth itself is unstable because of our actions
00:00:22.120around climate catastrophe. So in many ways for us to come back into the alignment with the law
00:00:29.420of life. We have to choose life, which means choosing each other, choosing to slow down,
00:00:35.920and to try to heal in our relationships with each other. Fenmarie Sandorarojin is an elite
00:00:43.720American civil rights artist, organizer, and theorist who has worked with organizations0.93
00:00:49.080around the world to address the urgent issues of racial, caste, and gender equity. Her intersectional
00:00:56.280cross-pollinating work helps to create a more generous, global, expansive, and inclusive
00:01:02.460definition of South Asian identity, along with safe spaces from which to honor the stories of
00:01:09.040these communities. She was also an inaugural fellow of the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as
00:01:15.640Activist, Atlantic Foundation for Racial Equity, and is a current fellow at Stanford Center for
00:01:22.420South Asian Studies. She is also the author of the new book, Trauma of Caste, by North Atlantic Books.
00:01:31.120Well, Fenmuri, thank you so much for joining us on this rainy and frozen day where we both are.
00:01:40.100I'm really looking forward to diving into this tender and complex conversation with you.
00:01:48.720So looking forward to it, and thank you for having me.
00:01:51.700I just want to say in preparation for this interview, I was really, yeah, moved by so much of your writing. And when I was thinking of how to start this off, I was like, where do I begin? There's so many quotes that I could pull from. And so I guess I'll just have to be patient knowing that we'll get to explore a number of things together.
00:02:15.920but I thought we could start off with reading, I wanted to read a quote from your Slate interview
00:02:21.660titled, Silicon Valley has a caste problem. Quote, the best way to think about it, caste,
00:02:29.280is as a system of exclusion based on birth that goes back thousands of years. Its initial origins
00:02:36.060are an ancient Vedic society, but it came strongly into force in India during the Mughal era,
00:02:42.500which began in 16th century, and then in the British Raj, Brahmins were at the top,
00:02:48.400deletes at the bottom. It started in scripture, and just like race, it's based on a social myth,
00:02:55.740where some people at the top said that other people at the bottom are less worthy,
00:03:00.500and therefore set up structures that excluded them from many institutions in society, end quote.
00:03:06.540I found this really important to understand the history of the caste system and how we
00:03:14.900are replaying that system in the United States today.
00:03:18.700And something that really stood out to me about this quote as well is this idea of a
00:07:25.060But what will be new is thinking about caste with the lens of, you know, trauma and also
00:07:30.460how frameworks like understanding caste as a soul wound can help us understand how we embody
00:07:37.460systems of exclusion. And whether you're privileged or oppressed, we all carry this
00:07:43.980burden. And it's been a training in our nervous system that really is the biggest impediment for
00:07:50.100us to being collaborators on equity. I'm wondering, how is abolishing caste
00:07:56.760depended upon abolishing other forms of oppression?
00:08:01.260Well, I think it may even be new for some of your listeners to first know about caste,
00:08:07.100and then that there is a movement to annihilate or to abolish caste. And the thing to know is that
00:08:14.700under the caste system, not only has there been punishing systemic exclusion and violence,
00:08:21.500there was also literal slavery. And that's why many caste-depressed people use terms like
00:08:27.860abolition or annihilate the system altogether because of how much degradation and dehumanization
00:08:34.320we faced. But also the term abolition really connects us to other struggles against slavery
00:08:40.280and other oppressed peoples. So solidarity is not a transaction. It's in fact an enterprise,
00:08:47.640shared and mutual solidarity and you know in many ways you know as someone who was cast depressed
00:08:55.660my personal journey to being able to feel to find my path towards dignity and rehumanization
00:09:05.120was being held by other movements and other leaders who were in their own journeys for
00:09:11.620dignity and reclamation and black and black internationalism has been one of the the north
00:09:17.900stars for many oppressed peoples around the world because in trying to out-organize white supremacy
00:09:25.040uh black liberation leaders reached out to oppress movements around the world to find shared
00:09:31.600resistance shared community and mutual language for our freedom so in many ways you know the book
00:09:40.820is an artifact to that, because much of the language that I had to construct to talk about
00:09:46.340cast with the lens of intergenerational trauma, and even how we might consider thinking about
00:09:52.460healing, those things could only be done if I use language that came from other oppressed peoples.
00:10:00.420And so, you know, we share analysis, we share, you know, we share meals, and we also share potential power building because of the fact that our freedoms are intertwined with each other.
00:10:15.980There is no freedom for one community if any of the other communities are still languishing in oppression. And that's why I think that caste abolition is really linked to so many other racial justice struggles, because the same people oppress us within the South Asian community are the same South Asians who would actually work against racial solidarity in other contexts.
00:10:41.540So being able to learn about each other's struggles and creating mutual liberatory discourse is a key part of our process.
00:10:50.760And thinking about the relationship between caste and ideas of punishment, and I'm wondering, how is the idea of, quote, worthiness often weaponized and used as justification for punishment from, you know, the prison system to access to resources to educational opportunities and so on?
00:11:15.660So I think one thing that is really important to think about is that as people are getting
00:11:21.840familiar with the caste system, there's also a very key carceral logic that's at the heart
00:11:29.240That's really a place where I think that there's a lot of momentum that I think that we need
00:11:35.440to be able to have more learning around.
00:11:39.180And, you know, for people that are unfamiliar about what I'm speaking about, the carceral
00:11:44.140logic and caste is actually related to reincarnation because the idea is is that
00:11:50.540people were born into a caste oppressed background or a dulled background because they did something
00:11:57.880bad in another life you know maybe they were a murderist or a rapist or a thief and therefore0.96
00:12:04.280because they did something that was bad in another life they deserve to be oppressed and excluded
00:12:10.160because that's their sentence in this life that was the the logic that came out of certain
00:12:16.280scriptures in the initial you know you know development of caste and so what that has meant
00:12:24.380is that there's always an understanding that Dalits should accept the conditions of their0.81
00:12:29.560subjugation because they deserved it and I always rankled around that and I was someone who was born
00:12:36.880I'm both Hindu and Christian, and now I'm Buddhist, but, you know, when we know that caste, you know, exists across so many South Asian faiths, it is so challenging to see that people are telling Dalit people not to organize for their own equitable conditions.0.99
00:12:58.080And that's what I'm really, you know, not comfortable with in terms of seeing what's happening in terms of our community.
00:13:07.800And that's a big part of why I've spoken out about this carceral logic, because we don't want systems that punish.
00:13:15.620We don't want systems that dehumanize.
00:13:17.960And we want to be able to hold grace and connection and community with each other.
00:13:24.360So these are all things that I think are super helpful to be able to think about as we move forward and think about how we, you know, want to heal from systems of carceralization.
00:13:38.520yeah gosh there's so much here and there's so much in your work that I
00:13:44.820am trying to wrap my head around there's a quote from your book the trauma of caste and you write
00:13:52.460quote caste trauma is generally reduced to the discussion of the consequences to only delete
00:13:59.560people yet the suffering the caste causes is not limited to those of us born at the bottom
00:14:05.700never discussed are the networks of privilege that benefit from caste and the ways that the
00:14:11.500dominant caste psyche also is defined by suffering end quote and i'm wondering about this topic that
00:14:23.600i've thought you know or discussed on the podcast a lot around white supremacy or supremacist culture
00:14:30.520in general, it's like everybody is actually suffering under this type of belief system.
00:14:37.400Now, of course, some people have it much more comfortable and have privileges that make life
00:14:45.200convenient and easier in many ways. But I think even on a spiritual level, the type of
00:14:52.900disconnection and spiritual bankruptcy that either caste systems or white supremacy leaves for all of
00:15:03.880us is extremely detrimental. And I think that's really manifested in how we see what's happening
00:15:11.560to the world, to the earth, to the land. Poisoned water, poisoned air will eventually impact all of
00:15:19.360us like even those at the top can't run forever and so i just wanted to open up this thought
00:15:27.460process with you and and uh maybe you could speak to this quote that i recited of yours and take us
00:15:36.640a bit into this these ideas so what is really profound to me about even in my own writing
00:15:46.960journey for this book as someone who's advocated on the issue of caste for almost 20 years was how
00:15:54.680much I was still dehumanized and not embodied about my own pain about caste and that might seem
00:16:03.600strange for your audience but you know I think many oppressed people in order to survive in
00:16:10.760very violent societies they go to the cerebral you know and they're troubleshooting about how
00:16:16.900to get to from point a to point b whether if it's the hustle of their work or lifting their family
00:16:22.240out of poverty you know whatever whatever these situations are um they are doing they're focused
00:16:29.920on the practical and the material but not about the pain that lingers in your body about what
00:16:36.160you're seeing and so much of what i wrote there was about first giving permission for
00:16:43.800cast oppressed people and really all oppressed people to slow down enough to be embodied about
00:16:49.860the container of grief that they might carry related to the system of exclusion that they're
00:16:56.000navigating. And certainly for me, I just, I was not doing that. I was really just shoving it down
00:17:04.320and trying to really just be focused on the work that needed to happen. And I was getting health
00:17:10.000problems from it. I was getting high blood pressure. I was getting, um, you know, panic
00:17:15.320attacks. And I also was moving so quick. I couldn't acknowledge how much violence that
00:17:24.140you're exposed to as a caste depressed person. So there's a piece in that quote, that's about
00:17:29.000first allowing caste depressed and oppressed people to, to humanize by being embodied around
00:17:36.820our pain. Because the world may not recognize it, but if we can't even begin that journey to a global
00:17:43.640conversation, if we don't embody ourselves first. But additionally, there's a call for accountability
00:17:51.320and a calling in for people of privilege to know that there is a wound, there's a part of this
00:17:58.620wound that you also carry because you can't other another without losing some part of your humanity
00:18:07.320so whether you're witnessing atrocity or you're staying silent in the face of the slur or maybe
00:18:13.620you're an active contributor to discrimination or bigotry each time you take down another human
00:18:20.460you actually take down a part of yourself and you have to close yourself off from the web of life
00:18:27.960in order to do that. And that's a profound wound as well. And we don't talk about it because it's
00:18:35.300much easier to focus on the consequences of caste and not the origins of caste and the people who
00:18:42.540benefit. So there's a political logic for looking at who benefits. But if we're also using the lens
00:18:49.320of healing, we want all of us to come back into the family of humanity. And that's really part of
00:18:55.360the negotiation around this conversation. And then second, I think that the other piece of this,
00:19:03.080which is what you spoke to, is that there's an interconnectedness that we have as humans with
00:19:09.620other species and the earth. And I think what systems of exclusion do well is to silo us off
00:19:17.560from each other and the earth and I think in times of deep polarization we see ourselves
00:19:25.780leaning into trauma worlds made up of filter bubbles of a hellish landscape where no one
00:19:34.700can be trusted but a few and that there are you know projections of what we're assuming
00:19:42.160about other communities. And the reality is, is when someone is in a trauma bubble,
00:19:48.840you're not going to be able to get through to them through direct attack. You have to deescalate
00:19:55.700their nervous system. You have to actually work to re-regulate their nervous system to be in
00:20:01.140relationship with you again, in a relationship of trust enough so that they deescalate their
00:20:05.960nervous system. And the ways that you do that have to be not just with each other, but you do that
00:20:11.500with nature and you do that with other species these are all ways that we're connected to the
00:20:17.280web of life and so it's not accidental to me that we see a rise of polarization and anti-democratic
00:20:25.040forces at a time when the earth itself is unstable because of our actions around climate catastrophe
00:20:32.460so in many ways for us to come back into the alignment with the law of life we have to choose
00:20:40.300life, which means choosing each other, choosing to slow down, and to try to heal in our relationships
00:24:42.180and in fact they used the blueprint of caste as the architecture for apartheid in South Africa
00:24:49.400because they saw how efficient it was to have the few to control the many and to kind of put these
00:24:54.640little gradations of classes of people to be pitted against each other so that they never
00:25:00.480achieve solidarity to take down the actual fundamental you know powers that be at the top
00:25:06.180So, you know, I think that, you know, again, it's really important to understand that do we need to decolonize? Yes. And in the context of South Asians, in order to decolonize, we must first de-Brahmanize.
00:25:21.180Brahmanize. And what that means is, is that, you know, the caste system has an animating ideology1.00
00:25:28.440called Brahmanism. And just like we wouldn't talk about anti-Blackness without talking about
00:25:35.360white supremacy, Brahmanism is that ideology that set that framework in motion. And for people that0.78
00:25:42.640want to dig in, like, why that name? Where did that come from? Well, in the caste system, you know,
00:25:47.120as I mentioned earlier, there's a pyramid where you have a priestly caste at the top called
00:25:52.660Brahmins that basically structured the scriptures to allow for the categorization of the other
00:25:58.940communities. So under Brahmins, you have the rulers that were Shatriyas, you have the merchants that
00:26:05.360were Vaishyas, you have the peasants that were the Shidra caste. And then outside of that whole0.86
00:26:11.380system, you have people that are untouchable, because they were seen as spiritually defiling
00:26:16.900to other people. And because they were spiritually defiling, they shouldn't be touched. That's why
00:26:22.320we were, you know, called untouchable. But of course, that's, you know, ludicrous and extremely0.87
00:26:27.820offensive. And so we use other terms like Dalit, or Ambedkarite, or, you know, Bahujan. And, you
00:26:35.560know, it's basically everyone chooses their own name as a way to free themselves from this
00:26:39.240construct. And then you have South Asian indigenous people who are also outside of the system. So they
00:26:44.900might call themselves tribal or advasi or their tribe names so brahmanism set up this entire
00:26:52.080framework like this and we see its ideology stretching way beyond its origins into many
00:26:59.760aspects of south asian society and to even other communities of faith practice today so you use
00:27:07.080brahmanism interchangeably the way that you might use white supremacy to understand dominant
00:27:13.340thinking when it comes to systems of exclusion in our in our region and so for me it's very
00:27:20.280important that yes we acknowledge the pain of colonization but we can't really solve you know
00:27:28.260what got harmed in colonization if we don't look at the first wound which is the caste soul wound
00:27:34.760and so you know decolonizing requires us first to examine where we might de-brahmanize
00:27:40.580i want to explore a bit about something that you bring up again in your slate interview
00:27:48.980titled silicon valley has a caste problem and and you say quote in the united states we have a very
00:27:56.040north american understanding of race as long as we've got a diverse workforce and we're challenging
00:28:02.240white supremacy we think we've got all of our boxes checked but the reality is that these are
00:28:08.800American companies working in a global context. North American models of race aren't going to
00:28:14.560cover all the issues of inequity. Think about Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Meta. Their largest
00:28:21.000market isn't the United States. It's in India, end quote. I really was moved by this quote because
00:28:30.900You know, I can admit for myself, it's easy to get wrapped up in whether it's like a local mental framework or a national framework where, you know, like, I don't know if it's called American exceptionalism, but definitely this thought around, you know, being in the United States and thinking about, you know, seeing it through a lens of being here.
00:28:57.920But reading that quote, it really expanded my thought process around how other places like India are interfacing with these large multinational corporations that are truly trying to control us.
00:29:15.560And so I just wanted to open up this question to you, or this thought process with you about other, you know, I don't know if I'm trying to think like there's, you know, definitely a question around frameworks of discrimination.
00:29:32.700But I also think talking about big tech and discrimination when it comes to other countries who have bigger markets than ours, it's something that I can honestly say I haven't even really been aware of.
00:29:48.820Well, I think there's kind of like two ways to really think about the way our minds might be opened around this. So the first is that because of American dominance in the global economy, we've never really had to step out of the comfort zone of thinking about our definitions for race are not the only definitions for exclusion in the world.
00:30:16.640and in fact we have so many ways that different communities around the world are thinking about
00:30:23.460decolonizing and also experiencing you know rapid conversations around the shifts of power
00:30:32.060around the lines of race but in their own logic you know so whether we're talking about countries
00:30:38.960like Brazil or the different countries in the African continent or in Asia, the conversation
00:30:50.580about equity looks really different because it's not about necessarily a white dominant class.
00:30:57.820It could be and is oftentimes about dominant gatekeepers that come from historical legacies
00:31:05.500of trauma in that region. So we have to really be specific about the manifestations of historical
00:31:14.580violence that we're trying to remedy with policies that are focused on DEI and equity.
00:31:21.700And an American framework is not a one-size-fits-all because of how complicated those
00:31:27.180colonial and local histories are. And the issue of caste is a really good example of that because
00:31:34.280it has both an American discourse and a discourse in the region. So in the American discourse is
00:31:41.360that the IT industry, because of the high amount of South Asians that it hires, has a great deal
00:31:50.720of caste discrimination happening in American borders, which means it's subject to civil rights
00:31:57.060law and labor law here in a way that really needs to be addressed. And then I think outside
00:32:04.260Outside of that, what we have is outside of the United States is when American companies do business in other global contexts, our legal laws here are not going to be robust enough to understand the systemic discrimination there.
00:32:20.720And that's why we need to have global policies that kind of speak to keeping all of the workers and all of the users safe to the same standards.
00:32:31.600And that seems like that would be obvious and logical, but it's actually not been the
00:32:36.900business practices of many of these companies.
00:32:39.900So, you know, they, you know, they either have inconsistent policies where casts are
00:32:45.120not listed in HR policies outside of South Asia, but, you know, they have to do it in
00:32:51.240South Asia because it's a protected category there in many of the countries, or refusing
00:32:56.100to acknowledge that it's happening in the United States, even though there are significant
00:33:00.180caste-depressed tech workers that are raising their appropriate civil and labor rights around
00:33:05.080these issues and are concerned about it. So it's a very complicated landscape that Americans need0.69
00:33:15.080to quickly become familiar with because we cannot afford a vision of justice that ends at our
00:33:22.700borders, especially when our companies are multinational. The flows of our capital are
00:33:28.020multinational. And we have billionaires that are American citizens that are destabilizing
00:33:33.740democracies through their tech and their, you know, across the world. And, you know, I think
00:33:41.100about, you know, Twitter, which has been in the news because of Elon Musk's takeover, and 90%
00:33:47.220of the India team was laid off. And this is in one of their largest markets and one in which
00:33:53.400dangerous genocidal hate speech is the norm. If there are so many people in human rights and
00:33:59.800academic research and legal compliance and moderation that are fired, how will you stop
00:34:06.040and address the duty of care companies like Twitter and Meta have around the human rights
00:34:14.260crisis that's happening there? So it's really important that we expand our notion of equity
00:34:20.920and justice and get familiar with these global conversations because they're already impacting
00:34:26.500us here. We're already seeing the impact of what happens with biased tech, like biased companies
00:34:33.380create biased tech. And when we have people that are not adhering to the law, we find that they
00:34:40.880will skirt accountability for tech that creates harm in all of our communities. Thank you for
00:34:49.020opening our eyes or many of our eyes to this it's um it's heavy and so important to understand
00:35:00.320how insidious these systems and corporations and big tech are to so many of us around the world
00:35:10.920oh goodness um yeah there's of course more to talk about with big tech I mean there's so much here
00:35:22.000definitely thinking about investigating the many uh horrific ways big tech acts as a mediator for
00:35:32.140global issues of power you know just that seems really frightening and like holding us back from
00:35:41.600actually healing or being able to find a way through some of these really intense issues
00:35:50.180i i think that we have the reins of power in our hands and we've surrendered control
00:35:58.180because we think we're really limited to only being users, but we are in fact citizens.
00:36:04.900You know, we actually have the rule of law and we are seeing people with money behave
00:36:10.040as if they don't have any accountability to anyone else.
00:36:13.900And to me, I think these conversations about these tech companies, it's not just about
00:36:23.500it's actually a battle of futures. Because, you know, the the model that many of the billionaires
00:36:30.800have is that they view the earth as a husk. You know, everything, you know, especially if you
00:36:35.500take someone like Elon Musk, and, you know, the movements that, you know, he comes out of,
00:36:41.120they really do believe that the earth is meant to be a husk for us. And our only purpose and only
00:36:47.240way that we survive as a species is if we burn all of our resources and get to Mars and start
00:36:53.300to colonize the stars, you know, and using again, that term colonization, you know, and, and I think
00:36:59.600that there are alternative futures, I think that, you know, in this time of great climate catastrophe,
00:37:04.740we can use this as a moment of reexamination, and consider, is there another way for us to return
00:37:12.280back to balance, because the earth, you know, in its own, if it didn't have humans as the, you know,
00:37:18.380the apex predator here, you know, generally tends towards balance between the different species that
00:37:25.320are here. We are the ones that are causing the great kind of catastrophe here. So I think if we
00:37:32.980can, you know, think about things like the great turning that, you know, that, you know, we've,
00:37:39.100we've heard in other circles, and use this moment of the just transition to think about ways that we
00:37:45.720calibrate our relationships with each other. And tech is certainly part of it. Tech is just a tool.
00:37:51.760And we do not have to adhere to the visions of these billionaire titans that don't know how to
00:37:58.500run companies, don't know how to run democracy, but they just have a ton of capital and are
00:38:03.400anti-democratic in their engagements. And I think remembering that we have the rule of law,
00:38:09.180remembering that we have the ability to vote, remembering that we have the ability to bring
00:38:13.840litigation and support people towards that process, I think is to, to accountability and
00:38:22.260also towards love is something that we still have in our power. And, and I think that sometimes
00:38:28.620people get in despair because they see the division of these very rich people and they're
00:38:33.700like, how can I compete with that? You know? And, and I think that the love of millions of people
00:38:39.980is as strong as, you know, the money of like one billionaire, you know, and to be able to
00:38:47.600return back to love, to return back to humanity. I think that means everything.
00:39:00.120Sister, you are not too far for holding. I need your strength to carry.
00:39:09.980on sister you are not too far for holding i need your strength to carry on
00:39:24.660and our bodies are bound like the vines on the side of a house somewhere deep in the heart of
00:39:31.700the earth bodies are bound like the vines on the side of a house somewhere deep in the heart of the
00:39:38.340earth sister you are not too far for holding i need your strike to carry on
00:39:50.600that's really beautiful and thank you for empowering some of us again because i
00:40:01.920think with big tech it can feel really overwhelming with these issues of control and power within a
00:40:13.600rapidly growing and often unregulated space that's technology it can be like oh my gosh how do we even
00:40:20.340stop this monster and thanks for giving us some some ideas of how to move forward and
00:40:29.040And I want to jump to another topic, and I want to read a quote from your book, The Trauma of Kast, where you detail the experience of Kast saying, quote, you're not even allowed the consultation of spiritual practice, some kind of relationship with the higher power, because you are considered spiritually defiling before God, end quote.
00:40:53.480gosh and it's just such an intense you know thing to take in it's like thinking through
00:41:02.100the complex relationship between caste and religion and I'm wondering if you could provide
00:41:07.360some more depth on that relationship and the spiritual struggles that come with it
00:41:12.580you know I think writing those words were very hard for me to write too
00:41:17.280because I had to confront the totality of some of the pain that I had as someone who is a survivor
00:41:24.520of religious abuse. And even to say it out loud was, you know, it was kind of like a bell rang
00:41:31.100in my soul because all of the pieces of what I had been running from, I had to hold and really
00:41:38.720just say, this happened to me. And it happens to millions of Dalit people. Because again, I think0.67
00:41:45.400the the problem with caste is that it is a system of exclusion that has its roots in religious
00:41:53.260communities so it's not just that you're excluded from society it's that you're actually excluded
00:42:00.420from the divine and you know that is a very profound thing because you know for other people
00:42:06.940like when you decide that you want to become a seeker you might go out to the stars and look up
00:42:12.020and wonder about your place in the universe and think deeply about, you know, who am I,
00:42:18.320where do I belong and what do I believe? And that practice, that ability to have freedom to do that
00:42:26.380is really denied to Dalits because we are from jump thought to be spiritually polluting
00:42:32.860and othered. And the path to becoming part of a community feels so deeply pained. It's not an
00:42:42.780easy one to reclaim your divinity. And in fact, you have to fight tooth and nail, you have to
00:42:48.480fight centuries of conditioning, you have to fight, you know, societal programming that tells
00:42:53.760you that you don't have a right to this, to actually surrender and say, I absolutely do,
00:43:00.460because all of us are divine and that again was a much easier thing to say than it was to actually
00:43:10.300practice in my real life because I really always felt ashamed and never felt good enough to be part
00:43:17.680of spiritual communities and it's part of the reasons why I was a seeker and I would read
00:43:23.580every religious text and I would go to different community gatherings to see if I could find a1.00
00:43:29.260political home and a religious home but I always felt othered because of that core caste soul wound0.85
00:43:37.480and I had to I had to love myself and I had to really really be kind to acknowledging how deep
00:43:49.140this pain was in me and give myself space to self-examine and once I was witnessed both by
00:43:57.440myself and other people, I could then feel like I could make my choice about returning to a
00:44:05.820spiritual practice that was on my terms. And, you know, you don't have to be Dalit to understand0.79
00:44:11.920this experience because there are many survivors of religious abuse. But the path towards
00:44:18.300surrendering to a mystery or a divinity that's greater than yours is so hard when you've been
00:44:24.500wounded in this way and the trust has been broken and for me what really helped me heal was a
00:44:31.100connection to the earth a connection to you know to life and um and to see the divine in everyday
00:44:39.620things as well as in grand mysterious things you know you see the divine in the blooming of a flower
00:44:47.500just as you would in like a grand religious spectacle of an institution you know it's about
00:44:53.700that interconnectedness to that, that larger sense of who we can be as a species, as an earth
00:45:00.980connected to the rest of the universe. And, and I had to give myself permission to take up space
00:45:09.580spiritually. And that was also part of my healing, you know, and so to talk about this in this way
00:45:15.560was to give words to an experience that many Dalits don't talk about because the wound is so
00:45:21.820intimate and it's so shameful. But my hope in talking about this was really to create space
00:45:28.120for people to consider that the divine belongs to everyone and to democratize access and to
00:45:35.120give space to people who have never been able to hold how horrific this kind of wounding is
00:45:42.560to be witnessed and to heal. Thank you for sharing that with us.
00:45:52.820Cornel West, who wrote the afterword for your book, writes in his book, Race Matters, quote,
00:46:00.180In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis.
00:46:06.260We must assent the best of each other, even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power.
00:46:17.960We simply cannot enter the 21st century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks.
00:46:31.820We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation, and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us, or we hang separately.