Watching India Untouched in 2024

Reflections from a history of education class

The other day, I was part of a history of education class where all of us watched the documentary ‘India Untouched’ together.

When I first saw the message from the professor about watching the documentary in the class, my first thought was – why now? The documentary is about twenty years old, so I thought it would not be relevant anymore in an academic context – most people, especially the highly educated youngsters that joined a premier social science school - would somehow have had exposure to these thoughts, right? Also, I had watched it a couple of times before in different contexts, so was afraid of getting bored with the documentary as well as the discussion.

When we watched parts of it together and my classmates, on an average about a decade (and half, maybe!?) younger than me, responded, I realized how wrong I was and how important an experience it was for all of us.  

Since this was a premier institute, naturally, the class was mostly urban and upper caste (do you see what I mean?). Most of us thought caste was not an influence anymore, at least in public life.  

Many of us were also therefore against reservations.

When we started responding to the documentary, recalled life experiences and reflected, we realized that not knowing caste is a privilege. And that caste is the main component of the social fabric of this nation.

It was wonderful to see so many young (and not so young!) people honestly reflect on their own thinking about on an important social institution, examine their stand on reservations (which was not part of the agenda at all, we automatically thought of reservations when they thought about caste), and be willing to say, ‘yeah, there is something to learn here!’

My learning was that insightful understanding of Indian social fabric and the pervasive influence of institutions like caste or class is not as prevalent as I imagined it to be. And now I am much firmer about my students acquiring a sociological lens before they finish high school.