One of the letters carries these lines: Remember in Pondi, when we were out really late in the night & we saw these municipality workers wearing fluorescent jackets, working. I said, "They-re always women," and you said, "and they-re always Dalit." Was I that unwilling to admit things? I had said sorry for overlooking things...or maybe for making it my cause, my concern and not yours. I really had to be shaken up.

Jyotsna Siddharth, actor, activist, writer and project manager at Gender At Work India

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Marriage is often used as a tool to protect and enforce caste boundaries. Sometimes, transgressing these boundaries can lead to tragic consequences like honour killings. Think of the Marathi film Sairat. It can also be understood through the emergence of legitimacy around the discourse of -love jihad.-

Project Anti-Caste, Love stemmed from its founder-s personal struggle against discrimination as a Dalit person. "I experienced abuse in a past relationship with a cisgendered, upper caste man. The project was born out of the need to question blatant caste discrimination you could have to face in an intimate context." Not only is love informed by caste, it also directly challenges the caste status quo. "For instance, children born out of inter-caste unions carry the castes of both their parents. The caste location of such children muddles the watertight compartmentalisation of caste categories and the inherent hierarchy of the caste system," they observe, adding that even BR Ambedkar wrote about inter-caste marriages as one of the routes to annihilate caste.

The activist has had to conceal some of the names associated with the letters. The contributing couples are aware that when their families learn of their inter-caste romantic relationship, it-s going to drive a wedge between them. "Trauma is inflicted on anyone who enters such a relationship, via their families, friends, and the state. Governments give money to inter-caste couples as a tokenistic way of showing support, while not doing enough to safeguard the interests of such couples." The central government offers R2.5 lakh to every inter-caste couple, involving a Dalit person. While this may be a step in the right direction, disturbing incidents like that of a father from Ahmednagar setting his pregnant daughter and her husband on fire in 2019, makes one question the efficacy of merely providing a financial incentive.

Jyotsna has interviewed inter-caste couples in the course of their academic engagement with the issue at hand. "The love letter series inquires why inter-caste couples across caste and religions are stigmatised. Of course, the intensity of the violence varies." The people who were interviewed spoke about being beaten up, locked up in rooms, all because they dared to love. "Every Indian has a caste experience. It-s not as if upper caste people don-t have a caste experience, it-s just that Dalits- experiences tend to get fetishised. Love and relationships serve to bring out and cement some of these," they explain, urging us to question caste.

EXPLORE THE LOVE LETTERS - @projectanticastelove, INSTAGRAM

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