The Brahmin as "Culture": Problematizing Caste in India’s Media Event Space

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session III
  In Interactive Poster Session: Journalism Studies Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss how the caste category of ‘Brahmin’ emerges in English language news in India through the construction of a media event space. Building upon anti-caste critiques of how English language news media scripts lower-castes – Dalits and Bahujans – through themes of death, violence, deprivation and abjection, I argue that in contrast, Hindu upper-castes, particularly Brahmins, emerge in culture, lifestyle, and technology news as representative of the historical and cultural ethos of India. The news media’s caste discourse therefore reveals differing parameters for how Brahmins predominantly experience (and therefore, express) their caste privilege as “culture,” while Dalit-Bahujans experience their caste location as oppression. These scripts of the lived experience of caste, I suggest, create a news episteme where coverage of violence against Dalits becomes a convenient substitute for more critical understandings about the operationalization of caste through institutional power structures, and in particular, elite caste oppressor groups. 

Author

• Pallavi Rao, Indiana U Bloomington