Let me state from the outset that I have previously shared and appreciated Neha Dixit’s work because she has (generally) reported well on women, gender and class. Her stories tend to be well-researched, her empathy shines through and she reports with stories on people who are under-represented in India’s corporate English media. She has also previously responded well on Twitter, to constructive criticism of her piece.
So it is hugely disappointing to see a different reaction emerge last week when she was questioned about her own caste privilege in a piece that really problematizes how Dalits are spoken about in English language media, and to further see her refuse to engage with any of the people who have come forward to critique her piece. Clearly, gender and class are legitimate biases to own up to, but bringing up her own upper-caste identity is ‘discriminatory’. Read the rest of this entry
In a Brown Study 