From a Pune slum to MacArthur genius grant, the formidable arc of a Dalit scholar

“I started my travel successful the slums of Yerwada. It has taken each my beingness to get here, wherever I americium the lone Dalit pistillate to beryllium a full and distinguished probe prof successful South Asian Studies successful the Western academia. Why is it that galore Dalits, and particularly Dalit women, person been excluded from planetary academia?,” says Paik implicit the telephone from the US, wherever she is simply a past prof astatine the University of Cincinnati.

Talking of the evening erstwhile Paik received a telephone informing her of the fellowship, she says, “As a pistillate of colour successful the US and arsenic a Dalit woman, I was overjoyed to person the fellowship. It is the highest honour and designation of my enactment implicit galore years and my combat against racial, caste and sex oppression.”

Paik says that portion she had not faced “overt discrimination” successful Pune, the consciousness and the world of caste seldom near her. “I person not faced overt favoritism successful the city, but determination were instances of radical saying that I volition get a occupation easy due to the fact that I americium a Dalit and could avail of reservation. Or radical recovered it precise hard to judge that I received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to enactment connected my probe successful the UK.”

She had her earliest — and astir nonstop — encounters with caste during her visits to her ancestral colony successful Brahmangaon Takli, successful Kopargaon taluka. “We did not person our ain good and fetched h2o from a good that belonged to the ascendant caste. I utilized to travel my cousins and aunts. We would get to the pump archetypal but then, we would spot the upper-caste women approaching with the look successful their eyes that said, ‘You are going to support a distance, oregon else…’. My aunts, cousins and I would flinch and locomotion backwards holding our pots portion the ascendant caste women filled their pots and left. Only aft that, would we instrumentality water,” says Paik.

That was 40 years ago. When the historiographer visited her colony this year, she recovered that Dalits present person their ain wells and are not babelike connected ascendant caste neighbours. “People besides said that the higher castes cannot practise favoritism successful overt terms. Things are changing and relations are transforming,” says Paik, who began to probe Dalit women successful 2000, erstwhile Dalit Studies arsenic good arsenic subaltern studies were mostly male-centric

Paik’s archetypal book, Dalit Women’s Education successful Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge 2014), focuses connected Dalit women’s struggles for acquisition and bureau successful assemblage and modern municipality Maharashtra. In her latest book, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity successful Modern India (Stanford 2022), Paik demonstrates however caste reinforces notions of enactment and gender.

But it’s her travel from Yerwada to the US, from the margins of nine to the centrestage of academia, that is the astir riveting. Paik credits her “very strict” parents — begetter Deoram Paik worked successful the authorities Agriculture Department and parent Sarita Paik is simply a homemaker — for making definite their girls focused connected studies. “He would thatch the girls personally. Shailaja made it a constituent to slumber erstwhile her sisters were studying. When everybody went to bed, she would survey till late,” says Sarita.

In Yerwada, Paik attended a section school, Roshni School connected Tadiwala Road, and recovered enactment among the teachers. “She was perpetually topping the class. When she scored 98% successful Class 10, the schoolhouse was mentioned successful a paper nonfiction for the archetypal time,” says Roheeni Waghmare, Paik’s sister, who works successful the Irrigation Department. The youngest of the Paik sisters, Kirti Paik Inkar, is an ayurvedic doc based successful London.

Sarita insisted connected her daughters learning English, a connection she did not know. “When they were born, my mother-in-law would accidental that we needed a boy. Their begetter said these 3 are my boys,” says Sarita.

While the different 2 girls would occasionally squabble, says parent Sarita, Paik did not fuss with thing but her studies. She went connected to bash her post-graduation successful past from Savitribai Phule Pune University.

It was astir this clip that the household shifted to a first-floor single-room location successful different portion of Yerwada, connected the margins of the slum wherever they lived earlier.

Paik, who aspired to beryllium an IAS officer, appeared for her UPSC exams and cleared her prelims, twice. But she had to springiness up connected her dreams aft her begetter Deoram Paik passed away. Her parent Sarita past took connected tailoring jobs to supplement her husband’s pension and net from their tiny landholding successful the village.

“My household circumstances changed and I decided to instrumentality the archetypal employment accidental I got — arsenic a lecturer astatine Kirti College successful Dadar. I thought that I would hole for UPSC alongside, but surviving successful Mumbai and teaching did not let maine capable clip to bash so,” says Paik.

But Paik much than made up for those mislaid dreams, pouring each her attraction into researching the lives of Dalit women. She won the Ford Foundation Fellowship and penning fellowship from Emory University, among others, to implicit her doctoral studies astatine the University of Warwick successful the UK successful 2007. She went connected to go a visiting adjunct prof of past astatine Union College (2008–2010) and a postdoctoral subordinate and visiting adjunct prof of South Asian past astatine Yale University (2012–2013). Paik has been with the University of Cincinnati since 2010, wherever she is presently the Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Research Professor of History and affiliate module successful Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies and sociology.

“What I would similar is for the oppressor castes to halt pushing the load of warring caste favoritism to the oppressed who are already vulnerable. The ascendant castes should basal with Dalits to combat sex and caste discrimination, locally, nationally and internationally,” says Paik.