Caste on the couch

Do brahminical ideologies permeate Indian psychological theory?
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My five years of stay in Europe and America had completely wiped out of my mind any consciousness that I was an untouchable and that an untouchable wherever he went in India was a problem to himself and to others. Bu.t when f came out of the station fin Bawd(?) my mind was considerably disturbed by a question, "Where to go? Who will take me?" I felt deeply agitated. Hindu hotels, called Vishis, I knew, there were. They would not take me. The only way of seeking accommodation therein was by impersonation. But I was not prepared for it because I could well anticipate the dire consequences which were sure to follow if my identity was discovered as it was sure to be.

– BR Ambedkar in Waiting fora Visa

Unwilling also to impose on friends — one a caste Hindu and the other a Brahmin- Christian — a young, scholastic Bhimrao did take recourse to impersonation. He faked a Parsi identity to take shelter at a Parsi inn, and was unceremoniously turned out when discovered. Humiliated by stick-wielding Parsis, Ambedkar said, "It was then for the first time that I learnt that a person who is an untouchable to a Hindu is also an untouchable to a Parsi".

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