This new MacArthur “genius” says she defied caste prejudice thanks to Dad and Mom

Shailaja Paik was born into India’s Dalit community — one of the millions who belong to  historically marginalized and oppressed castes due to their professions. They’re so scorned that they were for centuries known as “untouchables.” And even though modern India is changing, caste discrimination refuses to go away.

Paik faced prejudice both as a Dalit and a woman. She credits her parents, especially her father, for helping her (and her three sisters) defy the prejudices they faced as Dalits and as women. He made sure they got an education.

For Paik, schooling was a path to teaching history in the U.S., writing books about the untold plight of the Dalits — and now being dubbed a genius.

She’s one of 22 recipients of the 2024 MacArthur fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for creative and intellectual achievement — informally known as “the genius grant.”

MacArthur fellows receive $800,000 over five years to spend however they want -- one of the few no-strings attached grants. The fellows do not apply nor are they officially interviewed for it. The call informing them of the fellowship comes out of the blue.

A research professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, Paik is not a public figure as some recipients are. She has documented the deep social inequity rising from India’s repressive caste system that she is a part of. Her focus is the plight of Dalit women like herself.

In a video interview with NPR, Paik, age 50, shares key findings from her years of research — and why this achievement is such a milestone. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you received the news that you'd won the MacArthur grant, what was that moment like?

The call came around 5 p.m. I was resting after a full day of classes. I was tired and couldn’t really believe what I was hearing. The Foundation congratulated me, explained the details of the award and how it related to my work. It was such an exhilarating, ecstatic moment.

How does it feel to be called a genius? Growing up, did you ever think that this kind of recognition would be yours?

I’ve worked very hard all my life against odds, and while every success I’ve had has been appreciated and celebrated by parents, friends, and extended family, I’ve never been called a “genius” before. It’s overwhelming, but when I think of how I got here — an often rocky journey — I’m going to embrace it with gratitude.

Tell us about those early years.

Growing up, I had to fight hard to survive. I was born in Pohegaon, a small village in [the western Indian state of] Maharashtra.

My family moved to Pune, the nearest city [four hours away by road] in the 1960s, where I grew up. We lived in a one-room house in a slum area in Yerawada, on the Ahmednagar highway, which made it easier for my father to make trips to our native village so he could keep in touch with his family. Our house was about 20 by 20 feet, and we didn’t have access to toilets.           

The neighborhood where we lived in was a densely populated, underserved area, full of underprivileged people, some labeled disruptive or dangerous. I have three sisters and if it weren’t for our father, who was determined to give us an education, these opportunities wouldn’t have been ours. My mother, educated until grade 6, introduced me to the English alphabet. She worked very hard at domestic drudgery to enable me and my sisters to devote ourselves to our education. She protected us and taught us to protect ourselves. She has been a model of fortitude, standing by me, teaching me to pursue my interests singlemindedly and believing in my endeavors.

My father struggled for an education himself. He attended what we call night school and worked during the day, waiting tables and cleaning at restaurants. He put up pandals [temporary scaffolding, used for weddings or religious events] and learnt to play [pre-recorded] music during events. In this way, somehow, he educated himself — and got a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Sciences, the first Dalit man from his village to do so.                      
Did his emphasis on education encourage you to pursue a career in academia?

Dalits have been excluded from education and seeking out knowledge for centuries. I mention this in my first book, Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India, Double Discrimination. Women faced double discrimination — for being Dalits and because of their gender.

So that became an important motivation for me too. To escape the slum, I had to get education and employment — it was key to living a better life.

It became especially important after my father’s death in 1996, because I had to support my family — my mother and sisters .

Soon after, in the same year, I got my masters’ degree from the Savitribai Phule university in Pune. I started out as a lecturer teaching history in Mumbai. The Ford Foundation fellowship provided me support to pursue a doctoral degree in Warwick University in the U.K. I arrived in the U.S. in 2005 after securing a fellowship from Emory University.

For people encountering your work in South Asian history for the first time, what can they expect?

My work explores the role of power and identity. It shines a light on the fundamental inequalities in our lives that make some people more equal than others.

Broadly speaking, it documents the inequalities that we inherit. My teaching and research focuses on systemic mechanisms of stigmatization and exploitation.

Those who are privileged elites have pushed the burden of [making amends for prejudices like] caste onto Dalits, of race to Black people and of gender to women, thus holding the oppressed responsible for fighting for their rights and addressing their difficulties on their own. My work shows that everyone — the oppressed and oppressors — need to work together to fight for liberation.

Through the course of your career, you've championed the cause of Tamasha women, dancing artists from the Western Indian state of Maharashtra — some of whom are Dalits. What drew you to their stories?

Tamasha brings together drama, dance, mime, song, and it is considered a traditional art performed predominantly by women from the Dalit community. However, it was often branded ashleel or vulgar by the larger society. The performance and the performers were regarded as loud, pretentious, showy and considered indecent, rude, dishonest.

So growing up, I’ve watched these performances in both my village and the city and I understood how intensely these women performers were stigmatized. I found literary evidence that dates back to the 10th century calling the art vulgar and saying that no one should be engaging in it or watching it.

When I began the fieldwork for my Ph.D. dissertation in 2002 and 2003, I interviewed about 180 women from different social backgrounds — from middle-class apartments and slums, from different castes and different Dalit castes. Among these interviewees were many Tamasha women.

Little was known about the caste prejudice and violence that Tamasha girls face.

It amazed me how their voice was so completely erased after being branded as vulgar, and so I set about creating an archive, filled with newspaper clips, magazines, pamphlets, films, music and fieldwork that centered on the experiences of Tamasha women.

So this topic has been on my mind for the last 20 years and became the subject of my second book, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality and Humanity in Modern India.

In your book, you discuss the vicious cycle that Tamasha women must endure. Many despise their own line of work because of the bawdry, sensual nature of the dance. They know others don't respect them for it and worse, it leaves them vulnerable to sexual assault — seen by society as sex workers even though that is not the case. Yet they cannot stop performing, because discrimination against them will not allow them to take on other jobs or switch careers. You call this the sex, gender and caste complex. Could you elaborate?

In the caste system, women are rigidly regulated in terms of their sexuality — it is used as a means of controlling and branding them. Gender and sexuality are used to deny Dalit women dignity.

For instance, the sex-gender-caste complex very cunningly labels a range of dancers, singers and Tamasha women as prostitutes [as a result of their low caste status].

In my book, Mangalatai Bansode, a well-known Tamasha artist who continues to dance to this day, has discussed the ways the sex-gender-caste complex created so many difficulties for her. She recalled an incident that happened to her as a 16-year-old. She was forced to dance in an ox cart by the people in her village. She was the lead dancer, and she and other women were crammed into an ox cart and had to dance as it made its way around her village. A wild crowd gathered, and men danced and cheered around the ox cart, trying to grab at her and pull at her saree. You can imagine how frightening this experience would have been for a 16-year-old, and yet she could not refuse because she would have to face violence if she did.

In recent years, have things changed? Have modern Tamasha girls found a way out of this cycle of suppression and violence?

As I show in my book the sex-gender-caste complex exploited Dalit Tamasha women, but some women like Bansode have made it work. She created business opportunities and propelled social mobility for herself, her family members and her troupe. Her granddaughter is now a medical doctor.

Tamasha women have also pursued different opportunities in terms of recording CDs, uploading YouTube videos, reels, entering films — but still these numbers are very small.

Many Tamasha women continue to live in poverty, do not get the pensions promised by the government, do not get support from local authorities and continue to struggle. COVID was particularly challenging for many.

Though it isn’t easy, is there any way to build a more equitable society for people who still endure caste prejudice?

It’s a centuries-old discrimination so certainly not easy. There are a number of ways we can work on fighting this discrimination and the system. But primarily, we need to acknowledge that caste divisions and prejudice exist.

This is something that especially high-caste elite liberals do not want to talk about. Some [Indians] are quick to talk about the racial discrimination that they face but do not want to talk about the caste discrimination that they perpetuate.

So we should talk about it and stop pretending that there is no caste, in India and elsewhere. There are very intense conversations taking place in the U.S. today, especially [around] caste and race.

The MacArthur grant comes with $800,000 disbursed over five years. Is there a beach chair with your name on it? How does it factor in your future plans?

(Laughs). To be honest, it’s going to take some time to sink in.

But I do know that it will help me conduct my research and write on historical inequities and social barriers with greater ease and to expose my students to these different perspectives.

You know -- history isn’t a dead subject. Our attitude to the past shapes how we think about the present and how we build our future.      

What do you think the fellowship means to other Dalits?

This fellowship is a celebration of the enormous contributions of Dalits -- their ideas, actions, history and fight for human rights — as much as it is of me as a Dalit woman scholar. I am indebted to the Dalit women who shared their lives with me and I hope this achievement will strengthen the fight of both Dalits and non-Dalits against caste discrimination, in and beyond South Asia.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t