The sweet life as a researcher
One day of all those days as life passes by:
Taking the bus trying to get on before the traffic jam starts at 8.45. Always fail and get stuck eitherways. Luckily Chennai has lots of nice mural paintings; this one I see everytime I head for Egmore.
Hanging out at the Tamil Nadu Archives. Literally wading in books! And today I got to read documentation from 1834 – wooow! Books are so old they are almost falling apart, it is magical to turn the pages and the handwriting is extremely beautiful!
Conducting interviews with people having different views and experiences on my essay topic. Today I met Mr. Veeramani, President of the Dravidar Kazhagam, pro-reservationist.
Waiting at the train platform to get into the ladies’ compartment.
Doing some serious idli researching. I didn’t know that you could buy ready-made idli mix! Ha!
Is this what winner cooking looks like?
I am starting to feel that my time in India is about to wrap up for this time. Because as every time you are about to leave a place, things suddenly go in ultra-speed. I am meeting so many interesting people, I am invited to so many homes and so many positive things are happening. I feel it is very beautiful and good for me to be here with a mission, a mission to understand Indian society and reservations in depth. I am happy to feel that I have a mission to try to understand something very complex and bring knowledge back to my home country. And as happens with the course of time, I am finally moving about in Chennai as it is my own town, enjoying contacts and friends already made. And at the same time as I am learning more about Indian society, caste and politics than I could imagine!
Essay writing
Interiors of the hostel to give you strength.
Digging into the archives at the TATA Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.
Making my way through the jungle of documents and animals at the gem of library in the Periyar Thidal, Chennai.
I guess most of you have been wondering if that Swedish girl was not supposed to do some research for her master thesis and not just go around taking photos using up Swedish government scholarship. Well I can tell you that I am multi-tasked! Since day 2 (first day was for getting out of the airport and find a place to sleep) I have been engaging in reading, talking and writing about quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in higher education in India and Tamil Nadu. I have dug into the principle of equality before the law and ways to reach real equality through special provisions for the historically discriminated segments of society. And:
The magic of deadlines!
If I was working on hard since I came here, that’s nothing from the last two weeks when I had a deadline to hold on to and an hour to send my so-far-finished work to my supervisor in Sweden. So much work has been done, so many things have been cleared out, so many places have been visited, so many new bus lines have been conquered and so much interesting people have been met!
Having to go out of the library to search for documents and persons, I have started to explore Chennai. I have been going by bus to places I didn’t know how to reach before. I have stumbled across archives just out of pure luck. I have met fighters for social justice and the anti-religious and anti-caste Periyar movement. I have met Mr. K.M. Vijayan who has filed petitions against the Tamil Nadu Reservation Act in the Supreme Court, and I have had the opportunity to meet the Chairman of the Tamil Nadu Backward Classes Commission Thiru M.S. Janarthanam and hear his highly interesting views on the judiciary and caste in Indian society from his experience as a practicioner of more than half a century in the Indian legal system.
When I came here I was firmly determined to keep all the politics and different opinions on reservations out of my essay as it was supposed to be purely legal. But I am starting to realize that it is more complicated than that, that there is no universal view of the existence and nature of the caste system and its operations in India today. Different groups argue differently on its importance in Indian society, and there are big battles fought from these different starting points on all levels in society, political, legal, occupational, in every-day life. I am starting to see that the battle between different interest groups and their relative power in Indian society also affects the legal issues, and that it is impossible to separate one from the other.
India 