Curating the Subaltern: Gentrification, Sanitisation, and the Comfort Politics of Upper-Caste Allyship in Universities

In contemporary universities, especially within elite and metropolitan institutions, it has become increasingly common to witness upper-caste students and scholars publicly aligning themselves with anti-caste politics. They organize talks, share posts, cite Dalit thinkers, and express solidarity with marginalized communities. On the surface, this appears as a progressive shift—a recognition of historical injustice and an attempt to engage with it.

Yet beneath this surface lies a more complicated dynamic. The Dalit subject that is often welcomed into these spaces is not the one that exists in full complexity, contradiction, and discomfort. Instead, what emerges is a curated version of Dalit existence—one that is intelligible, presentable, and above all, comfortable for upper-caste sensibilities.

This process can be understood as a form of cultural gentrification. Just as urban gentrification transforms neighborhoods by making them aesthetically appealing while displacing their original inhabitants, cultural gentrification reshapes Dalit life into a form that can be consumed without discomfort. The rough edges are smoothed out; the inconvenient aspects are removed.

Upper-caste engagement with Dalit culture often privileges certain elements—resilience, resistance, creativity, intellectual production. These are celebrated, circulated, and incorporated into academic discourse. Dalit literature, poetry, and theory are discussed, often with admiration.

But what is excluded from this appreciation is equally important. The messiness of lived experience—abusive language, fractured family structures, economic instability, anger, contradiction—is often seen as excessive, inappropriate, or lacking refinement. These aspects do not fit easily within the aesthetic and moral frameworks of elite academic spaces.

This selective engagement produces a sanitized Dalit subject—one who is articulate but not abrasive, critical but not confrontational, reflective but not raw. The expectation is not only that Dalits speak, but that they speak in ways that are legible and acceptable within upper-caste norms.

The language of academia plays a crucial role here. Complex theoretical frameworks, abstract vocabulary, and polished articulation become markers of legitimacy. Dalit experiences are often translated into this language, making them more accessible to dominant audiences. While this translation can enable broader engagement, it can also strip away the texture and immediacy of lived reality.

There is a tension between representation and recognition. Representation involves making something visible, but recognition requires accepting it in its full form. The curated Dalit subject is represented, but not fully recognized. The parts that disrupt comfort are excluded.

This dynamic reflects what might be called the politics of comfort. Upper-caste allyship often operates within boundaries that do not fundamentally unsettle the subject. It allows for engagement with injustice, but in ways that remain manageable. The discomfort of confronting structural inequality is mitigated by focusing on aspects that can be appreciated rather than those that demand deeper confrontation.

The result is a form of engagement that is both genuine and limited. Genuine, because there is real interest and concern; limited, because it does not fully engage with the realities it seeks to address.

From a Dalit perspective, this can produce a sense of dissonance. The expectation to conform to sanitized forms of expression can feel like another layer of control. It suggests that even within spaces of supposed inclusion, there are conditions attached to visibility.

The issue is not that Dalit culture is being appreciated, but how it is being framed. Appreciation that requires sanitisation risks reproducing hierarchy. It positions upper-caste taste as the standard against which Dalit expression must be measured.

This raises important questions about the nature of solidarity. What does it mean to stand with marginalized communities if one is unwilling to engage with the full complexity of their lives? Can allyship exist without discomfort?

To move beyond this limitation requires a shift in orientation. It requires recognizing that Dalit life cannot be reduced to narratives that are easy to consume. It involves engaging with aspects that are difficult, unsettling, and resistant to neat representation.

This does not mean romanticizing hardship or reducing Dalit existence to struggle. Rather, it means allowing for complexity without filtration—acknowledging that lives are not always coherent, polished, or aligned with dominant norms.

Universities, as spaces of knowledge production, have a particular responsibility in this regard. They shape how ideas are framed, how subjects are represented, and how discourse evolves. If they reproduce sanitized versions of marginality, they risk limiting the scope of understanding.

Ultimately, the challenge is to move from curation to confrontation. To engage with Dalit existence not as an aesthetic or intellectual object, but as a lived reality that demands recognition in its entirety.

Only then can solidarity move beyond comfort and become something more transformative—an engagement that does not merely include, but truly listens, even when what is heard disrupts the very frameworks through which it is understood.