Yashica Dutt is one of India’s top writers, writers and journalists based in New York. She is recognized globally for her work on a range of painful issues including gender equality, identity, caste and class.
Wiki/Biography
Yashica Dutt was born on Wednesday, February 5, 1986, in Ajmer, Rajasthan (38 years; as of 2024).
Yashika Dutt childhood photos
She studied at Sophia Boarding School in Merta, Nagpur, India, and then pursued a Bachelor of Science degree at St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, India. She subsequently completed an MA in Arts and Cultural Journalism at Columbia University in New York, USA.
appearance
Height (approximately): 5′3″
Hair color: medium brown
Eye color: dark brown
family
Yashica Dutt was born into a poor family in Rajasthan.
Parents and siblings
Yashica Dutt’s father is a tax official and her mother Shashi wears many hats. She has two siblings.
Yashica Dutt with her mother Shashi
caste
Yashica Dutt grew up in a family belonging to the lowest group in the caste system of Indian society, namely Dalits, also known as untouchables. She learned to hide her identity as a Dalit from an early age. At the age of seven, Yashika entered a boarding school in Merta, Nagpur district, Rajasthan, India. Her mother Shashi was worried about her ability to get into a good private school, knowing her financial situation and caste-based discrimination in society. Yashika’s mother advised her to hide her Dalit identity and pretend to be an “upper caste” to ensure a safe and non-discriminatory education in school. When she studied in a boarding school, she lived with girls from the “upper castes,” which helped her better pretend to be one of them by observing and adapting to their lifestyles. Yashika said she started using face masks made by her mother to cover up her dark skin after she was discriminated against for having a dull complexion while studying at a boarding school. Yashika was educated in a convent school and has a “dark” complexion that could easily pass for a non-Dalit. Her family gave up using the surname “Nidaniya” and adopted the surname “Dute”. The first time Yashica Dutt publicly acknowledged that she was a “lower caste” was when she was 15 years old, when she visited a friend’s home (as she always did), her friend’s The mother invited her in and gave her a glass of water. When Yashika sat across from her friend’s parents, they asked questions about her caste and she decided to answer honestly and tell them the truth. After learning her caste, they tried to explain that they were liberals and then asked her to leave. A few days later, when she saw her friend and tried to talk to her, her friend told her that her parents had asked her to stop contacting her.
In 2016, Yashika Dutt spoke in an interview about the days when she hid her Dalit identity in school and college. She revealed that she used to do this with so much confidence that people would immediately believe her. she says,
My convent school education, un-Dalit-sounding surname, and “dull but still not dirty” skin color made me easily pass as a non-Dalit. “Beta, what caste are you?” “Aunt, Brahmin.” I lied so frequently and so consistently that I not only fooled my friend’s mother, but even myself. “
Yashica Dutt has been hiding her caste for over a decade. She announced in 2016 that Rohith Vemula, an Indian PhD student at the Central University in Hyderabad, committed suicide in protest against the discrimination faced by all Dalits in South Asia, including himself. I am a Dalit myself. She invited Dalits to write their stories and share them on Facebook and Tumbler.
Profession
reporter
Yashica Dutt served as chief correspondent for Hindustan Times Brunch. She has also worked as a freelance journalist at The Wire, Livemint, HuffPost India and Scroll.in.
writer
Yashica Dutt joined Hindustan Times in 2011 as a fashion writer. She has written numerous articles and essays, such as “The Ghost of Caste in Silicon Valley,” published in The New York Times (July 14, 2020), “Oscar Nominated Movies: A Masterclass in Journalism” (February 14, 2022) , published in The Atlantic, “Feeling Like an Outcast—An Indian Dalit Reading of Isabel Wilkerson’s Best-Selling Caste” (September 17, 2020), published in Diplomacy “Long live Gay Gael”” (September 12, 2021), published in Foreign Policy; and “Indian matchmaking exposes easy acceptance of caste” (August 1, 2020), published In The Atlantic.
author
Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019) by Yashica Dutt raises concerns about the racism faced by Dalits in India focus on. It reveals her journey over more than a decade as a “presumed non-Dalit” struggling within social strata. She expressed her views on how Dalits have to hide their identity to survive in society. Yashica Dutt says in Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir,
“We left behind our food, our songs, our culture and our surnames so that we could become ‘better’ and ‘purer’, more ‘upper’ caste, less Dalí Special. We don’t throw away our untouchability to fit in more easily. We do it because sometimes it’s our only option.”
Yashika said she was inspired to write the book by the experiences shared by many Dalits on the Dalit Discrimination Doc, a platform launched by Yashika for Dalits to share their experiences of caste-based Stories of discrimination; Yashika launched this platform to give Dalits a broad space to share their experiences that are not available in the newsrooms of traditional media. Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir went on to win many awards.
Yashica Dutt publishes her first book ‘Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir’
Awards
She won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar (National Award for Literature) in 2020 for her book Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir (2019).
Favorites
Food: Eggs, toast and seafood
Facts/Trivia
- Yashika often shares photos of her breakfast through posts on social media.
- She idolized Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic and author Margo Jefferson.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education