What does caste look like? A graphic book offers an unsettling answer

A graphic book named "The Blue Book" presents an unsettling depiction of caste in India. The book begins with an inverted map of the subcontinent, which forces the reader to reorient themselves before the story starts. The author, Siddhesh Gautam, does not provide an explanation for this choice, but it effectively sets the stage for the content that follows.

Gautam describes the book's dreams as those that occur while awake, through imagination, memory, and the freedom to think differently. The book explores caste through conversations with historical figures such as BR Ambedkar, Savitribai Phule, and the Buddha, as well as Gautam's own encounters with caste. While these conversations are not literal, they serve as a means to navigate history, public memory, and Gautam's personal experience with caste.

The book aims to avoid a procession of historical figures reciting their positions to a student, instead keeping Gautam as the central figure who questions the inheritance of a struggle that predates him. The visual language of the book is spare, often reducing people to silhouettes and leaving large areas of the pages empty. This visual approach emphasizes how caste is an arrangement of lives, rather than just a belief.

One of the most unsettling aspects of the book is when it delves into the desire aspect of caste. Gautam writes, "You learn to want what's allowed and forget what you deserve." Here, caste is not just about what a person can do, but also about what they can reasonably want. The book also addresses cultural erasure, highlighting how communities can be recognized for their production but denied recognition as contributors to culture, ideas, or history.

This questioning of authorship is as important as acknowledging exclusion. The visual representation of caste as something built and maintained - a map, a machine, a queue, a label - makes the reader see it as an abstraction turned system. In this way, "The Blue Book" offers a compelling portrayal of caste as a constructed and maintained system, leaving something for the reader to contemplate.