Aleena’s on our algorithm: How this Dalit Christian is using her words to talk about caste and oppression

Our feeds are fiery with this Dalit Christian’s acerbic takes on caste and oppression. People hate her but she doesn’t care

Aleena, 29, is well known in the world of Malayalam poetry—her award-winning book, Silk Route, was published in 2021—but since June last year she has been more than happy to offend, defend and needle people on the Internet.

The author moved to Kochi a few years ago from her village in remote Kerala for better opportunities as someone who uses words, but it’s been in the last few months that she got a wave of followers on Instagram (@iseesomeletters)—almost 37,000 now. “I think I got a lot of hate from savarnas (privileged castes) in the past few months and maybe as a result I might have got followers too,” says the writer in a phone chat.

Aleena’s account stands out not only because of her in-your-face Dalit perspective but because she talks about the countless undocumented Dalit-Christian perspectives that seem to be lacking in intellectual discourse.

Most of Aleena’s videos are littered with hate comments, and her DMs, she says, are filled with casteist slurs. 

Aleena recites excerpts of Annihilation of Caste written by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, who is one of her inspirations

One video is when she reads out an excerpt of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste: “The Hindus criticise the Mohammedans for having spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the Inquisition. But really speaking, who is better and more worthy of our respect—the Mohammedans and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their salvation, or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavour to keep others in darkness, who would not consent to share his intellectual and social inheritance with those who are ready and willing to make it a part of their own make-up?” The video has now close 5,000 likes, over 300 comments and more than a 1,000 shares.

Many in the comments accuse Aleena of being provoking and underhanded as she refused to share her opinion on it. “I think it was pretty self-explanatory,” 
she says and gives out an exasperated laugh. 

When we ask her about comments such as: “Of course, if Ambedkar says it must be true. Now go collect your rice bag and milk powder,” which is one of the comments that she replied to, she says, “My friends often tell me not to reply to the really nasty messages, or casteist slurs, but as someone who has grown up with these slurs I think I reply because I am trying to heal my inner child. I am speaking for all those times that I couldn’t as a child because I did not have the vocabulary or because I was just a child. I am not cruel but I am definitely not going to get deterred by savarna bullies.” 

Her tongue-in-cheek humour coupled with an almost serene expression as she reads out similar quotes and poems, and makes reels that seem to send those who disagree with her over the edge, confesses, comes from her grandmother. As urbanisation reached Aleena’s tribal village and many of her kith and kin were being bought out of their land, it was her grandmother who stood her ground and refused to sell it off. “As a child I remember people coming to our home and quoting her an amount for our land but she would say to them, ‘Forget my land, I will not sell you a cup of my land’s soil’,” says Aleena.

With regard to what the Dalit-Christian-Bahujan-Adivasi is facing today, Aleena feels there are two very important stakeholders who need to step up. “The government must step in and let there be a caste survey that includes Christians. They are afraid, because if they do it they will have to give the Dalit Christian a quota. Conversion to any religion for that matter cannot be used as a way to disenfranchise people who need to be given a seat at the table of progress,” she says. 

At the same time, she also recognises the role played—or not—by churches across India that further perpetuate the caste system. “Endogamy in the Christian community, where people do not marry outside their caste, is one of our biggest invisible evils. I feel here the Church and Indian Christian structures need to step in and tell people clearly that this is not something that can be tolerated, even if we go back to what Christ practiced in his lifetime,” she adds.

Aleena is currently working on another book, and says that the move to Kochi has enabled her to get the kind of exposure that city Dalits are perhaps blessed with, but also remarks that it was her paradoxical reality of growing up in a largely Dalit community, with a religious mother and a Marxist father, which has informed her strength. “To be honest I never realised that there are so few like me when I made my Instagram account. I was really taken by surprise at the reaction I have been getting but at the same time I think people fail to realise the strength that a Dalit girl—who can never pass as a savarna because of the way I look—can take,” she says.

Aleena seems to be signing off with a warning shot—or perhaps more of a “Bring it on!”

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