Anti-caste Memes as Cultural Archives of Resistance

Abstract

In this article, we make a case for looking at memes as potential digital cultural heritage artefacts to counter hegemonic narratives around the caste system in India. We reflect on this potentiality of memes by evaluating how three anti-caste Facebook meme pages responded to protests against the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC) from December 2019 to March 2020. These pages simultaneously archived and critiqued key moments of the protests as well as the anti-caste movement through memes, playing a significant role in amplifying the voices of the Bahujans, the marginalised caste groups in India. Focusing on the protest memes created by these pages, we look at the contexts in which the protest memes could be considered carriers, preservers, and transmitters of cultural knowledge. We argue that memes could be understood as cultural heritage,not only as objects but as processes and practices that constitute the building of cultural narratives. We illustrate how the protest memes hold and demonstrate potential to become digital cultural heritage as they simultaneously provided a much-needed alternative account of the way the resistance played out on the streets as opposed to how mainstream media portrayed them and archived and highlighted key moments of the protests and the anti-caste movement.