Anjali* was born and raised in a village in the Harda district of Madhya Pradesh in central India. She is currently pursuing a Masters degree at a local college.
Anjali belongs to the Balai community which is listed as a Scheduled Caste (SC) in the Indian Constitution. As a Dalit, she grew up with the knowledge that upper caste people look down upon her community. The Balai are primarily involved in agriculture.
“I asked the elders in my family why our community faces discrimination. I was told that the upper castes have always disliked the lower castes and this has been a tradition for a very long time,” says Anjali.

Anjali feels that the caste system is very much present even today in her village. For instance, during weddings or communal feasts, people from her community are made to sit separately from the rest of the guests.
She recalls an incident when she and her family were invited to a marriage in the Bishnoi community. The Bishnoi have the Other Backward Castes (OBC) status and are considered higher on the caste ladder than the Balai.
During the wedding feast, Anjali and her family were made to sit separately from the upper caste Thakur families. Not just that, her grandfather and brothers were made to sit right outside the boundary wall of the host’s house. When Anjali asked her grandfather why they were treated that way, he said he was used to this behaviour.
Incidents like these made a young and impressionable Anjali believe such traditions were alright. “Until I was in middle school, I though such treatment towards my community was normal,” she says.

When Anjali joined college, she began to question things. She wondered if people from different castes could sit at the same table in a restaurant and eat together, why couldn’t they do the same in her village. 
It was Anjali’s re-introduction to the constitution that led her to challenge the age old practice of caste discrimination in her village.
“When I was in school, I found the constitution boring. I always wondered why I have to study it. Last year I started to volunteer at Synergy Sansthan, a local NGO and within a few months I joined their Internet Saathi programme. An Internet Saathi is someone who helps village women learn about Android mobile phones so that they can use technology. During this programme, I got a book about the constitution. I read two or three pages from it and then put it back on the shelf,” says Anjali.

Anjali first heard about Be A Jagrik from Vishnu Prasad Jaiswal, the coordinator at Synergy Sansthan. “While Vishnu bhaiya talked about the constitution and our rights and how it is connected to the self, I listened to him silently.”
“My first task from the Jagrik game was about fundamental rights and The Right to Information (RTI). My co-Jagrik Reetika* and I needed to talk to fifty people in our village about RTI and show them how to use it. We went to our panchayat (village governance body) and asked them if they knew anything about RTI. They seemed to have very basic knowledge. There were also people who were poor and illiterate and knew nothing about it. So, we explained how they can use RTI to ask the government about any matter relevant to them,” says Anjali.

Anjali and Reetika’s efforts prompted the people in their village to file an RTI about irrigation. As a result, they now have access to better irrigation facilities which has enabled them to grow more than one crop annually.
But there was one task that made a huge impact on Anjali’s personal life. She says, “Out of the five tasks I did as a Jagrik, the most important one for me was to visit temples in my village. I had to check whether the area inside the temples was being maintained hygienically and clean them up if needed. But there was a problem - only upper caste people go to these temples. Generations of Dalits have not entered these temples. We do not enter these temples because we fear violence. We could even be thrown out of the village for violating this old tradition.”
Anjali explains that the upper castes believe that Dalits do impure work and this is the reason why they are not allowed into certain temples in order to maintain purity and sanctity of these sacred spaces. She describes the intense feelings she experienced and the thoughts that crossed her mind when she decided to go to one such temple.

“I felt hesitation and fear. I was very scared. I was worried about how I would enter the temple. When I took off my sandals outside the Bhiled Baba Mandir, I was terrified. At the same time, I was overwhelmed with one question -  if my fellow Jagrik Reetika who is from the Bishnoi community can go inside the temple, why can’t I?” says Anjali.
Anjali did enter the temple but as she climbed down the stairs after saying her prayers, she began to feel people’s eyes on her. “At the end of the stairs, there were a few upper caste women who summoned Reetika. I could see them looking at me and talking to her. They were asking her who I was,” she says.
Anjali worried that these women would tell the other people in the village that she had entered the temple and then people would start talking. After leaving the temple, she shared the photos from her visit on social media and got encouraging comments from other Jagriks and Jagrik facilitators.

After this moment, there was no looking back for Anjali. She made up her mind to visit four other temples the next day. But she didn’t tell her family about her plans. “If my father had known that I was going to do such a thing, he would have never let me step out of the house,” says Anjali.
Although Anjali was not stopped from entering any of temples, she did raise many eyebrows. She was elated at her accomplishment. But her happiness did not last too long. “I told my father  about my temple visits when I returned home. He started to scream at me and scolded me. I was so upset with my father's behaviour that I broke down,” recounts Anjali.
Despite the sudden tension that erupted between her and her family, Anjali’s brothers stood by her. All this while, her mind was filled with questions and she wanted answers. She challenged her father as to why Dalits were barred from certain temples reserved for the upper castes. Her father came up with the same old explanation as her grandfather - this is what they had been doing for generations.

Anjali’s father was perplexed - why did she have to enter the temple in the first place? Her parents eventually understood her intention yet they were scared of the backlash they would face from the larger community.
The whole family dispute left Anjali feeling quite sad and put her in a contemplative mood. She says, “The constitution says that there cannot be any discrimination on the basis of caste but caste-based discrimination still exists in reality. At this very moment, the Constitution that I once found boring became alive for me. I want to actively work for what the constitution has given to us and have a deeper understanding of it all.”
Anjali feels that Be A Jagrik changed her mindset. “The game opened my eyes to see what equality and inequality are and most importantly, what unity is...It also helped me question practices in my own home and village. Now I take my own decisions for my own satisfaction,” says Anjali.

Anjali also feels that people around her began to re-think their behaviour after she initiated conversations on caste with them. “It was my brother's birthday and we invited all our friends home. A Dalit friend of mine does not like people from the Chamar community and he was quite upset that that we had invited some of them. I told him if he did not mind visiting the same restaurants as them, then why did he have to discriminate with them in my house. I told him clearly that everyone was invited to my home. After this talk, he seemed to have changed his mind,” recalls Anjali.
Before Anjali joined the Jagrik journey, she was scared of talking to people and felt nervous around them. “After doing my tasks, my confidence has definitely grown. At the Jagrik culmination event, I met so many young people from many different states. It gave me a sense of unity and equality and I feel like I am able to talk to people openly,” she says.

Coming to Delhi was Anjali’s first trip out of Madhya Pradesh. “It was a happy and exciting time for me. There is a big difference in the quiet and shy Anjali from the past and the courageous and confident Anjali of today. I feel prepared for life,” says Anjali.
* (names have been changed to protect the privacy of the persons involved in this story)