For Bahujan youth, fluency in pop culture is a survival skill and a strategy for self-respect. Education isn't enough; real opportunity is in acquiring cultural shorthand

For Bahujan youth, fluency in pop culture is a survival skill and a strategy for self-respect. Education isn't enough; real opportunity is in acquiring cultural shorthand

- Balram Vishwakarma

A few years ago, I found myself in the middle of a conversation with my office mates, all graduates of universities such as Symbiosis and New York Film Academy, about Martin Scorsese and his cinema. I knew enough to smile and nod but not enough to riff. And in that moment, I knew exactly what was happening. Everyone at the table had grown up speaking a dialect I was just beginning to learn: cultural shorthand. Not English. But something slipperier.

I am a final-year B.Com dropout from an aided college in Mumbai's suburbs. I worked as a welder (which wasn't a coincidence; my Lohar caste has always been in metalwork, and my father ran a small fabrication shop in Jogeshwari) before joining a pop culture content company as a meme maker.

One of the reasons I think I got in was because I could understand pop culture references. I knew who Pink Floyd and Metallica were, could quote Eminem lyrics, and knew the difference between Marvel and DC storylines. That exposure didn't come from inherited privilege. It came from an English-medium school and a habit of spending recesses with classmates talking about American pop culture.

That exposure, scrappy as it was, turned out to be currency. For Gen Z and young millennials from working-class and Bahujan backgrounds, this kind of exposure isn't just helpful, it's fundamental. It's how they're navigating a world that increasingly runs on reference, articulation and cultural access.

Caste doesn't always announce itself through slurs or surnames anymore. In 2025, it's subtler. It's in the rhythm of taste. A dance everyone seems to know. When to laugh. Who casually drops Succession, quotes Fleabag, or instinctively knows how to dress down for a client lunch. The kind of exposure that counts isn't about degrees or English. It's about taste.