Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation
Badri Narayan, 2009, Sage, pages 195
—the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, —a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face
– Du Bois ( The Soul of Black Folks)
1.
The question of mapping ‘agency’ as it unfolds itself in the trajectory of the oppressed has been a recurring theme in the social sciences of the 20 th century ? In his historic treatise ‘Soul of the Black Folks’ the legendary African-American social scientist and activist Du Bois had discussed the ‘double consciousness’ which inhabits the Negro ( this was the term which was used then for the African-Americans) and tried to delineate the dilemma through which every oppressed individual / formation is condemned to pass. According to Du Bois, a black individual lives with a feeling of ‘twoness’ in a dominant white society. On the one hand S/he is engaged in confrontation with the dominant white world to oppose racial discrimination and on the other hand s/he also yearns to become an American ‘without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows’.
If the feeling of ‘twoness’ inhabited the blacks, is it possible to think about the dalits in a Varna society on similar lines. The contradictoriness of the consciousness is very much visible in this case as well. On the one hand s/he is engaged in imitating/following the Varna hierarchy ( this process of upward mobility is variously described as Brahminisation/Sanskritisation by scholars a la M.N. Srinivas) and on the other hand one encounters a strong current of resistance to this cooption.
Interestingly, as we approach the sixtieth year of India’s becoming a republic when (to quote Dr Ambedkar) we embarked on the journey of becoming a political democracy where one wo/man had one vote and the challenge of its becoming a ‘social democracy’ with one wo/man one value still beckoned us, an altogether different situation awaits us. We have before us dalit assertion reaching its zenith signified by a ‘dalit ki beti’ becoming Chief Minister of the largest state in the Indian Union and the ‘guest actor role of the dalits’ in the Indian polity becoming a thing of the past. And simultaneously one encounters the ideological and institutional incorporation of a section of the subalterns – namely dalits, tribals, backwards – in the unfolding Hindutva agenda also coming to its fruition. As is widely known if the 1992-93 riots in Bombay made us aware of the communalisation of a section of the women and their turning stormtroopers for the Hindutva brigade, (discussed and debated in detail in the volume ‘Women and the Hindu Right – ed.) throwing many of our earlier assumptions about women’s empowerment to the winds, the Gujarat genocide in the year 2002 made us aware of this dangerous and the anti-human detour of the dalit consciousness.
Interestingly while it is easy to comprehend dalit assertion on autonomous lines, connecting it to the glorious tradition of cultural revolts led by the likes of Phule, Jyothee Thass, Periyar, Ambedkar and others, one is normally baffled by a section of the dalits cooption by the Hindutva forces and their becoming stormtroopers for its hate agenda.
The book under discussion by Mr Badri Narayan titled ‘Fascinating Hindutva : Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation’ ( Sage, 2009) in fact tries to unravel this dynamics of dalit identity to ‘deconstruct the tactics used by the Hindutva forces to politically mobilise Dalits’ to its side. The articles collated in this volume -a few of which have appeared in different journals/magazines- are mainly based on the original empirical data collected by the writer through his extensive field trips to UP and Bihar, wherein he has looked at the recent goings on in individual marginal communities and the manner in which politics of identity is being played out in these communities at the behest of political forces on the right namely Hindutva forces. The writer has focussed his attention on mainly four dalit castes Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs and their clever manipulation by the RSS-BJP.
2.
The book is divided into eight chapters with an added chapter on introduction wherein the author lays down the basic premise of his work where he describes in detail how politically motivated communal forces are silently but ingeniously working among common people supposedly to break up the harmony existing in society. Communalisation of the identity construction of different communities, their positing against other communities which are in turn projected as their enemies, conversion of the pride of a community in own identities into feeling of hatred for other communities, replacement of the narratives of self-respect by narratives of violence against other communities – essentially the modus operandi used by the Hindutva forces has been explained in great detail.
The Introduction part of the book looks at the use of ‘pastness’ by individuals / communities which is the source of a person’s /communities identity and which is deeply entrenched in his/her/their dreams/desires. For the author pastness is ‘both the truth and the imagination of the past’ which takes shape ‘during the process of rememberance of the past.’ For the communities the sense of pastness ‘help fight anxities and insecurities that arise from their increasing feeling of temporiness’ which is a result of its ‘encounters with statehood, modernity, the onslaught of globalisation and the changing forms of the market.’ Political parties and other agencies which are engaged in impacting the communities cleverly encash this strong desire of communities to assert their identities. One can easily notice a shift in the strategy of political mobilisation by these political formations. If earlier the emphasis use to be on making promises and offering allurements to the gullible masses, since 1980 s with the phenomenon of dalit assertion making its presence felt, one notices creative strategies to mobilise smaller castes/communities by arousing their sense of pastness. The interplay between the new mobilisation strategies and the assertion by the communities themselves has ‘led to the evolution of prevailing political strategy based on the exploitation of ‘pastness’.
This process unfolds itself in the picking out of heroes from myths, histories, legends present in the oral culture of the castes, reinterpretation, recreation and reconstruction of such heroes to suit the political ideologies of the concerned party and their transmission back to the people as symbols of their caste identities. The next stage involves celebration of these heroes by organising programmes, erecting statues, holding rallies, bringing out booklets and pamphlettes valorising these heroes and narrating their legends in the form, which suits the political agenda of the party.
Although the phenomenon of identity construction and assertion is visible at an all India level, for the author this political strategy is being most successfully carried out in the states of Bihar and UP. This can be attributed to the typical social formation in this region, which makes it amenable to those parties, which are engaged in caste and identity politics. Interestingly while most of the political parties are engaged in this game of identity politics, BSP and BJP can be considered to be the main players as far as politics in UP is concerned. And both the parties seem to be following diametrically opposite approaches to the question.
If the BJP is trying to win over Dalits to its side by appropriating its past and identity as a Hindu past and identity, the BSP seems to be empowering the Dalit communities and providing them self-respect and confidence. (It is debatable if this understanding can be said to be still valid. A close look at the trajectory of the BSP during last one and half decades, one notices very many changes. Earlier when the strategy was to challenge and question the upper caste hegemony, the slogan was ‘Tilak, tarazu aur Talar/inko maaro joote char’ and today when power considerations have led to new alignments the key slogan today seems to be ‘Haath Nahin Ganesh Hai, Brahma Vishnu Mahesh Hai’. Two inferences are unavoidable. One, there is no conscious attempt to stop/decelerate the process of Hinduisation of dalit identity; secondly, since attaining political power seems to have become a key goal, the alliances with upper caste dominated forces like BJP on three occasions has definitely impacted the process of dalit assertion) One also comes across recreation of memories through myths, heroes and caste histories in a manner which suits the political formation. It can also be observed that the same caste hero or myth invoked by the BSP being interpreted by the BJP in a more aggressive manner and its getting posited as anti-Muslim hero. Another significant difference between the two parties seem to be whereas BSP focuses on the myths of Dalit women heroes of the 1857 revolt – Jhalakaribai, Udadevi, Mahavirdevi, Avantibai and Pannadhai supposedly to buttress to the image of its leader Mayawati, one rarely comes across myths of Dalit women in BJP’s political discourse. The manner in which story of Suhaldev, caste hero of the Pasis has been appropriated is a case in point.
3.
The dargah of Ghazi Mian situated in Bahraich, UP is very popular among the local populace. Any normal day one can witness thousands of devotees thronging there to have a glimpse of the Mazaar. Lakhs of devotees gather in the month of May when a fair is held in his memory. Interestingly, a majority of the devotees are Hindus. As the popular perception goes, the dargah is reputed to be a place where the wishes of all devotees are supposedly granted. There are broadly two contesting versions about Ghazi Mian popular in the region. If the first one can be said to be a folk or popular version the other seems to be the product of the machinations of communal elements Ghazi mian, whose actual name was Salar Masood and who was nephew of Mahmood Ghazanavi had come to the area in Bahraich to hunt. The local population supposedly approached him and asked him to act as their saviour. It was the period when Suhaldev was the king of the Bhar/Pasi community who happened to a very cruel king and oppressed people of his kingdom. When Suhaldev heard about Ghazi Mian, he attacked him and killed him and his entire army. Suhaldev also died in the battle. The popularity of Ghazi Mian in the region arose from the fact that when his tomb was built, it supposedly acquired magical powers. Local people believe that both Hindus and Muslims are blessed after praying there.
A parallel version which has been consciously built and circulated by communal elements talks of the great warrior Maharaja Suhaldev, who defended Hindu religion and Hindus from the foreing invader Masood who despoiled Indian cultural traditions, ravaged women and killed children and men. One can easily see that there are broadly two purposes behind the creation of communal warring memories of the myth of Suhaldev, if the first one pertains to the appropriation of Pasis – a dalit caste which is numerically no. two among them – into their political fold, the second is to extend and construct a Hindu history against Islam to mobilise Hindus under their fold. In order to counter the popularity of Ghazi Mian – where a majority of the devotees are Hindus – and bring the straying Hindus back into the fold, the Hindutva elements/formations have also started organising parallel fairs and other cultural programmes/event to commemorate his memory. Many programmes are organised to celebrate Suhaldev namely Kalash Yatra, yajna, sports competitions, a huge wrestling match and a Ram katha.
One also witnesses the ‘spatial strategy’ (to quote Satish Deshpande, Page 85, Contemporary India, 2003, Viking) of Hindutva based on site in full play here.
To quote :
The strategy based on the site has two facets. First, a chosen spot or site is invested with some unique particularity, such that it can be declared to be the only one of its kind ; or if a site already has some such claims, these claims are refined and amplified. However, the criterion of selection is that the spot must implicate the ‘other’ deeply enough to prevent easy extrication. The combined result is to prepare a battleground where Hindu ‘pride’ or ‘self-respect’ can be defended only by inflicting an insult of some kind on the ‘other’.
Apart from projecting Salar Masood as a cruel person, the RSS emphasises repeatedly that the dargah was once the ashram of Balark Rishi. The ashram and the Suryakund inside it were razed by Salar. To denigrate the Hindus, who are believers in composite culture and heritage, the RSS claims that the Hindus have forgot the saviour of the nation and Hindu religion and they have no qualms in going and praying at the imaginary tomb of a foreing invader.
It is worth noting that despite the feverish attempts by RSS and its affiliated organisations to vitiate the atmosphere, the popular narrative of the people contradicts what they are peddling. And this narrative looks at Suhaldev as a villain and Ghazi Mian as a hero.
There is no denying the fact that the ‘construction of Suhaldev as a great warrior’ has definitely helped Hindutva forces in mobilising people and creating for them a solid constituency among the Pasis there, who have a significant population in areas around Bahraich. For the Pasis, the discovery of Suhaldev has acted as an iconic figure who was born into their own community..
Apart from describing in detail this ‘Making of a War Hero’ the book also discusses similar interventions in other dalit communities. In case of Nishads, which is a sub-caste of Mallah caste, which is a ‘water-centric’ community whose primary occupation is boating and fishing, it discusses the use of its cultural resources by other dalit parties as well. The metamorphosis of these ‘castes’ into ‘political constituency’, which the ‘political parties are contesting to win’ has benn explained in detail. According to Mr Badri Narayan ‘ All these political parties are using the same mythical and cultural resources, with the common motive of winning the votes of these castes, but are reinterpreting and recreating them in different ways to suit their political agendas.’ It also finds that as an interesting side effect of this process is that the castes are acquiring power to negotiate with various parties in the fray.
Taking advantage of the mythical hero of the Nishads namely Nishadraj Guhya, who supposedly helped Ram, the BJP-RSS combine skillfully used the community during the infamous Ram Janambhoomi-Babri mosque agitation. In 1990 when Advani was undertaking his rath yatra around the country and his entourage was prevented from entering Ayodhya, the Nishads were mobilised to transport the kar sevaks to Ayodhya through the water route.
In case of Musahars, while the myths of Savari – a character in the minor sub-plot in Ramayana – and that of two brothers Dina-Bhadri – who were great fighters – have helped the community to assert themselves or, raise themselves in the social hierarchy and develop their social confidence, they have become handy for the BJP-RSS also to further its agenda. As the Musahars consider themselves descendants of Savari, the RSS-BJP tried to mobilise the Musahars to help in Ramkaj (incomplete work of Ram). The two brothers Dina-Bhadri are also projected as reincarnations of Ram-Laxman although RSS-BJP are careful enough not to highlight their struggle for the cause of Nonia and Beldars against the contractors and the people employed by them to dig the land. The author laments over the fact that left and other democratic forces have not understood the significance of these cultural resources for mobilising the Musahars and creating popular support for them
4.
To conclude, it need be commended that the book is a welcome addition to the small albeit growing scholarly/popular works on the theme where Hindutva’s engagement with the dalits is being dealt in a specific way. A combination of fieldwork laced with oral history and a broad knowledge of the theme based on research has definitely added to novelty to the book.
It has been successful in not only explaining the dynamics of dalit identity but has also looked very closely at the manner in which forces like RSS-BJP – who are opposed to the composite heritage of the people – operate in our society. Through different case studies the danger, which this situation presents before the dream of an inclusive, tolerant, just India is also conveyed.
The book emphasises a very important point, which has not received the attention it deserves. Whenever there has been a talk of Hindutvaisation of Dalits, witnessed as a phenomenon during the 2002 Gujarat genocide, an attempt has been made to deny ‘agency’ to the dalits. The participation of a section of the dalits in the anti-Muslim violence was explained on the grounds that they were either misled or used by the varna dominated communal forces.
The author rightly tells that the ‘success’ of the Hindutva forces in saffronising myths and legends of Dalits is not only because the strategies used by Hindutva forces have been smart, but also because there is a strong urge within the dalit communities ‘to seek acceptance from the upper-caste hindus who had always culturally and socially marginalised them’
The process of Hinduisation can thus be interpreted as a ‘dual’ process, wherein on the one hand it is an attempt to seek acceptance from the dominant castes by imitating them and on the other hand, one can find a vein of dissent which gets exhibited in the subaltern’s challenge to the dominant hegemony by ‘becoming’ one like them.
The only lacunae which one notices in this book is absence of proper editing. If the author would have been careful enough he could have avoided repetitions of ideas, details at various places. This definitely makes it a dull reading. It is also surprising that the author has missed to refer or mention a few important publications, which have discussed the same phenomenon, which have appeared during this interregnum. And a most notable among these books is ‘Hindutva and Dalits’ (Edited by Anand Teltumbde, 2004, Samya)
At the end one just hopes that a radical dalit community would emerge which can critically engage with the reconstruction and reappropriation of its memory by vested interests and move towards the emancipatory agenda put forward by Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar and others.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Subhash,
If twoness of the Negro were interpreted as belonging to two different nations -Africa and America, would you still preface the above for a relational observation of the dalit and the Hindu?
Or is Hindu = Indian? And the dalit is being discussed as aspiring to be a Hindu Indian and the ‘Hinduness’ an equivalent to White Americanism?
And in opposition what is the dalit being pulled towards? ‘Dalitness’ to be a ‘Dalit Indian’ similar to being a proud Black American?
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when Fanatic Brahmin becomes the national citizen, Dalits may have to claim it with same token na?
badrinarayan’s theory has the inherent problm which the great M N Srinivas also carried along with his academic career.
and Mr. Badrinarayan should stop collecting pamphlets and start talking to Dalits. Else such sociologically flawed theories will emerge that too argued soooo polemically… but who cares, na?
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just one more point.
as Anu pointed out DAlits are not waiting to be “hinduised”… After all they have a better world to reclaim. Dalit nation will not be a hindu nation.
thanks
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Subhash,
Fanatics are there with u wearing sacred threads. my humble request to you is that dont try to wear those sacred threads on your blog posts as well
otherwise, good luck!
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Ranju Radha, you have clearly not read any of Badri Narayan’s books. If you had, you would have known that his work is based as much on oral histories collected from field interviews as it is on pamphlets. Your patronising edict that he should “stop collecting pamphlets” is rather misplaced. What he brings out from the pamphlets and other written literature is indeed of great value. Do you think what Dalits write is of no value that you don’t want the pamphlets collected, read, analysed? I didn’t expect you of all people to disregard Dalit writing.
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that is true shaivam… we should not disregard the writings of Dalits. 100% agree. and u r right abt my ignorance also.. what intersts me is the kind of morbid theories Badrinarayan comes up with after reading/interviewing Dalits.. just as M N Sreenivas..
for me these are useless as M N Sreenivas’s. I may be wrong..
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Dear Ranju Radha,
By admitting ignorance, are you accepting my charge that you haven’t read either of Badri Narayan’s two books? If yes, then how did you come to the conclusion that his “theories” are “morbid”?
Even if your impression is based on the above review or such articles about Badri Narayan’s work, then can you please explain how his “theories” are “morbid”?
The word morbid means “of, relating to, or characteristic of disease”. Can you please explain which theories of Badri Narayan are afflicted with which disease?
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Shivam,
The above question was not for me and Ranju can answer for himself, no doubt. All the same, I have a few minutes and this is interesting, I have read Badri’s book on Women Heroes, and find his work a fascinating archiving kind of activity recording the dalit resistance in a media format that few outside the dalit community may be aware of -pamphlets, stories, myths and plays theatre form, foot and cycle dissemination of news material.
The complex unpacking of these modes of dalit resistance by one scholar can be interpreted variously by readers -dalits included.
The above post reviewing his new book makes me not want to buy or read it. It is morbid, that it would indicate that dalit resistance is al about becoming hindu. And its extension that this route is via becoming stone throwers for the right wing,
is as diseased as it comes, even if it is true in parts of a process, the limitation in seeing that this might be because the dalit aspires to be a hindu, limiting don’t you think?
And lets go easy on theories about dalits, there are observations, which remains to be validated as facts and these facts may or may not hold up a theory about a people as diverse as the dalits.
And i saw no theory in women heroes, a methodology, a collection of research material, and interpretation that highlighted myth appropriation for political gains. That’s all.
Oral histories, pamhlets and written words of dalits tells a story that goes much beyond this.
It would be great to have the discussion back to Du Bois’s concept of twoness and dalit-hindu relation.
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Anu you raise three points.
Firstly, “The complex unpacking of these modes of dalit resistance by one scholar can be interpreted variously by readers -dalits included.” I can only agree.
Secondly, “It is morbid, that it would indicate that dalit resistance is al about becoming hindu.” The book does not say, neither does the review, that dalit resistance is “all” about becoming Hindu. The book merely says that the Hindutva project is on to it, beware, that this is happening in fits and starts. If you want to ignore it it’s your problem. This is a phenomenon Badri Narayan is recording but far from endorsing. Your fears are misplaced.
Thirdly, “And lets go easy on theories about dalits…” Please note that I used the word theory only in the context of Ranju Radha, asking him to explain what “theories” of Narayan does he find “morbid” and why.
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Anu,
You dont seem to be saying that any investigation into why Hindutva succeeds in some places at some points of times is suspect. You dont seem to be saying that any investigation into dalit consciousness is suspect unless it is carried out by dalits. I am puzzled. Why is the review/book morbid ?
I grant that the title of the post and the overall structure masks some of the specificity of the book. But, when i first skimmed through the review, two details caught my eye. The book is about four castes in two states.Probably just a few districts unless through kinship networks these subcastes are territorially extensive.
That is empirically a miniscule part of the world that calls itself dalit. But then the study is clearly not survey based and i doubt if it makes any claims that it has taken a representative sample. It is an investigation into how a particular political strategy has succeeded at a particular time and place. Given that we are by and large as clueless about how Hindutva works as we were 20 years ago, I felt this could be an interesting piece of work. Part of the explanation is a faultline in the subjugated consciousness -we can quarrel about whether or not he manages to show that this is a useful explanation in that particular context. But why rule it out?
The women’s movement is full of instances of mobilizations of women wanting to be more like men. anticolonial mobilizations are full of instances of colonized people wanting to be more like the colonizer. it is of course morbid if it is being suggested that that is all there is to it. i didnt get the sense that that is what is being done in the review/book but that could be because I did not read carefully enough. By the same token I would say it is morbid to suggest that there is no such thing as dalits wanting to be like hindus – unless of course it is based on the argument that the very idea of brahmin and hindu is a gross totalization.
Frankly, that sort of an argument would be a big relief to me. Being a twiceborn from a peculiar sect whose scriptures were mainly written by 8th century outcastes, most of the time i find the ideas circulating in the mainstream media as well as dalit and radical media about brahmanism to be so nonsensical that sometimes i think ibn batuta was the last intelligent critic of brahmanism. :(
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@shivam
I have gone through his work Documenting Dissent and find the method quite interesting. However, the kind of theorisation he makes out of it shows the true morbid state which i feel M N Sreenivas kinda was alos part of.
I wil be able to answer ur quetions in details once i finish my book.. but for that u have to wait for long.
As mentioned his theories are “characteristics of the disease called brahminism that ha engulfed normative academic writings/thinking abt Dalit emancipation/social mobility.
what i meant by “talking to Dalits” is to enagage with their politcs/culture of thinking which i think cannot be limited to a “hindu fanatic” reading… though people might have their own views, his works do not interest me as a scholar working in this area at all ..and this review doesnt make me feel like buying this book. it is useless and waste of money for me.
thnks
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Mr M Srinivas was belongs to Brahmins and hindus who wanted to save the hindu nation that,s why he brought the theory of Sanskritisation but dalits belong to different nation .If some body wants to know about dalits and their thinking about dalit nation then they must read about Dalit Voice which is being published by V.T.Rajshekhar.Great dalit writer Om Praksh Balmiki has written about the dalits that rope only know how it was burnt.In my openion dalits are not communal,to defeat hindu nation ,dalits have to come under Buddhism .
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Dipesh Chakrabarty speculating on history and politics in engagement with Badri Narayan…. http://tinyurl.com/lb3m5r
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Anant,
>>You dont seem to be saying that any investigation into why Hindutva succeeds in some places at some points of times is suspect.
I don’t follow. People can study whatever they want, how it is read and the contents processed is another matter. For instance, a study on the origin of rape, is interesting to me (I want to know), when the study takes a turn to say rape has an evolutionary advantage, I will read it as morbid and slam it.
I would suspect extended funding for certain kinds of questions and absence of funding for cross-examining the findings. To suspect any investigation per se, does not occur to me.
>>You dont seem to be saying that any investigation into dalit consciousness is suspect unless it is carried out by dalits. I am puzzled.
Your puzzlement puzzles me. Am I to exclude myself from being able to study the Brahmin consciousness, because it is supposed to come through as suspect, as I am not a Brahmin?
Will this help? In the sciences (involves a lot of history), the researcher’s background; gender, nationality etc is irrelevant to the study, except in the light of the shoddiness or thoroughness of approaches used and conclusions drawn. Celebrity researchers can be counted on the fingers, the vast majority are faceless people, of all kinds of consciousness. Studying why the metabolism of Americans is titling towards obesity, requires that I step into their reality, quite distant from my own. So I am a bit lost here with your question-statement.
>>The women’s movement is full of instances of mobilizations of women wanting to be more like men. anticolonial mobilizations are full of instances of colonized people wanting to be more like the colonizer. it is of course morbid if it is being suggested that that is all there is to it. i didnt get the sense that that is what is being done in the review/book but that could be because I did not read carefully enough. By the same token I would say it is morbid to suggest that there is no such thing as dalits wanting to be like hindus – unless of course it is based on the argument that the very idea of brahmin and hindu is a gross totalization.
In the above paragraph,
You derive:
By the same token I would say it is morbid to suggest that there is no such thing as dalits wanting to be like hindus
Will you also derive –
By the same token I would say it is morbid to suggest that there is no such thing as women wanting to be like men?
What ever your answer, if you dwell on the whys of it, you might get a little closer to what troubles us with this kind of reasoning.
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>Your puzzlement puzzles me. Am I to exclude >myself from being able to study the Brahmin >consciousness, because it is supposed to come >through as suspect, as I am not a Brahmin.
Anu, Unlike in the natural sciences – Identity of the researcher, positionality of the researcher etc., are problematic in social sciences in all kinds of complex ways. Some times it is not explicitly stated, but is imposed by the researcher himself or herself and some times it comes from extant power relations. Some times it comes from ethical choices that we have to make. For example, while many men have studied cultures of male wrestlers, i cannot think of even one female researcher studying male wreslters. In all these years, I have come across only one successful study by an Indian sociologist on public housing in the US. The first time I interviewed runaway youth from American suburbs – one of my interviewees who volunteered a lot of personal information during the interview, turned around and accused me of having been aggressive and pumping her for information after she realized that the interview effectively inverted an assumed power hierarchy. That accusation effectively restored the hierarchy brown non American male and poor white young woman – for both of us via a complex recoding of the transaction.
It has indeed been suggested on kafila in the past that non dalits should not study or write about dalits. Although it some times comes packaged with a lot of aggression, and can create a lot of rankle, it is actually a well considered political position. I have never come across any dalits wanting to study brahmins or anyone explicitly saying that they cannot -but I will find it hard to imagine a dalit researcher gaining access to the ritual practices of let us say a priestly community.
My point anyway was simply that you dont seem to be coming at this from any of those kinds of considerations.
Would I consider it morbid to suggest that there is no such thing as women wanting to be like men ?
Yes of course I would. But you dropped the rider (I hope unintentionally) – unless it is based on the argument that there is no such thing as ‘men’.
What I mean is this: you can demonstrate in a particular instance that such a thing did not occur or you can argue that focusing on that occurrence misleads us away from more potent questions or that the overall direction of that study was disempowering for women and so it needs to be rearticulated.
More generally,however, taking the position that there is no such thing women wanting to be more like men – without problematizing the category ‘men’ itself in my view is at best disingenuous. Often it is just plain dishonest, disempowering, and to be symmetric – yes morbid.
I am unfortunately no closer to why Badri narayan’s work is troubling for you. Hopefully I will make progress. For now, I find the work quite fascinating – as far as I am concerned, it is an important antidote to a lot of the work that tends to portray dalits and tribals as dummies who are fooled by Hindutva’s ideology. It shows the caste groups in question as composed of conscious choosing subjects. What they choose, how they choose, why they choose those are political questions. But as far as sociological work on Hindutva’s cultural strategies is concerned -it is a useful addition to what continues to be a very limited body of work.
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identity of researcher for social sciences is not lost on me, i was trying to tell you from where my lack interest about the researcher comes from -training in natural sciences. And yes, i keep myself open to study any question that grabs my interest, without my background becoming a stumbling block.
>>It has indeed been suggested on kafila in the past that non dalits should not study or write about dalits. Although it some times comes packaged with a lot of aggression, and can create a lot of rankle, it is actually a well considered political position. I have never come across any dalits wanting to study brahmins or anyone explicitly saying that they cannot -but I will find it hard to imagine a dalit researcher gaining access to the ritual practices of let us say a priestly community.
Hmmm, can the dalit be studied without the brahmin also being studied? Every study of the dalit by dalit or others is a study of the brahmin too, isn’t it? Just as dalits may not access the ritual practices, the brahmin cannot access the encrypted life of the dalit. The impasse has to break for any useful dialog. You also seem to forget that a small number of dalits are married to brahmins, observation and study from within is possible. Recall reading somewhere, the liberation of the dalit lies in the liberation of the brahmin.
There is a world of history that lies hidden from you about dalits successfully studying the brahmin through times.
Badri’s work is wonderful, in his tying with the notion of dalit wanting to be a hindu, he lost the momentum he carried forward, that does not negate the other valuables of his research. it ceased to continue the ‘thinking out of the box’ of his previous study for me.
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“Unlike in the natural sciences – Identity of the researcher, positionality of the researcher etc., are problematic in social sciences in all kinds of complex ways.”
it is even problematic in natural sciences that too in experimental lab settings.. i dont have a link 2 offer but pls see the new developments that discusses gender aspects in natural sciences.. subjectivity does play a major role in natural sciences’ experimental settings tooo.
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Thanks for the pointer to the Dipesh C. paper Anant. I enjoyed reading it
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Shivam,
I raised the point of the Du Bios’s preface, that does not seem to be going anywhere.
about second point: lets just say at this point in the debate it has become pointless. Please consider that i am now duly warned that hindutva is at the doorstep of every dalit. Yes, it is my problem, if i am not too impressed with the warning. Please also consider that i had no fears to begin with, so they are neither placed or misplaced.
please add a fourth point, what is the word fanatic doing in the title? And how did Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs become representative of all dalits, as the title of the post goes?
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Dear Anu,
I have made no reference to Du Bois in my comments; Subhash has in his post. I am not going to respond to Subhash’s behalf.
Hindutva fortunately is not at the doorstep of every dalit, though the footsoldiers of Hindutva would like it that way, and that’s what they are trying with limited success with non-Jatav dalit sub-castes in eastern UP and Bihar. The means they are employing is what Badri Narayan’s work documents, as Subhash shows in his review, and I don’t see why that is a cause for discomfiture. Narayan is just saying, look, this is happening, and by no means celebrating that, or blaming “dalits” as a whole.
Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs do not represent all dalits, just as ranju radha does not represent all dalits. But are you saying Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs are NOT dalits? Or hat Hindutva forces will not try their strategies with other dalit sub-castes?
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Shivam,
I have not been following this as closely as I used to at one point. But perhaps you can fill us in on this. Is there something different about the way Hindutva works with pasi, nishad, musahar and dusadhs as compared to the way it worked with let us say the sarnas in jashpur or with middleclass housewives in Ahmedabad ?
I am curious because, we have known for a long time that the cultural strategy of Hindutva broadly follows a pattern: work closely with a group with some shared cultural practices, construct a history for a purified, authentic identity out of local lore, produce a desire for recovering that last authentic sovereign self and then gradually create conditions where one single source of impurity, obstruction to sovereignty can be identified by everyone. All this of course involves construction of memorials, recovering places, creating and establishing boundaries, developing new practices that can symbolically empower.
By its very nature this involves a different story for each person, each community, each social group but all directed at single foe. For a middle class mother of a teenage daughter — all her anxieties about the unsafe urban space get focused on the Muslim male from the slum, and for a landless tribal youth all his anxieites and insecurities about lost common property resources get focused on the local missionary. This is an extremely flexible and creative style of doing politics that the secular mainstream left has simply proven itself completely unequal to.
Is Badri Narayan’s book suggesting that situation that he is studying – one that is rife with inventions of heroic pasts and heightened anxieties about getting one’s due from parliamentary democracy – a situation that got produced from the efforts of dalit identity based mobilizations – is a happy hunting ground for hindutva? (I am sorry, I should read the book, but it will take me a little time to get to it).
I ask this because if this is the case, it would mean that the issue here is not somuch about dalits, but about a particular set of historical conditions in a place and the possibilities that it contains. Those conditions are there almost everywhere – including an uppercaste middleclass urban neighborhood – it is a matter of degree and of mobilization.
Or perhaps is there an implicit critique in the book about a particular style of doing identity politics (dalit in this case, but it could be vanvasi elsewhere or even a regional identity like Telangana) and the risks attendant upon it? I thought Subhash’s post was actually suggesting that there is such a critique!
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1) But are you saying Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs are NOT dalits?
Nope. Please read again: “And how did Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs become representative of all dalits”
the word ‘all’ should have been capitalized perhaps ?
2) Or hat Hindutva forces will not try their strategies with other dalit sub-castes?
They may. They might be doing it right now.
3) On the one hand s/he is engaged in imitating/following the Varna hierarchy ( this process of upward mobility is variously described as Brahminisation/Sanskritisation by scholars a la M.N. Srinivas)
Linking 2 to 3 is the problem.
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Anu, Thanks for that third point. I see what you mean there. Actually sanskritization itself and then its linking to upward mobility are not very influential anymore. When I first came across the term many years ago – I had dismissed it quickly as some thing that Srinivas must have come up with based on some field work in the 1930s in and around some Brahmin hamlet near Mysore. He must have been egged on by his teachers to make something of it and it grew and grew and grew because nobody challenged it. In other words, i didnt take it seriously. I did not associate it with brahmanism – but with the way in which concepts develop and gather weight and (dust as well) in academic disciplines especially when british and amerian scholars decide to promote brown scholars. So when I read the post where all this began, I didnt pay any attention to this sentence – Actually I had to use the ‘search’ to locate it. )
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Anu,
Your questions were directed at Subhash – and seem to be specifically about the way he deploys Dubois. So I will leave it to him to respond.
But I would be cautious about interpreting twoness as ‘belonging’ to two nations. That assumes that two nations are already formed and available to belong to.
The double consciousness is primarily an irresolvable tension (and therefore generative of action) – a dialectic if you will, of self and the other. Where the imagination and historical possibilities provide a land for which one ‘longs’, a land that can be liberated, a nation that one aspires to become one with – the nation can become the object of desire.
In Dubois’ case it is an america that is different from white america (not an africanized america – just not white america thats all). For Fanon it is a liberated Algeria. It is possible to argue that for some Muslims it would be the ummah – (you can stretch that to mean a nation without territory, but only barely).
I think the most useful way to deploy the double consciousness idea is to focus on what kinds of action it can generate under specific historical-geographical conditions.
I would actually love to find a reading group which can pursue this further through a critical reading of Fanon’s “Black skin white masks”.There is a useful quick reading on Fanon here
Click to access Gordon.pdf
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>>I think the most useful way to deploy the double consciousness idea is to focus on what kinds of action it can generate under specific historical-geographical conditions.
Anant, First, let me tell you, the Du bios preface remains the most fascinating part of the post for me, and i was giving up hope of ever getting the discussion here :).
In the African American experience there is a pull towards two geographical nations, which is simply not there for dalits, to figure out the first and the second aspects of twoness/double consciousness presents a far more complex scenario and like you say putting it under a scanner for specific historical-geographical conditions would be a good start. And work from an individual’s experience of this phenomenon and then see if the unit is true of a group’s experience. It would have been great to have our own ‘Soul of the dalit folk’ to analyze, but culling this from the Indian narrative as it is, is difficult, where it is referred to tangentially, perceivable to only those experiencing it and rarely a frontal acknowledgement of this, that is the reason i was excited when i saw it prefaced here.
I have not read Fanon, the ‘Invisible Man’ takes this on beautifully, though i can relate to the black experience, the dalit experience and their grappling of twoness is not comparable. Don’t want to dwell on it extensively here, but thanks for this comment, means a lot to me. Not sure, if I can embed a youtube link here, but hope someone does, anyway click on the link and see the Black twoness recited my Smokey Robinson and if you listen to it from a dalits view, you will see that it intersects at certain points and simply bounces of at others. (one of fav. poetry jams Enjoy :))
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Anu – you say: “It has indeed been suggested on kafila in the past that non dalits should not study or write about dalits. Although it some times comes packaged with a lot of aggression, and can create a lot of rankle, it is actually a well considered political position. I have never come across any dalits wanting to study brahmins or anyone explicitly saying that they cannot -but I will find it hard to imagine a dalit researcher gaining access to the ritual practices of let us say a priestly community.”
That it is a well-considered political position, of this there is no doubt; you see it from a certain kind of homosexual identity politics as well, on kafla and elsewhere. But at the same time, make no mistake: the insistence on doing so is equally a well considered political position. If as a non-Dalit [not all non-dalits are Brahmin, a fact obscured by the way you have counter-posed the two:)] an academic/journalist/social observer studies or engages with Dalit politics, culture, discourses circulating around Dalit identity etc. the reasons have often to do with destabilizing one’s own non-Dalit self, understanding how one got constituted as this non-Dalit self, and how Indian society continually constitutes and reconstitutes itself. With rare possible exceptions, such people never claim to represent Dalits or to speak the “real truth” about Dalits. What they are doing is studying a critical, significant presence in Indian society/polity/culture/economy.
If a certain kind of Dalit politics condemns this on the principle that only Dalits may speak about Dalits, two related responses are possible:
a) I am not writing about “dalits”, but about contemporary India which is impossible to understand without understanding this strand (Indeed I would say as a feminist scholar that i dont write about “women”, but about contemporary India) and
b) nobody has the right to permit or ban others from speaking. So you can ignore this work, or else engage with it critically or otherwise, but it’s going to keep happening, you cant stop it.
Rather than “Don’t dare to speak about us” more fruitful responses would be – “this is the problem with the way you have understood us/ you haven’t got it/ you dont know the history and so you have made an erroneous assumption” – whatever. That at least is an engagement that sets up a debate, a conversation. And if you dont want conversation, ignore the work.
As for Dalits studying the non-Dalit, every piece of writing that is about any phenomenon in India that is not explicitly Dalit is of necessity “about non-Dalits” in your sense. Are Dalit scholars and journalists not studying history, contemporary politics, literature etc. that is not Dalit? if they are not, is that not a great tragedy and a terrible ghettoization? What special access is required to study these things, why bring up only the issue of “ritual practices” which are inaccessible to every single caste and community other than Brahmins? Is it because the moment you move out of “ritual practices” you can see the whole world of social research is wide open to be studied by the Dalit scholar?
And I would appreciate it if it is taken for granted that I recognize the continuing indignities faced by Dalits, the terrible impediments in the way of Dalits in becoming scholars, journalists etc., which is why we need reservations. In this particular discussion, we are talking about the next stage.
And finally, since “queer” and dalit” have become tied together in fascinating ways on kafila, I also want to say that “queer” identity is radically different from Dalit identity in that while both are social identities, the latter is ascribed and inescapable, you are born into a community bearing that label, and you inescapably inherit it from parents. “Queer” politics is precisely about refusing to see sexuality in this way, about insisting on the learnt nature of sexual desire, and on the fluidity of sexual desire and identification even over one person’s lifetime. If one recognizes this, one is queer, whether one is at some particular point in time monogamous with a person of the “other” sex, or celibate, or of course, L/G or bi-sexual in a non-monogamous way, or trans-gender or inter-sex. the point is that such labels can keep multiplying. Rather than fixing each such as a specific identity, “queer” radically questions the very basis of the categorization system that produces these endless labels.
The possible emancipatory resonances with “caste” identity are evident – but perhaps this is not the historical moment when they can be heard. At a very much later stage in our history? Perhaps.
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Quoting Nivedita “As for Dalits studying the non-Dalit, every piece of writing that is about any phenomenon in India that is not explicitly Dalit is of necessity “about non-Dalits” in your sense. Are Dalit scholars and journalists not studying history, contemporary politics, literature etc. that is not Dalit? if they are not, is that not a great tragedy and a terrible ghettoization? What special access is required to study these things,”
Nivedita, there is a tiny fraction of dalits who are able to earn on the topic of studying dalits, the rest -another tiny fraction of the large world of dalits happen to be earning their bread participating or study other phenomenon (non-dalit), BUT moonlight in our free hours being immersed in the topics of dalit issues, be it figuring out ways of translating grandmothers songs about nature, digitally archiving dalit art, raising awareness or engaging with deconstructing theories that aid their ghettoization, and are doing so by loving every moment of it. I could easily talk for others too, but I will restrict to myself, if studying dalit issues would pay me anywhere close to even half as much as my day job of esoteric science, that I happen to passionately love, I would dump it to go fulltime into dalit studies. The great tragedy and terrible ghettoization for us is our inability to be doing so (explicitly studying dalits), all 24 hours, seven days a week. Does it sound strange? :)
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Nivedita, You missed the >> before that paragraph, I use it to quote, this came from Anant’s comment number of fifteen, I think.
“Anu – you say: “It has indeed been suggested on kafila in the past that non dalits should not …………….. priestly community.”
I repeat, this was a quote, -i have not been reading Kafila as long as Anant has probably been doing and that was an interesting bit, i used the brahmin-dalit eg, in response to Anant’s comments, about a dalit researcher not being able to access a priestly sect, again comment 15 I think. And if you read my response i tell him that it is possible to access, even those priestly sects.
Since your comment has mixed up parts of Anant’s comment but addressed to me…. I will let you unentangle this. Though I read the message in it. which is little like what i am arguing for that access research should have no boundaries. Unless you misread the entire tone of my comments and hence my stand, but others, at least Anant have not, so that’s good.
Will get to back to rest of what you and Anant are saying.
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Friends
I feel that the quotation by Du Bois has caused unnecessary confusion which I had not expected earlier. Looking at the different (valid) interpretations of the quote, it would have been better if I had not put it there.
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My Take:-
Only quotes from the original post by Subhash Gatade, reviewing Badri Narayan’s Work.
Kindly ignore this exercise in ‘deconstruction’,and excuse me for not saying anything..
Except this-
That at least the following observations would have been valid even without doing detailed field studies in those particular states/districts mentioned, which encompassed only particular dalit castes ; even without going to the details of what Badri Narayan wanted to show, these observations would resonate the concerns of many democratic minded souls elsewhere in India.
Quote 1
“..Interestingly while most of the political parties are engaged in this game of identity politics, BSP and BJP can be considered to be the main players as far as politics in UP is concerned. And both the parties seem to be following diametrically opposite approaches to the question.”…
Quote 2.
“One can easily notice a shift in the strategy of political mobilisation by these political formations. If earlier the emphasis use to be on making promises and offering allurements to the gullible masses, since 1980 s with the phenomenon of dalit assertion making its presence felt, one notices creative strategies to mobilise smaller castes/communities by arousing their sense of pastness..”
Quote3(conclusion)
“..At the end one just hopes that a radical dalit community would emerge which can critically engage with the reconstruction and reappropriation of its memory by vested interests and move towards the emancipatory agenda put forward by Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar and others.”
Thanks,
(Venu).
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In the above thread, a fourth quote from Subhash Gatade would have also been in order which I somehow omitted to mention in the previous comment. It could actually be seen as the 3rd in the above that impressed me. This could also pass as a very serious,
but a common place concern of the Indian democracy,irrespective of what transpires as fears confirmed or otherwise through the ‘impugned’ field researches by Badari Narayan.
Quote 4(3)
“..Earlier when the strategy was to challenge and question the upper caste hegemony, the slogan was ‘Tilak, tarazu aur Talar/inko maaro joote char’ and today when power considerations have led to new alignments the key slogan today seems to be ‘Haath Nahin Ganesh Hai, Brahma Vishnu Mahesh Hai’. Two inferences are unavoidable. One, there is no conscious attempt to stop/decelerate the process of Hinduisation of dalit identity; secondly, since attaining political power seems to have become a key goal, the alliances with upper caste dominated forces like BJP on three occasions has definitely impacted the process of dalit assertion) One also comes across recreation of memories through myths, heroes and caste histories in a manner which suits the political formation. It can also be observed that the same caste hero or myth invoked by the BSP being interpreted by the BJP in a more aggressive manner and its getting posited as anti-Muslim hero….”
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Hi Anu,
this is really taking off at a tangent from the original post and may be should actually prompt a completely new post. :)
Thanks for the video link. I enjoyed it.
I do think that there is something to be gained from working on that question of double consciousness.
Not to go overboard with references, but you might find Paul Gilroy’s book – “Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness” an interesting read. I found it very useful to help me get away from discussions of cultures as somehow trapped in geographic locations. I havent given it enough thought but it may give us some clues to thinking about dalit cultures as well.
Think about it – we always seem to be seeing caste as something that is ‘located’ in a place; it is a sedantary population that we think of; and yet ironically we never even pay attention to the specificity of places. We take it for granted that what is true of a chitpavan brahmin must be true of a mythili brahmin; what is true of a chamar is true for a madiga.
What if we take caste as something constantly being reshaped by people’s mobilities – physical or social or psychological?
Fanon – I think is an important resource for a couple of reasons – first because unlike american black writers Fanon is concerned about colonial relationships -something that has been largely absent in critical thinking on caste; second because Fanon has a lot to give us about psychic truths something that most social science/humanities work tends to overlook especially in the case of caste.
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Hi Anant,
>>What if we take caste as something constantly being reshaped by people’s mobilities – physical or social or psychological?
I don’t think losing geography helps me think about it with any sharper focus…..!
Anyway, as the post’s author thinks the preface is not right, we should drop this line of thought here, but since you have been very patient with this (and me) and shared some fabulous leads, thought I should confuse you a little by sharing this experience of mine, as a token of appreciation :).
Ok. Dalit women of my generation (few known to me) do one of these two things:
a) Wear a bindi or don’t. All of them wore it as children and while growing up, their mothers did/do without exception. b) Bindi is a non issue for dalit christians or dalit muslim women.
Women of other castes of my generation also do one of these two things. Apart from the shared common reasons, these dalit women have very specific reasons for their chosen action.
1) Reject it. Because bindi appears to be symbolic of caste hindus.
2) Embrace it. Because, bindi is very much a dalit symbol, with an uninterrupted line of evidence from the goddess cults, still practiced in many families (practice of wearing bindi may have multiple origins).
3) Just wear it. As it let’s us get through most part of the day with a little less hassle.
4) REJECT it. Because it reminds us of the past consequences of exploitation of Goddess cults and present indignities of daily snobbery of hindu upper caste women (are you familiar with the haldi kumkum ‘socials’ in Maharashtra? Or the way kumkum is applied on the thali (which is a characteristic caste symbol) in Tamilnadu and Karnataka? -provides a quick clear way of knowing where the otherwise indistinguishable woman falls along the caste hierarchy).
These women are negotiating memory and the present reality. Now, please go ahead and deploy all the big names and their analytical tools, which you and others have been dropping during this discussion, on this specific set of experiences.
M.N Srinivas will pause on 3) and say looky look they are imitating the ideal.
DuBios will surely see a version of twoness at play. Fanon, I don’t know, how the colonial angle comes into play here except that dalit Christian women have avoided these dilemmas (Just beginning to read his works).
When we see these experiences as snapshots, it can be completely misread. When visualized as a process, it still is, at best, confusing. The feeling that a process indicates movement (upward-downward-lateral) is also misleading. Because as far as I see it, the person is exactly where she is, with a graded memory of distant pride in the action, overlaid by horrific ones of exploitation surrounding the rituals of this action, and accumulating memories on a daily basis, the grossness associated with this action. And then there is the inability to reclaim the ancient pride in it as it has been appropriated now and used as a tool in subtle subjugation. All these women are urban, educated, either one or two generation away from their rural roots. So, what is happening here? Mobility, assertion, negation or what? Do their actions move them towards an ‘ideal’. What or who is the ideal? Are these choices empowering or disempowering?
I chose something that does not immediately present the seeking of the ‘national’ to suit the elements you looked for: mobilities, physical, social and psychological.
Will exit now, have fun :)
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Anu, sorry about attributing to you something Anant said about whether non-Dalits can talk about Dalits. I was catching up on this long and complex thread at one go, that’s the reason for my confusion.
Perhaps we are in agreement then, on this point of representing/talking about etc. I just felt the need to take on the point itself, because it is not only on kafila that it is made, and has a more general existence.
Coming back to the African American experience and the grappling with “twoness”, I recently read an amazing book by an African-American woman Saidiya Hartman, “Lose your mother. A journey along the Atlantic slave route” in which she goes on the African-American pilgrimage to Ghana, tracing the slave route, only to discover that the expected kinship is not so easy to recover in the present. A feature she highlights that I had never thought about, is the fact that Ghanaians who remained in Africa have a history of owning slaves themselves, and therefore simultaneously see the history of having *been* a slave oneself as shaming, while telling her things like, ‘my family owned a slave girl, she was treated very well…’
Above all, she is acutely conscious of being there as a wealthy American among poor people in Ghana, and the shared experience she assumed she would have of being Black is continually splintered.
Subhash, your reference to Du Bois was not as irrelevant as you fear!
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Anu – “The great tragedy and terrible ghettoization for us is our inability to be doing so (explicitly studying dalits), all 24 hours, seven days a week. Does it sound strange? :)”
Not at all, Anu! Not strange at all.
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@Anant:
That concerns about colonial relationships have been largely absent in critical thinking on caste seems to be a debatable point.
Unlike Fanon who did not have to engage with a divinely perfected system of hierarchy, the Sastraic Hinduism, India the Dalit-Bahujan ideologues of India had to grapple with such reality. The internal colonialism was both visible and invisible in people’s lives. But by and large , it was far more visible to people initiated to the values of modernity and Western education, while others continued to be kept in dark about the possibilities of emancipation through education.
Ambedkar while criticized political leaders Gandhi, Jinnah, Tilak and others who were too ambitious to take over the power from the colonizers even at the cost of forgoing the long pending agenda of social reforms, he acclaimed M.G.Ranade’s great efforts toward pushing ahead the modernist agenda of social reforms. Nevertheless, we were told through our school lessons that people like Ranade were overtaken by Gandhi and Tilak simply for the fact that the latter were more radically oriented to the agenda of national independence. Sree Narayana Guru had reportedly told Gandhi in his caustic style of witticism that it were the Britishers who gave him sanyas. Apparently he meant by this statement that an avarna daring to consecrate an idol of shiva and setting up a temple would certainly have been dismembered in Hindu India.
These are few reverse examples of Fanon, in which dalits and their intelligentia in a Hindu India tried to critically and dialectically engage with the effects of colonialism.
The Congress and Hindu leadership on the other hand, had delivered nothing to dalits other than empty rhetoric of anti- colonial sentiments. Besides, while leaving the political economy to be managed by the colonial powers, the emerging bourgeoisie and their feudal allies in the villages, ruthless suppression of the phenomenally rising protests by farmers and peasants at the hands of the colonial state was justified by many national leaders, in the name of ‘condemning violence’!..
Unquestioned allegiance to a brand of pan Indian nationalism led by the Congress elite was equaled with patriotism. S.K Ghosh has cited several instances where the Congress leadership openly took sides with imperialism particularly in instances where the landless and poor farmers protested against the war time taxations. Gandhi , despite his love for non violence had reportedly promised ‘freedom’ to the poor farmers in lieu of their participation on the side of the imperial powers in the first world war.
In short, it would be more appropriate to say that it was the casteist national leadership rather than the critics of caste, that largely disregarded colonial relationships.
Thanks,
(Venu)
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Venu, I should have put a few caveats on that sentence. but i left it open deliberately to see where it goes. Of course, colonization has been a big concern among south asian thinkers both disciplinary and non disciplinary and over a very long stretch of time. For me let me just revise that statement – Frantz Fanon can be a useful resource. Period. How and why, I will get to… after a few days. :)
About divinely ordained caste hierarchy – I am not so sure this is unique to India, nor am I sure that the colonizer did not play a role in codifying that divinity. If we go on that premise then, the issue will really be one of figuring out new ways to imagine the spatialities of the colonial world- internal and external is too newtonian for me.
ALso seriously — I am not convinced that manu smriti played such an important deterministic role in shaping caste hierarchies. To me it just seems like a lot of retrofitting effort must have gone into establishing Manu as the law giver. this is not to deny that hierarchies did not exist. But i think there is room for a lot more innovation in adopting relational approaches to caste identities. But more about that also later….
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I think ,hindus have forgotten that Dalits will alive till hinduism is alive.Dalits become dalits after Poona pact where ,Hindus wanted to become Rama who had killed Shmabukha but still pretend to be innocent like their leaders Gandhi <Nehru <patel and Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee.For Ms Mennon ,reservation is a intrest and nothing else ,the day dalits will get seprate county away from barbaric people ,reservation and and ms Mennon will dis appear from the earth and then no body will bother about dalits and Hinduism.
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Mr Kumarpushp…lage raho munna bhai….
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Read it with interest. I have always wondered why would Hindus pray at a “Muslim invader’s” tomb. There is an explanation now.
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