Dalits and Access to Higher Education

 Oppressed, broken, or crushed is the direct translation of the word Dalit, which is used to describe the class of citizens that are lowest on the caste system’s social ladder. Previously considered “untouchables” by the standards of the caste, their goal is to eliminate this oppression that they have experienced going back to the beginning of the Hindu religion and second century BCE. However, during the time of Mahatma Gandhi, he called the groups Harijans and promoted keeping the caste system in place while changing the stigma behind calling almost 25 percent of the country’s population. Currently, there are over 200 million Dalits in India alone, according to Paul Diwakar, from the National Campaign of Dalit Human Rights.

Dr. Ambedkar, a lawyer and Dalit from the 1950’s initially called for the caste system to be ripped apart to limit the “untouchability” of the Dalits, but eventually gave up on this and converted to Buddhism. He had the right idea, however, as the Indian Constitution abolished the untouchability status by law, but socially, many still treat Dalits as such. It has disproportionately affected them in a 2004 tsunami, their sanitation facilities and sewage systems have been worse than the higher castes, and even politically have been undermined by the higher caste systems. Specifically, a good amount of Dalit injustice stems from education, especially higher education akin to college and other sorts.

When looking at the data, there is a misrepresentation in Dalit education in many states and villages, with only few states actually educating them past a certain point at a reasonable rate. This is due to the socio-economic hardships of not only being poorer and unable to get certain jobs, but also because they are not socially accepted by everyone in India.

In a study conducted by Kathryn Lum at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, which shows at the most elite universities in India, the discrimination of Dalits is similar to students in the LGBT community, and really focuses on the inner struggles of their life, both institutionally and socially at college. They actually have some pressure to not reveal their caste status, called the “Dalit Closet” which is why Lum compares them to this group. The students are well aware of the disadvantage that they have been given, and use it to motivate and mask themselves off, facing many internal challenges with fitting in as well. Ultimately, the author suggests change in the systems, admission of Dalit students, and talks of how a middle class of Dalits has actually emerged. There are now state legislature spots reserved for Dalits, and they are apt to pass at elite universities, but almost because of a societal impostor syndrome, some have developed a lot of mental issues.

To combat these injustices, the Indian government has mostly done its job on eradicating the unequal distribution of equity that the caste system had created. Now, it is more so up to private businesses, schools, and other institutions to not discriminate against Dalits. Yes, public buildings in certain areas most likely have some stigma toward the Dalit population, and some villages almost segregate Dalits from higher classes with specific areas for them, it is really a collective social change that needs to be made: Dalits need to be accepted as touchable, or accepted in society. While this defeats the purpose of caste, to break up groups, caste is stagnant, and does not allow for anyone to move up, meaning that these same groups will continually be institutionally discriminated against.

Since the beginning of the caste system, Dalits have been labeled untouchable. They have been oppressed, been unemployed for, given the worst treatment possible. This treatment has been mitigated in previous years, with people such as Gandhi, and legislation such as making it illegal to discriminate against Dalits. Similar to prior and current situations in American politics with the treatment of many systematically oppressed groups, Dalits will continually be oppressed against. To change this, an entire social change among all members of society to bolster a better, positive treatment for the previously untouchable Dalit class in India.
Source: educationforindia.org

Why remembering unsung Dalit women heroes matters

 It would be a profound injustice to recognise Babasaheb Ambedkar, whose 131st birth anniversary was recently celebrated, as only a Dalit leader. He also worked hard for the cause of women’s rights, believing that a society’s political, economic and social aspects can only be ameliorated when men and women have equal rights. This piece is therefore a tribute to all the women from the periphery who have either not been heard of or written about but are important. We can’t celebrate Ambedkar without giving due respect and acknowledgement to these women.

The historical and cultural narratives of India have failed to acknowledge the contributions of the women from the margins, as they are either androcentric in approach or reflective of the dominant castes. Remembering unsung Dalit women heroes and their stories of struggle and bravery from across the centuries, will broaden these narratives and help address the institutionalised discrimination Dalit women have faced for centuries.

The story of Sabari from the Ramayana has been used as an example of acceptance, selflessness and unconditional love, and adapted into bhajans and poems. The coming of bhakti saw the emergence of women from the Mahar caste, such as Sant Nirmala and Soyarabai, questioning Hindu orthodoxy. Nangeli fought against the cruel “breast tax” system, which imposed a tax on women of the lower castes who covered their breasts. She cut off one of her breasts and presented it to tax collectors, inspiring other women in the community to cover their breasts unapologetically.

Every section of society attempted to combine social and political liberation during the freedom struggle. Kuyili, who commanded the army of Velu Nachiyar, the queen of Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu, was a Dalit woman who fought against the British around 1780. Jhalkaribai, another fearless Dalit warrior, played a pivotal role in what is known as the First War of Independence in 1857, as the most trusted companion and advisor of Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi. Born in Ujirao, Lucknow, Uda Devi formed a battalion consisting of Dalit women under the leadership of Begum Hazrat Mahal.

Among social reformers, there was Savitribai Phule, a pioneer in education for Dalits, who started a school in 1848 with nine girls. By 1851 this became three schools with around 150 girl students. She also started a school in 1849 with her friend Fatima Sheikh, the Mahila Seva Mandal in 1852 to raise awareness about women’s rights and the Balahatya Pratibandhak Griha, where widows and rape survivors could deliver their babies. Born in the Kaibarta caste community, Rani Rashmoni, protested practices like sati and child marriage and atrocities against lower caste people and even submitted a plea against polygamy to the Company. Moovalur Ramamirtham Ammaiyar fought against the exploitative Devadasi system. In 1936, she published a Tamil novel on Devadasis and wrote the fictional series Damayanthi in 1945.

Dakshayani Velayudhan was the first and only Dalit woman to be elected to the constituent assembly in 1946. She was also a part of the provisional parliament from 1946-1952. Her contribution in civil disobedience and satyagraha is a story that needs to be told.

The bravery of Dalit women has not only been visible in their deeds but also in the words they wrote. In Maharashtra, writers like Shantabai Kamble, Mallika Amar Sheikh and Kumud Pawde shone a light on Dalit feminism through their autobiographies. In Tamil Nadu, writers like Bama and P Sivakami explored gender discrimination as a two-fold oppression. Marathi writers like Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon worked to make Dalit women visible in women’s movement and, through their research and testimonies, brought out the grim reality of the missing voices. Dalit women like Dulari Devi and Mayawati also need to be celebrated. Her conviction and social engineering skills made Mayawati chief minister of UP four times, and through her art, Devi, a Mithila painter from Bihar, tracks the interplay between meaning and power within the hierarchical structures of religion, caste, gender and politics.

Written by Aditi Narayani Paswan

Source: Indian Express, 21/04/22

The symbolism of inter-caste marriages

 

When countries worldwide are now integrating rapidly across color, racial, ethnic boundaries, the Indian government has to offer incentives for couples to marry outside rigid boundaries. Does inter-caste marriage then result in the anticipated social change and abolish untouchability?

Surrounding the anti-caste movement, a topic remains hotly contested. It is about inter-caste marriages as a way towards the annihilation of caste. Activists, thinkers and leaders are divided over this. Dr Ambedkar’s famous quote from Annihilation of Caste, wherein he stated that inter-caste marriages were “the real remedy for breaking caste”, is often cited. Ambedkar thought “fusion of blood” would create the feeling of kith and kin.

Ambedkar’s advice remains unheard. The Indian Human Development Survey reported that 95% of Indians still find partners within their subcastes. What is the situation of the rest 5%, who have braved the odds against tradition and caste? There isn’t data or satisfying coverage of them.

Many a time second- or third-generation educated Dalits who have managed to access quality education, and landed respectable (elite) jobs, find the prospects of marriage outside caste available to them. What then happens to their inter-caste marriages? Their union is unlike any other marriage. It is a political act — an achievement of love over caste. The Dalit person marrying outside caste, say to an upper caste, finds himself or herself duelling between the struggle of their community, and the culture of their spouses and in-laws. It’s akin to getting a good job in a company surrounded by oppressor castes. Rarely does one get a chance to balance both, and what is the outcome if they do?

The children of mixed-caste parents also grow up amidst profound misunderstanding of their complicated backgrounds. They are brought up in a caste-neutral or a-caste environment, which essentially means being subjected to the dominant caste parent’s identity. The closest they come to caste is while availing caste reservations or visiting their Dalit family. If they align themselves with the identity of the oppressed caste parent, which is need-based, they risk a backlash.

The Government of India launched a scheme in 2013 to encourage inter-caste marriages. It offers Rs 2.5 lakh if one of the partners is a Dalit. One of the requirements is a recommendation from a sitting MLA / MP and government officer concerned. The scheme wants to appreciate and promote the “socially bold step” of the couple. When countries worldwide are now integrating rapidly across color, racial, ethnic boundaries, the Indian government has to offer incentives for couples to marry outside rigid boundaries.

Does inter-caste marriage then result in the anticipated social change and abolish untouchability?

I can share my experiences. Of a savarna woman in the US who married a Dalit man and joined the Dalit community’s network. Often, during interactions, the savarna woman wouldn’t parse her background. The Dalit community’s culture, religion and festivals were different from hers. Unknowingly, the savarna woman would privilege her experiences. At some point, she forgot about her caste identity and started to claim Dalit identity passively. Since she was a student and an activist, she profited from the networks offered by her Dalit compatriots.

As she became more comfortable with the Dalit community, she began to take over leadership roles. She started to call out the Dalit leadership for their overrepresentation of males. Within a matter of a few months, she was representing Dalits at conferences and seminars.

What we see from the above anecdote is that the notion of inter-caste marriage has become a passport for those who have lived the life of oppressing Dalits directly or by virtue of their participation in anti-Dalit prejudices, to now suddenly assume the position of misrepresenting Dalits.

The second case is of a Dalit minister married to a Brahmin woman, who was asked about it on a Marathi talk show. He replied that it was because “Brahmin women are very good”, and appealed to all Dalit men to marry Brahmin women.

Coming back to Ambedkar’s speech quoted above, he further suggested that to break the caste system, it was pertinent to destroy religious notions, the sanctity of the Shastras on which caste was founded and not occasionally bring about “inter-caste dinner and inter-caste marriages, which were futile methods of achieving their ends”.

What Ambedkar is arguing is not against inter-caste marriage, but he is inviting us to go deeper, beyond social sanctions. He wants us to be participants in movements that would upend and eventually change mindsets.

Written by Suraj Yengde

Source: Indian Express, 6/02/22

India needs a new social contract

 

Harsh Mander writes: The pandemic exposed the horrors of the existing economic and social arrangements that privilege some but treat others as expendable

The pandemic has dramatically laid bare the catastrophic public costs of inequality. Thousands of lives could have been saved if much greater investments had been made in public health provisioning. The explosion of mass hunger and joblessness and the dislocation of millions of working poor people could have been averted had labour protection, social security, and wage levels of workers been secured.

“Inequality Kills” is the apt title of a devastating report by Oxfam India released at the time of the World Economic Forum in Davos. For India’s super-rich, the pandemic became a time to swell their wealth dizzyingly. The worst year of the pandemic for India was 2021. In this year, the net wealth of just one Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, multiplied eight times, from $8.9 billion in 2020 to $50.5 billion in 2021. The net worth of Mukesh Ambani doubled to $85.5 billion in 2021, rocketing him from India’s to Asia’s richest man. In fact, Ambani added Rs 90 crore to his wealth every hour right from March 2020, the start of the pandemic. In 2021, the number of dollar billionaires in India expanded by 39 per cent. India is home today to the largest number of dollar billionaires, after the US and China, with more billionaires than France, Sweden and Switzerland combined. In 2020, 98 families held more wealth than 555 million Indians. India’s top 10 per cent owned 45 per cent of the country’s wealth. Three-fifths of India’s top 100 added $1 billion or more to their wealth in 2021 over the previous year.

In this same period, as many as 84 per cent Indian households suffered a fall of income, for many into deep and stubborn poverty. The RBI estimated a GDP contraction of minus 8.7 to 7 per cent. 120 million jobs were lost, of which 92 million were in the informal sector. In 2021, FAO reported there were 200 million undernourished people in India and India was home to a quarter of all undernourished people around the world. Pew estimated that the number of poor people in India doubled from 55 million in 2020 to 120 million in 2021. Oxfam reports that daily-wage workers topped the numbers of people who committed suicide in 2020, followed by self-employed and unemployed individuals.

Evaluations in the media do not adequately recognise that the greater part of the grim economic devastation that surrounds us in India today — deaths, joblessness, hunger — is not caused primarily by the Covid-19 virus. They are the consequence of market-led public policies that have fostered unequal life chances. This got exposed more in these times of global calamity.

Imagine a vastly different India. Imagine, for instance, a country that has secured free and quality healthcare for every citizen, a guarantee of food for all, workers’ rights to social security and wage payments to all during lockdowns, and decent housing and clean water. The deaths and unemployment that engulfed a large section of Indians could have been eschewed. If millions of working people had more money in their hands, the greatest contraction of the economy since Independence could have been forestalled. If decent social housing and clean water supply had been secured by governments for all residents, it would have enabled the millions forced into overcrowded shanties to protect themselves by keeping distance in well-ventilated tenements and washing their hands regularly. Millennials might then argue: All of this is unattainable; what, then, is the point of painting scenarios of utopias?

But just as the humanitarian crisis today could have been prevented, the alternative is eminently feasible if people and government commit themselves to the goals of the Constitution. India spends only 3.54 per cent of its budgetary resources on healthcare, much less, as noted by Oxfam, than other middle-income countries like Brazil (9.51), South Africa (8.25) and China (5.35). Income inequalities reduce life chances in India even more for those disadvantaged by caste, gender and religious identities. A Dalit woman, for instance, has 15 years lower life expectancy than an upper-caste woman. Confronted by a broken and starved public health system, even the poor have to rely on private health providers, and 60 per cent of health spending in India is out-of-pocket, among the highest in the world, and a major cause of poverty. In the pandemic, the exclusions were even more spectacular. Oxfam found middle-class families spending Rs 4 lakh a day in private hospitals during the second wave — sometThe starting point of our vision of a new India is for the state to assume responsibility to provision quality healthcare, education, food, pension, clean water and housing, free or in affordable ways for all citizens. Economist Prabhat Patnaik, in his contribution to the India Exclusion Report brought out by the Centre for Equity Studies, says that to resource all of this would demand a public resolve to expand taxation of the super-rich. Sufficient to fund all of this, he calculates, is two taxes levied only on the top 1 per cent of the population — a wealth tax of 2 per cent and an inheritance tax of 33 per cent. Our government is doing the opposite; it withdrew the wealth tax in 2015 and reduced the already low levels of corporate tax. The result is regressive taxation burdening the poor and abysmally low public spending.

Those who care for a kinder world must not miss this moment when the pandemic has revealed to us the horror of our moral collapse; of economic and social arrangements that privilege some lives, but treat the rest as expendable. The struggle of our times must be for a new social contract based on solidarity and inclusion.hing a casual worker earns in 1,000 days.

Written by Harsh Mander

Source: Indian Express, 29/01/22

The Precarity of Dalit Lives in India

 

Atrocities on Dalits are never a singular instance, they are part of a larger narrative of caste vengeance and a reflection of a hurt savarna pride.

On September 30, in the dark of night, a young Dalit girl was cremated in an undignified manner by the Uttar Pradesh police. The police did not allow the family and relatives of the girl to attend the funeral. In the development of the case up to now, the focus has primarily remained on the perpetrators of violence. We contend that in addition to the four alleged perpetrators, the investigation agencies must not ignore the complicity of the police and the state administration in the process. The UP administration, it is becoming clear, is an accomplice to the crime and has openly violated due process, both legal and moral.

The 19-year-old girl from Valmiki community, it is alleged, died of rape and torture at the hands of four upper-caste men who belonged to the Thakur community. She went to cut grass in the fields in Boolagarhi village of Hathras, when the upper caste men found her and allegedly raped her on September 14.

The narrative of savagery that appeared in the reports following the incident highlights that the assault did not merely exhibit the desire for a feminine body but used to display caste dominance. According to the latest Crime in India Report, six Scheduled Caste women are raped in India every day. The Haters case is distinct because of the vulgar display of state collusion with the perpetrators of caste violence.

The brutal assault on the girl in Hathras indicates that though the punishments have got harsher for caste atrocities and sexual assault, the perpetrators now not only rape and assault but aim to kill or maim the victim to avoid any indictment later. The condition in which the girl was found in the fields by her mother points out that the assaulters had left her for dead. Second, had the girl not been brought and later died in a top medical institute in the national capital, the case would not have become common knowledge and remained just another case of forgotten caste and sexual violence. Third, despite parallel narratives created to discredit the allegation of rape on the accused, the victim had made a video statement before her death which was widely circulated on the internet. Fourth, a midnight cremation of the victim’s body raised new questions and exposed various loopholes in the entire story.

The police administration of the state, particularly the ADGP, peddled a misinformed narrative that the victim was not even raped because there was no semen found in the medical report. However, later it came to light that the sample sent for examination was eleven days old and the victim had told the doctor that complete penetration had taken place during the sexual assault. The ADGP wilfully ignored that in 2013 after the horrific Nirbhaya case, IPC section 375 had ruled out ‘no sperm-no rape’ argument and stated that penetration is sufficient to constitute the sexual intercourse necessary to the offence of rape. The initial report of gang rape that caused multiple life-threatening injuries to the victim is also now being questioned. However, the ‘burden of proof’ in the cases related to the absence of consent in rape now lies upon the accused and not the victim.

The force of Brahmanical patriarchy appears to be more powerful than that of the state. It is the parallel rules and laws of caste that decide the fate of the marginalised Scheduled Castes. As per various news reports, Thakurs of nearby villages had held a caste panchayat vowing protection to the accused and threats to the Dalit community in the village. Brahmanical patriarchy emerges as a counter-sovereign that neither recognises nor respects the rule of law or constitutional rights. It only concerns itself with the predatory power of caste dharma. In this case, the state government supplemented the dominant upper castes with the power of the state machinery.

Rape is used as an instrument of stamping the authority of men over women. If patriarchy operates through various socio-cultural norms, then rape is a weapon of the humiliation of the body and self. Dalit women, due to their caste and gender identity, witness a frequent violation of their sammaan (dignity) by the Brahmanical patriarchy. Rape and other forms of sexual violence reproduce upper-caste male privilege where upper-caste men do not conceive rape as a crime but rather as their right to make exemplary punishment. According to Crime in India data published by National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), there were 45,935 crimes committed against Scheduled Castes in India and Uttar Pradesh has the highest atrocities cases against Scheduled Castes with 11,829 followed by Rajasthan (6,794) and Bihar (6,544). There were 13,449 sexual assault-related crimes committed on Scheduled Caste women under assault on women, assault on women with the intention to outrage her modesty (IPC 354), sexual harassment (IPC 354A), assault or use of criminal force to disrobe (IPC 354B), voyeurism (IPC 354 C), Stalking (IPC 354D), insult to the modesty of women (IPC 509), rape (IPC 376) and attempt to rape (IPC 376/511). In 2019, around 3,486 Scheduled Caste women were raped. Rajasthan (554) has the highest reported rape cases against SC women followed by Uttar Pradesh (537). Many such cases are not registered due to social stigma, the issue of “honour” attached to women, distrust in the investigation and judicial process, and also fear of revenge from the upper castes who often enjoy support from administration.

According to the most recent India Justice Report published in 2019, 68 per cent police officer level posts in the reserved category are lying vacant in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, UP also received the worst police ranking in a Tata Trusts Study with a score of 2.98 out of 10. The data points out some serious gaps in the issues of representation of marginalised castes within the police department. Hence, it also raises concerns about the nature of the investigation by the police.

In Uttar Pradesh, the formation of state government by BSP in the past provided an opportunity to Dalits to assert equality and dignity in the society. However, a counter-assertion of the upper castes also followed. Savarna Hindus, in parallel, began asserting themselves to maintain their traditional position. While the Dalit assertion is for upward mobility from the “historically lowly placed position”, the upper caste assertion is to secure and maintain “historically highly placed position”. Furthermore, there is an effort to maintain existing the social order where atrocities against Dalits are used as a means of control, a symbolic tool of threat and act of coercion against Dalit assertion.

If we look at the broader narrative of caste violence on the bodies of Dalits, the four accused are merely a symptomatic expression of the broader Brahmanical mentality that legitimises and defends such barbaric acts. It is no secret that caste panchayats often intervene between the accused and the perpetrator and favours negotiation. This is one of the major reason for the lower conviction rate of atrocity cases under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. The conviction rate in caste atrocity cases was 25.7 per cent in 2016, 23.2 per cent in 2017, 29.8 per cent in 2018 and 32.6 per cent in 2019. Upper caste men compel the victim and its family to compromise rather than witnessing court proceedings.

From struggling to register the case by the police to the filing of the charge-sheet, from the arrest of the perpetrator to a long drawn trial in the court, the process torments the spirit of the victim and their family. As a result, the process becomes another punishment. Witnesses are threatened, communities are forced to withdraw the cases or to give a false statement. On average, in 80 per cent of the cases, charge-sheets are filed each year. As per available NCRB data, there is 89.6 per cent pendency of such cases in 2016, 97.2 in 2017, 92.7 in 2018 and 91.4 in 2019. It raises questions about the speedy justice mentioned in the Act and rules of SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Even the creation of special courts has not helped the cause. A high pendency rate in court induces the Scheduled Caste families to compromise. Compromise is expected to be the “normal” behaviour of the dispossessed and marginalised.

Challenging the status quo often results in a cycle of atrocities that go beyond the initial incident. Atrocities on Dalits are never a singular instance, they are part of a larger narrative of caste vengeance and a reflection of a hurt savarna pride. We contend that the nature of civil society in India is primarily casteist. The manner in which an upper-caste narrative blaming the victim and her family are peddled points out that caste affinity is stronger than civic sense or a principle of equal dignified citizenship.

With the recent Dalit assertion in the public sphere and the availability of social media to voice their opinions, Brahmanical patriarchy is easily rattled. The existence of caste panchayats reminds us that constitutional equality will remain a distant dream as long as caste inequality thrives in various forms. As a result, caste pride overrides justice in an unequal society like India.

Written by Javed Iqbal Wani and L David Lal

Wani is Assistant Professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi and Lal is Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Information Technology-Guwahati

Source: Indian Express, 27/10/20

Countering the Right’s hegemony

In a fightback, only a deep fostering of intra-subaltern solidarity using culture can help

India has witnessed the rise of the Hindu Right as not just a political but also a cultural force like never before. The has been made possible by a series of tactical moves which has allowed for a consolidation of power with the traditional castes and classes.

The Right has managed to do this by exploiting and magnifying micro-level social conflicts that lie dormant in order to create a meta-level hierarchy and reinforce the hold of traditional power. It has led to a weakening of the resistance of lower end social groups by fragmenting them and allowing intra-caste, intra-religious and intra-regional differences to articulate themselves in order to de-legitimise the resistance and mobility of vulnerable social groups that have so far benefited and accrued some social power. The Right negates the power of such groups in the name of justice and power to those even weaker and further neglected.

In terms of caste, it is now well known that the Right has made significant advances in terms of breaking up Dalit sub-castes and fully exploiting intra-sub caste tensions and mutual prejudices.

Everyday prejudices

Similarly, it is making advances in mobilising lesser mobilised Other Backward Classes (OBC) groups against dominant OBC groups such as Yadavs and Kurmis. It is further sharpening the conflict between OBCs and Dalits. Added to all this is allowing the dominant Rajput caste to vent its angst against the mobility Dalits have accrued so far: by allowing street violence and mob lynching of Dalits. It is reinforcing social power of dominant castes at one end and fragmenting this through a mobilisation of lesser mobilised sub-castes of subaltern castes. It is sharpening dormant prejudices that have existed for a long time between subaltern castes, caste and religion, and religion and region.

Similarly, the relation between Dalits and OBCs has been fraught with mutual suspicion and dislike, in spite of four decades of ‘Bahujan’ identity having been mobilised, mostly in the north. In fact, B.R. Ambedkar himself identified the OBCs as ‘savarnas’ and sometimes equates them with Aryans. This again collates in complex ways with regional dynamics between the north and the south. What the location of the OBCs is in this complex matrix is not very clear historically; politically the kind of mobility they have got after the implementation of the Mandal Commission has only sharpened the differences. Violent attacks against Dalits by the OBCs are a continuous, if less discussed aspect of Indian politics. The Khairlanji incident was the most recent attack against Dalits by the Kunbis who are listed as OBCs in Maharashtra.

Within the minority religion too, which includes Muslims, there are castes, sects and other differentiations. For instance, in Kashmir, there are differences between Sunnis and Shias, between Sunnis of the Valley and those in the border areas of Poonch and Rajouri, and those living in Ladakh. They neither inter-marry nor do they enjoy amicable relations. Class and regional prejudices overlap with that of sect and caste.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-led hegemony is not a top-down machination even if there is fear, intimidation, control of media and destabilisation of institutions. The current dispensation is bringing into the open all the cultural contradictions that existed historically. While the Congress’s inclusive nationalism attempted to accommodate social groups politically without overcoming social prejudices, the BJP’s muscular nationalism lies in including them politically but dividing them socially. The divisions existed; the Right is only wi

A new multitude

The fight against the Right is only focusing on critiquing its strategies and exposing it without offering a positive fight to construct an intra-subaltern solidarity. There needs to be a robust cultural programme of fighting prejudices, encouraging inter-dining and inter-marriages. Not mere tolerance but positive celebration of cultural differences is required. Whether or not the Right can be made to retreat depends on this deep cultural programme. We are not clear how one should go about it. This may have to happen as more of a cultural than a political fight. It has to be about humanity, not power; it has to be more about everyday realities than about a programmatic idea of justice.

Every move towards solidarity is also perceived as lowering the status of groups that are higher-up in the ladder-like structure even if they are simultaneously victimised by dominant groups. Sub-division of Dalits is viewed as a pulling down of the relatively well-to-do castes within Dalits; a sub-division of OBCs is seen as a mode of allowing for the domination of traditional caste Hindus. Gandhi attempted ‘change without conflict’; he failed to usher in faster change but offered a semblance of burying conflict. Today, we are witnessing conflict and change itself is suspended between mobility and reinforcing traditional hierarchies. Mere critiquing and electoral defeat of the Right is not going to work.

Castes, religious groups and regional identities should fight it upfront by overcoming the prejudice within. To truly fight the Right, relatively dominant social groups must be prepared to lose a bit of social power they wield, however small it may be. It would also mean being critical of one’s own social location, however oppressed it may be. Is this realistic at the current historical juncture? The Right compulsively requires fear, anxiety and insecurity to block the process. What are the cultural resources on the other side of the political divide?

Ajay Gudavarthy is Associate Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNUdening them.

An equal music, a beautiful society

No aspect of life in India from the exalted heavens of the classical arts to the most mundane pits of bodily waste can escape the totalitarian structure of caste.

A recent event in Delhi brought together two Indian winners of the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award, Bezwada Wilson and T.M. Krishna, in a wide-ranging conversation about freedom of expression, nationalism and inequality, issues of pressing concern. Both were outspoken against a growing majoritarianism, and passionate about building an egalitarian and just society through their respective fields. Wilson, 50, national convener of the Safai Karmachari Andolan, is a campaigner against manual scavenging; and Krishna, 40, is a prominent exponent of Carnatic music and a public intellectual.

The two men share a commitment to free speech and equal citizenship, to addressing entrenched forms of exclusion, discrimination and violence based on caste, to democratic rights and the Indian Constitution. They come from absolutely unrelated areas of engagement, and from personal backgrounds that are far apart, but what is remarkable is how they converge in their social activism as well as their shared ability to communicate clearly and forcefully with large audiences. The Magsaysay Award jury was astute indeed in recognising the laudable public spiritedness of both Wilson and Krishna, and their common concern with the problem of caste.

The annihilation of caste

Manual scavenging — including the removal, carrying and disposal by hand of human excrement, and the physical cleaning of latrines, sewers and septic tanks, a task invariably assigned to Dalits (including men, women and children) — has been targeted for eradication since Gandhi came back to India a hundred years ago. It was the Mahatma who began to insist, in the face of tremendous resistance, that all his family members and associates, regardless of caste, class and gender, clean toilets themselves. An Act of Parliament in 1993 officially banned the employment of manual scavengers and the construction of dry latrines. And yet it continues today, perpetuating the most extreme forms of indignity and oppression, causing disease and death, reducing life expectancy, and making the occupation of thousands of Indian citizens a living hell.

Wilson has been campaigning to put an end to this abominable practice for close to thirty years. The turning point for him was around 1990-91, the birth centenary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), that brought the life and work of the great Dalit leader back into the mainstream of national consciousness and forced the government of the day to implement the Mandal Commission Report, expanding the scope of affirmative action against caste-based social inequality. How can India proceed with its ambitious economic and political agendas for growth, change and prosperity, Wilson asks, when such an archaic form of caste discrimination, a kind of slavery and a form of torture, continues to exist and to ruin countless Dalit lives?

Krishna comes at caste from the direction of the arts, particularly Carnatic music, for almost a century now the preserve of elite urban Brahmin men — whether as composers, singers, musicians, accompanists or listeners — in Chennai and other artistic capitals of southern India. He has been arguing that what is now considered Carnatic classical music and what is now called Bharatanatyam classical dance were both originally the provenance of women, especially temple dancers and courtesans, and of non-Brahmin “holding communities” like the Isai Vellalars. These groups were sidelined and their art forms taken over by socially dominant Brahmin practitioners and patrons, who cleansed the music and dance of their vernacular, erotic, demotic and popular character, and reinvented them as classical, religious, refined and urbane. The temple courtyard and the noisy village square gave way to the kutcheri and the sophisticated concert hall as performance spaces, which closed their doors to ordinary people.

In 2015 Krishna announced his decision to stop performing in the December concert season — in the Tamil month of Margazhi — of Chennai, even though he has been the star of this vaunted annual cultural event from a young age. He now organises a new winter-time music festival in the small fishing village of Urur-Olcott Kuppam in Chennai, teaches music and performs free concerts at corporation schools, trains girls and women in Carnatic vocal and instrumental music, and extends the ambit of his pedagogic outreach to tribal, rural and marginalised communities. He has also expanded the repertoire of music that he himself sings, including modern Hindustani and Bengali forms. Most recently he has made joint appearances with the Jogappas, a transgender community of devotional folk performers, associated with the goddess Yellamma, from northern Karnataka and contiguous parts of the Deccan (Andhra and Maharashtra), unimaginable in the hallowed halls of classical music for the Carnatic orthodoxy.

Self-purification and self-respect

Krishna and Wilson — together, as a pair — remind one of the late D.R. Nagaraj’s insightful formulation of “self-purification” and “self-respect” as the two modalities of a moral resistance to caste, especially untouchability, flowing from Gandhi and Ambedkar, respectively. According to Nagaraj, the caste Hindu and especially the Brahmin self must purify or purge itself of its impulse to exclude or hurt the untouchable, while the Dalit self must assert its intrinsic worth and inalienable dignity even in the face of relentless discrimination.

Krishna, constantly aware of and critical about his own birth, training, conditioning and privilege, has been advocating strenuously that Carnatic music “de-Brahminise” itself, undertake some “social re-engineering” as an act of self-purification to render itself less unequal and more inclusive. The arts are after all a microcosm of society, reflecting and even amplifying its inequalities. Wilson meanwhile states unequivocally that if the Constitution guarantees the self-respect of Dalits, then an abhorrent demeaning practice like manual scavenging simply cannot be allowed to persist in today’s India.

But what is more striking than this obvious dialectic of self-purification and self-respect, which can be traced back to Gandhian and Ambedkarite stances on caste, is how both Krishna and Wilson in their own ways struggle to actualise what Ambedkar called “social endosmosis”. This is the natural flow and exchange of ideas, values, practices, knowledge and energies between and across groups that Ambedkar lamented could not occur in the rigidly stratified and segregated Hindu social order. The traditional caste system controls social reproduction through strict endogamy, and places nearly insurmountable taboos on cohabitation, commensality and other forms of conviviality and commerce between different castes.

Ambedkar and ‘social endosmosis’

Untouchability may have been outlawed through Article 17 of the Indian Constitution, but that is only the most extreme way to keep human beings and fellow citizens apart. In fact, Indians of different castes even today seldom eat together, live together, inter-marry or in other ways participate in each other’s life-worlds across the invisible yet impenetrable barriers of caste. As Krishna has shown, in a manner that is all the more effective for being so blunt, we can’t even sing together, an indicator of how little we hear the speech, the pain, the yearnings, the silences of others.

No aspect of life in India from the exalted heavens of the classical arts to the most mundane pits of bodily waste can escape the totalitarian structure of caste: this was Ambedkar’s rage against varnaashramadharma, the total society. From music to excreta, everything is segregated, violating the basic principle of equal citizenship. Having Krishna and Wilson come together on a common platform exemplifies what Nagaraj characterised as the necessity for modern Indians to address, simultaneously, “the beauty and the horror” of caste. “My journey began from the question of beauty,” Krishna said. “What is beauty?” For a moment this seems like a strange way to begin thinking about the cultural politics of Carnatic music, or indeed any other art form, but it turns out to be an enormously productive line of inquiry. As Wilson points out, an equal society is the most beautiful thing that human beings could make.

Why can’t scientists, planners and bureaucrats come up with a way to end forever the scourge of manual scavenging, Wilson demands, not just a moral and political alternative but a technological and policy solution? Krishna’s path has been more challenging to interpret as a radical move in the politics of aesthetics. In systematically educating himself and us about the actual historical origins and forgotten trajectories of Carnatic music; in abandoning the highest prosceniums for unexplored spaces and unexpected audiences; in opening himself to the sounds and rhythms of every kind of community populating the hum and hubbub of India; in learning to listen and unlearning how he was taught to sing, he has indisputably transformed himself as an artiste.

Articulate to a fault, Krishna reflects, writes, lectures and teaches continuously about what he is doing. But even if he were not to talk about it explicitly, any sensitive listener can hear in Krishna’s voice as it continues to evolve, over the past couple of years especially, a note of compassion, empathy and sweetness that deepens immeasurably the musical experience for singer and audience alike. This is not just amazing virtuosity, which he has had from the very beginning. It is, rather, the sound of virtue itself, the profoundly moving melody of an ethical music. Is there only suffering for the Dalit condemned to manual scavenging, Wilson was asked. “The fight for justice is itself the greatest happiness,” he answered.

Ananya Vajpeyi is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi.

Source: The Hindu, 24-12-2016

A new idiom of Dalit assertion

There’s a new turn in Dalit politics that entails taking charge of affairs in their own hands, and a widening of the terrain of struggle rather than restricting it to political power or religious conversion.

There is a new swing in Dalit politics today. Its signs are palpable in the way Dalits have reacted to atrocities on them, the modes of struggles devised, the kind of alliances forged, and the nodal concepts and norms invoked for action. While old ways of doing Dalit politics — paternalism, quotas, sub-caste appeal, conversion, bahujan (including sarvajan) — are still around, more in a client-patron mode, Dalits are increasingly taking charge of affairs in their own hands.

A few features of this turn are noteworthy: caste is back into reckoning; the use of social media to network and communicate has proliferated; Left politics and its limitations are under scrutiny; Babasaheb Ambedkar has reinforced his presence as the flagpole; there is a highly literate Dalit leadership deeply aware of historical injustice and electorally decisive numbers in support; a thick notion of Brahmanism is highlighted as the enemy; a search for a new civil society-state axis is on; and a new body of concepts and slogans are being deployed as the battle cry. Dalits have begun to dig deep into layers and layers of folklore and alternative nationalist imagery to forge skilful use of signs, symbols and representations.

While one can say that all these features were part of the Dalit movement at one time or the other, it is their combinatory which is proving itself lethal. Above all, this stir is situating itself on the terrain of India’s distinct democratic politics, employing its resources as much as possible. There is no single political party at the head of this movement although many political parties will have much at stake in it.

Reaction to atrocities   The continuing, large-scale and disdainfully executed atrocities on Dalits were largely confined to police records and the bulky records of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes for long. But incidents such as a suicide note by a research scholar, Rohith Vemula, that stated, “My birth is my fatal accident”, has connected all of them and much more to the social fact of caste: his suicide is seen as a witness to the squeezing out of the life of millions of youth — bright, daring, and with dreams to reach out to the sky — on account of caste and all it means in context. Dalits increasingly feel that the opportunity to access the legal and institutional resources of a democratic polity has gone hand in hand with relocating them into a caste grid, consigning all their effort, again in Vemula’s words, to “immediate identity and nearest possibility”. Their life prospects are much inferior to those of its other beneficiaries. This sense of ‘unfair inclusion’ connects them to the vast numbers in the Indian subcontinent who are kept, in Ambedkar’s cryptic phrase, “outside the fold”.

 The denial of access to equal opportunities and rewards is not merely economic but ways of life, and abilities to define one’s own and collective futures. Such a state of affairs may not be played out in the open but built into the common sense of everyday life. Therefore, in all sectors, even in public enterprises, Dalits tend to crowd those levels that are insignificant, prone to routine and imitation rather than inventive and decision-making. In institutions of higher learning Dalits crowd social sciences and humanities that are endowed with very little institutional outlay or vision, and can generate very few sought-after jobs or opportunities.

The effect of land reforms and agrarian transformation — while reinforcing the hold of landed castes and communities in the countryside — has pushed Dalits and social segments akin to them further to the margins. There is a new enslavement and recrudescence of gradation and ranking at the workplace rather than enablement and camaraderie.

The Hindutva agenda of inviting all Hindus to the banquet table but assigning lower castes to their predestined places has further exacerbated the sense of being unwanted. ‘The fatal accident of birth’ connects all the sites that have witnessed Dalit upsurge in recent days, from Tughlakabad to Una, from Hyderabad to Udupi. But it also runs through the distinction between skilled and unskilled, organised and informal, rural and urban, and male and female labour. This cleavage also links much subtler forms of exclusion and relative marginalisation to more cruder forms of atrocities.

Modes of struggle   The social relations in which Dalits are caught calls upon them to struggle not merely against external dominance, be it capital, caste or power, but also against denial of their very humanity. The latter forms of struggle are pitted against subtler forms of human degradation and enslavement of one’s very self.

The new turn in Dalit politics is precisely calling for a widening of the terrain of struggle rather than merely restricting it to political power or religious conversion. Given this task, there are new instrumentalities in place in Dalit struggles: the social media does not become merely a site to network, but also to inform, to criticise, to assess as well as redefine concerns. In fact the social media has emerged today as the backbone of the new Dalit awakening as could be seen in the solidarity movement with Rohith Vemula across the country, in ‘Azadi Koon’ (March for Freedom) from Ahmedabad to Una in Gujarat, or the ‘Udupi Chalo’ walk that brought thousands of Dalits from different parts of Karnataka to the temple town, Udupi.

The great marches and rallies winding across distant villages and small towns and uniting people around a set of core demands are connecting people physically and emotionally. There are slogans asserting pride in being a Dalit, with a sub-caste enumeration as an add-on, not infrequently. There is a resurgence of folklore, sites of atrocities have become places of pilgrimage, traditional musical instruments of Dalits have thrown up fusion with rhythmic dances of great power and poise, and broadsheets, songs and street plays, evocative posters and imaginative slogans challenge dominant perception and sensitivity. Women and men are found shoulder to shoulder with one another in this ‘long march’, something that the late Sharmila Rege portrayed in her writings. Ambedkar makes a rich and exemplary presence across such performances, and there is almost none beside him in stature. Today, sites of Dalit rallies are crowded with a rich display of books and publications, a widespread practice in Left rallies of yore.

Hitherto, cleavages between Dalits and backward castes, Dalits and Muslims, and the gender divide have come in the way of optimising the democratic dividend from their overwhelming numbers. The decisive support of Dalits to the backward castes in the Mandal agitation did not beget enduring political alliances. The Dalit and Muslim alliance never took off the ground at any time in right earnest. And, less said the better with regard to the alliance between backward castes and women. In recent years, faced with Hindu consolidation under the aegis of Hindutva, the targeting of Dalits and Muslims by the cow-brigades or Gau Rakshak Dals, the growth in civil society surveillance and moral policing, and the relative marginality of these groups in the market, there is a growing realisation among sections of them that they need to politically draw closer.

The slogans that resound in the Dalit movement today indicate such a thaw: The banners read, and slogans echo: ‘choice of food’, ‘right to land’, ‘Swabhiman’ and ‘Atmabhiman’ (self-respect), ‘Azadi’ (freedom) and ‘dignity’. They pronounce death knell to historic oppression, and freedom to define their own self-hood. Dalits also proudly announce the equality of women and their right to choose the kind of life they wish to live and denounce the surveillance of Hindutva brigades on them. The dragging out of Mohammad Akhlaq from his house and his killing by a local Hindu mob on the charge of storing beef at his house in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, has become an important issue in Dalit struggles, woven around the right to food. As a result, we find the bonding together of a large number of associations of these groups and communities.

Nodal concepts and norms   The registry of norms that are invoked by the current Dalit movement to explain and justify its objectives and actions has much to distinguish it from its earlier expressions. It is increasingly human dignity and worth, and the capacity to be what one can be, that occupy the high ground. The reduction of freedom to one’s birthmarks, and the social structures, institutions, prejudices and interactions that sustain such a state of affairs are seen as new forms of enslavement. A patch of land of one’s own, a home where one can live on one’s own terms, not to be condemned to certain occupations, or be treated as low and defiled stir Dalit imagination today as never before.

The term Brahmanism that Dalits have employed to rally against a specific mode of dominance from the time of Jyotirao Phule and Iyothee Thass has acquired new connotations of sustaining a social order based on graded inequality, servility and deference, and self-aggrandisement at the expense of misery and inhumanity meted out to others. India’s so-called modern and democratic institutions are increasingly perceived as sustaining a Brahmanical dispensation. The central concerns of Muslims, women and backward castes are perceived as being consonant with these concepts and norms.

What electoral dividends this new sensitivity will bring at the hustings or in foisting party alliances is difficult to anticipate at present. The new Dalit politics feels that it holds the key to some of these concerns and strivings. While there is much that unites the social groups and communities enumerated above, there is much that divides them too. Bridges connecting these divides are yet to be built. Dalits are yet to reach out to Adivasis in a meaningful way.

Valerian Rodrigues is formerly Professor at Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and currently National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research.

Source: The Hindu, 19-11-2016