In praise of Ambedkar and the Buddha

Jay Bhim se, jay Bhim se / Meri duniya jay Bhim se 
Jay Bhim se, jay Bhim se / Meri khushiya jay Bhim se 
Koi nahi tha mere liye / Unhone apna jeevan tyag diya 
Aandhi tufano se ladte rahe / Mujhe apne pairo pe khada kiya

(Long live Bhim [Rao Ambedkar], long live Bhim / He is my whole world

Long live Bhim, long live Bhim / He is my happiness

When there was no one for me / He sacrificed his life

He battled every storm / To help me stand on my feet)

That’s from the song, ‘Jay Bhim se’, the most popular number by Navi Mumbai-based Dalit rock band Dhamma Wings. (The Pali word ‘dhamma’ means to imbibe a quality -- equality, in this case).

“We don’t want to rewrite the page. We want a fresh page,” says lead singer Kabeer Shakya, 28. “We want to connect with the younger generation because youngsters are more open to change.”

The six-year-old band has four other members -- Srijit Banerjee (keyboards, 27), Rahul Kamble (bass guitar, 32), Rohan Zodge (rhythm guitar, 24) and Swapnil More (drums, 27) -- all of whom make a living teaching music.

They sing songs based on the teachings of the Buddha and Dalit icon BR Ambedkar, preaching equality, brotherhood and peace in Hindi, English and Marathi.

“Our mission is to end caste discrimination, and highlight other social issues such as unemployment and drought along the way,” says More. “We use songs because music delivers a message faster.”

The band has performed in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and in areas such as rural Aurangabad and Yavatmal, where casteism is more prominent.

They also have good online presence, with thousands of followers across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. ‘Jay Bhim se’ has had more than 50,000 views on YouTube.

The idea of starting a band struck Kabeer in 2010. Inspired by the philosophy of the Buddha, he was living as a monk in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, just after graduation. At the end of his three-month experiment, he decided to dedicate at least part of his time to spreading the Buddha’s teachings.

On his return to Navi Mumbai, he began performing solo at events. At the same time, he also started an IT services company with four partners. Nine months on, Kabeer realised music was his true calling and quit the company. He met More while performing at a tribute to Ambedkar. More introduced him to the others and the band was born.

“It’s changed my life completely. I earn about as much as I used to from my IT company, but this gives me so much more satisfaction,” says Kabeer. “I feel like I’m contributing to society.”

Even if youngsters start to think about change, the effort will have paid off, he adds. “Recently, we performed at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai and over 200 students cheered for us all through,” Kabeer says. “Our music is making a difference.”

Source: Hindustan Times, 23-10-2016

A story to two caste struggles

The Dalit fighting for rights still upholds the universality of citizenship. The dominant castes insisting on consolidating their privileges reduce democracy to the worst kind of parochial politics.

Politics cannot be studied as a mere set of facts as if they are little nuggets to be polished and examined on their own. Politics needs frameworks which provide ways for interpretation and understanding. One senses the need for this when one watches the sudden explosion of upper caste agitations. An ethnography of these demonstrations alone is not enough. One has to see them as statements of values, of the manner in which democracy is seen and assessed. One can see three visions of democracy contesting and overlapping with each other.

A politics of anxiety

The early socialist vision saw democracy as a place where rights to quality were worked out, where the marginal and minority groups used the democratic process to be empowered as citizens. Such a vision is captured in the careers of B.R. Ambedkar and Ram Manohar Lohia. The second kind of vision inaugurated after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power was a majoritarian vision, where electoralism was a consolidation of numbers. The transition from democracy as a value to a fact of demography becomes obvious here. There is a third kind of contest emerging where democracy, like the market, becomes a competitive game, where right loses to might and democracy becomes a fragile Hobbesian word.

Here the battle is not for justice to the downtrodden but a search for consolidation and privilege. Quotas and reservation no longer embody a search for justice, but an interest group politics where the powerful seek to accumulate more power. There is a mirror inversion of concepts like justice, victimhood, fairness as these same concepts are used by higher castes in a new “Alice in Wonderland” way, where they insist words mean what they say.

There is a politics of anxiety played out by the upper class who see democracy not as a framework of universal values but as a basis for consolidating a parochial world. The contrast is stark between a Dalit or tribal battling for rights and the demands of upper castes such as Patels, Jats and Marathas. The logic of the scripts and the nature of political dramas is radically different. First, the Dalits’ protests for rights have the character of an appeal. They are seeking to go beyond deprivation. The upper caste protests convey a sense of threat, of aggression and violence. For Dalits, democracy is a value; for upper castes it appears relevant as long as it sustains them instrumentally in power. If democracy does not work, it can be discarded like an old piece of tissue or a rag.

The body languages of the two dramas are different. One acts as a shareholder threatening to sell his shares or dismiss the directors if the firm fails to show profit. The marginals speak the language of suffering, deprivation and pain. The dominant castes utter the language of privilege, of consolidation. Rights meet a mentality of consolidation. One creates a politics of consensus, protest and persuasion, the other engages in a game of threat, preferring democracy as a zero-sum game. The Dalit fighting for rights still upholds the universality of citizenship. The dominant castes insisting on consolidating their privileges reduce democracy to the worst kind of parochial politics, a bullyboy spectacle which makes democracy appear empty and ironic. One sees this drama enacted with ruthless clarity in the recent protest of Marathas.

Their political script is simple. On Sunday, September 11, lakhs of Marathas poured out into the streets of Pune, paralysing the city. They had two demands. The first was a demand to repeal the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and the second a demand for a greater share in the reservation. The power of the Maratha groups is seen not only in their hold on the city but also in the indirect endorsement of Sharad Pawar, the Maratha leader, and Raj Thackeray, chief of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. An endorsement of the two leading godfathers of Maharashtra speaks of the sheer power of the community.

And of atrocity

Central to the first of the demands is what one calls the politics of atrocity. Critical to this is a categorical act of denial of caste atrocity. The scenario of violence is typical and predictable. A Dalit youth is usually stoned or lynched on grounds of suspicion. His alleged crime is an illicit relationship with an upper class/caste girl. When investigated, the allegations hide deeper conflicts over grazing land. Such Gairanland often cultivated by landless Dalits has now been regularised by the Maharashtra government.

The upper castes feel the Atrocities Act is often misused and want it repealed. Yet what few talk about is a stranger legal battle where upper castes in turn file counter-cases of robbery and dacoity embroiling Dalits in the entrails of law. What is clear in discussions about these battles is that there is little respect for the rule of law. By turning the question of atrocity into a law and order problem, Marathas hope to get the Act repealed.

There is a strange reversal of victimology with upper castes almost amnesiac about their own atrocities and vigilantism. They are demanding justice for a 14-year-old girl who was raped and killed allegedly by three Dalit youths. It is almost as if history is inverted and the roster of atrocities against Dalits forgotten.

A misleading silence

The second demand is that Marathas as a caste community be brought under the reservation category. It is almost bizarre to watch a dominant community with roughly 33 per cent of the population — and which has electorally dominated State politics, virtually controlled the powerful cooperative movement — now play helpless and vulnerable, demanding reservation. As a wag put it, they are demonstrating a politics of anxiety about their various fiefdoms, signalling a future decline in power. The electoral frame which they dominated almost zero-sum style is now fragmenting as Other Backward Classes and Dalits enter the power game. It is an attempt to buy insurance for the future realising full well that the current quotas are a bit inelastic and that the Supreme Court has not looked kindly at their demands.

Currently the protests involve a series of silent marches as a statement of their problems. But the silence is misleading. What one senses behind it is the need to use violence to reassert power. One senses that a dominant caste community which feels threatened acts as if it is far more vulnerable than the communities it has exploited. There is a double danger here. First, that the silence so far is staged and temporary. Second, it is clear that what is being signalled is the possibility of violence as dominant groups which lorded over electoral democracy now feel threatened. It is not rights one is worried about but the very fabric of democracy. An electoralism which tends to go beyond the constitutional rules of the game negates democracy.

Such an attitude is not peculiar to the Maratha struggle. A contempt for law and order, the threat of violence and the rise of violence have marked all these dominant caste battles. The horrendous violence inflicted by Jats on other communities and on property was the hallmark of the recent struggles for reservation in Haryana. The second factor which has not been fully investigated or publicised is the full involvement and connivance of the local police in the agitation. It is almost as if law and order and justice are the preserve of dominant castes. Democracy as an aberration cannot or should not alter the dominant structures of power radically.

Between the appeals and protests of Dalits and tribals and the arrogant demands for continued dominance lies the new problematic form of democracy in India. Democracy as a way of life is threatened by electoral democracy as a rule game. First, majoritarianism threatens the pluralism of Indian democracy. Second, dominance of castes in the system threatens any hope for rights, for a more equalitarian system. The challenge of the future lies in how democracy reinvents itself to handle these two contradictions. Otherwise, India faces the final irony — that of democracy as a mechanism quietly corroding the institutional values of democracy as a value system.

Shiv Visvanathan is Director, Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems, O.P. Jindal Global University.

Keywords: Maratha community, two caste struggle, Dalit rights, upper caste agitations

Source: The Hindu, 28-09-2016

Pushback against civil liberties

The sense of impunity that drives discrimination against Dalits is at the heart of recent demands for the dilution, or even repeal, of the Act for prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs

It is the sense of impunity nurtured by caste hierarchy that prepares the social ground for the “shockingly cruel and inhumane” crimes against Dalits called atrocities. It is this impunity that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes(Prevention of Atrocities) Act (henceforth PoAA) criminalises. And it is the desire to defend the same impunity that motivates recent demands for the dilution or even repeal of the PoAA. To examine the validity of these claims, we must first understand the very different relationships that caste has with the Constitution, society, and state.

Caste and the Constitution

The Constitution is a portrait of the nation as it would like to be rather than as it actually is. Therefore, it is obliged to regard aspirations as achievements, uncertain journeys as assured arrivals. Beginning with the Preamble, where it presumes that “we, the people” are indeed a unified and homogenous collectivity, the Constitution proceeds to treat hoped-for outcomes as though they were established facts. This is not a defect — the Constitution is required to reflect the republic in the best possible light, and is at its most majestic when doing so. However, this also means that the Constitution is unable to directly confront obstinate realities like caste that flout its fundamental tenets, because acknowledging caste amounts to confessing that the republic is more desire than reality.

So, when the Constitution is forced to deal with caste, it does so with an averted face, allowing it only an inferential, shadow-like presence. But it also manages to be obliquely eloquent about what it cannot face. For example, caste makes its first entry in Article 15 rather anonymously, as one among many sources of discrimination. But this is compensated by Sections 2(a) and 2(b) which prohibit discriminatory restriction of access to (respectively) “shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment” and “wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort…”. Why is it necessary to explicitly prohibit discrimination in access to both modern and traditional facilities already declared to be for the public? Or take Article 17, which abruptly announces that “Untouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. What does this capitalised word stand for and why must it be quarantined in quotes? The answer, of course, is caste, which is an absent presence in the Constitution, addressed only as an exceptional or special circumstance.

Discrimination as dominance

The PoAA, 1989, and its older sibling, the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, are “special laws” located at the strategic sites where the Constitution’s default setting of caste-blind formal equality must be changed to address the reality of substantive inequality. All citizens are not equally at risk of being subjected to the acts specified in the sub-sections of Section 3(1) of the PoAA, such as being forced to “drink or eat any inedible or obnoxious substance” (i); have “excreta, waste matter, carcasses or any other obnoxious substance” dumped in their premises or neighbourhood (ii); or being paraded “naked or with painted face or body” (iii), and so on. If there exist specific groups of citizens who have repeatedly suffered such gross violations of the fundamental right to dignity, then surely the republic owes them the protection of special laws like the PoAA.

But why do such groups exist in the first place? They exist because of the social relations promoted by caste. The atrocities that invite interventions such as the PoAA are made possible by caste society’s ability to sustain specific types of relationships, or mutually oriented attitudes and conditions. On the one hand, Dalit castes are forcibly invested with an enduring social vulnerability vis-à-vis castes higher up in the hierarchy, especially those dominant within a region. On the other hand, dominant castes are allowed to acquire, and to eventually take for granted, a socially sanctioned sense of impunity with respect to Dalit castes. When the dominant caste feels it has little prospect of economic and social mobility, its self-esteem and identity become increasingly dependent on the unequal relationships it maintains with subordinated castes. In such situations, the Dalit-dominant caste relationship turns into a zero-sum game where any real or imagined improvement in the lives of Dalits is seen as a reduction in the social distance separating the two groups, thereby implying a decline in the status of the dominant castes.

The caste-state relationship

The state is simultaneously the child of law and society as well as the mediating link between the two. Because of its idealistic orientation, the Constitution — mother of all laws — is external to society and has a largely exhortatory relationship to it. The state depends on the Constitution for its legitimacy, but the Constitution also depends on the state for the actualisation of its ideals. Since it is regulated by politics which in turn is rooted in society, and since its personnel are themselves members of society who embody the prevalent social prejudices, the state is strongly influenced by society. But because it is institutionally bound to obey the Constitution, the state cannot always be guided by the dominant social prejudices of the day; rather, it must at least occasionally rise above these prejudices to perform its constitutional duty. In sum, the caste-state relationship is necessarily ambiguous because the state is itself a differentiated and plural (rather than homogenous or monolithic) entity, capable of acting in a wide variety of ways with respect to caste.

Returning now to the demands for restraining or removing the PoAA, we can begin to decipher what is happening. Both in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, the two States where it has been voiced, the demand is coming from political parties representing regionally dominant castes. Both States have seen the emergence (or re-emergence) of Dalit assertion following some upward mobility. This has enraged the dominant castes, leading them to argue that the PoAA is being “misused”. The misuse argument is so popular that it can be called a syndrome, or “a characteristic combination of opinions, emotions or behaviour”. It has been used against every special scheme or law intended to empower vulnerable groups, including reservations, laws against dowry, sexual harassment and rape, and even theMahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In each case, it is alleged that the “genuinely deserving” never benefit and that the “vast majority” of cases are fake.

Underdogs and predators 

Since any law can be “misused”, it is not the potential for misuse but its actual occurrence and frequency that matter, and this needs to be established through credible evidence. No such evidence-based claims have been made as yet. On the contrary, reports from activist groups show that it is hard for ordinary Dalits to get cases registered, and extremely difficult to get them placed under the PoAA. But to be fair, the misuse argument is not always meant to be taken literally; it also acts as proxy for the more general perception that Dalits are no longer underdogs and may be turning into predators. This impression is confirmed when we recall that the Pattali Makkal Katchi leader, Dr. S. Ramadoss, reinforced his demand for dilution of the PoAA with the allegation that Dalit boys were luring non-Dalit girls by wearing “jeans, T-shirts and fancy sunglasses” (The Hindu, December 3, 2012). In Maharashtra, recent calls for reviewing the PoAA issued by the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party have intensified after the rape-murder of July 13 in Kopardi (Ahmednagar district) in which the victim is dominant caste and the accused are Dalits.

While there is no reason to doubt that Dalits, like any other caste group, could become efficient oppressors if given the chance, the obvious question is if they are in fact getting the chance. Going by the nationwide evidence on the frequency of atrocities on Dalits, the shoe still seems to be firmly on the other foot. Ahmednagar district alone has witnessed three atrocities on Dalits in the past three years (Sonai, Kharda and Javkheda). Meanwhile, as the first anniversary of the Dadri lynching approaches, let us also spare a thought for vulnerable groups who do not have, and will probably never have, the constitutional protection of special laws.

Satish Deshpande teaches sociology at Delhi University.

Keywords: Crime agaiinst Dalits, SCs, STs, 

Source: The Hindu, 24-09-2016

Dalit capitalism’s moment has arrived

When Dalits in prosperous states start agitating against occupations such as clearing garbage and tanning, India’s mask of social harmony starts to slip. Dalits facing physical violence are speaking up, as with a young Dalit boy attacked recently in Bhavra village, 40 km from Ahmedabad, because his family had decided to boycott the work of lifting dead carcasses. They are increasingly asking for basic rights — the right to land, the right to public goods and spaces like water and temples, and the right to social acceptance. Other Dalits in Saharanpur’s Usand village in Uttar Pradesh have taken to sleeping in the forest, given the concerns about physical safety. Municipal corporations around India are suddenly starting to run out of willing Dalit workers to sweep the floors and remove carcasses. Social justice, an age-old topic, is the new third rail.At an individual level, Dalits continue to remain significantly poorer than other social classes — 36% of the rural Dalits are classified as poor while just 13% of the SC men are engaged in regular salaried work, despite public-sector affirmative programmes.

The government can help nudge social behaviour and institutions to encourage Dalit empowerment. Consider education. According to the 11th Five-Year Plan, dropout rates continue to be high — 74% of the Dalit boys and 71% of the Dalit girls usually drop out of primary and secondary school.

Incentive schemes, such as free textbooks or free hostel accommodation in universities for students from underprivileged households, can go a long way in overcoming the barriers of poverty and discrimination. Offering such students access to the minimum facilities (a bed, a table, a chair, etc) can help make education more inclusive and incentive-focused.There are only a few Dalit entrepreneurs in India, with most Dalits still employed in their traditional occupations. Such individuals would also lack access to social enablers — only 12% of the Dalit households have access to 2-3 contacts in the formal sector, compared to 26% amongst the forward castes. Given the discrimination, a history of landlessness, social pressure and little, if any, relevant sub-caste networks, Dalit businesses are few and far between.

Enabling the launch of more social impact funds focused on Dalit entrepreneurs (e.g.: Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry) can help solve financing issues, with a special focus on fiscal incentives and infrastructure support.

The growth of grassroots cooperatives/institutions for developing traditional crafts presents a solution. The Urmul Marusthali Bunkar Vikas (UMBV) has provided 120 Dalit weavers of the Meghwal community with sustainable livelihood through their traditional crafts, stopping migration and keeping local skills alive.

We need to make it easier for Dalit businesses to flourish. The Dalit presence in businesses has stagnated — 9.9% in 1990 and 9.8% in 2005. Since 1989, the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation has disbursed an average of $484 per borrower to over 900,000 Dalits. The empowerment of small and medium enterprises, through incentives for struggling entrepreneurs, remains the right way to bolster SC/ST entrepreneurship. An expansion of the Public Procurement Policy’s mandate of 20% from SME businesses, as part of the Stand Up India campaign, could bolster Dalit suppliers. Dalit capitalism’s moment has arrived.

Fair land distribution corrects unequal social constructs and power equations by providing equal access to productive economic units. Land reforms (tenancy, land ceiling, consolidation of holdings and intermediary abolition) have produced mixed results, especially where land distributed remains on ‘paper’ — land distributed is not land owned for many Dalits. Physical occupation of lands needs to be ensured, through social audits at the gram sabha level, under the guidance of a Special Expert Committee under the SC Commission, supported through awareness generation through camps.

We need to recognise the need for land reform as well to induce equity for Dalits in agriculture. The government of Andhra Pradesh has launched a crash programme since 1969 to assign government waste land to the landless poor people, particularly the Dalits. Over 113,972 acres was distributed to 43,000 beneficiaries under the Bhoodanland programme.

Our society is marching from feudalism to post-modernism, in less than a generation; and yet outdated attitudes remain. While the media continues to highlight the plight of the Dalits, one must stand vigilant against reducing such livelihood issues to a by-line. We’ve spent the last half-century pitting our castes against each other, in politics and in the job market. Leaving such islands of inequity, in India’s journey towards development will only give rise to social turmoil. For Dalits, equity and social acceptance must go hand in hand.

Source: Hindustan Times, 29-08-2016

U.P., Bihar lead in crimes against Dalits

Data from Gujarat show such atrocities impossibly make up 163% of the total number of crimes.

Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar lead the country in the number of cases registered of crimes against the Scheduled Castes, official data pertaining to 2013, 2014 and 2015 show.

The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) counts these States among those deserving special attention.

While U.P. has witnessed a political war of words over an expelled BJP leader's insulting remarks on BSP leader Mayawati, it is Rajasthan that leads in number of crimes against Dalits.

Fifty-two to 65 per cent of all crimes in Rajasthan have a Dalit as the victim. This is despite the fact that the State's SC (Dalit) population is just 17.8 per cent of its total population. With six per cent of India's Dalit population, the State accounts for up to 17 per cent of the crimes against them across India.

With 20 per cent of India's Dalit population, U.P. accounts for 17 per cent of the crimes against them. The numbers — ranging from 7078 to 8946 from 2013 to 2015 — are high, but so is the population of Dalits in the State.

Bihar too has a poor track record, with 6721 to 7893 cases of atrocities in the same period, contributing 16-17 per cent of the all India crimes against Dalits with just eight per cent of the country's SC population. While Dalits form 15.9 per cent of the State’s population, 40-47 per cent of all crimes registered there are against Dalits.

Gujarat corrects figures

Gujarat on its part has shared corrected figures of crimes against Dalits with the NCSC after an abnormal increase in the figures pertaining to crimes against Dalits in the State.

“The anamoly and sudden increase in respect to Gujarat and Chhattisgarh are abnormal and are being highlighted so that these States can provide actual data in case there was a mistake in reporting,” said the agenda note for the NCSC review meeting with the States last week.

Gujarat's numbers of crimes against Dalits had jumped to 6655 in 2015 from 1130 in 2014, which made NCSC officials suspicious. There was also a statistical impossibility in the data — the crimes against Dalits were 163 per cent of the total number of crimes reported.

“Gujarat officials corrected the data in the meeting, and these are like previous years,” an official present at the meet said. “Chhattisgarh officials have done the same.”

Gujarat's officials, sources said, were worried that “inflated” data would further damage the State's record on Dalit atrocities when at a time it is in the eye of storm over the Una incident of public beating of Dalits and the subsequent suicide attempts by Dalits in the state.

In an attempt at damage control, the Gujarat government has also released figures claiming crimes against Dalits in the State have “gone down” under the BJP. The corrected figure for 2015 in this data set is 1052, which is lower than figure for 2014.

The data also claim that while there were on an average 1669 crimes against Dalits per year in the State from 1991 to 2000, the number declined to 1098 between 2011 and 2015.

Atrocities

So far as the atrocities reported to the NCSC by Dalits who feel the authorities are not giving them justice are concerned, U.P. accounts for the highest number at 2024 cases and Tamil Nadu comes next at 999 cases.

“This could mean both laxity of the authorities and greater consciousness of rights among Dalits,” an NCSC official said. (With inputs from Nistula Hebbar)

Source: The Hindu, 25-07-2016

Caste atrocities and political abdication

The murder of a 22-year-old Dalit man at Udumalpet in western Tamil Nadu has brought to the fore the worst aspects of today’s Tamil society: the resurgence of caste pride, a shameless disregard for individual rights when they are in conflict with the hegemonic order, and an anachronistic belief in the notion of caste purity and pollution. That a group of mercenaries could casually surround V. Shankar and his 19-year-old wife Kausalya, and brutally slay one of them and leave the other seriously wounded on the edge of a busy road does not merely indicate a lack of fear of the law. It demonstrates a disquieting confidence that no one would dare challenge or pursue them. Often characterised as ‘honour killings’ because their motivation arises from the idea that a woman marrying outside her community brings dishonour to the family, such murders in India normally involve family members rendering brutal ‘justice’ to the ‘transgressor’ within. In recent years, it appears to work in a different way in Tamil Nadu. In such murders, the victims are often Dalits, for daring to transgress social mores to marry someone deemed to be above their station in life. Thus, E. Ilavarasan, a Dalit youth whose marriage to a Vanniyar woman led to caste riots in November 2012 and whose body was found on a railway track in July 2013, and Gokulraj, another Dalit youth murdered for talking to a Gounder girl last year, were clearly victims of caste atrocities.

In the case of Shankar, too, the emphasis seemed to be mainly on wreaking vengeance against a Dalit man; though the element of punishing the family member too was present, as Ms. Kausalya was also attacked with long knives and remains in hospital. Whether in alleged defence of imaginary family honour or as a strike against Dalit assertion, such murders have become disturbingly frequent. The regrettable part of the entire episode is that major political parties tend to condemn such murders only in general terms, and avoid any mention of the role of dominant castes. Seldom do they confront the arrogance of some castes that enjoy political patronage and operate as enforcers of norms in some regions, especially targeting Dalits. Caste groups have become powerful political lobbies. Caste associations attract young and educated members of the community. Shockingly, Shankar’s murderers drew fulsome praise on social media from committed caste adherents. There is a shallow debate over whether present-day caste consciousness indicates the failure of the Dravidian social reform movement in Tamil Nadu. It is futile to blame social reformers who fought for caste-based reservations when it is the political leadership of recent years that has given credence and credibility to caste icons. Tamil society, which prides itself on its cultural moorings, needs to look inwards. Freedom to choose who to love has been seen to be a distinguishing sign of progressive societies. That it can be denied in this day and age is a disgraceful commentary on our times.

Keywords: honour killings, Dalit youth killing, caste atrocities, political abdication, murder of Dalit youth

Source: The Hindu, 17-03-2016

Dalits still left out

Discrimination against Dalits is rising despite stronger laws. Attitudes of police, judiciary must change

The Dalit mobilisation that is gaining momentum in the wake of Rohith Vemula’s suicide reflects structural issues that he was well aware of. Certainly, reservations have given birth to Dalit entrepreneurs and a Dalit middle class benefiting from government jobs. But in spite of this, or because of this, anti-Dalit attitudes have been on the rise.

The number of registered cases of anti-Dalit atrocities, notoriously under-reported, jumped by 17.1 per cent in 2013 (compared to 2012) according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The increase was even more dramatic between 2013 and 2014 — 19.4 per cent. The word “atrocities” needs to be fleshed out here, otherwise it will become another bureaucratic, abstract euphemism.

The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (the PoA act), gives a list of “offences and atrocities”.

Someone is guilty of one of these “offences and atrocities” if he or she forces a Dalit or an Adivasi “to drink or eat any inedible or obnoxious substance”, “forcibly removes clothes from the person of a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe or parades him [sic] naked or with painted face or body”, dispossesses him “from his land”, compels him to do “bonded labour”, “exploits her sexually”, “corrupts or fouls the water” he or she is using, denies him or her “right of passage to a place of public resort”, forces him or her “to leave his house, village or other place of residence”, etc.

This list is surprising, not only because of its detail but also because the Constitution drafted by Ambedkar had already taken care of most of these issues. Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 23 prohibits bonded labour and Article 15(2) stipulates that no citizen should be subject to restriction with regard to access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of entertainment, the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort on the grounds of caste. In 1955, the Untouchability (Offences) Act reasserted that Dalits should not be prevented from entering any public place. Then, in 1976, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was passed. In 1989, why did a new, detailed law have to be made that listed instances of “offences and atrocities”? Because none of the previous legislation had made any difference.

The PoA Act has not made a huge impact either, as evident from the figures mentioned above. Atrocities have continued, unbearably. In October 2014, a 15-year-old boy was burnt alive by an upper-caste man in Mohanpur village (Rohtas district) because his goats had eaten his paddy crop. In June 2015, two Dalit boys were killed in an altercation because they were short of Rs 4 in a flour mill of Allahabad. In October 2015, two kids of three and eight were burnt alive in their house in Ballabgarh village (Haryana) after an argument with local Rajputs. In May this year, a 21-year-old Dalit man was killed in Shirdi (Maharashtra) because he was playing a song in praise of Ambedkar.

In parallel, Dalit women continue to be victims of violence and rape, the same way as Mahasweta Devi, who turned 90 this month, described them decades ago in her short stories.

What has been the response of the state, lately? A new law was passed. Last month, the Indian Parliament made the existing
legislation even more sophisticated. This law provides stringent action against those who sexually assault Dalits and Adivasis and occupy their land illegally; it also declares as an offence garlanding with footwear a man or a statue, compelling to dispose or carry human or animal carcasses or do manual scavenging.

Will that make any difference? Not if the police and the judiciary do not change their attitude. In spite of the fact that the PoA Act has introduced special courts for speedy trials, the conviction rate under this act has remained very low and has declined even — from 30 per cent in 2011 to 22.8 per cent in 2013 (more recent data are not available). And the percentage of “pending cases” has increased from
80 to 84 per cent.

But to have a case registered under the PoA Act is in itself a problem. On average, only one-third of the cases of atrocities are registered under the PoA Act. The police is reluctant to do so because of the severity of the penalties likely to be imposed by the act.

Many Dalits do not know their rights anyway and cannot fight a legal battle that is costly in terms of time and money. The 2011 Census offers a poignant picture of the socio-economic condition of the SCs, which explains their vulnerability. Out of the 4,42,26,917 Dalit households in India, 74 per cent live in rural areas, where the per-household land area they own on an average is less than 0.3 ha — most of them are landless. A total of 2,06,16,913 Dalit households live in one room and 1,39,24,073 in two rooms. Only 22 per cent of the Dalit households live in larger homes. And only 34 per cent of them have toilets in their premises. More than 50 per cent Dalit households use firewood as their main fuel for cooking.

The literacy rate among Dalits is rising, though. In 2011, their literacy rate crossed the 66 per cent landmark (8 percentage points below the non-SC/STs). But educated Dalits want more — to join the university system. Some of them have succeeded in doing so, but they often face frustrating experiences when they are discriminated against in the very institution that should promote social mobility. Rohith Vemula was one of them. There are many others. Take the case of Senthil Kumar from Jalakandapuram (near Salem). This son of a pig-breeder joined Hyderabad University, just like Rohith Vemula, and got a PhD scholarship in physics in 2007. But he committed suicide in 2008 — victim of the local atmosphere — after failing his exams and losing his scholarship. Today, the children of his family don’t want education — his mother even “hates education”. But can a country progress if a fifth of its population does not have full access to higher education? What kind of development (today’s key word in India) will that be?

Christophe Jaffrelot- The writer is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/ CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s India Institute, London, and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Source: Indian Express, 18-02-2016

The annihilation by caste

The controversy over whether Rohith Vemula was a Dalit or not is a red herring, a disgraceful attempt to discredit his politics.

Even as we come to terms with the death of Rohith Vemula, we are witness to the unprecedented churning that he set in motion even as he left — educating, agitating, organising in death as in life.

From all his writing and his associations, there is no doubt whatsoever that Rohith identified himself as a Dalit son of a Dalit mother; as a Dalit Ambedkarite scholar and organiser; and as a co-traveller encountering the oppressions, discrimination and exclusion experienced by his Dalit compatriots on the university campus and outside. For those uneasy with his erudition, his performance, and his total identification with the Dalit identity, there had to be some way to discredit his politics in death.

Searching for this crucial flaw was even more important because what Rohith’s treatment amounts to, resulting in his death, comes within the meaning of caste atrocity, under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and has grave implications for those named in the FIR registered after his death. Whether or not Rohith named people in his suicide note is not material at this point. What is important to consider is whether the chain of events leading to his death gives reason to presume the possibility of discrimination based on caste coming within the meaning of atrocity and leading to his death by suicide.

Read: Rohith and the real anti-nationals

Caste as the core

There is no dispute about the facts. Contrary to what Ministers Smriti Irani or Sushma Swaraj might assert, this entire issue has to do with discrimination based on caste — the struggles of the Ambedkar Students Association; Rohith’s political and personal struggles; the institutionalised discrimination that Dalit students have been subjected to at the University of Hyderabad; curricular and co-curricular neglect of the social basis of discrimination in institutions of higher education; constant and disproportionate punitive action against Dalit students; their academic neglect and isolation; the simultaneous stigmatisation of “reserved” candidates and the vilification of Dalit students like Rohith who qualify in the open category but persist in identifying themselves as Dalit; the unusual and excessive interest of the Union government in the criminalisation of Dalit student activists who organise as Dalits on campuses; and most importantly, the institutionalised humiliation of Dalits in academia. Ministerial ignorance cannot be excused.

Dalit or not?

Officers and reporters have ferreted out his father and paternal family in an overzealous attempt to roll back the demand that this is a Dalit issue. The old patriarchal argument that since his father was Vaddera, he was Vaddera, negates Dalit women’s struggles in a caste order. In this case, it obliterates the experience of struggle against bondage, violence and humiliation of two generations, Radhika Vemula and her children — their fortitude and determination to defeat the oppressions of caste at all costs. And when they are on the threshold of an unimaginable victory, we witness, yet again, annihilation by caste. An injustice compounded and bolstered by the institutional and political denial of discrimination or atrocity.

Read: The clarity of a suicide note

There is no need to labour the point about whether the actions that led to Rohith’s suicide prima facie attract the provisions of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. All that is needed at this point is to understand whether the act of suicide by a Dalit points to abetment by a non-Dalit. A complaint may be registered invoking the Act if this fact is established. If the police refuse, the court can intervene. Rohith has a non-Dalit father and a Dalit mother. While there has been a long line of cases in the various high courts and the Supreme Court on this question, the most recent one, decided by the two-judge bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai, is the law. In Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika vs State Of Gujarat & Ors. (decided on January 18, 2012), the question before the Supreme Court was “what would be the status of a person, one of whose parents belongs to the scheduled castes/scheduled tribes and the other comes from the upper castes” (para 1).

The concluding paragraph of the judgment is self-explanatory: “In an inter-caste marriage [i.e., a marriage between an SC/ST person and a non SC/ST person] the determination of the caste of the offspring is essentially a question of fact to be decided on the basis of the facts adduced in each case. It is open to the child of such marriage to lead evidence to show that he/she was brought up by the mother who belonged to the scheduled caste/scheduled tribe” (para 43). Did his father’s non-Dalit status give him an “advantageous start in life” or did he suffer “the deprivations, indignities, humilities and handicaps like any other member of the community to which his/her mother belonged?” Additionally, was he treated like a member of the community to which his mother belonged not only by that community but by people outside the community as well?

Read: Ancient prejudice, modern inequality

Rohith suffered the exclusions, humiliation and discrimination along with other Dalit students on the campus and in the wider community. Yet, he refused to allow caste to break or confine him — and that was his most poignant struggle. The most important aspect of this struggle — its defining feature — was that it carried forward the tenacious struggles for a life with dignity for her children by Radhika Vemula, who pointed her children to the stars daring them to dream. In a moment of utter collective regret, irreparable loss and grief, this family points the way to the annihilation of caste.

(Kalpana Kannabiran is Professor and Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad.)

Keywords: Educational institutions, higher education, Rohith Vemula, Dalit scholar suicide, caste discrimination, MHRD, University of Hyderabad

Source: The Hindu, 3-02-2016

Wanted: Ambedkar 2.0

Sagarika Ghose





The Dalit leadership has failed young Ambedkarites like Rohith Vemula

The politically correct felicitations of B R Ambedkar on his 125th birth anniversary were rendered somewhat meaningless by the suicide of Hy derabad Central University student Rohith Vemula. Netas descended in quick succession on HCU. From Rahul Gandhi to Chirag Paswan, Mayawati to Arvind Kejriwal, there were familiar expressions of sympathy but little evidence of just how the political class intends to address the core issue of realising the Ambedkarite vision for 21st century India. Particularly heartless were the utterances of Union ministers who questioned Rohith's caste without an ounce of empathy , even as they've been busily trying to appropriate Ambedkar.When Ambedkar is only a political token, how can his modern progressive vision ever be realised? By challenging Rohith's caste status, BJP might save its minister Bandaru Dattatreya from the SCST Act but it hardly provides for a political reach-out to those who now see Rohit as a symbol of a brutally unequal order. Nor can this be Rahul Gandhi's Belchi moment: having treated its Dalit leaders as marginal representatives for decades, it will require more than a one night vigil to convince Dalit groups that Congress is willing to share power.
The Paswans and Mayawatis may have benefitted from their caste status, but their politics has revolved around selfaggrandisement, hardly the radical change in the power structure that Ambedkar envisioned, nor the idea that political power was to be sought for the larger goal of social equality . Perhaps reservation in constituencies plays a part here; forever imprisoned in the reserved trap, a competitive Dalit leadership of intellect and stature has not emerged.
Ambedkar believed a political democracy that does not work towards an egalitarian society was meaningless. In Annihilation of Caste, he provided a trenchant critique of “enlightened high caste reformers who did not have the courage to agitate against caste“. For Ambed kar, upper caste leadership of Dalits was abhorrent, he rejected both Hinduism and the caste system as well as the claims of any upper castes to represent Dalits.
But his legatees in the post-Independence era, from Paswan to Mayawati to Ramdas Athavale, have rushed to form alliances with different mainstream upper caste political parties, enamoured as they are of political power for its own sake. Ambedkar's urgent mission of creating a Dalit counter-narrative to caste, to Hinduism and to the dominant forms of Indian culture, to mount a full scale socioeconomic transformation of Indian society , has been forgotten by those who act in his name.
The fiery Athavale and his Republican Party of India have sought favours from whoever has been in power. Ram Vilas Paswan holds the distinction of being in virtually every cabinet since the United Front government of the mid-1990s. For a while it looked as if Kanshi Ram and Mayawati would break out of the deadening cycle of mainstream politics particularly in their BAMCEF years. A BAMCEF bulletin declared in 1976: “Educated persons from oppressed communities are trapped in government services ... their cowardice, selfishness, inherent timidity and lack of desire of social service to their own creed ... makes them useless.“ But BAMCEF failed at an intellectual awakening. Kanshi Ram and Mayawati set up BSP in 1984 and unleashed a political revolution in UP.
Yet BSP not only created its own power elite but today has become almost unrecognisable from any other political party , particularly after Mayawati declared her mission was Sarvajan Samaj.While this made political sense, ideologically the Ambedkarite mission was somewhat betrayed. Educated Dalits may have formed entrepreneurs' groups and pressed for change in the private sector. But in the public realm, the Dalits today lack their version of an Asaduddin Owaisi. Love him or hate him, Owaisi is emerging as the political voice of the Indian Muslim, by offering a robust and reasoned counternarrative (unlike his more outrageous brother) on debates ranging from terrorism to the Uniform Civil Code. Where is a similarly argumentative Dalit leader offering a genuine alternative template?
As the scholar Kancha Ilaiah writes: “The tragedy is every young Dalit intellectual's ambition is to be a civil servant ... an administrative slave of Hindu Brahmanism ...the Dalit community has not produced a powerful socio-spiritual philosopher.“
In Homo Hierarchicus, Louis Dumont argued that the caste system is a system of ideas in which the Dalit by his very existence violates the brahmanical obsession with personal hygiene and purity . While the menstruating woman or the bereaved can escape their pollution, the Dalit is “unclean“ from birth. Reservations have created a Dalit middle class, but what about the mission to smash the “purity“ versus “pollution“ system of ideas altogether? When Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti, launched a movement to drink water from tanks, he took his place with Jyotirao Phule and E V Ramaswami Naicker who had not just anti-Brahmin, but anti-caste and anti-birth based social hierarchy in their overarching agenda of action.
Where is such a Dalit leader today?
Rewriting the Purusa Sukta, a hymn that places castes in a hierarchy of the Divine's Being's body parts, was a demand once voiced by Dalit intellectuals as a crucial first step in a spiritual renaissance of Hinduism; they believed this would make Hinduism more modern and egalitarian.But there is no Dalit political leader who is able to frontally challenge the idea of Dalitness in caste Hindu minds. The Dalit Panthers of the 70s have faded away , their radical poetry either co-opted or forgotten.Youth like Rohith Vemula search for answers, try in vain to make sense of the discrimination they face, yet the modern Dalit leadership continues to fail them.

Source: Times of India, 3-02-2016

Dalits and the remaking of Hindutva

The conflict between Ambedkarite consciousness and Hindutva over religion, politics and society has become even more violent with the intrusion of state power

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s relations with the Dalits are tense and complex. For the party, Dalit assertiveness has become hard to comprehend, let alone accept, reminding us of a popular folk idiom, ‘Na Nigalte Bane, Na Ugalte Bane’ (neither can it be swallowed nor can it be thrown out). The BJP is showing an interest in accommodating Dalit groups, but it knows that this embrace is not palatable for its core supporters.

The BJP in its strongholds in northern and western India has been seen as a party of the urban middle class, the Banias, and a section of Brahmins. Over time, the party also brought the Other Backward Classes and the Most Backward Classes within its fold. With the retreat of socialist politics, the rural neo-rich from the backward castes began feeling marginalised in national politics and moved towards Hindutva politics. From the 1970s to 1990s, this community purchased rural land at a much faster rate and emerged as a landed community. On the one hand, this affluent group appears to be part of the new political leadership for post-Mandal Hindutva politics; on the other, being the landed community, it is also perceived to be the oppressor of Dalits in everyday rural life.

Badri Narayan

Along this 1970s-onwards timeline, another change slowly took place. Dalits too became more assertive in electoral politics, mainly due to a growing democratic consciousness and a deeper quest for identity. The BJP was thus politically compelled to appeal for Dalit votes, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) subsequently took charge of providing a Dalit base to the BJP.

Absorbing dissent in the mainstream

In recent decades, the BJP and RSS have been initiating intensive nationwide programmes and campaign activities such as arranging community meals (Samrasta Bhoj), opening schools in Dalit settlements, and organising sensitisation campaigns for upper castes. The primary objective of the Samajik Samrasta campaign launched in Maharashtra in 1983 was to eradicate internal conflicts in society while its second aim was to assimilate Dalits into the mainstream by providing them with health, educational and entrepreneurial assistance. A crucial move was to invite Dalits to eat khichri with the upper castes.

The Sangh Parivar also propagated the concept of Ramarajya in which the upper and lower castes come together in social life as well as in democratic politics. For instance, the Ramayana and Lord Rama have been projected as symbols of unity by contending to Dalits that Rama was always linked to the deprived masses and that the epic centred around the Dalits. According to this viewpoint, the Dalits played a significant role in Rama’s life history — in the quest to find Sita in Lanka, for example, the role of Sugriva, Angada, Jambavan, Hanuman and the monkey brigade, all symbolising the underprivileged, was crucial, according to Sangh and BJP ideologues. This showed the Sangh’s attempt to absorb growing Dalit dissent against Brahminism and their struggle for self-respect and equality, and transforming their newly emerging Dalit-Bahujan identity into a Hindutva one.

Communalisation and saffronisation of public spaces is a new strategy adopted by the BJP to mobilise each Dalit caste individually by evoking its unique caste identity. The party reinterpreted and recreated the cultural resources of Dalits at the local level, including their caste histories and heroes, with the aim of saffronising the Dalit psyche and memory, ultimately transforming them into sites for political control. The local heroes of various castes, particularly Dalits, have been selected by the party in different regions for incorporation into one unified Hindutva metanarrative.

Acknowledging the political and electoral importance of the Pasis, an important Dalit community in North India, the RSS launched a campaign in search of the community’s heroes. Following this, Suhaldev, an icon of the Pasi community, was projected as a Rashtra Rakshak Shiromani (the greatest saviour of the nation) for defending Hindu culture and the country from Muslim intruders by forming a confederation of local kings. Festivals were also organised in memory of Suhaldev in Chittora. Thus the RSS and BJP projected the Dalits as the militia — saviours who made up the army of protectors of Hindu dharma.

Appropriating Ambedkar

Of late, the BJP has endeavoured to appropriate B.R. Ambedkar, as is evident from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration of the world-class memorial in the Indu Mills compound in Mumbai, and of Ambedkar’s memorial at his partially restored London house. Also, prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah took part in caste rallies and meetings of various Dalit communities.

A big dilemma of the RSS and BJP is that they are willing to assimilate Dalits within their fold but just in form of a vote bank. For this, the Sangh Parivar is trying hard to incorporate the Dalit identity in the Hindutva ideology, but wants those from the forward castes and middle castes to remain leaders. Till now, Dalits have not been given any crucial role under the BJP and RSS leadership. After Independence, due to various state-led developmental efforts, a literate, critical Dalit leadership has emerged. These leaders are inspired by the writings of Periyar E.V. Ramasami, Jyotiba Phule and Ambedkar, and their consciousness is informed by criticism of Hindu religion and Hindutva ideology. Though a small part of this group is under the BJP’s influence, it is also influenced by Ambedkarite thought. The RSS has not come to terms with this.

It is this situation that could lead to clashes in educational institutions between students charged with Ambedkarite consciousness and those belonging to Sangh-affiliated organisations. Clashes could also occur as it may not be easy for the belligerent middle castes, who have become influential in recent decades under the BJP leadership, to accept these Dalit groups’ assertion. All this could also cause tension within Sangh organisations.

Thus, a conflict between Ambedkarite consciousness and Hindutva consciousness over religion, politics and society has become even more violent with the intrusion of the power of the state. After coming to power, the BJP wants to crush through government interference every idea that opposes its own. The biggest challenge before the Sangh Parivar in the politics of Dalit appropriation is the clash of ideas. In the process of the RSS and the BJP trying to subsume Dalit ideas under bigger narratives of development and nationalism, it is not only the young Ambedkarites who are being attacked; the Sangh organisations are also hurting themselves.

(Badri Narayan is professor, Centre for the study of Discrimination and Exclusion, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.)

Keywords: BJP, RSS, Dalits, Dalit vote bank, B.R. Ambedkar, Hindutva

Source: The Hindu, 25-01-2016