Caste and Hindu Nationalism

Found this book browsing through Amazon.com.  Looks like a good book based on this description by the publisher:

Belligerent Hindu nationalism, accompanied by recurring communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, has become a compelling force in Indian politics over the last two decades. Ornit Shani’s book examines the rise of Hindu nationalism, asking why distinct groups of Hindus, deeply divided by caste, mobilised on the basis of unitary Hindu nationalism, and why the Hindu nationalist rhetoric about the threat of the impoverished Muslim minority was so persuasive to the Hindu majority. Using evidence from communal violence in Gujarat, Shani argues that the growth of communalism was not simply a result of Hindu-Muslim antagonisms, but was driven by intensifying tensions among Hindus, nurtured by changes in the relations between castes and associated state policies. These, in turn, were frequently displaced onto Muslims, thus enabling caste conflicts to develop and deepen communal rivalries. The book offers a challenge to previous scholarship on the rise of communalism, which will be welcomed by students and professionals. (Italics and bold mine)

Reminds me of how the upper class uses race to get poor and working class and working poor whites to ally with the white upper establishment against people of color and immigrants in the United States.

In Search of Ramrajya

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

V Ramaswamy writes a four part series on Muslims and Hindus in India and his own experiences as a community and grassroots organizer. Below is an excerpt from part I. Ramaswamy wrote this post for Blogbharti’s Spotlight Series.

It was only in the aftermath of 6 December 1992 that I came alive to the question of Muslims in India. I was an atheist, and a left-oriented social activist working on issues of urban poverty, low-income housing, slums and squatters. Riots had hit Calcutta too, with Muslim bastis being torched in Tangra in east Calcutta and in Metiabruz in the west. This was the first time in my life that I knew communal riots in my city. The enforced stay at home when Calcutta was under curfew in the days following 6 December 1992, led to an enforced engagement with this question, the Muslim question, something I had hardly thought about earlier. Afterwards, my friend, photographer Achinto, and I went to Tangra. The people from the burnt out slum were sheltered in the municipal slaughterhouse. I will never forget that sight, a vision of hell.

Modi and Gandhi’s Connections

Tehelka (India) reporter S. Anand states that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s comments on Dalit scavengers, on how they must view scavenging as “spiritual,” and Gandhi’s views on the same subject are really not that different:

IF SANITATION work in India brings with it untouchability, disease and death, why then do the Dalits not just give it up? At the least, why can’t they go on strike and ask for better working conditions? It is not that they did not try. In Delhi’s Balmiki Bara in Aryapura, Rajinder Kumar, a Delhi Jal Board sewer worker, offers us some non-textbook history. “Safai karamcharis have raised their voice several times. On July 31, 1957, there was huge procession planned in Delhi. Sanitation workers from several states had gathered. We had been demanding oxygen kits, masks, safety equipment. Nehru’s government imposed Section 144. They opened fire, and Bhoop Singh, a worker from Haryana died.” Today Bhoop Singh is a martyr, and safai karamchairs observe July 31 as Safai Mazdoor Diwas.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi recently said, “Scavenging must have been a spiritual experience for the Balmiki caste… At some point in time somebody must have got enlightenment in scavenging.” Not many found this amusing, but Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s views were not very different. There’s a popular myth that Gandhi was opposed to scavenging. A reading of the man’s own words, found in the hundred-volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, reveals that Gandhi romanticised and often justified the labour of “Bhangis”, insisting they continue with “the most honourable occupation”.

The Struggle Against the Brahmin/The Struggle Against the White Man: Inter-Connectivity Between India/U.S. Struggles

Cross-posted from Blogbharti.

I was recently invited by my (blogger) friend Kuffir to blog for Blogbharti in their Spotlight Series, an Indian blog aggregator, whose stated mission is to make sure that “all voices from the Indian blogosphere are properly heard.” Kuffir, from Hyderabad, India, is an editor at Blogbharti and also blogs here. I was very honored he invited me (along with others) to blog about a topic of my liking. So I decided to blog about the similarities between the Dalit struggle and the struggles of people of color in the United States; as well as on the privileges and ignorances of whites and Brahmins in the United States and India and the system that keeps them up and keeps “the other” down. For those of you in America and abroad you can read more about Dalit issues on my blog here and here and as well as clicking on the “Dalit” tag and “Caste” tag at Blogbharti.

Trying to jog my brain on what to write I decided to flip back to my old posts on caste, especially my two posts on Dalits and Hinduism. One thing that struck me was the similarities of caste and whiteness; specifically on not seeing one’s own privilege as an upper caste Hindu or as a white person. One thing whites have done in America is try to co-opt movements from people of color and try to make them their own or try to co-opt them by trying to enfold certain leaders from communities of color into the mainstream political fold so only cosmetic changes are done and no real change happens. The main political parties are still run by white males with their token people of color mixed in but the reality is, is that these parties are still guided by white elites and essentially only represent the interests of white elites; which in turn shows us why there was never really any big change in the American racial landscape after the civil rights bills of the 1960s.

So too for the Congress Party of India, which for a long time was really the only political party that had control of the Indian government. While Gahndi and the Congress Party claimed to represent the interests of India and to be for all Indians in reality the Congress Party was actually run by upper caste men; while, even though many of whom were more “liberal” minded when it came to religion, they still enjoyed the benefits of caste. Many in the Congress Party, including the bourgeois and upper caste Gandhi, were unaware of the caste privilege and in fact even lauded the caste system as divinely inspired. This was meet with severe and harsh criticism by Dalit leaders such as Ambedkar (one just need look at the title of Ambedkar’s book What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables).

Another similarity between caste and white supremacy is that both of these systems and institutions have been meet with both mainstream and more radical and militant resistance. In the United States (early one) in the civil righs movement whites and Blacks united to fight against Jim Crow laws, yet when it came time to really institute change in the U.S. many whites decided to back out and not confront their own white privilege; to them the civil rights legislation was enough and if Blacks couldn’t make it then it was “their own damn fault.” Liberal whites could “feel good” about helping their Black “brothers and sisters” but that didn’t mean they actually viewed them as their equals. Instead those who called for radical change in the corrupt and unjust white supremacist system were Blacks and other people of color. They formed radical organizations that confronted whiteness and white supremacy, such as the Black Panthers and Brown Berets. It was people of color, not whites, who organized their communities and demanded real change and took militant stances in demanding equality for all and access to the vast abundance of wealth that was horded by the elite.

As in India it was not the Brahmins and upper cast Hindus who led for genuine reform, it was the Dalits. While many upper caste Hindus did seek to abolish “caste discrimination” they did not seek to abolish the caste system itself, just as whites were comfortable with seeking to ban Jim Crow laws but not white privilege itself. Ambedkar, who was a Dalit, was able to see in Gandhi and the Congress Party what they could not see in themselves because they were blind by their privilege. “Examine the Gandhian attitude to strikes,” stated Ambedkar, “the Gandhian reverence for caste and the Gandhian doctrine of Trusteeship of the rich…Gandhism is the philosophy of the well-to-do and leisured class.” Also it was radical Dalits in India who created the Dalit Panthers, in direct connection with the Black Panthers, and tackled the problem of caste head on and with no regrets.

So what does this mean for those in America who fight against white privilege and those in India who fight against the caste system and upper caste reactionaries? For one, in this highly globalized and technological world both sides can view each others triumphs, failures, writings, and thought in order to better themselves and their own struggles and in turn open up lines of communication between each other and two it meas Dalits and people of color can align themselves in a shared common struggle against capitalism and of destructive social systems so ingrained in each society that it is nearly impossible to think of said society without thinking of caste or white privilege and racism. Not only will it be beneficial to study both movements mutually, but in this globalized world both systems collide with each other and play out in other countries and spill over amongst themselves. One can’t separate America’s goal for domination of the globalized world with that of white supremacy and one can’t deny that it is the elites in both countries (which Anand Patwardhan captured so well in his documentary War and Peace) who benefit from globalism and capitalism. Thus there is an inter-connectivity between privileged white males in Europe and America and privileged upper caste males in India. Thus there too must also be an inter-connectivity between people of color and immigrants in Europe and America and the Dalits, Shudras, and OBCs in India in order to combat this new conflation of oppression were both lower classes are left behind in the dust and left to suffer for the “betterment of the ‘whole’ society.”

Calm Like a Bomb

Arjun Sen, of the blog Rantings of a Gaged Journalist, writes about how the poor in India are a ticking time bomb ready to lash out against the authorities:

That is why even in Left-ruled West Bengal the so-called communists make sure that the administration and the law enforcement agencies protect the interests of the rich rather than the poor, and, to do so, resort to even murder, if necessary. Can you imagine living in a state where the police go about murdering an ordinary law abiding citizen simply because he has gone against the desires of someone who is not just a rich fatso but also has a criminal record to boot? So, a poor law abiding citizen is murdered by the police a few days after his marriage because his rich and criminal father-in-law wanted the police to do so.

Originally linked by Kuffir at Blog Bharti.

Dalit Seminar

A blogger at Teluga Bloggers writes about an upcoming national seminar in India about Dalits and religion:

Religion is one of the problems for Dalits in India. It is the question of its being implicit and explicit, inclusive and exclusive, an insider and outsider for Dalit life. Dalits have been in dilemma as to which religion they have to follow in the Post- Colonial period. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar has made a statement that he will not die as a Hindu. It had an impact on several Dalit Hindus. Moreover, his conversion to Buddhism has influenced thousands of Dalits to follow. However, there may be a few Dalits who are in Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism, Islam and some others have considered Ambedkarism as one of the religions. The Dalits who are in the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism have constitutional benefits and others who are in Christianity and Islam are denied the same. This could be one of the debates that the seminar is looking forward to address.

Originally linked by Kuffir on Blogbharti.

The Death of Chandrashekhar and Indian Socialist Politics

Bhupinder writes:

Socialist politics, dominated now by such ‘bleeding heart socialists’ like Amar Singh and caste centered politicians like Mulayam, Laloo and BJP’s friends like Nitish Kumar and George Fernandes, has now come to practically a dead end. Acharya Narendra Dev is now a forgotten man altogether. Human Rights and civil liberties organizations that grew in the days of the Emergency are the only reminders of JP. Lohia’s ghost continues to haunt in the form of caste politics (not necessarily bad, but I don’t suppose even Lohia would have conceived of caste politics as an end in itself.)

Caste, Reservations, and a Divided India

Shivam Vij comments on the latest caste based violence in Rajasthan by quoting B.R. Ambedkar:

The literature of the Hindus is full of caste genealogies in which an attempt is made to give a noble origin to one caste and an ignoble origin to other castes. The Sahyadrikhand is a notorious instance of this class of literature. This anti-social spirit is not confined to caste alone. It has gone deeper and has poisoned the mutual relations of the sub-castes as well. In my province the Golak Brahmins, Deorukha Brahmins, Karada Brahmins, Palshe Brahmins and Chitpavan Brahmins, all claim to be subdivisions of the Brahmin Caste. But the anti-social spirit that prevails between them is quite as marked and quite as virulent as the anti-social spirit that prevails between them and other non-Brahmin castes. There is nothing strange in this. An antisocial spirit is found wherever one group has “interests of its own” which shut it out from full interaction with other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is protection of what it has got. This antisocial spirit, this spirit of protecting its own interests is as much a marked feature of the different castes in their isolation from one another as it is of nations in their isolation.

Language and Class

Madhat, a blogger from Bangolore, writes about a video he saw at a charity/theatre event in India in his blog My life, my words:

I noticed something interesting in the video. The founder and some other people who looked to be members of the board (they were mostly businessmen) spoke to the camera in English but the testimonials of the kids were in Kannada with English subtitles! Now why is that?

…

The elite, the rich and the upper class are the ones who have access to good english education and the lower class can converse only in the local language. Balraj Sahni was right. English is the new Sanskrit.

In Solidarity: Sanhati

Rama quotes a mission statement from the West Bengali activist organization Sanhati in the blog Cuckoo’s call:

We are voices of dissent. We oppose the murderous politics of the state government of West Bengal as well as the cheap populism of otherwise pro-liberalism parties. We stand in solidarity, in Sanhati, with all forces that oppose police terror in Bengal and the inhuman urban-industrial vision. We staunchly defend the rights of tillers over their lives and their lands.

BJP “Feminists”

Krish blogs about the hypocrisy of calling oneself a feminist and being a member of the ultra-nationalistic BJP party in India in his blog Krishworld Politics:

I have come across many Indian women who claim that they are out there in the world to eradicate male chauvinism. The same women (who are from the privileged castes of the society) support BJP unabashedly. I find this highly hypocritical. I have high regard for real feminists. But I consider these pseudo-feminists as the cheapest group of people. BJP is a party which considers Rama to be the gold standard. Rama, the last time I heard about him, made his wife walk through fire to prove her “purity”. It seems he did that to shut the mouths of people who, in their own male chauvinistic way, questioned the “purity” of Sita.

Someone Else’s Problem

N. (from Bangolore, India) blogs about an encounter she had with a publisher from a feminist publishing house in her blog Noah’s Ark Broken:

I find it disturbing that the representative of a feminist publishing house is not clear about what feminism means, not to the world at large but even just to them. That she gets defensive about the word ‘feminist’. That three other writers with her believe that “women like us” don’t have “such problems” therefore, women like us don’t have to write about them. I find it especially disturbing because it reflects a trend that is common among urban educated women from upper middle class families in India. Feminism is passe. Feminism is uncool. And mostly, it is Somebody Else’s Problem.

Originally linked by Bhupinder at Blog Bharti.

Savagery at Salwan

Shivam Vij, a journalist based out of Dehli, posts an article he did on the sacking of the Dalit (Untouchable) settlements of Salwan in his blog National Highway:

The long road from Karnal city that leads to Pardeep’s village, Salwan, showcases some of rural India’s prosperous best. Spring is in the air and after every other wheat and mustard field there is a river body. Farmers proudly walk around fields with their women whose veils hide even their eyes. There are pucca houses and modern tractors and mobile phone towers. But there is a high-voltage line of caste not visible to the naked eye. If anyone steps on it, it can electrocute an entire village.

Indian Left, Caste and the Dalits

By Bhupinder Singh

I asked Bhupinder Singh to write a guest post for me to complement my series on “The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India.” Part 1 was the introduction to the series, Parts 2, 3, and 4 were based on a Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) report on the situation of Dalits in India and Parts 5 and 6 were written by me on a Hindu Liberationist Dalit issues.

I asked Bhupinder to write a blog on the situation of the left in India and the left’s interactions with Dalit issues.

Bhupinder Singh is the author of a reader’s words which is a very perceptive and excellent blog that mainly focuses on Indian affairs. He also is an editor for Blogbharti which “is an aggregator that brings to you the best of the Indian blogosphere.”

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

(Thanks to Jack for inviting to write this guest post)

The Indian Left has had a troubled association with the caste question.

The major reason, in case of the Left has been the over arching importance that Marxism has attached to class and class conciousness. This has been true of the Marxist Left which includes the original and later CPI, the CPM and even most of the Maoist formations. The socialist parties, specially under Ram Manohar Lohia and to a lesser extent Acharya Narendra Dev acknowledged the issue of caste since the fifties though from the backward caste, and not a Dalit perspective.

This post, however, focuses on the relationship between the Marxist Left and Dalit politics.

The class based approach of the Marxist Left gave little importance to caste, and even saw it as an impediment for growth of class consciousness. It’s mass fronts consisted of the trade unions, the peasant associations, landless agricultural workers. Outside these class based fronts were those for women, students and the cultural wing (the famous Indian People’s Theater Association).

No scope was seen for a Dalit or any other caste based association. In fact, when the DS4 of Kanshi Ram began to grow in the 1980s, it was seen, even by those cadres in the existing communist parties who came from a Dalit background, as reactionary and dangerous- since these threatened to break the unity of the class based fronts along casteist lines. At no time, till the Mandal Commission forced it to take a firm stand, did the Indian Left see centrality of the caste question in India.

Within the CPI and the CPM, the leadership has been, even till recently, primarily drawn from the Brahmins or the local dominant castes, with very few exceptions. Neither have these parties made any conscious attempt to bring cadre from the Dalit strata into leadership positions. Instead, they have recreated in their internal structures the imbalances of society.

This is not to deny the fact that they have also been relatively less susceptible to casteism, and many among their cadre continue to be within these parties because of the relative absence of casteism within these parties in comparison with others. This is especially so where Dalit movement has been weak or non- existent.

In comparison with some other countries, the Indian communists’ participation and acceptance of parliamentary politics has been long and unquestionable. However the stress of political action also blunted the social and mass based actions that these parties should have been involved in.

This came out very clearly when, after the CPI(M) Congress in 1998, in reply to a question as to why the Left had failed to strike roots in Uttar Pradesh, the then party General Secretary H.S. Surjeet explained the reasons thus:

“There has been no social reform movement in the state”.

This surely is a case of putting the cart before the horse, since for those on left of the political spectrum, reforms are only a part of a much more comprehensive radical agenda. The task of the left is to carry out changes that go beyond reforms and not wait for others to carry out the job. Surjeet’s words raise an existential question for the CPI(M).

Another reason of this dichotomy between the Left and the Dalit movement has been that Dr. Ambedkar, by far the most towering leader of the Dalit movement if not its only one till the rise of Kanshi Ram, had been an opponent of Marxism. His focus remained the social upliftment of the Dalits and as a politician his sensibilities honed in English liberalism restricted his view. W.N. Kuber puts it thus:

In 1937, (Ambedkar) founded the Independent Labour Party, for sometime joined hands with the communists in the labor field but did not take consistent attitude and fight class battles. Though his community was downtrodden and landless and mostly wage- earners, still he could not make them class- conscious, because of the weakness in his inherent thinking. After the Poona Pact he tried to lead the working class, but failed and left the field forever, and chose to become the leader of his community.

(source: Ambedkar: A Critical Study by W.N. Kuber, 1973. Page 304)

His insistence on Buddhism as an alternative to Marxism also did not help to build bridges.

Buddhistic countries that have gone over to communism do not understand what communism is. Communism of the Russian type aims at bringing it about by a bloody revolution. The Buddhist communism brings it about by a bloodless revolution. The South East Asians should give a political form to Buddha’s teaching…. Poverty cannot be an excuse for sacrificing human freedom.

(Source: Ambedkar, Life and Mission, page 487, quoted in Kuber).

To the over arching importance that Dr. Ambedkar gave to conversion as a salvation for the Dalits (then called the Depressed Classes), the scholarly CPI leader Hiren Mukerjee commented:

But merely by changing one’s religion, one cannot bring a solution, particularly to the kind of problem that we have in our country. That is why I say the conversion to Buddhism was a gesture, a moral gesture, with certain conceptual connotations of its own. Buddhism is a magnificent religion, but somehow it was eased out of India. If by some miracle, Buddhism is brought back again, well and good. But things do not happen in real life like that.

(source: Hiren Mukerjee: Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Extirpation of Untouchability, page 46, quoted in Kuber)

If the Left parties are more sensitive to the caste question in recent years, it is because of the battle lines that were drawn in the aftermath of the Mandal Commission and also because of the political base that caste based parties, especially the Bahujan Samaj Party have been to create for themselves. While these made a dent in the following of all existing parties, the ones specially impacted were the Congress and the Left.

The second reason is the recognition of near absolute identity of the Dalits as one of the more oppressed sections in the country. Earlier observers, even among the most radicals ones, disdained this. Groomed in the modernist, Nehruvian framework in the backdrop of global appeal of Marxism, the caste factor was pushed under the carpet. It was even seen as an obstacle in establishing class-consciousness.

This has now changed, and rightly so. The communists and the Dalit movement share a complementary role. While the Dalit movement has articulated the social and political aspirations of the oppressed community, it has lacked a firm economic program, with the result that once power is gained (in Uttar Pradesh, for example), the lack of a class based theoretical perspective restricts it to either parliamentary politics or the perspective, often narrow, of a single leader. A Marxist understanding and placing the Dalit movement within a larger national and world wide struggle for emancipation complements this social and political approach.

It is not that this has not been attempted, it was there during the brief existence of the Dalit Panthers Movement in the 1970s before its disintegration. It was also there in the approach of Sharad Patil who broke away from the CPM to form the Satyashodak Communist Party in Maharastra in the 1980s.

Given the ossification in the dominant Left, however, this dialogue will have to be initiated by the cadre of the Dalit movement and independent Marxists.

The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India, Part VI: A Hindu Liberationist Perspective

Finally, I’ve finished the series! The last time I posted a blog in this series was Part V on Oct. 28, 2006. I’ve been swamped with school and working for the newspaper, but I’m on break now until Jan. 24, 2007. So I’ll also be working on my Mespotamia Burning series as well (which I also haven’t done in a long time due to college and newspaper work).

‘So knowing this, and becoming calm, self controlled, quiet, patient and concentrated, he sees the self in himself, sees the self as all. Evil does not overcome him: he overcomes all evil. Evil does not burn him: he burns all evil. Without evil, without dust, free from doubt, he becomes Brāhmana. This is the world of Brahmā.’
-Brhadāranyaka Upanisad IV.5.23

The actual word, “Dalit,” means “crushed underfoot” or “broken into pieces.” The word comes from the 19th century activist Jotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) who fought to remove the stigma of “untouchability” in India. The term also comes from the writings of the Dalit Panthers, a radical Dalit rights movement founded in 1972 in the state of Maharashtra.(1) And indeed, for Dalits, Sudras, and SC/ST peoples all over India this is the reality they still find themselves in today (by no fault of their own). For thousands of years Dalits and ST peoples had no right to property, were only allowed to eat food thrown away by higher caste Hindus, could not drink from town and village wells, weren’t allowed to enter Hindu temples, were denied access to education, performed menial jobs for upper caste Hindus, and were not allowed to live in the main towns and villages. They had to live on the outside, and since they couldn’t live in towns they had no right to ownership of property and thus “leading to [a] lack of access to all sources of economic mobility” which further caused “social exclusion and economic discrimination over the centuries.”(2)

Yet, still today, despite Indian independence in 1947 and a plethora of legislation outlawing caste discrimination against Dalits, SC/ST, and Other Backward Caste (OBC) peoples are just as thoroughly oppressed as they have been since before the founding of the modern state of India. Today, Dalits, SC/ST, and OBCs comprise about 52 percent of the Indian population,(3) and including lower caste Shudras, 77% of the population.(4) The reasons for the Dalits continued oppression are many, some of them religious, others economic, and still others political, with each category constantly melding into the next. Sagarika Ghose explains the situation of the Dalits quite well:

The dalit’s pariah status derives its strength and justification from religious texts. In the Manusmriti, the dalit is described as “polluted,” in the same way as a menstruating woman, a widow, or a person who has recently been bereaved is polluted. The dalit is “unclean” from birth. He violates, by his very existence, the brahminical obsession with hygiene…While the “untouchability” of the menstruating woman or the bereaved is temporary and he or she can escape the Untouchable condition after the period of “pollution” is past, the dalit can never escape his status: he is perpetually filthy.(5)

This “pariah status” thrust upon the Dalits by greater powers has caused much of the suffering we see today. In a census taken in 1991 it was found that 70% of all Dalit and SC households were landless, by the year 2000 it had increased to 75%,(6) this despite the fact that in 1990 the V. P. Singh government decided to implement the policies of the Mandal Commission Report of the Backward Classes Commission, a commission on how to deal with Dalits, SC/ST, and OBCs that came out with their report in 1980 (part of the report called for reserving 27% of all services and public sector undertakings and 27% of all higher education slots for students, to Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs).(7) This landlessness and lack of property causes many problems for Dalits; because they have no property (that they own) they are often bonded-laborers and their children are forced to work as well, this causes many Dalits to be dependent on waste-land for grazing. A study in 1992 showed that in the state of Rajasthan, that as many as 89% of Dalits were involved in scavenging to make ends meat.( On top of land issues in 2000 49.06% of the working Dalit and SC population were agricultural workers with 32.69% being STs and only 19.66% being labeled as “other” which shows a “preponderance of dalits in agricultural labour.” Not only that but from 1991-2001 the number of agricultural workers increased. As for child labor, around 60 million children (reported) work in India, 40% of the labor force comes from Dalits and ST peoples.(9) Across all levels the situation for Dalits has been getting worse, not better, for all those statistics you can look at parts II and III on my blog series “The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India.” Now that the situation of Dalits in India is established (again, for more, see parts II and III) we can go on to what Hindus and Dalits have done since the late 19th century in fighting against caste discrimination and untouchability and how the Hindu religion can play a liberating role in the emancipation of Dalits instead of an oppressive role, by looking at the actions of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Ambedkar, and other Indian movements.

One of the early reformers of the Hindu religion (especially in relation to Dalits and women’s rights) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was Narendranath Datta, also known as Vivekananda (1863-1902). Vivekananda was born into an upper caste Ksatriyas family in Bengal and was educated in a Western-style university where he learned about Western philosophy, Christianity, and Western sciences. Latter on he joined the Brahmo Samaj (Society of the Brahma) which was “dedicated to eliminating child marraige and illiteracy” and was “determined to spread education among women and the lower castes.” Latter on he became a disciple of Ramakrishna (who preached on the unity of all of the world religions). Instead of adhering to the Vedas in a dogmatic way Vivekananda stressed the humanistic side of the Vedas and thus became a prevailing force in preaching the Vedanta school of thought to the United States and England.(10) The Vedanta school is one of the six orthodox philosophies of Hinduism which based itself on the “speculative portion of late Vedic literature” and is chiefly concerned with the knowledge of Brahman and the unification of oneself with her or his atman to attain the truth.(11) In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission at the monastery of Belur Math which sat on the Ganges River near Calcutta which was dedicated to social work for many in India, including Dalits.(12) Yet despite his work he had done very little as a whole for the Dalits and for emancipating the Dalits from caste oppression. What Vivekananda showed us (as did the other Hindu reformers I mentioned in Part V of my blog) was that one did not have to dogmatically adhere to the Vedas to be Hindu. Vivekananda was just as Hindu as anyone from the BJP or the RSS today (even more so) and yet he was able to fuse diverse philosophical beliefs and to reject the uglier forms of Vedic Hinduism in order to help out those of the lower caste and of the female sex. Yet Vivekananda was of the upper castes and his view was very much influenced by Western white beliefs. Despite his reforms he still was afflicted with an upper caste and bourgeois mentality that hindered him from truly offering an alternative to Hindus and to truly uplifting the lower castes and Dalits from oppression.

After Vivekananda, one of the last reformers during a significant period of reform for the Hindu religion in the 19th century (for more see Part V), came Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-194 and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) whom, states Ghose, emerged “from the context created by these nineteenth-century movements as well as deeper traditions of anticaste protests by Buddhism, Jainism, and the Bhakti culuts.”(13)

As a child Gandhi grew up in a Vaisya caste household where his mother was a strict adherent to Vaisnavism, a Hindu sect which worships the god Vishnu and his incarnations, especially those of Rama and Krishna. His religious life was also influenced by stands of Jainism and ahimsa (non-injury to all living beings), so the tenets of non-violence and that everything in the universe is eternal surrounding the young Gandhi all the time,(14) which helps us better understand his religious and moral philosophy latter in his life.

After growing up in India and being educated in England Gandhi’s first boat of fighting for those who were oppressed was during his time in South Africa, which won him acclaim in India and England. He studied the deplorable conditions Indians lived in and founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 which took up Indian grievances to South Africa and England (since South Africa was a colony of England). Yet despite all this Gandhi still had many bourgeois tendencies that he would carry with him throughout his life (all though they would be morphed into more high-caste Hindu tendencies), in 1899 Gandhi argued all Indians that it was their duty as citizens under the English crown to defend South Africa during the Boer War. Yet after the war Gandhi continued to fight for the rights of Indians and took up more confrontational non-violent mass actions.(15) These battle in South Africa further more shaped his thinking just as his mother’s religious devotions had shaped his thinking in his youth. With this we will look at Gandhi’s actions relating to the Dalits and what he did (and didn’t do) for them and how, despite the fact that he was a very conservative and strictly observant Hindu (with upper-caste tendencies), he fought against the stigma of untouchability and urged reform all across India to help out the Dalits.

By autumn of 1920 Gandhi had become a very important figure in Indian politics and he had even managed to help refashion the Indian National Congress (founded in 1885) into a very formidable political tool for the fight against British rule, having the Congress Party branch out all over India by entrenching itself in Indians small towns and villages. In 1932, during a bout in prison, Gandhi started a fast (which his mother had done many times in his youth) to protest the British government’s move to segregate the Dalits by assigning them separate elections in the new constitution of India. His fast caused upheaval in the country and worked, thus starting Gandhi’s actions to remove the stigma of untouchability from the Dalits within Hinduism and the state of India. In 1934 Gandhi had resigned from his position in the Congress Party and also resigned as a member. Instead he wanted to build up national unity “from the bottom up” by setting up programs in rural India (85% of the population back than was rural) and educating around the countryside through himself and others. A part of this building “from the bottom up” included fighting against untouchability.(16)

Gandhi’s fight for Dalits was very much steeped in Hinduism. Instead of Hinduism being a barrier for him (or an excuse) in helping Dalits and coming in contact with them it was instead used as a jumping off point, a platform, for trying to remove the stigma of untouchability and it was something he used to the fullest. After resigning from the Congress Party his new mission, and revolution, was not necessarily home-rule for Indians by Indians (but he did fight against British rule) but was an “exercise in the autonomy, the dignity, and the freedom of the ‘non-subject’ by being neither colonizer nor colonized, neither oppressor nor oppressed, neither hawk nor dove…”(17) In the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad IV.5.23, which I quote above, it states that if one lives a righteous Hindu life one can become Brahmā, unified with Brahman. This was essentially how Gandhi saw the Dalit question. Because Dalits (or harijan as he called them, that is “Children of God”) where Hindu and because they were fully human and could indeed become unified with Brahman just as the Brahman caste could become unified, than one should treat Dalits with respect, and old traditions, such as untouchability, were misguided and hurtful. Gandhi said that “[t]he taint of Untouchability is an intolerable burden on Hinduism. Let us not deny God by denying to a fifth of our race the right of association and on equal footing.” The culmination of centuries of anti-Brahmin thought in Hinduism and different Hindu sects (such as Jainism) essentially meet each other in the figure of Gandhi (for more on this see Part V). Unlike Vivekananda he had actively tackled the question of the Dalits and had done much to try and reform Hindu’s in their thinking. Yet, as we can see today, very little has changed for the Dalit and her or his situation. Yet Gandhi was very much effected by strands of upper-caste conservative Hinduism, even though he showed us that one can still practice such strands without oppressing Dalits and other ST/SCs and OBCs. This is where Ambedkar comes into play.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, born into a Dalit Mahar family in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, was a contemporary of Gandhi’s, and, like Gandhi, campaigned for the rights of Dalits all across India. Except his was a much more involved and militant campaign seeking the emancipation of all Dalits across India and one that scourged upper-caste Hindu practices and any semblance of elitist thinking and help from those who carried Brahminic tendencies. Unlike Gandhi who had been born into a well off family (Gandhi’s father served as a dewan, or chief minister, in Porbandar and Rajkot) Ambedkar was a Dalit and grew up being humiliated by his fellow school mates whom where high-caste. As a Mahar, Ambedkar’s duties traditionally were cutting wood for cremation, getting rid of dead cattle, washing wells, delivering messages over long distances, and other menial and degrading tasks. Also, all Mahar’s were to live in segregated areas outside of the villages and towns that they served.(1 Ambedkar was able to study abroad in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, where he meet such thinkers as John Dewey, one of the original founders of the school of pragmatism and a pioneer in functional psychology. His education abroad (which was due to a scholarship given to him by the gaekwar, or ruler, of Baroda)(19) greatly influenced his thinking, just as Gandhi’s education abroad. Yet his education abroad wasn’t the only thing that influenced his thinking, it was also his life as a Dalit, being treated as dirt by other Hindus, as well as a history of “powerful 19th century anti-caste movements in his own province” and “the histories of numerous heterodox, anti-Vedic, materialist sects/schools that have always existed on the fringes of Hinduism.”(20) (For more on this see Part V).

Originally Ambedkar was optimistic about the political and economic emancipation of his peoples, the Dalits, and that they would eventually be integrated into mainstream Indian society. Soon though he would come to realize that this was not the case, and while originally religion didn’t play an initial factor in his political struggles it soon would loom large. After intense struggles with getting rights to access drinking water from village wells, the right to enter temples, and the a struggle in voting rights in 1932 in where he held intense debates with Gandhi who opposed separate voting rights for Dalits, he quickly came to realize, in his mind, that the struggle for Dalit rights was essentially a struggle that was not only political and economic, but also had to do with the ingrained bigotry within the Hindu caste-system itself. He also became disillusioned with the Congress Party, which he saw as filled with upper-caste nationalism that cared more for home rule than for the emancipation of the Dalits. This led him to declare in 1935, “I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu.(21)

One large weakness that Gandhi had (all though it didn’t undermine his belief in Hinduism and it didn’t make his belief in Hinduism wrong) was that while he was indeed campaigning for the removal of untouchability from Dalits he was, as the same time, publically lauding the caste system as being divinely sanctioned and a source that brought harmony and community to Indian society, as supposed to the capitalistic and individualistic system of the West.(22) Yet what Ambedkar saw and what Gandhi saw, were to different things. Because Ambedkar lived the life of a Dalit he saw first hand how the opposite was actually the case. The caste system couldn’t be divinely sanctioned because it brought so much trauma and pain and suffering to so many people, this was something Ambedkar had experienced first hand while Gandhi, because of his caste privilege and economic privilege as a youth, never experienced. Essentially Gandhi was blind to the deep and inherent flaw in his statements lauding the caste system. If anything, the caste system only brought about social harmony through the oppression of Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, it was through their pain that society was able to “gain.” Because of this, Ambedkar was one of Gandhi’s harshest critiques. “Examine the Gandhian attitude to strikes,” stated Ambedkar, “the Gandhian reverence for caste and the Gandhian doctrine of Trusteeship of the rich…Gandhism is the philosophy of the well-to-do and leisured class.”(23) Ambedkar was able to see aspects of the Gandhian movement that others couldn’t (or refused to) see because of their caste background. What Ambedkar saw was a movement that was conservative, upper-caste, and bourgeois. Because Gandhi was upper-caste and because most of his leadership was upper-caste Ambedkar wanted nothing to do with Gandhi, his movement, or the upper-caste dominated Congress Party. Not that they would want anything to do with Ambedkar either since he argued that political democracy was meaningless without radical social transformation and a repudiation of the caste system.(24) Ambedkar stated that the “‘monster of caste’ crosses everyone’s path alike, every which way you may turn: ‘you cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill the monster [of caste].’”(25) Ghose states, “For Gandhi, Hinduism and the caste system were not negotiable. But Ambedkar rejected both Hinduism and the caste system as well as the claims of any upper caste to represent the dalits. For Gandhi, Untouchability was an evil within Hinduism, to be reformed by Hindus. For Ambedkar, upper-caste leadership of dalits was abhorrent.”(26) In his 1936 book, Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar stated that upper-caste Hindus and supporters of caste did not deny Dalits a way of life because they were “inhuman or wrong headed…but because they are deeply religious. The myriad hierarchies and taboos of caste have the sanctity of the shastras [scriptures]…people will not change their conduct unless they have ceased to believe in the sanctity of the shastras.”(27) So the real enemy is not the people observing caste but the shastras that teach people to observe the caste system.

With Gandhi, despite his flaws, we saw a devout and observant Hindu fighting to alleviate the Dalits of their plight. With Ambedkar we saw a Dalit militantly, and without remorse, completely take on the system of caste at full speed in order to emancipate his people by any means necessary. In fact, on October 14, 1956 Ambedkar, along with 200,000 or so of his followers, renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, India in a final repudiation of Hinduism and of the caste system.(2

Because of Gandhi and Ambedkar the constitution of India outlawed discrimination based on caste and also created “reservations” (affirmative action policies).(29) Yet despite the legal emancipation of Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, Dalits are still harshly discriminated against. Gail Omvedt wrote in The Hindu that:

The reservation system was instituted not so much on the basis of the Constitution as on that of the decades-old elite resistance to restructuring public employment. It serves several purposes. It allows the elite to maintain the facade of a generous patron of Dalits while continuing to deprive them of mas-level education and access to resources. It provides a process to absorb some of their brightest members into a system still based more on extortion and corruption than true public service. Finally, it continues to block true representation of the majority of the nation’s population.”(30)

Yet, even with these factors Dalits are still fighting as they have been since the death of Ambedkar. In 1972 emerged the Dalit Panthers (borrowing their name from the American Black Panther Party for Self Defense) which was made up mostly of militant poets and writers seeking full emancipation of Dalits in India. Yet within a few years the movement splintered and became coopted by the government elite as its members joined several government committees and panels. In 1984 the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was formed after Dalit leaders Kanshi Ram and Mayawati Kumari broke away from BAMCEF (All-India Backward and Minority Employees Federation, set up as a “talent bank” for Dalits in 1976). The BSP was set up to represent Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs in the government of India. Yet despite their rise in power in key states such as Uttar Pradesh it has fromed governments with and has allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the utter embodiment of conservative caste worshiping Hindu nationalism, especially when it attacks Muslims, Dalits, and others whom are not high-caste Hindus. Ghose explains that their hasn’t been able to be a solid Dalit and “society of the backward” movement because of the nature of the caste system (because of the many diverse states Dalits from different parts of India can’t even speak to each other due to language barriers) and “because of the nature of agrarian relations, which pits backward castes against each other and thus divides the society of the backward.” Also, “[s]ince brahmins have become urbanized, it is the intermediate backward castes (those just above the ‘pollution line’) who have become owners of the land on which the dalit is a laborer. This has led several dalit intellectuals to argue that the greater enemy of the dalit is no longer the brahmin but the intermediate castes,”(31) which I’m sure delights many of the Brahmin caste.

Yet despite all of this we have seen in Parts V and VI how Hinduism, instead of being a tool for oppression, can instead be used as a tool for liberation. Instead of taking the Vedas and other religious texts at their word many Hindus have been able to reject certain aspects of sacred Hindu literature that have Brahminic supremacist tendencies, and have still be able to hold onto their core Hindu beliefs, but without harming themselves or others. Also, we have seen, especially in the example of Ambedkar, how Dalits have taken their destiny into their own hands in order to liberate themselves. We see that Dalits can see certain aspects of so called “reformed” Hinduism that others can’t, mainly that many of these “reformed” Hindus were actually still perpetuating high-caste tendencies and were in effect, talking down to Dalits (such as Gandhi’s term “harijan,” which Ambedkar and other Dalits found utterly repugnant). Because of this, Dalits are the ones who are to liberate themselves and no one else, anyone other than a Dalit actively trying to lead Dalits is essentially perpetuating their upper-caste privilege and in turn is doing more harm than good. No one can claim (without being ignorant to history, caste oppression, and utterly arrogant) to be a leader of Dalits except a Dalit. Hindu’s can, and should, fight for Dalit rights. By saying that Dalit’s are the only ones who can liberate themselves however doesn’t mean that upper-caste Hindu’s are off the hook. In fact, the opposite is true. Because many upper-caste Hindu’s enjoy benefits in a society that is based on caste oppression and the exploitation of Sudras, Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, they must critically look at themselves and at the caste system in place that keeps them propped up in a life of privilege. Upper-caste Hindus (who don’t need to loose their religious beliefs, all though for some that may be impossible, and others, at no fault of their own, may find losing their belief to be a benefit, and I don’t fault them for it) must actively help out Dalits by speaking to others within society about the plight of the Dalits and by speaking about caste privilege and its necessary destruction. I cannot know where the struggle for Dalit rights will head since I am an outsider but I do know that as Dalits take charge (as they have for many decades now) and as fellow Hindus continue to use their religion in a liberating manner (and to attack those aspects of Hinduism that are oppressive) there can be a strong liberating voice that will demand, and get, revolutionary change in the system. As an outsider I will wait and see how this continues to unfold.

Notes

1. Ghose, Sagarika. “The Dalit in India.” Social Research 70, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 85.
2. Communist Party of India (Marxist). “Resolution Adopted At The All India Convention On
Problems of Dalits” (New Delhi: February 22, 2006), 1. See also part II of this series in my blog post http://mustardkernal.blogspot.com/2006/09/opression-of-shudras-in-india-part-ii.html.
3. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 84.
4. See http://mustardkernal.blogspot.com/2006/08/oppression-of-shudras-in-india-marxist.html.
5.Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 84.
6. Communist Party India (Marxist), “Problems of Dalits,” 5.
7. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 97-98.
8. Grey, Mary. “Dalit Women and the Struggle for Justice in a World of Global Capitalism.”
Feminist Theology: The Journal of Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology 14, no. 1
(Sept. 2005): 135-136.
9. Communist Party India (Marxist), “Problems of Dalits,” 5.
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Vivekananda,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9075594.
11. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. “Vedanta,” available at FirstSearch
http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezproxy (accessed Nov. 25, 2006).
12. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Vivekananda.”
13. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 92.
14. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand,” available at Encyclopedia
Britannica Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9109421.
15. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-22634.
16. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-22636.
17. Prakash, Madhu Suri. “Remaking Our Soil: Gandhi’s Revolution for the 21st Century.”
Encounter 15, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 23-24.
18. Meera, Nanda. “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science: Reconstructing the Deweyan Buddha of
India’s Dalits.” Social Epistemology 15, no. 4 (Oct. 2001): 348.
19. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica
Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9006040.
20. Meera, “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science,” 336-337.
21. Ibid., 349.
22. Ibid., 350.
23. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 94.
24. Ibid., 95.
25. Meera, “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science,” 351.
26. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 96.
27. Ambedkar, B. R. Annihilation of Caste (Jalandhar: Bhim Patrika Publications, 1936), 111.
28. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji,”; and Meera, “A ‘Broken People’
Defend Science,” 348.
29. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 96.
30. Omvedt, Gail. “Caste, Race and Sociologists.” The Hindu, 14 March 2001.
31. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 100-101.

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