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Dialectics of Dalitism
Braj Ranjan Mani
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The dalits
are asking compelling questions about the politics of
knowledge-production and its role in maintaining the oppressive
status quo. It is generally the apartheid in the public sphere,
the media and academia that greet such dalit activist-writers,
but some of them have somehow barged their way through the glass
ceiling. Dr Sheoraj Singh Bechain is one such gatecrasher. |
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 The
two-nation theory vivisected the subcontinent in 1947. India and
Pakistan got truncated freedom at enormous human cost. India
embraced democracy, and declared its desire, in Nehru’s words, to
redeem the pledge made during the freedom struggle— “not wholly or
in full measure but very substantially” .Ever since, the ruling
class talked of freedom, equality and dignity in abstract terms, and
willfully allowed and promoted— through its policies and priorities,
despite loud proclamations to the contrary—a new form of the
two-nation theory which is now becoming more and more manifest in
the “India shining” and the “suffering majority”.
Democracy is
deepening in
India
with the unprecedented prosperity of the few and the persistent
poverty, illiteracy and poor health of the many! The deafening
sarkari and corporate crowing about the statistical decline in
poverty sounds silly and sinister when inequalities in terms of
health, wealth and education are getting wider. At least it comes as
a cruel joke to those who cannot send their little ones o school,
nor can take their diseased dear ones to hospital. This state of
being unfree, of coping without bare minimums of life is not only
their own loss: it is the national loss—of labour and intellect—of a
magnitude that shows the true face of the state and its collusion
with the dominant to keep a vast majority of people humiliated and
subjugated.
A decent,
democratic society gives its citizens more than just the right to
vote—it provides some basic freedoms and justice— economic,
political, and social—to every citizen. No wonder, those devoid of
such basics are still waging their freedom struggles. Recent years
have witnessed an upsurge of democratic aspirations among the
suppressed majority—women, dalits, adivasis, lowered castes, Muslim
masses, and the other oppressed.
 Dalit
ideology and politics, at its best, is wedded to the idea of
restructuring the society along democratic-egalitarian line. It
means smashing up caste and dismantling the brahmanical grammar of
hierarchy and hegemony. Which means transforming society through
changing attitudes and reeducating minds. In short, it means an
Indian revolution minus the bayonets. Committed to this cause, a
fledgling dalit intelligentsia has announced their arrival on the
intellectual landscape. Debarred for centuries from the world of
learning and letters, Ambedkar’s daughters and sons are angry.
To them, nothing
can be more inhuman and profane than the Vedicbrahmanic
tradition—often made synonymous with and presented as the Indian
tradition— that shamelessly celebrates na shudray mati dadyat
(do not give education to the toiling castes) and striyohi
mooldoshanam (women are the root cause of evils). Much to their
Kafkaesque horror, the dalits see the metamorphosis of the old
intellectual tradition—that conspired to treat shudras and women as
subhuman creatures— into the new epistemologies which continue to
validate and valorize the varnashrama dharma under the veneer
of “our beautiful philosophies”.
Not
surprisingly, the new grammar of elite-led knowledge-production and
education system carry forward in several visible and invisible
forms the regressive spirit and substance of the old. Of course, the
language and idioms of the caste-class elite have changed—and
acquired the required democratic façade—but not their Manuvadi
mindset. No wonder, the dalits are asking compelling questions
about the politics of knowledge-production and its role in
maintaining the oppressive status quo. It is generally the apartheid
in the public sphere, the media and academia
that greet such
dalit activist-writers, but some of them have somehow barged their
way through the glass ceiling. Dr Sheoraj Singh Bechain is one such
gatecrasher— he is the first dalit to enter the world of what is
called the mainstream Hindi journalism.
For close to two
decades he has written on the dalit issues for various journals and
periodicals, including a three-year long regular fortnightly column
“Dalit Uvach” for the Rashtriya Sahara. He has collected
those writings— and some unpublished ones—in an anthology which has
recently been published under the title Samkalin Hindi
Patrakarita Mein Dalit Uvach (The Dalit Articulation in the
Contemporary Hindi Journalism).
Bechain raises
burning sociopolitical issues that highlight the debilitating,
suffocating life- ituations under which dalits are forced to live in
the modern India—in keeping with the old— and several modernized—
casteist cruelties. The central focus of many of his writings here
is to democratize media and other public fora for desired
socio-cultural transformation. Pointing out the near total absence
of dalits and other marginalized communities in the mainstream
media, he underlines the fact that this apartheid reflects not only
the deep-seated prejudice but the continued glaring discrimination
against the dalit-subalterns by the people who fancy themselves as
the society’s conscience-keepers.
He attacks the
anti-reservation merit thesis as disingenuous, employed to safeguard
the dominance of the traditionally dominant castes. Instead of
opposing multifarious and continued privileges of the privileged,
the upper caste intelligentsia indulges in specious arguments to
oppose any attempts at empowerment of the hitherto excluded
communities. Such anti-poor attitudes, he argues with live
illustrations, can be seen at different levels in the entire
spectrum of elite-controlled media and academia. Many of the
articles present the contemporary intellectual debates and
activities in New Delhi from the dalit viewpoint.
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A collective
struggle cannot be waged without building a community of all the
oppressed. It requires an emancipatory vision, ideology and
strategy—not some half-baked ideas and moves, and that too
culled from the master’s armoury, however inadvertent. The
master’s tool will not dismantle the master’s house. |
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The writer also
engages with many debates and differences within the dalit
intelligentsia on critical issues. One write-up deplores the rise of
“dalit brahmans” who use their caste certificate to get ahead in
life, and then callously move away from the plight of millions of
their poor, uneducated sisters and brothers. Bechain’s own story is
the stuff an average dalit life is made of. A child labour, he
worked for years as a shoe-maker, farm worker, lemon vendor, etc.
before he enrolled himself in a school. His unconquerable desire for
learning coupled with some timely support from two kind souls came
handy.
The rugged,
merciless journey broke down his spirits many times, but he recouped
and finally completed a groundbreaking research on the “Impact of
the Journalist Ambedkar on the Hindi Dalit Journalism” which won him
a doctorate. He comes across as a fine product of the Ambedkarite
liberation enterprise, and a dedicated cultural activist of the
ongoing dalit movement. His poetry and prose writings are animated
by a burning desire to liberate the oppressed. There is no doubt on
this count. The doubt is on many of his simplistic and problematic
ideas and strategies for liberation that one can detect in this
anthology. For instance, his obsessive celebration of the dalit
cultural identity with the concomitant exclusive claims on, and
jealous guarding of, who defines and qualifies and who doesn’t for
the dalit literature comes dangerously close to the selfdefeating
essentialism and cultural relativism—akin to the mirror image of
brahmanism which he wants to dismantle. He is not only not keen to
building a greater solidarity with other oppressed segments of
society— women, adivasis, other lowered castes, Muslim masses, and
religious minorities which together form an overwhelming majority—
but revels in the minority status of dalits, seeing the earlier
sporadic attempts at unity as a mistake.
Like some of his
dalit compatriots, Bechain appears to miss the diabolic seduction of
caste fundamentalism, so brilliantly unravelled by Phule and
Ambedkar—as a system of graded inequality (hundreds of mutually
antagonistic castes placed in an hierarchical order) with sinister
manipulation from top to divide-and-dominate the productive
majority. Actually, minorityism of different segments of oppressed
majority—fighting their own isolated battles and often committing
the mistake of targeting other marginalized groups for the scarce
resources, instead of launching a united struggle for
liberation—perfectly suits the hegemonic design of the neo-brahmanism.
Such insular approach accommodates, even enriches, a handful of
self-seeking dalits—in fact, the rulingclass encourages such myopic,
divisive moves and love to dole out rewards to the factional
leaders— but it will not emancipate the majority. Collective
aspirations demand collective struggle.
A collective
struggle cannot be waged without building a community of all the
oppressed. It requires an emancipatory vision, ideology and
strategy—not some half-baked ideas and moves, and that too culled
from the master’s armoury, however inadvertent. The master’s tool
will not dismantle the master’s house. (Braj Ranjan Mani is a
Fellow, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Rashtrapati Nivas,
Shimla, and the author of Debrahmanising History: Dominance and
Resistance in Indian Society (Delhi,
Manohar: 2005). He can be contacted at
brajrmani@gmail.com)
28
May,
2008
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