Dalit Studies - Introduction
Dalit Studies - Introduction
Dalit Studies - Introduction
DALIT STUDIES
R A M N A R AYA N S . R AW AT & K . S AT YA N A R AYA N A , E D I T O R S
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
viii contents
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
coeval, with regimes of caste inequality. This volume explores many of t hese
themes.
A distinctive feature of the volume is that the contributors to the volume did
additional new research and substantially rewrote their essays after presenting
them as papers at the Dalit studies conference at the University of Pennsylvania in December 2008. The discussants, chairs of sessions, and audience at the
conference played a crucial role in asking the right questions and enabling
the contributors to further develop their research. The anonymous referees
at Duke University Press provided solid feedback to all the contributors by
asking insightful questions, which w
ere specific but also addressed the overall
theme of the volume. The volume introduces a new group of scholars who
have addressed the concerns of Dalit studies in different regions of India. Most
contributors to the volume belong to the marginal social groups in India. Indeed, many of us were deeply influenced by the political and academic debates
in the 1990s following the Mandal commission report controversy in 1990.
These debates were also shaped by the rapid rise of right-wing Hindu groups
following the demolition of the Babri masjid (mosque) in December 1992.
We have addressed these concerns in the introduction to the volume.
Our objective in writing a definitive introduction was to introduce Dalit
studies to a diverse audience. It also provided us with a valuable opportunity
to formulate the idea of Dalit studies as a critical location that allows the
study of Dalits as marginalized subjects but also offers a perspective for reinterpreting Indian society and history. We wrote the introduction together in
the fall of 2010 whenK. Satyanarayana was a visiting fellow at the Center for
the Advanced Study of India (casi) at the University of Pennsylvania. The
introduction eventually became a bold statement on our part, motivating us
to engage a variety of topics from several disciplines. Recognizing the merit
of the introduction, the two anonymous referees of the books manuscript
for Duke University Press became the most valuable interlocutors with their
incisive comments and suggestions. Feedback from them has helped us considerably revise and rework parts of the introduction, making it sharper and
clearer. Most of the comments by the two referees dealt with the introduction.
We would like to thank the participants at the Dalit studies conference,
where this volume began its journey. Nearly three hundred people submitted proposals for papers to be delivered at the conference. The conference
brought together a new group of scholars and was instrumental in creating
new friendships and collaborations. We are grateful to those who presented
papers at the conference, who in the order of presentation there are Narendra Jadhav, Chinnaiah Jangam, Gopal Guru, Sanal Mohan, Raj Kumar
x ack nowl edgm ents
Hans, Rupa Viswanath, Sukdeo Thorat, Shailaja Paik, Laura Brueck, Jebroja
Singh, Hugo Gorringe,M.S.S. Pandian, Sambaiah Gundimeda, Shyam Babu,
Surinder Jodhka, Chandrabhan Prasad and Devesh Kapur, Karthik Muralidharan, Katherine Newman, and Paul Attewell. We are especially thankful to
the discussants at the conference for their valuable time and suggestions:
Douglas Haynes, Lucinda Ramberg, Mrinalini Sinha, Sudipto Kaviraj, Steven
Wilkinson, and Lant Pritchett. We are also grateful to the chairs at the conference: Priya Joshi, Jamal Elias, Ania Loomba, Atul Kohli, and Gail Omvedt. We
are extremely grateful to Barbara Savage and Tufuku Zuberi for participating
in the African American and Dalit studies roundtable. This roundtable was
another highlight of the conference because it attracted a large audience, nearly
ninety people. casi provided substantial financial support for the conference,
enabling us to invite a large number of scholars from India. In addition,
it provided a small research grant to all contributors. Additional support was
provided by the South Asia Center, the Department of South Asian Studies,
and the Center for Africana Studies, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the years we have accumulated boundless debts to friends, colleagues,
and institutions, and we made new friends during the course of producing this
volume. Most of all, we acknowledge our deep gratitude to Devesh Kapur, director of casi, for his support to the conference and the volume. The conference was his idea. The remarkably professional but kind staff at casi made the
conference and the book possible. Their commitment to the conference turned
it into a choreographed festival of ideas. Our heartfelt thanks go to Juliana Di
Giustini, deputy director of casi and a dynamic leader and person of ideas,
who planned and executed the entire conference when Ramnarayan Rawat
was in India on sabbatical. We are also very grateful to Tanya Carey, administrative coordinator, for managing the conference with so much ease and
a smile. Alan Atchison, the online editor and expert, was always around
and ready with answers to our numerous questions. Our thanks go to Tanmaya Nanda. Several Penn undergraduates who worked part-time at casi contributed immensely to the success of the conference. They include Katherine
Maughan, Rahul Reddy, and Yashas Vaidya, all of the class of 2009. Thanks
are also due to Maisha Philips and Paola Campos at South Asia Center.
In the Department of South Asian Studies and at the South Asia Center at
Penn, our heartfelt thanks go to Kathy Hall, who was director of the center;
the late Aditya Behl, who supported the conference plan; and Jody Chavez,
assistant director of the center. The graduate students in the Department of
South Asian studies provided support in various ways. Christian Novtzke
and Sunila Kale, Ramnarayan Rawats colleagues at Penn at the time, played
ack nowl edgm ents xi
INTRODUCTION
Mata Prasads 2002 autobiography attributes the emergence of Indian nationalism to the everyday humiliation experienced by the English-educated
Indian elite under colonial rule. Like earlier Dalit authors, Prasad argues that
the origins of Indian nationalism must be located in the nationalist leaders
personal experiences of colonial humiliation, during which they w
ere treated
produced by western modernity, necessarily disrupts their feudal complacency and awakens them to their own subordination within this framework
of power.3 He has emphasized the privileged location of the colonial Indian
elite in defining the intellectual and cultural agendas of anti-colonial struggles.
It has maintained dominant position a fter independence within social, politi
cal, and academic contexts. The categories of humiliation and dignity, salient
in Dalit vernacular writings, have entered South Asian academic discourse
because Dalit intellectuals, consciously retaining an activist sensibility, have
entered academia in a significant fashion since the 1990s. Once almost completely absent from the academy, Dalit academics are now beginning to bring
vernacular histories of these two categories to bear on debates in the study
of India.
This volume represents the beginning of a qualitative transformation of Indian academia, both in terms of debates and in its recognition of the entry of
new social groups into academia a fter the 1990s. A number of developments
after the 1990s (discussed below) contributed to the emergence of Dalit studies as a significant intervention to reassess the study of Indian society and
history. Dalit academics and activist-intellectuals outside of formal institutions contributed a significant number of essays to this volume, with eleven
of the original nineteen papers at the conference presented by Dalit scholars.4
It would be more accurate to describe these scholars as belonging to nonelite social and educational backgrounds. The conference acknowledged the
emergence of a new generation of scholarsboth Dalit and non-Dalitwho
do not belong to the traditional elite of India. They do not belong to the elite
landed and bureaucratic Indian families. They did not study at elite colleges
in India such as the St.Stephens, the Lady Shri Ram, or the Presidency, and
they do not have PhDs from English institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge, which is characteristic of Indian academia. Another crucial feature of
this group is that for the majority of them English is not their first language;
they learned it in college. The entry of social groups who have often been
the subject matter of academic scholarship rather than actors in the production of that knowledge is perhaps the most significant recent development in
India. In that sense, this volumes contribution goes well beyond simply paying attention to the study of Dalit society and history and enables a significant reconsideration of many of the core assumptions in Indian academia.
All of this is also an indication of therapid changes taking place in India in
recent decades, visible especially after 198990.
The project of this volume must be located in the context of post-1990
political and intellectual developments. According to Partha Chatterjee,
introduction 3
this period marks the rise of autonomous Dalit politics and regional political
formations in India that have decisively replaced the Congress Party, which
dominated Indian politics until the 1990s, as the central active force.5 Five
broad trends have made the rise of Dalit studies possible: (a) the political
and intellectual controversy in the 1990s over implementation of the recommendations of the 1980 Mandal commission report (named afterB.P. Mandal, chairman of the Second Backward Classes Commission, 197980) that
expanded the constitutionally mandated reservations in public education
and employment for lower-caste Hindu groups;6 (b) the rise of new Dalit
activism in southern India; (c) political and electoral interventions by new
Dalit political parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (bsp ); (d) the rise of
Dalit feminism in India; and (e) global discussions of caste, race, and social
exclusions, such as those at the 2001 Durban conference (the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racial Intolerance) in South Africa. Rajni Kothari suggests that the new Dalit movement
in the 1990s has forced a detailed consideration of the theoretical and politi
cal issues involved in the whole debate on caste and its role in social transformation.7 It has challenged structural injustices and hierarchical practices by
demanding education, employment and special rights.8
First, questions of dignity and the stereotypes associated with Dalit communities culminated in critical discussions in the 1990s. In August 1990 the
Indian government decided to accept the recommendations in the Mandal
commissions report, expanding statutory reservation (or affirmative action)
policies from Dalits to other backward classes (or lower-castes). Considered
a feature of rural India, caste became extremely visible in urban India during
student protests in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. The
caste Hindu students in urban centers protested the extension of affirmative
action from scheduled castes and tribes to other historically disadvantaged
lower-caste groups. Several commentators at the time, such asK. Balagopal
and Gail Omvedt, noted that the vast majority of the Indian intelligentsia
opposed implementation of the recommendations in the Mandal commission report, arguing that such policies would tear the national fabric apart.9
Perhaps the most productive contribution of the debate was to bring into
focus the dominance of Indian academia by caste Hindu intellectuals from
relatively homogeneous economic, cultural, and educational backgrounds.
Most important, caste became a recognized legitimate political category and
a modern and living one, as opposed to its prior representations as primordial, backward, and reactionary. Yet at the same time, the continued visible
exclusion of Dalits from formal academic institutions, the media, and the
4 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
private sector has further validated the primacy of caste in institutional exclusions. The controversy over the Mandal commission report also deeply
affected the Dalit intelligentsia, especially the younger generation, many of
whom had previously identified primarily with Marxist ideas. For example,
in the 1990s, Dalit groups questioned the dominance of Brahmins and caste
Hindus in leadership positions in Marxist and Naxalite organizations. The
past decade has seen the emergence of Dalit student organizations in universities and Ambedkar Youth Forums throughout India and the expansion of
Dalit political organizations into new regions of the country.10 The conception of caste as a form of inequality and discrimination emerged on the center stage of the Indian political scene for the first time in independent India,
creating intense discussions in the public domain.
Second, in the 1990s, South India witnessed the rise of the new Dalit activism. The phenomenon of mass killings of Dalits in southern India and the
failure of both parliamentary parties and Marxist organizations to satisfactorily address this challenge led to new discussions of caste-based violence
in India. In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a large number of Dalit
activists discarded Marxist-Leninist (Maoist or Naxalite) ideological frameworks and embraced a Dalit identity as a more effective way of engaging with
mainstream political discourse.11 The declining ideological appeal and legitimacy of socialism and communism in India, especially among Dalit activists,
has also played a major role in catalyzing identity-based Dalit struggles in
Kerala. Class-based activism is no longer the dominant and legitimate mode
of activism in India today, as it was prior to the 1990s. This ideological realignment also led to the resurrection since the 1990s of Indian leader and
juristB.R. Ambekar, born in a Dalit family, as an important social phi
losopher and icon.12 In Tamil Nadu, Dalit organizations and activists have
questioned the legacy of Periyar (E.V. Ramasamy) and the Dravidian movement.13 Autonomous Dalit organizations such as the Dalit Sangarsh Samiti
in Karnataka, Dalit Panthers of India in Tamil Nadu, and Dalit Mahasabha
in Andhra Pradesh and many other caste-specific Dalit forums such as the
Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti in Andhra Pradesh and Adi Tamilzhar
Peravai in Tamil Nadu were all established in the 1990s. The consolidation of
Dalit identities and their increased presence in the public domain is a hallmark of the 1990s.14
Third, one of the significant contemporary developments in Indian politics is the remarkable electoral success of the bsp in northern India. The
bsp was founded in the Punjab in 1984 as an all-India party, but its electoral
success has been most striking in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh
introduction 5
a fter 1990. The controversy over the implementation of the Mandal commission reports recommendations in 1990 played an important role in the
bsp s success by realigning the political and electoral map in India. The bsp
entered into a pre-election alliance with the Samajwadi Party, representing lower-caste interests (particularly t hose of the Yadavs), and the coalition
stunned political pundits by winning the 1993 state assembly elections. Since
then, the bsp s increasing political and social strength has continued to surprise the mainstream establishment.15 By building a formidable alliance of
Dalits, poor backward communities, Muslims, and Brahmins, the bsp won
a majority in the 2006 elections in Uttar Pradesh. This electoral and political
success in the last two decades in northern India has inspired and motivated
a cross-section of Dalit groups in different parts of India, reflected in the
bsp s presence in almost all of the southern states, including Dalit parties
such as the Dalit Panthers of India and the Pudiya Tamilazham.
Fourth, the post-1990s context, defined by the mobilization of groups that
supported and t hose that opposed the Mandal commissions report and the
rise of Dalit movements, also marked the emergence of Dalit womens forums as a distinct political formation that enabled a new inquiry into the
foundational paradigm of liberal and Marxist Indian feminist ideologies. The
implementation of the Mandal commission reports recommendations in
1990 motivated sections of caste Hindu women to participate in anti-Mandal
political forums. The centrality of caste in womens lives was illustrated by the
caste Hindu women who took to the streets to protest the implementation
of the Mandal commissions recommendations and who displayed placards
expressing their anxiety about finding a good caste Hindu husband in light
of the new reservation policies. Such a public display of caste arrogance and
upper-caste identity by sections of Hindu w
omen also revealed the social
divide between Dalit and upper-caste women.16 Institutionally, the formation
of the National Federation of Dalit W
omen in 1995 signaled a new politi
cal intervention within the womens movement in India.17 Describing mainstream Indian feminism as Brahmanical for its failure to recognize caste as a
crucial element of social and political life, informing norms that shape even
the most intimate and sexual domains, Dalit womens organizations challenged
upper-caste Indian feminists right to speak on behalf of all women. Dalit
feminist organizations have emphasized three distinct modes of subjugation.
These are patriarchy (male domination of females in the family and society,
and the exclusion of Dalit w
omen from Dalit maledominated political and
cultural organizations), caste inequities (exclusion of Dalits by caste Hindu
6 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
men and women), and sexual violence (especially used by caste Hindu men
to enforce their domination over Dalits, but also used at times by Dalit men
in the family context). Gopal Gurus 1995 essay, Dalit Women Talk Differently, emphasized the crucial role of caste identity in instituting forms of
domination, exclusion, and violence. Citing testimonies of Dalit w
omen activists at a 1995 conference, Guru argued that caste identity plays a significant
role in the humiliation and violation of Dalit w
omens bodies and takes on
a severe and intense form that cannot be explained by existing frameworks
of patriarchy, class, and psychological factors. By foregrounding the centrality of caste inequities against Dalit women and articulating the complex
connections between caste and patriarchy and between caste and class, the
emergence of a Dalit feminist movement a fter the 1990s has posed new questions for interrogating a feminist history of India. The 2003 Gender and Caste
reader edited by Anupama Rao contains many articles published after the
1990s that reflect this shift.18
Fifth, with Indian economic liberalization in the 1990s, new institutional
and formal public spaces have become available as sites of debate. The new
political economy has created new opportunities for Dalit writers and activists. The rise of the Internet, an explosion in vernacular media, and the
growing availability of resources outside the state framework have all helped
Dalits gain public attention through literary productions, print media, and
social media mobilization.19 Global communication, transportation networks, and access to international forums have enabled new dialogues and
alliances. For example, a large contingent of Dalit activists and scholars
participated in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in
September 2001. Dalit participants demanded that caste be included as a form
of racial discrimination in the conference agenda. This reconceptualization
of caste discrimination allowed Dalit activists to declare the rights of their
community to be legitimate h
uman rights.20 The reinvigoration of the study
of India in the United States over the past two decades and the increasing
exchange of scholars between the two countries gave additional impetus to
the emergence of Dalit studies. The African American civil rights movement
and the presence of black studies departments in the United States have provided a forum for comparative analysis and exchange. This global circulation
of Dalit issues, the rise of a Dalit diaspora, and an engagement with questions
of diversity and race have all helped enrich and expand the debate on caste.
In this context, the University Grants Commission, a federal institution of
introduction 7
higher education in India, established centers for the study of Social Exclusion and Inclusion Policy in several Indian universities to examine caste-
based and other forms of exclusion.21
The increasing visibility of Dalits in contemporary India and abroad has
been accompanied by the rise of the Dalit intelligentsia. In the 1990s, Dalit
activists and intellectuals began to enter Indian academe, marking the arrival of a new social group in the mainstream Indian public sphere.22 For the
first time questions were raised about the domination of Indian academia by
intellectuals belonging to the caste Hindu groups. Th
ere is no doubt that the
protests and counterprotests in 1990 over the implementation of the recommendations of the Mandal commission, along with the rise of Dalit movements all over India, brought the question of caste discrimination into the
center of academic and political debates.23 This is a historic development that
has largely gone unnoticed, even as it has made possible a reconsideration of
Indian history and politics.
Interrogating the Prevailing Paradigms
ere has been a general absence of research into and engagement with
Th
the perspectives of twentieth-century Dalit intellectuals like Swami Ach
hutanand, Bhagya Reddy Varma, Kusuma Dharmanna, and Iyothee Thass,
and their critiques of untouchability and caste inequality are not widely
known. Until the 1990s, even Ambedkars critique of Indian society and the
Gandhian national movement remained on the margins.24 In Indian historiography, Dalit struggles against untouchability and upper-caste domination
were frequently regarded as sectarian and pro-British, and therefore as anti
national. The prominent Marxist historian of India, Sumit Sarkar, suggests in
a self-critical essay in 2002 that it has proved difficult to accommodate within
this framework [colonialism versus nationalism] sympathetic evaluations of
many movements for womens rights and lower caste protests, for these often
utilized aspects of colonial policies and Western ideologies as resources.25 In
the context of his work on Tamil Dalits in 1998,G. Aloysius points out that
social crises in subaltern life had begun to throw up organized activities as
early as the middle of the 19th century, though such actors still await the
historiographers and social scientists to unearth and install them in their legitimate niches of history.26 A notable shift since the 1990s has been the recognition of Dalits as actors in Indias history. New attention has been devoted
to the contributions of Dalits to the shaping of modern India, both in terms
of their political struggle and in the recognition of their key leaders. This is
8 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
in marked contrast to the absence of attention to Dalit struggles and intellectual agendas in English-language publications and mainstream academic
writings in the long twentieth century.
In this section we discuss dominant frameworks in Indian academic
scholarship on Dalits. These include (a) the Gandhian Harijan ideology; (b)
the primacy of the colonialist historiographical framework over the nationalist one to study modern India; (c) the nationalist idea of Indian civilization;
and (d) the Nehruvian model of modern developmentalism. Each of these
prevailing notions excluded Dalits and their perspectives from academic debates. The latter half of this section traces the noticeable shift in the tone and
content of academic writings on Dalits from the 1960s to the 1990s. The perceptible transition is from a general study of Dalit society and movements to
the positioning Dalits as actors with a distinct ideological agenda, recovering
their active role in shaping debates in India.
The hegemony of the Harijan perspective is one explanation that helps
account for the absence of systematic engagement with Dalits as political
and historical actors. It represents Dalits through the powerful stereotype
of the bhangi (scavenger) figure and stigmatized victim in need of reform
from above.27 Removing other more prominent forms of Dalit lives from
discussion, the scavenger figure became the dominant trope through which
questions related to Dalits were discussed and debated in the nationalist
discourse. Gandhi played a prominent role in creating this discourse when
he idealized the scavenger figure and sought to ennoble the occupation of
scavenging. Gandhian discussions of reforming Hindu society relied heavily
on the reform of untouchables impure occupation of scavenging. An ideal
Bhangi, Gandhi claimed, would be an expert who would know the quality
of night soil and urine because of his scientific education.28 In the Gandhian
agenda the reform of untouchables became intricately linked to the reform
and modernization of the profession of scavenging. Gandhi maintained
that the varna model of social division consisting of four orders (Brahmin,
Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra) is an ideal system b
ecause the callings of
a Brahminspiritual teacherand a scavenger are equal, and their due
performance carries equal merit before God.29 Harijan perspective denies
any notion of liberty and freedom to the scavenging community. Following Gandhi, the manual scavenger was romanticized in early Indian classics
such as Mulk Raj Anands 1935novel, Untouchable, and Sivasankara Pillais
1947novel, Tottiyute Makan (Scavengers son), both of which reinforced the
stereotype of the scavenger figure and stigmatized victim as the normative
figure of the Dalit.30
introduction 9
tial evidence of a long history of Dalit efforts to envision new social and po
litical structures free from caste Hindu domination.60 Aloysiuss 1998 study
draws our attention to Iyothee Thass and his organizational efforts between
1890 and 1914 in claiming that Buddhism is the original religion of Tamil
Dalits.61 Thasss work on the 1900s has enabled the recognition of the emergence of an autonomous Dalit movement that used the language of southern Indian indigeneity well before the mature Dravidian movement of the
1930s.62 Anupama Raos 2009 book discusses the strategies of emancipation
advocated by caste subalterns in questioning caste inequality as forms of
civic and political exclusion and their efforts to rewrite history, rename
identity, and challenge Brahmanical knowledge production.63 Rao further
argues that the liberal states policies of affirmative action also created new
sites of violence against the Dalits. More recently, Ramnarayan Rawats 2011
study recovers the role of Dalit actors in intervening in and reshaping politi
cal practice in northern India from 1922 onward, providing new models not
just for Dalits but for all political actors.64
The rise of Dalit feminism has interrogated existing stereotypical assumptions of Indian feminist historiography, especially its representation
of Dalit women as liberated.65 Urmila Pawar and Gopal Guru have urged
an investigation into Dalit patriarchy and representations of Dalit women
in mainstream historiography as liberated subjects.66 Dalit women, Pawar
has argued, have had to deal with caste based atrocities...the threat of
rape, [and] in the f amily...tolerate physical violence and other atrocities
of men.67 Gurus influential essay has emphasized the social location and
experience of the w
oman intellectual-activist in articulating a distinctly Dalit
feminist standpoint that is markedly different from the experience of caste
Hindu women. Sharmila Rege has expanded on this point by arguing that
the feminist movement in India did not analyze the formative influence of
Brahmanism in shaping the cultural and political practices of caste Hindus,
both men and w
omen.68 The visibility of Dalit w
omen in work and social
roles and their increased political activism after 1990 has elicited violent reprisals against them.69
One of the more systematic efforts to rethink colonial modernity and
offer a conceptual framework for the study of colonial and postcolonial India
has been provided by Guru. He asks a historiographical question that is extremely important for the study of India when he writes, what are those normative grounds on which the struggle for rejection of rejection is carried out
by the subaltern masses?70 He goes on to suggest that the normative grounds
are created by the politics of recognition, emancipation, and education of
introduction 15
the subject. At the same time we must recognize that these modern principles, along with modern institutions, bureaucracy, industrialization, and
the public sphere, have also created new conditions for the perpetuation of
humiliation. Modernity, argues Guru, creates new shared moral and ethical
commitments to egalitarian values among dominant and subordinate groups,
yet it also creates new practices that contribute to the latters exclusion.D.R.
Nagaraj has emphasized the long history in Dalit neighborhoods of Dalit
cultural memory of saints and yogis who have challenged caste hierarchy.
The efforts of indigenous rebels and radicals to fight caste discrimination
has been one of the spiritual requirements of their tradition.71 It is impor
tant to note the continued popularity of an alternative tradition built by the
followers of saints like Ravi Das in northern India, Chokhemala in western
India, and Basavanna and Nandanar in southern India in shaping struggles
for dignity. At the same time, Dalit intellectuals and activists are wary of
Nagarajs suggestion of a civilizational connection between Dalit and caste
Hindu societies and his criticism of Dalit social and literary movements faith
in the project of modernity. Instead, what we are emphasizing is that the
Dalit groups were particularly attentive in appropriating cultural practices
and using them to engage with the modern liberal context to transform their
self-identities to fight caste inequality. Departing from the subaltern studies
project, this volume seeks to emphasize struggles related to dignity that successfully engage with colonial liberalism to interrogate religiously sanctioned
caste discrimination that has shaped the politics of nationalism and continues to inform democratic practices today.
By writing histories of struggles for human dignity and recovering histories of struggles against caste discrimination, this volume seeks to outline
a new historiographical agenda for the study of India. Dominant scholarly
frameworks have elaborated aspects of exclusion and deprivation faced by
caste subalterns through the paradigms of social mobility and Sanskritization. However, because of the overwhelming concern with movements
against colonialism and a commitment to the cultural unity of Indic civilization, until recently Indian historiography has paid little attention to Dalit
thought and activism. The pedagogical projects of nationalist elites identified
Dalits activities, including their social and political struggles, as occupying
the domain of tradition, as primordial and backward, or as a product of the
colonial states patronage politics. Yet Dalits found colonial modernity, including colonial liberal thought, useful in addressing concrete questions of
representation for minorities, which offered new opportunities for engaging
with caste Hindus. Most Dalit organizations engaged with the colonial state
16 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
over issues concerning affirmative action to secure representation in legislative assemblies and schools and colleges. The longer history of Dalit struggles
related to questions of self-esteem and self-worth deserves serious academic
attention today.
Notes for New Scholarship on India
One of the most important objectives of this volume is to offer a new perspective for the study of India. Some of the key interventions the authors
in this volume offer include (a) foregrounding issues of human dignity as
central to the study of Indian history, (b) examining discursive practices that
have allowed caste discrimination to persist, and (c) moving beyond the conceptual obsession with the framework of colonialism versus nationalism. The
long quote with which this introduction opened offered Mata Prasads interpretation of Indias freedom struggle. He examined it not through the dyad
of colonialism versus nationalism that has dominated Indian historiography
but through a framework of human dignity. Prasad insists that the Indian
elites experience of the loss of dignity was central to their struggle against
colonial domination. Humiliation and dignity are the prominent themes
that permeate the Dalit vernacular literary and political sphere in provinces
throughout India.
This volume is conceived of as an academic intervention that can connect activists and writers with scholars to investigate the untold narratives of
Dalits as active participants in the project of imagining new visions of modern
India. It aims to move beyond the nationalist historiographical framework of
colonialism versus nationalism and recover struggles related to dignity. In
the process, we reexamine prevailing conceptions of colonial rule and colonial knowledge. In the nationalist narrative, colonial rule is seen only as
exploitative, repressive, and therefore anti-Indian.72 This view of colonialism
as a homogeneous and singular structure of oppression does not adequately
explain the complex transformations of the colonial period or the diverse
responses of different social groups within society. Yet this uniform view of
colonialism has helped a caste Hindu nationalist elite appropriate both history and power in modern India. In contrast, we demonstrate that protocols of colonial public space and its normative categories enabled Dalits and
other subordinated caste groups to use modern juridical practices.73 Prominent Dalit leaders and intellectuals in the twentieth century like Ambedkar,
Swami Achhutanand, Mangoo Ram, Bhagya Reddy Varma, Jagjivan Ram,
and Iyothee Thass viewed the colonial state as offering new legal structures,
introduction 17
which guaranteed Dalits new access to public space and provided employment in new professions. A small section of the Dalit community benefited
from colonial education, employment, and political representation. This
group of educated rural and urban Dalits fashioned counter-ideologies to
challenge organizations such as the Congress Party and caste Hindu organizations. They swiftly embraced new opportunities, establishing local organizations, setting up printing presses, launching newspapers, and opening
schools and hostels to mobilize their community and take advantage of opportunities for engaging in the new public space. Chapters2, 3, 4, and5in
this volume demonstrate that Dalit groups deployed the language of rights,
social equality, and affirmative action to challenge caste Hindu organizations
refusal to discuss issues relating to caste inequalities.
Research over the past three decades has revised the nationalist and Marxist representations of the colonial state as a purely secular and external entity.
Such research has drawn attention to the colonial states role in consolidating
Hindu society and nationalizing Hinduism as a unified Indian tradition.74
Caste Hindu dominanceparticularly by Brahmansin the colonial bureaucracy, education, and middle-class professions has been well demonstrated.
Practices that helped produce colonial knowledge like the census and caste
and tribe surveys in the nineteenth c entury classified and organized Indian
society on the four-fold varna model of social division, based on Brahmanical texts like the Manusmriti (one of the most cited texts in colonial sources),
with Brahmans at the top and untouchables at the bottom of the census
table. The varna ideal in the Brahmanical texts excluded untouchables from
the social order by describing them as avarnaliterally, out of caste or
outside of society. Furthermore, the colonial state enumerated and identified impure occupations as a unique feature of Dalit communities. By equating Dalit groups with traditional impure occupations, the colonial state ignored its own evidence of Dalit groups other occupations in the nineteenth
century, including work as agricultural peasants, stonemasons, and weavers.
Stereotypes of Dalit occupations also s haped the colonial states land tenure
policies, which favored caste Hindus and lower-caste groups but worked to
the disadvantage of Dalits. In many provinces, colonial tenancy laws barred
Dalits from buying and selling agricultural land because of occupational ste
reotypes that defined them as nonagriculturalists and limited the buying and
selling of land to t hose groups explicitly defined as agriculturalists. Colonial
policies reinforced caste Hindu notions of Indian society, which also ensured caste Hindus domination of the modern institutional apparatus.
18 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
Indian context and in the global diasporic context within broader trends of
knowledge production and pedagogy. Second, it offers a framework to compare Dalits with related social groups in other national contexts, including
African American struggles, with which Dalits have forged long-standing
connections; the Burakumin protests in Japan; and the anti-apartheid protests in South Africa. Third, with the upsurge of Dalit political and cultural
movements in the 1990s and the renewed national and international debate
on caste, efforts like this project have emerged as sites of new scholarship
being produced by both Dalits and other like-minded scholars that reframe
the analysis of society from the structural position. The project provides a
new perspective for the study of Indian society and has the potential to redefine existing models of scholarship in both the Indian humanities and social
sciences.80
Critical Questions in the Study of India
This volume, whose authors include a large number of Dalit scholars, intervenes in the study of India in three distinct ways. First, the essays in this
collection draw attention to practices of caste exclusion in ways that seek
to refocus Indian historiography and social sciences. Second, in contrast to
earlier ideological positions that viewed Dalits only as passive victims or
as objects of reform (as illustrated by Gandhis Harijan discourse or Arya
Samajs embrace of temple entry movements), this volume recognizes Dalits
as intellectuals, leaders, and active participants in processes of social transformation, highlighting their interventions in shaping debates in modern
India. Third, the essays demonstrate that Dalits w
ere not passive imitators of
dominant discourses and practices; rather, they actively articulated their own
agendas for advancing struggles against caste discrimination.
Dalit writings in Indian languages have praised the arrival of colonial modernity for introducing new principles and institutions that enabled Dalits
and other marginal groups to participate in the public space. This is a widely
shared theoretical framework that informs many Dalit writings. Arjun Dangles review of Dalit literature associates the arrival of the British with new
knowledge, technology and production processes and, more importantly,
with a new codified legal system that enabled Dalits to challenge Hindu
religious-and scriptural-based systems.81 Baburao Bagul associates colonial
modernity with the rise of new literary expression based on self-critical
thinking that made possible for the first time an expression of social themes
rather than the metaphysical, transcendental or religious.82 Essays in this
20 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
volume develop and expand on this view of colonial modernity in the contexts of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab. As one method
of building a movement and claiming a space in modern institutions, Dalit
organizations and activists relied on colonial laws and appropriated the po
litical language of equality and representation.
The essays in this collection highlight struggles related to dignity in the
colonial and postcolonial periods to move beyond the mainstream preoccupation with anticolonial struggles. Gurus essay alerts us to the dominant
framework of Indian historiography within which Dalit histories have been
examined. He outlines at length the theoretical flaws of Indian historiography and concludes that mainstream scholars of history direct their acrimony
toward colonial racism but refuse to contribute any criticism on the question
of caste outside of a rhetorical accommodation in the nationalist agenda.
Ambedkar had argued in the Constituent Assembly debates of 194648 that
Indian nationalism as led by the Congress Party had developed the doctrine
of the divine right of the majority to rule the minorities, and any claim
for the sharing of power by the minority is called communalism while the
monopolizing of the whole power by the majority is called nationalism.83
This was a widely shared view among Dalit activists and intellectuals in much
of the twentieth century. In 1949, the Dalit Hindi author Nandlal Viyougi
argued that the unique feature of caste discrimination in Hindu society is the
absence of a cultural and religious commitment to equality in Hindu religion. It is therefore easy, he wrote, for a radical Indian nationalist like Gandhi
to be socially conservative and yet claim a revolutionary image by being an
anticolonial nationalist.84
In contrast to Indian historiographys stereotypes of Dalit activism as a
product of the Congress Party and British patronage or enlightenment, this
collection of essays highlights Dalits not only as engaged participants but as
actors who effectively intervened in political and cultural debates in modern India. Sanal Mohans chapter outlines a history of Dalits engagement
with questions of modernity in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century
Kerala. From 1898 onward, the Dalit activist Ayyankali and his organization,
the Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham, organized protests to demand access to
public schools and spaces like roads and markets in the Travancore region of
southern Kerala. These Dalit struggles created what Mohan rightly describes
as a modern social space in Kerala. Chinnaiah Jangam reveals the active
role of Bhagya Reddy Varma in creating a Dalit public space in the Hyderabad
region through the mobilization of Dalit groups, the opening of schools, the
publication of newspapers and books, the organization of conferences, and
introduction 21
their teachings to distance their religion from Sikhism, but also to build a
conscious Ravi Dasi community. Members of the Punjabi Dalit diaspora in
England (who accounts for around 10percent of the total Punjabi population in the United Kingdom) have played a key role in sustaining the deras
in Punjab as an alternative to the Sikh Gurudwaras. Similarly, several Dalit
Christian organizations have led struggles against inequality in the Christian
denominations. These organizations sought, for example, to distinguish Dalit
Christians from Syrian Christians by expanding the meaning of salvation
and revelation with ideas drawn from Dalit lives to build what Mohan calls a
new emancipatory discourse. Borrowing from the biblical notion of salvation, the Dalit Christian leader Poikayil Yohannan has emphasized the role
of a Dalit messiah in liberating their community.
By providing evidence of Dalit activism in social, political, and religious
spheres from the early decades of the twentieth century, these essays sift
through modern Indian history to recover Dalit agency. Raj Kumar Hanss
essay traces the critical role of Dalit activists in Sikh history from the era
of Guru Gobind Singh in the seventeenth c entury to their role in the Singh
Sabha movement in Punjab in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hanss essay captures the visible tensions in Sikh religion and its history,
including contestations over its theological claim of equality, its criticism of
caste oppression, and the continued persistence of untouchability. The resultant fractures evident in Sikhism are well described by Hans, who accepts the
Sikh theological standpoint but accuses Jatt Sikhs, who came to dominate
Sikh religious organizations and political economy in the past two centuries,
of introducing exclusionary practices directed against Dalit groups. Do we
describe the leading role of Jatt Sikhs as a Brahmanization of Sikhism? Hans
also explains why Dalit Sikhs have begun to create alternative religious sites
for their community, the Dalit Sikh deras. Hanss essay reveals a typical pattern in which such debates are frequently present in Indian-language liter
ature but do not exist in English-language academic writings, and it alerts
us to the importance of ensuring that such debates and narratives are included in mainstream English-language scholarship. Hans demonstrates that
despite the claims in Sikh history of an absence of caste, Dalit Sikh activists
from the seventeenth c entury onward have carefully documented ongoing
discrimination against untouchables.
Dalits visibility as agents of change in the postcolonial Indian social and
cultural domain, especially since the 1980s, marks a remarkably new development (even if their activity is not new). K. Satyanarayana argues that it
was the phenomenon of mass killings of Dalits and the controversy over the
introduction 23
10. TheB.R. Ambedkar Students Association and Dalit Students Forum at the
University of Hyderabad and the United Dalit Students Forum at jnu , Delhi, came
into existence in the 1990s.
11. Srinivasulu, Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh.
12. Kothari, Rise of the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste, 45052.
13. Ravikumar, Re-Reading Periyar.
14. See Pendse, At Crossroads. This collection of essays provides a detailed discussion
of the Dalit movement in independent India. See also Gorringe, Untouchable Citizens.
15. Pai, Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution; Pushpendra,
Dalit Assertion through Electoral Politics.
16. Chakravarti, Gendering Caste, chapter1.
17. Guru, Dalit Women Talk Differently, 254849.
18. A. Rao, Gender and Caste.
19. The 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Racial Intolerance, Durban (South Africa), and the International Dalit conference at Vancouver, BC, in 2003 brought together representatives of Dalit diasporic
nonprofit organizations and other international agencies to debate caste discrimination in the global context. A significant group of Dalit scholars and activists attended
these conferences. The international French literary festival Les Belles Etrangres
(Beautiful foreigners) honored the Dalit writers Bama (Faustina Mary Fatima Rani)
and Narendra Jadhav in Paris 2009. Two academic conferences were held in the
United States: the Dalit studies conference in December 2008 organized by the Center
for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, mentioned above;
and Caste and Contemporary India, a conference held in October 2009 at Columbia
University, in honor of its alumnusB.R. Ambedkar.
20. For an extensive discussion on race, caste, and the 2001 Durban conference
seeD. Reddy, The Ethnicity of Caste.
21. See Guidelines for Establishment of Centres in Universities for Study ofSocial Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, http://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/2118716_social
-exclusion-colleges.pdf, accessed September15, 2015 (also on March26, 2011).
22. Guru organized a small but significant group of scholars under the banner of the Dalit Intellectual Collective. A major outcome of Dalit activism in the
1990s was the Bhopal Conference: Charting a New Course for Dalits for the 21st
C entury in January 2002 which brought together Dalit scholars, activists, and
nongovernmental organizations to demand a share in the development in a globalized economy.
23. Such debates were most evident in the Dalit vernacular writings; some are
recently translated, including Dangle, Poisoned Bread;K. Satyanarayana and Tharu,
No Alphabet in Sight. A large number of Dalit vernacular writings are being translated
into English.
24. Since the 1990s Ambedkar has attracted considerable academic attention, but
his theoretical contributions have not yet been sufficiently appreciated in the mainstream social science disciplines.
25. Sarkar, Writing Social History, 359.
introduction 27
26. Aloysius, Religion as Emancipatory Identity, 49. However, some of these issues were
addressed in Tamil-language writings in the early 1990s (see Ravikumar, Venomous Touch).
27. Human Rights Watch, Broken People. See also the Dalit commentator Chandrabhan
Prasads critique of this report in the Indian English daily Pioneer, February21, 2001.
28. Gandhi, The Ideal Bhangi, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 70:127.
29. Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, 1:83. The vedic conception of the varna model
excludes the untouchable castes as avarnas who perform impure menial services
to the four varnas. The varna order is an ideal i magined in classical Hindu literature
which resonates with the real and lived caste order. When Ambedkar and o
thers argued
against caste and untouchability, Gandhi was forced to take a public position. Ambedkar
explains how Gandhi opposes the practice of untouchability but justifies birth-based
social division and hierarchy in his interpretation of the varna model. In Ambedkars
view, Gandhis ideal of vedic varna model and the lived caste system theoretically fix the
social position of the individual based on birth in a particular varna or caste. Gandhis
endorsement of the vedic varna model does not question the imposition of scavenging
on certain untouchable castes based on birth, in the past, and even today (9294).
30. Anand, Untouchable; Pillai, Tottiyute Makan.
31. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, 306.
32. Guru, Dalit Movement in Mainstream Sociology, 570.
33. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India, chapter2. Srinivas popularized Sanskritization
as a conceptual model in the 1950s to assess social change among the lower-caste
groups in Indian society. Sanskritization was defined as a social process by which
castes placed at the bottom in the caste hierarchy seek upward mobility by emulating
the rituals and practices of the upper or dominant castes.
34. Sumit Sarkar observes that the dominant historiographical assumption here,
cutting across many otherwise widely varied approaches, has been that of a single, colonial/anti-colonial binary, setting both narrative pattern and standards of evaluation
(The Limits of Nationalism). For a more elaborate discussion, see Rawat, Reconsidering Untouchability, introduction.
35. See the chapters in this volume by Sanal Mohan, Chinnaiah Jangam, Rajkumar
Hans, and Surinder Jodhka.
36. Bhattacharya, The Problem.
37. Upadhya, The Idea of Indian Society.
38. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Kosambi and the Discourse of Civilization, Hindu,
July31, 2008, accessed June27, 2015, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp
-opinion/kosambi-and-the-discourse-of-civilization/article1303866.ece.
39. Uberoi, Deshpande, and Sundar, Introduction.
40. For a critical analysis of Srinivas, see Deshpande, Fashioning a Postcolonial
Discipline. See also Rodrigues, Dalit Struggle for Recognition within India.
41. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications.
42. The Indian sociologists Srinivas,A.M. Shah, andB.S. Baviskar opposed caste-
based reservations for other backward classes recommended by the Mandal commission and described the caste system as divisive and premodern. See Kothari, Rise of
the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste, 444.
28 ramnarayans. rawat andk. satyanarayana
43. Thurston and Rangachari, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, 4:292325
(Madigas) and32987 (Malas), and6:77140 (Paraiyan or Pariahs); Crooke, The
Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, 2:16894 (Chamars)
and4:13852 (Pasis).
44. Moffatt, An Untouchable Community of South India.
45. Guru, Dalit Movement in Mainstream Sociology, 570.
46. Mahar, The Untouchables in Contemporary India.
47. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians, chapters1114.
48. Zelliot, Doctor Bahasaheb Ambedkar; OHanlon, Caste, Conflict, Ideology.
49. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability; Khare, The Untouchable as Himself; Juergensmeyer, Religious Rebels in the Punjab.
50. Guru, Dalit Movement in Mainstream Sociology, 571.
51. S. Deshpande, Contemporary India, 71.
52. Rudolph and Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition, 2936.
53. Ibid., 6487.
54. K. Satyanarayana, Dalit Reconfiguration of Caste, 51.
55. Kothari, Rise of the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste, 443; Dirks,
Castes of Mind, 28688.
56. Chatterjee, Caste and Subaltern Consciousness.
57. This theme is discussed in Rawat, Reconsidering Untouchability, 1218.
58. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 1011.
59. Mayaram etal., Subaltern Studies XII.
60. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India.
61. Aloysius, Religion as Emancipatory Identity, especially chapters3 and4.
62. Satyanarayana and Tharu, No Alphabet in Sight, 119.
63. A. Rao, The Caste Question, 2.
64. Rawat, Reconsidering Untouchability, chapters4 and5.
65. Liddle and Joshi, Daughters of Independence, 8594 and6569; Ilaiah, Why I Am
Not a Hindu, chapter2.
66. Pawar, What Has the Dalit Movement Offered to Women?, 8485; Guru,
Dalit Women Talk Differently. See also Pawar and Moon, We Also Made History,
chapter9. For a brief discussion of Dalit feminist arguments, see The Dalit W
oman
Question, in Satyanarayana and Tharu, Steel Nibs Are Sprouting, 3643.
67. Pawar, What Has the Dalit Movement Offered to Women?, 8485.
68. Rege, Writing Caste/Writing Gender, 37.
69. A. Rao, introduction.
70. Guru, Rejection of Rejection, 219.
71. Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet and Other Essays, 25.
72. David Ludden writes incisively that in Ranajit Guhas accumulated writings,
colonialism appears to be a single, unified, discursive structure of power inside a vast
ethnographic present; and state institutions, texts, personnel, and discourse, including
those of the nationalist movement, stand in stark opposition to subaltern India and its
indigenous culture from the first day of British rule down to the rupture of Subaltern
Studies. Ranajit Guha might be said to be the Louis Dumont of colonialism, which
introduction 29
in his writing attains a comprehensive power like that of caste in Homo Hierarchicus
(Introduction, 14).
73. See the chapters in this volume by Sanal Mohan and Chinnaiah Jangam.
74. See Dirks, Castes of Mind, chapter11; Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu
Traditions, introduction.
75. On sanitation, see Prashad, Untouchable Freedom, chapters3 and6. On land and
caste, seeD. Kumar, Land and Caste in South India. On labor, seeR. Gupta, Labour
and Working Class in Eastern India.
76. Chowdhry, The Veiled Women. See alsoR. Kumar, The History of D
oing, chapters2 and3.
77. On this point, see the review article by Sarkar, The Return of L
abour to South
Asian History. See also Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History; Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Captialism in India.
78. Namishray, Apne-Apne Pinjare; Moon, Growing Up Untouchable in India; Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: An Untouchables Life.
79. Reges essay on Dalit studies may be one of the first attempts to conceptualize
Dalit studies (Dalit Studies as Pedagogical Practice, 1051).
80. K. Satyanarayana, Dalit Studies as a New Perspective in the Indian Academia,
87.
81. Dangle, Dalit Literature: Past, Present and Future.
82. Bagul, Dalit Literature is but Human Literature, 278. In recent years Chandrabhan Prasad, a Dalit writer and public commentator, has started celebrating Lord
Macaulays birthday in Delhi every year to applaud his role in establishing colonial
modernity by formulating a uniform rule of law from which groups like Dalits
benefited.
83. Ambedkar, States and Minorities, 427.
84. Viyougi, Ambedkar ki Awaz Arthat Achhutoin ka Federation, 33.
85. Ambedkar, foreword, iiiiv.
1
The Indian Nation in
Its Egalitarian Conception
go pa l g ur u
qualities and triumphant modernists. The scholars who claim to have found
this vision for Dalits unquestioningly accept the validity of these claims. The
faith and force in their assertions leave no room for any ambiguity or confusion that Dalits may have in understanding nationalism, electoral politics, or
globalization. That is, these writers suggest that nationalism, electoral politics, and globalization are the spaces that tend to clarify the Dalit vision of
any kind of confusion. These are the spheres, so the writers would argue, that
provide an opportunity for Dalits to acquire a generic identity as Indian nationalists. This would mean that Dalits could appear in different spheres with
secular but national identities. For example, someone might argue that in the
sphere of nationalism a Dalit could change from an untouchable to a citizen;
or in the realm of electoral politics a Dalit could shed the culturally attributed identity of dhed and, through the dynamics of electoral power, acquire
a secular identity, possibly even as head of a political institution.3 However,
at the other end of the spectrum, there are scholars among the Dalit community who seem to have developed a new set of aspirations for their social
constituency. According to these scholars, Dalits need to aspire to become
consumers of commodities.4 In the context of globalization, such scholars
would further argue, Dalits have a unique opportunity to become part of a
more homogeneous social space of global consumers. Constructing Dalits in
terms of enlightened consumers in the global cultural sphere pushes them
beyond the boundaries of nationalism. Imagining Dalits as global consumers
also contests the intellectual claim that there is a particular construction of
Dalits as nationalists.
In fact, scholars tend to claim that they have discovered a space for Dalits
in Indian nationalism (Badri Narayan and Charu Gupta), electoral democracy (Kanchan Chandra), and globalization (Gail Omvedt). It is interesting
to note that writers who are looking for nationalists among the Dalits are taking a nonlinear route that exists outsideB.R. Ambedkars conception of nationalism and its implication for Dalits.5 Claiming radical intellectual agency
by writing on Dalits and attesting to the presence of a nationalist space for
them, the nationalist scholars claim is at odds with the Dalit articulation of
these agendas, which contests whether Dalits have any space in nationalism,
electoral democracy, and globalization.6
These writers, claiming originality for their discovery of Dalits as nationalists, seem to be arguing that scholarship on Indian nationalism has neglected the role played by the Dalits in Indias struggle for independence. It
is fine if they criticize mainstream writing about the history of nationalism
for its failure to recognize the contribution that the Dalits have made to In32 gopal guru
dias freedom. One might even see some merit in writings that can claim to
have led to recognition for Dalits as nationalist. However, in claiming to have
recovered the Dalits as nationalist subjects, they seem to be suggesting that
nationalism is the only sphere that can help Dalits gain some importance
in the life of the nation. The writers also suggest that it is this historical recovery of the Dalits as nationalist subjects that give them a good reason to
feel associated with Indian nationalism. Indeed, the claim to have delivered
justice to Dalits by writing about their contribution to nationalist history also
speaks of an ideological distance between the scholars and the passive objects
of their historical narrative. Furthermore, such efforts end up insulating the
idea of nationalism from the point of view of its Dalit critique. It seems that
these scholars fail to detect the obvious contradiction associated with this
recovery: that it makes nationalism a discursive space containing intersecting purposes and tendencies. For example, nationalism becomes available to
different social forces for mutually exclusive purposes. The industrial classes
had an interest in nationalism because it was expected to help them acquire
benefits without any colonial constraints. On the one hand, workers put faith
in nationalism for the reason that it would help them to gain a better deal
from the industrialists. On the other hand, the Hindutva forces (right-wing
Hindu organizations) had a stake in nationalism because it was expected to
help Hinduize India. Naturally, the minorities and the lower castes w
ere
skeptical about nationalism because they rightly assumed that it would bring
back the dominance of the upper-caste Hindus. Finally, I would like to argue
that these scholars fail to subject the normative strength of concepts like nationalism to rigorous epistemological and methodological scrutiny. As a result, they end up producing the kind of writing that they sought to critique
in the first place. To use the category of exclusion or silence as a rhetorical
device or tool for critiquing mainstream historical writing is one t hing, but
interpreting peoples perceptions and using them to uphold the value of a
concept (in the present case, nationalism) is quite another thing.
But I believe that there exists a fundamental contradiction between Dalits
existential place, their segregated dwellings and obnoxious occupations like
rag picking and scavenging, and nationalist spaces both symbolic (the national flag) and material (parliament buildings and big dams). The Indian
state that gives concrete meaning to nationalism by transforming the existential conditions of the p
eople on the margins has not been able to effectively
resolve this contradiction. Similarly, electoral democracy and globalization
have not been able to address it. For example, electoral democracy has not
been able to create a positive sense of citizenship among the Dalits. In fact,
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception 33
they feel as if they are the passive recipients of fringe benefits that trickle
down from this kind of democracy. Globalization also has not led to any
structural transformation in the lives of the Dalits, many of whom continue
to lead degraded lives in the villages and urban slums. According to Ambedkar, India as a modern nation no doubt attempts to organize society based
on egalitarian principles, but it is helpless to enforce t hese principles as a part
of social practice.7 The modern nation vehemently asserts its geographical
boundaries without dissolving the pernicious boundaries that exist between,
for example, the main village and the Dalit vadas (quarters or neighborhoods). National boundaries invoke respect and pride, while the boundaries
that divide society perpetuate a deep sense of contempt for the Dalit vadas.
Ambedkar argued that in India there are two nations: Puruskrut Bharat
(ideal, pure India) and Bahiskrut Bharat (actual, polluting India). Ambedkar
articulated many of his ideas relating to the two Indias in the fortnightly
newspaper, Bahiskrut Bharat which he started in 1924. According to Ambedkar, the Puruskrut Bharat represents the twice-born castes who are spatially,
socially, and culturally different from the Bahiskrut Bharat, the untouchables
who occupy separate spatial and cultural spaces. He proposed an alternative
idea of the nation, which he called Prabuddha Bharat (enlightened and inclusive India).8 Jotirao Phule, the nineteenth-century non-Brahman thinker,
imagines the Indian nation in terms of the mythical King Bali who was the
most egalitarian peasant ruler but was portrayed as a demon in Brahmanical narratives.9 These portrayals suggest that any subjective imagination of
the nation that does not talk of the existence of two nationsthe Puruskrut
and the Bahiskrut Bharatsnecessarily involves an acceptance of nationalist
rhetoric of equality and unity. In the context of this reading of nationalism
by both Phule and Ambedkar, it is important to examine whether the scholarship on nationalism shows any sensitivity to, or sense of urgency about
recognizing and interrogating, this spatial and ideological contradiction between Puruskrut and Bahiskrut Bharats.
Ambedkars conception of the Indian nation consisting of Puruskrut and
Bahiskrut Bharats helps us comprehend the riddle of nationalism and its ideological frameworkwhich makes a rhetorical claim for social equality but
sustains the spatial practices of exclusion. It also helps us question the recent
efforts by radical Indian scholars to include Dalits into the nationalist narrative of the 1857 rebellion.10 In addition, this ideological formulation provides
us with a valuable resource to explain why some Dalit writers find the idea of
nation deeply problematic, while others do not. This is one of the main issues
that I would like to address in the first half of this essay. In the second half
34 gopal guru
has become popular in India and is frequently used in the mass media, indicates the elevation of people in the devotional mode to the nation, but only
at the abstract level. Through their devotion and nationalist rhetoric, people
virtually write the hagiography of the nation. In this regard, it is interest
ing to note that several nationalist leaders and thinkers have actually written hagiographies of India. The foremost among them is that of Jawaharlal
Nehru. This idealization of India is clearly evident in his seminal work, The
Discovery of India.11 The idealization of nationalism was justified because of
the normative promises of democracy, freedom, fraternity, and dignity that it
held out to people during the struggle for freedom. But t hese promises came
to fruition only for the members of Puruskrut Bharat. For the members of
Bahiskrut Bharat, the vast majority of the Indian population, the promises
remained unfulfilled. This glorified concept of the nation was deployed to
attract the devotionand thus the political supportof those who remained
marginalized with respect to access to the promised rights and freedoms.
In contrast, it is interesting to note that Gandhis approach to nationalism was quite cautious, even though Gandhian hagiography elevates it to the
sacred status by comparing it with Gandhis notion of Ram Rajya (Lord Ramas perfect rule). Sarker has argued that the Gandhian-initiated nationalist
program incorporated promises regarding democracy only with great reluctance.12 A leading scholar in Gandhian studies, Bhiku Parekh, has convincingly demonstrated Gandhis deep skepticism of nationalism. According to
Parekh, Gandhi saw in Indian nationalism an element that sought to frighten
Muslims, other minorities, and even the lower castes.13 The minorities were
frightened because of the Brahman and caste Hindus domination in the
Congress Party. Arguably Gandhis notion of India as Ram Rajya would not
be intimidating to either minorities or the lower castes. Ultimately Gandhi
does provide a vision for India. In that vision, the independent Indian nation is imagined as a Rama Rajya, promising to flatten social hierarchies and
enabling equality.14 In the Gandhian vision of India, villages would dissolve
all forms of hierarchy as they expanded outward. Ashish Nandy calls this a
shudraization of India, or the entry of lower-caste and Dalit groups into
mainstream politics.15
The Gandhian hagiography expressed a new perception of the Indian
nation, but it also undermined the more substantive aspects of daily interaction and social practices that produce the sense of belonging to a nation.
Hagiography does not provide space for concrete expressions of nationhood
through processes of interaction and dissolution of cultural boundaries. The
democratic dimension of the nation provides a much-needed interactive
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception 37
element for social groups belonging to Bahiskrut Bharat, and it has the capacity to overcome their sense of alienation, produced through civilizational
violence by the twice born. Civilizational violence in the Indian context renders the untouchable also as unseeable, unapproachable, and incapable of
communicating.
Freedom to engage in social and cultural communication in everyday life
plays an important role in the realization of the nation as concrete entity.
To put this differently, the everydayness of nationalism has to be interactive
rather than celebrated as an abstract form that is accessible only through devotion. In India, a large portion of civil society (or Puruskrut Bharat) arouses
sentiments of patriotism by deploying rhetoric and cultural symbols. Yet,
these sections of civil society actively refuse to promote interaction with the
untouchables or adopt measures to extricate Dalits wretched levels of h
uman
existence. The upper-caste imposition of a social boycott on the untouchables
bears out this antinational and illiberal tendency. Caste Hindu groups belonging to Puruskrut Bharat even permit the social diminution of Dalits and
members of lower castes who take part in wars to defend the nation. For
example, many Dalit soldiers fight for the nation on the front line, but after
retirement they find themselves pushed to the ghettos. Many Dalit soldiers
who return to their hometown a fter retiring from the defense services cannot live in upper-caste areas even if they can afford to buy h
ouses there. Dalit
soldiers had to buy houses in the Dalit vadas in the village of Mundgaon,
in the taluka (administrative district) of Akot, Akola District, Maharashtra. Similarly, villagers might put portraits of Dalit soldiers in little hotels in
semi-urban towns but would hesitate to accommodate Dalits in an upper-
caste area. This was the experience of Dalit soldiers from Gadhinglaj, in Kolhapur District, Maharashtra. Civil society ridden with caste consciousness
continues to ostracize them and continuously push them to the Bahiskrut
Bharat. The articulation of this pernicious caste consciousness was evident
in the wall of separation that was erected by members of the upper caste of
Tamil Nadu so they did not have to look at Dalits.16 Thus, the upper-caste
conception of nation is constitutive of social practices regulated by the ideology of purity and pollution, and this ideologyas Ambedkar very rightly
pointed outcharacterized Indian villages as the den of ignorance and the
sink of casteism.17 Thus for a Dalit or an outcaste, the Indian nation is based
on fragmentation, which is not only physical but ethically repulsive. The majority of the population defines the nation through war and opposition, but
they simultaneously articulate its fragmentation by practicing segregation
based on untouchability. The caste Hindus can easily relate to the nation even
38 gopal guru
from the sphere of civil society without necessarily participating in war. The
hagiographic efforts to create an ideal nation rely on rather than resolving
the issue of Indias existence as Puruskrut Bharat and Bahiskrut Bharat. This
paradoxical nature of the conception of nation mediated through its hagiography has been overlooked both by mainstream nationalist writers and those
who claim to be the historians of the Dalits.
In India the writing of history and intellectual practice have failed to interrogate the persistence of hierarchical practices that endow the world of
Bahiskrut Bharat. This is evident from the caste Hindus differential vision of
their demand from t hose of the minorities and the Dalits. For example, they
pursued a clear vision of self-rule in the colonial period, assuming that the
realization of self-rule was contingent on the clarity of their vision. The primacy of political concerns (independence or patriotism) in the upper-caste
nationalist agenda obscures the existence of any underlying contradiction.
They see everything very clearly. What they do not see, however, is their own
contradictory role in violating the principle of self-respect in the local configuration of power. This configuration consists of two social forces, capitalism
and Brahmanism. Dalits saw in capitalism a source of material exploitation,
while in Brahmanism they saw the source of what would destroy their dignity and self-respect. The nationalists failure to apply the logic of their broad
political agendas to local situations by addressing the concerns of Bahiskrut
Bharat illustrates their exclusive attitude. The contradiction in the nationalist
goal of self-rule has been rightly detected by Ambedkar, who saw this particularly in Gandhism. For him, Gandhism is a paradox, because it stands for
freedom from foreign domination, which means the destruction of existing
political structure of the country. At the same time it seeks to maintain the
social structure which permits the domination of one class over another.18
Mainstream scholars of history direct their acrimony toward colonial racism but refuse to contribute any criticism on the question of caste outside of
a rhetorical accommodation in the nationalist agenda. This approach seeks
to subordinate the caste question to the more abstract question of national
freedom. Similarly, the hagiography of the nation subordinates the normative question of self-respect to self-rule. Th
ose who defend the idea that hagiography has contributed to the development of the nation tend to overlook
this dichotomy, which plays a key role in forming a strong basis for both
the imagination of nation and the politics of nationalism. Taking their cue
from this hagiographic construction of the Indian nation and the contribution made by Dalits from northern India, some scholars and commentators
argue that Dalits, particularly women heroes who also participated in the
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception 39
indeed, the concept of sarvajan makes it possible to gloss over the differences between Puruskrut and Bahiskrut Bharat, central to the politics
of nationalism, electoral politics, and globalization. B
ecause the nationalist
framework allows for the rhetorical accommodation of the critique of social hierarchy, it enables us to recognize that sarvajan politics obscures the
essentialist character of both Dalits and members of upper castes. Sarvajans
projected political persona must be somewhat vague and ambiguous to
provide space for erasure. My aim in this essay is to foreground this intentional ambiguity and explain the durability of the concept of sarvajan in the
40 gopal guru
ing this phase many upper-caste officers and politicians did face a threat of
possible humiliation. The goal of Brahman politics, among other things,
was to eliminate the possibility of such humiliation from the Dalit power
structure, and the sarvajan model provided a politically valuable tool for
the Brahmans to use in enaging with the bsp. Given the new political configurations after the 1990s marked by the rise of Dalit politics, the caste
Hindus in India today have found a way to deflect the irresolvable tension
between rhetorical and substantial recognition of Dalits and their cultural
symbols. For example, at the rhetorical level, the caste Hindus assign so
much respect to Ambedkars pratima (image) that they may carry it on their
heads, but at the substantive level of recognition they would trample under
their feet his pratibha (genius)his intellectual and philosophical writings and his role in drafting Indias constitution (194750). Let me further
explain the irresolvable tension in the cultural practices of orthodox Hindus
or in the Hindutva politics. The right-wing National Democratic Alliance
government in India (19992004) had established a commission in 2000
to review the Indian constitution. This move was seen as an attempt on the
part of right-wing Hindutva groups to violate the secular and democratic
norms and provisions of the constitution written by Ambedkar, the Dalit
thinker and activist who fought for the rights of minorities. Similarly, the
caste Hindus would show respect to the larger-than-life size images of Dalit
leaders such as Ambedkar, or respectfully address the president of the bsp
and three-time Chief Minister of Uttar Pradish Mayawati as bahenji (elder
sister), but they have little or no respect for ordinary Dalits.22 The politics of
sarvajan, I further argue, provides the background condition for a paradox
to successfully sustain itself in the public imagination of Dalits by seemingly resolving the irresolvable tension between rhetorical and substantial
recognition of Dalits.
It is impossible to resolve the tension between the Puruskrut and the
Bahiskrut Bharat, but the nationalist rhetoric of social equality and the sarvajan model mask the contradiction and become a source of power in two
major senses. First, through making promises, an essential element of the
sarvajan model, the model provides an initial condition in which people
begin to offer allegiance to the most powerful. Simply put, if no promises
are made to the p
eople, there is no sarvajan model. Not all promises generate peoples allegiance, particularly since only less spectacular promises
could be partially realized. Second, to make such promises, one has to possess political power. That is, no one would take seriously promises made,
for example, by a pauper. One has to make promises that are not completely
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception 43
empty but at least partially realizable. Thus, t hese promises assume a donor.
Those who are a part of power structures (whether at the center or on the
margins) can make false promises only if they look realistic in the beginning
to the potential recipients. However, over time, promises lose their hold on
the public imagination, thus paving way for the articulation of the sarvajan
model, which begins to surface due to a growing sense of discontent, while
inability or a sense of incapacity grows among those who made the promises. The more one aspires to remain in power, the more the sarvajan model
accelerates the degeneration of promises into vacuity. As mentioned above,
the sarvajan model looks almost endemic in the structures, irrespective of
its social base in power, which makes it increasingly difficult to contain the
growing frustration among social groups such as Dalits or even Brahmans.
Thus, public articulation of the sarvajan model depends on the widening gap
between hope and despair. However, it has to be mentioned that the sarvajan
model does not choose the condition of its own articulation. This insight into
the sarvajan model can be vitiated by several factors.
First, the expression of the sarvajan model depends on those who have
acquired moral power to not only resist but also to critique the paradox.
Moral power becomes important in contexts where many political observers
and scholars recognize the limits of the sarvajan model but for some reason
choose not to expose it. On moral and ethical grounds, it is the middle-class
Dalits who are supposed to develop an insight into Dalit politics and expose the limits of the sarvajan model of bsp politics in Uttar Pradesh. But
the Dalit middle class does not seem to take the moral lead in developing
an internal critique of the sarvajan politics of the bsp . Why? There may be
two interrelated reasons. First, upwardly mobile middle-class Dalits aspire
to benefit from the structures of opportunities and patronage that flow from
the Dalit leaders who control state institutions. Second, middle-class Dalits
view the ascendance of Dalit leaders to political power as a weapon, with which
they can avoid upper-caste domination and discrimination at the work place.
These twin factors prevent them from criticizing the Dalit leaders paradoxical
politics of sarvajan. The m
iddle class is only a tiny part of the Dalit community, but it plays an important role in making this model salient. This is done
through deploying certain pedagogical devises. This class would thus argue
that the existing structures are full of opportunity and that it is possible to
convert these opportunities into an asset. Individual efforts are warranted to
acquire this asset. This pedagogy also entails the moral message that those
who do not take risk (both by making material efforts and by losing their
44 gopal guru
dignity) can expect to gain entry into the system in the f uture. Thus, the message is conveyed that it is natural that structures do not solve the problem
of everybody all at once, but gradually. Thus, these beneficiaries of state patronage keep advocating the virtue of patience, repeating the popular refrain,
today it is somebody e lses chance, tomorrow it w
ill be yours. This suggests
that those who are missing out today have something to lose tomorrow if
they step out of line. This effectively prevents the widespread expression of
discontent. This rhetoric succeeds in naturalizing the sarvajan model, a fact
that continues to escape the critical attention of t hose who have been legitimately ambitious in their life plans.
Second, the sarvajan model becomes durable precisely because those who
took the lead in detecting the contradiction tend to reproduce it depending
on where the m
iddle class fall in the power structure. Progressive accommodation into opportunity structure, which emerges as a part of the self-reflectivity
as mentioned above, makes the middle class part of the system. Thus, those
who originally stood outside the contradiction ironically now become complicit in its reproduction.
Third, the sarvajan model provides a constitutive condition. When the
state fails to provide opportunities, those who might withhold their allegiance to the state do not, as they still think that t here is a possibility that the
state will offer them some opportunity. If the state has provided accommodations to people whose sociological background is similar to those to whom
it has made promises, this decreases the possibility that the latter group will
criticize the state. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, having a Dalit government
replaces the need for detecting the paradox that defines only the rhetoric
of truth, not the truth itself. The elimination of the possibility for subversive action happens through what could be termed ethical relativism. Ethical
relativism tends to make morally objectionable practices appear acceptable
to those under their sway, which becomes evident as the paradox loses its
ideological potency. In the act to produce a balanced impact on all p
eople,
the supporters of particular leaders (such as Mayawati) then would ask, why
single out only the Dalit leaders when leaders of other political parties are
on this moral slippery slope? The supporters of such Dalit leaders tend to
defuse criticism by spreading the position of ethical relativism within their
organization and affiliated groups who form the core of the morally depleted
society. In addition to this ethical relativism, Dalits use caste identity as a
powerful defense mechanism to disarm any legitimate criticism that seeks to
expose the paradox that lies at the heart of their politics. Ethical relativism
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception 45
used in this way acts to perpetuate this sarvajan model. Ethical relativism acts
against those who seek to criticize the moral practice or cultural lifestyle of
some of the contemporary Dalit leaders. In fact, Dalit leaders often use this
language of relativism to consolidate support for their paradoxical past and
present as well as to propose that they know the truth. In contrast, our exemplar (Ambedkar) is produced through a continuous process of moral editing,
or examining oneself for paradoxical behavior. Ambedkar followed this form
of moral editing, which is why he could see the contradiction in the rhe
toric of social equality in nationalist and electoral politics and why he offered
a conceptual framework to understand the audience of this message, the
people belonging to Puruskrut Bharat but not those who belong to Bahiskrut
Bharat. His famous speech in the Constituent Assembly is a testimony to his
creative capacity and moral ability to detect the paradox in the system.23
Fourth, developing an insight into the sarvajan model depends on the
moral ability to militate against what could be called the designated power
structure. The power structure adversely affects the cognitive capacity of Dalits,
and they refuse to detect the paradox. For example, several Dalit women tend
to celebrate the expensive clothes of their leader while they themselves are
in rags or tattered clothing. Similarly, Dalits celebrate the palatial mansions
of their leaders while they continue to live in wretched huts. Th
ose who are
caught in the framework of designated power somehow refuse to recognize
the contradiction or articulate their critique of the sarvajan model. With the
help of a common saying, let me explain this statement. In Marathi, the seductive quality of this designated power structure is very well captured in the
saying patalache ghode, maharala bhusahn, which means taking care of
Patils (the landlords) horse, is a privilege and an honor for the Mahar (Dalit)
family. The Mahar family is responsible for maintaining the landlords horse
in the village. Those who see the irony in this situation would say that there
cannot be any pride for the Mahar family in feeding Patils horse; rather it
should create a sense of moral anger at their predicament. Dalits should rediscover worth in themselves rather than basking in the glory of the master.
They should develop critical consciousness about the hegemonic power of
the master and restrain from participating in it. It is in this sense they should
use anger as a moral resource to sustain the critical consciousness against
upper caste hegemony.
These four factors should help us to understand the bsp s appropriation of
the sarvajan model but also the support it has received among Dalit and non-
Dalit groups. Its popularity has also tempered the radical potential of Dalit
politics and making it subservient to the nationalist rhetoric of caste equality.
46 gopal guru
in conclusion, I must say that whether or not one recognizes the nationalist rhetoric of social equality that actually perpetuates social hierarchy by
actively ignoring the spatial contradiction between those who belong to the
Puruskrut and the Bahiskrut Bharats depends on ones location in time and
space. Those who are continuously on the margin or outside the opportunity structures and belong to the Bahiskrut Bharat are potentially ready to
develop this insight. However, that insight is not automatically apparentin
fact, it is much more difficult to sustain continuous and critical opposition to
nationalist rhetoric. As has happened with the Dalit consciousness in India,
those who raised their voices against the rhetoric of nationalism were pacified and drawn into t hese structures. The Dalit Panthers of Maharashtra are a
case in point. These Dalit leaders, who used their social vigilance to publicly
reveal the paradoxical political relationship between the Republican Party
of India (established by Ambedkar in Maharashtra) and the dominant Congress Party in Maharashtra, at some point began to see promise in the Congress Party. This shift in approach happened a fter their incorporation into
power hierarchies, though they were not given a central place of power. Ruling parties belonging to the Puruskrut Bharat in Maharashtra carried out this
co-option with a remarkable degree of success. Today one does not require
non-Dalit ruling parties to perpetuate nationalist rhetoric because Dalits
have their own parties that can do this job. Members and groups belonging to
the Puruskrut Bharat now argue that Dalit political parties have the potential to win the highest political position. What they often ignore, however,
is that this desirable shift in power w
ill actively sustain the nationalist rhe
toric, reducing adversity in the political realm without necessarily diminishing the hardship that many Dalits face in the social realm. For example, the
upper caste in the bsp may be politically subservient to the bsp s supreme
leader, but in their social interactions they may be overtly anti-Dalit. Yet
the bsp s sarvajan model serves to diminish the historical political adversity
of Dalit groups and exclusionary practices experienced by p
eople who live in
the Puruskrut Bharat.
Indeed, as mentioned in the last section, challenging the sarvajan model
depends on p
eople who have the necessary moral power to expose it but
choose to ignore for personal benefits. W
hether a person understands the
contradiction depends on his or her capacity to develop insights into such
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception 47
matters. As discussed above, the Dalit self has to take the moral responsibility
to detect the contradiction. The moral stamina alone, however, is not sufficient for detecting the contradiction in the sarvajan model. In addition, one
must have a background characterized by deprivation or underprivilege; this
creates the potential for state intervention and the manipulation of disproportionate populism by the state. If the state starts acting honestly and accepts its
limitations in terms of the needs it is able to satisfy, there will no longer be a
need for the sarvajan model or rhetoric of social equality. In a liberal framework, it is impossible to imagine this kind of a moral state. Hence, this leads
to positive conditions in which those who are part of the counterpublic must
take the lead in exposing the contradictions.
notes
1. The best example isD.R. Nagarajs book, The Flaming Feet. The first edition was
published by a small press in Bangalore and was not even reviewed in most journals,
but the second revised edition was published by Permanent Black in 2011.
2. Bose, Bahenji; Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed;C. Gupta, Dalit Virangana
and Reinvention of 1875; Narayan, Reactivating the Past, Memories of 1857; Omvedt, The Great Globalization Debate.
3. The Dalit caste name, dhed, has been used only in a derogatory sense for the
Dalits of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
4. Omvedt, Capitalism and Globalization, and Dalits and Adivasi. See also Chandrabhan Prasads numerous articles on this subject in the Delhi Sunday Pioneer.
5. Khairmode, Babasaheb Ambedkaranche Charitra, 89.
6. Bagul, Dalit Sahitya ajache Kranti Vidynana, 70; Teltumbde, Reverting to the
Original Vision of Reservation and State Market and Development of Dalits;S.
Thorat, Givan Marge, a Marathi language monthly, Mumbai, May 2008.
7. More, The Social Context for an Ideology, 314.
8. The concept of Prabhudha Bharat was developed by Ambedkar through a fortnightly newspaper started by Ambedkar in the 1950s.
9. Wangmay, Mahatma Jotirao Phule, 190.
10. SeeC. Gupta, Dalit Virangana and Reinvention of 1875; Narayan, Reactivating the Past, Memories of 1857.
11. Nehru, The Discovery of India.
12. Sarkar, Indian Democracy, 30.
13. Parekh, Gandhis Political Philosophy, 193.
14. Tendulkar, Mahatma, 6:67.
15. Personal conversation with the author.
16. There are several examples of caste walls, separating Dalits from caste Hindu (or,
at times, from lower-caste) neighborhoods, in the districts of Salem, Coimbatore, and
Madurai in Tamil Nadu. See Uthapuram Wall Is No Berlin Wall, Hindu, March21,
2012; Caste Fence Pulled Down in Tamil Nadu, Times of India, October18, 2010.
48 gopal guru
2
Colonial Archive versus
Colonial Sociology: Writing Dalit History
r a m n a r a y a n s . r a wat
More than three-quarters [of Jatavs] work in agriculture and less than a quarter [of Jatavs] work in artisanal and other kinds of occupations.
Skills: Except their knowledge of agriculture and artisanal industry, the
Jatav community does not have skills in other professions. Their livelihood
is dependent on artisanal [industry], agriculture, and day wages, and they
[the Jatavs] have lost the business of leather work that has been usurped by
Muslims, Kayastha Khatri communities.
pandit sunderlal sagar, Yadav Jivan
Outlining his communitys conditions in 1929, Pandit Sunderlal Sagar, a
major Jatav publicist from Agra and founding member of Jatav Mahasabha,
an untouchable community association established in 1917, stated that more
than 75percent of Jatavs (untouchables) were engaged in krishi karya (agricultural work). Indeed, on the next page he lamented the unfortunate condition of Jatavs because they knew no other occupation except agriculture
(krishi vidhya). During my fieldwork in the northern Indian state of Uttar
Pradesh (up ), many Dalit activists, belonging to a prominent Chamar untouchable community that consists of several regional communities such
as Jatavs, Jatiyas, and Kurils, made similar claims about their community,
indicating that this is still a widely shared sense among sections of Dalits.
Sagar of course was drawing on his personal experience in representing the
Chamar community of Jatavs as cultivators, but census data support his claim.
According to the 1911 census, 96percent of Chamars w
ere agriculturists, and
of these, 40 percent were occupancy tenants with legal rights to the land,
40percent were rent-paying nonoccupancy tenants at w
ill with customary
rights, and14percent were landless laborers. By 1961 the percentage of occupancy tenants had increased to 50percent.1 In up the majority of Chamars
belong to two prominent castes, the Jatavs in the western part of the state and
the Jatiyas in the eastern part of the state.
Sagars 1929 book and scores of other Hindi-language Dalit publications
dating back to the early decades of the twentieth century have proved to be
a valuable source of information that I collected during the course of my
fieldwork spanning the past fifteen years. The Hindi-language books by
Dalit writers that I found in the personal collections of activist families have
been the most useful in providing both a perspective and information that
is generally absent in historical and archival sources. In contrast to the dominant assumption that Dalits in the early part of the twentieth c entury did not
write histories of their community, it would be more accurate to say that
their works are not available in the traditional sites such as libraries and archives. Dalit activists in small towns in northern India have collected and
proudly maintained personal collections in their homes. One Dalit activist,
Mr. J. Kanaria, from Gawalior, a small town in northern India, explained
the reason to me on March3, 2009. On that pleasant morning, he told me
Chamars, like Brahmans, earn income to read and write books and consider
themselves as an intellectual class in India.2 The personal collections of Dalit
activists in small towns in northern India have played a crucial role in my
research, emphasizing the value of local, nonmetropolitan sources.
Writing the history of Dalits in northern India was made possible by recognizing the differences between the regional or local archives and the more
centralized all-India archival collections. This distinction offers an important
corrective to the way we think about the project of colonial sociology and
its relationship to different types of colonial-period archives. My research
and interactions with Dalit groups in Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Etawah, Allahabad, and Mainpuri raised new questions for my project, which I took to
the provincial-and district-level archives for further study. This approach
yielded extensive material that illuminates the regional character of the Dalit
struggle in up . It also meant that I did not need to focus on the more commonly used National Archives of India or the British Library collections lo54 ramnarayans. rawat
noted that 49,728 Chamar peasants owned 74,280 acres of land, and he commented on the presence of twenty-nine Chamar proprietors in Bansi Pargana (administrative unit) of the district. These sentiments were echoed in
the settlement reports of Aligarh, Shahjahanpur, Etawah, Kanpur, Bharaich,
Azamgarh, and Gorakhpur. The Etawah settlement report expressed its authors unease with a classificatory regime in the census that created confusion
about the position of Chamars by classifying them as non-agricultural.18
On the basis of this data generated by the settlement reports, we can make a
few general statements about Chamars as cultivators: (a) in most districts of
up they held land as occupancy and nonoccupancy tenants, and many w
ere
also plowmen and laborers; (b) depending on whether the zamindari and
the bhayachara (coparcenary) land tenure system was in place (explained
below), in most cases Chamars either maintained or increased their share
of land; (c) in very few cases they had proprietary rights; and (d) they were
unanimously recognized for their skills as one of the best groups of cultivators. Revenue inquiries in the nineteenth c entury into the status and rights of
peasants of up show evidence of Chamars presence and claims of occupancy
and nonoccupancy tenure rights.19
The Chamar peasants of Moradabad District paid an annual rent of about
Rs (rupees) 324,571in 1909. Out of the total rent of Rs 3,021,394, Chamars
payment in 1909 represented the highest rent paid by any caste in the district.
In the same year the Jat tenants paid Rs 281,268in rent, while the Sheikhs paid
Rs 313,733, the Thakurs paid Rs 164,419, and the Brahmans paid Rs 142,597.
Given their 107,525 acres of land, the Chamars were the third largest peasant
caste after the Jats and Sheikhs.20 Many settlement reports in western up , like
those from Saharanpur and Bareilly Districts, noted Chamars excellent skills
as cultivators of sugar, basmati rice, and wheat. In Saharanpur they were the
sixth largest community of occupancy tenants, and their annual rent of Rs
263,260in 1921 put them in the fourth positionafter Gujars, Garas, and
Malis or Sainis, but ahead of well-known peasant groups like Jats, Ahirs,
and Rajputs.21 They controlled a good percentage of land both as tenants
and as proprietors. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Chamars held
7percent (49,506 acres) of the land in Bareilly, and they paid an annual
rent of Rs 209,905.22 In the 1880s the Chamars of Agra District held 60,286
acres of land, amounting to 7.1percent of the total land under cultivation.
By the 1930s they had managed to increase their land to 65,000 acres, out of
which40,000 acres were held under occupancy rights and the rest (25,000)
under nonoccupancy rights. Their gain of 5,000 acres was the highest among
all the castes.23 Their strongest position as tenants in the western part of up
60 ramnarayans. rawat
was in the Bulandshahr District, where they held 81,179 acres. Most Chamar
ese examples are representative
cultivators also owned a pair of bullocks.24 Th
of the strength of Chamars as one of the largest rent-paying caste in much of
western up and in the central and eastern districts of the state. Furthermore,
they were among the top six rent-paying social groups, a point reiterated in
many settlement reports of various districts of up .
The rights of Chamars over land were shaped and conditioned centrally
by the nature of proprietary tenures. This was particularly the case under
the bhayachara tenure, in which the dominant peasant groups belonging to
a shared lineage were recognized as proprietors of land, and responsible for
the collection and payment of revenue to the state because they were also
actively engaged in the management and cultivation of land. Peasant proprietors in the bhayachara tenure valued skilled occupancy tenants such as
Chamars who contributed centrally to sustaining the revenue obligations. In
the bhayachara region of western up , from Jhansi in the south to Saharanpur
in the north and west of Kanpur, Chamar peasants not only possessed occupancy rights but also acquired, in very small percentages, proprietary rights.
The settlement officer of Jhansi District in the Bundelkhand region noted in
1893 that the Chamar peasants were the most sought cosharers by the peasant proprietary groups.25 By 1921, the Chamars in Saharanpur District had
gained more land under bhayachara tenure as well as a bit of proprietary
share, because the proprietors considered them good tenants.26 In Agra District, too, bhayachara tenure enabled Chamars to acquire occupancy rights,
because the proprietary bodies are always slower to move, and have not
sufficient unanimity to carry out any sustained measures for preventing the
acquisition of occupancy rights.27 The settlement officer of Muzaffarnagar
District succinctly observed in 1896 that because of their skills, the Chamar
peasants gained proprietary rights, living alongside the dominant cultivating
castes, which included Jats and other groups.28
The settlement reports of the 1870s and1880s from central up (the Awadh
region) draw our attention to the presence of Chamar and Pasi peasants in
the area. These reports also help us rethink the social history of the region,
especially from a Dalit perspective. For instance, the dominant historical
perception of the Awadh Kisan Sabha movement is that it was a lower-
caste peasant struggle, against landlords illegal and excessive rent demands,
in which Dalits participation was always relegated to the role of looters and
rioters. It was assumed, because of the Dalit occupational caste stereotype
that they were landless laborers, and their participation was therefore viewed
as marginal or exploitative of the situation (thus the charges of looting). In
Colonial Archive versus Colonial Sociology 61
Rae Bareli, for example, the key theater of the Awadh Kisan Sabha movement,
we can see that Chamars paid an annual rent of Rs 75,820in 1898 for 19,005
bighas (7,602 acres) of land held under occupancy rights.29 Similarly, members
of the Dalit Pasi caste paid an annual rent of Rs 198,546 and cultivated 49,729
bighas (19,891.60 acres) of land. Compared with the Kurmis 42,380 bighas
(16,952 acres) and the Muraos 45,574 bighas (18,229.60 acres), the Chamars
cultivation of 19,005 bighas and the Pasis of 49,729 bighas is impressive and
attests to their position in the area as cultivating peasants, rather than simply
landless laborers. Even the 1867 inquiry into the rights of the nonproprietary
tenants of Awadh (in central up ) documents the claims made by Chamars
and Pasis of their right to the land they cultivated, similar to claims made by
lower-caste peasants like Kurmis, Muraos, and Ahirs.30 The settlement officers of all the districts in the Awadh region, who wrote reports for this inquiry,
recorded claims made by Dalit peasants (Chamars and Pasis) of the right to
cultivate their land and contested the right of anyone else to dispossess them
from their holdings. Despite the two Oudh Rent Acts of 1868 and1886, only
1percent of the vast body of tenants held rights of occupancy, with the rest
only provided with security of tenure for a period of seven years.31 These figures also indicate that many Dalit groups had very good reasons for joining
the Awadh Kisan Sabha movement not just as looters taking advantage of a
disruptive situation, but as invested members of the movement with much at
stake. In the famous police firing on Kisan Sabha activists in the Rae Bareli
District in January 1921, the majority of the peasants killed were Dalits. The
battle between protestors and the state took place in the town of Rae Bareli
at the Fursatganj bazaar and led to a police action that resulted in the deaths
of twenty-five peasants.32 Eighteen of the dead w
ere Chamars and Pasis, suggesting that groups regarded as untouchable made up a large, rather than a
marginal, percentage of the overall participants.
Baba Ramachandra, the renowned peasant leader of the Awadh Kisan
Sabha movement, mentions the role of Chamar and Pasi peasants in his accounts of the movement in his diaries. In his diary on the movement, Ramachandra notes the presence of Chamars and Pasis prominently in the Kisan
Sabha committee meetings at Rure Village in Partabgarh, suggesting that they
were part of the movement from the very beginning in 1919 and not just from
1921, when other scholars have claimed that they first appear.33 The names of
thirty-five participating castes are mentioned in the following order by Baba
Ramachandra in his diary: Brahman, Thakur, Baniya, Chauhan, Kurmi,
Koeri, Teli, Pasi, Chamar, Barhi, Kahar, Ahir.34 By listing them alongside
other peasant groups, he underlines the important position that the Pasis
62 ramnarayans. rawat
and the Chamars occupied in the region. He also notes their contribution to
the movement in the form of provisions. Baba Ramachandras description
of peasant groups is in sharp contrast to Gyanendra Pandeys description of
the Kisan Sabha movement as a movement of Kurmis, Muraos, and Ahirs.
Baba Ramachandra stresses the role of Chamars and Pasis not b
ecause he
sees them as landless laborers whose interests converge with those of peasants, but because he recognizes them as important peasant groups in Awadh
region. The settlement reports of Rae Bareli District, the key theater of the
Kisan Sabha struggle, attest to the substantive position of Chamars and Pasis
as cultivating peasants in the area rather than simply as landless laborers.
It should not surprise us that sections of the Chamar elite that claimed
Jatav status (pure Kshatriya identity) and established Jatav organizations in
the western up in the first two decades of the twentieth century belonged
to well-off agrarian families. Ramnarain Yadvendus 1942 book Yaduvansh
ka Aitihas provides short biographies of dozens of Jatav Mahasabha activists
based in Agra and the surrounding region and mentions that many of them,
such as Seth Jivan Ram of Mainpuri, were zamindars. Equally notable is that
almost all the fifty-nine activists mentioned in the book were high-school
graduates who belonged to diverse occupations. The most prominent of
these Agra-based activists were building contractors and state and federal
employees. These activists led the Chamar movement for a Jatav identity during the first four decades of the twentieth c entury. Seth Sitaram Mansingh,
who belonged to a family of contractors, established the first Jatav organ
ization in Agra City in 1889.35 He also became a zamindar of the villages
Milavda, Agra, and Pingri in Mathura District. The Jatavs of Agra take par
ticular pride in having played an important role in the building of Delhi as
the new capital by the British during the first decade of the twentieth century.
In the words of one Jatav, we supplied them with labor and stones.36 Ram
Dayal Jatav, a Chamar contractor of labor and red Jaipuri stones, provided
financial support and also chaired the first meeting of the Adi-Hindu Mahasabha (movement to claim Dalits as the original [Adi] inhabitants of India),
held in the town of Etawah on October 16, 1923, u
nder the leadership of
37
Swami Achhutanand. We can take this datethus far unknown in Indian
historyas the founding date of Adi-Hindu Mahsabha in up .38 The Chamar
elite that emerged in the first two decades of the twentieth century in Agra
were contractors who acquired wealth by supplying labor to the construction
sites in Calcutta and Delhi.39 These vernacular-language local sources allow
us to rethink the dominant explanation of the emergence of an educated and
prosperous Chamar elite in the first two decades of the twentieth century to
Colonial Archive versus Colonial Sociology 63
the leather industry.40 The Jatav literature on the subject offers a starkly dif
ferent representation of the social origins of the Chamar elite in Agra City
and outlines several reasons for Jatavs investment in claiming a Kshatriya
Yadava identity.
The Jatavs of western up and Jatiyas of eastern up along with thirteen
other major jatis like the Azamgarihiyas, Aharwars, and Jhusiyaswere categorized as part of the Chamar caste. Given that the category Chamar covered
diverse groups of communities who primarily were peasant and, according
to the 1911 census, less than 4 percent of whom were leatherworkers, it is
unclear on what principle these diverse groups of people were incorporated
within the generic term. Despite the Jatavs preference for a name that identifies their distinctive geographical location, the official classification grouped
them with the generic Chamar occupational category. Perhaps equally if not
more important was the centrality of village as marker of their identity, producing names like Chamrauli or Chamrauti that gave residents of the village a way to enter the official classificatory regime. We should be cautious
in associating these village names with leather work because of the prefix
cham-as a derivative of charma (hides/skins). For instance, it is assumed
that the term Chamrai refers to a tax on leather, but according toB.T. Stoker,
it referred to a range of agricultural taxes on Chamars plows, land, irrigation, and crops. A seasoned civil service officer who retired as secretary of
the up government, Stoker, in his 1889 assessment report of block Khurja in
Bulandshahr District, noted that Chamrai, one of the nine important taxes,
was levied at the rate of 1 rupee per plow from tenants who did not render
unpaid labor.41 It is district-level settlement reports like Stokers that provide
detailed information about Dalits that challenge a simplistic understanding
of their status and position.42
A reliance on colonial sociological sources has reinforced the Hindu
textual representation of Chamars as leatherworkers. By emphasizing the
role of census and colonial classificatory regimes, the field of postcolonial
studies has, unwittingly, reinforced the image of the colonial archive as an
imperial monolith. In addition, this understanding has also mapped caste
centrally on the varna status. In striking contrast, the district-level revenue reports, embedded in local relationships, offer new ways of thinking
about caste and untouchabilityespecially in spatial, economic, and po
litical terms. Chamars emerge in these reports not as leatherworkers but
as peasants who also participated in up s major peasant movement of the
early twentieth century.
64 ramnarayans. rawat
Prioritizing land revenue records over typical caste history sources of colonial sociologysuch as the caste and tribe surveyspaid handsome dividends in enabling me to understand claims made in Chamar publications
of the 1920s and1930s and their activism as noted in the police reports of
the period. Such an approach empowered me to move beyond the stereo
typical representation of Chamars as leatherworkers, demonstrating their
substantive relationship to agricultural production and their role in the rural
political economy. The issues raised in Dalit publications resonated, quite
remarkably, with official descriptions of Chamar political activities recorded
in Criminal Intelligence Department reports from 1922 through the 1940s.
The land revenue records were important in my understanding of trajectories of Chamar and Dalit histories in northern India, drawing my attention
to the groups agrarian context and their distinctive tenure position in up .
Jatavs claim for Kshatriya status was not unique but rather was comparable
to similar assertions by the lower-caste peasant groups such as the Gujars,
Jats, Ahirs, and Kurmis in the 1920s.
The 1883 Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account of the North-
Western Provinces of India noted that the Chamars of Shahjahanpur District
of up traced their genealogy to the noble Kshatriya Raghubansia f amily belonging to the race of Raghu, mythical King of the Solar race.43 Explaining
the context for such claims, Robert Currie noted in 1874 that most of the
101,227 Chamar tenants who possessed occupancy rights w
ere well located
in a cultural scenario for asserting a noble Kshatriya identity.44 These themes
were also addressed in four Chamar histories published in northern India in
early decades of the twentieth c entury: the anonymous Suryavansh Kshatriya
Jaiswar Sabha and works by U. B. S. Raghuvanshi, Pandit Sunderlal Sagar,
and Ramnarain Yadvendu.45
Most recently, Chamar Jati ka Gauravshali Aitihas (A glorious history
of the Chamar community) by Satnam Singh rehearsed the stories and accounts mentioned in those histories.46 The objective of the histories was to
engage and challenge Hindu and colonial histories available in the census
reports and caste and tribe volumes. Instead of viewing t hese Chamar jati
histories or vanshavalis as obscure, representing autonomous voices of subalterns produced in isolation, we should view them as offering us evidence of
Chamars engagement with caste Hindu agendas. The histories methodological
Colonial Archive versus Colonial Sociology 65
The weekly police intelligence reports from 1922 to 1949 have been used
for writing histories of the anticolonial nationalist movement, and peasant
movements, but not for writing the history of the Dalits struggle for dignity
and equality. More than any other colonial source, the police reports provide
the most valuable notes on the Dalit movement. By documenting Chamar
protests and meetings, these reports provide sociological evidence for claims
of noble or Kshatriya status made in Chamar histories. Th
ese protests were
first noticed in 192122in the western districts of up, but by 1924 such protests had extended to central and eastern districts as well.56 I have discussed
these protests extensively elsewhere, but h
ere I w
ill give a few examples.57
For instance, at a vast meeting of four thousand Chamars in the town of
Mowane, Meerut District, in November 1922, a series of resolutions was
passed claiming a Kshatriya status and vowing to purify their lifestyle.58 In
Mainpuri City, a Chamar association was formed in May 1924 explicitly to
claim Kshatriya status for Chamars.59 Similar meetings were organized by
Chamars in different parts of western up between 1922 and 1932 to assert
a noble identity and adopt a pure and clean lifestyle. In addition, other demands were also outlined. From early on, Chamars w
ere eager to show their
loyalty to the British government, a fact reflected in the nature of resolutions passed at these meetings. Access to education, the opening of municipal schools for their children by the colonial government, and the starting of
their own independent private schools constituted a very important part
of their struggle. The agrarian context of the lives of Chamars, which I discussed above, played a very important role in their desire to acquire a new
noble identity because the lower castes, such as the Jats, Ahirs, Gujjars, and
Kurmis, were also making similar assertions in up in the 1920s.
By engaging with puranic and the colonial forms of writing history, and
by articulating agendas of social reform, Chamar organizations w
ere involved in debates with various sections of Indian society. One example was
the organizations engagement with Arya Samajs agenda of Hindu religious
reform. In this respect Jatavs concerns were similar to those of lower-caste
peasant groups whose members were also involved in religious and social
reform activities, in which Arya Samaj played an active role. Arya Samaj addressed the Chamars agendas of reform and activism. The methodology of
Jatav claims for a clean Kshatriya status provided what David Hardiman has
called a meeting point between Chamar agendas and reformist Hindu organizations such as the Arya Samaj.60 In his study of adivasi (tribal) protest
in Gujarat, Hardiman argued that the advasi sought to deprive the dominant
Hindu classes of their power of domination by appropriating their value
68 ramnarayans. rawat
and taught in an Arya Samaj school in Manipuri District and was an active
participant in its activities. Jatav organizations in Agra and other parts of
western up advocated vegetarianism and Vedic style rituals. The ideals of the
Arya Samaj had a particular appeal to Chamars because they strengthened
Chamar claims to superior status.
By recognizing the embeddedness of Chamar Hindi-language histories
and their political activism in the northern Indian cultural and political milieu, we can move beyond the stereotypical representations of Chamars as a
marginal and isolated group. The Hindi-language Chamar histories, as well
as the cultural and political meetings reported by the police reports, inform
us about a Chamar elite that was well informed and participated in debates
that concerned other groups of Indians. Chamars w
ere not passive recipients
but active agents of social and political change.
Conclusion
The notion of a unified colonial archive rests primarily on the sources of colonial sociology, the census and caste and tribe surveys, which inform much of
the debate on the subject, including the study of caste. A reconsideration of
archival sources for writing Dalit histories by emphasizing the role of local-level
revenue records turned out to be a major unintended methodological innovation. Land revenue records have rarely, if ever, been used to write Chamar histories. In addition, the ethnographic approach of engaging with Dalit activists
during archival research in different parts of up illuminated new connections
and linkages with the themes embedded in the revenue reports. A focus on
the district-level settlement reports of the 1880s, with their detailed revenue
and rent information, allowed me to grasp Chamars locations in the differ
ent regions of up. My focus on this strategy was motivated and inspired by the
kinds of questions and discussions I had with Dalit activists in different towns of
northern India. My second strategy of engaging with Dalit activists proved most
beneficial in assisting me with getting documents (the local caste histories) from
their personal collections that are not usually available at metropolitan archives.
It also connected well with my third priority, creating connections with the accounts available in police intelligence reports, the only source of Dalit activism
for the early twentieth c entury. The police accounts provided detailed information that resonated with the claims of Kshatriya status made in Chamar Hindi-
language histories. These nontraditional sources, like settlement reports or
police reports, are rarely emphasized in the writing of Dalit histories, in contrast
to a solely ethnographic live-in methodology to search for authentic voices.
70 ramnarayans. rawat
3
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency
in Twentieth-Century Kerala
p. s a n a l m o h a n
The modern social space in Kerala was created through mobilizations in which
Dalit movements played a crucial role. However, this story is unknown outside Kerala. The anonymity of Dalit movements is directly linked to an elitist
historiography that emphasized the roles of the Ezhava movement, the Sree
Narayana Dharma Paripalana (sndp) movement, the movements of other
upper castes such as the Nairs or Namboodiri Brahmans, and later the communist movement as the harbingers of modernity in Kerala society. Such
elitist histories and historiographies have dominated the intellectual and po
litical sphere, circulating several myths about contemporary Kerala. Yet no
Dalit intellectual endeavors have emerged to challenge these ideas. This essay
attempts to analyze some of the crucial issues problematized by the Dalit
movements of the early twentieth century that made Dalit engagements with
modern social space and civil society in Kerala possible. Modern civil society could emerge in Kerala only because of the relentless struggles waged
against caste domination and oppression. It is necessary to identify here the
most significant moments in the struggles that are crucial to the formation of
modern civil society in Kerala.
From the perspective of Dalit history it is difficult to think of civil society without referring to the mobilization against caste slavery in the mid-
nineteenth century. The social space and civil society in Kerala was caste
determined. The modern middle class that became decisive in the formation of civil society was almost exclusively constituted of the upper castes
including the Ezhavas, although they are referred to as a backward caste. A
close examination of the mid-nineteenth-century developments in various
regions of Kerala shows that in spite of regional differences there were certain
visible trends that vouchsafed a colonial transformation. We may identify
several aspects of colonial modernity that began to evolve during this phase.
The ideas of missionary Christianity, such as the notions of salvation and
improvement or the agenda of social transformation were beginning to reach
the Dalit communities in the native states of Kerala.1 As the Anglican missionaries were trying to work among the slave castes from the late 1840s on,
the possibility of an alternative public also began to evolve. This alternative
public was exemplified in what the missionaries termed slave schools and
chapels, where slave-caste men, women, and children were taught the word
of the Lord. In addition to this, basic literacy was imparted to them.
A close reading of missionary writings of the mid-nineteenth century in
the Travancore region of Kerala shows how much missionaries w
ere concerned with the changes in the habits of Dalits who joined the missions.
Following John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, one may call it a revolution
in habits.2 Changes in habits were important for the evolution of Dalits as
modern citizens. Moreover, in the prevailing situation of distance pollution
and untouchability, slave-caste men and w
omen had to evolve as socially presentable bodies by adopting new social practices. This would be possible only
if they abandoned habits that the upper castes abhorred. It appears that such
a change of habits had been considered as fundamental for claiming social
space and becoming part of the evolving civil society that was always inimical to them. Sometimes the missionaries asked their congregations to refrain
from eating carcasses. This, they said, would raise the Dalits in the eyes of the
upper castes as well as of the Syrian Christians in the Anglican congregation.
This disciplining assumes significance when combined with the fact that even
as late as the early decades of the twentieth century the Syrian Christians
would invoke health sciences and notions of hygiene to support the segregation of Dalit Christians in the churches.3
Beginning with the example of the liberation of the slaves of the Munroe island whom the missionaries purchased along with the land and later
liberated as free individuals ascribing them the new status of laborers to be
hired, we witness the coming of the notion of wage labor instead of slave
labor which was a significant matter considering the fact that such a notion
was alien to the native society.4 As far as the slaves were concerned, this was
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 75
movements had used all available means to press for Dalit demands such as
access to public space, cultural and symbolic capital, human dignity, and civil
rights. These issues never figured in the historiographical debates as they did
not directly challenge the colonial powers; sometimes the colonial powers
reacted favorably to the demands of Dalits and other lower castes. Most historiographies failed to reconsider colonialism from the multiple locations
of the colonized as they had a one-dimensional view of colonialism. This
refers to their understanding of colonialism as uniformly incapacitating the
colonized, without taking into account forms of exploitation and oppression
that preceded colonialism and that continued to exist even as colonialism
succeeded in establishing its domination. In the case of Kerala, caste formation qualifies as such a form since the types of oppression that it created
continued under colonialism. This obliges us to see how caste oppression was
dealt with in historiography.
The most eloquent representation of caste oppression is available in the
nineteenth-century accounts of missionaries that were printed and circulated in publications that had an international reach.9 It is in the course of
such writings that the missionaries problematized the historical caste slavery of Dalits in nineteenth-century Kerala. This should be considered as the
moment of Dalits entry into historical records in a spectacular manner. We
shall consider the missionary writings as a distinct historiographic genre.
Most studies on slavery in Kerala had referred to the existence of slave castes,
and there is a historiography of slavery that refers to the origins of caste slavery in the precolonial social formations, sometimes stretching back to ancient times.10 The latter-day historians of the European Christian missions in
Kerala depended a great deal on the historical information available on the
slave-caste communities in missionary writings. Many of these scholars are
dismissive of the spiritual dimensions of Dalit engagement with missionary
Christianity.11 However, the source materials of various Dalit religious movements contradict those views.12
Religious Conversion to Modernity
Historically there have been two visible trends in Dalit mobilization from
the mid-nineteenth century. The first and most important trend was the ac
ceptance of missionary Christianity by Dalits from the 1850s onward. This
experience was decisive in transforming their individual and social selves.
The abolition of caste slavery in 1855 took place a c ouple of years after the
first Dalit joined the way of Christ in the Travancore region of Kerala as
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 77
tians. In addition, there were individual Dalits who had established small
groups of followers through their new religious ideas derived from the Bible,
which the European missionaries critiqued as heresies.15 For the present
purpose, such movements can be thought of as another form of anticaste
mobilization, although they functioned in the realm of religion. All these
mobilizations were determined by the agency of Dalits, which reached a
turning point in the early decades of the twentieth century.
One of the significant results of Dalit interaction with European missionary Christianity had been the articulation of a new and different consciousness by Dalits that was very complex. This consciousness is not adequately
encompassed within the instrumentalist analysis of scholarship on missions,
which interprets Dalits attraction to missionary Christianity as merely an
effort to improve their socioeconomic position. Dalit consciousness found
expression in social movements that problematized all aspects of their subordination. There was another closely related opinion held by some of the
missionaries as well as the later scholars of missions: that Dalits did not understand the high moral principles of religion.16 Some scholars went so far
as to argue that even Dalits prayers w
ere purely instrumentalist, meant only
to get something from God.17 In the first half of the twentieth c entury t here
were several powerful movements in various Dalit communities, such as the
sjps of the foremost Dalit leader of Kerala, Ayyankali, which had members
not just from the Pulayas; the prds of Yohannan; Cheramar Mahajana Sabha
of Pampady John Joseph; and a host of other organizations that occupied
almost the same social space although within different communities. It may
be observed that theoretically Ayyankalis and Yohannans movements were
open to all Dalits, irrespective of their caste background. There were other
organizations such as Brahma Prathyaksha Raksha Dharma Paripalana (Organization of Parayars to Protect the Revealed Salvation of Social Order of
Brahma), Parayar Mahajana Sangham of Kantan Kumaran and movements
led by other popular leaders such as Paradi Abraham Issac and Vellikkara
Chothi, who w
ere named to the Popular Legislature of Travancore. There
existed spaces in which these movements could interact socially and politi
cally. Of them, the sjps was the most widespread in the Travancore region of
Kerala, having a thousand branches at the peak of its prominence.18 Similarly,
in 1926 the prds had 10,000 followers in sixty-three parishes.19
Modern civil society emerged in Kerala in the first half of the twentieth
century through the struggles against the caste-determined social and public sphere. The social movement of Ezhavas under the leadership of Sree
Narayana Guru is generally considered to be a paradigmatic reformist
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 79
happened in the case of many oppressed social groups, ideologies and movements that seek an egalitarian and just future society were readily accepted
by Dalits. Quite often such movements spread in these groups through kinship ties and social relations.
The movement of Ayyankali, the sjps , was founded in 1907 and thus preceded the caste reform movements among the Nairs and Namboodiris.28 It
was second only to the movement of the Ezhavas in order of appearance. This
chronology is important, as it refers to the coming of new ideas of modernity
and modern forms of political mobilization among Dalits. The most significant political act of Ayyankali was his forced entry into public space that was
specifically closed to Dalits. In 1898 he broke the ban on entering the public
road imposed upon the Pulayas and other Dalit communities by riding in
a decorated bullock cart, a mode of travel reserved for upper-caste people.
Entry into the public space was to become a major feature of the movement
in the years to come. Ayyankalis followers in other parts of southern Kerala
mobilized locally, which led to several open confrontations between Dalits
and members of upper castes in various parts of Travancore.29 One major
mobilization in Quilon in 1915 erupted in a riot in which both Dalit and Nair
houses were set on fire. When Ayyankali was consulted for guidance by the
local leaders, he advised them to retaliate, stating that they had nobody to
support them except God, and that the only course open to them was to
carry the movement forward. Immediately following the riots, the local leaders, in consultation with Ayyankali, made arrangements for a public meeting
in Quilon that was also attended by some upper-caste reformist leaders. In
the course of his speech t here, Ayyankali exhorted his p
eople to continue to
mobilize and asked the upper castes not to oppose anticaste mobilizations.30
This movement had repercussions in various parts of Travancore, as Dalits
under the leadership of Ayyankali were ready to violate the code of spatial
control and discipline that had been in existence for centuries. Ayyankali had
organized a small group of men that by then had become famous as Ayyankali Pada (Ayyankalis army). In 1898 he led another expedition on the public
road from his village, Venganoor, to Aralummood, defying the prohibition
on the Pulayas.31 These rebellious acts, as I noted above, had a domino effect
in mobilizing Dalits to claim public space, and the acts resulted in violence
in many parts of Travancore as Dalits clashed with upper-caste opponents.
In the first decade of the twentieth c entury, a new politics began to emerge
with the coming of Dalit movements. Movements like the sjps were very
radical in their mobilizations and programs. Ayyankali led the movement to
claim access to public spaces such as roads and markets that w
ere essential
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 83
for securing the civil rights of Dalit communities. Similarly, he led struggles
to secure school admission for Pulaya c hildren, which led to violent clashes
between Pulayas and members of upper castes. In 1913, in the face of opposition from upper-caste Nairs, Ayyankali led the first Pulaya agricultural
workers strike for school admission for Pulaya children.32 The strike lasted
for a year, and the Pulayas of South Travancore region endured in spite of
being without wages and experiencing severe threats to their livelihood.33
In this situation they sought the help of the fishing community of Vizhinjam, which is in close proximity to Ayyankalis village, Venganoor. The strike
was remarkable in that the fundamental issue at stake was not economic demands such as increased wages. On the contrary, the strike raised a strongly
contested cultural issue, that of school admission for Pulaya c hildren. Ayyankali demanded that the government order of 1907 granting admission to
everyone irrespective of caste be implemented without any changes. This was
followed by mobilization in various parts of the Travancore region on the
question of school admission for Dalit children. In 1914 the attempt of Pulayas to have their c hildren admitted to a school at Pullad, in central Travancore, led to clashes with Nairs and Syrian Christians. Similarly, in the village
of Ooroottamblam, near Trivandrum, the efforts of Ayyankali to have a girl
named Punchami admitted to the local school led to riots by Nairs, who subsequently set fire to the school.34
What infuriated the upper castes was the Dalit emphasis on education
above all other things in the changing social context. Dalit social movements
of the early twentieth c entury carried on the program of social change, which
in many ways was reminiscent of the project that the missionaries had envisaged. Anglican missionaries had initiated educational projects among Dalits
from the very beginning of their work with the community, although those
projects were confined to the elementary skills of reading and writing. Similarly, the missionaries had taken up the question of access to public space
when they found that the Dalit members of their congregation, including
teachers, were not allowed to use the public roads.35 By the late nineteenth
century, the rulers of Travancore had laid down rules to enforce Pulayas access to public spaces, but the local bureaucracy and the upper castes effectively kept such rules from being implemented. Opposition to the Pulaya
use of public roads was so intense that some of the missionaries in the early
1890s observed that such restrictions would end only if powerful movements
emerged from within Dalit communities.36
As there were oppositions to admitting Dalit children to existing schools,
Ayyankali started a school in his village in 1904. In the words of the histo84 p. sanal mohan
leys specially meant for their use. In spite of the fact that they w
ere denied use
of public roads, they w
ere allowed to use the Victoria Jubilee Hall, which was
also the venue of the Popular Legislature meetings. One interesting aspect
of the annual meetings of the sjps is the support the movement had from
the Diwan and bureaucrats at the higher levels, which included the presence
of important officials who took note of the deliberations.46 It was the most
important occasion Ayyankali had to present the problems of Dalits in front
of government officials and an occasion to draw the attention of the ruler
to their problems. The government officials were often asked to find ways
of resolving the problems listed by Ayyankali, with the concurrence of the
ruler.47
The experience of the sjps showed a qualitatively different politics emerging from Dalit communities. On the one hand, they adopted radical mobilization to claim their rights; on the other hand, they also used the available
legislative avenue to articulate their problems and press the native government to resolve their problems. This particular politics was effectively used
by the sjps , as it resorted to radical mobilization u
nder the leadership of
Ayyankali.
In 1913, the princely state of Cochin witnessed the emergence of a power
ful movement of Pulayas named the Pulaya Maha Sabha (The great association of Pulayas). It was led by Krishnadi Asan, who subsequently converted
to Christianity as he became disheartened by the slow pace of progress the
movement was making. This left the movement without leadership, though
later, with the coming of leaders likeP.C. Chanjan andK.P. Vallon, it received a new lease on life. The two men were named to the Cochin Legislative
Assembly in 1926 and1931, respectively. Their mobilization was instrumental
in opening up the public space to Dalit communities. Similar to the sjps ,
their movement used the legislative space to argue for the cause of the Dalit
communities. As we have seen in the case of Travancore, through the Pulaya
Maha Sabha, the members of Dalit communities demanded educational facilities, cultivable land, and other civic amenities in addition to the removal
of all restrictions imposed on their free movement.
The experience of the prds shows another form of radicalism emerging,
which was more religious in nature and more typical of religious movements.
The prds was founded in 1910in the central Travancore region of Kerala by
Poyikayil Yohannan and his colleagues, who belonged to Dalit communities.
This movement originated as a radical response to the continued existence
of caste inequalities between upper-caste Syrian Christians and Dalit Christians within the cms and other denominations.48
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 87
powerful social and religious movements had developed from Dalit communities and that they w
ere able to articulate their critique of the traditional
order, they failed to become major players in the evolving political society.
As a result, the gains made through interventions in civil society and through
social and religious activities were relegated to a place of secondary significance when new civil society initiatives came up in the postcolonial phase.
Another movement that is important in the analysis of Dalit interventions in civil and political society in Kerala in the early twentieth century
was Cheramar Mahajana Sabha, founded in 1921 by Pampady John Joseph.59
First, this movements members did not consider the religious divisions
among Dalits to be a serious problem in forging a unified organization and
argued that they needed to focus on the shared historical experiences that
formed their collective identity.60 Second, while engaging with the social and
economic issues of Dalit communities, the movement focused especially on
the problems of Dalit Christians and took up the question of the discrimination and inequality that they experienced within the church. As part of
its organizational efforts, the movement acquired property in many parts
of Travancore to set up its offices and coordinate its activities. John Joseph
represented the movement to the native rulers as part of an effort to change
the caste name from Pulayas to Cheramars. This name identified the indigenous Pulayas with the ancient kingdom of the Cheras, and the proposition
was acceptable to many Pulayas in Travancore irrespective of religion. It may
not be out of place to suggest that John Joseph not only tried to constitute
a different identity for the Pulayas, but that he also initiated a discourse of
ethnicity in the 1920s in Kerala as an antidote to the oppressive caste system.61
Moreover, he took up the question of the oppression and discrimination
that Dalits had been facing in church and submitted a memorandum to the
British Parliament detailing the social conditions of Dalit Christians and the
need for the intervention of the British Parliament in resolving it.62 Like his
other contemporaries, he was also named to the Popular Legislature of Travancore, and he used that forum to articulate Dalits problems.
The examples discussed so far show the manner in which Dalit communities expressed themselves in the first half of the twentieth century. This raises
certain questions about the experience of Dalits in the missionary churches
that existed alongside the prds and other such movements. The Anglican
missionaries of the cms were the first to live with and interact closely with
the slave castes in Keralawhich was contrary to the practice of the Hindu
upper castes, who considered lower-caste slaves polluting, and of traditional
Christians of Kerala, who regarded them in much the same manner. How90 p. sanal mohan
ever, Dalits who joined the missions had to face severe caste oppression and
discrimination from traditional Syrian Christians. This led to the emergence
of exclusively Dalit congregations within churches and sometimes to the departure from churches of Dalits, who subsequently formed exclusively Dalit
churches. Interestingly, traditional churches also began to work among Dalit
communities by the last decade of the nineteenth c entury, an effort which
some in the cms hoped would counteract their divisive effects on the church.
The work of traditional churches among Dalits, however, led to the formation of denominational differences among Dalit Christians.
In the early twentieth c entury, the religious radicalism of Dalits was expressed in the formation of movements such as the prds that led to the imagination of a new divine power for Dalit communities. Organizations such as
the Cheramar Daiva Sabha (Gods Church of Cheramar),63 the Thennindian
Suvishesha Sangham (the South Indian Gospel Association),64 and smaller
churches were all expressions of this desire for a different religious and social
vision. In the 1920s, Pentecostalism began to emerge as a distinct movement
as it drew large numbers of Dalits from other denominations. I have argued
elsewhere that religion could be considered as an alternative public for the
Dalit communities. It is important to emphasize that this experience would
have been more of a reality for t hose who joined the churches than for t hose
who remained Hindu. In spite of the caste segregation prevailing within the
churches, perhaps biblical theology provided the necessary ideological resource for the flourishing of such movements and sects. This possibility did
not apply to those who did not become Christian. The Dalits joining the
cms Anglican Church in the mid-nineteenth century should be understood
as their first social movement, although the missionaries were instrumental
in initiating it. However, this trend had real subversive potential when one
considers struggles for equality within the churches.
Historically in Kerala, the cms Anglican Church had the largest Dalit
membership, and the discontent that Dalit communities felt within the
church took a decisive turn in the early decades of the twentieth century.
This culminated in the formation, with the support of the church, of an
organization of Dalit Christians known as Sadhu Jana Christiya Sangham
(The Poor Christians Assembly) in 1912.65 Yet there were no policy initiatives to resolve this crisis. Another moment of articulation of Dalit rights
within the cms took place with the demand for separate administration of
churches, which was raised by a vocal group of Dalits within the church. The
Dalit groups moved a resolution in 1941 for separate churches that was supported by English BishopB.C. Corfield of the Anglican Church. Since he
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 91
supported the move, the Syrian Christians were forced to do so, too, but surprisingly nothing substantial came out of the decision. A
fter the formation
of Church of South India in 1931, the ongoing discontent of Dalit Christians
with the domination by Syrian Christians of the church reached a critical
stage, leading to open agitation in 196166 that was known as the Separate
Administration Movement.66 As there was no resolution of the conflict, a
group of Dalit Christians broke away from the church and formed the cms
Anglican Church in 1966, under the leadership of one of the prominent
Dalit priests, Stephan Vattappara.67 This exclusively Dalit church continues
to function today, with 160 small congregations that have their own clergy.
However, one group of Dalits remained in the Church of South India. To assuage their feelings, in 1967 another senior Dalit priest, the Rev.T.S. Joseph,
was consecrated as a bishop.68
Anti-Caste Struggles, Nationalism, and Communism
The 1940s saw the gradual decline of the Dalit movements of the first half of
the twentieth c entury that w
ere instrumental in securing many of the demo
cratic civil rights of Dalit communities in Kerala. The Dalits still faced many
issues that had not been adequately addressed in spite of the powerful presence of t hese movements. One could note here economic deprivation, landlessness, educational backwardness, and a host of other problems that w
ere
addressed by the earlier social movements but remained unresolved. In the
1930s and1940s we see the growth of the Communist Party of India (cpi ) as
well as the nationalist movement under the Congress Party in the Malabar
region of Kerala, and the State Congress in Travancore.69 The state of Cochin
also had a nationalist organization, the Cochin Praja Manadalam (Cochin
State Congress). The three geographical regions of Kerala subsequently had
nationalist and leftist political mobilization dominating the political sphere.
The political movements of the first half of the twentieth century had anticolonial struggles as their major program and w
ere not concerned with
the anticaste struggles in the way the sjps was. The Malabar region of Kerala, which was u
nder direct British rule, had the Indian National Congress,
which was organized by members of the educated upper castes, mostly in
the legal profession.70 Their activities were not ideologically different from the
activities of the Congress elsewhere in India. The Indian National Congress did
not take the caste question seriously until the Kakinada Congress of 1923,
in whichT.K. Madhavan, who was a close follower of Sree Narayana Guru,
moved a resolution stating that temple entry was the birthright of all Hin92 p. sanal mohan
dus.71 One of the major political events in Kerala during this period was the
mobilization known as the Vaikom Satyagraha. Although it was begun with
the goal of temple entry, it was ultimately limited to the question of opening up to the lower castes the roads that passed through the temple area.
Because Gandhi played a crucial role in the Vaikom Satyagraha, his leadership brought together all the upper-caste community organizations since
it was widely perceived as a question of the Hindu community. The Indian
National Congress leaders from the Malabar region w
ere the organizers of
the movement, joined by local p
eople and volunteers from Nayar, Ezhava,
and Pulaya communities. The outcome of the struggle was that a resolution
introduced in the Legislative Council, to allow Ezhavas to use the roads near
the temple, was defeated by one vote.72 Subsequently the Travancore government constructed diversionary lanes and managed to defuse the situation.73
The Vaikom Satyagraha is celebrated in the nationalist accounts of anticaste
struggles, whereas in the Dalit accounts it does not figure prominently.
Another important moment in the anticaste mobilization was the Guruvayur Satyagraha in 1931, which claimed entry into the famous Sri Krishana
temple at Guruvayur, in the Ponnani taluk (block) of Malabar, for all Hindus.74 Here again the mobilization was led by elite Congress leaders who
came from Nayar landlord backgrounds. It seems that it was not just a question of the entry of lower castes into temples; on the contrary, discontents
within caste society became the prime concern of such a mobilization. For
example, the contradictions within the caste hierarchy between Nairs and
Namboodiri Brahmans came into the open as Nairs sought to abolish the exclusive privileges of Namboodiri Brahmans in the temple. At the same time,
the mobilization had the goal of bringing the lower castes into the nationalist program. The language of dominance employed in nationalist discourses
is evident in the argument that the inherent uncleanliness of Pulayas and
Cherumans made their temple entry necessary.75 In the leadership of the Guruvayur Satyagraha we find veteran Communists such as P. Krishna Pillai
andA.K. Gopalan, who played leading roles in the movement along with
other Congress leaders such as K. Kelappan and K. Madhavanar. One of
the results of the mobilization was the beginning of the construction of a
hegemonic Hindu community that was established through the movement
for temple entry. Without going into the details of the movements seeking
temple entry, I wish to underline the fact that such mobilizations failed to
enlist the support of the Dalit masses, unlike their own autonomous movements in the first half of the twentieth century. I wish to emphasize the fact
that, while Dalit movements of the early twentieth century recognized the
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 93
religious dimension of their subordination, their mobilization was more concerned with gaining education; access to public spaces; and the acquisition of
symbolic resources as well as land and other material resources, if we go by the
example of the sjps . Dalits participation in movements based on religious
grievances, it seems, remained elusive in spite of the efforts of dominant religious and political groups.
Dalits who were mobilized first by the missionaries and subsequently by
the autonomous Dalit movements were influenced by other forms of politics
that began to grow with the start of the CPI s work among the agricultural
laborers and marginal peasantry.76 With respect to the long-term dynamics of Dalit movements, the Communists work among the Dalit agricultural
laborers in the wetland tracts of Kerala has been significant.77 It seems to me
that even if one talks about mobilization in class terms, it is difficult not to
be caught in the net of caste. For example, if one talks about the organization
of toddy tappers (producers of coconut palm wine), as toddy tappers came
exclusively from the Ezhava community, some aspects of the social relations
rooted in the culture of the community must have informed their work and
the political solidarity of the u
nion that made use of the resources of that
particular community. Similarly, the organization of Dalits in agricultural
workers unions must have also had the same dimension of solidarity fostered on the basis of caste. This would mean that the class characteristics
of agricultural workers, including the conditions of their mobilization, are
determined by their caste and solidarities that caste was able to generate.
This argument is strengthened by the fact that in the wetland tracts of Kerala
where agricultural workers organizations were very strong, a large majority
of the laborers came from the Dalit communities. The mobilizations of the
communist parties in the agrarian sector had substantial support from Dalit
communities, especially from the late 1930s onward. This situation continued
well into the 1970s, and even today a majority of Dalits in Kerala continue to
support communist parties. However, in the view of t hese parties, the caste
question was relegated to a place of secondary importance and declared to
be an issue that could be resolved by economic development. It will be appropriate here to mention the difficult dialogue that Communists had with
caste, which did not take into account the complexities of caste but used an
extremely rigid class-based interpretation. As a result, in spite of the support
that Dalit communities offered to the leftist movement, the movement failed
to live up to the Dalits expectations. I have argued earlier that Dalits w
ere
eager to embrace modernity in whatever guise it came to them: at first, it
was salvation that the missionary churches offered, and next was the secular
94 p. sanal mohan
salvation that the Communist movement offered with its liberation agenda.
It seems that there has been disillusionment with both of these movements
in spite of the fact that large numbers of Dalits remain in both the churches
and the communist parties.
There was a generation of Dalit activists who were attracted to the
Gandhian nationalist idea of Harijan (children of god) uplift and who continued to support the Congress in the postindependence phase, entering
parliamentary politics, becoming members of the legislature and even government ministers. In the Malabar region before independence, volunteers and
activists informed by Gandhian vision, such as Swami Ananda Teertha, carried on activities against untouchability and caste with dedication.78 Teertha
was legendary in his social activism. In spite of being a Brahman belonging
to Gouda Saraswata caste, Teertha took sanyasam (ascetic) from Sri Narayana Guru and dedicated himself to the cause of Harijan uplift. He led public marches with nationalist volunteers and Dalits, especially young people,
breaking the barriers to access to public space for Dalits in Malabar. But he
soon realized the limits of the Gandhian programs on caste and untouchability. There were several occasions when he was assaulted by members of
upper castes, as many of those protectors of caste did not know his caste.
This situation continued well into his old age, when he was severely beaten
in the Guruvayoor temple in the early 1980s for violating the caste rules by
entering the temple dining hall which was reserved for the Brahmans. Since
he did not wear the so-called sacred thread, the protectors of caste did not
know that he was Brahman. This became another important event as people
rose up in protest against this incident, and one Dalit leader, Kallara Sukumaran, led other activists in another temple entry jatha (agitators) beginning
on February 1, 1983, from Sree Padmanabha Swami T
emple in Trivandrum
to Guruvayoor, where they entered the temple dining hall that was meant
for Brahmans on February 13.79 But they w
ere received there by the chief
minister of Kerala,K. Karunakaran (who was notorious for his craftiness),
and dined there with him. Karunakaran, who was not a Brahman, was able
to enter the dining hall for the first time, although he was a great devotee of
Guruvayoorappan (Krishna).
Dalit Movement: New Directions
by successfully creating social space for Dalits through religious and social
interventions. They critiqued the existing practices and understandings of religion, creating an alternative public sphere that subsequently fostered much
of their struggles. A host of movements such as the sjps and the prds developed a different and new discourse centered on the Dalit lifeworld. They also
wrested agency for Dalits by developing a radical critique of caste in the first
half of the twentieth c entury. I have already shown the historical genesis of
these movements and their critical engagement with slavery, borrowing from
the missionary critiques of t hese practices in Kerala. They were fundamental
to the formation of critical Dalit consciousness. The nationalist strategy of
atonement for the sins of caste and untouchability failed to understand the
critique of caste developed by Dalits using their own resources in the context
of colonial modernity. The Communists also failed to understand the Dalit
social world and the complexities of caste that determined power structure as
they w
ere fixated on a mechanical notion of class formation and applied a reductionist category of agricultural laborers to Dalit communities. As a result,
nationalists, Communists, and reformist organizations in anticaste struggles
failed to mobilize Dalits in the way that Dalit movements such as the sjps
or the prds did. Dalit movements are extremely concerned with the conditions of modernity that enable them as agents of protest. It appears from this
discussion that they had to embrace modernity as their tradition, unlike the
upper castes in Kerala who could rely on their tradition. Dalit struggles in
civil and political societies became fractured as religious divisions developed
and as movements vied for resources from the government. Subsequently,
dominant social, political, and religious forces easily intervened to enforce
their hegemonic agendas. As a result, it is difficult to visualize a different Dalit
mobilization emerging. However, Dalit cultural interventions from the late
1990s onward may be capable of creating a new politics of culture in the long
run. Such interventions in the cultural sphere are capable of interrogating the
hegemony of the public sphere in Kerala. Moreover, contemporary mobilization
focusing on the Adivasi-Dalit land question is a move in the right direction that
will initiate a new critique of politics in Kerala.
notes
1. For details, see the journals of Rev.George Matthan from 1845 on, in the Church
Missionary Society Archives, Special Collections, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (hereafter cms Archives).
2. Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 2:8. See also Rev.Oomen
Mammens Journal for the Quarter ending June30, 1856, cms Archives.
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 99
3. For details, see Deepika, April11, 1910, microfilm at the Deepika Library, Kottayam, Kerala.
4. The First Part of Cottayam Report, Appendix No. XII and No. XVI, accession
no. 91 01/2, cms Archives.
5. It may be noted that most of these histories have been written by an amateur
historian,T.H.P. Chentharassery, in the biographical mode but with significant
information on the movements. We do not yet have serious academic studies of such
movements. See Chentharassery, Ayyankali, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, and
Sree Kumara Guru Devan.
6. P. K. K. Menon, The History of Freedom Movement in Kerala, vol. 2.
7. Thulaseedharan, Colonialism, Princely States and Struggle for Liberation.
8. The debate about the Kerala model of development focuses on these notions. For
an analysis of the phenomenon, see Tharakan, History as Development Experience.
For a critique of the Marxist interpretations, see Rammohan, Material Processes and
Developmentalism.
9. For example, see publications of the cms such as the Church Missionary Register
and the Church Missionary Intelligencer of the mid-nineteenth century for information on lower-caste slaves in the Travancore region of Kerala, in particular, Slaves
of Travancore, Interview of the Travancore Slaves, Church Missionary Intelligencer 6,
1855. Also see Slaves of Mallappally, Church Missionary Record 3:18384. Both items
are available in the United Theological College Archives, Bangalore.
10. Kusuman, Slavery in Travancore; Saradamoni, Emergence of a Slave Caste.
11. Saradamoni, Emergence of a Slave Caste, 83.
12. For example, see the Bible study notes of Chathamputhur Yohannan, the founder
of the Thennindia Suvisesha Sangham, one of the Dalit churches of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries near Kottayam, Kerala. Also see theBible study notes
of the early members of the prds movement and lay propagandists (Upadeshis)
of the cms . These notes were collected as part of the Endangered Archives Project
sponsored by the British Library in the School of Social Sciences of Mahatma Gandhi
University, Kottayam, Kerala.
13. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7.
14. Samithi, Sree Kumara Devan, 4647.
15. One of the missionaries based in Thiruvalla in the Central Travancore region
of Kerala referred to a Dalit elder named Venkotta Yohannan, who had radical ideas
derived from the Bible. The missionary condemned them along with the ideas of Yohannan, comparing both to heresies in missions of the cms in Uganda and Niger. For
details, see Travancore and Cochin Diocesan Record 28, no. 1 (1919), 1920, Archives
Section, the cms College Library, Kottyam, Kerala.
16. Jeffrey, The Decline of Nayar Dominance in Society and Politics in Travancore
18471908; Kooiman, Conversion and Social Equality in India, 54.
17. For such an absurd level of argument, see Deliege, The World of the Untouchables, 9.
18. Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 1619.
19. According to a memorandum submitted to Morris Watts, divan of Travancore,
quoted in Baby and Babu Rajan, Thiruvithamkur Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha, 29.
100 p. sanal mohan
20. Ibid.
21. Gladstone, Protestant Christianity and Peoples Movements in Kerala, 258.
22. One of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in Travancore refers
to the conversion of a slave girl named Kali, who was christened as Lucy in Cochin.
She was the first person from the slave castes to accept Christianity about whose
conversion there is documentary evidence. In fact, she demanded that the missionary
baptize her, as she had escaped from the fate of being taken out of Kerala to Java as
a slave by a European. For details, seeW. S Hunt, The Anglican Church in Travancore
and Cochin 18161916, 1:161.
23. In using this concept, I am following David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity. Van
der Veer, Conversion to Modernities, 47.
24. Gladstone, Protestant Christianity and Peoples Movements in Kerala 18501936,
14247.
25. For details, see Raghavaiah, Basel Mission Industries in Malabar and South Canara 18341914; Raina, Basel Mission and Social Change in Malabar.
26. Jeffrey, The Decline of Nayar Dominance in Society and Politics in Travancore
18471908, 118.
27. Gladstone, Protestant Christianity and Peoples Movements in Kerala 18501936,
370; Ninan, Sabhacharitra Vichinthanangal-Anglican Kalaghattam, 11728.
28. For details, see Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 4; Jeffrey, The
Decline of Nayar Dominance in Society and Politics in Travancore 18471908, 232. The
Namboodiri reform movement was started in 1908. On Namboodiri and Nair reform
movements, see Arunima, There Comes Papa, 165.
29. Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 1523.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 15, 23.
32. Ibid., 2021. See also A Question of Caste: Travancore Disturbances, Times of
India, December10, 1914.
33. A Question of Caste: Travancore Disturbances, Times of India, December10, 1914.
34. Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 21.
35.A.F. Painter, letter to Rev.J. Gray, January 7, 1884, cms Archives.
36. Ibid.
37. Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 1718.
38. Ibid., 19.
39. Ibid., 18.
40. Ibid.
41. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 7.
42. Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 2830.
43. Ibid., 28.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 3233.
47. Ibid.
48. For an early history of the movement, Kangazha, Sree Kumara Guru Devan, 8.
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency 101
49. The movement had 7,000 followers in the early phase. See Census of India, 1941,
vol. 25: Travancore, part1: Report, 141 and229.
50. Mohan, Religion, Social Space, and Identity, 4463.
51. The argument of one group of the followers was that they were reclaiming the
name of Yohannan before his conversion at the age of five, Komaran or Kumaran.
With the ascription of divinity to him, his posthumous identity of Kumara Guru
Devan was created.
52. Mohan, Religion, Social Space, and Identity, 5657.
53. Ibid., 5557.
54. Ibid., 45.
55. Mohan, Imagining Equality.
56. Travancore and Cochin Diocesan Record 24 (Feb. 1914), 15.
57. Samithi, Sree Kumara Devan, 47.
58. Ibid., 5254.
59. Chentharassery, Pampady John Joseph.
60. Mohan, Dalit Discourse and the Evolving New Self, 1112.
61. Ibid., 11.
62. Chentharassery, Pampady John Joseph, 7685. See alsoN. John Joseph etal.,
Before the Government of Travancore the Humble Memorial of the Representatives
of the Depressed Class Christians in Travancore, Enclosure 3, 4, and5, India Office
Records, British Library, London; Joseph, Memorial Submitted to the Honourable
Members of the British Parliament.
63. Chentharassery, Pampady John Joseph, 94.
64. The movement in 1896in a village called Manganam, not far from Kottayam,
under the leadership of ChathamputhurC.M. Yohannan and Chemmarappally
C.J.Joseph. For details, see South Indian Gospel Association booklet (Kottayam:V.E.,
n.d.).
65. Mohan, Dalit Discourse and the Evolving New Self, 4.
66. For details, seeK. Raj, Chennaikkalude Idayil Kunjadukal, 10318.
67. Ibid., 13051.
68. Koshy, Caste in Kerala Churches, 8283.
69. For a more recent Marxist analysis of the nationalist movement in Malabar, see
Gopalankutty, The Task of Transforming the Congress; Panikkar, Against Lord and
State. For a Marxist perspective, see Namboodiripad, Em Esinte Sampurnakrtikal. For
a study of the anticolonial movements in the Travancore region, the princely state in
Kerala, see Thulaseedharan, Colonialism, Princely States, and Struggle for Liberation.
70. For an analysis of the imbrications of caste nationalism and communism in
Kerala, seeD. Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India Malabar,
89118.
71. Ibid., 81. See also Gladstone, Protestant Christianity and Peoples Movements in
Kerala 18501936, 38889.
72.D. Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India Malabar, 82.
73. Ibid.
74. For details, see The History of Freedom Movement in Kerala, 2:31631.
102 p. sanal mohan
75.D. Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India Malabar, 8387.
76. Kamalasanan, Kuttanadum karshakathozhilalhi Prasthanavum.
77. Ibid.
78. Ayrookuzhiel, Swami Anand Thirth: Untouchability.
79. Saseendran, Dalit Saradhikal Theeyathikalilude.
80. Thulaseedharan, Colonialism, Princely States and Struggle for Liberation, 1045.
81. Ibid., 10610.
82. Chentharassery, Ayyankali: The First Dalit Leader, 3637.
83. The Chengara land struggle began as a local movement led by Laha Gopalan, a
retired government employee. Under his leadership landless Dalits and poor landless
laborers from other communities occupied one of the rubber plantations owned by
Harrison Malayalam Plantations whose lease had expired. The plantation was developed on the land leased to the private company by the former government of Travancore. Those who occupied the plantation argued that since the lease had expired, the
land should be considered as excess land held by the company to which the landless
poor had a natural claim. The struggle began in August 2007 and, in the mid-2010s,
the agitating laborers and the government of Kerala reached an agreement. For
details of the mobilization, seeT. Jency, Contemporary Dalit Mobilization for Land
(MPhil diss., Mahatma Gandhi University, 2009).
84. There is an absolute lack of English language academic writings on Dalit
Christians in Kerala. For a recent study in Malayalam language on Dalit Christians in
Kerala, see Chirakkarode, Dalit Christhavar Keralathil, 23346.
85. Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities.
4
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas: Political Subjugation and
Self-Emancipation in Telugu Country, 191050
chinnaiah jangam
The nizams territory was a late entrant into the field of social reforms and
cultural and literary organizations. Due to the slow growth of Western education in this area, we see hardly any organizational activities in t hose areas
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 105
in the nineteenth century. Only after 1900 was there even a slow growth of
literary and cultural consciousness in Telugu, because the state language
in the nizams territory was Urdu and all regional languages there suffered
due to the lack of official patronage. The emergence of nationalist politics and
the rising awareness of the language and identity gave birth to new organizations and associations. In 1901, the Sri Krishna Devaraya Andhra Basha
Nilayam (Sri Krishna Devaraya Andhra [Telugu] Library) was established
in Hyderabad under the patronage of the rajah of Munagala.3 The Sri Raja
Raja Narendra Andhra Basha Nilayam (Sri Raja Raja Narendra Andhra
[Telugu] Library) was established at Hanumakonda in 1904, and the Vigyana Chandrika Mandali (Society for the Seekers of Knowledge) was established in Hyderabad in 1906.4 The Andhra Jana Sangh (Andhra Peoples Association), which was established in 1921 by Madapati Hanumantha Rao, still
had to face innumerable difficulties and opposition from the government.5
During this period, the atmosphere was inhospitable to political activities in
the region. Most of the organizers confined themselves to social and religious
reforms and literary activities to avoid persecution from the government.
The government maintained its restrictions on modern ideas and activities
irrespective of religious and caste boundaries. As a result, untouchables faced
both discrimination from caste Hindus and opposition to organization from
the government, and their activities were aimed at overcoming these dual
impediments.
The earliest roots of untouchable consciousness in Telugu-speaking regions resulting in any organization can be traced to Hyderabad, the capital
city of the nizam. Echoes of untouchables political and social consciousness
were heard in this city as early as 1906. Under the leadership of Maadari Bhagyayya, popularly known as Bhagya Reddy Varma, the untouchables were
organized to speak for themselves. Bhagya Reddy was born in 1888in Hyderabad. Controversy surrounded about his use of Reddy as a surname, as
the title was exclusively used by the land-holding caste. According toP.R.
Venkatswamy, Suravaram Pratapa Reddy asked, If everyone called himself
a Reddy what would happen to the original Reddys?6 Bhagya Reddys son
wrote in his biography of his f ather that in November 1888, their f amily guru
visited them and named the child Bhagya Reddy instead of Bhagyayya, as
the parents called him. He hailed from the prominent untouchable Mala
caste, the second largest group of untouchables in the nizams territory. Their
prominence came from their early participation in modern education and
occupations, in which they were much ahead of other Dalit groups in the
region.
106 chinnaiah jangam
Bhagya Reddys introduction to modern education and new ideas was the
result of an interesting episode in his life: He lost his father at an early age
while he was still attending school. One day his mother chided him for his
quarrelsome behavior, and as a result he left home and began working as
a butler in the house of two Roman Catholic barrister brothers. The elder
of these two barristers, Francis Xavier Dos Santos, was very kind to him,
and with his sponsorship Bhagya Reddy obtained his education and became
acquainted with elite men of the legal profession. His employer bore all his
expenditure on books and Telugu journals.7
During this period, Bhagya Reddy was exposed to contemporary events
in India and the larger world, most importantly social reform movements
and politics. While he was still working in the h
ouse of the Roman Catholic b
rothers, he became actively involved in the activities of the Jagan Mitra
Mandali (Friends of Peoples Society).8 The main activities of this organ
ization were to organize Harikatha (stories from Hindu epics) performances
and Bhajans (devotional songs) to encourage untouchables to rid themselves
of social evils. The organization also published pamphlets and tracts on pre-
Aryan culture written by Bhagya Reddy. It was renamed the Manya Sangham
(Society for Self-Respect) at a general meeting held on January 1, 1911.9 The
Manya Sangham continued to work to ameliorate the social conditions of
untouchables through its reformist activities. Its main objectives were to
(i) to educate untouchable children, (ii) discourage child marriages, (iii) ban
nonvegetarian food and intoxicants at marriages and other auspicious functions, (iv) abolish the devadasi system known as the custom of parvatis or
jogins10 that was prevalent in the community. As untouchable communities
were plagued by illiteracy, addiction to alcohol, and other backward practices
that w
ere identified as the important reasons for the stigma of untouchability
and poverty, the above-mentioned objectives attempted to address those issues. Moreover, with the intention of involving the prominent educated men
from untouchable community in spreading the message of reform and working for the uplift of their brethren, the following executive committee was
elected: Walthati Seshaiah, president;H.S. Venkat Ram, vice president;J.S.
Muthaiah, secretary; H. S. Shivaram, treasurer; and Bhagya Reddy, organ
izing secretary.11 As part of his effort to provide education to untouchable
children, Bhagya Reddy set up primary schools at the following neighborhoods in Hyderabad city, the Manya Sanghams office, Easamiah Bazaar, Lingampally, and Boggulakunta in 1910. L
ater four more schools w
ere opened
at Chenchalguda, Sultan Shashi, Dhoolpet, and Gunfoundry in Hyderabad.
Funds for these schools were collected from public donations. Gradually the
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 107
Bhagya Reddy became increasingly recognized as a social reformer and activist through his extensive travel and work in organizing various forums
where untouchable voices could be heard. He founded the Adi-Hindu (The
Original Inhabitants of India [Untouchables]) Movement in Hyderabad
and organized the first All-India Adi-Hindu Conference, held in Hyderabad on March2931, 1922. Delegates from Bombay, Poona, Karachi, Nagpur, Yavatmal, Raipur, Bezwada, Machilipatnam, Rajahmundry, Eluru, and
many other places attended the conference. Most importantly during this
conference, the Manya Sangham was renamed the Central Adi-Hindu Social Service League to work for the uplift of Adi-Hindus,12 also known by dif
ferent regional names such as Adi-Andhras, Adi-Karnatakas, Adi-Dravidas,
and Adi-Maharashtrians. The renaming of the organization reflects the
growing assertion among the untouchables of their social identity in caste
Hindu society and their increasing efforts to reclaim their status as original
inhabitants of the nation. At this conference Kusuma Dharmanna of coastal
Andhra recited his famous poem, Maakodhu ee Nalladhorathanamoo (We
do not want this black landlordism), denouncing the caste Hindus domination and oppression of untouchables. The involvement of Coastal Andhra
untouchable leaders in the conference demonstrates that untouchable leaders of the two regions collaborated for the emancipation of their brethren.
Significantly, Bhagya Reddy did not confine his organizational activities to
untouchables but attempted to bridge the gap between caste Hindus and
untouchables. On the last day of the conference, therefore, speeches w
ere
made by prominent social reformers of Hyderabad who w
ere also part of the
Adi-Hindu movement: Justice Rai Balmukund, Pandit Keshav Rao, Seth Lalji
Meghji Jain,N.G.Wellinker, Pandit Raghavender Rao Sharma,R.E. Reporter,
andT. Dhanakoti Varma.
The conference touched on the issues of social practices and religious
rites and ceremonies and urged the necessity of education for untouchable children. It a dopted an agenda for change and reform in the form of
the following resolutions: (1) The demeaning names thrust on the so-called
untouchables by the Aryan Hindus should be replaced by the collective
term Adi-Hindu (meaning original pre-Aryan Hindus) and region-specific
108 chinnaiah jangam
fter renaming the Manya Sangham, Bhagya Reddys activism among unA
touchables and also in the larger civil society of Hyderabad took concrete shape,
and he devoted all his time to social, religious, and political activities. He did
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 109
ultimately lead to their social, moral, religious, economic, and literary uplift;
and adopt adequate measures for them to attain their birthright and privileges
and noble character; (3) undertake research work in the ancient history of the
Adi-Hindus and spread knowledge among them by publishing books and
leaflets in an Ancient Indian Historical Literature Series and having them
start their own newspapers; (4) establish societies, schools, reading rooms,
bhajan mandalis (devotional song associations), and boy scout associations,
chiefly for the benefit of the Adi-Hindus in the nizams territory; help existing
institutions; and convene meetings and arrange for lectures on such subjects
as come within the purview of the second aim; and (5) strive for and achieve
due recognition with the help and cooperation of all classes of p
eople.17
Among the activities of the league, the establishment of schools for Adi-
Hindu c hildren can be seen as most significant. As a part of this work, Audaiah
founded an Adi-Hindu primary school at Secunderabad, William Barton
Boys School. The school was named after the British Resident of Hyderabad,
Sir William Barton (192630) who was also its chief patron. The number of
schools started by the league in and around Hyderabad and Secunderabad
grew to twenty-six, which collectively could educate about 2,500 students
at any one time. Resources to run t hese schools came mostly from the Jeeva
Raksha Jnana Pracharak Mandali (Society for the Knowledge and Protection
of Human Lives) and also from caste Hindu sympathizers. However, maintenance of this elaborate network of schools became a difficult task financially
because it relied too heavily on the contributions from caste Hindus and
other sympathizers. In 1933, Bhagya Reddy pleaded with the nizams government for adequate grants, and in response the government came up with a
proposal to take over t hese schools. The league had agreed to hand over the
schools on certain conditionsthat is, the medium of instruction should be
the mother tongue of the pupils (Telugu) and not Urdu,18 and handicrafts
must be introduced, for the benefit of the pupils. The government agreed to
these demands, and the schools were handed over in November 1934. Scholarships were also introduced for students who were pursuing higher studies.
Apart from organizing social and religious reform activities for the emancipation of untouchables and endeavoring to reform caste Hindu society, Bhagya
Reddy played a pioneering, but unrecognized, role in the field of journalism
and publication in Hyderabad. He established the first untouchable-owned
publishing house, the Adi-Hindu Press and a Telugu fortnightly newspaper
called the Bhagyanagar Patrika in 1925, which was published for two years
and then discontinued because of his ill health and absence from Hyderabad
(he was in Mysore for medical treatment). After his return in January 1930,
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 111
Bhagya Reddy revived the Bhagyanagar Patrika.19 He also wrote and published many books and pamphlets on themes related to history, culture, and
contemporary social and political movements. In historical accounts Bhagya
Reddy tried to build historic antecedents for untouchables. He strived to build
pre-Aryan roots for untouchables to claim their rights to the Indian nation
as its original inhabitants, and he concentrated on writing the ancient history
of untouchables. For example, he wrote Purana Charitramu: Bharatha Kanda
Pracheena Jathulu (History of the ancient tribes of India) and Veera Suratha
Manjari, Mala Pillanu Raakumarudu Pendliyaduta (A royal prince marries an
untouchable [Mala] girl). In his first work, he traced the history of untouchables to pre-Aryan times, and in his second work he built a royal lineage for
untouchables. His primary goal was to reform untouchables social, religious,
and personal habits that destroyed their personality and economic resources;
another goal was to urge caste Hindus to get rid of the practice of untouchability. He therefore wrote pamphlets such as Antudhoshamu Manarela (Why
cannot they do away with the practice of untouchability) and Madhyapana
Nishedha Keertanaloo (Songs against alcohol consumption). Interestingly, he
also wrote pamphlets in Hindi intended for Jains of Hyderabad who supported his activities with financial aid, urging them to allow Adi-Hindus into
Jain temples; one such pamphlet was Jaino! Achuthonko Jaina Mandirome
berok anedho (Oh Jains! Let the untouchables freely enter Jain temples).20
Bhagya Reddy combined his activism with writing and publishing to spread
his message to all sections of society.
Historically and intellectually, the publication of the Bhagyanagar Patrika
was Bhagya Reddys most significant contribution to the public life of Hyderabad and to the cause of the untouchables. The Bhagyanagar Patrika was
one of the few Telugu-language newspapers published in Hyderabad, since
the official language of the state was Urdu and most people were interested
in learning it to avail themselves of public employment opportunities. His
launching of a Telugu-language newspaper was not only an adventurous step,
but it also reflected the emerging political consciousness among the Telugu-
speaking people about their language and regional identity. Therefore, he was
one of the architects of Telugu nationalism in Hyderabad. The Bhagyanagar
Patrika was also the first successful newspaper run by an untouchable, and
it was circulated widely across the country. Interestingly, Bhagya Reddy mobilized resources for his publications from the well-to-do sections of society.
Even in terms of symbolic representation, the Bhagyanagar Patrika combined symbols of cultural and historical significance to represent the growing
sense of regional and nationalist consciousness by publishing illustrations
112 chinnaiah jangam
Adi-Hindu Social Service League of Hyderabad was to consolidate the several castes into Adi-Hindus.30 Bhagya Reddy had also campaigned among
the untouchable communities in both rural and urban areas to regard themselves as Adi-Hindus when census enumerators visited to record their castes.
It was remarkable to note that his campaign yielded successful results, and
untouchables responded and recorded themselves as Adi-Hindus instead of
Malas and Madigas. Even the census report for Hyderabad in 1931 included
an elaborate discussion about Bhagya Reddys movement. Due to the success of his campaign, the untouchable population in Hyderabad was entered
as 2,473,230 Adi-Hindus, representing 16percent of the total population of
Hyderabad.31
Dalits and Constitutional Reforms in Hyderabad State (1930s)
Even though the nizams government was quite slow in implementing representative politics and democratic institutions, it finally announced the
formation of a Constitutional Reforms Committee u
nder the chairmanship
of Aravamudu Aiyangar on September22, 1937. The committee, popularly
known as the Aiyangar Committee, was to recommend constitutional reforms.
Its members were mostly caste Hindus and Muslims; there was no represen
tation for untouchables. In response to this announcement, the untouchable
organizations, such as the Central Adi-Hindu Social Service League and the
Youth League of Ambedkarites, expressed their disagreement with this decision. Bhagya Reddy organized a meeting on December19, 1937, u
nder the
chairmanship ofB.S. Venkat Rao of the Youth League of Ambedkarites, to
discuss the political demands of Adi-Hindus as a whole (including all the
subcastes of untouchables) to be submitted to the Constitutional Reforms
Committee. There was a strong objection from the Arundatiyas (Madigas)
against Bhagya Reddys representation of all the Adi-Hindus.32 Despite the
acrimony, Bhagya Reddy put forward the following demands on behalf of
Adi-Hindus. He stated:
As the depressed classes of the state have certain specific economic and
social problems they should be provided with adequate special repre
sentation in the council. Till the majority community [Hindus] create full confidence in them, they should be provided with 10 seats in
the council. Th
ese seats should be reserved for the depressed classes
for a period of 15 years, the number increasing proportionately with
the strength of the council. Th
ese seats should be distributed over the
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 115
Given Bhagya Reddys activism that embraced the untouchables and the caste
Hindus, he actively participated in events organized by the Brahmo Samaj
and the Arya Samaj movements, the two Hindu social and religious reform
organizations spearheading the campaign for the abolition of untouchability.
With his charismatic leadership, Bhagya Reddy was able to attract many untouchables into the Brahmo Samaj fold. Even the untouchables themselves
felt that this was an important means of escaping the stigma of untouchability
and other social prejudices. But that did not r eally bring any positive social
and moral elevation of untouchables, nor did it bring any change in caste
Hindus attitudes. In contrast, over time, Brahmos were identified with untouchables, according to Venkatswamy: If a Hindu was asked his caste the
questioner would not feel satisfied with the s imple answer Hindu. He would
be anxious to know his sub-caste also. Under such circumstances an untouchable should say e ither a Mala or Madiga or some other sub-caste. If a member
of Brahmo Samaj was asked his caste, he would straight away say, without the
fear of stigma, that his caste was Brahmo. As the movement developed the
word Brahmo had lost its significance and whoever said that he was a Brahmo
was suspected either to be Mala or a Madiga.37
Bhagya Reddy had also taken an active interest in the Arya Samaj movement. In recognition of his services, Arya Samaj wanted to honor him with
the title of sharma (a title exclusively used by Brahmans and synonymous
with pandit), but he preferred the title of varma, as he considered himself a
practical man of action.38 After this title was conferred on him, he was popularly known as Bhagya Reddy Varma.
Bhagya Reddy was the organizing secretary of the Jeeva Raksha Jnana Pracharak Mandali (Society for the knowledge and protection of h
uman lives),
which was founded by Rai Balmukund in 1913.39 Balmukund worked as a
full time organizer. This association proved crucial for his reformist activities
among the untouchables, especially for the schools he had established, which
were financially supported by its members. Balmukunds commitment to
the uplift of untouchables was quite commendable; in his will, he instructed
his family to hand over his dead body to Adi-Hindus to perform his last rites.
In fulfillment of his wish, Bhagya Reddy along with activists in the Central
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 117
Adi-Hindu Social Service League performed Balmukunds last rites.40 Primarily due to the campaigns of Bhagya Reddy, in a special firman (order)
on February 5, 1920, the nizam banned cow slaughter in his dominions on
Bakri-Id day (a Muslim festival celebrated with a goat sacrifice). Bhangya
Reddy continued working in this organization until 1927, leaving it when his
programs there were not implemented due to the oganizations heavy financial burden.41
Bhagya Reddy and Telugu Nationalism
As noted above, Bhagya Reddy was one of the earliest public intellectuals
to insist that the nizams government teach Telugu in schools, and he also
launched a Telugu-
language fortnightly newspaper in Hyderabad. Even
though it is difficult to gauge the exact cultural and ideological influences
responsible for his attachment for the Telugu language and identity, his extensive travels and engagements outside Hyderabad, especially his contacts
with the early nationalist leaders and social reformers in coastal Andhra
districts, were certainly an important influence on him. Most importantly,
Bhagya Reddy was elected president of the first untouchables organization,
the Andhra Rashtra Adi-Andhra Mahajana Sabha (The Andhra association
of untouchables) held at Vijayawada in 1917, and he was supported by caste
Hindu reformers, indicating the close links among and influence between
Andhra leaders and intellectuals. Even though consciousness about Telugu
language and identity in Hyderabad was the result of more significant politi
cal and cultural encounters, Bhagya Reddy inherited Telugu consciousness as
part of his larger political and social engagements. His close association with
Madapati Hanumantha Rao naturally made him part of the Nizam Andhra
movement led by Telugu language caste Hindus. Bhagya Reddy used the platform provided by the movement to further the cause of the untouchables. He
participated in the annual conferences of the Andhra Maha Sabha, an organ
ization set up by caste Hindus to create Telugu linguistic identity. However,
it is pertinent to note that the caste prejudices and discrimination against
untouchables continued even at the political conferences in which caste Hindus were advocating political rights. Bhagya Reddy attended the first Andhra
Maha Sabha conference, held on March35, 1930, at Jogipet town in Medak
District to promote the Telugu language in the nizams dominions. At this
meeting, Bhagya Reddy had a very humiliating experience. By then he was a
very well recognized social activist and a leader of stature. He went to the dais
to read out the resolutions he was proposing. While making his way to the
118 chinnaiah jangam
dais through the crowd, he touched many people. The moment he went up to
the dais many p
eople started protesting and began to leave the hall b
ecause
he was an untouchable. The organizers were at a loss, and in the end, Waman
Naik, a prominent social reformer from Hyderabad, had to convince the audience to come back and take their seats.42 This humiliating incident gives us
an idea of the discrimination practiced by the politically conscious caste Hindus even against a leader and public intellectual. Indeed, it also reflects the
nature of hardships faced by the untouchable leaders and activists in general.
As a representative of the untouchables, Bhagya Reddy proposed two
important resolutions at this conference. In the first one, he requested the
nizams government to take proper steps to meet the educational needs of the
untouchables; in the second, he condemned the government officials who
were forcing untouchables to perform vettichakiri (forced labor without compensation) and requested the government to take the necessary action to stop
this practice.43 Bhagya Reddy also participated in the second Andhra Maha
Sabha conference held on March 35, 1931, at Devarakonda, in Nalgonda
District, along with other members of the Central Adi-Hindu Social Service
League, Ch. Chitharaiah, Gurakula Mallesha Rao, and Matari Balaramaiah.
They urged all caste Hindus to disavow the practice of untouchability, allow
untouchables access to temples and community wells, and treat untouchables
as h
uman beings with equal rights. Resolutions pertaining to the uplifting
of untouchables w
ere proposed and discussed by Rao, and the conference
accepted them unanimously.44 Simultaneously, Bhagya Reddy and his colleagues organized untouchables from Devarakonda and neighboring villages.
Balaramaiah performed Sati Sulochana Harikatha (story of Sulochana from
Ramayana), and Chitharaiah and Bhagya Reddy spoke and requested the untouchables to give up drinking alcohol and eating meat. Bhagya Reddy could
not attend the third Andhra Maha Sabha conference, held at Khammamumettu in 1934, but he sent a message to the conference, which was read as a
prominent persons statement.45
In this way Bhagya Reddy contributed enormously to the Telugu language
and journalism, and by participating in the Andhra Maha Sabha conferences
along with his followers, he strengthened the cause of Telugu nationalism
in Hyderabad. Simultaneously he used the platform and the opportunity
provided by the conferences to expose the oppression and exploitation of
untouchables and espouse their rights. Through his participation and leadership, he made the Andhra Maha Sabha move beyond its exclusive focus on
Telugu linguistic identity to take up untouchables issues. Significantly, the
historic pamphlet published by Andhra Maha Sabha on vettichakiri (forced
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 119
labor)46 was the best indication of how he was able to influence the agenda
of the Andhra Maha Sabha for the cause of the untouchables. However, it
is important to note that the agenda of untouchables disappeared from the
Andhra Maha Sabha movement when it was transferred into the hands of
communists u
nder the leadership of Ravi Narayan Reddy.
Bhagya Reddy and Gandhian Nationalism
Politically and ideologically, Bhagya Reddy can be located within the reformist Gandhian nationalist paradigm. Even though he started his social
and religious reform activities among untouchables before Gandhis appearance in the Indian public sphere, his intellectual and political ideology exactly
suited the nationalist paradigm led by caste Hindus. Bhagya Reddys political
and ideological inclinations were clarified when Gandhi visited Adi-Hindu
Bhavan as part of his Andhra tour. On this occasion special functions and
meetings were organized all over Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Prominent
Congress leaders such as Waman Naik and Madapati Rao apprised Gandhi of developments in Hyderabad. On April 7, 1929, the Adi-Hindu bands
led Gandhi to a big meeting organized at the Vivekavardhini High School.
After the meeting he paid a visit to the Adi-Hindu Bhavan, the office of the
Central Adi-Hindu Social Service League. Four hundred students from nine
Adi-Hindu schools welcomed him. Waman Naik explained the Adi-Hindu
schools and the activities of the league to Gandhi. The headmaster of the
schools, Sevakadasu, presented a certificate of appreciation to Gandhi on
behalf of the league, praising Gandhis efforts to uplift the Adi-Hindu community by speaking against the practice of untouchability.49 Maybe it was for
this reason that caste Hindu Gandhian nationalist leaders idealized Bhagya
Reddy and wanted him to be emulated by all untouchable castes. He was
made the hero of a famous novel, Maalapalli, written by Unnava Laxminarayana in 1922.50
On the issue of uniting disparate untouchable communities into one
Adi-Hindu community, Bhagya Reddy had a problematic position. He and
Arigay Ramaswamy, another untouchable leader and his rival, had a major
disagreement about the issue of caste differences among untouchables. Both
of them stood for the reformist Hindu ideas within the Gandhian nationalist paradigm and emulated Hindu Brahmanical ideas and practices, urging
their brethren to follow them. However, they had fundamental differences
on the issue of resolving subcaste differences among untouchable communities. Though Bhagya Reddy coined the identity of Adi-Hindus for untouchables of all castes, his views in relation to the subcaste differences remained
conservative. He argued for the preservation of t hose differences and did not
even encourage Malas and Madigas to eat together, let alone intercaste marriages. In contrast, Ramaswamy argued for the abolition of subcaste differences and unifying untouchables into one community as Adi-Hindus. He
personally conducted many intercaste marriages between Malas and Madigas and got his a dopted daughter married to a Madiga boy.51 Bhagya Reddy
and Ramaswamy fell apart on this important issue of unifying untouchables,
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 121
and over time the gulf between them widened as they competed with each
other for the leadership of the untouchables. Starting with this ideological
difference and competition for leadership, the untouchable movement in Hyderabad state suffered rifts in both ideology and organizations.
Gandhian and Other Alternatives
religious practices resulted in serious tensions between caste Hindus and untouchable communities.
By the 1920s Gandhis appearance in nationalist politics brought mass
mobilization politics to center stage. As part of this strategy, the Congress
Party, under the leadership of Gandhi, sought to unite all sections of Indian
society against British colonial rule. As part of t hese efforts and with the goal
of drawing untouchables into the nationalist movement, Congress addressed
the issue of untouchability. As a result, Gandhian nationalist activists in the
Andhra region focused on the needs of untouchables and started working
among them. Pre-1920 reformers, mostly Brahmans, sided with Congress and
its activists and became part of the nationalist mainstream u
nder Congress.
Added to the old reformers were new activists and reformers such as Unnava
Laxminarayana and N. G. Ranga, who organized untouchables in Andhra
districts and also wrote on the issue of untouchability. Their novels Maalapalli and Harijananayakudu, respectively, were celebrated as depicting the
best Gandhian solutions for the emancipation of untouchable communities.
Gandhis visits to Andhra from 1921 on not only strengthened the vigor and
commitment of Gandhian activists but also had a considerable impact on
the nature of untouchable assertions and associations. Th
ese efforts made
the untouchables cognizant of their strength and the necessity of their inclusion into the nationalist politics; subsequently, they made demands for more
representation in representative bodies, social equality, and a greater share in
economic resources. Another effect of the leadership of Gandhi and the all-
encompassing nationalism was the shrinking of space between the untouchables and nationalist politics under Congress. Yet untouchables remained
subjugated within the nationalist movement. Their independent initiatives
to build a parallel politics evaporated.
Under the shadow of Gandhian nationalism, the prominent untouchables
organization, the Andhra Rashtra Adi-Andhra Mahajana Sabha (Untouchables association), held its fifth conference at Hindu High School in the
Guntur district on July29, 1928. Prominent participants in this conference
were the Congress nationalist leaders Nallapati Hanumantha Rao, Guduru
Ramachandra Rao, Vellanki Krishna Murthi, Ranganatha Mudaliar, and the
Adi-Andhra leaders Naralasetti Devendrudu, Rayudu Gangaiah, Kusuma
Veeraswamy, Chunduru Krishnaiah, Thiruvakolluri Venkata Subbaiah, P.
Venkatswamy, and Prathipati Audinarayana. Th
ere were more than three
hundred participants. Baddela Ramakrishnaiah was the secretary of this conference, and Sundru Venkaiah delivered the presidential address.52 Eigh
teen resolutions were passed at this conference. Some important ones were
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 123
Conclusion
10. Jogins are large number of small girls traditionally or superstitiously dedicated
to the village gods, but eventually abandoned to the woodsto the caprice and avarice of mere mortals (Mowli, Theirs Is the Kingdom of God, 3).
11. Gautam, Bhagyodayam, Maadari Bhagya Reddy Varma, 3.
12. Vadlakonda Narasimha Rao, Nizam Rashtra Andhrodhyamamu, Andhra
Patrika, November14, 1923, 170.
13. Gautam, Bhagyodayam, Maadari Bhagya Reddy Varma, 51.
14. Apparao, Akhila Bharatha Brahma Samajamu, 542.
15. He was also the founder of hostels and schools meant to uplift the Reddy
community from which he came. He had assisted Central Adi-Hindu Social Ser
vice League financially. SeeS. Reddy, Rajah Bahadur Venkata Rami Reddy Jeevitha
Chartra.
16. Venkatswamy, Our Struggle for Emancipation, 1:39.
17. Ibid., 40.
18. Bhagya Reddy was also actively involved in the Andhra Jana Sangham, which
was led by Madapati Hanumantha Rao. The organization worked for the development of the Telugu language and culture in the nizams dominions, and this demand
emanates from his involvement in that movement.
19. Ramesan, The Freedom Struggle in Hyderabad, 4:79.
20. All the titles of the pamphlets and books listed here were published in the back
page of most issues of the Bhagyanagar Patrika.
21. Untitled article, Bhagyanagar Patrika, July15, 1932.
22. Puthalapattu Sriramulu, Adimandhra Bhakthuni Jeevithamu (Life of an Adi-
Andhra devotee), Bhagyanagar Patrika, July 1, 1932.
23. Gorantla Rangaiah, Matthupadharthamulu (Intoxicants), Bhagyanagar
Patrika, June15, 1932.
24. Ibid.
25. Thallapragada Suryanarayana Rao wrote Helavathi, and Mangipudi Venkata
Sharma wrote Nirudhabharatham. These two novels are known as the earliest reformist reactions against the practice of untouchability.
26. Adi-Hindu National Flag, Bhagyanagar Patrika, November 1, 1932, 41.
27. Adi-Hinduvuni Paristhithi, Bhagyanagar Patrika, March1, 1933, 3.
28. Census of India, 1933, Vol. 23, Part I:H.E.H. the Nizams Dominions (Hyderabad
State), 246.
29. Ibid., 255.
30. Ibid., 234.
31. Ibid., 248.
32. Venkatswamy, Our Struggle for Emancipation, 1:128.
33. Quoted in ibid., 1089.
34. Report of the Reforms Committee-1938, 130.
35. Ibid., 59.
36. Ibid., 116.
37. Venkatswamy, Our Struggle for Emancipation, 1:9.
38. Abbasayulu, Scheduled Caste Elite, 33.
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas 129
5
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History
r a j kum a r h a n s
Growing out of the powerful, anticaste sant tradition of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in northern India, the Sikh variant of Guru Nanak (1469
1539) and his successors evolved into an organized religious movement in the
Punjab in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 It became a rallying cry
for the untouchables and members of lower castes that they be allowed a
respectable social existence. As a young, vibrant religion of the subcontinent,
the Sikh religion has witnessed high and low points in its journey of five hundred years. So have the Dalits of Punjab, who joined it in great numbers in
the seventeenth c entury and found dignity and equality within its egalitarian
fold. But in the process of its growth and expansion in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, its body politic came
to be afflicted by casteism and untouchability from which the g reat gurus had
tried to extricate its followers.
Being a religion of the book from within the Indian tradition, Sikhism has
received worldwide scholarly attention in the last hundred years. A strong
and respectable body of literature about Sikh religion, history, polity, and
society has appeared in the last fifty years. Besides academic historians, social
scientists, and litterateurs, a large number of activists, professionals, and officers have entered the field and enriched the body of Sikh scholarship. Yet
another factor that has contributed to the vast body of literature on various
facets of Punjabi life and Sikh religion is the large Punjabi and Sikh diaspora,
especially in the West.2
Whether due to the strong doctrinal position of egalitarian Sikhism or the
hegemony of the dominant Jatt Sikh caste, whose members have also been
the focus of academic work, the issues of caste and untouchability within
Sikhisms history have received scant attention. The remarkable contribution of Dalits to the Sikh tradition has been missing from mainstream Sikh
discourse. Naranjan Arifi, a nonprofessional Dalit Sikh historian writing in
the Punjabi vernacular, laments the discriminatory attitude of Sikh historians. If the Sikh historians had honestly and impartially recorded history
from the point of view of history writing, he writes, todays general readers would not have been confused on several issues.3 On the basis of his
reading and analysis of the body of historical and hagiographical works on
the Sikhs and Sikh gurus, Arifi is convinced that Sikh history needs to be
rewritten from the start without bringing in miracles and magic so as to give
a scientific and analytical orientation to history.4 While researching the Dalit
heroes of the Sikh past and completing the first part of his history of Ranghretas or Mazhabis (untouchables) in 1993, Arifi was made acutely aware of
these problems in Sikh history. This chapter first deals with the g reat attraction of Sikhism for Dalitsthat is, its egalitarianism. Second, it covers the
forgotten facets of Dalitstheir glorious moments, their heroes, and their
achievementswithin the Sikh tradition. Last, it discusses the emergence of
the Hindu caste system, particularly the practice of untouchability, within
the Sikh tradition after the mid-eighteenth century and the setbacks and resultant sufferings of Dalit Sikhs. This section also deals with the efforts of
Sikh reformers to eradicate the revived untouchability within Sikhism.
Egalitarianism and Caste Hierarchy in Sikhism
religions. He was aware of the strong anti-Brahmanical principles and practices of Sikh religion.
Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred text of the Sikhs, consists of the compositions of six of the ten Sikh gurus and contributions of fifteen Sikh bards
and fifteen non-Sikh sant poets of various social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, including the eminent Muslim Sufi, Sheikh Farid. This makes the
sacred text an inclusive expression of spirituality in the history of world religions. Spread over 1,450 pages, Guru Granth Sahib seeks to build spiritual
awareness and searching through a lifelong process of living and learning for
the most liberating, empowered condition of human life. One possible way to
reach out to the essence, or the core, of the texts message is to see it as a part
of the philosophy of liberation propounded by the Latin American philos
opher Enrique Dussel. He asserts:
Philosophy of liberation is a pedagogical activity stemming from a
praxis that roots itself in proximity of teacher-pupil, thinker-people.
Although pedagogical, it is a praxis conditioned by political (and
erotic) praxis. Nevertheless, as pedagogical, its essence is theoretical
and speculative. Theoretical action, the poetic intellectual illuminative
activity of the philosopher, sets out to discover and expose (in the exposition and risk of the life of the philosopher), in the presence of an
entrenched system, all moments of negation and all exteriority lacking
justice. For this reason it is an analectical pedagogy of liberation. That
is, it is the magisterium that functions in the name of the poor, the oppressed, the other, the one who like a hostage within the system testifies
to the fetishism of its totalization and predicts its death in the liberating
action of the dominated.5
Following this pedagogical device for Sikhism, the very word Sikh
denotes the relationship between the guru (teacher) and the Sikh (pupil).
And the whole Sikh movement was a proximity of thinker-people, an organic
relationship between the gurus and their followers. At the pinnacle of Sikh
thought, the merger of the two (aape gur chela) achieves a radical position
within the Indian tradition.J.P.S. Uberoi puts it aptly in the case of the last
guru, Gobind Singh (16661708): The tenth guru of the Sikhs...became in
effect the disciple of his disciples at the new revolutionary moment of reversal, inversion and reflection of the leader/follower relation.6 The pedagogy of
liberation epitomized in Guru Granth Sahib also turns out to be magisterial7
in the sense that it resists all systems of oppression and injustice, especially
perpetrated on the poor. As it speaks in the name of the low, the poor, the
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 133
oppressed, the text envelops the philosophy of liberation. It does this so completely that Guru Nanak, coming from the upper caste of Khatris, identifies
completely with the lowest of the Indian social order, Dalits:
I am the lowest of the low castes; low, absolutely low;
I am with the lowest in companionship, not with the so-called high.
Blessing of god is where the lowly are cared for.8
The Sikh guru embraced untouchables by distinctly aligning himself with
them to challenge the Hindu caste system. He destroyed the Hindu hierarchical systemssocial as well as political. The subversion of the system
reached its climax in the creation of Khalsa by the tenth guru, Gobind Singh,
in 1699. The real historical force emerged out of the long gestation of the liberation praxis and philosophy that not only fully integrated the untouchables
into the struggle for liberation but also succeeded in abolishing the inhuman
practice of untouchability in the Sikh practice. It is another thing that untouchability was to re-enter the body politic of the Sikh religion in the mid-
eighteenth century and fully corrupt it in the nineteenth century.
By and large, the literature on Punjab and Sikh studies ignored the aspect
of caste prejudice in Sikhism. But as sociological and other empirical studies
have highlighted the prevalence of caste and untouchability among Sikhs,9 it
is no longer possible to avoid or hide this embarrassing question in historical
discourses as was the case in the last fifty years.W.H. McLeod, who studied
the religion for half a century, recently admitted to such a tendency:
To understand Sikh history and religion adequately, one must first
grasp the true nature of Sikh society. It is here that caste becomes significant. To understand Sikh society, one must comprehend the nature
of caste as it affects the Panth. An understanding of the future development of the Sikh religion makes an understanding of caste as practised
by Sikhs absolutely imperative. Social scientists already recognize this,
although some of their books or articles may skate round it or omit all
mention completely. For those of us who are historians, it is likewise
imperative. Without it our understanding of both the Panth and its
religion must inevitably be flawed.10
By practicing what they preached, the gurus became the exemplars of their
message. Guru Nanak felt that the real cause of the misery of the people was
the disunity born of caste prejudices. To do away with caste differences and
discords, he laid the foundation of sangat (congregation) and pangat (collective dining).11 Thus, all ten of the gurus took necessary steps to eliminate
134 raj kumar hans
As most literature on Sikh history and religion has failed to take account of
the Dalits, John Websters pioneering formulation on the Dalit history approach is quite instructive. Ever since he published the first edition of The
Dalit Christians: A History17 in 1992, he has been deepening his thought on
the concept of Dalit for a non-Hindu religion, and in an important recent
article he discusses its implications for Sikh history.18 According to him, the
Dalit history approach is based on two assumptions. The first is that of Dalit
agency. In this case, Dalit Sikhs move to centre-stage to become the chief
actors and shapers of their own history; the historian will therefore focus
upon them, their views, their struggles, their actions. The second is that a
conflict model of society, with caste as not the only but the most important
contradiction in Indian society, provides the most appropriate paradigm for
understanding their history.19
There is no work on Sikh history and tradition in English that has been
produced from the Dalit history perspective. Major historical works reflect
what Webster calls the Sikh history approach.20 Only a few books available in Punjabi (Gurumukhi) languagenot all of which are by professional
historianscan be seen as written from the Dalit Sikh approach.21 While
denouncing the established histories as nothing but high-caste histories,S.L.
Virdi stresses the need for a Dalit history: India needs such a history that
germinates revolutionary consciousness for social change because history
plays a very significant role in this respect. Society assumes a character and
shape as molded by its history. From this perspective Dalit history has a
very important role. Dalit history is another name for revolution in Indian
society.22
While Shamsher Singh Ashok wrote his history of the Mazhabis
commissioned byK.S. Neiyyer, a Dalit Sikh settled in London23Naranjan
Arifi, a Dalit officer in the revenue department of the Punjab government,
wrote a bulky volume on the history of Dalit Sikhs a fter a g reat deal of
research. He gives us a comprehensive account of Ranghretas or Mazhabis
joining the Sikh fold as early as the period of the fifth guru, Arjun (1563
1606). Arifi very diligently extracts Dalit information from the Sikh writings
available since the early eighteenth century. In this volume he provides fas136 raj kumar hans
Gulab Singh, and ruled its territories from its headquarters at Rahon, near
Sirhand, until his death in 1807.33
Evidence of Dalits participation in the Sikh movement coming from the
Persian sources, quite hostile to Sikhs in tone and tenor for political reasons, is quite instructive. After the death of Guru Gobind Singh, Banda Bahadur (16701716), whom the guru had sent from Maharashtra to save the
Sikhs from the Mughal oppression in Punjab, succeeded in mobilizing Sikhs
to fight against Mughal governors.34 Muhammad Shafi Warid bitterly underlines the leveling effects of Banda Bahadurs policies a fter the victory of
Sirhind:
fter the slaying of Wazir Khan, he [Banda] laid down that of HinA
dusand Muslims, whoever enrolled among his Sikhs, should be one
body and take their meal together so that the distinction in honour
between the lowly and the well-born was entirely removed and all
achieved mutual unison, acting together. A sweeper of spittle sat with a
raja of great status, and they felt no hostility to each other....
Strange it was how through God-decreed fate, the courage and bravery of the inhabitants of those places had departed. If a lowly sweeper
or cobbler (chamar), more impure than whom t here is no caste (qaum)
in Hindustan, went to attend on that rebel [Banda], he would be appointed to govern his own town and would return with an order (sanad)
of office of government in his hand....He [the official sent by Banda]
would demand whatever precious goods were in anyones house and
deposit it in the ill-destined treasury of the Guru.35
The trend continued throughout the eighteenth century, as noted above.
The strength of Dalits in the Sikh Panth and Ranjit Singhs army was considerable. We have an account of the Sikhs in Ghulam Ali Khans history of the
eighteenth-century north Indian state of Awadh, written in 1808. He says:
Finally, now [1808 ad ] the whole country of the Punjab up to the Attock River [Indus], and this side up to Multan, and from the banks
of Sutlej to Karnal...is in the possession of this sect. Their leaders
of high dignity are mostly from the lower classes, such as carpenters,
shoemakers and Jats....
In addition to the army, which they call dal , the number of Sikhs
in the Punjab has reached millions (lit. thousands of thousands),
since yogurt-sellers, confectioners, fodder-vendors, grain-sellers, barbers, washermen, all [fully] keep their hair and, saying Wahi Guru di
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 139
fateh, interdine with each other. They are not confined to the Punjab
only. In the whole of Hindustan from Shahjahanabad [Delhi] to Calcutta, Haidarabad and Chennapatan [Chennai], groups after groups
are found to belong to this sect; but most of them are market people
(bazarian), and only a few are well-born.36
Though substantially diminished in their power, the Dalit Sikhs continued
as soldiers and fighters. They continued to be influential during Ranjit Singhs
rule, which enabled them to construct the Mazhabi Singhan da Bunga (the
lodging of Mazhabis) in the Golden T
emple complex in 1826. The Mazhabi
Bunga was l ater demolished and the premise was incorporated into the Guru
Ramdas Langar building. Mazhabis had their Bunga (lodging) at the holy
Sikh temple in the city of Tarn Taran.37 After the British takeover of Punjab
in 1849, the control of the Golden Temple and other gurdwaras was given
over to the Hindu mahants (priests) by removing Mazhabis from all their
positions.38 Thereafter, Hindu Sikhs had complete control over Sikh religious
institutions, which will be discussed in the next section.
Creativity, especially literary creativity, is another area in which the Sikh
religion seems to have played a significantly positive role in the life of Dalits.
Reference has already been made to Bhai Jaitas Sri Gur Katha (Story of Sikh
gurus), an epic composed at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The second Dalit poet, sant Wazir Singh (c. 17901859), prolifically composed metaphysical and social poetry, both in Punjabi and Braj Bhasha. He attracted a
number of p
eople as his followers, including five poet disciples hailing from
high castes. One of the five poets was Nurang Devi, who was the first female
Punjabi poet groomed under sant Wazir Singhs tutorship.39 The next Dalit intellectual writer Giani Ditt Singh (18521901) emerged as a poet, teacher, polemicist, journalist, orator, and ardent Sikh missionary, who turned out to be
the pillar of the Singh Sabha movement.40 Sadhu Daya Singh Arif (18941946),
who came to master the Gurmukhi, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages, was the most popular intellectual poet of his time in Punjab. His first
poetical work, Fanah-dar-Makan (Doorstep to dissolution), was published
when he had just turned twenty. The work which made him a h
ousehold
name throughout Punjab was Zindagi Bilas (Discourse on life), which was
completed in 1916. Overall, it was didactic poetry that caught the masses
imagination, and Zindagi Bilas became the most frequently published, read,
or heard poetic creation after Waris Shahs Heer. All of them have remained
neglected in the histories of Punjabi literature. From the early twentieth
century a series of Dalit writers are writing with a clear Dalit consciousness.41
140 raj kumar hans
Caste and untouchability came to afflict the Sikhs, particularly in the past
two centuries. There was a gradual rise of Sanatan Sikhism,42 a fine admixture of Hindu caste-centric practices and Sikhism, in the second half of the
eighteenth century. By the close of the nineteenth century, it had assumed a
vicious form. Features of Sanatan Sikhism w
ere first outlined in a genealogical history of Sikh gurus by Kesar Singh Chhibber in Bansavalinama Dasan
Patshahian ka, completed in 1769.43 Chhibber belonged to a Brahman f amily
of Jammu. He attributes the Guru Gobind Singhs power and success to the
worship of a Hindu goddess and gives considerable importance to the role of
Brahmans in his account of the Sikh gurus. Arifi devotes more than a hundred pages of his book to a close examination of Chhibbers work and lashes
out at him, saying that the work is a complete conspiracy against the gurus
philosophy as its purpose is to introduce Brahmanical ideas....Even if it is
a bundle of lies in which8090percent of the dates are wrong, imaginary
characters are introduced, and the principles and traditions of the gurus are
colored with Brahmanism.44 HistorianJ.S. Grewal is also highly critical of
Chhibbers work and calls it Brahmanizing the tradition: Whether consciously or unconsciously, Kesar Singh Chhibber makes a consistent and an
earnest attempt at Brahmanizing the Khalsa tradition.45
It is ironic that the Hindu caste-centric practices entered Sikhism during
the reign of Ranjit Singh (17801839), who founded the first Sikh empire in
India. Even in the first decade of the nineteenth century the egalitarian spirit
of the Khalsa had remained intact, as observed by John Malcolm: Wherever
the religion of Guru Govind [Gobind] prevails, the institutions of Brahma
must fall. The admission of proselytes, the abolition of the distinctions of caste,
the eating of all kinds of flesh, except that of cows, the form of religious worship, and the general devotion of all Singhs to arms, are ordinances altogether
irreconcilable with the Hindu mythology, and have rendered the religion of
the Sikhs as obnoxious to the Brahmans, and higher tribes of the Hindus,
as it is popular with the lower orders of that numerous class of mankind.46
Henry Steinbach, a European soldier in Ranjit Singhs army, made an astute
observation about a definite change that had taken place since Malcolms
statement: The assumption of irresponsible power by Ranjeet Singh destroyed,
in some degree, the potency of the Khalsa.47 That the Hindu practices were
fast creeping into Sikh culture during Ranjit Singhs time was also observed
by another European traveler in 1836, Baron Charles Hugel, who noted that
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 141
like every other religion grounded in deism, the faith of the Sikhs is already
deteriorated; image worship and distinction of castes are gradually taking
place of the precepts enjoined by their original institutions.48
The Golden Temple at Amritsar has been the sanctum sanctorum for
Sikhs, as Mecca is for Muslims, and many lives w
ere lost defending the
temples sanctity during the eighteenth century. It had assumed such an importance in the religious and political life of Punjab that Ranjit Singh abolished the system of collective management and assumed the right to appoint
a temple manager. This precedent was used by a subsequent ruler of Punjab,
Lieutenant-Governor Sir Robert Egerton, in 1881 to appoint his own t emple
manager.49 By that time, the Mahants had already introduced non-Sikh practices in the precincts of the temple, and the commissioner of the Amritsar
Division, Robert Needham Cust, could foresee in 1858 what was in store for
the faith. He observed that unsupported by the State, plundered by its own
guardians, in due course of time the temple will fall to ruins; the sect which
was founded by Baba Nanak will cease to exist; the nucleus of nationality
which was created by Guru Gobind Singh will be dispersed, and [the] proselytising and fanatic Sikh will fall back into the ranks of the lethargic and
uninspiring Hindu.50
Idols were placed in the Golden Temple, and Dalits were prevented from
bathing in the sarovar (holy tank). In 1877, there was consternation among
the t emple authorities as some Mazhabi soldiers and their families attempted
to bathe there.51 The deterioration in the Sikh religion was observed at the
beginning of the twentieth c entury by John Campbell Oman, a keen student of Indian epics, mysticism, cults, customs, and related issues. During
his extensive visits to the Golden Temple Oman noticed quite a few Hindu
practices within the complex. In front of the Akal Bunga, goats were slaughtered on the Dussera festival. He found that along the northern side of the
pool, a Brahman was worshipping tiny images of Ganesh and Krishna. At the
northeast corner of the tank, there was a Shiva temple with a lingam, and
along the eastern side there was another temple of devi (goddess). At the devi
temple Oman encountered Brahmans engaged in worship, separately, of
course. One had before him a saligram and a picture of the t emple of Badrinath; while the other adored a saligram and a tulasi (holy basil) plant. The latter worshipper appeared quite at home in the precincts of the Sikh t emple, for
he blew sundry loud blasts by means of a conch, from which he managed to
produce some three or four distinct notes.52 In the concluding paragraph of
his chapter on the Golden Temple, he observes that the advanced party
alluding to the radical members of the Singh Sabhasucceeded in removing
142 raj kumar hans
the Hindu idols from the complex in 1905, but he added: Nonetheless, only
last year (1907), an apparently well-informed writer in the Civil and Military
Gazette of Lahore lamented the fact that the distinctive differences between
Sikhism and Hinduism were melting away, a conclusion at which I had myself arrived some years ago.53
Caste prejudice and the practice of untouchability being central to Hin
duism, any individual, organization, or ideology questioning it was always
seen as an e nemy, and no effort was spared to eliminate the challenge. In the
context of the Sikh religion,A.E. Barstow observed in the 1920s that Hinduism, [due] to its wonderfully assimilative character, had thus reabsorbed a
good part of Sikhism, as it had absorbed Buddhism before it, notwithstanding that much of these religions is opposed to caste and the supremacy of
the Brahmans.54 Bhagat Lakshman Singh (18631944), a scholar and intellectual who was a new convert to Sikhism, believed that the Sikh creed had
been Hinduized after the establishment of Sikh rule. The high-caste Hindus
had made advances toward the new power in an attempt at reconciliation,
and a compromise was affected through which the Sikhs abandoned their
revolutionary program.55 Sikhism began to lose its distinct identity. Khushwant Singh is straightforward in admitting that Sikhism did not succeed in
breaking the caste system....and Sikhs of higher castes refused to eat with
untouchable Sikhs and in villages separate wells were provided for them.56
We have some accounts from Sikh newspapers in the first quarter of the
twentieth century that already give evidence of the problems caused by the
Hinduization of Sikhism. Dalit Sikhs had started e ither following the Hindu
vedic religion, supposedly casteless, advocated by Arya Samaj or converting to Christianity, which forced the Sikh reformers to address the issue of
caste inequality and stem the tide. Singh Sabhas had initiated the process,
but caste attitudes were too deep-seated to make much difference. The Sikh
press started pushing the cause forcefully. In an editorial titled Isaai hon de
Karan (Reasons for becoming Christian) in the Punjab Darpan of October10, 1917, the Sikhs were warned to mend their ways:
In the last eight months 1,600 Hindus have become Christians....For
this mission, the pastors have relinquished professorships in the mission colleges as they have also abandoned the comforts of churches.
Compare this with the Sikh community: t here are thousands of t hose
baptized Sikhs rendering Gurbani with musical instruments that are
called Mazhabis, Ramdasias, or Bishth. But high-caste Sikhs always
oppress those who simply labor for their sustenance....Because these
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 143
illiterate Sikhs hate them more than they hate Muslims, it is necessary
to inspire the Sikh Sardars, Numberdars, and Zaildars in the villages to
embrace their brethren in faith rather than making them the enemies
of their religion by rebuking them all the time.57
The growing anxiety about the virus of untouchability among educated
Sikhs is reflected in most of the community-oriented newspapers and magazines. One reader signing himself Sewa Singh ba wrote a letter to Khalsa
(community) newspaper in 1923 (a translation of the title would be Ones
most necessary duty: for the attention of Chief Khalsa Diwan), in which he
drew attention to the problem of untouchability.58 Referring to Arya Samaj,
the writer urged the diwan to shoulder the improvement of untouchable
castes. On June24, 1923, Khalsa published a report on a divan (assembly)
about a shudhi (purification) at Amritsars Jallianwala Bagh that had been held
on June21. The divan was devoted solely to the removal of untouchability.
The report said:
Sardar Dalip Singh, the secretary of the divan, while introducing the
purpose of the divan said that even now Guru Gobind Singhs baptized
Sikhs, who are called Ramdasia, Mazhbis, and Chuhras, are thrown out
of langars [community kitchens] and their Prasad is not accepted in the
gurdwaras. Thats why todays divan is organized, to find out remedy
for this malaise....
Later on Bhai Mehtab Singh Bir lamented how due to our indifference hundreds of our so-called untouchable brothers are being swallowed up by other religions. He reported that twenty-five Rahitiyas
became Aryas in 1903 and after that 10,000 Rahitiyas joined the Arya
Samaj.59
The Sikh leadership by that time had gotten so lost in the struggle to liberate gurdwaras from the clutches of Brahmanized Mahants that the agenda to
liberate Sikh minds from casteism was set aside. The helpless situation drove
emple, to write a
Bhai Pratap Singh, the head granthi (priest) of the Golden T
60
treatise on the issue. Besides looking into the theological and practical high
points against untouchability in the Sikh tradition, he summarized the efforts
of the sgpc for the removal of untouchability between 1921 and1933.
Ambedkars engagement with Sikhism was another factor contributing to
the introspection on the part of a small group of Sikh reformers seeking to
remove untouchability. It started with Ambedkars powerful move in 1936
to envisage a dignified life for the Dalits in the Sikh religion. Sardar Amar
144 raj kumar hans
Singh, secretary of Shri Guru Singh Sabha Shillong (in Assam), wrote two
articles in Khalsa Sewak on March17 and22, 1936 (in English, the title of the
articles is The need of the Sikhs preaching among the untouchables and
some suggestions for that).61 An editorial in Khalsa Sewak on March7, 1936,
reports that Ambedkar had written letters to the sgpc but laments that the
committees response was unsatisfactory. The editorial notes with sarcasm
that with all this the Sikhs are so indifferent that they would not stop bragging of their reforms on paper, which is just a show, but in practice not a
single step forward has been taken.62
It is the Dalit voices that are most vociferous about caste and untouchability in Sikhism. Pandit Bakshi Ram, who was born in a Balmiki family toward
the close of the nineteenth c entury, recalls in his memoirs the condition of
untouchability. He narrates two incidents from his village to show how Dalit
Sikhs were treated by the dominant Jatt Sikhs. Once, a Rahitia (a Dalit who
observed the Sikh code of conduct) boy was beaten up by Jatt boys while
drawing water from the school well. Another time, when a Rahitia weddingparty used the village pond for cleaning their backs in the morning, they w
ere
63
thoroughly beaten up by Jatts. Untouchability has become deep-rooted in
the Jatt-dominated villages, Ram says, and asks Isnt practicing caste and
untouchability against gurmat (Gurus teachings)?64 Observing how a fter
independence the Jatts came to completely control the politics and economy
of Punjab as they opposed the Dalits economic demands, Ram asks: If the
Jatt Sikhs demand higher prices for their agricultural produce dont the labourers have right to demand higher wages? And if the latter struggle for
their right the former boycott them. I snt it the height of injustice? If Akalis
have their pickets for their demands why cant Dalits exercise their right to
make their demands?65
Prem Gorkhi, an eminent Punjabi short-story writer who graduated from
a daily worker to a full-time employee as a library peon (office-boy), and then
becoming a respectable journalist, recalls with bitterness:
I have seen that if Punjabi writers are intimate friends they also carry
deep casteist ideas within....I have close relations from the high to the
low...they respect [me] as well....I go to everyones house, eat and
sleep there...but over taking sides on any vital issue, the cobra within
spreads its fangs....There is no drastic change in the caste situation
from what it was a hundred years ago...only the ways of untouchability have changed. T
oday if you eat from the same plate, you also kill
the same personand who you call Dalit today is not a century-old
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 145
uprising helped them further consolidate their hold over other castes in the
villages, as they came to form the backbone of the Anglo-Indian army.68
The Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1901,69 though largely an official effort
to protect agriculturistsespecially distraught Muslim peasants of western
Punjabfrom rapacious moneylenders, proved to be a grand colonial gift to
the Sikh Jatts. The act prevented nonagricultural communities from buying
and occupying lands. The Dalits of Punjab proved to suffer the most from
this act as they had been declared as nonagricultural menials in official enumerations, despite the fact that within the Sikh fold they had become soldiers, artisans, or peasants. As agriculturists at several places they tilled lands
as owners or tenants.70 But after passage of the act, even the houses in which
their families had been living for generations did not belong to them; all land
in villages now belonged to peasant proprietors, predominantly Jatts. Dalits
had been completely thrown to the mercy of Jatts and rendered extremely
vulnerable by the colonial law. From once honorable warriors of the Sikh
religion the Dalits had been reduced to untouchable Sikhs without land
or homes of their own. In such circumstances, caste came to be used by
Jatts as a convenient way to obtain a virtually free supply of agrarian labor
from Dalits for their class interests, in service of their land operations. The
Jatt domination of the Sikh religion and in the Punjab countryside in the
twentieth century created problems for other dependent caste communities
in general (and for Dalits in particular), which resulted in the building of
caste-oriented gurdwaras.
Conclusion
Sikhism emerged as a vital religious force and movement with ideas of equality and liberation for the downtrodden. It succeeded in empowering those
groups of Punjabi Dalits who joined it. They excelled in several fields, including religion, warfare, and literary creativity. If Sikhism as a social force
was failing in its mission, what alternatives were left open to the Dalits of
Punjab? Some Dalits succeeded in finding social-religious solutions, such
as the Ad-Dharam movement in the 1920s. The movement aimed at securing
a respectable place for Dalits through cultural transformation, spiritual regeneration, and political assertion rather than seeking patronage from above.
The argument of its founder, Mangoo Ram Mugowalia, that Dalits were the
original inhabitants of India had an enormous psychological impact on the
untouchables of Punjab, inspiring them to fight for their liberation. Within
a short time, the movement became a mass Dalit struggle for a separate
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 147
identity. Though after independence it petered out, its success lies in the fact
that those who continued to identify themselves as Ad Dharmis have made
far greater progress in all fields when compared to those Dalits who continued to follow established religions, including Sikhism.
The nonreligious path to emancipation was a socialist revolution. The
Communists have had a few successful movements in Punjab since the 1920s
but only once addressed the Dalit question explicitly. The exception was the
young revolutionary Bhagat Singh, who wrote a lengthy article titled Achhut
da Sawal (The question of untouchability) in 1928. Pointing at the competition between different religions to win the untouchables to their respective
folds out of sheer political greed and vested interests, he issued a clarion call
to Dalits to unite and fight their own battles, as no one else would fight for
them.71 But after Bhagat Singh was martyred in 1931, no Communists followed his approach. Assuming that the end of class rule would automatically
resolve cultural issues, the Communists failed to see the significance of caste
and untouchability in the Indian cultural context. Even the best Dalit poets
and activists in the extreme left Naxalite movementnamely, Lal Singh
Dil and sant Ram Udasiexperienced casteist insults and died in difficult
circumstances if not altogether in ignominy.
Dalits in general and Dalit Sikhs in particular find themselves at a crossroad as far as the question of religion is concerned. A group of Dalit Sikhs
whose families have retained memories of the glorious past are unable to
understand what has happened to the religion, and they still entertain hopes
that Sikhism will restore what has been lost. Yet a majority of Dalits have experienced the tensions of conflicting attitudes and feel frustrated as they turn
away from Sikh religion. Education, political awareness, and Dalit assertion
pose the challenge to older religious identities as Dalits find alternative ways
to seek dignity and pride.
notes
1. For a discussion of a broad range of bhakti sant movements and issues, see
Schomer and McLeod, The Sants.
2. Grewal, Contesting Interpretations of the Sikh Tradition; Juergensmeyer, Sikh
Studies.
3. Arifi, Ranghrehtian da Itihas, part1, 13. All translations from Punjabi are mine.
4. Ibid., 35.
5. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 178.
6. Uberoi, Religion, Civil Society and the State, 74.
7. Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture, 133.
148 raj kumar hans
8. Neechan andar neech jati, Neechi hun ati neech / Nanak tin ke sang sath, Vadian
siyon kya rees / Jithe neech sanmalian, Tithe nadr teri bakhshish (quoted in Puri,
The Scheduled Castes in the Sikh Community, 2694).
9. Jodhka, Dissociation, Distancing and Autonomy and Sikhism and the Caste
Question; Judge, Religion, Caste, and Communalism in Punjab; Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision; Marenco, The Transformation of Sikh Society; Puri, The Scheduled
Castes in Sikh Community; Indera Singh, Caste in a Sikh Village; Walia, The Prob
lem of Untouchability among Sikhs in Punjab with Special Reference to Mazhabi Sikhs.
10. McLeod, Sikhs and Castes, 106.
11. Sangat in Gurmukhi means to accompany or to sit with others. Thus, praising
God through the words of the guru in the company of the learned is known as keeping sangat in the Sikh tradition. Pangat in Gurmukhi is derived from the Sanskrit
pankti, which means a line or row. Thus, eating food sitting in a row without any differentiation or discrimination is called pangat in the Sikh tradition.
12. Quoted in Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, 105.
13. McLeod, The Sikh Concept of Caste, 173.
14. Ibid., 186.
15. Gandiwind, Shaheed Baba Jiwan Singh, 174. This important writing by Bhai Jaita
(also known as Jiwan Singh) came to light only in the second half of the twentieth
century. Sri Gur Katha (the full title is Sri Gur Katha krit kavi Baba Jeevan Singh [Bhai
Jaita]) was first published in Arifi, Ranghrehtian da Itihas, part1, 396424. Other
books in which Sri Gur Katha was published are Baldev Singh Panjwan Sahibjada,
465501; Gurmukh Singh, Bhai Jaita Ji, 4982.
16. Ab rahit sunuh gur singhan ki, hari dhian dhare ur judh chitare / jab arit aye
pukar karenh, nij sookh taje tin dookh nivare / nahi jaat sujaat bichar kareh, ar poot
khudaye janahen sabare / rahu reet geh nahin bipran ki, ar gurmat prapat mokh
duare (quoted in Gandiwind, Shaheed Baba Jiwan Singh, 181).
17. Webster, The Dalit Christians.
18. Webster, The Dalit Sikhs: A History?
19. Ibid., 138.
20. Ibid., 133.
21. Some of these are Arifi, Ranghrehtian da Itihas; Ashok, Mazhabi Sikhan da
Itihas; Nirbhay, Mazhabi Sikhan di Jaddo-jaihad; and Giani Singh, Guru ka Beta. For
general histories of the Dalits of Punjab, see Ishar Singh, Sikh Ithas de Visre Panne;
Virdi, Punjab da Dalit Itihas.
22. Virdi, Punjab da Dalit Itihas, xxxixxxii.
23. Ashok, Mazhabi Sikhan da Itihas.
24. For details, see Arifi, Ranghrehtian da Itihas, 22426.
25. See the novel by Baldev Singh, Panjwan Sahibjada.
26. Murphy, Materializing Sikh Pasts.
27. Gurnam Aqida, Baba Jeevan Singhji di mahan kurbani nu vi nahin samjhia,
1011.
28. The researchers of Punjabi literary texts, especially those pertaining to the Sikh
traditionincluding Shamsher Ashok, Gurinder Maan, Pritam Singh, and Piara
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History 149
6
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity:
Citizens and Castes in the Telugu Public Sphere
k. s a ty a n a r a y a n a
Sahu, who was a Naxalite leader, coauthor of the famous novel Komaram
Bheem, and a member of theA.P. Viplava Rachayitala Sangham, popularly
known as Virasam,1 is said to have criticized the organization for its failure to
publicize his illegal detention by the police as a violation of the democratic
rights of a writer belonging to an oppressed caste. This led to an open debate.
Virasam responded by saying that Sahu was a well-known Naxalite leader
and that he enjoyed the support of the large segments of the public, particularly Adivasis. This view implies that there is no need to publicize Sahu
as a writer in the domain of the m
iddle-class public.K. Srinivas, a literary
critic, intervened in this debate to suggest that the crucial issue is that Dalits,
other minorities, and women are demanding recognition in the middle-class
world, not just in the popular domain of the p
eople. The middle-class domain, in this context, is the domain of the authorized public spherekey
spaces where public opinion is molded.2
Dalit writers and critics argued in the 1980s and the 1990s that they w
ere
denied recognition in the Telugu public sphere on the basis of caste identities. Yet now they seek recognition in the public sphere on the very basis of
those identities. The shaping of a distinct Dalit public and Dalit identity are
crucial to understanding the question of recognition and the emergence of
Dalit discourses such as Dalitvadam (Dalit sociopolitical debates) and Dalit
literature in the Telugu public sphere. It was in the context of Dalit mobilizations against caste atrocities and the struggles over caste-based reservations
in the 1980s and the 1990s that the Dalit public emerged as a subaltern public,
challenging the exclusionary norms of the Telugu public sphere represented
by both the liberal and the revolutionary leftist writers and critics.
I have argued that we can conceptualize the shift toward the new notion
and function of Dalit writing through mapping the larger structural changes
in Telugu public sphere (such as the emergence of the new social groups and
the rise of Dalit writing) and through a reading of Dalit discourses in the
form of debates, literary controversies, and Dalit poetry. Through the category of Dalit writing, Dalit writers advance a critique of the human citizen
(read: Hindu, upper caste, and male), a figure of the modernist project of
Telugu modern literatures, and posit the not-quite-citizen figure of the Dalit
to reconfigure the Telugu public sphere. Dalit claims to self-representation
in the Telugu public sphere cannot be read just as claims of producing au
thentic literature. These are claims specifically made for recognition in the
public domain as poets, writers, scholars, and critics. Reading discourses such
as Dalitvadam and Dalit literature as pure literature or culture and justifying
this body of writing on the ground of authenticity will obscure the new politics of caste or recognition and the refiguring of the Telugu public sphere.
Telugu Publics
In this section, I map the contours of the Telugu public sphere by reading the critical discourses of the liberal and the revolutionary leftist critics.
Velcheru Narayana Rao, a prominent Telugu literary critic and a professor
of languages and cultures of Asia at the University of WisconsinMadison
made a major intervention in 2002. In a Telugu-language journal article, he
attempted to assess the literary value of new claimants to literary recognition
in the Telugu public sphere.3 His criticism of Dalit poetry is also applicable
to the newly emerging Dalit literary movement as a w
hole in Telugu. It is
important to note that Narayana Rao is popularly known as a Marxist critic
in Telugu literary circles. His Telugulo Kavita Viplavala Swaroopam (Poetic
revolutions in Telugu) is a widely acclaimed study of Telugu poetry. Narayana
Rao says: Whatever may be the views or theories that literature proposes
and propagatesfirst, it should be literature. In fact, those who are in the
literary field w
ill not judge its literary merit based on the views and proposed
aims in literature. There is no one in [the] Telugu [world] today who would
assertyou propose whatever politics and social values you want to propose
156 k. satyanarayana
only if your work has literary merit, then we recognizse it as literature and
respect it.4
He believes that the institution of literature should be autonomous and in
dependent. He insists that literature is a special kind of knowledge that only
specialists can judge. What is good poetry, Narayana Rao argues, should
be decided only by poets.5 He bemoans the fact that there is no one in [the]
Telugu [world] to perform the function of judging what is good literature.6
He offers an explanation for the decline of literature as an institution in
Telugu society. In the 1970s Virasam came on to the stage, making literary
commitment a key issue in the discussions of Telugu poetry. Narayana Rao
believes that Virasam propagated ideas like social consciousness, writing
for the p
eople, the poet as someone who stands for the armed people, and
7
so on. Even after the weakening of Virasam, these ideas continue to prevail
in the evaluation of poetry. The feminist and Dalit poets, Narayana Rao
argues, rejected Virasam but followed the path of Virasam in literary discussions and controversies and believed that literature is a vehicle to propagate
their views.8 As a result, sahityam (literature) as an institution got weakened. Criticizing Virasam writers and literary critics as middle-class opportunists, Narayana Rao says that they have no special training or qualifications
to be called literary p
eople. He attributes the destruction of the boundaries
of literature to the entrance into the literary domain of ineligible p
eople and
notes that many of these people are not poets, writers, or critics and not at
all pundits.9 Arguing that no standards are followed in publishing literary
works in Telugu, Narayana Rao points out that Telugu poets publish what
ever they write as it is. Th
ose who write books themselves are publishers.
Because of this, we do not have traditions established separately by the publishing houses.10 These practices in Telugu literature, he says, contributed to
the blurring of distinctions between literature and society and between the
language of addressing problems in society and the language of literary criticism. Therefore, literature lost its special status.11
Narayana Raos argument that literature is a special kind of domain is not
a new one. His conception of pure literature is closely linked to his endorsement of an elite domain in the public sphere. What is relevant in Narayana Raos argument for our purposes is his elaboration on the nature of the
Telugu literary public sphere. He idealizes the Telugu literary public sphere of
the Bavakavitvam (Romantic poetry) days (the 1930s), when poets discussed
poetry, its rhythm, language, structure, and so on. Poets used to judge what
a good poem was and who wrote well.12 Narayana Rao marks the 1970s as a
point when t here was a significant break from the past, and nonpoets (read:
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity 157
notion of the public, and categorizes the Telugu public sphere as backward
and chaotic.
To explain the backward and the chaotic character of the Telugu literary
public sphere and make sense of Telugu public life, the Habermasian concept
of a liberal public sphere is quite useful.15 The liberal public sphere, according to Habermas, is an institutional arena in which citizens discuss common issues. This site is separate from the state and produces discourses that
are in principle critical of the state.16 Nancy Fraser critiques and reworks the
Habermasian concept of the public sphere. She argues that Habermas idealizes the liberal public sphere as the only public arena in which inequities of
status [of citizens] w
ere to be bracketed.17 She describes the public sphere
as an institutional arena of discursive interaction that thematizes inequalities. She emphasizes the conflictual relations between the bourgeois public
and other publics and proposes the concept of multiple publics. She further suggests that subaltern c ounter publics are parallel discursive arenas
where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate c ounter
discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs.18 She adds that these subaltern publics function as spaces
of withdrawal and regroupment as well as bases and training groups for
agitational activities directed t oward wider publics.19 Frasers redefinition of
public sphere allows us to recognize the split in the unitary domain of the liberal public sphere and also to stage the active negotiations of subaltern social
groups to enter this domain. In the 1990s, Dalit writers broke the invisible
and transparent boundaries of the secular space of the Telugu revolutionary
public sphere and publicly articulated their caste identities.
I have outlined Narayana Raos Eurocentric view of the Telugu public
sphere to highlight the shift in conceptualizing the public sphere by Virasam
writers, feminist writers, and later Dalit writers. Instead of lamenting the disruption of the normative public sphere, one should attempt to explain the
changing character of the Telugu public sphere and counterdiscourses. The
concept of subaltern counterpublics may help us capture the reconfiguration
of the Telugu public sphere.
Narayana Rao conceives the poets of revolutionary, Dalit, and feminist
movements as a group of nonpoets who cannot be part of his idea of the
public sphere. In fact, the Dalit argument takes an interesting turn. The Dalit
critics argue that the counterpublic of the revolutionary Left is indeed the
dominant public of the 1990s. What Narayana Rao refers to as the path of
Virasam is the paradigm that Dalit critics engaged with in the 1990s. As the
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity 159
The social struggles and the public debates on Dalit massacres, the issue
of reservations, the upsurge by oppressed castes in the electoral arena, and
the renewed interest in B. R. Ambedkar and Jotirao Phule point to two
important developments. First, new social groupsDalits and Backward
Classesappeared on the stage of the Telugu public sphere. Second, a new
Dalit critique was establishedoften referred to as Dalitvadam (Dalitism) in
Telugu.26
In this section, I will discuss the rise of new social groups in the 1990s. An
important factor in this development is the phenomenon of mass killings of
Dalits in Andhra Pradesh. Dalits raised their voices when their people were
massacred in the 1980s and 1990s.27 The central issue that Dalits raised in
their protests against atrocities is self-respect. Dalit intellectuals often described Dalit struggles of the 1990s as struggles for Dalit self-respect.
The Karamchedu massacre in 1985 marks a turning point in the history of
Dalit assertions in Andhra Pradesh.28 The Dalit Mahasabha was formed in
response to the massacre. Bojja Tharakam, a lawyer and leader of the Dalit
civil rights movement, and Katti Padmarao, leader of the rationalist movement, were elected president and secretary, respectively. Incidentally, both
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity 161
are poets and writers. AsK. Srinivasulu, a social scientist, points out, what
the dalit movement, especially in the context of ap , brought forth with clarity was the need to address the question of caste in its specificity, since the
unfolding social conflict involved caste-specificity: it could not therefore,
simply be seen as a class question, although the class dimension was closely
related to it.29
The Dalit Mahasabha addressed the question of caste in its specificity.
It organized Dalit youth and intelligentsia as a distinct social group, cutting
across political affiliations and foregrounding caste as a critical category of
social analysis and Ambedkarism as a philosophical outlook of the Dalits.
Several Ambedkarist associations w
ere formed throughout the state of Andhra
Pradesh, and issues of caste violence and discrimination were raised in the
public sphere.30
The struggles for and against reservations also contributed to the rise of
new social groups in the 1990s.31 The constitutional provisions for providing
reservations in education and employment for Other Backward Classes
(obc s) have become a site for caste conflict in postindependence India.
The 1986 decision of the Telugu Desam government in Andhra Pradesh
to increase the quantum of obc reservations in education and employment
sparked stiff resistance from upper-caste students. Commenting on the antireservation offensive, K. Balagopal, the noted h
uman rights activist, says
there is little difference between anti-reservation agitations and atrocities
on harijans.32 One revelation of the reservation controversy is the centrality of caste in upper-caste arrogance and violence and the role of caste as an
indicator of the social backwardness of the bc s. In the 1990s, the politics of
caste was split into two parts: the politics of caste of members of the upper
castes and that of the oppressed (Dalits and bc s).33 The understanding of
caste as a premodern identity has been ruled a myth. Caste has resurfaced
and is now a new entity in public discourse.
With the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, which provided 27percent reservations for obc s in 1990, the struggle over reservations
moved to center stage in national politics.34 The intelligentsia, students, and
political parties were virtually divided into two camps: the upper castes and
the oppressed castes. The modernization of Indian society and the erasing of
caste identities from the body politic of the nation turned out to be a failed
project. The dominant Indian sociology and its modernist framework failed
to explain new forms of caste violence and untouchability and faced a crisis
when caste identities resurfaced in the modern domain.35 In the Mandal moment, caste was debated as a systemic issue at the national level in the media,
162 k. satyanarayana
The Dalit movement foregrounded the category of caste to analyze and understand the denial of civic status to Dalits. It was the Dalit movement that
made it clear that the antireservation offensive is an anti-Dalit protest and a
display of upper-caste arrogance and power. The notion of civic status and
the category of caste are two important concepts to use in analyzing power
relations and the Dalits situation in India. What is relevant here are the views
that Dalits have not been proper citizens and that caste is a mode of power
in India.41 To illustrate the impact of the new theoretical understanding informed by Dalit critique, I will cite the discussions in the Andhra Pradesh
Civil Liberties Committee (apclc ), a Marxist organization established in
1973 that has spearheaded the civil rights movement in the past four decades
in Andhra Pradesh. Balagopal, then general secretary of the apclc , reflecting on his experience of civil liberties activity in 1996, admits that the apclc
did not take up caste as a basic civil rights issue u
ntil 1991.42 The apclc viewed
Dalit massacres such as the one at Karamchedu as issues of state violence
against poor harijans (Scheduled Castes). It intervened in the cases of Dalit
killings to force the state to act and deliver justice to the Dalits. This state-
centric perspective reduces Dalit killings to an issue of atrocity. Balagopal
suggests that this inadequate understanding had to do with the Marxist origins of the civil liberties movement in Andhra Pradesh. The apclc s initial
agenda was to take up issues regarding the suppression of workers and peasants by landlords and capitalists. Karamchedu, Balagopal tells us, forced the
apclc to rethink the categories of class and other economic categories and
to accept caste as a basic civil rights issue. The apclc had to rethink the
presumed status of Dalits as citizens in a liberal democracy. Balagopal draws
on Ambedkars work to suggest that Dalits are not considered citizens. The
denial of civic status to Dalits, Balagopal points out, cannot be addressed
within the liberal or Marxist conceptions of democracy.
The status of Dalits as not proper citizens in the 1990s is an important
observation. One approach to solving this problem is to demand the status of
citizenship for the untouchable castes. As Balagopal points out, members of
these castes are not considered human beings and, therefore, are not autonomous individuals who are eligible for the status of citizens. The untouchables
are certainly part of the abstract category of the p
eople. Dalits are included
as the p
eople in the Lefts project. As the normative subject of the Lefts discourse is the secular individual with no markers of caste, Dalits have to be
educated to become the p
eople, so they can attain civic status. In this context,
164 k. satyanarayana
the untouchable castes have to fashion new forms of subjectivity to reject the
not-yet-citizen status in the Lefts pedagogical project of modernity and enter
the domain of the authorized public.
What we have seen in the struggles and conflicts of the 1990s points to
the reality that Dalits continue to be brutally murdered and marginalized in
postindependence modern India. The state-led programs of modernization
such as the Green Revolution43 and reservations have indeed sharpened caste
divisions and identities.44 It has certainly been proven that the modernization project will not resolve the contradictions. I wish to suggest h
ere that
the Dalit movement and its discourses articulated and elaborated the failure
of the modernization of the Indian nation-state and proposed new ways to
conceptualize democracy.
The concept of subaltern publics allowed us to conceptualize the Dalit
public as a distinct domain. But this characterization does not help us conceptualize the nature of Dalit political activity. It is in this context that Partha
Chatterjees distinction between civil society and political society is useful
to analyze the democratic visions of Dalits in the 1990s and to account for the
not-quite-citizen status of Dalits and other oppressed castes.45 Redefining
the framework of state-society relations to analyze political developments
in India since independence, Chatterjee, a distinguished political theorist,
proposed a split in the domain of society. One half is civil society, which
refers to those characteristic institutions of modern associational life originating in western societies that are based on equality, autonomy, freedom of
entry and exit, contract, deliberative procedures of decision-making, recognized rights and duties of members, and such other principles.46 The other
half is political society, which is the domain of the population represented by
parties, movements, nonparty forums, and so on.47 According to Chatterjee,
civil society is restricted to a small section of proper citizens, while politi
cal society includes different groups of people who are not quite citizens.48
The contradiction between the project of modernization and the aspirations
of democracy w
ere embedded in the Indian nation-state from its inception,
becoming visible in the 1970s. It is in the domain of mobilizations of the
populations,49that is, political societythat the contradiction between
modernization and democracy is mediated through the language of social
policy.50 Following Chatterjee, I suggest that the domain of the Dalit public is
a domain of political society.
To put it simply, the untouchables are not bourgeois citizens, they are populations. I invoke the category of political society as it captures the location
of the untouchable castes outside the domain of the authorized public of the
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity 165
Reading the new Dalit poetry in conventional literary frameworks would restrict its political and theoretical thrust.52 One of the significant functions of
Dalit poetry in the 1990s was to constitute a new Dalit subject. While marking the normative subject of revolutionary literature as the middle-class and
upper-caste Hindu, Dalit poets invoked untouchable caste identity as a new
entity that is at the core of the Dalit subject. Untouchable caste groups (Madigas, Malas, and others) imagined caste as a new form of community in the
1990s.
The well-known Dalit poet and critic Sikhamani voices the concern of many
Dalit writers when he says: Birth, life and experience are the prerequisites
to express the anguish of your community. If you are not a born Dalit, then
166 k. satyanarayana
the authenticity and the punch essential to express angst will be missing.53
Dalit writers created a new public (their community) through a new set of
organizational and political initiatives. Th
ese writers posited caste identity
(a born Dalit) as a positive identity and used it to demand equal space in
the public sphere. They narrated the experiences of humiliation, discrimination, and exclusion based on caste identity. Simultaneously, they redeployed
the category of caste to invoke caste ties and imagine a new community. It
is imperative to pay close attention to the self-fashioning of the untouchable
castes before we call caste ties primordial, parochial, or casteist.
Sikhamani critiques Telugu modern poetry in his poem An Apology
(Kshamapana). In this poem, he apologizes for his failure to depict Dalit
life and problems:
I apologise, dalit!
I am a poet, a rare poet
Why my name,
My background?
Im a Brahmin
With a glorious lineage
Oh, please accept my apologies, dalit!
Never had the time to write
a line about you
the past thousand years,
so engrossed I was in
amorous and ascetic literary pursuits.
Our old poet
Calls Sudras poetry
the sweet pudding
maligned by crow.
You are not even a Sudra!
How can I write poetry about you?
My apologies, dalit,
Im a poet, a modern poet
and a post-modern poet
How can I write poetry about you?
I can write about the
g reat Vietnam
Tiananmen Square,
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity 167
rising of Dalit heroes from the grave. He evokes the story of Christ to convey
the brutality of caste oppression and atrocities against Dalits:
It is against the law to have two feet
They drive nails so he shall not walk.
It is against the law to have two hands.
They drive holes so he shall not ask for work
It is against the law to have a brain.
They stick a crown of thorns on his head
So he shall not write a constitution again
It is against the law to have a lovely face.
They spit on him so no mother can kiss him.
The child is killed on the cross
in the open rice fields.
others, heavy with grief for the loss of your children,
M
welcome him in white clothes.
A child is born
Hallelujah.58
The poem depicts how Dalits are crippled, dehumanized, and finally killed.
It is the law of Manu Dharma (ancient legal text of Hinduism which prescribes the duties of the four varnas) that dehumanized and mutilated the
Dalits. The violated body, the poet emphasizes, is a human body that lives even
after death. The child, Christ, and the Dalit are born again. The symbol
of Christ simultaneously represents the Dalit, Ambedkar, and the Chunduru
Dalit martyrs. By evoking the myths of death and resurrection, the poet powerfully communicates the caste-based killings of Dalits and the simultaneous
rise of Dalits in the 1990s. The poem also highlights the centrality of Chris
tianity and its mythology in Dalit imagination in coastal Andhra.
The imagining of the h
uman figure as the Dalit subject is one of the recurring themes of Dalit poetry. In his well-known poem Fifth Note (Panchama Vedam), Satish Chandar writes about a talented Dalit student who
was abused and humiliated in the classroom by a Brahman teacher. He failed
an examination and, therefore, in life. H
ere is the section that raises the issue
of casteism:
No, it isnt kerosene that burned me,
I burned from pride.
Tell that to the press.
170 k. satyanarayana
174 k. satyanarayana
Conclusion
Dalit critics have pointed out that the Lefts national modern project makes
caste invisible, transparent, and, therefore, unspeakable in the public. Dalit
and Madiga poets broke this silence and made caste identities opaque in the
Telugu public sphere. The new Dalit and caste collectives have undergone
internal transformation and emerged as new political communities. In their
transactions in the intellectual and institutional domain of modernity, these
groups own their caste-based occupations and take pride in their caste cultures, caste names, and labor practices. They cite all these caste solidarities
as evidence for their status claims in the modern political domains. Combining social oppression with population data and sociocultural status, the new
caste collectives demand their share of the power and resources of society.
Describing these new caste collectives as premodern and casteist is an attempt to undo the resurfacing of caste in the 1990s and to suppress desires
for democracy. The modernist assertions of our liberal nationalist and leftist intelligentsia endorse caste privilege and, more importantly, suppress the
fashioning of alternative modernities and subjectivities.71
notes
I thank Devesh Kapur and Ramnarayan Rawat for inviting me to the Dalit Studies
Conference in 2008. I thank members of the audience at the conference for their comments. Ram has gone through this essay carefully and offered very concrete suggestions to improve it. Short versions of it were presented at Anveshi Research Centre in
Hyderabad, and South Asian studies at the University of Minnesota. The discussions
at these places helped me to revise the essay. Susie Tharu read initial versions of it and
offered valuable suggestions.R. Srivatsan, a senior fellow at Anveshi, helped me in
reformulating some arguments in the essay. However, I am responsible for the views
expressed here.
1. TheA.P. Viplava Rachayitala Sangham (the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Writers Association) is an organization of Marxist-Leninist writers of Andhra Pradesh.
It emerged as a new organization after the decline of the mainstream leftist literary
organization, the Progressive Writers Association. Virasam (an acronym for the
Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Writers Association) was formed in response to a
pamphlet published by the students of Andhra University, in Visakhapatnam, on the
occasion of the eminent modern Telugu poet Sri Sris sixtieth birthday (sashti poorti
in Telugu). The pamphlet asked writers Whose side are you on? The students posed
this question in the context of severe repression of the Srikakulam tribal revolt led by
the Naxalite parties. The birthday celebration was canceled, and Virasam was formed
on July 4, 1970, to voice support for the struggling people. The terms Virasam
writers, revolutionary writers, and leftist writers are used interchangeably in this
essay.
2. K. Srinivas, Virasam Sampradayalu Silasashanala? Andhra Jyothi Dinapatrika,
July11, 1993.
3. See Narayana Rao, Sahityanni Sahityanga Choose Vallu Kavali, 1926. All the
quotations from this article are my translations.
4. Ibid., 23.
5. Ibid., 29.
6. In response to Narayana Raos criticisms, Sarathi, a Marxist critic, argued that in
evaluating literature Narayana Rao failed to recognize the role of social practice and
to appreciate the fact that literature and arts belong to the people. The intentions of
an individual writer, Sarathi says, may be commendable, but if the work of literature
is not popular and well received among the people, it cannot be recognized as great
literature. In judging a work of literature, Sarathi argues that literary critics, observers,
writers, and people must participate in the process of evaluation. Sarathi highlights
the central role of social groups in defining good literature. Narayana Rao, in contrast,
sees no role for social groups in the determination of what is good literature. See
Sarathi, Roopavadaniki Tirogaminchina Velcheru, Andhra Jyothi Dinapatrika,
May19, 2003, and Sahityam Sahityam kosam kadu, Prajala Kosam, Andhra Jyothi
Dinapatrika, July14, 2003.
7. Narayana Rao, Sahityanni Sahityanga Choose Vallu Kavali, 20.
8. Narayana Rao, Sahityanni Sahityanga Choose Vallu Kavali, 2021.
9. Ibid., 21.
10. Ibid., 25.
11. Ibid., 21.
12. Ibid., 19.
13. Narayana Rao, Twentieth Century Telugu Poetry, 320.
14. Narayana Rao, Sahityanni Sahityanga Choose Vallu Kavali, 23.
15. I have greatly benefited from the essays on this subject in Craig Calhoun, Habermas and Public Sphere, particularly those by Nancy Fraser and Geoff Eley.
16. Fraser, Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, 11011.
17. Ibid., 11516.
18. Ibid., 123.
19. Ibid., 124.
20. One must note the contribution of Virasam in redefining the literary sphere
as one of the social spheres of political negotiation for a new democracy. Virasam
actively undermined the elite composition (in the case of both writers and readers)
of the literary sphere and worked for the democratization of literary and artistic
fields. It was noted in a critical assessment of the revolutionary literary movement
that democratization in literature is expressed in three stages. First, emergence of
more and more writers, development of literary creativity, and overall interest in
literary taste; second, production of literature by groups of people who had no introduction to literary activity; third, the birth of new modes of expression, expansion
176 k. satyanarayana
in diverse direction, literature in dialects and new languages (Viplava Shityodyamam, 4).
21. Ibid., 5.
22. Venugopal, Avisranta Janahrudaya Spandana: Jananatya Mandali.
23. Dalit critics identified the revolutionary literature of Virasam as the dominant
and authentic modern Telugu literature. The Dalit critic Kalekuri Prasad (Dalit Udyamam, 24) mentions that the dominant trend in literature at the time of the Karamchedu massacre was the literature of Virasam and Jananatya Mandali of Gaddar.
24. When feminist and Dalit writers appeared on the scene, Virasam claims that
it provided the base for the emergence of Dalit and feminist movements through its
practice of rebellion in Telugu literature. While extending critical support to Dalit and
feminist literary movements, Virasam argues that caste issues will be resolved as a
part of the class struggle (Viplava Shityodyamam, 17). Virasam framed the Dalit question in terms of a problem to be addressed and solved in the struggle for democratic
revolution, one more issue on its agenda of class struggle.
25. Madhusudanarao, Kavitvam-Chaitanyam, 10.
26. S.V. Satyanarayana, Dalitavada Vivadalu.
27. Sambasivarao, Dalitarananninadam; Srinivasulu, Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh, 16974.
28. In 1985, six Dalits were killed and three Dalit girls were raped by caste Hundu
Kamma landlords in a village called Karamchedu, in Andhra Pradesh.
29. Srinivasulu, Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh, 46.
30. Dalits continued to register their public protests and agitations against a series
of massacres of Dalits at Neerukonda (1987), Timmasamudram (1990), Chunduru
(1991), and so on. For a detailed list of atrocities against Dalits, see Andhra Pradesh
Civil Liberties Committee, The Chunduru Carnage.
31. Balagopal, Probings in the Political Economy of Agrarian Classes and Conflicts,
17585; Chalam, Caste Reservations and Equality of Opportunity in Education;
Dirks, Castes of Mind, 27596; Omvedt, Twice-Born Riot against Democracy.
32. Balagopal, Probings in the Political Economy of Agrarian Classes and Conflicts,
185.
33. Kothari, Rise of Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste, 43958.
34. Dirks, Castes of Mind, 27596.
35. S. Deshpande, Contemporary India, 98124; Ilaiah, Caste in a New Mould.
36. Baxi, Emancipation as Justice: Babasaheb Ambedkars Legacy and Vision, 13.
37. Ilaiah, Uttar Pradesh Prajaswamika Viplavam.
38. Srinivasulu, Caste, Class, and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh, 30.
39. Ramulu, Sahitya Charitrani Kottachooputo Tiragarayali, 97104.
40. Ramulu, Introduction, 5556.
41. On the question of Dalit engagement with modernity, see Guru, Dalits in
Pursuit of Modernity; Nigam, Secularism, Modernity, Nation. Satyasodhak social
scientists, a group of Dalit and bahujan scholars, articulated the view, for the first
time publicly, that caste is a mode of power in a seminar on caste and power in
March1994in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh.
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity 177
42. These arguments are a summary of Balagopals lecture, Caste and Civil Rights
Movement in Andhra Pradesh.
43. This is a process of modernizing agriculture that involves the introduction of
technology, high-yielding varieties of seeds, and fertilizers. The Indian state introduced this process in selected districts of the country with the aim of increasing the
supply of food grains. This led to new conflicts in India, as the process created new
imbalances and tensions.
44. Srinivasulu, Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh.
45. Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed.
46. Chatterjee, Introduction, 10.
47. Ibid., 15.
48. See Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed, for this argument.
49. Michel Foucault invokes the concept of population groups identified and
deployed in the administrative and developmental project of the state (Governmentality, 87104). In Chatterjees analysis, it is the marginalised social groups of obc s,
sc , st , communities and religious minorities such as Muslims. These marginalised
populations, Chatterjee argues, articulate their interests, make political innovations,
and shape democracy.
50. Chatterjee, Introduction, 16.
51. Sambhasivarao, Yadhatadha saampradaya Dhrukpatham to Dalita Sahityodyama viplava Dhrukpaathaniki pottu kudaradu, 13. A commentator on Dalit-
Bahujan politics and an activist, suggests that the normative perspective of modern
Telugu literature is that of the upper middle class or the middle class and that the
Dalit and feminist literary movements represent the new subjects of contemporary
Telugu literature, such as women, subordinated castes, and Dalits. Similarly,G. Lakshminarasaiah, the editor of the first published anthology of Dalit poetry, Chikkanavutunna Pata, defines Dalit poetry as poetry of the marginalized caste groups and
religious minorities. In this view, Dalit acquires a new definition as a broad category
Scheduled caste, Scheduled Tribe communities and Muslim minorities. The social
origin of the poets is foregrounded in this construction of the category. The liberal
and leftist critics dubbed this formulation casteist and reiterated the view that modern
Telugu literature is a domain of universal values.
52. Sikhamani, a Dalit poet and critic, analyzes Telugu Dalit poetry in terms of its
new mythological imagery, its new language, its artistic qualities, and its use of alternative symbols such as bat, crow, and hen. See Dalitasahityatatvam. Similarly, Jaaware
(Eating and Eating with the Dalit) and Dharwadkar (Dalit Poetry in Marathi)
have discussed Marathi Dalit poetry as modernist poetry. Th
ese studies are completely formalistic in approach and take the conception of literature as given.
53. Sikhamani, Portraying Peoples Plight: An Interview, Hindu, November 1, 1999.
54. Sikhamani, An Apology, in The Black Rainbow, 1517. An Apology was translated from Telugu byM. Sridhar and Alladi Uma. For the original Telugu version, see
Sikhamani, Kshamapana in Chikkanavutunna Pata, 9597.
55. Ibid., 16.
56. Sikhamani, Portraying Peoples Plight: An Interview, Hindu, November 1, 1999.
178 k. satyanarayana
57. Chandar, A Child Is Born, 23234. This poem was translated into English by
Narayana Rao. For the original Telugu version, see Chandar, Sishuvu nedu Lechenu,
14446.
58. Satischandar, A Child Is Born, 23234.
59. Chandar, Fifth Note, 23437. This poem was translated into English by Narayana Rao. For the original Telugu version, see Chandar, Panchama Vedam, 13639.
60. Sikhamani, The Steel Nibs Are Sprouting in The Black Rainbow, 2527. This
poem was translated into English by Indraganti Kiranmayi. For the original Telugu
version, see Sikhamani, Inupa paleelu Moluchukostunnayi, 14951.
61. Sikhamani, The Steel Nibs Are Sprouting in The Black Rainbow, 2526.
62. See Sudhakar, Nalladraksha Pandiri, 11215, for both Telugu and English versions of the poem Ostracized (Nettuti Prasna). This poem was translated byC.L.
Jayaprada.
63. Sudhakar, Drumbeat, 495. This poem was translated by the editorial team of
The Little Magazine. For the Telugu version, see Sudhakar, Dandora, 3068.
64. See Balagopal, A Tangled Web, for a detailed discussion on this issue.
65. Sudhakar, Drumbeat, 495.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Rajeev Bhargava says: An alternative modernity, though radically different from
indigenous traditions and mainstream Western modernity, is still a version of modernity (Introduction, 29).
7
Questions of Representation in Dalit Critical Discourse:
Premchand and Dalit Feminism
l a ur a br ue c k
On July31, 2004, members of the Bharatiya Dalit Sahitya Akademi (the Indian
Dalit Literary Academy; bdsa , whose name constitutes an obvious riposte to
the Bharatiya Sahitya Akademi, Indias premier national literary institution),
burned multiple copies of a book in New Delhis Jantar Mantar, a popular site
of social and political protest actions in Indias government center. The book
was the celebrated novel Rangbhmi, by the iconic nationalist-era Hindi author Munshi Premchand. The raucous gathering of around a hundred p
eople
shouted, cheered, and snapped grinning photos of one another as a small pile
of copies of Rangbhmi went up in flames. The members of the bdsa saw
themselves as a righteous group making a powerful case for the need to fight
upper-caste (savarn) prejudice in literature and education. The provocation
for the group to burn Rangbhmi, they said, came from a recent decision by
the National Council of Educational Research and Training (ncert ) to replace Premchands novel Nirmala with Rangbhmi on the syllabus of twelfth-
grade1 students in Delhi governmentfunded public schools. According to
the bdsa and its supporters at the book burning, Rangbhmi is offensive
to Dalits and dangerous to the soft minds2 of young students, who could
become biased against Dalits because of the novels constant repetition of
caste-specific terminologyspecifically, the repeated references to the main
character of the novel, Surdas, as Srdas Chamr. According to the bdsa s
The debates about Premchand provide a context in which to negotiate disparate subidentities and agendas within the Dalit public sphere that fracture
particularly along lines of class and gender. It is through this framework, then,
that I approach the discussion about Premchands writing in Dalit literary
counterdiscourse of the past decade from a variety of a ngles. First, tracing
public debates among Dalit critics in the months following the Rangbhmi
incident in 2004, I will consider the employment of the critical concept of
Dalit consciousness as it applies to a particular reading of Premchands The
Shroud (Kafan, 1936) a story that is broadly criticized in Dalit counterdiscourse, while widely appreciated in the Indian literary mainstream as a sensitive portrayal of the societal degradation of untouchables. Next I will consider
a growing articulation of a Dalit feminist rhetorical identity as it is refracted
through continued debates over The Shroud, debates that emerged a fter the
publication of a particularly controversial book by the Dalit critic Dharamveer
in 2005, and I w
ill weigh the responsibilities of Dalit writers in the twinned
projects of representing the reality of Dalit life and imagining the utopian
possibilities of a transformed social order. Finally, I will proffer the example
of a short story by the Dalit author Ajay Navaria, first published in 2009 and
included in his 2012 short story collection, Yes Sir, that boldly engages with
the problem with Premchand and offers readers a completely new version,
not just of his major works, but also of the author himself.
Premchand and the Dalit Hindi Sphere
The interventions of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere in the analysis of mainstream literature and literary figures, in moves both literary and nonliterary,
are key to constituting that sphere as a provocative and powerful alternative
public in its own right. Thus, by choosing such a potent cultural icon as
Premchand as the center for debates about issues of inclusion and exclusion
and authority and identity, Dalit writers are defining the very boundaries
of the Dalit public sphere. Key issues that arise in the renewed debate over
the significance of the bdsa s action that erupted in the Hindi Dalit literary
sphere after the book burning in 2004 include the charge that Premchands
literature lacks realism; that he privileges class over caste in his social critique
(a perspective at odds with Ambedkarite politics); and finally that as a non-
Dalit and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, he is incapable of Dalit authorial
authenticity. In between the printed lines of debate and polemic and in the
shadows of reasoned discussion, personal attacks, and sometimes outlandish
claims lies the negotiation of the boundaries of the Dalit public sphere, along
184 laura brueck
in the morning, Ghisu and Madhav set out begging for the money to pay for
the wood and shroud required for the cremation. They manage to collect
five rupees and arrange the wood, but they balk at spending the rest of their
money on a shroud that will only be burned up with the bodies. Instead, they
spend the money on liquor and fried snacks, and as they become more and
more drunk, they alternately praise Madhavs wife for her gift of abundance
after death and fall into spells of grief at her difficult and joyless life. The story
ends with f ather and son drinking themselves into oblivion, and showing no
final respect to the corpse of Madhavs wife.
The pages of Dalit literary journals in the months after the burning of
Rangbhmi subjected Premchand to the critical gaze of the Dalit public sphere,
and many Dalit writers severely criticized Premchands depiction of these
two Chamr characters as heartless and lazy drunks, paying little attention
unlike other criticsto the critique of the system of institutionalized in
equality that produces such characters.10 Writing in the prominent Dalit literary journal Apeksha, Sumanakshar asserted that in six-lakh [six hundred
thousand] villages in the country t oday you can go into any Dalit settlement
and not find a single man with such a lack of sympathy.11 He accused Premchand of creating negative Dalit characters only to win the praise of elite
readers who would exult in finding confirmation of their opinion of Dalits as
slovenly, inhuman creatures. Such characters are not realistic, according to
Sumanakshar, whose notion of realism is inextricable from the exigencies of
honor and forthrightness outlined in the concept of Dalit consciousness.12
His notion of realism is also tightly intertwined with an idealistic view of
Dalit society as ultimately humane and compassionate, and Sumanakshar
believes that any realistic Dalit character would be representative of that
ideal. He regards Premchands depiction of Ghisu and Madhav as devious
and selfish, thereforeshowing not individual characters but false representatives of a Dalit community under vicious attack by a non-Dalit writer
interested in catering to the casteist ideology of the dominant public.13
The assessment of authentic realism is made in Dalit readings of Premchand by using the critical lens of Dalit consciousness. The first line of Sharankumar Limbales Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature reads, by Dalit
literature I mean writing about Dalits by Dalit writers with a Dalit consciousness. He goes on to define Dalit consciousness: The Dalit consciousness
in Dalit literature is the revolutionary mentality connected with struggle.
Ambedkarite thought is the inspiration for this consciousness. Dalit consciousness makes slaves conscious of their slavery. Dalit consciousness is an
important seed for Dalit literature, it is separate and distinct from the con186 laura brueck
literary sphere with his literary, historical, and critical contributions since
its inception in the early 1980s, adds: Was Premchand a storyteller with a
Dalit consciousness? The concept of Dalit consciousness is so well-defined
that it is not possible to attribute it to Premchand. He was a Kyasth (a caste
group of Hindus who traditionally acted as keepers of records and administrators of the state) by birth and Dalits cannot be blind to this fact....
During Ambedkars Mahar movement when the Manusmriti was burned,
Premchand kept silent and this is sufficient basis to say that he was not a
Dalit writer.21 For Valmiki and Naimishray, Premchands political affiliations and public expressions outside of literature are intrinsic to his ability
to understand and convey a sense of Dalit consciousness. For Valmiki, it is
Premchands vociferous support of Gandhi in nationalist politics that makes
it impossible to consider Premchand a representative of Dalit interests in lit
erature, and for Naimishray it is Premchands own caste identity and lack of
affiliation with Ambedkars infamous public sphere performance of burning
the Manusmritithe obvious inspiration for the more recent performance of
the bdsathat makes him incapable of expressing Dalit consciousness in
any of his works.
True to the form of public sphere discourse, however, t here is another side
to the literary and ideological debate about Premchand, one that suggests
Hindi Dalit writers need to rethink the ways in which they judge and categorize literature. The writer and critic Anita Bharti, critiquing the reactionary
responses of members of the Dalit community, such as the bdsa s members,
who categorically refuse to view Premchand as a contributor to Dalit liter
ature, writes in defense of Premchand: So then what is this opposition of
Dalit writers toward Premchand? On the one hand, they believe that besides
Kafan his stories Thkur k Kun, Pus ki Rt, Sadgati, and Ghsvali to
be great Dalit stories, but on the other hand, taking up the subject-matter
of Kafan they label him with epithets like anti-Dalit and non-Dalit. If we
were to make a comparison between Premchands Dalit characters and other
Hindi writers Dalit characters, then we would decidedly conclude that Premchands characters are everywhere more prominent, argumentative, fearless,
rebellious, and willing to clash with Brahmanism.22
Bharti further suggests that some Dalit writers have also depicted Dalit
characters who are less than sympathetic, but that these writers have not
faced the same kind of criticism as Premchand for the very reason that they
themselves are Dalit. She censures Dalit writers who reserve their criticism
only for non-Dalit writers: Doubtless it is because Dalit writers are also
casteist, they all sit in their own circles and consider themselves to be better
Repres entat ion in Dalit Critical Discourse 189
The Shroud once again came to the fore of debates in the Dalit public
sphere in 2006 with the publication of a controversial book by the well-
known Hindi Dalit writer Dharamveer, Premchand: Samant ka Munshi
(Premchand: Master of feudalism). At the books release party, several Dalit
women in the audience rose in protest while Dharamveer was speaking and
threw their shoes at him from the audience, in a galvanizing display of gendered critique.28 It was an event that shook the Hindi Dalit literary world in
Delhi and contributed to reorganizations, in recent years, of Dalit literary
groups t here. In the ensuing discussions, published principally in Dalit literary journals, about both this event and the substance of Dharamveers analy
sis in the book, the debate about The Shroud shifted to take on a decidedly
gendered dimension that highlighted a second set of discourses in the Hindi
Dalit literary sphere surrounding sexual violence and the constitution of
Dalit womens literary identities. These discussions principally critiqued the
gendered limits of Dalit consciousness as a rhetorical construction of collective identity formation, while also complicating a Dalit feminist standpoint that hinges on the understanding of gendered violence as primarily
constitutive of the experience of Dalit womanhood. The Dalit feminist reaction to Dharamveers interpretation of The Shroud makes clear that neither
discursive construct is wholly representative of caste or gendered identity
and experience, and, when taken together, they have the potential to reduce
Dalit women to a hypersymbolic state of victimhood.
The uproar among Dalit feminists revolves around Dharamveers following imaginative reinterpretation of Premchands story:
The whole story would become newly clear if Premchand would
have written in the final line of the story this reality of Dalit life that
Budhiya [Madhavs wife] was pregnant with the zamindars child.
That he had raped Budhiya in the field. Then, those words would
shed light on the story like a lamp and we would understand every
thing. That even while Ghisu and Madhav wished to be able to do
more, in fact they could only resist by refusing to call the child their
own. That this is the real pain of Dalitswho will say this?a Dalit or
a non-Dalit? This is the reality of Dalit exploitation and oppression
that so often their offspring are not actually their own. Compared to
this kind of exploitation, the economic exploitation of Dalits seems so
inconsequential!29
192 laura brueck
rakhail [mistress]. Those who graciously dont do this, slap t hose who do on
their backs.38
The narratives Dalit w
omen write about their own lives, these critics
argue, are much more expansive. Its about their education, labor, organ
ization of community rights etc....sexual exploitation is not the only prob
lem facing Dalit w
omen.39 In particular, Dalit feminists like Bharti look to
the genre of Dalit w
omens autobiography as a necessary corrective to this
myopia because they pay attention to the nexus of ghar-parivar-samaj, or
both the domestic and public spheres, rather than emphasizing one over the
other. In a recent essay about the growing number of Dalit w
omens autobiographies in several Indian languages in the last few years, Bharti writes:
There is no doubt that Dalit w
omens autobiographies are both individual
and societal. The use of we in place of I expresses the desire for the liberation of the whole of the woman caste. Thats why their autobiographical
voice is overflowing not just with Dalit consciousness, but with feminist consciousness as well.40
Many Dalit women writers also express their frustration over their isolation and a general patriarchal condescension toward their perspectives
and literary aspirations. In an open letter to Dharamveer in the special journal issue mentioned above, Vivek asserts: Todays woman is educated and
has come to understand her rights. Whenever she tries to exercise her own
authority over those rights, then our own male Dalit authors ridicule her
and throw stumbling blocks in her path, because they cannot stomach the
idea of advancing w
omen to the equal status of men.41 She cites in particu
lar Dharamveers vitriolic condemnation of Bharti, whose defense of Premchands literary treatment of Dalits was addressed in the first section of this
essay. In his book, Dharamveer writes: I find it even worse when some Dalit
woman protects a non-Dalit man, whether its Anita Bharti or someone else.
Anita Bharti praises an adulterous man like Premchand....Does Anita
Bharti want to end up like Budhiya? I dont think the poor woman was at
fault but there is a major problem with Bhartis thinking. When the Dalit
woman was sexually assaulted, then the home was robbed. Then the zamindars seed took hold in the belly of the Chamar. According to Dharamveer,
the Dalit problem is not tied to poverty or inequality, but to the sexual misappropriation of Dalit women: The issue is not limited to povertythe issue
is not poverty at allits the enslavement of the sexuality of Dalit women.42
Vimal Thorat, whose editorial opens the special issue, argues that the
new version of The Shroud that Dharamveer constructs to recuperate the
196 laura brueck
masculine honor of Ghisu and Madhav (in giving them a righteous reason
for letting young Budhiya languish and finally die) does so only at the expense of Budhiya herself.43 Thorat argues that this kind of automatic reliance on the abuse and stigmatization of women results from a Manuvadi
perspective (literally, views of the upper castes, which are said to be codified
as law in the infamous classical text Manusmriti, that condemns both Dalits
and women to abject existences). In a highly sarcastic piece (she regularly
refers to Dharamveer as Dharmguru [teacher of dharma]) in which she
condemns Dharamveer and other male writers who support him for ironically adopting a Brahmanical attitude toward Dalit women, she suggests that
the bigotry t oward sexually abused w
omen that results in this kind of interpretation of the story is no different than the bigotry manifested t oward both
women and Dalits in Manus 3,000-year-old treatise. While Thorats critique
of Dharamveer is astute in that she makes a connection to a long history
of misogyny in Indian literature, by referring to Dharamveers attitude as
Brahmanical, she may be sidestepping the trickier problem of recognizing a
duplication of patriarchy within Dalit society itself. Indeed, activist-scholars
such as Kancha Ilaiah44 and Dietrich45 have illuminated in their work the fact
that one way Dalit men attempt to restore their masculine agency is to enact
the kind of patriarchal control over Dalit womens sexuality and honor that
upper-caste men have traditionally exerted over upper-caste women.
Bharti similarly does not shy away from recognizing both the real-life experience of gendered violence that marks Dalit womanhood: Even today
Dalit women are pronounced witches or demonesses and killed with stones
and lathis [a long, heavy stick used as a weapon, especially by police]. They
thers also
have sticks thrust in their vaginas as punishment.46 But she and o
read Dharamveers analysis as enacting a similar kind of virtual violence
against women, fetishizing and exploiting this violence to aggrandize themselves and limit the imaginative possibilities of Dalit womens literary roles.
The rancor of their various critiques aside, these feminist critics charge that
Dharamveers manipulation of the rape script in his attempt to critique and
rescript Premchands story from the critical position of a Dalit consciousness
reifies Dalit womens bodies as merely marginal, hypersymbolic sites where
allegories of caste oppression are performed. Dalit feminist critics in the Hindi
Dalit literary sphere thus demonstrate the inability of e ither of these discursive constructions of community to fully represent their identities and life
experiences and advocate the wresting back of their subjectivities from their
passive use as transactional objects in power struggles between men.
Repres entat ion in Dalit Critical Discourse 197
Conclusion
Over the course of the past decade, then, through book burning and shoe
throwing and vitriolic public debates, and through reinterpretation and rewriting, Premchand has emerged as a singularly powerful cultural symbol
in which various counterdiscourses of the Dalit public sphere can productively intervene to advance various social and political agendas that support
the construction of Dalit literary and political identities. A critique of Premchand is at the core of both a reconstitution of the contemporary Dalit public
sphere and the development of power to make effective interventions into
the mainstream literary sphere.
The specific example of these debates over Premchands The Shroud
demonstrates in a broader context the ongoing processes of renegotiation
of identity and representation in the literary spheres of the Dalit public. This
brief analysis of the rhetoric of critical counterdiscourses in the Hindi Dalit
literary sphere reminds us that caste, class, and gendered identities are regularly repositioned by advocates for the competing interests of diverse social
collectivities. It is these very debates that sustain the health and viability
indeed, the vibrancyof the Dalit public sphere as a discursive space at
the forefront of the growth of ever-changing conceptions of belonging and
unbelonging.
The discussion of Premchand in the Hindi Dalit literary public sphere was
appropriated by Dalit women writers to challenge the gendered construction
of Dalit collective identity. Dalit women writers have criticized Dharamveers
rereading of The Shroud for promoting a Dalit masculinity that reinforces
patriarchal ideology by thoroughly subjugating Dalit w
omen. Many of them
were critical of their male counterparts obsession with narratives of the rape
and sexual exploitation of w
omen. In contrast, Dalit feminist writers emphasized discussions of issues relating to their struggles for education, work, and
rights.
Finally, the above discussions demonstrate that in recent years literature
specifically has emerged as a vibrant and important corrective space for contemporary Dalit identity construction. The power of Dalit public discourse
is in the creative impulse of Dalit literature and literary criticism to establish a Dalit public identity from a Dalit perspective, to resist the various
identitiesthose of exploited victim, reviled criminal, silenced majority,
and illiterate innocentthat have been forced on them by the long tradition of
hierarchical caste society. Members of the Hindi Dalit literary sphere may differ
198 laura brueck
ecause it is oppressed and to the exact extent to which it is oppressed. On the conb
trary, the oppressed are sanctified and every aspect of their actions, their culture, their
past, present and future behavior is presented as admirable. Direct or indirect narcissism takes over and the fact that the oppressed are oppressed becomes less important
than the admirable way they are themselves. The slightest criticism is seen as criminal
sacrilege. In particular, it becomes quite inconceivable that the oppressed might
themselves be oppressing others. In an ideological conception, such an admission
would simply imply that the object of admiration was flawed and hence in some sense
deserving of past or present oppression (quoted in Resistance Literature, 29).
14. Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature, 1 and32.
15. Valmiki, Dalit Sahitya ka Soundaryshastra, 2829.
16. Toral Gajarawala has written insightfully about the Dalit reception of Ghisu and
Madhav, in particular noting that Ghisu and Madhav are the most salient examples
of what Dalit critics read as Premchands irrevocable kayastha (effectively, upper
caste) perspective; despite his attempts at a benevolent social realism that would
incorporate the world of the peasant into the literary sphere, his upper caste status
permitted him to see the Dalit only as objects of pity and disdain....Ghisu and Madhav, in other words, are not realistic representations of Dalits, rather, literary Dalits
are most easily read as Ghisu and Madhavs (Some Time between Revisionist and
Revolutionary, 579).
17. Valmiki, Premchand, 28.
18. Ibid.
19. Passed on September24, 1932, the Poona Pact set into place reserved seats for
untouchables within the general electorate. This is still widely regarded in the Dalit
community as a significant defeat for Ambedkar, who had advocated for separate
electorates for untouchables, at the hands of Gandhi and the casteist interests of the
Congress Party.
20. Valmiki, Premchand, 28.
21. Quoted in Ibid.
22. Bharti,Kafan aur Dalit Stree-Vimarsh, 210.
23. Ibid.
24. Dherivala, Thakur ka Kua Dalit Chetna ka Dastavej, 16.
25. Kardam, Sahitya men Dogalaapan nahi chalega, 88.
26. Bharti, Rangbhoomi-dahan aur Dalit-asmita ka prashan, 63.
27. Ganganiya, Rangbhoomi, Gandhi, aur Ambedkarvadi-Vimarsh, 25.
28. I have discussed this event, and the basic contours of a feminist critique of
Dharamveer, elsewhere (Brueck, At the Intersection of Gender and Caste). My
discussion here takes on a new dimension, however, when paired with the other
examples of Dalit critical engagement with Premchands prose in this essay, and my
thoughts on what is at stake in these discussions continue to evolve.
29. Dharamveer, Premchand, 17.
30. Ibid., 29.
31. Gajarawala, Some Time between Revisionist and Revolutionary, 580.
32. C. Gupta, Feminine, Criminal, or Manly?
200 laura brueck
33. Ibid. See alsoS. Anandhi, Work, Caste, and Competing Masculinities.
34. Dietrich, Dalit Movements and Womens Movements, 58.
35. In these discussions, violence has emerged above all else as the axis around
which both the experience and the enforcement of gendered and caste identities
revolve. For example, Vasanth Kannabiran and Kalpana Kannabiran argue that the
logic of sexual violence is central to both caste and gender as twin mediators of oppression (Caste and Gender). Citing numerous high-profile cases of sexual assault
against Dalit women by upper-caste men, they point to the mediation of inter-caste
relations through a redefinition of gendered spaces (254)in other words, the ways
in which upper-caste men appropriate Dalit womens bodies as a way to emasculate
and control Dalit men. If the manhood of a caste is defined both by the degree of
control men exercise over women and the degree of passivity of women in the caste,
then, logically, the structure of relations in caste society castrates [the Dalit man]
through the expropriation of his women (ibid.). An attack on a Dalit woman is an
attack on her entire community, an assertion of power over all women [and men]
in her caste (ibid.). According to Ruth Manorama, founder and president of the National Federation of Dalit Women, certain kinds of violence are traditionally reserved
for Dalit women: extreme filthy verbal abuse and sexual epithets, naked parading,
dismemberment, pulling out of teeth, tongue, and nails, and violence including murder after proclaiming witchcraft, are only experienced by Dalit women. Dalit women
are threatened by rape as part of a collective violence by the higher castes (Ruth
Manorama, Background Information on Dalit Women in India, available at http://
www.rightlivelihood.org/manorama_publications.html, accessed October 5, 2015).
36. Brueck, At the Intersection of Gender and Caste.
37. Ibid.
38. Bharti, Anyay ke Kilaaf Larna hai..., 17.
39. Ibid.
40. Bharti, Dalit Stree Atmakatha ke Sansar, Jansatta, July 2, 2011, 6.
41. Vivek, Dalit striyan sabak sikhane ka hausla rakhti hain, 41.
42. Dharamveer, Premchand, 16.
43. Thorat, Manusmriti ka Taalibaani vistaar.
44. Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu.
45. Dietrich, Dalit Movement and Womens Movement.
46. Bharti, Anyay ke Kilaaf Larna hai..., 17.
8
Social Justice and the Question of
Categorization of Scheduled Caste Reservations:
The Dandora Debate in Andhra Pradesh
s a m ba i a h g un d i m e da
Since the 1990s the Dalit political activism in the south Indian state of Andhra
Pradesh (ap ) has paid particular attention to the question of affirmative action, or reservations. Certain Dalit castes such as the Malas and Adi-Andhras
acquired social and political consciousness and social mobility through education and employment. They w
ere able to do so because of their proximity
to the Hindu upper castes, the reforms instituted by Christian missionaries
in the form of schools, and the welfare programs for Dalits of the colonial
and postcolonial governments.1 It is this group of castes that has benefited
most from the reservations for Dalits and that has become dominant within
the Dalit community. In contrast, Dalit castes such as the Madigas and Rellis did not have the same opportunities and advantages as the Malas and
Adi-Andhras and were too poorly equipped to take advantage even of facilities extended to them through the policy of reservation. This, in turn, has
resulted in their continuous imprisonment in traditional, caste-based socioeconomic relations and occupations.
To counter this underrepresentation in education and employment by the
state, which is evidently one of the primary reasons for their overall marginalization, the Madigas organized under the banner of the Madiga Reser-
vation Porata Samithi (mrps ) movement in the 1990s. Through the mrps
they questioned the overrepresentation of the dominant Dalit castes in the
quota for scheduled caste (sc ) reservations and demanded caste-based re
distribution or categorization of that quota. The categorization was to enable
every caste within the Dalit category to access its due share. But the Malas
and the Adi-Andhras rejected this demand on grounds that raised serious
concerns: they argued that the Madigas lacked the merit to compete against
the Malas and that the categorization would destroy the unity of the Dalit
community. They even formed the Mala Mahanadu, a countercaste association, and organized a no holds barred campaign against the mrps .2
Contrary to conventional understanding, Dalit is not a homogeneous
category.3 It is an outcome of British colonial legislation that grouped heterogeneous castes into a single category, first as Depressed Classes and later
as sc s.4 The categories in the domain of politics, as Gopal Guru argues, are
conscious constructions with either a positive or negative agenda as chalked
out by their users.5 The sc category, which was created in the service of
the colonial state,6 officially came into existence in 1936 when the government created one schedule to list all the untouchable castes. In the schedule
Dalit castes were differentiated among themselves according to their standing in the caste hierarchy, levels of socioeconomic and educational progress,
and levels of political consciousness. In other words, the existing description
of the sc s is not based on the self-representation of the castes in question but
derives from the worldview of native elites and colonial ethnographers.
The identity of untouchable castes as sc s has, as noted by Sudipta Kaviraj,
given them power to resist. In other words, the common identity has given
rise to a trend which seeks to transfer its grievance from a caste language to
class language, highlighting the idea of exploitation associated with social
indignity.7 However, the grouping of the disparate castes in the sc category
has eroded the differences and diversities among them. For example, although both the Bhangis and Chamars in north India w
ere untouchables, the
former group is more deeply discriminated against by caste Hindu society
than the latter. While the Bhangis were prohibited from engaging in any form
of physical and social contact with both the upper castes and the untouchable
castes, the Chamars appear to have social interaction with the other castes
in many aspects of daily life.8 In south India there is no direct indigenous
equivalent of the Bhangis, and the Dheds of Gujarat are more akin to Mahars
in Maharashtra than to the Bhangis. Such social realities of heterogeneity
and inequalities were not only typically masked by homogeneity, but it also
led to a fundamentally false perception that there is no difference between
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 203
them.9 Nevertheless, the sc category had become the basis for the politi
cal representation of the untouchables in colonial India. And the makers of
the Constitution of India, instead of addressing this fundamental question,
blindly adopted the colonial category for the distribution of reservations in
postindependence India.10 But what grounds were used to justify the system
of reservations for Dalits?
This essay interrogates the issue of social justice and the question of categorization of sc reservations and tries to reveal the paradoxes in the system
of positive discrimination. I have divided the essay into two main sections.
The first deals with the main principles according to which the system of
quotas has been institutionalized, and what has happened to that system
in postindependence India. The second section examines the acrimonious
debate about social justice and the question of categorization between the
Madigas and Malas in ap , a south Indian state. Finally, the second section
identifies a major challenge to Dalit politics and activism raised by the question of categorization of marginalized castes.
The Indian Constitution and the
Question of Minorities: The Dalits
By declaring the Indian state to be seculara status that was justified because
of three cardinal liberal principles, liberty, equality and neutralitythe
Constitution of India prohibits the state from discriminating against any
citizen. But against a historical background of entrenched social, economic,
and political inequalities created and justified by the caste-based hierarchical
social order, such principles would remain only paper principles. To overcome these inequalities there should be constitutionally guaranteed special
provisions for the so-called backward classes. In a way, the makers of the Indian constitution were convinced that the transition from a rigid hierarchical
Hindu order to an egalitarian Indian order required a deliberate departure
from the formal principles of secularism.11
The Dalit question in the Constituent Assembly debates was considered
to be a question of minorities.12 But what was it that qualified a group for
minority status? Part of the answer lies inB.R. Ambedkars observations. In
his draft provisions, which w
ere submitted to the Minorities Sub-Committee
of the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar categorically stated that social discrimination constitutes the real test for determining w
hether a social group
13
is or is not a minority. And he justified his case for considering Dalits as
minorities because of the tyranny of caste Hindus and their monopolization
204 sambaiah gundimeda
its investigation the committee found that a lions share of preferential benefits had been appropriated by the numerically larger and politically well
organized communities.39 To correct the deleterious effects of the policy, the
committee suggested descheduling some of the relatively forward castes
and communities. In addition to fourteen tribal communities, this list included twenty-eight sc s, including the Chamars (in Bihar, up , and Punjab),
Mahars (Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh), Malas (ap ), and Namasudras
and Rajbanshis (West Bengal). This suggestion held out the prospect of redistributing the benefits of the reservation policy to the marginalized castes
within the Dalit group. However, politically such a step would have been a
major catastrophe for the group as a whole. Although it would have left the
southern sc s virtually intact (except in ap ), it would have almost halved
the sc population in north India, and that would have substantially reduced
the number of reserved seats for Dalits at all levels in the political arena.
Not surprisingly, Dalit leaders reacted angrily to the proposal and held huge
demonstrations in front of Parliament, which led to the withdrawal of the
governments support for the proposal. Apparently the Congress-led government was not serious about the committees recommendations. The Congress
Party had been the major beneficiary of the seats reserved for sc sat the
time of the report of Lokur Committee, the party held 72 out of a total of 114
sc seatsand was heavily dependent on the votes of the numerically sizable
castes like the Chamars, Mahars, and Namasudras. Thus, according toB.P.
Maurya, renowned Dalit leader and former Union minister, the purpose of
the committees report, issued just a year before the general election in 1967,
was to remind them [the advanced sc s] that there was such a possibility and
how much they had to be grateful for.40 But what was the context for the
Madigas demand for categorization of the sc reservations?
Since the early 1990s India has aggressively pursued a path of economic
liberalization.41 In what started as Indias response to the crisis of the balance
of payments, the state has pursued a number of policies with single-minded
determination in reforming trade, financial, and industrial investment sectors.42 Conspicuously, no attempts have been made to revive and improve
sectors such as the rural economy, agriculture, nonagricultural employment,
and social security. While the policies of liberalization became a m
atter of
grave concern for educated Dalits in general, for the Madigas in ap they have
a different meaning. U
ntil the early 1980s, a majority of the Madigas w
ere
eking out their livelihood as agricultural laborers. This livelihood was threatened by the slowdown in agricultural growth when the national and state
210 sambaiah gundimeda
In this section my main concern is to analyze the arguments and counterarguments concerning the categorization of sc reservations in the debate
between the Madigas and Malas. The Madigas w
ere represented by the mrps
movement, and the Malas by the Mala Maha Nadu (mmn ). The main ar ere not distributed
gument of the mrps had been that Dalit reservations w
equitably among all the castes within the Dalit group. A majority of the opportunities went to the already advanced castes, especially the Malas and
Adi-Andhras. This injustice against marginalized Dalit castes should be rectified by dividing the Dalits in the state into four subgroups and apportioning
the reservations to the subgroups in proportion to the population of each. The
mmn opposed this demand, surprisingly relying on arguments similar to
those that have been used by the Hindu upper castes to oppose reservations,
and preferred the continuation of the existing pattern of group-based distribution of Dalit reservations. I have organized the debate into four key themes
and analyzed each theme separately. In my analysis I shall situate myself between the two contending parties and try to argue their cases from their perspectives. Eventually, however, I shall take the stand of the mrps and argue
for categorization of the sc reservations as an effective means of distributing
reservation opportunities among all castes within the Dalit category.
One of the key ideas on which the mrps based its categorization demand
was representation. It argued that although reservation opportunities have
been provided for the Dalits as a matter of representation, the Madigas had
been uniquely underrepresented. In pamphlets and political speeches, the
leaders of the mrps presented data about the opportunities in the sectors
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 211
Malas
Per session
For first 10
sessions
Per session
For first 10
sessions
24
240
15
150
Number actually
held
12
120
27
270
Seats
Malas
Per session
Per session
36
18
Number actually
held
18
36
Seats
other similarly placed Dalit castes, an injustice that is against the equality
principle of democracy.45
Two points are clear from this. First, injustice has been conceived of in
terms of the Madigas underrepresentation in the opportunities accorded
to the Dalit group. Second, proportional representation of the underrepresented Madigas in t hese opportunities is associated with democratic equality,
which in turn is envisioned as social justice. Before we discuss these ideas, let
us examine the mmn s counterargument.
The mmn s response to the argument of under-representation was grounded
on the notion of merit. Two claims made by members of this group are noteworthy. First, it was argued by the Mala youth that the Madigas eat beef, drink
and loaf around, whereas we work hard.46 Second,C.R. Sekhar, a writer and
an activist in the mmn , justifies the overrepresentation of the Malas in the
following way: The dominant presence of the Malas in the Scheduled Caste
reservation is because of their self-respect and social conscience....The Madigas were underrepresented in the reservations because they have neither
self-respect nor social conscience. The self-respect and social conscience of
the Malas helped them develop social consciousness, which in turn endowed
them with not merely the intellectual ability and power to recognize social
injustices but also the courage required to fight against those injustices....
We have developed merit and power as part of our ongoing struggle against
social injustices.47
Two underlying elements in this argument are that self-respect and social conscience are equated with merit and that the overrepresentation of the
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 213
The dominant presence of members of certain social groups and an absence of members of marginalized social groups in public employment,
education, and other state sectors clearly provides evidence of injustice in
ere is that the system
a democracy.60 In any case, what must be recognized h
of reservation is a representational mechanism to mirror the proportion
of Dalits and Adivasis in society in the domains of public educational and
employment opportunities and legislative bodies and to ensure democracy.61
And a categorization of that representation is simply extending this concept
of mirror representation within the Dalit category.
Malas and Madigas: The Question of Fair Representation
Mala
[C]
Madiga
[B]
Adi-Andhra
[D]
Relli
[A]
Total
B.Tech
64%
26%
10%
100%
B.E
73%
23%
4%
100%
M.B.B.S
77%
20%
3%
100%
Law
56%
37%
7%
100%
B.Ed
71%
28%
1%
100%
Sciences [M.Tech,M.Sc.]
65%
33%
2%
100%
Arts [M.Com,M.A.]
71%
28%
1%
100%
68%
29%
2%
100%
62%
35%
2%
100%
89%
10%
1%
100%
Source: Mehra, Report: National Commission to Examine the Issue of Sub-Categorization, 67.
entry of the less advanced among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
should be enabled through the method of sub-categorization in the state.63
There are two crucial aspects of these arguments. First, caste is the crucial factor, both in the monopolization and deprivation of opportunities (for
evidence, see table8.4), and therefore caste should be the basis for any redistributional measures. This would facilitate the marginalized castes access
to their legitimate share of benefits. And second, the mrps also pointed out
the gap between the abilities of the dominant and marginalized Dalit castes.
While the former group, whose members have been benefiting from opportunities generation a fter generation, are equipped with the required skills for
competition, the same is not true for the latter, whose members have just
begun to enter the arenas of public education and government jobs. Thus,
continuing the existing pattern of distribution would continue to deny the
marginalized castes opportunities. Finally, it must be recognized here that the
demand for categorization does not include a demand for compensation for
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 217
Madiga
(B)
Adi-Andhra
(D)
Relli
(D)
Total
62,055
20,384
6,149
1,333
89,921
5,896
3,756
1,112
83
10,847
735
369
33
1,140
1,675
1,431
383
348
3,837
303
202
511
10,703
7,282
2,402
577
20,964
10,402
6,025
1,822
18,249
169
70
20
259
2,101
1,216
149
43
3,509
Universities
534
423
110
150
1,217
951
357
115
126
1,549
32
10
42
85
15
100
10
13
25
29
50
14
54
Department
Total scheduled caste
employees
Central government and public
sector undertakings
State public sector
undertakings
Local bodies
Andhra Pradesh social
welfare residential educational
institutions
table8.4 (continued)
Groups
Department
Mala
(C)
Madiga
(B)
Adi-Andhra
(D)
Relli
(D)
Magistrates
25
29
Government pleaders
15
18
17
22
20
24
Total
Source: Mehra, Report: National Commission to Examine the Issue of Sub-Categorization, 6970.
what the marginalized castes have been losing on account of the appropriation of opportunities by the dominant Dalit castes. The marginalized castes
are seeking only justice in the present and future distribution of the Dalit
quota.
The mmn has put forward two arguments in its opposition to caste-based
reservations. First, Venkatarao Mallela has justified the mmn s position on
the ground of the distributional dynamics of social justice.64 In his theory
of social justice, Mallela divides Indian society into three primary groups
exploiter, proletariat, and oppressedand argues that the distribution of
power and wealth among these three groups should be undertaken in a
phased manner. In the first stage, the distribution of justice should be confined to the exploiter and the proletariat. Once that distribution has taken
place, the second stage begins, during which the oppressed will be given their
share of justice; this is also the stage at which the internal problems of the oppressed will be sorted out. I am sure that Mallelas theory of justice would be
enthusiastically received by the Hindu upper castes, for he employs an argument that has been made by them since the inception of reservations.65 It is
clear that to ignore inequalities and differences within the Dalit group and to
evade the mrps s claim of caste-based justice, Mallela rather cleverly employs
the idea of class groups and does not even acknowledge the existence of caste.
Second,P.V. Rao, president of the mmn , rejects the caste-based distribution or categorization demand as part of an erroneous and dangerous trend.
He argues that it is inevitable that the more advanced group (the Malas)
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 219
sandal repairers, at least some of our children would have the opportunity to
go to colleges, become educated, and get some jobs.74
Prasads observation mirrors the genuine aspiration of the unfortunate
Madigas to access modern opportunities and improve their lives. Although
the mrps s argument of deprivation is valid, discrimination against the Madigas justifies their demands more than their deprivation does. The response
of the mmn is a typical one. Since the Madigas had the leather-making occupation, it was argued, the best way to empower them is to give them help
so as to develop their traditional occupations, especially the leather work.75
It is true that leatherworking was one of the traditional occupations of the
Madigas. But such workskinning dead cattle, tanning hides, and making
and repairing sandals by handhas never been an instrument in their socioeconomic advancement. In fact, besides being poorly rewarded, t hese occupations are stigmatized, and almost by definition they reduce the social
status of the Madigas. It must be recognized h
ere that the economic assistance argument is one of the most potent casteist arguments.K. Balagopal retorts: Uplift them from their poverty and give them economic assistance to
improve their traditional occupations...but do not breach our preserve of
expanding knowledge and the status and opportunities it carries.76 In other
words, the premise of the Malas arguments is that while Malas should work
their way out of the structure of caste-determined occupations, the Madigas
should continue to live inside them.
Malas and Madigas: Unity and Uniformity
Two major concerns in the Dandora debate are related to unity and uniformity. While the mmn rejected categorization on the basis of Dalit unity, the
mrps , in contrast, built its demand for categorization on the idea of the uniformity of the Dalit group. The mmn , in its rejection of categorization, made
three arguments to emphasize Dalit unity:
Malas and Madigas all are Dalits; all are oppressed and exploited in
the Brahmanical caste system. The Manuvadis are jealous of our unity,
and categorization is their political conspiracy to divide and rule the
Ambedkars family.77
At present whenever t here is any incident of atrocities against any caste
among the Dalit community, all the castes together face the tyranny of
the upper castes and agitate against such incidents united. However,
222 sambaiah gundimeda
a fter the castes are divided into groups, members of other castes or
groups will not come forward to protect the victims if the latter do not
belong either to the caste or group of the former.78
fter categorization p
A
eople would give their vote to their caste candidates only . . .there will be unprecedented political competitions,
which leads to social animosities among Dalits as e very Dalit caste
would field its own candidate in the reserved constituencies.79
Three points are clear from the above arguments. First, both the Malas
and the Madigas are considered part of the Ambedkar family (that is, the
Dalit category), and the Madigas have nothing to do with the demand for categorization, for that was a political conspiracy of the Hindu upper castes to
destroy the unity of the family. Second, there are two negative consequences
of Dalit disunity: (a) all the Dalits would not be obliged either to protect Dalit
victims or protest against atrocities if the victims did not belong to their caste
or subcaste (in other words, categorization would trick Dalits into thinking
and acting to promote narrow, caste-based interests rather than the lofty
goals of the larger group, and that would adversely affect the security of individual Dalit castes), and (b) disunity among Dalits would perpetuate the rule
of the Hindu upper castes. This statement even suggests that the domination of
the Hindu upper castes is necessary for the preservation of the brotherhood
ere that categorization results in unwanted
of Dalits. Finally, it is assumed h
political competition and social animosities among Dalit castes (implying
that such competition and animosities did not exist among Dalits prior to
the categorization demand).
Now, let us examine the mrps s argument of uniformity among the Dalits.
Interestingly, the mrps also used the language of f amily and Dalit unity. For
the mrps , however, unity could be achieved only when reservation opportunities w
ere equally (that is, proportionately)80 distributed among all the
children of Ambedkar. Krishna Madiga maintains: Ambedkar, the father
to both Madigas and Malas, left them with the property of reservations but
that property should be equally distributed between the two sons rather than
appropriated by one son.81 Arguing along similar lines, Krupakar Madiga
insists that distributive justice among all the castes is an indispensable step
before we join other Dalit castes for political power.82 He clearly recognizes
the importance of Dalit unity in the fight against the forces of Hindutva,
both in the social and political realms. But he believes that such a fight needs
to be preceded by justice for all castes in the Dalit group. Thus, both the
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 223
Mala Mahanadu and the Madiga Dandora have sought Dalit unity on the
similar groundsto fight the common e nemy and to promote common interests through political power. The one crucial difference between them is
that while the latter asks that internal problems be sorted out before any
common action is undertaken, the former sees that common action as a
strategy of avoiding discussion on internal problems. For the former, the
enormity of the threat posed by the enemy is a sufficient condition for seeking unity.
Is unity possible without equality? Before answering this question, let me
bring in an argument made by Jupaka Subhadra, a Dalit writer and supporter
of the Dandora. She argues: How is it possible for a person on the floor to
join hands with another person who is on the terrace for friendship, for unity,
for working together, and for fighting against the Manu dharma? Is unity
possible between two unequal individuals?...Unity is possible between
equals and not between unequal[s].83
Subhadras argument has three elements. First, she points out the common
enemythe Manu dharma (ancient Hindu law)of both the Madigas and
Malas; second, she recognizes the need for a united front against that common enemy; and third, she emphasizes the conditions required for unity.
Unity can only be achieved between two equal parties.
Now let us analyze the normative claims involved in concepts of family
and unity. First of all, we need to recognize that what is being claimed in the
concepts of the Ambedkar family and Dalit unity is in the self-interest of
both the Malas and the Madigas. This can be explained from two perspectives. First, both the Madigas and the Malas, as the castes at the bottom of
caste hierarchy, are vulnerable to atrocities and discrimination on the part of
the Hindu upper castes. No caste is strong enough to fight against the Hindu
upper castes on its own. In fact, whenever the upper castes commit atrocities
against Dalits, it is always strategically against an individual Dalit caste rather
than Dalits as a group. For instance, in Karamchedu village, despite the presence of both Malas and Madigas, the Kammas organized a massacre against
the Madigas alone; in Chunduru, they acted against the Malas alone. Thus,
unity between the castes serves the interest of each one.
Second, on the political front unity is also in the interest of all Dalit castes.
As Phillips points out, partly this is no more than efficiency: to change the
world we need the weight of numbers.84 No Dalit caste alone has enough
demographic weight to win elections. Phrases like Dalit f amily and Dalit
unity are simply veils of social courtesy designed to hide the uglier face of
self-interest. Of course, it is true that sometimes members of families are
224 sambaiah gundimeda
would not even dream of jobs in the private sector. This means that they w
ill
either be limited to caste-based occupations such as tanning, sandal-making,
oreven worsescavenging or be condemned to work as waged laborers in
the urban areas forever.
In any case, what we have to recognize here is that neglecting the question
of social justice for the marginalized Dalit castes would be counterproductive
to the ongoing movement for reservations in the private sector. For, as we
have already been warned, unless a fair distribution of the reservation facilities through the method of categorization of reservations is guaranteed to the
marginalized, we would go to the extent of launching a counter movement
against the demand for reservations in the private sector.88 Such warnings
give us some indication of the f uture challenges posed to the Dalit movement
from within the Dalit community. Whether or not the marginalized Dalit
castes launch a countermovement against reservations in the private sector,
the dominant Dalit castes will have to confront this opposition either before
or after the realization of Dalit reservations in the private sector.
This essay is an attempt to interrogate the issue of social justice and the
question of categorization of sc reservations. Through that interrogation it
aimed to reveal paradoxes in the system of positive discrimination for the
sc s in India. To understand and analyze the Dandora debate on the question of categorization in ap critically, I began this essay with an examination
of the main principles behind the system of quotas. Following this, I briefly
noted the mixed results that w
ere produced among the Dalits by the quota
system. At the root of t hese mixed results, I have argued, is the construction
of the category called sc s. Disregarding the socioeconomic differences and
advantages and disadvantages among the untouchable castes, the colonial
state described them as sc s and instituted political reservations for them.
This practice was diligently followed by the state in postindependence India.
Although this might have given the divergent castes within the sc category
a common identity, in fact it could not erase the socioeconomic and political
differences among them. These differences inevitably played a crucial role
in whether or not various Dalit castes could avail themselves of the reservations. Those castes that have historically been in an advantageous position, in
comparison with the other castes in the Dalit category, have taken advantage
of the reservations. The other castes could not do so, and their members continue to practice caste-based traditional occupations. Over time this has led
to the emergence of dominant and disadvantaged castes within the Dalit category. The former are in a better position (both economically and culturally)
to compete against the upper castes in the job market than the latter, whose
226 sambaiah gundimeda
members remain unequipped to do so. They are not even in a position to take
advantage of opportunities in the public sector. Terrified by the withdrawal
of the state from the welfare arena and market activities and the subsequent
emergence of the market as the main source of employment, especially since
the early 1990s, marginalized Dalit castes such as the Madigas demanded the
categorization of the sc reservations. The dominant Dalit castes responded to
this demand with impassioned protests. I have critically examined the categorization debate, or the Dandora debate, that took place between the mrps of
the Madigas and the mmn of the Malas in ap . What is interesting about this
debate is that while the mrps argued its case for categorization of the sc reservations based on the original principles behind the reservation system, the
mmn argued against categorization by relying on ideas found in Brahmanism.
In my analysis of the debate, I have situated myself between both sides and
argued their cases from their perspectives. Eventually, however, I took the side
of the mrps and argued for categorization of the sc reservations as an effective
method of distributing reservation opportunities among all the castes within
the Dalit category. I have also noted the possible replication of the existing
situation in the private sector, if the demand for sc reservations in that sector
meets with success without the categorization of existing reservations.
notes
This essay is the result of my personal engagement with the categorization q
uestion
for the past thirteen years, both as a Madiga who is yearning to see the realization
of categorization not just for the empowerment of the Madigas but largely also
for other marginalized castes in the Dalit category and as a scholar who is deeply
interested in the project of broadening democracy and social justice for marginalized groups. Although I have penned this essay, the material and analysis come
from Krishna Madiga, Krupakar Madiga, and millions of other Madigas who have
been struggling for social justice for the past nineteen yearsto them, my grateful
thanks. I also would like to thankK. Balagopal, PrakashC. Sarangi, Sasheej Hegde,
Chitra Panikkar, Sharmila Sreekumar, Sudipta Kaviraj, Rochana Bajpai, and Matthew Nelson for their ideas and comments on this essay. My thanks to the participants of the following conferences: the Forum for Cultural Studies, the University of
Hyderabad in 2001; the Fourth Essex Conference on Political Theory, Rhetoric and
Politics, the University of Essex, 2003; and the Princeton Institute for International
and Regional Studies Graduate Student Conference, Princeton University, 2006. I thank
Steven Wilkinson for commenting on the first draft of this essay and the two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful suggestions on my essay submitted to this volume.
1. On this point, see Ramaswamy, Preference and Progress; Education and In
equality; Protection and Inequality among Backward Groups.
2. Balagopal, A Tangled Web, 1078.
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 227
23. Jaffrelot, Reservations and the Dalits at the Crossroad, accessed September20, 2015, https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/cjaffrelot. See also Jaffrelot, Indias Silent
Revolution.
24. Guru, A Subsidised Notion of Democracy, 4041. See also Weiner, The Politi
cal Consequences of Preferential Policies.
25. Quoted in Ghanshyam Shah, Consequences of Reservations, 244.
26. Mendelsohn and Vicziany, The Untouchables, 141.
27. Government of India, National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes.
28. Chitnis, Positive Discrimination in India with reference to Education, 3637;P.
Ghosh, Positive Discrimination in India.
29. Jogdand, Reservations in the Private Sector, 3345.
30. P.C. Vinoj Kumar, Caste in Campus: Dalits Not Welcome in iit Madras,
Tehelka, June16, 2007.
31. Quoted in Vidhya Subrahmaniam, Reality of Dalit Power: Condemned Before,
Times of India, August 9, 1997.
32. Galanter, Competing Equalities;P. Ghosh, Positive Discrimination in India;
Mendelsohn and Vicziany, The Untouchables.
33. Beteille, Society and Politics in India, 2034.
34. Chandrabhan Prasad, Berwa at C-K-P-I Party, Pioneer, February29, 2004.
35. P. Kumar, Reservations within Reservations, 3507.
36. Chitnis, Education for Equality;V. Shah and Patel, Who Goes to College?
Scheduled Caste/Tribe Post-Matric Scholars in Gujarat; Wankhade, Educational
Inequalities among Scheduled Castes in Maharashtra, 155358.
37. Premi, Educational Opportunities for the Scheduled Castes.
38. Jodhka and Kumar, Internal Classification of Scheduled Castes.
39. Quoted in Galanter, Competing Equalities, 136.
40. Ibid., 138.
41. Bhagwati, The Design of Indian Development; Corbridge and Harriss,
Reinventing India, 14372;J. Ghosh, Liberalization Debates;R. Jenkins, Democratic
Politics and Economic Reforms in India.
42. Varshney, Mass Politics or Elite Politics?, 249.
43. Bardhan, The Political Economy of Development in India.
44. Mallepalli Lakshmaiah, Udyamam vargeekaranakea parimitam kaaraadu!,
Andhra Jyothi, November 7, 2004.
45. Ibid.
46. Quoted in Balagopal, A Tangled Web, 1076. From the point of view of sociology of caste, it may be interesting to note here while caste Hindus sometimes justified
their discrimination against the Dalits on the basis of their practice of beef eating,
the same argument has been put forward by upwardly mobile Dalit castes to claim
their superiority over marginalized Dalit castes.
47. Sekhar, Dalita Shakthini Antamondinche Rajakeeya kutra Vargeekarana, 22.
48. S. Deshpande, Exclusive Inequalities, 2442.
49. Ibid., 2443; See also Galanter, Competing Equalities.
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 229
body of literature is available on these objections. For example, see Irschick, Politics
and Social Conflict in South India, 21874. For a compelling discussion of the upper-
caste arguments opposing reservations for other backward classes proposed by the
Mandal Commission Report, see Dirks, Castes of Mind, 275302.
66. Interview withP.V. Rao, Hyderabad, May 2004.
67. Students familiar with the Mandal debate will immediately recognize the origin of the Malas arguments. Rajni Kothari defended the caste-based reservations for
the other backward classes (Caste and Politics: The Great Secular Upsurge, Times of
India, September28, 1990). In response,M.N. Srinivas,A.M. Shah andB.S. Bavaskar (letter to the editor, Times of India, October17, 1990) argued that caste-based quotas for those classes would provide new avenues of exploitation for the elites among
them: The ploy of caste-based reservations, encouraging caste-based politicization, is
not the solution....For all we know, this will benefit only the rich and the influential
in all the castes and leave the poor and weak where they are (quoted in Dirks, Castes
of Mind, 287).
68. Conversation with Srinivas Gurram, a research scholar in the Department of
Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, January 2004.
69. Interview withP. Srinivas, who produced a documentary in 2006 on the history
of the Madiga movement titled Dandora: Resonance of Deceived Hearts.
70. Interview with Mary Madiga, president of the Madiga Mahila Samakhya, Hyderabad, May 2006.
71. Young, Polity and Group Difference, 262.
72. I thank Matt Nelson for clarifying my thinking on this point.
73. A similar proposal has been made by the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee
(Sachar, Report on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India). See also Khaitan, Transcending Reservations.
74. Interview withD.M. Vara Prasad, an active mrps campaigner, who later
became a Congress (I) member of the legislative assembly (mla) representing the
Tadikonda constituency, Guntur district.
75. Sekhar, Dalita Shakthini Antamondinche Rajakeeya kutra Vargeekarana, 22.
76. Balagopal, A Tangled Web, 1078.
77. Sekhar, Dalita Shakthini Antamondinche Rajakeeya kutra Vargeekarana, 22.
78. mmn memorandum to the National Commission for sc s & st s, 1998.
79. Suryarao Gollapalli, a Congress mla of ap .
80. In the Dandora debate, the words proportionality and equality have been
used interchangeably. Although conceptually they are two different terms, I too shall
use them interchangeably.
81. Krishna Madiga made this point in an address to the Dandora activists in, at a
meeting held at Ambedkar Bhavan Hall in Hyderabad on February20, 1999, which I
attended.
82. Krupakar Madiga, inP. Srinivas, Dandora: Dagapadda Gunde Chappudu.
83. Jupaka Subhadra, inP. Srinivas, Dandora: Dagapadda Gunde Chappudu.
84. Phillips, The Politics of Presence, 23.
85. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 187.
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization 231
86. I am aware that the initiation of categorization at one level would solidify intercaste competitions, but it would open up intracaste competitions and rivalries. But
this cannot be a good reason to reject categorization. In the future, if there is going to
be intracaste competition as a result of categorization, we will need to find a way to
resolve it.
87. Another issue that should have been a major concern of Dalit politics is Dalit
human rights. But that concern has been monopolized by nongovernmental organizations. This does not mean that I underestimate the contributions made by nongovernmental organizationsboth in India and elsewherein internationalizing the Dalit
question. In any case, the question of what the organizations did to Dalit politics and
movements is a serious one that merits careful analysis and examination.
88. Interview with Mallavarapu Nagaiah Madiga, President, mrps , Guntur district
in Mangalagiri, April14, 2007.
9
Caste and Class among the Dalits
d . s h y a m ba bu
Are the Dalits moving away from a tradition-sanctioned life of stigma, discrimination, and violence? One way of answering the question, according
to many scholars, is to study how many Dalits are wriggling out of their
caste identity and entering class. Caste is understood, for the purposes of
this essay, as birth-based and primordial, immutable, and immobile, whereas
class is more of an economic category associated with urban industrial society. Therefore, membership in a caste is preordained, while one can choose
ones class. In fact, it is possiblethough rarefor someone to move from
the top class to the bottom one or vice versa during a lifetime. The way caste
and class are defined in the preceding two sentences may be questioned or
dismissed as lacking in clarity. However, the purpose of the exercise is to
show the chief contrast between the two: ones caste as well as a castes place
within the system cannot be changed; but membership in a class is flexible in
the sense that t hose seeking entry can gain it by fulfilling certain conditions,
though class may also be rigidan upper class can never become lower,
and the underclass will be the same everywhere.1
There is widespread interest among scholars and policy makers in understanding the dynamics that engender better living conditions for the Dalits.
There are about 201 million Dalits in India, according to the 2011 census. Officially known as the scheduled castes, the Dalits were known in the first half
ere are four points about caste and class among the Dalits that deserve
Th
our attention: we need to understand the links between caste and class; economic and social change reflecting change in social structures tends to vary
across space and time, and that variation needs explanation; similarly, we
should explore intra-Dalit variation in terms of change and mobility; and
finally, we need to investigate how Dalits have fared relative to o
thers. This
essay will strive to explore these four points. The final section is devoted to
highlighting the importance of how public perceptions and media imagery
feed on each other to the detriment of the Dalits.
Is Class Relevant in a Caste-Ridden Society?
the whole country as they symbolize certain progress. But can they be called
part of a caste-to-class movement? The quibble is about identity. Michael
Schumacher is a legendary Formula One champion. Nobody would even
notice the etymology of his last name, which evolved from the profession of
shoemakers. Maybe we are a c ouple of centuries too early to raise the issue
of class among the Dalits. Even the target group thrives on the caste identity.M.N. Srinivas underscored what would be needed to eradicate the caste
system (which must precede the emergence of class): The moral to be drawn
is that an ideological attack on caste which is not backed up or underpinned
by a mode of social production ignoring or violating caste-based division
of labour, is totally inadequate. A combination of wholly new technologies,
institutions, based on new principles, and a new ideology which includes
democracy, equality and the idea of human dignity and self-respect has to
be in operation for a considerable time in order to uproot the caste system
(emphasis added).7
That being the case, what do scholars say about the links between caste
and class? The majority opinion during the past five decades has been that
there is a positive correlation between caste and class. In other words, members of upper castes tend to be found predominantly in upper-class positions, such as highly educated professionals, managers, and other leadership
positions; members of the middle castes (Shudras) in middle-class positions,
be they small and medium cultivators or other agriculturalists; and the Dalits
are found in disproportionately high numbers in semiskilled and unskilled
occupations. The so-called mobility or occupational shift usually takes place
within a certain band, which cannot be called across-caste and across-class
movement.
For example, one of the earliest studies on class-caste relation, by Edwin
Driver, was based on interviews conducted among 1 percent of the male
heads of households in Nagpur District to find out the relation of caste
to occupational structure in urban and rural Central India.8 According to
Driver, nearly 59.7percent of Dalits (members of the scheduled castes) in
rural areas and78.3percent in urban areas were found in the bottom two
occupational categories, semiskilled and unskilled. He also found a positive association between positions in the caste and occupational hierarchies....The pattern in the urban area is more internally consistent. As one
descends the caste hierarchy, the percentages of professionals and managerials decline, the combined percentages being: 39.4 for Brahmans...4.1 for
Scheduled Castes.9
Caste and Class among the Dalits 237
Sanjay Kumar, Anthony Heath, and Oliver Heath10 came to the same conclusions in 2002 as Driver did in 1962, in their study based on the National
Election Study of 1996, conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies. The total number of respondents was 9,614, from 432 sampling
points in 108 parliamentary constituencies. The study found that, in terms
of mobility, 67percent of the respondents remained stable, 19.4percent experienced upward mobility, the condition of 6.6percent of the respondents
deteriorated, and7percent experienced horizontal movements.
Kumar and his coauthors acknowledge the past impact of caste in enabling
members of upper castes to enter the privileged classes and assert that upper
caste membership still gives a statistically significant advantage. But in a curious U-turn, they write: Our suspicion is that the class inequalities described in
this paper are to be explained primarily by the resourcesfinancial, educational, and socialthat the members of different classes possess and should
not be ascribed to caste (emphasis added).11
Comparing sample data collected for the National Election Study in 1971
and1996, the same authors in a subsequent study12 sought to answer three
questions: how mobile Indian society was; specifically, w
hether it became
more mobile during the years between 1971 and1996; and how much the
relationship between caste and occupation had changed. Their conclusion
was: Another consistent pattern is for Dalits to be the group that is most
highly concentrated in manual work....Overall, both with f ather/son class
mobility and caste-class mobility, the dominant picture is one of continuity
rather than change.13
Anirudh Krishna has been able to deliver what is by far a definitive message
based on a field survey about caste.14 According to his fieldwork, conducted
in the late 1990s in sixty-nine villages in the adjoining areas of Rajasthan and
Madhya Pradesh, caste continues to be a primary source of social identity
in these villages, people live in caste-specific neighborhoods, and the clothes
that they wear reveal their caste identity. Yet insofar as political organization
is concerned, caste no longer has primary importance. Non-caste-based po
litical entrepreneurs are more successful than others in delivering economic
benefits and providing avenues for greater political participation, t hese findings show, and villagers associate with these entrepreneurs regardless of caste
or religion.15
Krishna identifies three factors in the emergence of these new leaders
(naye neta): the spread of education in rural areas, a vast expansion of public
programs in the countryside, and intensified political competition among
major parties. This is a new phenomenon that took shape during the 1980s
238 d. shyam babu
and1990s: More villagers by far consult the naye neta for diverse tasks involving party politics, market brokerage, and interaction with government
officials than any other type of leader.16
Krishna is justifiably cautious in not assuming that the phenomenon is
generalizable beyond the surveyed areas. However, three inferences and a
conundrum are inescapable. The first inference is that the newly emerged
leaders truly fall into the category of class. They are not merely a new generation of educated leaders who replaced old, illiterate caste elders within their
respective castes. They are also secular, in the sense that services are sought
and rendered without reference to caste. Second, this o
ught to be celebrated
as a peaceful revolution insofar as the Dalit emancipation is concerned. Having a 22percent share in the population of surveyed villages, the Dalits accounted for 26percent of the new leaders. This discrepancy can also be noted
among Other Backward Classes, who constitute 41percent of the population
in the villages u
nder survey and providing 49 percent of the new leaders.
The over-representation of leaders belonging to Dalit and obc groups in
these villages came at the cost of upper castes and scheduled tribes. Third, if
such a transformation could take place in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh,
where society is more conservative, then surely caste must have become po
litically less relevant in other parts of India. As for the conundrum, Krishna
makes it clear that this is a political phenomenon and that caste retains its
salience in the social sphere. This only begs the question, what is happening to
caste? This also reminds one of what Barbara Joshi wrote more than a quarter-
century ago:
Upper caste citizens often argue that while some of them may have
retained old cultural forms once expressive of prejudicesuch as exclusive food exchange patternsmost have changed the content of
their attitudes about low status castes, so that prejudice is not really
a problem in other social interactions such as those affecting employment. Many Scheduled Caste individuals have come to suspect that the
reverse is more nearly true: that in many cases a few details of the cultural idiom of prejudice have changed, while the content of prejudiced
attitudes has remained the same, and that many higher caste individuals who no longer complain about sharing a tea stall with Scheduled
Caste customers will still consistently choose a non-Scheduled Caste
job applicant over a Scheduled Caste applicant.17
Which of the two versions that Joshi mentions is true with regard to
Rajasthan?
Caste and Class among the Dalits 239
tled in states other than their own. This might be unfair to, for example, the
children of Dalits migrated b
ecause of economic distress. But the Delhi decision was taken at the behest of Dalit employees. Yet another irony is that it
goes againstB.R. Ambedkars advice to his people to migrate to urban areas
for anonymity.
The reassertion of caste is, in fact, the assertion of lower castes. This is old
news, g oing back almost a century to backward class movements in the south.
Dalits appear to have joined this trend in a more transformational way, with
wider implications. It is difficult to answer the question of what triggered it.
Probably the process Ambedkar set in motion reached a definitive stage, insofar as Dalits are concerned. First, it is no mere political phenomenon. Second, Dalits awareness that being Dalit is nothing to be ashamed of is obvious
across states. The two big Dalit subcastes in Andhra Pradesh, the Malas and
Madigas, have started to add the caste name to their names. Ramaswami Mahalingam reports a similar story from neighboring Tamil Nadu: [Dalits] are
proud of their identity and demand social respect. For instance, middle class
Dalits in Tamil Nadu proudly mention their caste in the marriage invitations
(e.g., Narayana Pariah cordially invites you and your f amily to grace the occasion of his d
aughters marriage).19 Such assertions of equality and self-
respect do invite a backlash that draws its inspiration and legitimacy from
the caste ideology. Prem Chowdhry explains succinctly how, in Haryana, the
emerging Dalit m
iddle class creates a sense of insecurity and resentment
among the upper castes:
Altogether, an entry into new professions, the availing of employment
opportunities along with reservation of seats in the elected bodies like the
gram panchayats, legislative assembly and the parliament has thrown
up a considerable number of Dalits as a distinct middle class category,
albeit a highly differentiated and layered one. Noticeable in public
arena, this class...is primarily responsible for creating a sense of insecurity and resentment among the upper caste groups. Clearly, despite
the emergence of a m
iddle class among the Dalits, the caste ideology
continues to play an important role in the reproduction of relationships and behavioral patterns.20
Therefore, the Dalits themselves appear increasingly not to care much
about how they are perceived by o
thers from an outlook frozen in the past.21
The tricky part as always is w
hether exceptions are advanced as rules or rules
are dismissed as exceptions.
Caste and Class among the Dalits 241
ings and that these are only two of the hundreds of Dalit castes in India. A
majority of Dalit castes have no supposedly polluting occupations attached
to them and are, in tradition and lifestyle, essentially the touchable lower
castes. It is undeniable that Dalit identity carries with it the connotation of
impurity, both in the ritual and the physical sense. Moreover, all Dalits may
not be found in unclean occupations, but most people in unclean occupations are believed to be Dalits. Ashwini Deshpande captures the problem
thus: However, at a deeper level, to gain insight into the nature of change in
the caste system, an investigation into ancient occupations that have survived
changes in economic structure (i.e., priests in temples, scavengers, traditional
money-lenders, and the w
hole spectrum of agricultural jobs) is required. Are
these jobs still performed by castes to whom they were traditionally allocated, or is the reshuffling of the deck total, i.e. the modern occupational
structure is randomly distributed across castes? It is likely that we may find
more continuity than change (emphasis added).24
Therefore, the caste-to-class movement of Dalits may not amount to much
in the estimation of non-Dalits. This has been attested by many Dalits who
made it into class: though they successfully overcame hurdles, they could
never shake off their Dalit identity. Decades before the Government of India
even attempted (and failed disgracefully) to abolish manual scavenging, a
horrendous curse of untouchability and an oft-used image for Dalits, the
writerE.M. Forster opined in 1956: No god is needed to rescue the Untouchables, no vows of self-sacrifice and abnegation on the part of more fortunate
Indians, but simply and solelythe flush system. Introduce water-closets
[flush toilets] and main-drainage throughout India, and all this wicked rubbish about untouchability will disappear.25
Is it possible to eliminate the stigma and shame of being Dalit when societys perception of Dalits remains shaped by centuries-old history? Here
Mahatma Gandhi was partly right in asserting that untouchability was a caste
Hindu problem. It is caste Hindus ideology and perceptions that need changing. In other words, Dalits smooth journey from caste to class w
ill be possible
only on the day when caste Hindus are willing to treat, to use Ambedkars
expression, the individual as the unit and determine his or her merit and
class status.
The Dalits followed on their own two routes to escape the stigma of their
identity. One was through religious conversions, and the other was education.
Conversions to non-Hindu religions might have met the spiritual needs of the
converted but failed to raise their social standing. Take the case of Dalit Christians, the one group whose members allegedly escaped caste discrimination:
Caste and Class among the Dalits 243
they have not been able to escape their caste identity even a fter a couple of
centuries. While demanding affirmative action benefits for Dalit Christians,
the National Coordination Committee for sc Christians distributed a pamphlet among members of Parliament, which highlighted the identity issue
thus: Except for the (wrong) records in the revenue offices he [the Dalit
Christian] is a Dalit in every sense of the word; viz., ethnically, lineally, racially, socially, economically, culturally, vocationally, geographically, relationally, contextually, and emotionally. he continues a full dalit everywhere except in the ignorant mind of the executive .26
In contrast, education has enabled many Dalits to move up both in social
and in economic terms. The states failure, in general, to provide quality education to a large group of p
eople meant that whatever education the Dalits received restricted their mobility. Thus, many Dalits for a couple of generations
after independence moved awaythanks to affirmative actionfrom village
life and traditional occupations but moved into petty government jobs not
far from their villages. As long as someones roots are firmly in the village,
any newly acquired class status remains an appendage to his or her caste
identity. That has been the broad change that has taken place in the country.
Class in the mere sense of an economic category mostly, but not entirely,
based on ones profession w
ill be effective in enhancing the status of Dalits,
but the change w
ill be commensurate with how many those Dalits are in
higher or leadership positions within their class. The current class, the Dalit
bourgeoisie, is still small in numbers and, even worse, it is ensnared in government service, effectively cutting itself off from providing leadership to the
community. The next step in their liberation will have to be the emergence
of an elite or intellectual class actively engaged with the others in a process
of accommodation and acculturation. Naomi Hossain and Mike Moore have
very effectively defined the intellectual class: They are the people who make
or shape the main political and economic decisions: ministers and legislators;
owners and controllers of tv and radio stations and major business enterprises and activities; large property owners; upper-level public servants; se
nior members of the armed forces, police and intelligence services; editors
of major newspapers; publicly prominent intellectuals, lawyers and doctors;
andmore variablyinfluential socialites and heads of large trades u
nions,
religious establishments and movements, universities and development
ngo s.27 Consider the above list. The Dalits enjoy adequate representation
among ministers and legislators and a modest presence among upper-level
public servants, lawyers, and doctors. They are completely absent from the
other positions of influence. Their adequate representation among ministers
244 d. shyam babu
Joshi cautioned against generalizations about the Scheduled Castes, for the
category covers a large number of diverse groups.29 Since then, things got
further complicated in unexpected places like up (with the Dalit-Brahman
entente) and Rajasthan (with its village transformation, according to Krishna).
Politically, at the national level, the Dalits ceased to be a vote bank for a single
political party when they realized that neither of the two national parties has
any incentive to espouse their cause.
But field surveys, census data, and so on cannot be combined to provide a broader picture. This is not peculiar to the Dalits alone. Linguistic,
subcaste, regional, and religious diversity renders India complex. However
special the Dalits case may appear to be, they share the ups and downs of
the whole country. For example, since 1991 as the poverty rate started coming
down for most groups, Dalits experienced the same trend.30 Indias long-term
economic future depends on urbanization and industrialization, and these
are the promising links in the Dalits emancipation.
One coincidence, if it is one, is that large numbers of Dalits (and tribal
people) are in the so-called laggard states, such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,
Orissa, Rajasthan, and up. Though there are significant differences among
the Dalits across subcastes and region, those differences are not related
to class. For example, the Mala-Madiga conflict in Andhra Pradesh is now
being seen as a fight over splitting the job quotas, but this is only the latest
phase of their decades-old antagonism.31 A similar trend of conflict or estrangement can be found between Mahars and Mangs in Maharashtra and
between Chamars and Valmikis as well as Chamars and Pasis in up . Therefore, differences based on regions, subcaste, or religion are too varied to be
amenable to comparison.
The story of Dalits vis--vis non-Dalits is no less complex. Debashis
Chakraborty, Shyam Babu, and Manashi Chakravorty report that they tested
the hypothesis that atrocities are triggered in areas characterized by upward
Caste and Class among the Dalits 245
mobility among the Dalits, and not in the poorer areas,32 and found the hypothesis to be true. In simple terms, attempts by Dalits to migrate from caste
to class are met with resistance and violence.
Thus, an attempt has been made in the preceding pages to figure out what
is happening to the Dalits in terms of both caste and class: how far the caste-
to-class framework is relevant; why generalizations are not possible; how the
Dalits regard themselves; and how non-Dalits perceive the community. In
sum, class may not be a useful tool for measuring or understanding the pro
gress of Dalits unless we modify its definition to such an extent as to blur
the distinction between caste and classsomething that some Marxists have
accomplished with their argument that caste is class in Indian terms. Ramkrishna Mukherjee argues: Thus, it is that we should not look at caste as a
new avatar....Class structure has cut across the caste hierarchy, forming
new alliances and antagonisms....Today, in India, caste in class depicts the
reality, and not caste per se or caste and class.33
While measurable factors like education, professional status, and income
can be employed to classify p
eople into groups (classes), membership in
a class depends not only on merit (one cannot become a doctor without a
medical degree, for example) but also on acceptance by other members. This
is not a new argument: historically, minorities in many countries suffered
nonacceptance at one time or the other. For example, though Jews and Catholics were never subjected to violence in the United Statesat least on the
scale of the Dalits in Indiathey were not welcome into its hallowed spaces,
either. The case of African Americans has more similarities with that of the
Dalits. Ironically, in India, history does not always follow a linear progression; on cultural matters, people there tend to run in circles.
notes
The author is grateful to the two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions made this
essay better than its previous version.
1. For the complexities of defining class, see Patil, Should Class Be the Basis for
Recognising Backwardness?, 2733; Stern, Power in Modern India.
2. Demerath, Demerath, and Jodhka, Interrogating Caste and Religion in Indias
Emerging Middle Class, 3813.
3. Stern, Power in Modern India, 6567.
4. Beteille, Caste, Class, and Power, 187.
5. Abraham, Arrivals and Departures, n.p.
6. R. Smith, Anthropology and the Concept of Social Class, 467.
7. M. Srinivas, An Obituary on Caste as a System, 459.
246 d. shyam babu
10
From Zaat to Qaum:
Fluid Contours of the Ravi Dasi Identity in Punjab
s ur i n d e r s . j o d h k a
According to the popular view, caste is an integral part of Hindu social life,
culture, and religious traditions. While inequality or even hierarchy may exist
in other cultures, religions, and regions, caste is peculiar to the Hindu mind
and its religious codes. The hierarchical structure of the varna system (an
ancient Hindu classification of humankind into four groups: the Brahmins,
the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas, and the Shudras; outside the varna w
ere the untouchables), is presumed to have existed since time immemorial. It continues to exist without much change over the centuries or regional variations
across the south Asian subcontinent, where the Hindus live. Even when t here
is a recognition of the possibility of internal fluidity, such as through the pro
cess of Sanskritization, this textbook view of caste rarely doubts the essential
unity of the system. Those at the top were always the Brahmans, and those at
the bottom w
ere always the untouchables. The agency for the systems reproduction, in this popular understanding, always rested with the Brahman, its
primary ideologue and benefactor. This view has not only persisted for a long
time but continues to be the most dominant view, even in the political life of
contemporary India, irrespective of the larger ideological locationthe Left,
center, or Right.
Interestingly, this view persists despite voluminous evidence and widespread recognition of the fact that caste and caste-like structures have existed
Of all the states of the Indian union, Punjab has the highest proportion of
scheduled castes (sc s) in its population. In contrast to the national average of
around 16percent, according to the 2001 census, nearly 29percent of Punjabs
population was listed as sc s. The sc population in Punjab has also been growing at a rate much higher than that of the rest of the states population. Punjab
has also been one of the more vibrant states of the country, socially, econom
ically, and politically. Though it is no longer the richest state, it continues to
be a prosperous area in terms of per capita income and other measurements
of social development. It also has much lower rates of poverty and malnourishment than most other parts of the country. Though the Green Revolution
was clearly biased in favor of the land-owning cultivating farmersalmost
From Zaat to Qaum 249
all of whom in Punjab were from the dominant upper castesits benefits did
trickle down to other groups in the local population.
Socially and politically also Punjab has been a vibrant region. In addition to
its active involvement in the freedom movement, Punjab has witnessed some
of the most powerful identity movements during the past century. Sociologi
cally, the significance of Punjab also lies in the fact that it is on the periphery
of India and is one of the few states where Hindus, who constitute nearly
80percent of Indias population, are a minority. Despite being non-Hindus,
the lower-caste Sikhs of the state have the distinction of being included in the
list of the sc s, a status that was not granted to their counterparts in the other
minority communitiesthat is, Muslims and Christians. Even the Buddhists
and Jains were not considered for such a status. Only beginning with the
1991 census have neo-Buddhist converts begun to be listed as sc s. According
to the 1961 census of the entire sc population of India, 98.56percent were
Hindus, and the remaining 1.44percent were Sikhs.2
In addition to widespread violence, the regions partition at the time of
Indias independence almost completely changed its demographic profile.
Despite the popular image of Indian Punjab being a Sikh state, it was only in
1966, after its reorganization in response to a strong movement for a Punjabi-
speaking province, that the Sikhs became a majority in the state. Punjab before partition was a much bigger province, in which Muslims outnumbered
both the Hindus and the Sikhs. According to the 1911 census, in Punjab
50.86percent of the population was Muslim and36.35percent was Hindu.
Only around 12percent had reported their religion to be Sikhism (Christians
accounted for around 1percent).
The population exchange that accompanied partition in 1947 changed the
demographic profile of Punjab very significantly. Almost the entire Sikh and
Hindu population of western Punjab crossed over to the Indian side, and
the Muslims living on the Indian side left for Pakistan. Thus, in Punjab after
partition, the Hindus came to constitute a majority. However, the Sikhs too
gained in demographic terms. Their proportion of the population went up
from around 12percent to around 35percent, and they became concentrated
in specific districts of Punjab, constituting more than half of the population. When linguistic surveys were carried out to reorganize the provincial
boundaries, Punjab was declared a bilingual state with the Sikh-dominated
districts reported as Punjabi-speaking areas and the Hindu-dominated districts as Hindi-speaking areas.
The Sikh leaders (mostly upper caste) saw in the new demographic scenario the possibility of a Sikh-majority province. After a long-drawn-out
250 surinders. jodhka
for social mobility for a section of local Dalits, particularly the untouchable
Chamars who worked with leather.
The cantonment increased demand for leather goods, particularly boots
and shoes for the British army. As was the case elsewhere in the subcontinent, much of the leather trade in the region was controlled by Muslims.
However, at the local or village level, it was the Chamars who supplied the
raw animal skins. Some of them were quick to exploit the new opportunities
being offered to them by the changing world. Not only did they move out of
the village, but they also ventured out to other parts of the subcontinent and
abroadespecially to the United States, Canada, and E
ngland. However, the
local leather trade remained under the control of Muslims. In fact, two of
the local Chamars tried to set up shop in Jalandhar but failed and had to create
businesses in Calcutta instead. The social and economic mobility that some
untouchables experienced during this period prepared the ground for politi
cal mobilizations of Dalits in the region.
The introduction of representational politics by the colonial rulers also
produced a new grammar of communities in India. The colonial administrative structure employed new categories of social aggregation and classification. The British thought of the Indian population in terms of religious
communities and looked at them accordingly in the process of governance.
They encouraged the members of each community to present their case
in communitarian terms.4 As is well known to students of Indian history,
the colonial census and classifications of the population into categories that
made sense to the alien rulers played a critical role in converting the fuzzy
boundaries of difference into well-defined communities.5 Though the British
came to Punjab only around the m
iddle of the nineteenth c entury, this pro
cess of new identity formations and restructuring of communities became
pronounced in the region fairly early through social reform movements
among the Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims.6
The anxiety about numbers among the neoreligious elite of the Hindus
and Sikhs also had important implications for the Punjabi Dalits. Through
newly launched social reform movements, Hindu and Sikh leaders began to
work with Dalits. The Arya Samaj in Punjab started a shudhi (purifying from
defilement) movement in which they encouraged the untouchables to purify
themselves and become part of mainstream Hinduism. The movement also
encouraged Dalits to send their c hildren to schools being run by the Arya
Samaj. Similarly, Sikh reformers began to decry the caste system publicly,
and it was mainly through a claim to castelessness that they argued for the
distinctiveness of Sikhs from Hindus.7
252 surinders. jodhka
Below
primary
Primary
Middle
Matric (tenth
grade) /
Intermediate
(twelfth grade)
Ad Dharmi
21.0
30.7
18.7
25.8
0.7
3.0
Balmiki
30.9
33.5
17.2
16.8
0.2
1.3
Mazhabi
37.0
32.5
14.0
14.5
0.3
0.7
All
28.9
31.6
16.8
20.3
0.5
2.0
SC
Postmatric
diploma
Graduate
and above
Source: Office of the Registrar General, India, Punjab: Data Highlights: The Scheduled Castes.
However, despite its success, the movement could not maintain its momentum for very long and began to dissipate soon after its grand success in
1931. According to the popular understanding, the c auses of the decline of
Ad Dharm movement lay in its success. Its leaders joined mainstream politics. Mangoo Ram and some of his close comrades became members of the
Punjab Legislative Assembly when the Ad Dharm movement finally merged
with the emerging pan-Indian movement of the Dalits, taking over the caste
issue. The Ad Dharm Mandal, a reformist Ravi Dasi sect, began to see itself
as a social and religious organization and in 1946 decided to change its name
to Ravi Das Mandal, entrusting the political work to All India Scheduled
Castes Federation in conformity with rest of India.11
From Ad Dharm to Ravi Dasi
Hindu caste group for the purposes of official classification, the Chamars of
Doaba did not really go back to Hinduism. Instead, they began to develop
autonomous religious resources under the identity of Ravi Dasis.
As mentioned above, it was, in fact, during the Ad Dharm movement that
the Ravi Dasi identity had begun to take shape. Leaders of the movement also
saw that identity as their own resource. In 1971, long a fter dissolving the Ad
Dharm Mandal and a fter having been in retirement for many years, Mangoo
Ram summed up the achievement of the Ad Dharm movement in an interview with Mark Juergensmeyer, in which his focus was more on having given
the local Dalits a new community and religious identity than on their politi
cal empowerment: We helped give them a better life and made them into a
qaum. We gave them sants to believe in and something to hope for (emphasis
added).12 After having changed the movements name to Ravi Das Mandal in
1946, members shifted their focus to social and religious matters. They had
realized long before that to consolidate themselves as a separate qaum, they
needed a religious system of their own that was different from Hinduism
and Sikhism. However, to do that they chose a caste-based religious identity:
Chamar=Ad Dharmi=Ravi Dasi. Even though during its early days the Ad
Dharm movement had aspired to bring all the formerly untouchable communities together into a new faith, the movement had appealed mostly to the
Chamars of Doaba. A
fter its listing as one of the sc s, it became obvious and
official that the Ad Dharmis were a section of the Chamars. Sant Ravi Das
appeared to be an obvious choice for the Ad Dharmis as a religious symbol
for the community. Though he was born in Uttar Pradesh, he belonged to
the Chamar caste. The fact that his writings w
ere included in the Sikhs holy
book, Guru Granth, which had been compiled in Punjab and written in the
local language, made Ravi Das even more effective and acceptable.13
Thus the Ad Dharm movement played a very important role in developing an autonomous political identity and consciousness among the Chamar
Dalits of Punjab, and the movements renaming itself as a religious body, the
Ravi Das Mandal, in 1946 was an important turning point in the history of
Dalit movements in Punjab. However, it is important to mention h
ere that
the Ravi Dasi religious identity had already begun to take shape, indepen
dently of the Ad Dharm movement in the region. In fact, some of the Ravi
Dasi deras had played an active role in the late 1920s when Mangoo Ram was
campaigning for separate religious status for Ad Dharmis. Mangoo Ram
often visited the Ravi Dasi deras during this campaign.
Interestingly, even when the community reconciled itself to the idea of
being grouped with Hindu sc s for census enumerations, the Ad Dharmi
From Zaat to Qaum 257
Ravi Das is believed to have been born in 1450 ad in the north Indian town of
Banaras, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, in an untouchable caste, the Chamars
(traditionally identified with leather work), and to have died in 1520.14 Like
many of his contemporaries, he travelled extensively, and had religious dialogues with saint poets, enlightened and holy persons of medieval times, in
different parts of northern India. Over time he acquired the status of a saint.
However, his claims to religious authority were frequently challenged by the
local Brahmans, who complained about his sacrilegious behavior to the local
rulers. His followers believe that e very time the king summoned Ravi Das, he
managed to convince the political authorities of his genuine spiritual powers
through various miraculous acts. He is believed to have visited Punjab and
met with Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, at least three times. He also
gave most of his writings to Guru Nanak, which eventually became part of
the Sikh holy book, Guru Granth.15
Though historians of Indian religions tend to associate Ravi Das with the
Bhakti movement, a pan-Indian devotional cult, his ideas appear to be quite
radical. He imagined his own utopia, a vision of an alternative society, that
he articulated in his hymn Begumpuraa city without sorrows, where
there will be no distress, no tax, no restriction from going and coming, no
258 surinders. jodhka
However, unlike the founder of the Sikh movement, Ravi Das did not develop a significant community of followers or appoint a successor. Though
he developed a critique of the Brahmanical social order, in the absence of a
community of followers he could not develop any kind of political ambitions.
It was only in the twentieth century that a community of Ravi Dasis began
to emerge, initially in Punjab and later in other parts of northern India. It
was only with the loosening caste hierarchy and village social structure that
an untouchable caste could begin to constitute itself as a separate religious
community. The Chamars of Doaba were among the first in northern India
to organize themselves under the name of the Ad Dharm movement. Ravi
Das was rediscovered by them.
The Ravi Dasis Today
Though the message of Ravi Das had been integrated into the Sikh holy book
and was routinely read and sung at the Sikh gurudwaras (Sikh places of worship) as part of the gurbani (religious singing), it was only in the early years
of the twentieth century that separate Ravi Dasi deras began to emerge in
Punjab. The reason for this sudden mushrooming of Ravi Dasi deras may be
found in the growing prosperity of Chamars in the region a fter the British
set up a cantonment in Jalandhar. Reform movements among the major religious communities of the Muslims, Hindus, and the Sikhs would have also
played a role in opening up opportunities for secular education among them.
Perhaps the most important of the Guru Ravi Das deras in Punjab t oday is
the dera located in village Ballan, around ten kilometers from Jalandhar. It is
locally known as Dera Sachkhand Ballan. Though the dera was set up by Sant
Pipal Dass sometime in the early twentieth century,21 it is identified more
with his son, Sant Sarwan Dass. In fact, among its followers, it is also known
as Dera Sant Sarwan Dass. According to the popular myth narrated by vari
ous interviewees during the fieldwork, which we also found in published
leaflets, the history of the dera could be summed up like this: Sant Sarwan
Dass was born in a village called Gill Patti in Bhatinda District of Punjab.
He lost his mother when he was five years old. To help his son overcome the
loss, his father, Pipal Dass, decided to travel with him. A
fter visiting a few
places, they came to Ballan Village. The elder b
rother of Sarwan Das had
earlier lived in the same village. On the outskirts of Ballan, they found a pipal
tree that was completely dry and dead. However, when Pipal Dass watered
the tree, life returned to it, and its leaves turned green. This, for him, was an
indication of the place being spiritually blessed. The tree also made the child
260 surinders. jodhka
Sarwan Dass happy. The father and son decided to build a hut close to the
tree and began to live there.After the death of his father in 1928, Sant Sarwan
Dass expanded his activities. He opened a school and started teaching Gurumukhi (the script used for writing Punjabi) and the message of Guru Granth
to young children. He also persuaded his followers to send their c hildren to
the school. Parents who do not educate their children are their enemies, he
used to tell his followers. Impressed with the work that Sant Sarwan Dass was
doing in the village, a local landlord gave him one kanal (about one-fifth of
an acre) of land close to the hut, where the dera was eventually constructed.
Sarwan Dass remained head of the dera from October11, 1928, u
ntil he died
in June 1972. He was succeeded by Sant Hari Dass and Sant Garib Dass. The
dera is currently headed by Sant Niranjan Dass.
Ravi Dasi as a Religious Identity
What makes the Dera Ballan popular with common Ravi Dasis? Why are
they so committed to the dera? What is the reason for such close identification with their gurus? Is it purely as a spiritual quest that they visit the dera, or
are they also motivated by more worldly pursuits? In addition to interviewing
From Zaat to Qaum 261
for our dignity. So we worship Sant Ravi Das. Interestingly, it was not only
the Hindu temples that Dalits were barred from entering. Even other deras
in Punjab discriminated against Dalits. Yet another interviewee pointed to
the fact that earlier there was discrimination. That is why our people have
opened our own deras. We do not discriminate. We respect all religions and
communities. The other deras do not respect us. It is only in our own dera that
we feel welcomed. Dera Beas, for example, is the biggest dera in Punjab, but
they do not respect Dalits. It is not only Hindu society that treats Ravi Dasis
badlyeven the Jat Sikhs in rural areas discriminated against them and their
religion. Even when we keep the Guru Granth in our temples in the villages,
no Jat will ever enter our temples, reported another interviewee in Ballan.
Underlining the need for a separate and autonomous religion for Dalits and
the fact that the dera was helping meet that need, he argued: Every religion
needs a guru. The dera has given our community a guru. The dera never
gets involved with politics. However, when we need to fight for our rights,
it unites the community. Our gurus have worked hard to keep the community united. They have stopped members of our community from g oing to
other deras. They have opened schools and hospitals. References to caste
and discrimination and the need for an autonomous religious system for the
Dalit community were common in many other interviews as well. Equally
common were the references to the emphasis that Ravi Dasi sants put on
education. Not only did the disciples point to the schools opened by the dera,
but many of them also referred to personal experiences of having been able
to study only because they were able to get financial help from the dera sants
or because of their persistence and motivation.
Though Dera Ballan is a religious center with a focus on preaching universalistic values and spirituality, it actively identifies itself with local Dalit
issues and Dalit politics. Not only do the spiritual heads of the dera foreground Ravi Dass message of building a casteless society, they have also been
actively identified with Dalit activism. Sant Sarwan Dass kept in active touch
with Mangoo Ram during the Ad Dharm movement, and Mangoo Ram visited the dera to communicate his message to the Dalit masses of the region.
During one of his visits to Delhi, he also met Ambedkar, who showed g reat
respect to Sant Sarwan Dass Ji.24 In one of his letters to Ambedkar, Sant Sarwan Dass described him as a great son of the community.25 In the emerging
national context, Dalit political leaders began to connect with their peers in
other regions. Religious sants like Sant Sarwan Dass did the same.
The message of Ravi Das had thus far reached the Punjabi Dalits primarily through the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth. However, the religious
From Zaat to Qaum 263
The second, and perhaps more important and interesting phase in the history
of the Ravi Das movement in Punjab began during the 1990s, with the phase
of globalization. Along with other Punjabis, a large number of Chamars of
the Doaba subregion had migrated to countries in the Western hemisphere
during the 1950s and1960s. Th
ere are no exact figures available, butquoting
the Indian consular officeJuergensmeyer claims that in the United Kingdom the percentage of Scheduled Castes within the total Punjabi community was as high as 10percent. The rest were largely Jat Sikhs.28
In the context of another country, with no systemic justification for
caste ideology, Punjabi Dalits did not expect to be reminded of their low status
in the caste hierarchy. While they did not have any such problems in the
workplace or the urban public sphere in the United Kingdom, they often
264 surinders. jodhka
experienced caste prejudice when they tried to be part of the local Punjabi
community in the diaspora. Juergensmeyer sums this up quite well:
The Chamars, who came to Britain expecting to find life different, take
offence at the upper caste Sikhs attitude towards them. They earn as
much as the Jat Sikhs, sometimes more, and occasionally find themselves placed by the British in command over thema Chamar foreman superintending a Jat Sikh work crewmuch to the displeasure of
the latter..... The Scheduled Castes can afford to act more bravely in
Britain since they have now entered a new context for competing with
the Jat Sikhs. In the Punjab the cards were stacked against them, but
in Britain they have a fresh start, and the ideology of Ad Dharm has
prepared them to take advantage of it.29
The migrant Dalits felt this bias in the gurudwaras, which were mostly
controlled by the Jats and other upper-caste Sikhs. Given their numbers and
position in the local economy, Dalits did not find it difficult to assert their
rights to equal status and dignity. They began to set up their own autonomous associations in the name of Sant Ravi Das. The first two were created
in Britain, in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, in 1956.30 While in the first
2025years of their emigration, they simply built their own community organizations and separate gurudwaras wherever they could, over the years
they also began to influence the homeland. The growing availability of new
communication channels such as the Internet and satellite television during
the early 1990s made it easier for them to renew an active relationship with
Punjab and the Ravi Dasi community at home.
By the early 1990s, diaspora Dalits had also experienced considerable economic mobility, which made it easier for them to travel back home, and they
began to do so more frequently. When they returned to India, they brought
money for the deras, and this new money and diasporic energy played a very
important role in the further growth of the movement. This was summed up
well by a Dalit businessman who has been involved in mobilizing the Ravi
Dasi sants into a pan-Indian association: It is the brethren from the West
who first understood the value of our deras and the need to strengthen them.
They gave huge donations when they came to pay a visit. The number of visitors from abroad and the frequency of their visits also increased during the
1990s. They invited the local sants to their countries. All this gave a boost to
the Ravi Dasi movement. Going beyond their immediate sphere of influence also provides a context to the current Ravi Dasi sants to mobilize the
From Zaat to Qaum 265
Writing about the Punjabi Dalits nearly four decades ago, Juergensmeyer
characterized their social and economic position by using the phrase cultures of deprivation. Though he did not see similarities between the situation of Punjabi Dalits and the slum-dwelling Mexican poor, mentioning
Oscar Lewiss work on the culture of poverty seems quite obvious.31 Unlike
the poor in the Mexican slums, the Dalits w
ere not simply poor. Their poverty was often reinforced by institutionalized prejudice, the caste system, and
the symbolic order of Hinduism, which in turn also reinforced their poverty.
It is this peculiar reality that makes it crucial for the Dalits to pursue not just
a path out of economic poverty but also a struggle for cultural autonomy, and
to seek a symbolic system that gives them a sense of self-esteem and dignity.
As discussed above, a group of the Dalits in Doaba subregion of Punjab began to experience social mobility and economic prosperity during the
early twentieth c entury when a new secular economy was put in place by the
266 surinders. jodhka
social movement. Migration to urban centers in India and abroad and growing prosperity among a group of Ad Dharmis provided resources to sustain
this movement.
Apart from the sants and religious heads of deras, who all came from
within the caste community, leadership of this movement has been provided
mostly by the mobile Dalits, t hose who w
ere the first to get out of the traditional system of caste hierarchy and into urban occupations, the successful
businessmen and professionals.
Over the years the Ravi Dasis have emerged as a strong religious community, a qaum. Though its center continues to be in Doaba, it has spread to
other parts of Punjab, neighboring Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and even to far
off Maharashtra. This strength of the community is reinforced by the increasingly active involvement of the Ravi Dasi diaspora.
This transformation of a formerly untouchable caste (zaat) into a strong
religious community (qaum) clearly has had several social and developmental effects on members of the community and Punjabi society at large. As it
has been argued based on interviews with a cross section of people, one of
the contributions of the dera most frequently referred to was the motivation
it provided for education and the sense of dignity it gave to the community of
formerly untouchable Chamars. The religious idiom seems also to play a very
important role in horizontal consolidation, to useM.N. Srinivass terms.32 In
a democratic polity like that of India where communities have become impor
tant actors in electoral politics, a marginalized group of Dalits can only gain
through such a process. While on the one hand their consolidation into a
strong community enables them to open their own institutions (such as
schools and hospitals) to provide a better life, on the other hand such a pro
cess of mobilization strengthens their bargaining capacity vis--vis the state
and other sections of the civil society.
notes
1. Jodhka, Caste.
2.K. Suresh Singh, The Scheduled Castes, 10.
3. Nayar, Minority Politics in the Punjab, 5051.
4. Grewal, Changing Sikh Self-Image before Independence.
5. Breckenridge and van der Veer, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament;
Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge; Dirks, Castes of Mind.
6. Fox, Lions of Punjab; Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries.
7. Jodhka, Caste and Untouchability in Rural Punjab.
8. Juergensmeyer, Religious Rebels in the Punjab.
268 surinders. jodhka
9. Ibid., 45.
10. Ibid., 77.
11. Ibid., 153.
12. Quoted in ibid., 155.
13. Some of the local Dalit leaders also believe that it was the Hindu nationalists
who suggested Ravi Das as a possible religious symbol to the Chamars. One of them
said: In order to make sure that untouchables did not convert to Sikhism, Islam, or
Christianity, the Arya Samajis propagated the symbol of Ravi Das among Chamars,
Valmiki among the Chuhras, and Kabir among the Meghs. Thats how they made sure
that Dalits stayed within the Hindu fold. While this may be true, the image of Ravi
Das as a Chamar had already been made available to the people of Punjab by the Sikh
gurus.
14. Omvedt, Seeking Begumpura, 7.
15. This discussion is based on Jassi, Holy Hymns and Miracles of Guru Ravi Das Ji.
16. Quoted in Hawley and Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India, 32.
17. Jassi, Holy Hymns and Miracles of Guru Ravi Das Ji, 24.
18. Ibid., 25.
19. Omvedt, Seeking Begumpura, 7.
20. Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries.
21. Mark Juergensmeyer in his pioneer work on the Ad-Dharm movement writes:
When he [Sant Hiran Das] established his Ravi Das Sabha, in 1907, in village
Hakim...several other deras including that of Sant Pipal Das, were founded soon
afterward (Religious Rebels in the Punjab, 87).
22. Jodhka, Caste and Untouchability in Rural Punjab.
23. Charlene, Dalits-Sikhs Relation: A Contrasted Approach.
24. Quoted in Sant Sarwan Dass Ji: A Great Visionary Sant, leaflet published by
Sant Surinder Dass Bawa (n.d.).
25. Ibid.
26. Even though Sikhism decries the caste system, caste-based divisions and hierarchies have continued to survive among the Sikhs in Punjab. See Jodhka, Sikhism and
the Caste Question; Judge and Bal, Understanding the Paradox of Changes among
Dalits in Punjab; Puri, The Scheduled Castes in the Sikh Community.
27. Jodhka, The Ravi Dasis of Punjab.
28. Quoted in Juergensmeyer, Religious Rebels in the Punjab, 246.
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CONTRIBUTORS
d. shyam babu is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, in New
Delhi. In collaboration with Devesh Kapur and Chandra Bhan Prasad, he has
completed a study of the phenomenon of Dalit entrepreneurs. He is a coauthor of Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs (2014).
laura brueck is an associate professor of Hindi literature and South Asian
studies at Northwestern University.She is the author of Writing Resistance:
The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit Literature (2014). She has also published Unclaimed Terrain (2013), a collection of translations of short stories
by the Delhi-based author Ajay Navaria.
sambaiah gundimeda is an assistant professor in the School of Policy and
Governance at Azim Premji University, in Bengaluru, India. He is currently
a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, in New Delhi, and
working on his second book, tentatively titled Dalits and the Public Sphere
in Contemporary India. His first book,Dalit Politics in Contemporary India,
is forthcoming.
gopal guru is a professor in the Center for Political Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi. A nationally recognized public intellectual of
India, he is the author of a number of books and scores of articles on contemporary Indian politics and political thought. Most recently he has coauthored, with Sundar Surrakai, The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on
Experience and Theory (2012).
raj kumar hans is a professor of history at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, in Baroda, India. His book, History of Punjabi Dalit Literature, is forthcoming. He is also the author of an essay in Devotion and Dissent in Indian
History.
294 contributors
INDEX
296 index
10910, 268; critique, 16466, 175; Hyderabad constitutional reforms, 11517; literary
sphere, 18084; major concerns, 225; on
mass killings, 16162, 165, 16869, 24546;
poetry on, 16675; politics of caste in,
166; post-independence, 9598, 99; pride
and, 241; in Punjab, 25155; rise of, 5, 11,
20, 1057; on sc reservations, 202, 2046,
21122, 227; in Sikhism, 13640, 254, 261;
social space and, 21, 7475, 79, 86, 88, 98;
study of, 1213, 21, 70
Dalit Christians, The (Webster), 136
Dalit consciousness (chetn), 2, 10, 20, 47, 58,
79, 99, 106, 109, 140, 184, 18690, 192, 193,
19597
Dalit feminism, 4, 7, 15, 177n24, 184, 19297
Dalit Kala Mandali, 163
Dalit Mahasabha, 5, 16162
Dalit Panthers of India, 5, 6; of Maharashtra, 47
Dalit Rachayitala, Kalakarula, Medhavula Ikya
Vedika (Darakame), 163
Dalits: caste vs. class, 23339; contemporary
context, 18; diaspora, 7, 23, 26466, 268;
dignity of, 23, 17, 24, 26; Hindi, 21, 24; humiliation of, 13, 17, 26; identities, 1112, 32;
Indias independence and, 3233; marginalization of, 31; middle classes, 25, 44, 46, 166,
2089, 241; minority status, 2046; Sikhs,
23; stereotypes of, 4, 9, 18; Tamil, 8, 15; use
of term, 2, 18182, 203. See also specific
communities
Dalit Sahitya ka Soundarya Shastra (Valmiki),
187
Dalit saints, 12, 16. See also specific saints
Dalit Sangarsh Samiti, 5
Dalit studies: conferences, 27n19; emergence
of, 3, 4, 7; frameworks, 9, 1920; recognition of, 31
Dalit Women Talk Differently (Guru), 7
Dandora debate, 21622; unity and uniformity
in, 22225
Dangle, Arjun, 20
Darakame. See Dalit Rachayitala, Kalakarula,
Medhavula Ikya Vedika
Das, Sisir Kumar, 199n8
Das, Veena, 13
Demerath, Loren, 234
Demerath,N.J., 234
index 297
298 index
index 299
300 index
index 301
302 index
index 303
304 index