Dalit-Bahujans and Fraternity: From Ambedkar to Kancha Illiah
Solidarity between social groups and fraternal feelings are the foundations of a healthy democracy but electoral politics in India work themselves around competing claims. This is without looking for possible means of establishing cross-cultural and cross-caste alliances based on mutual empathy and inter-subjective understanding of the specific issues concerning the various social constituencies. The leading lights of the Dalit-Bahujan struggles in India, along with an unflinching emphasis on agitation and mobilization for self-determination, also lay thrust on solidarity and fraternity. Jyotiba Phule, in his celebrated essay Ghulamgiri, calls for a solidarity between all those involved in manual labour, which alone can bring about an ‘ethical self’ and scientific knowledge. His critique of Brahminism included the rejection of a knowledge system based purely on mental constructs. He was the first to establish a school for girls in 1851 and that included girls of all castes.
Phule unequivocally argued that all women, including Brahmin women, made up his notion of shudraatishudra. He argued that subordination of women was a part of the larger process of the subordination of the shudraatishudras. Similarly, Phule was among the first to draw a similarity between the Shudras and the Blacks in America, preceding the more recent debate on ‘caste is race’. Phule’s essential critique of Brahmins was based on the potent hierarchical separation between mental and manual labour that the Brahminical philosophy put in place5 and further made the coming together of various castes and overcoming caste-based differences and discrimination a herculean task.
Ambedkar on Fraternity
Later, Ambedkar too forwarded a critique of the caste system based on its debilitating impact on civic ethos and fraternity between various social groups. Ambedkar identifies fraternity as a foundation of democracy. He, therefore, picked up the slogan of the French revolution, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ as the guiding principle for the anti-caste struggles in India. He recognized caste-based discrimination even among the Shudras and argued in his much-quoted essay Annihilation of Caste that ‘each caste takes its pride and its consolidation in the fact that in the scale of castes it is above some other caste’. Ambedkar pointed out that ‘all are slaves of the caste system’6 and what it destroyed was what he variedly referred to as common culture, fellow feeling, associated mode of living, social cement, public spirit, cooperation, and solidarity. In this sense, he felt that ‘cultural revolution’ ought to precede political reform and economic revolution. Overcoming deep-seated prejudice is a precondition for development, and therefore, he believed that what Marx and communists missed out was that Indian social and economic order worked not through ‘division of labour’ but ‘division of labourers’.
The future ideal society for Ambedkar has to be founded on substantive solidarity and deep-seated fraternal feelings in the society. He argued, ‘in an ideal society, there should be many interests consciously communicated and shared. There should be varied and free-points of contact with other modes of association’.7 He argued for ‘social endosmosis’ and a ‘conjointed communicative experience’8 and not exclusivists, experiences being privileged in order to make stronger political claims. Even such claims have to essentially realize the need to move towards more inter-subjective experiences to create a richer idea of the social.
Today’s debates in Indian politics, more so the electoral politics and discourse on development, have left very little space for a productive dialogue on how to enhance modes of solidarity and means of forging fraternity. This process of breakdown of all forms of shared spaces converges with the processes of individuation initiated by the global neo-liberal economy. Instead, what marginalized social groups are facing is a choice between cultural assertion and economic dispossessions, such as the various subjugated castes in rural hinterlands, or a promise of economic integration with a precondition of cultural subjugation in the case of the Muslims.
There cannot be any meaningful idea of development that does not contribute towards an enlarged idea of fellow feeling among the various social groups. Ideas of liberty and equality cannot be attained without promoting fraternity. Fraternity alone can provide a durable social base for justice. Initiating and strengthening fraternity needs a fresh political imagination. While interest-based mobilizations have achieved various degrees of success in providing mobility and better life-chances to hitherto marginalized social groups, we have collectively failed to overcome prejudices, as we argued with regard to the issue of Dalit-Muslim unity in the previous essay, and enrich trust and initiate a positive dialogue.
The latter can be achieved not just through a discourse on liberty and equality but by progressively bringing varied cultural groups closer to each other. The emphasis on difference in modern democracies has to move towards commonality and commonness. Recognizing and reconciling with commonness is as important as legitimizing differences because celebrating commonness provides for a durable basis for dignity. The new discourse on development is providing for one such opportunity though without any sustained debate on the significance of fraternity. Development without fraternity would be a failed project. Taking a clue from Ambedkar, we need to lay priority on achieving a ‘cultural revolution’ which is best understood as finding roots for solidarity and fraternity, and not through either merely competing for identity claims or an empty rhetoric about development.
However, both Right-wing populism and independent political struggles of resistance have emptied the spaces required for a productive dialogue, creating a unique and a rather spectacular convergence between Right-wing populism, protest politics, and neoliberalism. Two glaring incidents that stood out as an instance of this were the mob violence mostly by Dalit-Bahujan followers following the arrest of Ram Rahim, leader of Dera Sacha Sauda in Haryana and Punjab, who was accused of rape and the protests led by the Vaishya community demanding the arrest of the Dalit-Bahujan intellectual Kancha Illiah in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, for referring to Vaishyas as ‘social smugglers’.9 On either side of the divide, in both these incidents, fraternity suffered the casualty.
Dera Sacha Sauda
The politics surrounding the violent upheaval in Haryana and Punjab following the conviction of the chief of the Dera Sachcha Sauda sect, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, for rape on 25 August 2017, brings forth some key issues that lie at the heart of Indian democracy.10 On the one hand were those who were baying for Ram Rahim’s conviction, insisting that the rule of law must be maintained and violent ‘mobs’ contained, and then, when that did not happen, squarely blamed the Haryana government, and specifically, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar for the failure to stop the marauding ‘mobs’.11
On the other were those like Sakshi Maharaj—who continued to stand by the convicted Ram Rahim ‘because crores of people have faith in him and only two women had complained that he had raped them’.12 Similarly, Haryana minister Manish Grover said, ‘anger is natural on the part of Ram Rahim’s followers as they continue to be devoted to him’.13 The media, on its part, was crying hoarse against the BJP for both taking Ram Rahim’s support for electoral gains and for deliberately allowing his followers, who were predominantly Dalit-Bahujans, to congregate and unleash violence following his conviction.14 The Punjab and Haryana High Court, too, was of the view that the Haryana government let Panchkula burn for ‘political gains’. Amidst all these, we had tweets from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind, and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu appealing for peace, without going into who was responsible for it all. The BJP made it clear that it wouldn’t dismiss Khattar as it believed that he did the best he could in the given situation.
The issue becomes complex if one considers the fact that the majority of Ram Rahim’s followers are Dalits, while those in the media, the judiciary, and others—calling out for strict action against the violent mob—belonged to the upper castes and class. There seems to have been a vertical divide between those supporting and those oppo
sing Ram Rahim along caste and class lines. This divide raises a few serious issues. What do we do with the continued, unabated faith in the magical powers of Ram Rahim and the fact that there is still a large section of marginalized people that believed that he has done no wrong? Yet another issue that needs to be put on table is whether or not the caste-based following of Ram Rahim mattered in the way the media went about dealing with the case, including ordering seizure of the Dera’s property to pay for the costs of the damage caused by its followers.15 Is there a hidden or an assumed bias against a section of society, notwithstanding the crime committed by Ram Rahim? Would it not be true to state that other godmen have not been dealt with in a similar manner—for instance, Sri Sri Ravishankar when he encroached the banks of Yamuna river? Or previously, the Puttaparthi Sai Baba in Andhra Pradesh, who had cases of murder lodged against him but no action was ever taken?16
Politically, not long ago, the Jats were responsible for far worse mayhem in Haryana, when they came out demanding OBC status for the community. The violent mobs then had allegedly raped many women travelling on the highway. But neither were those cases investigated nor were there any convictions.17 The media, although it did raise the issue, did not pursue it to its logical conclusion. Since not many cases of corruption or violation of law, like that of Salman Khan in the hit-and-run case, reach their logical conclusion, would there be no truth in believing that in the Dera violence case, the proactive role of the media had something to do with the caste factor? It is a different matter that it is the same BJP government that allowed the Jats to go scot-free then, and has now allowed the Dalit followers of Ram Rahim to run riots. Street violence, it appears, has been a mode of political mobilization by the BJP since the days of the Rath Yatra in the 1990s. Now, in Haryana, the BJP seemingly allowed the situation to go out of control possibly to placate the Dalit constituency. Would it not be legitimate for the BJP, even as we critique the street violence and loss of lives, to represent the faith, devotion, and concerns of the followers as a party involved in popular mobilization? Does democracy not compel them to carry and represent the voices of those who still refuse to believe that Ram Rahim has committed no wrong? Would a mass political party be wrong in representing their concerns, excluding the violence that was allowed to occur?
Fraternity to Violent Indifference
Finally, in all of these, the missing question has been that of the women who filed the cases against being sexually assaulted, who must have taken the tremendous personal risk to come out and fight it out over more than 10 years. Who would be speaking on behalf of these women? Neither the BJP nor the Dalit followers who have reposed their faith in Ram Rahim paused to ask, who are these women who were assaulted, and what their caste and class might be. In competing representations, the victims seem to have become voiceless. Those two women must be again faced with the same mortal fear that they did all these years. Why has the issue of gender violence taken a backseat in all of this? Why are we not debating about how and why women fall prey to Ram Rahims?
Electoral and popular politics come with sectarian mobilization, and in a highly stigmatized and hierarchical society like India, this sectarianism has turned into violent indifference towards those whom we don’t imagine belong to our immediate identity. Political parties continue to mobilize and stoke this violent indifference that has struck all sections of society. While the logic of identity politics empowers, it also overpowers and renders those without voice invisible. This mode of mobility with indifference allows valourization on the one hand, but erodes the very basis of collective action on the other.
‘Social Smugglers’ and ‘Argumentative Indians’
After the Dera Sacha Sauda incident, the next major incident with regards to the Dalit-Bahujans was a concerted attack on the well-known Dalit-Bahujan intellectual Kancha Ilaiah, organized by the Arya Vaishya community all across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in 2017. Following this, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr Chandra Babu Naidu, toyed with the idea of banning his book titled Vaishyas Are Social Smugglers.18 A TDP legislator demanded he be hanged in public. The chief minister of Telangana had maintained a stoic silence on the issue. What has been even more disturbing is the eerie silence across the board on the threats that Ilaiah had received. There was a general indifference to the gravity of the issue.
Ilaiah had offered a rare critique that includes the Ambanis, Adanis, and even Amit Shah as Baniyas who have accumulated wealth. In a sense, Ilaiah was providing a social narrative to an abstract political economy critique of growing inequalities in capitalism. It is caste that provides the matrix for accumulation, which is generally overlooked in the Left-liberal critiques of the processes of accumulation. In fact, this critique of Ilaiah gained a renewed significance since not many Left-liberals were able to stand up to the pressures of taking on the corporate, as witnessed in the crisis in the well-known journal Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) resulting in the ouster of its editor, known for his investigative journalism for publishing an article against the Adani group.19 In short, Illiah argued that many of these corporates gained wealth through the caste advantage they had and kept the wealth within their caste community. Thereby, he drew a similarity between smugglers who stole wealth out of the country and these industrialists were ‘social smugglers’ who stole and kept the wealth within their own community. Arya Vaishyas took objection to being referred to as social smugglers, instead of recognizing them as creators of wealth who contributed to the general well-being of the society.
Soon after, there were calls for freedom of speech, by Ilaiah himself and others. We must however move a step further from this liberal rant to ask ourselves—what is the social basis that is necessary to nurture an ethos of free speech and dialogue and a culture of debate for the ‘argumentative Indian’ to be alive and kicking?
In Europe, free speech was an ideal that went along with a social democratic character of the state. The middle classes in Europe had a stake in free speech to preserve institutions in order to institutionalize rule of law and social equality. In India, in contrast, after neoliberal reforms, we have been looking for secularism without a welfare state, and free speech amidst growing social and economic inequalities. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman notes that till the 1970s, the displacement from ‘primitive accumulation’ was slower than the number of jobs created through industrialization and afterwards, it was the other way round. India is witnessing this process of mass displacement and fewer jobs being created leading to a social anomaly of the explosion of aspirations and implosion of opportunities. Middle classes and social elites from other so-called lower castes in India expanded with the onset of the neo-liberal order. Pervasive insecurity has become the hallmark of both the traditional caste-Hindu elites, like the Brahmins and Banias that Ilaiah is referring to, as much as the late entrants such as the Dalit-Bahujans and also the intermediary castes such as the Jats, Patels, Marathas, and others who have recently moved up the social and economic order and are facing threats from both neo-liberal order and demands for social and economic equality from below. Neo-liberalism’s singular ‘success’ has been in destroying the shared ethos that a social democratic welfare regime was putting in place, even if that was under the patronage of the dominant social elites. Social Darwinism became instituted along with political space for mobilizations for social mobility and equality. In such a scenario, we do not have social classes that have a deep conviction in free speech and dialogue as a necessary mode of social upliftment and preservation of democratic ethos.
Chanakya and Social Darwinism
This top-down process becomes further entwined with the bottom-up mobilization, especially by the Dalit-Bahujans, which is struggling to find a space and force its presence within this dominant narrative. Dalit-Bahujans do not have the social gestation necessary to lay a path outside the dominant pragmatic paradigm. They have, consciously and unconsciously, willingly-unwillingly become part of this ethos of social Darwinism, wanton indifference, a
nd self-imposed ghettoization. The dormant or mezzanine social elites within the subaltern castes are struggling to preserve the mobility gained through a singular focus on representation against the unabated pressure of being displaced by the neoliberal economic order lead by the dominant castes at one end and new demands from smaller social groups, including the Dalit-Bahujan women, within the Dalit-Bahujans at the other end. In order to preserve this tenuous mobility and visibility achieved through relentless struggle against the Brahminical order, Dalit-Bahujan politics has remained steadfast in protecting this space not only against intrusions from the dominant elites but also from other political fellow-travelers, including the Left and liberal discourses. They have been unsparing of alternative voices even from within the Dalit-Bahujan community. Scholars and public activists such as Gopal Guru and Anand Teltumbde too have been at the receiving end of their ire. Every criticism is equated with the attempts to pull down the mobility and block new and legitimate aspirations. The anxiety to preserve representation and social visibility achieved through reservations has cast a dark cloud on deliberative processes, including institutional arrangements that could be enabled for social empowerment. Universities such as Osmania today have 90% of Dalit-Bahujans as its students, while it has seen a sustained decline in its academic performance. It’s an intriguing coincidence that can be understood both in terms of abdication of responsibility to offer quality education by the caste-Hindu faculty and attacks on institutional arrangements as a target of mobilization by the Dalit-Bahujan student politics.
India After Modi Page 17
