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Annihilation of Caste : the force behind dalit movement
PRUTHVIRAJ KATTIMANI Patil Layout, Sedam Road, Kalaburgi 585105
Abstract
Annihilating Caste’ is perhaps the most eminent and desirable social and political objective that has
confronted progressive forces in Indian society, especially since the country’s independence in 1947.
Among all political forces, Ambedkarites and communists have played a prominent role in seeking an
end to caste-based oppression in the country and yet these two forces have failed to see eye to eye on
most issues that fall in their political trajectories. The author uses a recent conversation that he had
with an Ambedkarite friend on identity politics as a pretext to tease out tensions that exist between
Ambedkarites and communists. Issues thrown up by the conversation have been elaborated upon in
order to attain some understanding of the path that can be used to achieve the unfulfilled task of
‘annihilating caste’ to paraphrase Amedkar’s immortal phrase.
Keywords caste, Ambedkar, communists, class, annihilation
Introduction
In a letter dated 12 December 1935, the secretary of the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (Society for the
Abolition of Caste system), an anti-caste Hindu reformist group organisation based in Lahore, invited
B. R. Ambedkar to deliver a speech on the caste system in India at their annual conference in 1936.
Ambedkar wrote the speech as an essay under the title "Annihilation of Caste" and sent in advance to
the organisers in Lahore for printing and distribution. The organisers found some of the content to be
objectionable towards the orthodox Hindu religion, so intemperate in the idiom and vocabulary used,
and so incendiary in promoting conversion away from Hinduism, that they sought the deletion of
large sections of the more controversial content endangering Brahmanical interests. They wrote to
Ambedkar seeking the removal of sections which they found, in their words, "unbearable.".
Ambedker declared in response that he "would not change a comma" of his text. After much
deliberation, the committee of organizers decided to cancel their annual conference in its entirety,
because they feared violence by orthodox Hindus at the venue if they held the event after withdrawing
the invitation to him. Ambedkar subsequently published 1500 copies of the speech as a book on 15
May 1936 at his own expense as Jat-Pat Todak Mandal failed to fulfill their word.
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In the essay, Ambedkar criticized the Hindu religion, its caste system and its religious texts which are
male dominant and spreading hatred and suppression of female interests. He argued that inter-caste
dining and inter-caste marriage is not sufenough annihilate the caste system, but that "the real method
of breaking up the Caste System was... to destroy the religious notions upon which caste is founded"
Many people confuse the Dalit movement with the anti-caste movement, often seeing them as one and
the same thing. They forget that caste is not exclusive to Dalits. Everyone who claims to be a Hindu
falls somewhere on the caste hierarchy and therefore is a part of the caste system.Dalits are at one end
of this spectrum – they have experienced extreme oppression, deprivation and humiliation. But at the
other end are those born in privileged families, their privilege lying in the fact that they aren’t
exploited on the basis of their caste identity. Instead, they often benefit from their privileged caste
status.These are the people who, thus, go on denying the existence of caste, not acknowledging the
role their privilege plays in cushioning their lives. As Anupama Rao puts it, being from a privileged
caste offers the “luxury” of ignorance of caste.Nobody who is a Hindu is free of caste. So how can the
caste system, which has trapped the entire Hindu society in its divisive structure and rigid identities,
be countered by Dalits alone? How can the caste system ever be annihilated without people at all
levels of the caste hierarchy fighting hard against it?
Objective:
This paper intends to explore the role played by Ambedkar in general and his views enunciated in
‘Annihilation of Caste’ in particular to Dalit revival
Dalit voices in search of representative
To say that the battle to annihilate caste is to be fought by the Dalits alone is to deliberately keep this
movement from reaching its full magnitude. It is also to say that the dirty problem (i.e. casteism) of
about 80% of the Indian population (the proportion of the Hindu population) should be cleaned by
only 17% of them (the proportion of the Scheduled Caste population), thereby re-enacting the caste
system when it comes to social reform. It is, therefore, crucial to acknowledge that an anti-caste
movement should not be limited to Dalits. Fighting the caste system is definitely an inherent part of
the Dalit movement, but the anti-caste movement needs to grow beyond it.There are other reasons
why it is more challenging for the Dalits to fight the caste system alone. Being systematically
sidelined and excluded from the cardinal spaces of a Hindu society – from its celebrations, rituals,
holy places, markets and settlements, intellectual endeavours and discourses, and positions of power –
even strong and rational Dalit voices like Ambedkar’s often get ignored.
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The caste system has trained the privileged and dominant caste members to remain deaf to the voices
of those they exploit and oppress. Just as a Hindi saying goes, if a horse becomes friends with the
grass, what will it eat? The caste system – which is designed to appropriate the benefits of the labour
of the toiling communities to a privileged few – ensures that the voices of those exploited remain
unheard so as to continue the system of exploitation. To leave the responsibility of dealing with this
system of exploitation to those who are most oppressed is to make it more difficult to end the caste
system.
It is also important to understand that although Dalits face the worst manifestations of the caste
system, it is mostly practiced and perpetuated by the privileged castes. To seek ways of caste
annihilation only within the Dalit communities is like trying to treat the symptoms instead of the root
cause of a problem.The root of the caste system is at the top of this hierarchy, from where the attitude
of superiority and discrimination initiates. Can any outside force cause a transformation in such
highly-guarded and closed communities of privileged castes that do not even welcome others into
their homes? How can we make sure that caste-based endogamy stops in privileged castes without
having someone from their own families argue against it? How can we make sure that such
communities do not practice casteist rituals without having someone who gets to attend these rituals
raise questions? How can we stop dominant castes from being abusive and violent to oppressed castes
without those leading attacks acknowledging and then dealing with their own hatred? How much can
we leave to government policies, their implementation, and surveillance without changing the will of
the people?
We do not have strong answers to these questions. If fighting caste would have been possible without
the involvement of people from all the levels of the caste structure, India would have been caste-free
by now. With a few exceptions, Dalits have been the only community in India persistently fighting
caste until now. And the harder they fight, the stronger the opposition they face. The violence they
face has also increased with their assertion to challenge the caste-imposed hierarchies. And still,
despite all the disabilities and deprivations they experience in this hostile society, they continue to
dedicatedly fight the caste system.It is, therefore, not surprising that the Dalit movement is considered
synonymous with the anti-caste movement. Indeed, the Dalit movement has been an anti-caste
movement in the true sense. Moreover, it is primarily from the Dalit movement and Dalit literature
that we get a critical understanding of caste and its manifestations in the modern times. The Dalit
movement has meticulously studied and documented the changing face of casteism with
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modernisation and globalisation. Without acknowledging these theoretical and practical contributions,
any attempt at understanding the caste system remains incomplete.
Caste system and reservation
However, seeing the Dalit movement and the anti-caste movement as one and the same has also cost
us dearly. The most flawed and yet the most common argument people use for not fighting the caste
system is that the reservation system reinforces the caste system, and, therefore, the caste system
cannot be done with until the reservation system exists.As a result, they instead focus all their efforts
and energy on fighting against the reservation system. People forget to see that the reservation system
is not a replica of the caste system, but is a response to it. The reservation system cannot even be
called a solution to the caste system as it does not counter the caste system entirely and effectively. It
is only a temporary safeguard for the people who are most exploited by the caste system. And,
therefore, as long as the caste system exists, measures like the reservation system are needed and will
exist.
Moreover, privileged caste people who are interested in making the reservation system more efficient
in the name of fighting the caste system are also mistaken. Their interference and involvement in
ensuring a better functioning reservation system does not help counter the caste system. All it does is
shift focus away from the casteism existing in their own communities. Only Dalits and other
oppressed communities remain under scrutiny all the time. The argument to stop the top layer among
SC, ST and OBC communities from accessing reservation is an example of this uncalled-for
interest.Even if the reservation system is improved and made more efficient, it is only going to benefit
the oppressed caste communities and not help the entire Hindu population constituting the caste
structure fight it. It thus makes sense to leave the reservation system alone to be worked upon by the
communities availing it and to trust their intellectual capabilities to research and improve the existing
system. The reservation system is an endeavour for Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi movements.
Distinguishing between these movements and the anti-caste movement, therefore, helps solve this
confusion. Similarly, other policy-level and ground-level efforts to safeguard the lives, rights and
interests of Dalits should be seen as part of the Dalit movement, and not directly as anti-caste efforts.
While these are equally valuable and much-needed endeavours, they do not directly attack at the core
of the caste system and, therefore, are not immediately effective in the annihilation of caste. These
measures only indirectly challenge the caste system by empowering Dalits to fight it effectively and
become formidable forces in the anti-caste movement.Then what constitutes the anti-caste movement
if not an active interest in strengthening or doing away with the reservation system? The anti-caste
movement is about actively exposing and fighting all sorts of beliefs and practices rooted in the caste
system. It is not about privileged caste communities expressing sympathy and charity for the
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oppressed castes. It is not about “studying” Dalit communities and their suffering, but about
identifying how the caste system gets practiced by the government, privileged communities, media
and intelligentsia to marginalise and exclude Dalit communities from important and coveted social
spaces.
For non-Dalits, it is about introspection, about initiating the process of the annihilation of caste within
their own communities. And most importantly, this movement is about privileged-caste communities
acknowledging and respecting the actions and leadership of Dalit activism. It is about listening to
their staunch critique of the caste system in Indian society and acting to address those critiques. Such
role of non-Dalits in the anti-caste movement is very important and needed for it to progress to its full
potential. Any interest of non-Dalits in the anti-caste movement without exposing, questioning and
destroying the caste-based beliefs and practices within their own communities and social spaces is a
fraud and should be called so. It is mainly to wake non-Dalits from their passivity when it comes to
fighting the caste system that it is now important to distinguish between the Dalit movement and the
anti-caste movement.
Ambedkar, real and unreal
The most interesting argument however came not from Dalits but, paradoxically, an upper caste
journalist (“B.R. Ambedkar, Arundhati Roy, and the politics of appropriation” by G. Sampath,
Livemint , March 18, 2014). Challenging Ms. Roy, it said that if she wanted the bauxite under the
Niyamgiri hills to be left to the Adivasis, why did she not leave Ambedkar who has been the only
possession of Dalits to Dalits themselves? Interestingly though, the implication of the argument can
be dangerous insofar as any engagement of the “other” defined as such on the basis of caste can be
dismissed as illegitimate. May be, Ambedkar symbolises the cultural good of Dalits, but still, to
ghettoise him to Dalits alone will mean downright disrespect to him and incalculable harm to the
cause of Dalits. Niyamgiri left to the Adivasis implies a progressive interrogation of the prevailing
developmental paradigm, while leaving Ambedkar to Dalits will mean retrogressive destruction of the
annihilation-agenda of Babasaheb Ambedkar.
The controversy has surprisingly gone past the main point — that it is the bland business logic of the
publisher that has fundamentally drawn Ms. Roy into writing the introduction. With her stature as a
Booker Prize awardee, later amplified by her fearless pro-people stands on various issues on various
occasions, the book was sure to go global. Moreover, it can well be imagined that her writing would
certainly create a controversy, as has happened before. All this would mean a bonanza for any
publisher in boosting sales of the book. Whether Navayana had consciously thought it out this way or
not, these established product strategies of a publisher cannot be grudged by anyone as, after all, s/he
has to follow the grammar of business. Notwithstanding the “anti-caste” tag Navayana tends to wear
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of late, publishing adulatory and cultish literature on Ambedkar is not the same thing as supporting
the annihilation of castes. Once this controversy raked up by a few dies down, the vast majority of
Dalits would rather take pride in the point that even Arundhati Roy joined them in worshipping their
god. Every such form of Ambedkar adulation has indeed been reinforcing the caste identity and
directly distances the annihilation project.
The acceptance of Ambedkar does not necessarily equate itself with the spread of an anti-caste ethos.
Today, Ambedkar certainly outshines every other leader in terms of public acceptance. No other
leader can rival him in the number of statues, pictures, congregations, books, research, organisations,
songs, or any other marker of popularity of/on him. Curiously, his picture has become a fixture even
in movies and television episodes. However, the incidences of casteism as indicated by cases of caste
discrimination, caste atrocities, caste associations and caste discourses, etc. also show parallel growth.
This paradoxical phenomenon can be explained only by separating the real Ambedkar from the unreal
one, cast into the icons constructed by vested interests to thwart the consciousness of radical change
ever germinating in Dalit masses. These icons package the enigmatic real Ambedkar into a simplistic
symbol: an architect of the Constitution, a great nationalist, the father of reservations, a staunch anti-
communist, a liberal democrat, a great parliamentarian, a saviour of Dalits, a bodhisattva, etc. These
icons of the harmless, status quo-ist Ambedkar have been proliferated all over and overshadow a
possible, radical view of the real Ambedkar.
Which Ambedkar?
Notwithstanding the intrigues behind the promotion of such icons by vested interests with active
support from the state, the evolution of Ambedkar, the pragmatist sans any ideological fixation, all
through his life, makes him intrinsically difficult to understand. A young Ambedkar who theorised
castes as the enclosed classes, the enclosure being provided by the system of endogamy and exogamy,
expecting the larger Hindu society to wake up and undertake social reforms like intermarriage in order
to open up castes into classes is in contrast to the post-Mahad Ambedkar, disillusioned by the rabid
reactions from caste Hindus, turning his sights to politics to accomplish his objective. Were his threats
of conversion to Islam for a separate political identity for Dalits, or to force caste Hindus to consider
social reforms? Then there is the Ambedkar of the 1930s, anxious to expand his constituency to the
working classes sans castes, who founded the Independent Labour Party (ILP), arguably the first Left
party in India, and walked with the communists but at the same time one who declared his resolve to
convert to some other religion to escape castes. What about the Ambedkar of the 1940s, who returns
to the caste, dissolves the ILP and forms the Scheduled Castes Federation, shuns agitational politics
and joins the colonial government as labour minister or the one who wrote States and Minorities ,
propounding state socialism be hardcoded into the proposed Constitution of free India? Or Ambedkar,
the staunchest opponent of the Congress or the one who cooperated with the Congress in joining the
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all-party government and accepted its support to get into the Constituent Assembly? Or even the
Ambedkar who developed the representation logic culminating in reservations, expecting that a few
advanced elements from among Dalits would help the community progress or the one who publicly
lamented that educated Dalits had let him down? Or the Ambedkar who was the architect of the
Constitution and advised Dalits to adopt only constitutional methods for a resolution of their problems
or the one who disowned it in the harshest possible terms and spoke of being the first person to burn it
down? And finally, the Ambedkar who kept referring to Marx as a quasi benchmark to assess his
decisions? Or the one who embraced Buddhism and created the ultimate bulwark against communism
in India to use the words of one of his scholars, Eleanor Zelliot, or even the one who would
favourably compare Buddha and Marx just a few days before bidding adieu to the world, saying their
goal was the same but that they differed in the ways of achieving them — Buddha’s being better than
Marx’s? These are just a few broad vignettes of him, problematic in typifying him in a simplistic
manner. If one goes deeper, one is bound to face far more serious problems.
Ambedkar is surely needed as long as the virus of caste lingers in this land but not as a reincarnation
of the old one as most Dalits emotionally reflect on. Not even in the way Ms. Roy would want him to
come now and urgently. He will have to be necessarily constructed to confront the far messier
problem of contemporary castes than that obtained in his times.
Conclusion:
The Caste system is no doubt an economic institution as stated by the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in his very
famous book ‘Annihilation of Caste’ and before that he has given a very systematic and scientific
analysis of the origin and growth of the caste system in India in his very important book ‘Castes in
India’, are very important and relevant contributions of Dr. Ambedkar in literature. The present paper
is an honest attempt to provide the economic analysis of the caste system as an economic institution
given by Dr. Ambedkar especially in the first book mentioned above. Likewise the paper also presents
the relevance of the economic analysis of the caste as an economic organization in the context of the
present India. This paper adequately proves that Dr. Ambedkar’s economic analysis of the caste
system is very much important today also, and more importantly it has lot of utility and significance
in the present Indian society. But the present study is solely based on the secondary sources of the
data, and it did not consider the primary sources of data and information at all. The study should also
have the primary data support, which increases the scope, reliability, application and importance of
the study. It is therefore there is very large scope in undertaking the number of studies on the present
relevance of the economic analysis of the caste based on the primary data and information in the
context of India, which is thinking of inclusive growth, and economic supreme power in the World.
This is possible through the further research in the form of the number of research papers, research
projects, dissertations and theses as well on this important topic.
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References
1. Rajshekhar, V. T. (2003). Dalit – The Black Untouchables of India (2nd ed.). Clarity Press.
ISBN 0-932863-05-1.
2. Joshi, Barbara R. (1986). Untouchable!: Voices of the Dalit Liberation Movement. Zed
Books. ISBN 978-0-86232-460-5.
3. Omvedt, Gail (1994). Dalits and the Democratic Revolution – Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit
Movement in Colonial India. Sage Publications. ISBN 81-7036-368-3.
4. Samaddara, Ranabira; Shah, Ghanshyam (2001). Dalit Identity and Politics. Sage
Publications. ISBN 978-0-7619-9508-1.
5. Franco, Fernando; Macwan, Jyotsna; Ramanathan, Suguna (2004). Journeys to Freedom:
Dalit Narratives. Popular Prakashan. ISBN 978-81-85604-65-7.
6. Limbale, Sharankumar (2004). Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature. Orient Longman.
ISBN 81-250-2656-8.
7. Zelliot, Eleanor (2005). From Untouchable to Dalit – Essays on the Ambedkar Movement.
Manohar. ISBN 81-7304-143-1.
8. Sharma, Pradeep K. (2006). Dalit Politics and Literature. Shipra Publications. ISBN 978-81-
7541-271-2.
9. Omvedt, Gail (2006). Dalit Visions: The Anti-caste Movement and the Construction of an
Indian Identity. Orient Longman. ISBN 978-81-250-2895-6.
10. Michael, S. M. (2007). Dalits in Modern India – Vision and Values. Sage Publications. ISBN
978-0-7619-3571-1.
11. Prasad, Amar Nath; Gaijan, M. B. (2007). Dalit Literature: A Critical Exploration. ISBN 81-
7625-817-2.
12. Mani, Braj Ranjan (2005). Debrahmanising History: Dominance and Resistance in Indian
Society. Manohar Publishers and Distributors. ISBN 81-7304-640-9.
13. Ghosh, Partha S. (July 1997). "Positive Discrimination in India: A Political Analysis" (PDF).
Ethnic Studies Report. XV (2). Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 March 2004.
14. Rege, Sharmila (2006). Writing Caste Writing Gender:Narrating Dalit Women's Testimonios.
Zubaan. ISBN 9788189013011.
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Babasaheb Ambedkar voice of the Dalit and his refutation of
upper-caste hegemony
PRUTHVIRAJ KATTIMANI Patil Layout, Sedam Road, Kalaburgi 585105
Abstract
Through this paper author intends to look into Ambedkar’s thoughts on casteism and in particular his
debates with Gandhi on caste system and Dalit assertion. Ambedkar’s point is that to believe in the
Hindu shastras and to simultaneously think of oneself as liberal or moderate is a contradiction in
terms. When the text of Annihilation of Caste was published, the man who is often called the
‘Greatest of Hindus’ — Mahatma Gandhi — responded to Ambedkar’s provocation. Their debate was
not a new one. Both men were their generation’s emissaries of a profound social, political and
philosophical conflict that had begun long ago and has still by no means ended. Ambedkar, the
Untouchable, was heir to the anticaste intellectual tradition that goes back to 200–100 BCE. Gandhi, a
Vaishya, born into a Gujarati Bania family, was the latest in a long tradition of privileged-caste Hindu
reformers and their organisations.
Putting the Ambedkar–Gandhi debate into context for those unfamiliar with its history and its
protagonists will require detours into their very different political trajectories. For this was by no
means just a theoretical debate between two men who held different opinions. Each represented very
separate interest groups, and their battle unfolded in the heart of India’s national movement. What
they said and did continues to have an immense bearing on contemporary politics. Their differences
were (and remain) irreconcilable. Both are deeply loved and often deified by their followers. It pleases
neither constituency to have the other’s story told, though the two are inextricably linked. Ambedkar
was Gandhi’s most formidable adversary. He challenged him not just politically or intellectually, but
also morally. To have excised Ambedkar from Gandhi’s story, which is the story we all grew up on, is
a travesty. Equally, to ignore Gandhi while writing about Ambedkar is to do Ambedkar a disservice,
because Gandhi loomed over Ambedkar’s world in myriad and un-wonderful ways.
Key words: casteism, anticaste, Dalit, dalit cause, feminized, chatur-varna, varnashrama
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Introduction
The Indian national movement, as we know, had a stellar cast. It has even been the subject of a
Hollywood blockbuster that won eight Oscars. In India, we have made a pastime of holding opinion
polls and publishing books and magazines in which our constellation of founding fathers (mothers
don’t make the cut) are arranged and rearranged in various hierarchies and formations. Mahatma
Gandhi does have his bitter critics, but he still tops the charts. For others to even get a look-in, the
Father of the Nation has to be segregated, put into a separate category: Who, after Mahatma Gandhi,
is the greatest Indian?Dr. Ambedkar (who, incidentally, did not even have a walk-on part in Richard
Attenborough’s Gandhi, though the film was co-funded by the Indian government) almost always
makes it into the final heat. He is chosen more for the part he played in drafting the Indian
Constitution than for the politics and the passion that were at the core of his life and thinking. You
definitely get the sense that his presence on the lists is the result of positive discrimination, a desire to
be politically correct.The fact is that neither Ambedkar nor Gandhi allows us to pin easy labels on
them that say ‘pro-imperialist’ or ‘anti-imperialist’. Their conflict complicates and perhaps enriches
our understanding of imperialism as well as the struggle against it.
History has been kind to Gandhi. He was deified by millions of people in his own lifetime. Gandhi’s
godliness has become a universal and, so it seems, an eternal phenomenon. It’s not just that the
metaphor has outstripped the man. It has entirely reinvented him. (Which is why a critique of Gandhi
need not automatically be taken to be a critique of all Gandhians.) Gandhi has become all things to all
people: Obama loves him and so does the Occupy Movement. Anarchists love him and so does the
Establishment. Narendra Modi loves him and so does Rahul Gandhi. The poor love him and so do the
rich.He is the Saint of the Status Quo.
Objective:
This paper seeks to explore the key points of Ambedkar’s views on caste hegemony and his debates
with Gandhi to further Dalit Cause
Gandhi v/s Ambedkar
Gandhi’s life and his writing — 48,000 pages bound into ninety-eight volumes of collected works —
have been disaggregated and carried off, event by event, sentence by sentence, until no coherent
narrative remains, if indeed there ever was one. The trouble is that Gandhi actually said everything
and its opposite. To cherry pickers, he offers such a bewildering variety of cherries that you have to
wonder if there was something the matter with the tree.
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For example, there’s his well-known description of an arcadian paradise in The Pyramid vs. the
Oceanic Circle, written in 1946:
Independence begins at the bottom. Thus every village will be a republic or panchayat having full
powers. It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its
affairs even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world… In this structure composed of
innumerable villages there will be ever-widening, never-ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid
with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the
individual always ready to perish for the village… Therefore the outermost circumference will not
wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength
from it.
Then there is his endorsement of the caste system in 1921 in Navajivan. It is translated from Gujarati
by Ambedkar (who suggested more than once that Gandhi “deceived” people, and that his writings in
English and Gujarati could be productively compared):
Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit on enjoyment. Caste does not allow a person to
transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as
inter-dining and inter-marriage… These being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to
destry the Caste System.
Is this not the very antithesis of “ever-widening and never ascending circles”? It’s true that these
statements were made twenty-five years apart. Does that mean that Gandhi reformed? That he
changed his views on caste? He did, at a glacial pace. From believing in the caste system in all its
minutiae, he moved to saying that the four thousand separate castes should ‘fuse’ themselves into the
four varnas (what Ambedkar called the ‘parent’ of the caste system). Towards the end of Gandhi’s life
(when his views were just views and did not run the risk of translating into political action), he said
that he no longer objected to inter-dining and intermarriage between castes. Sometimes he said that
though he believed in the varna system, a person’s varna ought to be decided by their worth and not
their birth (which was also the Arya Samaj position). Ambedkar pointed out the absurdity of this idea:
“How are you going to compel people who have achieved a higher status based on their birth, without
reference to their worth, to vacate that status? How are you going to compel people to recognise the
status due to a man in accordance to his worth who is occupying a lower status based on his birth?”
He went on to ask what would happen to women, whether their status would be decided upon their
own worth or their husbands’ worth.
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Gandhi never decisively and categorically renounced his belief in chaturvarna, the system of four
varnas. Still, why not eschew the negative and concentrate instead on what was good about Gandhi,
use it to bring out the best in people? It is a valid question, and one that those who have built shrines
to Gandhi have probably answered for themselves. After all, it is possible to admire the work of great
composers, writers, architects, sportspersons and musicians whose views are inimical to our own. The
difference is that Gandhi was not a composer or writer or musician or a sportsman. He offered himself
to us as a visionary, a mystic, a moralist, a great humanitarian, the man who brought down a mighty
empire armed only with Truth and Righteousness. How do we reconcile the idea of the non-violent
Gandhi, the Gandhi who spoke Truth to Power, Gandhi the Nemesis of Injustice, the Gentle Gandhi,
the Androgynous Gandhi, Gandhi the Mother, the Gandhi who (allegedly) feminised politics and
created space for women to enter the political arena, the eco-Gandhi, the Gandhi of the ready wit and
some great one-liners — how do we reconcile all this with Gandhi’s views (and deeds) on caste?
What do we do with this structure of moral righteousness that rests so comfortably on a foundation of
utterly brutal, institutionalised injustice? Is it enough to say Gandhi was complicated, and let it go at
that? There is no doubt that Gandhi was an extraordinary and fascinating man, but during India’s
struggle for freedom, did he really speak Truth to Power? Did he really ally himself with the poorest
of the poor, the most vulnerable of his people?
“It is foolish to take solace in the fact that because the Congress is fighting for the freedom of India, it
is, therefore, fighting for the freedom of the people of India and of the lowest of the low,” Ambedkar
said. “The question whether the Congress is fighting for freedom has very little importance as
compared to the question for whose freedom is the Congress fighting.”In 1931, when Ambedkar met
Gandhi for the first time, Gandhi questioned him about his sharp criticism of the Congress (which, it
was assumed, was tantamount to criticising the struggle for the Homeland). “Gandhiji, I have no
Homeland,” was Ambedkar’s famous reply. “No Untouchable worth the name will be proud of this
land.”
The aftermath
History has been unkind to Ambedkar. First it contained him, and then it glorified him. It has made
him India’s Leader of the Untouchables, the King of the Ghetto. It has hidden away his writings. It
has stripped away the radical intellect and the searing insolence.All the same, Ambedkar’s followers
have kept his legacy alive in creative ways. One of those ways is to turn him into a million mass-
produced statues. The Ambedkar statue is a radical and animate object. It has been sent forth into the
world to claim the space — both physical and virtual, public and private — that is the Dalit’s due.
Dalits have used Ambedkar’s statue to assert their civil rights — to claim land that is owed them,
water that is theirs, commons they are denied access to. The Ambedkar statue that is planted on the
commons and rallied around always holds a book in its hand. Significantly, that book is not
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Annihilation of Caste with its liberating, revolutionary rage. It is a copy of the Indian Constitution that
Ambedkar played a vital role in conceptualising — the document that now, for better or for worse,
governs the life of every single Indian citizen. Their divergent views came to a head after the British
government granted the separate electorate to the Depressed Classes on 16 August 1932. It had
Ambedkar’s support; Gandhi was vehemently opposed to it because it would divide the Hindus. In
protest, he went on a fast unto death on 20 September 1932. Four days later, Ambedkar caved in,
agreeing to abide by the Poona Pact, which abrogated the separate electorate. In return, the Depressed
Classes were granted reserved seats far higher in number than the legislators they would have elected
under the separate electorate.The Poona Pact symbolised Gandhi’s triumph over Ambedkar.
Thereafter, the Congress went in for the kill in the 1937 elections. It fielded the reputed Scheduled
Caste bowler, Palwankar Baloo, against Ambedkar, who was contesting from a reserved seat in
Bombay. On India’s unofficial tour of England in 1911, Baloo had bagged as many as 114 wickets, a
feat that instantaneously turned him into a Depressed Classes hero.Fielding Baloo was akin to cutting
Ambedkar deep. In his magisterial A Corner Of A Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British
sport, author Ramachandra Guha points out that it was Ambedkar who had delivered the welcome
speech in a reception that Bombay’s Depressed Classes had organised for Baloo on his return from
England. Baloo was also among the two who represented Ambedkar in the negotiations to stitch up
the Poona Pact.Undoubtedly, the Congress wanted to teach a lesson to the emerging leader who had
the temerity to lock horns with Gandhi. For one, as Guha writes, the list of candidates for Bombay
was “vetted by the Congress strongman, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel”. Launching a vicious campaign,
the Congress depicted Ambedkar as one who drew support from anti-nationals and reactionary forces
and stood against freedom. It is hard to tell whether Gandhi endorsed his party’s “defeat Ambedkar
mission” — but he did not seem to have opposed it either.Ambedkar polled just 2120 votes more than
Baloo to emerge victorious, made possible because the third candidate, a labour leader, spirited away
nearly 10,000 votes. The Congress had its revenge in the 1946 elections — Ambedkar was defeated.
Gandhi’s party did not seem interested in sending Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly.In fact,
Ambedkar was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Bengal province, courtesy Jogendra
Nath Mandal, a Dalit leader and Pakistan’s first law minister. Ambedkar was then inducted as
chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution, a role he acquitted with such aplomb that his
stature was enhanced beyond his community. It would seem Gandhi did not oppose Ambedkar’s
induction as chairman.But Ambedkar resigned from the Nehru ministry over the Hindu Code Bill in
1951. In the general election of 1952, the Congress pitted against Ambedkar his personal assistant of
many years, Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar. It split the Scheduled Castes, for Kajrolkar, like Baloo,
belonged to the Chamar caste. Ambedkar lost by 15,000 votes, and failed to win a Lok Sabha by-
election two years later.
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This historical memory has prompted the Ambedkarites to pit their icon against that of the Congress
and the nation — Gandhi. On the face of it, the crowds that Ambedkar’s birth anniversary draws
testify that, as far as winning over the Dalits goes, his vision has been proved right, not Gandhi’s. The
most eloquent symbol of it is that Dalits no longer use the Gandhian term Harijan (children of God) to
describe themselves, discerning in it a humiliatingly patronising undertone.From this perspective then,
Gandhi, in death, has been deserted by Dalits, whose marginalisation he struggled to overcome within
the framework of revitalised Hinduism. Ambedkar has triumphed because his vision not only
encapsulates the lived experience of the social conflict that Dalits encounter, but also because the
story of his rise to eminence from his humble origin symbolises their aspirations.Let alone Dalits,
what is incomprehensible is that Gandhi’s mass support has continued to shrink. Caste, after all, was
just an aspect of Gandhi’s politics. He spearheaded the struggle for freedom, championed
nonviolence, tried to forge an amicable Hindu-Muslim relationship, and provided a blueprint of
economic development that was remarkably different from the Western paradigm. There should have
been an enduring romance for Gandhi, as is the case with Ambedkar. Alas, Gandhi seems to bewitch
only academicians, evident from tomes written on him.It is possible that decades after India’s
Independence, we take for granted the freedom that Gandhi crafted for us at such a low price. It is
even possible to argue that Gandhi has been “tamed” and turned into a symbol of the state and the
political class. Not for nothing then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose 2 October 2014 to launch
the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Given the declining regard for the political class, Gandhi might just have
suffered by association.
Appreciation
No less a reason is the steady decline of the Congress, which has taken down Gandhi with itself. As
also perhaps the cult of Nehru-Gandhi that Indira Gandhi fashioned, leaving the Congress with little
resolve to reinvent Gandhian ideas in the modern context.But there are also structural reasons.
Regardless of the academicians’ debate, Gandhi was appropriated by the privileged upper castes for
furthering their own interests. It included not just the industrialists, but also the landed class. Swami
Sahajanand, Bihar’s foremost peasant leader, suggests in his memoir that Gandhi turned his gaze
away from the exploitative ways of zamindars. Perhaps the need of the time was to build the widest
possible social coalition to challenge the British Empire.If the upper castes misused Gandhi and his
popularity for their selfish ends, their veritable en bloc migration to the Sangh Parivar since 1990, as
also of some sections of the OBCs, has reduced him to being a leader who was proud of his religion
and unabashedly practiced it. Forgotten in this appropriation is Gandhi’s penchant to reinterpret
Hinduism, his quest for social reform. His inclusion in the Sangh’s pantheon threatens to turn him into
a caricature.Then there is the growing middle class which finds Gandhi’s economic blueprint quirky,
best to laugh at; and Gandhi’s principle of ahimsa a threat to their masculinity, a surreptitious project
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to turn them effeminate, one reason why Nathuram Godse pumped bullets into him. Masculine
assertion also frames the increasingly fraught relationship between Hindus and Muslims, which has
inevitably eaten into the Gandhian plank of composite nationalism.It is hard to square up to the fact
that the name of Gandhi, at a popular level, is recited as a lament, as a dirge, after every incident of
communal violence. To the streets people go chanting, in Hindi, these words, “Gandhi we are
ashamed, your killers are still alive.”Indeed, we should be ashamed because Gandhi conceived ahimsa
as the weapon of the strong. It signifies a person’s willingness to court death for a cause he or she
believes in, accepting lathis and bullets without retaliating. The Gandhian ideals were perhaps
irretrievably buried the day the Sabaramati Ashram — Gandhi’s very own creation — closed its gates
during the Gujarat riots. It should have been, as the late reformer Asghar Ali Engineer wrote, the
principal sanctuary for victims fleeing the murderous marauders.In an interview to this writer two
years ago, political psychologist Ashis Nandy predicted that the catastrophe of climate change, largely
because of the unbridled exploitation of nature, would see the rise of hundred varieties of Gandhi.
Some hope that! Until then, it won’t be wrong to say that Ambedkar today influences the hearts, and
thoughts, and actions, of far more Indians than Gandhi does, a fact highlighted by the public responses
to 2 October and 14 April every year.
Using the Constitution as a subversive object is one thing. Being limited by it is quite another.
Ambedkar’s circumstances forced him to be a revolutionary and to simultaneously put his foot in the
door of the establishment whenever he got a chance to. His genius lay in his ability to use both these
aspects of himself nimbly, and to great effect. Viewed through the prism of the present, however, it
has meant that he left behind a dual and sometimes confusing legacy: Ambedkar the Radical, and
Ambedkar the Father of the Indian Constitution. Constitutionalism can come in the way of revolution.
And the Dalit revolution has not happened yet. We still await it. Before that there cannot be any other,
not in India.
Conclusion
Ambedkar himself had originally felt that with universal suffrage, reserved seats would be sufficient.
But universal suffrage was not given, and the issues at the conference revolved around separate
electorates. Gandhi was reconciled to giving these to Muslims; he had already accepted their identity
as a separate community. Not so for Dalits.When the Ramsay MacDonald Award was announced
giving separate electorates to Dalits, he protested with a fast to death. And this brought him into direct
confrontation with Ambedkar.For Ambedkar, the problem was simple. If Gandhi died, in villages
throughout India there would be pogroms directed against Dalits and a massacre. Ambedkar
surrendered, and the Poona Pact formalized this with reserved seats for Dalits – more than they would
have had otherwise, but in constituencies now controlled by caste Hindus.
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Ambedkar wrote, many years later, in What Congress and Gandhi have Done to the Untouchables,
“There was nothing noble in the fast. It was a foul and filthy act. The Fast was not for the benefit of
the Untouchables. It was against them and was the worst form of coercion against a helpless people to
give up the constitutional safeguards [which had been awarded to them].” He felt that the whole
system of reserved seats, then, was useless. For years afterwards the problem of political
representation remained chronic. Ambedkar continued to ask for separate electorates, but futilely. By
the end of his life, at the time of writing his “Thoughts on Linguistic States” in 1953, he gave these up
also and looked to something like proportional representation. But the Poona Pact remained a symbol
of bitter defeat, and Gandhi from that time on was looked on as one of the strongest enemies of the
Untouchables by Ambedkar and his followers.
The confrontation between Gandhi and Ambedkar did not stop with these issues and events. The final
difference between the two was over India’s path of development itself. Gandhi believed, and argued
for, a village-centered model of development, one which would forsake any hard path of industrialism
but seek to achieve what he called “Ram raj”, an idealized harmonized traditional village community.
Ambedkar, in contrast, wanted economic development and with it industrialization as the basic
prerequisite for the abolition of poverty. He insisted always that it should be worker-friendly, not
capitalistic, at times arguing for “state socialism”, (though he later would accept some forms of
private ownership of industry) and he remained to the end of his life basically a democratic socialist.
To him, villages were far from being an ideal; rather they were “cesspools,” a cauldron of
backwardness, tradition and bondage. Untouchables had to escape from villages, and India also had to
reject her village past. In sum, there were important and irreconcilable differences between Gandhi
and Ambedkar. Two great personages of Indian history were posed against one another, giving
alternative models of humanity and society. The debate goes on!
References:
1. Ahir, D. C. (1 September 1990). The Legacy of Dr. Ambedkar. Delhi: B. R. Publishing. ISBN
978-81-7018-603-8.
2. Ajnat, Surendra (1986). Ambedkar on Islam. Jalandhar: Buddhist Publ.
3. Beltz, Johannes; Jondhale, S. (eds.). Reconstructing the World: B.R. Ambedkar and
Buddhism in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
4. Bholay, Bhaskar Laxman (2001). Dr Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar: Anubhav Ani Athavani.
Nagpur: Sahitya Akademi.
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5. Fernando, W. J. Basil (2000). Demoralisation and Hope: Creating the Social Foundation for
Sustaining Democracy—A comparative study of N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) Denmark
and B. R. Ambedkar (1881–1956) India. Hong Kong: AHRC Publication. ISBN 978-962-
8314-08-9.
6. Chakrabarty, Bidyut. "B.R. Ambedkar" Indian Historical Review (Dec 2016) 43#2 pp 289–
315. doi:10.1177/0376983616663417.
7. Gautam, C. (2000). Life of Babasaheb Ambedkar (Second ed.). London: Ambedkar Memorial
Trust.
8. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2004). Ambedkar and Untouchability. Analysing and Fighting Caste.
New York: Columbia University Press.
9. Kasare, M. L. Economic Philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. New Delhi: B. I. Publications.
10. Kuber, W. N. Dr. Ambedkar: A Critical Study. New Delhi: People's Publishing House.
11. Kumar, Aishwary. Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy (2015).
12. Kumar, Ravinder. "Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Poona pact, 1932." South Asia: Journal of
South Asian Studies 8.1–2 (1985): 87–101.
13. Michael, S.M. (1999). Untouchable, Dalits in Modern India. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN
978-1-55587-697-5.
14. Nugent, Helen M. (1979) "The communal award: The process of decision-making." South
Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 2#1-2 (1979): 112-129.
15. Omvedt, Gail (1 January 2004). Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India. ISBN 978-0-670-
04991-2.
16. Sangharakshita, Urgyen (1986). Ambedkar and Buddhism. ISBN 978-0-904766-28-8. PDF
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Pan India Dalit movements and contribution of Karnataka
PRUTHVIRAJ KATTIMANI Patil Layout, Sedam Road, Kalaburgi 585105
Abstract
Power can be cut by only power. Hence, to attain power, the first thing required is knowledge. It was
thus, Phule and Ambedkar gave the main emphasis on the education of the Dalits, which will not only
bestow them with reason and judgement capacity, but also political power, and thereby socio—
economic status and a life of dignity. They knew that the political strategy of gaining power is either
an end in itself or a means to other ends. In other words, if the Dalits have power, then they do not
have to go begging to the upper castes. Also they will get greater economic and educational
opportunities.
The upper castes enjoy social power, regardless of their individual circumstances with respect to their
control over material resources, through their linkages with the other caste fellows in the political
system –in the bureaucracy , judiciary and legislature. And so , the Dalits require power to control the
economic scenario and thereby the politics of the country.
Phule thus added that without knowledge, intellect was lost; without intellect, morality was lost;
without morality, dynamism was lost; without dynamism, money was lost; without money Shudras
were degraded, all this misery and disaster were due to the lack of knowledge. Inspired by Thomas
Paine‘s ―”The rights of Man”, Phule sought the way of education which can only unite the Dalits in
their struggle for equality.
The movement was carried forward by Ambedkar who contested with Gandhi to give the Dalits, their
right to equality. In the words of Ambedkar, Educate, Organize and agitate. Education, the major
source of reason, inflicts human mind with extensive knowledge of the world, whereby, they can
know the truth of a phenomena, that is reality. It therefore, would help to know the truth of
Brahmanism in Indian society, and will make them to agitate against caste based inhuman practices.
Only when agitation begin, in the real sense, can the Dalit be able to attain power and win the
movement against exploitation.
Gandhis politics was unambigouslycentring around the defence of caste with the preservation of
social order in Brahmanical pattern. He was fighting for the rights of Dalits but was not ready for
inter-caste marriage.
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Key words: Radicalism ,Naxalites, BSP, DSS,Dalit Mahasabha, untouchability, avarna, savarna
Introduction
The human rights violation in this country is one of the major problems. The socio-economic milieu
of Indian society is inherently hostile towards protection of human rights of Dalits. It is the cast and
Varna system of social stratification which promotes the societal violation of Dalit human rights. The
rule laid down by the Hindu law giver, Manu, is that there are only four Varnas of Hindus and there is
not to be fifth Varna . The four Varnas are Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras.Gandhiji and
others in their campaign against un-touchability contended that untouchables and scheduled Tribes
fall under the fourth Varna namely Sudras on the basis of Manus law of stratification. Dr.Ambedkar
has pointed out that this theory is not acceptable because Manu speaks of untouchables as varn-baya
which means those outside the Varna system. The four classes of Hindus are called Savarnas while
those outside the four classes like the untouchables are called Avarnas.Manu has stated in his smiriti
that the devilling’s of the Chandals shall be outside the village and their wealth shall be dogs and
donkeys, their dress shall be the garments of the dead, they shall eat their food in broken dishes and
black iron shall be their ornaments, they must wander from place to place and they shall not sleep in
villages and towns at nights. 3 It is well known that in villages the untouchables live in separate
localities, while other castes live in the main village. It cannot, thus be denied that untouchables are
not part of Hindu society and they must remain separate and segregated.
Dalit (oppressed or broken) is not a new word. Apparently it was used in 1930s as a Hindi and
Marathi translation of „Depressed Classes‟, the term the British used for what are now called the
scheduled castes. Dr.Ambedkarchoose the term Broken man as English translation Dalits in his
paper- “The Untouchables” in 1948.The Dalit Panthers revived the term Dalit‟ and include in it the
scheduled tribes in 1973 in their manifesto. Buta Singh (ex- Chairman National Commission for
Scheduled Castes) said the word Dalit is an unconstitutional
Objective:
This paper is an attempt to look at dalit movements in their historical and social context and to find
important players of this struggke
Dalit Panthers
Dalit Panther as a social organization was founded by NamdevDhasal in April 1972 in Mumbai,
which saw its heyday in the 1970s and through the 80s.Dalit Panther is inspired by Black Panther
Party, a revolutionary movement amongst African-Americans, which emerged in the United States
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and functioned from 1966-1982.The name of the organization was borrowed from the ‘Black Panther’
Movement of the USA. They called themselves “Panthers” because they were supposed to fight for
their rights like panthers, and not get suppressed by the strength and might of their oppressors.
The US Black Panther Party always acknowledged and supported the Dalit Panther Party through the
US Black Panther Newspaper which circulated weekly throughout the world from 1967-1980.
Its organization was modelled after the Black Panther. The members were young men belonging to
Neo-Buddhists and Scheduled Castes. Most of the leaders were literary figures .The controversy over
the article “Kala Swatantrata Din” (Black Independence Day) by Dhale which was published in
“Sadhana” in 1972 created a great sensation and publicised the Dalit Panthers through Maharashtra.
The Panther’s full support to Dhale during this controversy brought Dhale into the movement and
made him a prominent leader. With the publicity of this issue through the media, Panther branches
sprang up spontaneously in many parts of Maharashtra.
The Dalit Panther movement was a radical departure from earlier Dalit movements. Its initial thrust
on militancy through the use of rustic arms and threats, gave the movement a revolutionary colour.
Going by their manifesto, dalit panthers had broken many new grounds in terms of radicalising the
political space for the dalit movement. They imparted the proletarian – radical class identity to dalits
and linked their struggles to the struggles of all oppressed people over the globe. The clear cut leftist
stand reflected by this document undoubtedly ran counter to the accepted legacy of Ambedkar as
projected by the various icons, although it was sold in his name as an awkward tactic.
The pathos of casteism integral with the dalit experience essentially brought in Ambedkar, as his was
the only articulate framework that took cognisance of it. But, for the other contemporary problems of
deprivations, Marxism provided a scientific framework to bring about a revolutionary change.
Although, have-nots from both dalits and non-dalits craved for a fundamental change, the former
adhered to what appeared to be Ambedkarian methods of socio-political change and the latter to what
came to be the Marxian method which tended to see every social process as the reflection of the
material reality. Both caused erroneous interpretations. It is to the credit of Panthers that the
assimilation of these two ideologies was attempted for the first time in the country but unfortunately it
proved abortive in absence of the efforts to rid each of them of its obfuscating influence and stress
their non-contradictory essence. Neither, there was theoretical effort to integrate these two ideologies,
nor was there any practice combining social aspects of caste with say, the land question in the village
setting. This ideological amalgam could not be acceptable to those under the spell of the prevailing
Ambedkar-icons and therefore this revolutionary seedling in the dalit movement died a still death.
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The reactionaries objected to the radical content of the programme alleging that the manifesto was
doctored by the radicals – the Naxalites.There is no denying the fact that the Naxalite movement
which had erupted quite like the Dalit Panther, as a disenchantment with and negation of the
established politics, saw a potential ally in the Panthers and tried to forge a bond right at the level of
formulation of policies and programme of the latter. But even if the Panthers had chosen to pattern
their programme on the ten-point programme of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the USA, which had
been the basic inspiration for their formation, it would not have been any less radical. The amount of
emphasis on the material aspects of life that one finds in the party programme of the BPP could still
have been inimical to the established icon of Ambedkar.
Radicalism was the premise for the very existence of the Dalit Panther and hence the quarrel over its
programme basically reflected the clash between the established icon of Ambedkar and his radical
version proposed in the programme. The fact that for the first time the Dalit Panther exposed dalits to
a radical Ambedkar and brought a section of dalit youth nearer to accepting it certainly marks its
positive contribution to the dalit movement.
There were material reasons for the emergence of Dalit Panthers. Children of the Ambedkarian
movement had started coming out of universities in large numbers in the later part of 1960s, just to
face the blank future staring at them. The much-publicised Constitutional provisions for them turned
out to be a mirage. Their political vehicle was getting deeper and deeper into the marsh of
Parliamentarism. It ceased to see the real problems of people. The air of militant insurgency that had
blown all over the world during those days also provided them the source material to articulate their
anger.
Unfortunately, quite like the BPP, they lacked the suitable ideology to channel this anger for
achieving their goal. Interestingly, as they reflected the positive aspects of the BPP’s contributions in
terms of self-defence, mass organising techniques, propaganda techniques and radical orientation,
they did so in the case of BPP’s negative aspects too. Like Black Panthers they also reflected ‘TV
mentality’ (to think of a revolutionary struggle like a quick-paced TV programme), dogmatism,
neglect of economic foundation needed for the organisation, lumpen tendencies, rhetoric outstripping
capabilities, lack of clarity about the form of struggle and eventually corruptibility of the leadership.
The Panthers’ militancy by and large remained confined to their speeches and writings.
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Phenomenon of Kanshiram and Mayawati (Bahujan Samajwadi Party)
In 1971 Kansiram quit his job in DRDO and together with his colleagues established the Scheduled
Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Minorities Employees Welfare
Association.Through this association, attempts were made to look into the problems and harassment
of the above-mentioned employees and bring out an effective solution for the same. Another main
objective behind establishing this association was to educate and create awareness about the caste
system. This association turned out to be a success with more and more people joining it.
In 1973, Kanshi Ram again with his colleagues established the BAMCEF: Backward And Minority
Communities Employees Federation. The first operating office was opened in Delhi in 1976 with the
motto-“Educate Organize and Agitate“. This served as a base to spread the ideas of Ambedkar and his
beliefs. From then on Kanshi Ram continued building his network and making people aware of the
realities of the caste system, how it functioned in India and the teachings of Ambedkar.
In 1980 he created a road show named “Ambedkar Mela” which showed the life of Ambedkar and his
views through pictures and narrations. In 1981 he founded the Dalit SoshitSamajSangharsh Samiti or
DS4 as a parallel association to the BAMCEF. It was created to fight against the attacks on the
workers who were spreading awareness on the caste system. It was created to show that workers could
stand united and that they too can fight. However this was not a registered party but an organization
which was political in nature. In 1984, he established a full-fledged political party known as the
Bahujan Samaj Party. However, it was in 1986 when he declared his transition from a social worker to
a politician by stating that he was not going to work for/with any other organization other than the
Bahujan Samaj Party. Later he converted to Buddhism.
The movement of Kanshiram markedly reflected a different strategy, which coined the ‘Bahujan’
identity encompassing all the SCs, STs, BCs, OBCs and religious minorities than ‘dalit’, which
practically represented only the scheduled castes.
Kanshiram started off with an avowedly apolitical organisation of government employees belonging
to Bahujana, identifying them to be the main resource of these communities. It later catalysed the
formation of an agitating political group creatively coined as DS4, which eventually became a full-
fledged political party – the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Purely, in terms of electoral politics, which has somehow become a major obsession with all the dalit
parties, Kanshiram’s strategy has proved quite effective, though in only certain parts of the country.
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He has given a qualitative impetus to the moribund dalit politics, locating itself into a wider space
peopled by all the downtrodden of India. But he identified these people only in terms of their castes
and communities. It may be said to his credit that he reflected the culmination of what common place
icon of Ambedkar stood for.
Apart from these broad political trends, there are many regional outfits like Dalit Mahasabha in
Andhra Pradesh, Mass Movement in Maharashtra, Dalit Sena in Bihar and elsewhere, etc., some of
which dabble directly into electoral politics and some of them do not. So far, none of them have a
radically different icon of Ambedkar from the ones described above. They offer some proprietary
ware claiming to be a shade better than that of others.
Ghanshyam Shah, a scholar who wrote article on Dalits, classifies the movements into reformative
and alternative movements. The reformative is the one that tries to reform the caste system to solve
the problem of untouchability. The alternative movement attempts to create an alternative socio-
cultural structure by conversion to some other religion or by acquiring education, economic status and
political power. Both type of movements use political means to attain their aims and objectives. The
reformative movements are further divided into Bhakti movements, neo-Vedantik movements and
Sanskritisation movements, and the alternative movements are divided into the conversion movement
and the religious or secular movements. Bhakti movement in 15th century developed two traditions of
saguna and nirguna.
Mahatma Jyotiba Phule formed the SaytaShodak Mandal in 1873 with the aim of liberating non-
Brahmins from the clutches of Brahminism. Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur started Satya Shodak Mandal
in 1912 and carried forward the movement started by Phule. In the pre-independence period, the Dalit
movements comprised of a strong non-Brahman movement against Brahmanism in Maharashtra, Adi
Dravidas movement in Tamil Nadu, Shri Narayan Dharma Paripalan movement in Kerala, Adi
Andhras movement in Coastal Andhra and the like. Phule tried to formulate a new theistic religion.
Ambedkar at Mahad Satyagarah
The religious reformers of the 19th century were influenced by the work of Christian missionaries in
India. The Brahmo Samaj (1828), the PrarthanaSamaj (1867), the Ramkrishna Mission, and the Arya
Samaj (1875) are the examples of such institutions founded with a view to fight against social evils
practiced by the caste Hindus. Dr. Ambedkar, on his part, turned to Buddhism. In Tamil Nadu, non-
Brahmin movement tried to claim Saivism as an independent religion although both Ayyapan
proclaimed no religion, no caste and no god for mankind. All the above movements led, to some
extent, to the social upliftment of Dalits.
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All India HarijansSevak Sangh founded by Gandhi in 1923 started numerous schools for the Harijans
including residential vocational schools. The Congress Government that later came into power in
various States under the Government of India Act 1935 did useful work for restoring to the depressed
classes their rightful place. Dr. Ambedkar struggled to secure social recognition and human rights for
Dalits. The all India Depressed Association and the All India Depressed Classes Federation, the
principal organizations of these classes, initiated a movement to improve their conditions.
All these efforts aimed at improving the miserable economic condition of Dalits, and to spread
education among them. They worked to secure for them the rights to draw water from public wells,
admission into schools, and to the use of roads; and the right to enter the public temples. The Mahad
Satyagrah for the right of water led by Dr. Ambedkar was one of the outstanding movements of the
untouchables to win equal social rights.
In Una, Gujarat a couple of months ago, a group of Dalits was brutally assaulted by self-styled cow
vigilantes (gaurakshaks) for skinning a dead cow. This place turned into an epicenter of anti-
Brahmanical assertion for upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections in 2017, threatening to unseat the
BJP’s 20+ years old run in the state which was and still remains the first ever laboratory of Hindutva’s
project. Rohith Vemula’s mother Radhika Vemula hoisted the national flag in Una shortly after Modi
did the same at Red Fort. Among others, the rally had significant presence of Gujarat’s Muslims and
Muslim organizations from different corners of the Gujarat, who have not found a political voice
since the 2002 pogrom spearheaded by PM Narendar Modi. Jignesh Mevani, Una Dalit
AtachiyarLadat Samiti (ULS) convener, raised the slogan “Dalit-Muslim Ekta Zindabad,” with
Radhika Vemula. Other social activists and student leaders also joined the protest in solidarity.
Again, another institutionalized murder of Rajini Krishna happened; a student of JNU whose death is
suspicious and is the version-2 of Rohith Vemula. Even after couple of days, no proper response from
JNU students union as well as social activists raises a big question. The way Dalit NGOs from Tamil
Nadu hijacked the case and kept Dalit student’s body aside and Member of Parliaments raised the
issue in ongoing parliament session (March 2017) to project Rajini Krishna as a Tamil guy, and not as
a Dalit. No justice done to any of the Dalit victims or Dalit movements.
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Dalit movement in Karnataka
The emergence of the Dalit movement in Karnataka in 1973 had a far-reaching impact not only
among the untouchable communities across the state, but also in challenging the dictates of caste. The
movement ushered in a new vision of civil rights across India. In order to understand the dynamics of
caste and state bureaucracy, this paper specifically tries to capture the social evolution of a Dalit
movement, the Dalit SangarshaSamithi (DSS) in Kolar District of Karnataka. The impact of the DSS
among the Dalit communities in the district is analysed by focusing specifically on the ethnographic
details of Valagalaburre village. Finally the paper considers how the state machinery responded to the
DSS. By taking the fact sheets of the atrocities recorded by the social welfare department of Kolar
District the paper contends that the DSS did alter the ethnographic map of social relations, drastically
reducing the number of atrocities perpetrated upon Dalit communities. This in turn inspired the
committed workers of the DSS to organize villagers to come together to shackle the age-old
oppressive caste structures that defined the relations to resources in the villages. This study is well
aware that unfortunately the DSS has currently fallen into a sad state of affairs with innumerable
factions. However the present situation does not invalidate the very real achievements of the DSS,
which are aptly captured in the words of one of those involved: “The Dalit movement in Karnataka in
the past three decades was a vigorous march towards self-dignity. But today it sadly gives an
impression of being at a tangent turn of events. Indeed, as it emerged from a long historical slumber, it
gave rise to a stormy wave of protest against all sorts of oppressive tendencies inherent in the very
social fabric of the society in Karnataka. It played a decisive role in awakening the Dalits in
Karnataka.
But it also shook the rigid, irresponsible Hindu conscience. The movement spread like a wild fire
burning every sluggish mind to transform itself into a zealous flame… It really hailed a new era of
hope for Dalits in Karnataka”2 It is this saga that will never allow the spirit of the DSS to die in spite
of carnages like the Kambalapalli episode. The Kambalapalli carnage took place in 2000, and the
following account of it illustrates precisely what the DSS struggles against: “a flock of sheep
belonging to both Vokkaligas and Dalits was stolen from KambalaPalli Village. In this connection a
‘Panchayath’ was held in the village and it was unilaterally decided that Venkataramanappa,
Anjanappa and Ravanappa - all Dalits - had stolen the sheep inspite of their denial and it was also
decided to file a police complaint of theft against them. Fearing police action the above named Dalits
left their village along with their families.
A police complaint was filed in this connection and during investigation it came to light that the sheep
were stolen and taken to Andhra Pradesh and sold for Rs. 9,000/- by K.M. Maddireddy,
Anjaneyareddy, Reddappa, Narayanaswamy, Kittanna alias Krishnareddy and their followers all
belonging to Vokkaliga community of the same village. The sheep belonging to the Dalits were
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recovered and brought back and handed over to the owners. Dalit Venkataramanappa and his two
brothers who had left the village took leading part in the detection of the stolen sheep which resulted
in the exposure of Vokkaligas’ conspiracy. Further it also brought contempt and ridicule to
Vokkaligasas a whole in the village.
They wanted to do away with Venkataramanappa and were waiting for a chance for him to come back
to the village. According to Section 3(1) (VIII) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act., 1989 whoever not being a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled
Tribe institutes a false criminal or other legal proceedings against a member of a Scheduled Caste or a
Scheduled Tribe shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six
months but which may extend to five years and with a fine. The police should have booked a criminal
case against the Vokkaligas who had filed false complaints against Dalits in the matter under the
above provision of law. That would have checked them from advancing further with their criminal
activities. On hearing the delivery of his wife Venkataramanappa came to the village on 5-6-1998 at
about 10.30 p.m. On getting information about his arrival Maddireddy, Anjaneyareddy and another 39
persons including Kittanna alias Krishnareddy formed an unlawful assembly and chased him to his
house and stoned him to death in the presence of his wife and other family members. He was buried
under the stones numbering about 50. All the above 41 culprits were released on bail and were
roaming in the locality.”3 This study highlights the value of the DSS in its continued challenges to
local caste relations and to LPG policies (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation) in Karnataka.
More particularly, the present study challenges the normative theoretical underpinnings of ‘caste’ to
show that Dalit activism did unravel the much-ignored fact of caste as experienced distance from
powerful castes that hinders the self-determination of Dalit communities.
Did State really help?
The post-1947 State, which has never tired of propagandising its concern for dalits and poor, has in
fact been singularly instrumental in aggravating the caste problem with its policies. Even the
apparently progressive policies in the form of Land Ceiling Act, Green Revolution, Programme of
Removal of Poverty, Reservations to Dalits in Services and Mandal Commission etc. have resulted
against their professed objectives.
The effect of the Land Ceiling Act, has been in creating a layer of the middle castes farmers which
could be consolidated in caste terms to constitute a formidable constituency. In its new incarnation,
this group that has traditionally been the immediate upper caste layer to dalits, assumed virtual
custody of Brahminism in order to coerce dalit landless labourers to serve their socio-economic
interests and suppress their assertive expression in the bud.
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The Green Revolution was the main instrument to introduce capitalisation in agrarian sector. It
reinforced the innate hunger of the landlords and big farmers for land as this State sponsored
revolution produced huge surplus for them. It resulted in creating geographical imbalance and
promoting unequal terms of trade in favour of urban areas. Its resultant impact on dalits has been far
more excruciating than that of the Land Ceiling Act.
The much publicisedprogramme for Removal of Poverty has aggravated the gap between the
heightened hopes and aspirations of dalits on one hand and the feelings of deprivation among the
poorer sections of non-dalits in the context of the special programmes especially launched for
upliftment of dalits. The tension that ensued culminated in increasingly strengthening the caste –
based demands and further aggravating the caste – divide.
The reservations in services for dalits, notwithstanding its benefits, have caused incalculable damage
in political terms. Reservations created hope, notional stake in the system and thus dampened the
alienation; those who availed of its benefit got politically emasculated and in course consciously or
unconsciously served as the props of the system. The context of scarcity of jobs provided ample
opportunity to reactionary forces to divide the youth along caste lines. Mandal Commission, that
enthused many progressive parties and people to upheld its extension of reservation to the backward
castes, has greatly contributed to strengthen the caste identities of people. In as much as it empowers
the backward castes, actually their richer sections, it is bound to worsen the relative standing of dalits
in villages.
Conclusion
Institutionalized efforts made by Dalit community leaders for the liberation of the downtrodden
masses can be termed as Dalit movement. These movements are protests against untouchability,
casteism, injustice and inequality in all sectors and for exterior classes, depressed classes or
Scheduled Castes. It aims to uplift the Dalits to the level of non-Dalits and to regain self-respect and
equal human status for them in the society, as well as to establish a new social order based on
equality, fraternity, liberty, social justice, and social, economic, cultural and political development of
Dalits. All this is the result of the consciousness of Dalits of their own identity as human beings,
equally equipped with physical and mental capacities as other human beings, and equally entitled to
enjoy all the human rights “without any infringement, abridgment or limitations. Let’s be a witness to
know how far these moments continue to get the justice, equality and freedom for Dalits from the so-
called upper caste Brahmins, how many lives they claim to treat man as man, when their thirst of
blood will end after killing hundreds of Dalits and Dalit farmers by banning beef which is their
livelihood.
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New politics or alternative politics need to be started to provide justice to these marginalized
communities, as few of the Dalit leaders are tools in the hands of many politicians for their political
gains and few Dalit leaders are corrupt to the extent of being ready to betray the trust of their
community just for few luxuries.
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Emancipation of Dalits in pre-independence India
PRUTHVIRAJ KATTIMANI Patil Layout, Sedam Road, Kalaburgi 585105
Abstract
The Indian Caste System is historically one of the main dimensions where people in India are socially
differentiated through class, religion, region, tribe, gender, and language. Although this or other forms
of differentiation exist in all human societies, it becomes a problem when one or more of these
dimensions overlap each other and become the sole basis of systematic ranking and unequal access to
valued resources like wealth, income, power and prestige . The Indian Caste System is considered a
closed system of stratification, which means that a person’s social status is obligated to which caste
they were born into. There are limits on interaction and behavior with people from another social
status . Its history is massively related to one of the prominent religions in India, Hinduism, and has
been altered in many ways during the Buddhist revolution and under British rule. This paper will be
exploring the various aspects of the Indian caste system related to its hierarchy, its history, and its
effects on India today.
India social structure is based on caste system. It is matter of shame that the Indian culture, which
gave the message of world-brotherhood, but call some of its own brothers untouchables. After
independence, the influence of caste in political field has increased. Whereas, the influence of
casteism in social and economic life (such as the standard of living of dalits, poverty, education,
literacy, income, employment, health) has decreased to some extent, in politics it has increased. The
study has been framed with the objective to access the influence of casteism on social and economic
life of the dalits and with special reference to Indian politics. Indian politics changed dramatically
after the Mandal commission issue hit the national consciousness. In the present paper we have tried
to explore movements of dalit in India and provisions made in the constitution of India for improving
the conditions of dalits to bring them at par with other members of society and with the objective to
access the influence of casteism not on social and economic life of the dalits and with special
reference to Indian politics. For this purpose data was collected through secondary sources. We have
found that as the development movements of dalits is increasing day by day and the role of casteism is
also influencing Indian democracy.
Keywords: caste, activism, dalit, mobilize, Adi-Karnataka
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Introduction
Though attempts were begun by the dalit castes from the late 19th century to organise themselves, the
various sections of the dalit liberation movement really began to take off from the 1920s, in the
context of the strong social reform and anti-caste movements which were penetrating the middle-caste
peasantry and the national movement which was beginning to develop a genuine mass base.
The most important of the early dalit movements were the Ad-Dharm movement in the Punjab
(organised 1926); the movement under Ambedkar in Maharashtra mainly based among Mahars which
had its organisational beginnings in 1924; the Nama-shudra movement in Bengal; the Adi-Dravida
movement in Tamil Nadu; the Adi-Andhra movement in Andhra which had its first conference in
1917; the Adi-Karnataka movement; the Adi-Hindu movement mainly centered around Kanpur in UP;
and the organising of the Pulayas and Cherumans in Kerala.
In most of the cases the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms provided a spark for the organization of dalits
but the crucial background was the massive economic and political upheavals of the post-war period.
The movements had a linguistic-national organisational base and varied according to the specific
social characteristics in different areas, but there was considerable all-India exchange of ideas and, by
the 1930s, this was beginning to take the shape of all-India conferences with Ambedkar emerging as
the clear national leader of the movement.The founding of the Scheduled Castes Federation in 1942,
and its later conversion into the Republican Party, gave dalits a genuine all-India political organisation
— though this remained weak except in certain specific localities and did not by any means constitute
the entire dalit movement.
Objective:
this paper seeks to study the prevailing conditions of the Dalits in pre-independence movement
Conditions for Social reformation
The social reform and anti-caste movements played an important nurturing and facilitating — though
often an ambivalent — role in relation to the dalits. Thus the movements in Maharashtra and Madras
to a significant extent came out of, and were influenced by the non-Brahmin movements in those
areas, especially their radical sections — the Satyashodhak Samaj and Self-Respect movements.The
Punjabi Ad-Dharm leaders had nearly all been previously in the Arya Samaj. Brahmo Samaj upper-
caste reformers helped to instigate and aid the Nama-shudra movement and the Adi-Andhras. Dalits in
Kerala were influenced and helped by the Ezhava-based movement under Sri Narayana Guru.
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Thus, whereas the Punjabi Ad-Dharm movement broke with the Arya Samaj both organisationally
and ideologically (though the Arya Samaj itself continued to foster some anti-untouchability
activities), the dalit movements of the south and west accepted and even carried forward the general
ideology of the broader non-Brahmin movements but criticised the middle-caste non-Brahmins for
betraying this ideology and falling prey to Brahmanic culture as well as to pure self-interest in gaining
government jobs and posts.
Thus, in Maharashtra, Ambedkar's movement developed with support from leaders such as Shahu
Maharaj and with many activists coming from the Satyashodhak movement and out of schools
founded by non-Brahmin leaders. Ambedkar frequently referred to himself as a 'non-Brahmin' (not
simply an 'untouchable') scholar, and became a spokesman in the legislative assembly for all the non-
Brahmin ('backward' and 'depressed classes' in British terminology) groups. His Marathi speeches
often used the shetji-bhatji terminology of the Satyashodhak movement. Yet he consistently criticised
the opportunism of non-Brahmin leaders and, in the end, after the non-Brahmin movement was
absorbed into the Congress party under Gandhi's leadership and its radical elements forgotten, the
separatism in Ambedkar's movement came to dominate.
In Madras, educated dalits were part of the Justice Party; but a rift grew after the party won power,
partly stimulated by disputes in a textile mill strike and partly due to charges that the Justice Party was
not giving sufficient representation to them but was monopolizing posts for higher caste non-
Brahmins. M C Rajah, the most prominent untouchable leader, withdrew with his followers; though
after this many participated in E V Ramasami's Self -Respect movement which represented the more
radical thrust of the non-Brahmin movement.
In Punjab, the young educated Chamars who founded the Ad-Dharm movement had first been in the
Arya Samaj, attracted by some of its ideals which held open the promise of purification (shuddhi) to
the low castes, then became disillusioned by the control of upper castes in the movement and rejected
completely the paternalistic implication of shuddhi that untouchables needed to be 'purified'. The
pattern of these regional configurations needs to be more thoroughly studied.
But, in contrast to the ambivalence of the dalits' relations with caste-Hindu-based anti-caste
movements, their relationship to the national movement was, even worse, an antagonistic one. The
fact was that, with the notable exception of Kerala where the Congress leaders themselves undertook
anti-caste campaigns, almost everywhere the Congress leadership was in the hands of upper-caste
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social conservatives who were often not simply indifferent to dalit demands but actively resisted
them. Thus dalit spokesmen were inclined to argue that "British rule was preferable to Brahmin rule"
and to look for any means — special representation, separate electorates, alliance with Muslims - that
might prevent them from being swamped by caste Hindu nationalists.
The Rise of Dalit Movements
It has to be stressed that this alienation from the organised national movement (the Congress) was not
just the result of the self-interest of a few leaders but was a widespread opinion wherever dalits were
organised on militant lines, and that the Congress leadership up through the time of Independence did
almost nothing to heal the split and build up dalit confidence and unity. Though dalits under
Ambedkar did take a nationalist position, it was as a result of their own conviction that Independence
was necessary.
These movements then organised struggles in various ways over the rejection of all the forms of
feudal bondage imposed on dalits. The most spectacular mass campaigns in the 1920s were efforts at
the ritual level, i e, to break down the restrictions barring dalits from use of common temples and
water tanks. The biggest, and very carefully planned, campaigns took place in Maharashtra (the
Mahad tank satyagraha of 1927 which culminated in the burning of the Manusmriti, the Parvati
temple satyagraha of 1928, and the Kalaram temple satyagraha in Nasik of 1930-35) and in Kerala
(the Vaikom temple road satyagraha of 1924-25 and the Guruvayoor satyagraha of 1930-32).
Thus the movements were highly involved in founding schools, hostels, and other educational
associations; and they consistently demanded fellowships, positions in existing educational
institutions and reserved government jobs. The final outcome of this was the system of 'concessions'
which has become so controversial today. It is important to note that such concessions were
necessary, because existing caste discrimination (caste and kin-based recruitment pattern and the
cultural as well as economic disabilities of the low castes) had resulted in a heavily divided working
class.
Dalits and the National Movement: The Issue of Power
"We want to become a ruling community", was a saying of Ambedkar, and in fact the drive to achieve
power or a share in power was seen by him and by many not simply as the negation of the extreme
feudal subjugation of dalits but as the basis for achieving any other kind of gain. But, because the
national movement did not consciously organise to build alternative revolutionary systems of power
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in which dalits would find a place, this demand for a share in power became expressed in the demand
for special, separate representation within the bourgeois parliamentary forms being institutionalized in
India.An additional motivating fact was the strong feeling among dalits that they must represent
themselves, that caste Hindus could not be trusted to represent them (nor for that matter could the
British government), that the nature of caste and class conflict was so great that no caste Hindus could
speak for their interests.
The conflict took specific form in the dalit demand for separate electorates (constituencies only of
dalits choosing dalit representatives to the parliament) versus the original nationalist unwillingness to
concede anything until finally a 'compromise' of reserved seats (dalit representatives chosen by
general, i.e., caste Hindu plus dalit, constituencies) was forced on them.The issue here was different
from that of separate electorates for Muslims because there was at no point a dalit demand, or the
possibility of a demand, for a separate homeland. Rather, the question was one of how to achieve the
unity of the Indian nation. Gandhi's firm opposition to separate electorates, too, had nothing to do
with the threat to Indian unity but rather the threat to Hindu unity and came from his religiously
motivated insistence that dalits were part of the Hindu community.
It might also be added that the idea of separate electorates, or "functional' representation of specific
social groups or classes, was one that went beyond bourgeois democratic forms entirely and in a sense
could be seen as an aspect of proletarian democracy, whereas reserved seats not only allowed caste
Hindu control of dalit political representation (as Ambedkar so bitterly and effectively established in
"What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables") but also proved an ideal method for
the bourgeois State to absorb and negate the dalit movement, giving dalits some semblance of power
within the bourgeois framework but at the cost of giving up militancy.The issue, however, was very
rarely seen in this way. Instead, considerations of power prevailed (the upper class/caste drive to
control the legislatures through control of Congress, and the fact that dalits did not simply have the
same political clout as Muslims); the demand for separate electorates was seen by most non-dalits as
one leading to separatism and disunity.
Here it is worth noting that, when Ambedkar and Gandhi met for the first time in 1930, Ambedkar not
only felt he had been treated rudely, but Gandhi himself admitted that he had not known that
Ambedkar himself was a dalit but thought rather that he was a Brahmin social reformer aiding the
untouchables! In other words, Gandhi had not only done substantially nothing himself on the issue of
untouchability up to this time, but he betrayed a crucial ignorance of the movement which had been
going on for over a decade and of its leadership. Indeed he unwittingly betrayed his assumption that
dalits themselves were incapable of doing much on their own or of producing their own leadership,
Ambedkar, therefore, insisted on separate electorates.Gandhi insisted equally adamantly that dalits
were Hindus and must be represented by Hindus as a whole (and was met on his return from London
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by a black-flag demonstration of 8,000 Bombay dalits). The British Communal Award gave
Ambedkar his separate electorates; and Gandhi undertook his fast-to-death in protest. Here again it
has to be stressed that this first fast over the 'issue' of untouchability was not a fast against the British
for nationalist causes or against the oppressive caste system, but was a fast against dalits themselves
to force them to give up their demands. Ambedkar conceded—knowing that if Gandhi died there
would be massive reprisals on his people throughout India-— and the result was the Poona Pact of
September 25, 1932, which as a compromise gave dalits the reserved seats that Ambedkar had
demanded in the first place For dalits and for Ambedkar, the lesson was clear: not a faith in the ability
of satyagraha to 'change the hearts' of caste Hindus, rather that only by fighting for their rights would
dalits win anything at all.
After 1932, Gandhi made 'untouchability work' a major programme of the Congress and for many a
crucial moral part of the Indian national movement. And yet Gandhi's essential paternalism and
insistence that above all dalits were Hindus remained in the choice of the term 'Harijan', in the
insistence that caste Hindus and not dalits should control the Harijan Sevak Sangh.
However 'radical' Gandhi's own views on caste became (in approving of inter-dining and inter-
marriage, for example), he never dropped the belief in chaturvarnya or the idea that children should
follow their fathers' professions, themes that stood in direct contradiction to the anti-feudal principles
of the dalit movement. Even worse, anti-untouchability became identified with the Gandhian, that is
the conservative wing of the Congress and remained a distraction and diversion to the radicals within
Congress (and for that matter the communist Left) who never developed a programme of their own on
the issue of caste.
In 1917 — alter the first depressed classes' conferences were organised in Bombay, and dalits as well
as non-Brahmins made proposals for separate electorates—the Congress reversed its policy of
excluding 'social reform' and passed a resolution urging upon "the people of India the necessity,
justice and righteousness of removing all disabilities imposed by custom upon the Depressed
Classes".In the 1920s, the governments of Madras and Bombay (controlled or influenced by non-
Brahmin organisations) passed resolutions confirming the rights of dalits to equal use of government
facilities, schools and wells; so did several progressive princely stales. These did little, however, to
provide reinforcement, and remained almost totally ineffective. In 1931, the Karachi Congress session
propounded a programme of fundamental rights which called for equal access for all to public
employment etc, regardless of caste, and equal right to use of public roads, wells, schools, and other
facilities.Temple entry bills were introduced between 1932-36 in the Central Assembly, Madras and
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Bombay legislatures and generally met with opposition from both the government and conservatives
in Congress. Baroda and Travancore states proclaimed temple entry in 1933 and 1936. In 1938, after
Congress legislatures were elected, temple entry bills were passed in Madras and Bombay.
Dalits and the Left: The Issue of Land
The relation between the dalit movement and the emerging communist and Left movement was,
unfortunately, little better than that with the national movement. The Left evolved no programme of
its own, regarding the abolition of caste. And, in regard to working class organizing, a history of
antagonism was built up. The major exception was in fighting feudalism in agrarian relations where
the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) programme did make an important contribution. This, however,
remained partial and isolated from the organised dalit movement.
A category of 'agricultural labourers' was identified and this presumably included almost all dalit
toilers, but they were seen in European terms as peasants dispossessed of the land. The Kisan Sabha
leadership was ambiguous about their inclusion, but where they argued for unity of interest between
'kisans' and 'agricultural labourers' it was in terms of the fact that middle-poor peasants were rapidly
becoming impoverished, losing lands, and becoming landless labourers. The special, traditional,
position of dalit field servants with their hereditary connection to the land was simply not taken note
of.A 1947 AIKS resolution on the abolition of landlordism stated: ''All agricultural labourers must
have a minimum wage. All other tillers of the soil must get proprietary rights in it under their direct
cultivation, and cultivable waste land must be distributed among poor peasants and agricultural
labourers".
Thus, while, dalits here were somewhat ambiguously seen as 'tillers' they were not considered to have
any rights in the land at all; only their wage interests were to be protected and their land hunger
satisfied by leftover — i e, 'waste' — land. Thus, in spite of the participation of poor peasants and
landless toilers in Kisan Sabha agitation, it is not surprising — because only middle-caste cultivating
peasants were seen as having rights in the land —that the end result was land reforms which even in
their most radical version (e g Kerala) have benefited rich peasants. 'Land to the tiller', then,
systematically excluded dalits.On the other side, the dalit movement itself also took up the issue of
land, but in an equally partial way. Campaigns against veth-begar and specific menial and degrading
caste duties (carrying away dead cattle, serving officials) were, as noted above, an important part of
the movement and were, of course, equivalent to the AIKS opposition to 'feudal forced labour'. But
generally these were undertaken by the dalit movement in such a way that the alternative was seen,
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not as revolutionary land reform in the villages or transformation of the villages, but rather as moving
from the villages altogether to new jobs in industry and service. The inability to see any real
opportunity for advance within the village was, of course, realistic in the absence of a revolutionary
movement.No direct struggles for land for dalits were apparently taken up before Independence, but
as far as Ambedkar at least was concerned it seems the issue of land was always present. Again,
though it was a question of looking beyond the village, in one of his earlier meetings he argued that
dalits should look for land for colonization. In later meetings, he considered the possibility of
settlements in Sind. The climax of this, however, came in 1942 at the conference which founded the
Scheduled Caste Federation when a resolution was passed on separate village settlements. This was a
demand that dalits from all the villages in one area (later sometimes specified as a taluka) should be
given land (to be provided both from unoccupied government land and from land bought up by the
government for the purpose) so that they could form independent settlements of their own. This has
come to be known as the 'dalitstan' demand.
Conclusion
One of the most striking features of the anti-feudal movement in colonial India was its fragmentation
— a fragmentation which reflected the divisions among the exploited sections that were so
characteristic of Indian caste feudalism.While social reform and anti-caste movements arose
throughout India, and all provided some kind of ground for dalits to begin to move ahead, the non-
Brahmin movements of south and west India posed a genuine possibility of a radical movement
against caste traditions that could unify both caste Hindu toilers and dalits. Their ideology itself and
the principles of their most radical organisations — the Satyashodhak Samaj and the Self-Respect
movement — posed a thorough challenge to caste hierarchy and in fact provided the central
ideological themes for the dalit movements. But such unity did not materialize as the more
conservative wing of these movements gained strength among caste Hindu peasants and educated
sections.It might have been expected that a national movement, dominated by bourgeois and upper-
caste forces would prove resistant to dalit demands and respond only in a nominal and co-opting way.
Most serious really was the failure of the Left to provide a radical and unifying anti-feudal alternative.
The communists organised the working class in its struggle for survival and at points this organisation
aided the lowest sections of that class, but they failed really to put the working class politically in the
leadership of the anti-feudal movement and as a result the class remains divided and the organisation
benefited mainly its skilled and more upper-caste sections.
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Kisan Sabha organizing, in its areas of strength, benefited dalits more directly. The fight against
feudal forced-labour struck at bondage within the village; the organisation of agricultural labourers,
which had its beginnings in the 1940s, also involved a challenge to feudal servitude: as a Kerala
landlord put it, "His body and his father's body are my property and he dares to ask for wages. Is it
right?"
Still the achievements of the dalit movement are impressive, and are too often overlooked. They have
given birth to a tradition of struggle in many areas, not only on cultural and ritual issues but on
breaking feudal bonds. They have mounted powerful pressure on the national movement resulting in
constitutional provisions for reservations and laws making untouchability an offence; unsatisfactory
as these have been, they have still provided weapons in the hands of low-caste organizers. They have
created a deep-seated conviction of equality and self-confidence which is inevitably making itself
heard. If this has not yet achieved a revolutionary transformation in the life of the most exploited
sections of society, it is because of the incompleteness of the revolutionary and democratic movement
itself. If this is to go forward, the dalit movement will inevitably be a part of it.
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