Modi Spews Caste Venom

June 9, 2010 at 9:48 am (Caste and Religion)

by Anand Teltumbade

EPW : VOL 45 No. 23

Caste venom is embedded in the body politic of this country. The BJP occasionally spews it; the Congress successfully conceals it.

 

On 25 April, while releasing his book Samajik Samrasata, Naren­dra Modi is reported to have observed that dalits were like mentally retarded children. The remark created uproar in Congress circles. Praveen Rash­trapal of the Congress sought to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha, but having been denied permission by the deputy chair­man K Rahman Khan, Congress members trooped into the well of the Rajya Sabha and caused a ruckus, forcing its adjourn­ment. Earlier, Modi had said that the Valmiki community was involved in manual scavenging for a “spiritual experience”. Activist circles were stirred with indigna­tion and began discussing whether Modi could be booked under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Preven­tion of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (the Atrocities Act). Legal luminaries may decide whether this is feasible or not given the fact that he would certainly invoke the spirit in which he said it, which may obviate the applica­tion of the act. Posturing as a great spastic patron, Modi may plead that he said it to ensure special care of dalits as we do of the mentally retarded children.

In some way this Modi speak represents the thinking of most upper caste people. Not many people realise that this display of magnanimity is basically the worst expression of casteism rooted in the ideology of brahmanism and, as such, deserves allround condemnation.

 

Stink of Brahmanism

The basic premise of brahmanism is that people are created unequal by god in accordance with their merit in the previous birth. They should reconcile with this divine order and only practise their dharma to earn merit points in order to get a better birth the next time around. The paternalis­tic attitude of the upper castes towards these fallen people is basically informed by this ideology. It assumes that dalits are lesser beings and they are superior; being noble born, it is their duty to have pity on dalits, help them perform their dharma to ameliorate their destiny. This attitude is displayed so casually in a self congratulatory manner that they do not even have an ink­ling that it is most humiliating to dalits. It is worse than insulting them with their caste names, which may be considered as a cognisable crime as per the Atrocities Act.

It is precisely for this reason that Ambedkar had denounced Gandhi’s harijan and dismissed the Congress attempts at wooing dalits through Harijan Sevak Sangh as the “Congress plan to kill untouchables by kindness”. Not only Gandhi, who was anyway propelled by political considera­tions, Ambedkar did not take kindly even to the bhakti saints’ selfpity or tame criti­cism of the caste system because they did not question the basic ideology behind it. His repeated denouncement of the then Mahar attempts to claim descent and or derive inspiration from the bhakti poet of the 14th century, Chokhamela, under­scores the same logic. He saw the act of the bhakti saints as an act of subservience to the will of god, and as conformist and antirevolutionary. Anything that even faintly smells of this obnoxious ideology becomes thus insulting to dalits. Modi’s statement stinks.

 

Spastic Minds, Sick Society

Modi is unduly presumptuous about his intelligence in regarding dalits as men­tally retarded. First, the creed he swears by fundamentally treats him, a member of shudra, as dumb. As such, he may not be particularly in a position to pontificate on others’ retardation. Second, if he is truly intelligent, he must know that the disability, mental retardation or whatever is not of dalits but of society. It is Hindu society which is sick not dalits. Dalits have defi­nitely been infected by this sickness, inso­far as they too have emulated this sick sys­tem among themselves. They are surely infected because, despite Ambedkar’s clarion call for annihilation of castes, many of them foolishly cling to the idiom of caste. But that is another matter. The important thing is to see the society as sick because it is incapable of treating its own people on the basis of equality. It is also mentally retarded as it could not learn from its long history of slavery, which is directly attributed to its myopic notion of caste division of society. Modi had better learn to be a statesman and think of how to cure this society of its debilitating sickness.

This is a serious point which is totally missed in reservation discourse. To think of dalits as disabled is pure brahmanism. Dalits needed reservation not because they lacked merit or skills, but because the societal prejudice will never let them get their due. With imposed backwardness over two millennia they did look weak to start with, which created an erroneous impression that reservation was a kind of helping hand. It has done a great damage. If reservation had been conceived as the countervailing measure to force society to behave, it would have been contingent upon the society overcoming its disability. The onus to do that would be upon soci­ety. Today it is on none, making reserva­tions appear perpetual and hence a cause of eternal conflict. Worse, with this “help­ing hand” notion, it has become a game to be played by unscrupulous politicians.Modi’s Slippery SamarasataWhat Modi spoke is basically the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) samarasata solution to castes. It aims at strengthening the Hindu identity for its communal agenda. It believes in the greatness of Hindus, their religion, culture and every­thing and wants to regain it. Naturally, it does not see anything wrong with the varna or caste system, the defining compo­nents of the “Hindu”. In justifying it, its protagonists indulge in all kinds of ideo­logical acrobatics to confuse the public. A typical gem of wisdom on castes in its rep­ertoire is taken from Golwalkar who gave a slogan – sab jaati mahaan, sab jaati samaan (all castes are great and all castes are equal), which seems to inform the samar­asta project. Actually, in this lofty declara­tion, Golwalkar has not made any depar­ture from the orthodox brahmanical posi­tion which argues that all the varnas (and castes) were parts of same virat purush and hence equal. What it truly means is that all the castes should perform their assigned tasks as their dharma. Valmikis should con­tinue to scavenge and Modis should rule!

Actually samarasata is the expedient political strategy of the Sangh parivar, inaugurated in Pune in April 1983. Until then, the RSS did not feel a particular necessity to woo dalits in a conscious manner. What prompted this realisation was the increasing competition in electoral politics in the impending coalition era in which dalit votes could make a big dif­ference. The decline of the dalit move­ment and degeneration of dalit politics provided fertile ground to seed such a strategy. After the fall of the Janata Dal government, the old Bharatiya Jan Sangh dissolved itself and formed a new party – Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, which needed to try out new strategies. An important component, the samarasata manch, the platform created for the pur­pose, undertook to saffronise Ambedkar and paint the RSS gurus in radical colours. It worked with some half-baked dalit intel­lectuals but did not make much headway with people.

Samarasata means social harmony. Like Dengist China replaced the Maoist lingo of class struggle with social harmony, samarasata means that various castes should coexist without conflict. How could castes in exploitative relations with each other coexist in harmony except by inter­nalising Manu’s ideology? It is here we can get the import of Modi’s statement about Valmiki’s “spiritual experience” in carry­ing upper caste shit on their heads. It is a shame that such a grave atrocity as remov­ing human excreta manually, officially banned way back in 1993 by the govern­ment of India, is eulogised as “spiritual experience”. No dalit ever cared for the “spiritual”; her/his concern has been solely material. If Modi values this “spirit­ual experience”, as he seems to be, anyone of the 14 lakh scavengers in the country will gladly handover his/her shovel and bucket to him. He must know as the chief minister of the state that Safai Karmach­ari Andolan has given a call for abolition of this atrocity by the end of 2010.Congress’ Fake ConcernIt is curious to see Congress agitated over the issue. Actually, Modi in a way voiced his concern for dalits in the grand Gujarati tradition embodied in the word “harijan” or in the idea of trusteeship that the rich people could go on enriching themselves but hold their wealth in trust for the weak in the society. Both incidentally came from Mahatma Gandhi, the patron saint of the Congress. Gandhi has been perhaps the pioneer in creating ascriptive and patron­ising labels for dalits in modern times. While he always claimed to identify with and represent the untouchables, he has also used the term like “uncultured” and “dumb” for them, highlighting his distance and difference from the masses. Look at this advice from Gandhi to the caste Hindu workers for the harijan cause: “Workers in the Harijan cause…must come in closest touch with utterly unsophisticated, inno­cent, ignorant men and women who might be likened to children in intelligence” (Harijan, 7 November 1936). Is there any difference in this and Modi’s calling dalits retarded?

Of course, Modi as a committed func­tionary of the RSS would openly uphold the tenets of Manusmriti that takes dalits as inherently inferior. The Congress would never do so. It is thrilled when the BJP is condemned as communal and casteist by progressive elements in the country. But as the vanguard of the ruling classes, has it been any different? Its track record in communalism is at best suspect. Its deal­ing with dalit issues has been muddy. Right from the days of the Poona Pact that robbed dalits of their political autonomy to the unscrupulous co-optation phase of dalit politics, its role has been antithetical to its own projection as a friend of dalits. The only difference between it and the BJP perhaps is in the intricacy of its strategy.

Interestingly, some years ago (around 2005), the Gujarat Congress had formu­lated a training programme for Congress workers at the instance of Sonia Gandhi. A course booklet was prepared for the pur­pose by one leader of the Gujarat Congress Seva Dal. This book extolled India’s ancient culture and social order, based on Manu’s code and articulated the objective for the Congress as to bring back this social order. Can one still see any differ­ence between the Congress and BJP with regard to their anti-dalit Hindu vision?

Caste venom is embedded in the body politic of this country. The BJP occasion­ally spews it; the Congress successfully conceals it.

 

Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.