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Zelliot, Dr. Eleanor - Interview on Dalit Liberation, Hindutva Fascism and Cultural Revolution - By Yoginder Sikand
Zelliot, Dr.
Eleanor - Interview on Dalit Liberation,
Hindutva Fascism and Cultural Revolution
Hindutva Fascism and Cultural Revolution
- By Yoginder Sikand
Dr. Eleanor Zelliot, a leading American Scholar, has
done pioneering
work through her studies of various aspects of the Dalit liberation movement, about which she speaks here to Yoginder Sikand.
Q: How did
you develop an interest in the Dalit Movement?
A: I got interested in Ambedkar when I was
reading widely about India when I was at the university, and found his name in
most books which I referred to. I however, had no analyze to
explain his rise. I have been supporting the African-American movement since I
was 14, so the comparable Indian
movement was a natural subject for me.
Q: You
have written a great deal on Dalit Cultures. How would you define that term ?
A: Every act, including a poem, song, object or design that a person who defines himself or herself as a
Dalit does or creates act of creation
arising out of the fact of the consciousness
of one's being a Dalit is a part of Dalit Culture.
Q. Can
non-Dalits play any role in developing Dalit Culture?
A. A white man cannot write Black literature,
though he can write wonderfully well about Black society.
John Griffin, a white American sociologist, painted
himself black, lived
in a black ghetto for two months, and then wrote a book which be claimed faithfully represented an
insider 's view of Black society in America.
But the
blacks asserted that despite this attempt at identifying with
them, he was unable to fully capture the story of their plight.
The same is true for the Dalits in India.
Non-Dalits cannot write Dalit literature, but they have a crucial role to
play in facilitating its development. The social awakening
brought about by non-Dalit reformers in Maharashtra such as Ranade,
Agarkar and Bhandarkar did play a crucial role in the later rise of the Ambedkarite
movement. A group of Maharashtrian
non-Dalits were the first to publish radical literature written by Dalits. I
therefore see the possibility of non-Dalits
being facilitators to the Dalit movement but not its guides or preachers. Non-Dalits cannot direct the Dalit movement. When Gandhi announced that he was a
"Harijan” that ended forever
the possibility of his leadership of the Dalits.
Q. Do you
see the possibility of a radical liberation theology on Latin American lines emerging in Ambedkarite Buddhism today?
A. To a great extent, conversion to Buddhism
has meant psychological liberation to many Dalits. The Dalits today
appear to be moving towards a socially more engaged
Buddhism, but not really in the direction of liberation theology. This is akin to
the recent developments in Thai and
Vietnamese Buddhism. The Dalits could learn a lot from the efforts of people like the Vietnamese scholar
Thich Nat Than who teaches
"Buddhism and Social Action" in France. There are several training institutes for the
Buddhist Sangha in Maharashtra, but
1 am not sure if the Sangha is really necessary.
What is required are more lay teachers moving from one Vihara E or Dalit settlement to the other.
There
is also a pressing need to develop Buddhist cultural activities to
transmit the message of social emancipation through
dramas, folk songs etc. The cultural side of Buddhism bas
been neglected by the Sangha. Buddhism appeals
directly to the intellectual, but for the masses one requires more
colour, more activity.
Q: But are these efforts
radical enough or are they at best
reformist?
A: I am not
quite sure what the term "Revolution" really means today.
Marxists in many countries, while not ignoring macro-level
issues, are thinking in terms of local problems, grassroots
level organizations and decentralized leadership. And as far as
liberation theology E is concerned, I do not think it has
as yet emerged in India and most certainly not in Hinduism.
Instead, what has happened is that the secular Indian intelligentsia
has left the field of religion completely to the
conservatives and reactionaries. In such a situation, where is the
possibility of liberation theology emerging?
Q. Is it
possible to creatively draw upon the epics, legends and collective memory of
the Dalits and other oppressed groups
to assist in their mobilization for social emancipation?
A. Such a
venture would work wonders for arousing the awareness of
the Dalits. Much work has to be done to collect the peoples
own versions of history or oral history their stories
and songs of defiance of caste oppression, etc. These can then be
used by activists in the field in a creative way. For instance,
the stories of Eklavya, Shambhukh and the ballads of the Dusadhs of Bihar
that an associate of mine has collected,
could be used as crucial images in the creation of a positive Dalit culture. Dalit culture and the Dalit movement cannot be built on the mere negative
platform of anti-Brahminism. The
infusing of Dalit culture with the images
of the long-forgotten Dalit heroes and heroines would serve as a positive foundation of the Dalit
cultural movement.
Q: Would the Ambedkarite Dalit cultural movement that you
talk about be able to unite the various Dalit castes?
A: I feel that
Ambedkarites ought to make efforts to link their movement
to the local folk heroes and anti-caste charismatic
leaders of the various Dalit castes so that its appeal could
be much wider. I saw a good instance of this at the Ravidas
Temple at Ramakrishnapuram in New Delhi recently. A picture of Ambedkar there
is placed next to one of Ravidas and this is an effective means to link the
Ravidasis to the
Ambedkarite Movement. However, it is also a fact that the Bhakti and a Untouchable Saints had a limited social programme, and the Dalit Cultural Movement needs
to be aware of this. Preaching the equality of all people in the eyes of God is not the same as actually
transforming society in the direction
of social equality.
Q: Is it not the case that many Dalits today have almost turned
Ambedkar into another divine prophet and thereby refuse to critically evaluate or re-interpret
Ambedkarism?
A: It is true that many Dalit Buddhists are not
going beyond Ambedkar. In the minds of these Dalits, Ambedkar was the one who
gave them self-respect, and so they feel the same way about him as many Indians feel
about their "Gurus". As regards
the need to creatively reinterpret Ambedkarism today, some Dalits do not seem to agree and they appear to be arguing that if Marxism was in existence for
150 years but Marx was not capable of
being critically evaluated until only
some years ago, a somewhat similar logic operates in their strict adherence to
the views articulated by Ambedkar.
Q: Do you
sense any danger to the Dalit Movement as the result of the growing threat
of Brahminical Hindu chauvinism?
A: The RSS is trying to co-opt Ambedkar. They
even go to the
extent of claiming that Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, and Ambedkar had similar aims!- (laughs)...If the RSS are genuinely admirers of Ambedkar they ought to
denounce caste and convert to
Buddhism as Ambedkar did! It is simply impossible
to go back to the Varna System as many Hindu revivalists argue. In today's context only the Brahmin Varna has any meaning and sociological relevance. Even in the
Varna system the Shudras are considered to be menials, so attempting to revive
this system would not change their degraded status at all.
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