Ambedkar and the Post-Ambedkar Dalit Intellectuals
Harish K. Puri
Desperate beatings on the drums of an imagined upper-caste past will produce no long-lasting victories. Gail Omvedt (Dalit Visions 1995:103)
The Dalit’s dogmatism about Ambedkar and his thoughts and philosophy may bring some immediate gains but may prove to be fatal in the long run for both the expansion of his ideas and philosophy and their own interests to be pursued through that.
Nandu Ram (Beyond Ambedkar 1995:80-81)
Are Brahmins still our Shatrus? . . . I very deeply felt that the thinking Dalit has somehow become a prisoner of the past, and for any successful battle of emancipation, the emancipators themselves must emancipate first
Chandra Bhan Prasad (The Pioneer 20.7.2003)
The consciousness and attitude of Dalit movements appears to have been frozen at its birth. It needs to recognise that the post independence reality presents a far more intricate complexity than in colonial times.
Anand Teltumbde (“Theorising the Dalit Movement”: 2000:27)
Dr Ambedkar is misunderstood on two crucial counts. One that he was merely a leader of Dalits, and two that he was anti- communist.
If others look down on me in their belief that my caste is low, it is their problem, not mine. I certainly don’t need to torment myself over it. I pity them, for they are the victims of their own obsolete prejudices. . . . Dignity, after all rests in the mind and heart . . . and soul. I have to reclaim it not from outside, but from within. And for that I must cut off the albatross of the caste system from my soul, once and for all.
Narendra Jadhav (Outcaste, 214)
The truth is that there are too many so- called leaders of Dalits who have actually betrayed Dalit interests.
Gopal Guru
The observations cited above point to the ferment among the Dalit intellectuals – the growing children of Ambedkar--- who were apparently dissatisfied with the course of Post-Ambedkar Dalit movement and searched for a clear direction of Dalit struggle for their emancipation. They looked up to Ambedkar for wisdom and direction. The challenges in the present context were different from those that Ambedkar had grappled with. His assessments and priorities changed, sometimes radically. Anand Teltumbde, in his book Ambedkar in and for the Post-Ambedkar Dalit Movement, for example, recalled Professor Upendra Baxi’s question, which he raised 14 years ago at the Ambedkar Birth Centenary celebration. There were many Ambedkars, wrote Baxi, and asked as to “which Ambedkar do we commemorate”? Teltumbde referred to the ambivalence reflected in Ambedkar’s sayings and doings. This, according to him, provided to the Dalit activists the scope to construct a variety of icons of Ambedkar and to interpret his teachings in a manner suitable to their own political agendas. There are among the Dalit intellectuals today clear signs of a critical review of their earlier positions in the light of the changed social and political reality. A call to move “from the abstract to the concrete” was, for example, raised strongly by Chandra Bhan Prasad. “The Issue for an intellectual”, as he argued, “is to balance the abstract by the force of the concrete”.( ) The participation of many in the Durban Conference and the World Social Summit seems to have made a considerable difference to the thinking of India ’s Dalit intellectuals. Their exposure to different kinds of struggles being waged by the oppressed people around the world and to the new kinds of challenges emerging in the wake of globalisation and liberalisation encouraged new thinking.
One such evidence comes from the ‘Bhopal Dalit Document’ of 2002 that emerged from the long discussions among a galaxy of Dalit intellectuals and activists representing diverse shades of opinion. On the agenda was Dalit response to the new openings and the challenges posed by the forces of international capitalism on the one hand and by the sectarian and revivalist agenda of the protagonists of Hindutva, on the other. This document makes a resolve to liberate the Dalit imagination from the stranglehold of some of the major and passionately held ideas about objectives and strategy of Dalit emancipation. It called for a serious review of the developments during the last 50 years. There was almost a consensus on the fact that Dalit bureaucrats and political leaders failed to make themselves into a social capital unlike those of the upper castes. One of the significant developments was the resolve not to remain tied to the discourse of “job–reservations”. The document asked for state intervention to ensure the de-casteisation of the economy, so that Dalits could become active players in the market. It was pleaded that private sector corporations in India should introduce “diversity principle” on the “American Model” to reserve a share of jobs for Dalits. There are problems with the impulse underlying the Bhopal Declaration and some of its assumptions, which we would discuss shortly. But one thing is prominent. There is serious effort to explore new ways of safeguarding and promoting Dalit interests. The new churning among the Dalit intellectuals also brought up the differences in their assessment of the past struggles of Dalits and about the vision and the strategy of action for the future. And these differences were sometimes sharp. That is a measure of the maturing of the thinking children of Ambedkar. Pride in Ambedkar’s legacy and gratitude towards his contribution became in this exercise a legitimate ground for “redefining Ambedkar”, understanding his core impulses and ideas, and for going beyond Ambedkar.
Babasaheb Ambedkar enjoyed an exceptional honour and love, as a liberator, among the Dalits. As Prasad put it, he was for the Dalit multitude a Prophet or “Christ plus”. No single leader, in the recent history of India , cared and did for them so much with love as he did to the transformation of the world of Dalits -–- in their perception of their self-worth and their destiny. Thanks to his vigorous and multi-dimensional efforts, the Dalits are today far more confident of themselves; they are far more politically conscious and assertive about their rights and about the need for struggle against oppression and exploitation than ever before. In fact, Ambedkar is perhaps the only one amongst the national leaders of India who seems to have grown immensely in his stature after his death, even among the non- Dalits.
The political priorities of Ambedkar and the interventions he made were, however, the responses to the problems he faced and the opportunities available to him in the specific historical conditions of his times. He launched a number of different kinds of struggles and established a variety of organisations. He was no less involved in working out an ideal philosophy of life. He grew with times and changed programmes and tactics accordingly. His prolific writings covered a wide range. But his primary concerns during the last years of his life were two. One was the project of establishing such institutions, rules and norms as would end untouchability and exploitation of his people and enable them to claim their rights to liberty, equality and human dignity. The second was the creation of a sensitive and civilised society in which there is a climate of fraternity. One of the most significant of his contributions for that purpose was the framing of the Constitutional Law of India. He had great faith in the rule of law. Given the clearly laid down objectives of the Constitution and the Directive Principals of the state policy, he had hoped (despite apprehensions to the contrary) that the state would be able to create the conditions necessary for social justice. Unfortunately, the apprehensions came to be true. The Indian state largely failed in fulfilling its constitutional obligations of social justice and the Indian people together failed in creating a civilised or caring society, where fraternity is possible.
Regarding how the intellectuals assessed the overall thrust of the state’s developmental and affirmative actions and its impact on the Dalits there were sharp differences among them. Some of them thought that such intervention by the state had, instead of empowering the Dalits, contributed to their subordination to a patronizing system. That point of view has been well articulated by S. P. Punalekar, himself a non-dalit. While there is recognition of the improvement made in the conditions of life of the Dalits it was viewed as a process which had, by giving to the small upwardly mobile section a few opportunities of personal advancement and a nominal share in political power divided the dalits. They distanced themselves from the vast section of their fellows. For the mass of dalits it created a situation of relative deprivation, making them to aspire for what the elites gained and tying them to a system of looking for benefits from above. ( ) Gopal Guru moved beyond this by looking at it as a negative process. According to him, the advancement of some sections, which facilitated their co-option and which trapped the Dalits in a “mobility syndrome”, contributed to a negative consciousness of looking for incremental improvement. The reduction of “absolute deprivation into relative deprivation” had the consequence of atomisation of an individual which “denies any community a collectively critical subversive consciousness”. (EPW April 3, 1993)
Anand Teltumbde largely agreed with Guru’s perception that such consciousness ‘emasculated’ the Dalits and denuded them of the revolutionary consciousness. Incremental change and improvement seemed to them to be counter-productive and harmful to their liberation. In a fundamental sense, the changes that occurred during the last fifty years of development and change had, according to them, further harmed and weakened them. In fact they tended to give the impression that absolute deprivation of the Dalits might have been better because that would have prepared them for bringing about a revolutionary transformation of society. One could recall how some of our Leninist or communist activists used to look for signs of the sharpening of class contradictions for the revolution to happen. Kancha Ilaiah, on the other hand, did not think much of “relative deprivation”. He believed that “Post-independent India has not given the Dalit-Bahujans anything except a saga of atrocities”. (The Pioneer January 30, 2000 )
Many intellectuals and perhaps a vast majority of Dalits, on the other hand, appeared to appreciate, howsoever grudgingly, the difference made in their lives, and were grateful to Babasaheb Ambedkar for making that possible through the Constitution. That was in spite of the sense of betrayal and anger over the state’s failure. In fact, most of today’s Dalit intellectuals are the product largely of state interventions --- ‘reservations’, education, and schemes designed for welfare of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes etc. The respect the Dalits had for ‘Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Constitution’ was evident when the NDA government initiated a review of the Constitution. No other section of society felt so incensed and angry, as the Dalits did, over the suspected “design to mutilate” the Constitution made by Ambedkar.
The overall changes in the country’s economy and society also made an impact on Dalit life. The end of jajmani relations, for example, helped in their liberation in the rural areas. A large section of Dalits moved away from the traditional caste-based occupations. It is correct that the Dalits still constitute the main strata below the poverty line and that caste discrimination and oppression of Dalits is very widely prevalent. Practices, such as those of the ‘two glasses’ system or separate cremation grounds persist in many parts of India, in violation of the law. The Dalits as a community continued to be more vulnerable to atrocities than others. The oppressors and criminals, both upper caste and OBCs, routinely succeeded in securing greater protection of the law and the civil society against the victims. But the practice of ‘untouchability’ has become an evil which could be referred to only in the past-tense. No social or political platform in India can today advocates or defends the injunctions of Manusmriti or the Varnashram, and still remains respectable or goes unchallenged. Over four million were employed in government or other public sector jobs. Chandra Bhan Prasad, for instance, argued in a article,
Now there are one million dalits with pucca houses, electricity, water supply, clean jobs, Television, fridge, scooter/car better colonies against only a few hundred of that kind in 1950. . . Can we not aspire to make the number 10 million and focus on education and self –employment for Dalits?
It was no small change that for the first time in history it was possible for a Dalit to be the President of India and another to be the Chief Minister of the biggest state in India. The Dalits have come to recognise their importance and stake in the electoral democracy. Each political party would like to woo them. None of these dare to take a position on public issues that was inimical to the interests of Dalits. Though their representation is still rather meager, we can find some presence of Dalits in practically all public institutions and occupations. What is more significant, the Dalits would not, any more, take insults without resistance or retaliation. And in their struggle against oppression they were no more friendless.
There were other changes in the overall environment which effected the options available to them at present. It is a long time, for example, since the Indians turned their backs on Gandhian Ram Rajya, which Ambedkar ridiculed as conservative and obscurantist. The modernist Ambedkar and his advocacy of a social and political order, based on liberty, equality, fraternity, and human dignity, has today a much wider constituency of supporters across barriers of caste, religion and even nationality. On the other hand, the faith in Nehru’s “socialist pattern of society or Ambedkar’s “state socialism” seems to be loosing out to the call for privatisation and free market. There is a crisis of welfare state and the state is fast withdrawing from its basic obligations of providing education, drinking water and medical facilities, or of prevention of disease and multiple kinds of pollution. The declining ability of the state to provide good governance hits the weakest and the poorest i.e. the Dalits, the most. The Dalit intellectuals are faced with a new context and new kind of challenges. That required critical rethinking on the worth of the achievements in the past, the vision for the future and strategy for the present
A number of questions have been raised during the last decade or so by a fairly large number of Dalit intellectuals such as Narinder Jadhav, Nandu Ram, Anand Teltumbde, Chandra Bhan Prasad, S P Punalekar, Gopal Guru, Gail Omvedt and Kancha Ilaiah. Besides the theoretical and other academic contributions made by scholars in publications and in presentations at conferences and seminars, there was evidence of wide participation in debates on a rich variety of relevant issues in popular magazines like the Dalit Voice, Pal Pratipal, Yuddhrat Aam Aadmi, and web magzines like www.ambedkar.org and www.dalitstan.org.
One of the major issues related to the Dalit response to the ideology and forces of liberalisation and globalisation. There was an urge to understand what course of action and priorities Ambedkar would have followed in the present conditions of liberalisation. Many of Ambedkar’s followers were shocked when Narendra Jadhav observed that Ambedkar would have supported liberalisation; that he was in favour of material prosperity, private property and an open economy. Jadhav saw in globalisation and liberalisation new kinds of openings for Dalit emancipation. As the Principal Economic Advisor on Analysis and Policy in the Reserve Bank of India, he was one of the trained economists and one of the highest officers among Dalits. His credentials as a neo-Buddhist Ambedkarite were impeccable. His published biographical family history, Outcaste, created waves in many parts of the world, as an outstanding contribution to literature on Dalits. His observations could not be ignored lightly; not by Dalit intellectuals. No less important was the view of Gail Omvedt in this regard, even though she was shocked when Jadhav stated 15 years ago that Ambedkar would have favoured devaluation of the rupee. (1999: 275) On the other hand, some of the other well-known Dalit economists such as S K Thorat and Anand Teltumbde, disagreed with such an interpretation of Ambedkar and regarded liberalisation as a grave threat which may harm the Dalits the most. In fact, as Omvedt discovered, there was great confusion about Ambedkar’s economic theory. Part of the reason lay in his strongly propagated idea of “Brahminism and Capitalism” being the two enemies of Dalits. His advocacy of “state socialism”, including nationalisation of land and industry, has been a part of Dalit imagination of Ambedkar’s radical agenda. It was believed that Ambedkar was opposed to private agricultural property. In a recent issue of the Ambedkarite weekly paper Bheem Patrika, for example, a saying of Ambedkar about private property was published prominently as under.
If a murderer can be killed because he has killed a citizen, if a soldier can be killed in war because he belongs to a hostile nation; why a property owner cannot be killed if his ownership leads to misery for the rest of humanity. There is no reason to make an exception in favour of the property owner, why one should regard property as sacrosanct. (No.45 November 2004 (1) p. 2)
To deal with the confusion, Gail Omvedt tried to look closely at Ambedkar’s economic theory. She discovered a distinct shift in Ambedkar’s thinking during the last few years of his life. In his Buddha or Karl Marx, Ambedkar had articulated a distinctly new perspective, wherein he “rejects” state socialism, and nationalisation and turned to Buddhism as the “solution” to “economic exploitation”. He called it a “moral economy” solution. The distinct superiority of Buddhism over Christianity, as he argued, lay “precisely” in its rejection of Christian values of poverty and other-worldliness: “There is no Sermon on the Mount to be found in Buddha’s teachings. His teaching is to acquire wealth”.
Ambedkar cited Buddha’s sermon to his disciple Ananthapindika.
The disciple asked, “Will the Enlightened One tell what things are welcome, pleasant, agreeable to the householder but which are hard to gain?
The Enlightened One having heard the question put to him said ,
“Of such things the first is to acquire wealth lawfully’.
“The second is to see that your relations also get their wealth lawfully”.
“The third is to live long and reach great age” . . .
Ambedkar, accordingly argued that,
“to acquire wealth legitimately and justly, earned by great industry, amassed by strength of the arm and gained by the sweat of the brow is a great blessing”. (text in Rodrigues 2002: 188, also Omvedt, op.cit.)
He stopped talking of socialism and instead talked in terms of an ideal of “abundance and wealth accumulation”. Ambedkar’s faith in Western liberalism and perhaps the Fabian influence contained in the word “lawfully” speaks of innocence. After all the British colonial expropriation was followed according to their laws as much the practice of apartheid in south Africa; and the Morgans, the Fords and MNCs of today like Wall-Mart operated lawfully. Omvedt, however, thought that the above mentioned shift in Ambedkar thinking “presents some alternatives that will make both market and state work for the good of the people”. But she was not sure whether Ambedkar would have opposed privatisation or supported liberalisation. Most likely, as she believed, he “would have been pragmatic, looking for a combination of state, market and community”. (1999 : 284) She apparently looked for greater hope and opportunities for Dalits in the age of liberalisation. Many of the Dalit intellectuals who apparently felt more concerned about the Dalit poor, however, chose to ignore the later Ambedkar’s economic ideas. Or may be they were not well aware of the shift in his position? In any case, they preferred to rally the pre–1948 state-socialist Ambedkar to the support of their arguments and agenda. Ambedkar, therefore, served as the guiding prophet for the two opposing positions on liberalisation. The effort of enlisting his support for the new ideology of lawful freedom for money-making, as the route to good future for Dalits, is however, more likely than not, going to be an illusion.
Closely connected to the above was the issue of the character of the state in general and the Indian state in particular and the capacity of the Indian state to regulate, if not control, the operation of the market in favour of social justice. As the maker of the Constitution and during his days as Law Minister he appeared to have reposed great faith in the role and capacity of the state as an agency of social and economic transformation. His apparently well thought ideas formed part of the Memorandum of March 1947 which he submitted to the Constituent Assembly, on behalf of the Scheduled Caste Federation. In that Memorandum, which was published as The States and Minorities, he observed that basic industries shall be owned by the State and that
Insurance shall be a monopoly of the State. Agriculture shall be a State industry. Land will belong to the State and shall be let out to villagers without distinction of caste or creed and in such a manner that there will be no landlord, no tenant and no landless labourer
(Cited from Keer: 1995:391)
Teltumbde believed that even though Ambedkar’s thinking about state reflected some amount of autonomy from the hegemony of the ruling class, “his conception of the state is largely idealist”. The idea of class character of the state and the limits of state action vis a vis the ruling class-caste interests and the ruling custom and morality did not seem to be intrinsic to Ambedkar’s thinking. If things went wrong and the state failed in its obligations, it would only be so because “man was vile”, not because of the character of the state system or the structure of community power.
The consensus among the Dalit intellectuals and activists at the Bhopal Conference was, in the manner of the socialist Ambedkar of 1947-50, in favour of high expectations from the state and its command over the economy. The conference recognised that the reluctantly agreed social consensus at the time of independence had “by and large broken down”. There was agreement on the point that the system of discrimination and exclusion remained deeply entrenched in the civil society. However, they were evidently inclined to hope that the state may be forced to pursue a more proactive agenda for “redeeming the pledges of the founding fathers of the Republic to do justice to the Dalits”. Accordingly, practically each one of the “21-Point Action Agenda For the 21 st Century” spelled out concretely what the state must do. Interestingly, as Aditya Nigam points out, the relevant chapter of the draft of “Bhopal Document” contained a passionate call that
Every walk of life in India should be subjected to rigid state control till society attains civility and social democracy matures.
Nigam correctly observed that it was “contrary to all social scientific sense”, that the state may be regarded as the embodiment of social reform and as the guarantor against the discriminatory practices of the economic forces and the ‘civil society’. (EPW March 30, 2002 : 1192) And that too, at a time when the state appeared to be all set to go into the service of the free market and prepared to wash its hands off its basic social obligations.
The present time is distinctly different from that of the early post-independence period of “consensus” regarding the transformational and social welfare role of the state. Even at that time, however, Ambedkar’s frustration came within one year of the Republic, when he talked of burning the Constitution. That was, followed by his resignation from the cabinet over the Hindu Code Bill. It seemed, in retrospect, that the feeling of betrayal was perhaps no less attributable to the illusions about the State being a neutral or a benign agency and about the working of representative governments. The constitution and the State worked to the good of the ruling interests, as in the case of land reforms; and of the ruling caste, as in the case of Hindu social reform legislation. Given a semblance of understanding of the structure of community power or the class character of the state, one wondered whether the expected social transformation did not amount to erring on the side of illusion. That is to say, in spite of the commitment of a Jawaharlal Nehru and the presence of the alluded “consensus”.
One can, understand the pragmatism of Dalit intellectuals at Bhopal. Chandra Bhan Prasad, who played the most crucial role at the conference and who is presently the only Dalit activist who makes his presence felt in India’s predominantly upper caste media, and his colleagues. had their reasons. Prasad’s appreciation for what the Indian state had been able to do for the Dalits carried sense in the pervading repertoire of relentless denial. However, while moving on to a positive agenda, the final resolution tended to give the impression of placing inordinate faith in the role of the Indian state and government, particularly in the context of the ruling market rationality. Secondly, the above mentioned focus on the benefit to a section of Dalits also tended to ignore the consequences of the widening differentials even among the Dalits. It also refused to grapple with the problem of the fast decline in the ability of the state to deliver the goods, even in terms of routine governance. There is considerable weight in S. P. Punalekar’s assessment that in the age of liberalisation, Dalits would need more, and not less support and protection from the State. But we need to be cautious and remember that the State is under far stronger hold of the propertied interests today than earlier. It is turning into more of a security state primarily meant to safeguard the property and investments of the big corporations, particularly MNCs. The faith which the Bhopal Consensus reposed in rigid state control was more likely, than not, to go against the Dalits and the other poor. Unless the struggle is directed to, what Randhir Singh described as “transformation of the nature of political power itself”.
The role of religion and conversion to Buddhism, which Ambedkar emphasised on, was another issue that has been a subject of debate among the Dalit intellectuals. It is well known that Ambedkar had great faith in religion, particularly during the later period of his life. “My philosophy has roots in religion and not in political science”, he stated. He also stated that he derived the fundamentals of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, from the teachings of Buddha, not from the French Revolution. According to Dhanajay Keer, Ambedkar was unhappy that the men of his party were interested more in politics than in religion, while he himself was interested more in religion than in politics. (1995: 502). Conversion of half a million followers to Buddhism was his last major enterprise and he thought of devoting the rest of his life to propagation of Buddhism. His hopes of radical social change seemed to be focussed on making India a Buddhist country within ten to fifteen years. To quote again from Keer’s biography of Ambedkar, “he thought that he would achieve now for Buddhism what Shankracharya had done for Hinduism’. (Keer: 509) Economic interpretation of history was not Ambedkar’s forte. Not many of his followers considered it crucial to understanding how politics happens. To many of them as teltumbde commented “Buddhism was the culmination of ambedkar’s mission and hence the true Ambedkarite not only had to be a Buddhist but also had to work for the spread of Buddhism’ ( 1997: 18) It is no wonder that some of them, including leaders like Udit Raj, considered conversion to Buddhism as the key to the emancipation of Dalits.
Several other intellectuals, such as Prasad and Teltumbde, for example, however, correctly regarded it as a useless distraction. Perhaps it was little more than thumbing one’s nose against Hinduism. Prasad ridiculed the choice of Ambedkar’s Buddhist radicals: “why this mad euphoria about conversion to Buddhism? It is no help’. The key thing, according to him, was the change in occupation. Teltumbde , who is a votary of revolution, was amazed that his followers projected Ambedkar as the Bodhisatva that inspires Nirvana – the state of total detachment from worldly matters. He believed it was a serious mistake that Ambedkar made Buddhism a substitute for Marxism. His excessive religiosity towards the last years of his life seemed to him to be a manifestation of “ frustration” of his efforts in the political domain. (1997: 64). “It is paradoxical that a person who is rational enough not to bind the posterity with his vision, volitionally binds himself with what is said 25 centuries before”, he said. The Buddhist orientation towards inwardness, according to him, “dis-oriented the Dalits” from the material world where their real problems are located. “Without the ideology of class struggle, the Dalit movement could never come to grips with the real problem of Dalits or comprehend the means to solve them”.
There was appreciation for the absence of irrationality in Buddhism and also for the value of moral force in social life. It was also felt that Ambedkar’s turn to Buddhism was meant not only to provide a new religion to his people but also a new cultural identity in place of the discarded Hindu identity. It is different point, however, to examine why do issues of social transformation sometimes end up as issues of identity. In the event, Mahars in Maharshtra were the only major section of Dalits who converted to Buddhism. Further, the growing emphasis on ritualism, mythology, or the controversial Vipasana, the pechant for more Buddhist temples, statues, religious congregations --- known aberrations in any organised religion --- made it no different from other religions in practice. A Buddhist Dalit remained as much a Dalit as a Hindu, Christian or Muslim Dalit. Mandelsohn and Vicziany referred to another negative dimension. According to them, the emphasis on Buddhist identity itself became a divide, between the Buddhist Dalits and the Hindu poor and oppressed communities. ( 2000: 217) In fact it also walled out other Dalit communities. To the Mangs in Maharashtra , for instance, it became the religion of the Mahars ; just as for the Bamikis in U P and Punjab that of a section of the Chamar. No wonder that most of the Dalit activists, including Kanshi Ram and Mayawati were not attracted to it.
That ideology free penchant for acquiring political power has been another subject of rethinking among Dalits intellectuals. Ambedkar’s followers were perhaps the most inspired by his call for “making Dalits the ruling race”. No one has as skillfully utilised that slogan to the advantage of his movement as Kanshi Ram did. Most of the other kinds of statements and observations of Ambedkar were not relevant. Teltumbde thought that Kanshi Ram ignored Ambedkar’s vision and instead propagated an image of Ambedkar as a master strategist, for whom electoral victory and acquiring seat of power was in itself the key to Dalit liberation. The focus of BSP and factions of RPI on somehow winning the largest number of seats in an election made the ideological thrust of Dalit struggle less relevant. It was alleged that instead of empowering the Dalits, such no holds-barred pursuit of political power robbed them of their little self-esteem and their potential optimism of will to change the social and political system. Questions were therefore raised whether such power was for Dalits an end in itself or means to a radical social transformation?
Closely connected to this issue, for the Dalit intellectuals, were the questions of adequacy of caste identity and Bahujan solidarity. Mere caste identity, as Teltumbde argued was bound to be dysfunctional. The question of Jati identity obstructed even Dalit solidarity. The fact that the benefit of reservations and other affirmative measures went more to a few advantaged Scheduled Castes favoured what Gopal Guru described as “politicisation of relative deprivation” among the others caste groups. The Mangs, for instance, positioned themselves against the Mahars. Educated Dalits like Jagannath Pani insisted that “‘jati identity’ can not be sacrificed for the sake of ‘Dalit unity’ “. ( Dalit Voice, April 16-30, 1999) The Balmikis insisted on their separate identity against the Chamars. Interestingly, some of the latter publicly declared their objective to be achievement of a “Chamar Raj“.
The question of Dalit unity with the OBCs and the religious minorities in the broad based struggle for social justice has been another issue of interest to the Dalit intellectuals and activists. Organisations such as Bahujan Samaj Party and BAMCEF were founded on that principle. Of late a certain rethinking has started on whether the interests of the Dalits Dalits and OBC are common or conflicting and contradictory. Chandrabhan Prasad has pleaded that the concrete reality pointed to a fundamental conflict of interest between the two. In his weekly column in The PIoneer and his book Dalit Diary he argued that after independence the Brahmins had been gradually replaced by the shudra or the OBC castes as the immediate and ”real tormentors of the Dalits”. The shudra castes (OBCs), according to him benefited the most from land reforms and became the landowning castes. Following Mandalisation and the strengthening of their clout in electoral politics they emerged as the most violent caste-class enemy of the Dalits. Instead of abstract ideas of broader class unity, the concrete reality, according to him, demanded a complete rethinking on the issue. In fact, writing under the title “Are Brahmins still our Shatrus? he argued that in the changed context, “Dalits and dwijas are destined to form common political coalition against marauding shudras”. (The Pioneer, July 20, 2003)
The differing perceptions and agendas among the Dalit intellectuals, pointed to the dichotomy between the selective directions from the”Ambedkar of faith” and the “essential Ambedkar”. In terms of essentials, his vision was that of creating a social and political order pervaded by values of liberty, equality and fraternity. For that purpose, the Constitution of India included besides the apparatuses and procedures of governance, a rather conspicuous text , what Upendra Baxi described as “Justice text”. Ambedkar had no doubt in his mind that it was not possible to conceptualize Dalit emancipation without the state committed to “a redistribution of resources and “redirection of the market”. No less important to him was the creation of a sensitive and caring civil society? He saw the civil society as the “conscience-keeper of the political sphere” which determined the course of governance. Perhaps that was part of the reason why he devoted all his energy during the last days of his life to explore and articulate the importance of Buddhism to the creation of a sensitive and responsible civil society.
The task before the Dalits in this age of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, is far more difficult and challenging. One of the problems, it seems, lies in the thinking of what K. P. Singh termed as “Dalit Bourgeoisie”. It was amazing that those who drafted the Bhopal Dalit Document waved the flag of “American Model” for seeking space for Dalits in Business corporations. It stated, for example, that the “American society has undergone a sea change in its attitude”; that “The U S has evolved into a thriving democracy”, which is”now an enthusiastic advocate and practitioner of equality of opportunity, affirmative action and diversity policies in every sphere of life “. (p.67, cited from Nigam, op.cit.) Sure enough, the blacks have been, following a dogged and hard struggle for decades, able to secure space in the big companies. But does that mean that this appearance social justice should be allowed to blind us to the general thrust of the ruling market rationality?
Liberalisation and globalisation tend to yoke the state and community to the service of the market. Market operates for profit. Chomsky explains the logic of international capitalism under an eloquent title of his book -- Profit over People. The lesson which economists like J K Galbriath drew from their own experience of the working of the said combination in USA are important. During the 1940s and 1950s, as Galbraith argued, the big business was used to lobbying to pressurise the agencies of state for such policies and legislation as would be favourable to their business interests. Now, as he finds, the big business are directly a part of the government.
There is another logical consequence. The small section of the rich and prosperous get disconnected from the society. A Harvard scholar Robert Reich described it as “Secession of the Successful”. It is no surprise that even the Dalit intellectuals “ in search of a Dalit Bourgeiosie” appeared to be getting disconnected from their less fortunate kinsmen. One has to take into account another related and serious problem liberalisation has posed, that is, the general disabling of governments. Political scientists have observed that in the present context, even when the people may be able to elect the representatives and the party which they liked, it was not sure that such an elected government would be free and able to make and implement decisions which it promised or even liked to make and implement. There is a tremendous global pressure for rolling back the welfare state and for limiting the intervention of the state in the social sector. On the other hand, consumerism and obsession with individual self-gratification, which is the hall-mark of liberalisation, tends to ridicule compassion and social morality. It is pertinent to remember that possessive individualism of the market strikes at the root of community feelings or “fraternity”, which was so central to Ambedkar’s and Mahatma Gandhi’s concerns.
It is necessary to understand that it is not possible in today’s context to conceive of Dalit emancipation outside or independent of the vast masses of the poor and the oppressed of diverse castes and religious affiliations. Ambedkar’s politics was not ethnic politics, but politics for the whole of Indian society. His politics was not of caste but for end of caste. Nagesh Chaudhry’s lament must make the intellectuals sit up. He said,
“ All are followers of Babasaheb Ambedkar, but divided, They hate each other more than the upper castes. . . Our numerous organisations are like the tribes, organisations for each caste” ( Dalit Voice Aug.16.2000)
How could the intellectual refuse to take note of I. P. Desai’s empirical observation that there existed a phenomenon of “untouchability amongst untouchables”. The comment by Dipankar Gupta made sense that instead of thumbing their nose at Hinduism by conversion to Buddhisn, they would do better “if they thought a little more deeply about combating caste among Dalits instead of wanting to be priests in a new religious order”. (Dipankar Gupta 2003)
Further, it is time to examine whether continuing to bewail the setback of Poona Pact or the fad of bashing of Gandhi served the causes in the context of the problems that face us in the 21 st century. Let the primary focus be Babasaheb Ambedkar’s larger vision. That can never be realised in an order of politics and economy driven by lust, greed and profit – by polution of the enviroment and of minds. There is no alternative short of the one directed to negation of Capitalism. The fate of centralised party-state bureaucratic route to socialism provides a lesson. The hope for an order of social justice and human dignity in an environment of fraternity can be realised only if the people secure real power, not the mask of power; when such politics, not market mystification, is in command. The task is far too big and complex. Dalits have to be part of the bigger struggle. The present ferment among Dalit intellectuals --- the readiness for ruthless criticism of old beliefs and ideas ---- may be viewed as a sign of confidence and hope. Appo Deepo Bhava .
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Courtesy: www.ambedkartimes.org