:: Friday, October 18, 2002 ::

Re: Mob Killing of Dalits:

As Vikash notes in his post below; there is a very cynical link between the use of religious symbolism and existing forms of social inequity and oppression. It is surprising how often-religious mobilisation by the right serves as a way of the established proprietary groups in society to maintain their hold on power. I am sure it is the same in many ways for the Christian right in the US, the Wahhabi Saudi monarchy and the BJP in India: all three regimes mask the exploitation of the public sphere and polity by private interests groups and to some extent the agents of Capital behind a veneer of social values, religious imagery and symbolism and fundamentalist interpretations of religion. It is simply amazing to me how often and successfully the strategy works and why people are not more sceptical of such ideological posturing.

The incident Vikash recounts is particularly bitter not only for the dubious and uncertain circumstances behind the killings but also because of the obscured history of cow killing in India. Vegetarianism was never an essential part of Hinduism in the Vedic age; it was absorbed from Jainism; similarly contrary to popular belief, beef was eaten in India until the medieval period and there was no taboo on cow killing. It was a combination of changes that took place at the end of the first Millennium AD that stigmatised the consumption of beef – a development over which there is some controversy but which is usually associated with the Brahminnic counter-revolution against Buddhism. DN Jha , a professional historian of ancient India whose book “The Myth of the Holy Cow” by using careful textual evidence shows how common beef consumption was, had his book banned by the Hyderabad High Court and the Indian publishers came under immense pressure not the publish the book in India, Jha himself received death threats and threatening phone calls warning him not to go ahead with the publishing of the book. In the end the book was published and printed abroad in the UK by Verso press and is still to my knowledge not available directly for sale in India. So much for the vaunted right to free speech enshrined in the Indian Constitution; ironically Hindutva activists were incensed by Muslim demands that the Satanic Verses be banned in India and when the then government decided to ban Salman Rushdie’s book this was commonly taken to be another case of Muslim appeasement and “pampering of minorities” by VHP ideologues.

There is also an unpleasant caste angle to much of this: as in rural India, when a cow does die, its carcass becomes polluting and so only Dalits usually are used to carry it from the fields and dispose of it. Contact with this polluting matter is held to be impure and is one of the reasons behind untouchability, hence many Dalits refuse to do such work – which leads to caste tension and violence as Dalits are frequently forced to dispose of such carcasses by other villagers. I think that episodes such as this belie the true nature of “organic society” that is the usual saffron euphemism for the caste system and expose the ugly reality beneath the veneer of religious idealism.

Again I feel that it is partly the rise of Hindu nationalism, which is to blame - (in this case the local VHP are justifying the incident) though that is only part of the problem. The other two main sources lie first in the uncritical acceptance by most Hindus that Hinduism is a unitary religion that has a common characteristic/core that joins all Hindus together; rather than seeing how the very idea of Hinduism as a single religion was an outcome of colonial and Orientalist modes knowledge. The second is the superimposing of a Brahminnic and orthodox version of this unified religion over the other versions/sources and an embourgeiosiment of diverse religious practises excluding those not seen as respectable or potentially threatening to the established social order. Overcoming these two hurdles will allow a more flexible and a more inclusive approach to religion and aid in removing many of the inegalitarian practises and conceptions that have crept in the more recent history of Hinduism.

:: Conrad Barwa 6:31 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Semitising Hinduism:

Vikash points to an important phenomenon in the semitising project that is now underway-in Hinduism by the Saffron brigade. I too have heard of the NASA discovery and was amused at how excited many Hindus became – even those supposedly middle class, professional and “secular” were animated by this “discovery”. Any scepticism was regarded as part of the fashionable exercise of “pseudo-secularism” where supposedly leftist intellectuals always take every opportunity to degrade or belittle anything related to the Hindu scriptures/texts. I find this a troubling trend for several reasons.

Firstly, it betrays what I would call a post-colonial mimic complex. By this I mean there is an undercurrent of a desire that seeks recognition from the West based on such “scientific” proof. Attempts to Semitise Hinduism through the Ramjanmabhoomi movement also though ostensibly targeted against another Semitic religion Islam, mobilises opposition through replicating the same characteristics of all Semitic religions. One seeks to destroy the enemy by becoming identical to it (interesting reference to that otherwise awful film “Mimic” where the bugs gradually evolve into the species they will annihilate and replace). The constant references to scientific standards and supposedly impartial Western scholars are invoked as authorities to justify such claims. This has in part to do with the Hindu diaspora and the insecurity that this highly skilled and wealthy middle class faces abroad, when confronted with very different cultures and ways of thinking. Recreating a Hindu identity that can be a source of respect and “take its place in the sun” along with the other Semitic religions is part of this. There was a good article in the Guardian a few months ago about the desire by the BJP to project a muscular and virile Hinduism that could compete with Christianity and Islam. Encountering such “hard” Semitic faiths provokes an anxiety amongst this middle class, which seeks to displace it by a mimicking strategy. I really dislike this approach, which has the subtext of implying that unless Hinduism measures up to some putative Semitic standard it cannot have the status of a “real religion”.

Secondly, The Myth of Hindu passivity also plays a role as the Hindu right has the problem of papering over the very sorry state of Muslims in India, who are largely a poor socio-economic category, with little influence in many sector of the economy or public life and also of ignoring the very real social discrimination that goes on within Hindu society itself. By invoking the memory of past injustices and wrongs this can be carefully eluded and the BJP, can pull off the trick of making a dominant majority seem vulnerable and discriminated against. It also cleverly inverts the internal Gandhian critique levelled at the Hindu right by many devout Hindus – it is the very passivity and non-violent nature of the Hindus, it is argued that is responsible for their poor plight today. Of course this narrative not only ignores historical evidence that invalidates this myth of passivity, it also completely denies the pervasive presence of violence in the everyday lives of millions of Indians. It is also a discourse that I think represents the world view of a group that is now being challenged from many different directions and senses its grip on power fading – namely a group that is largely upper caste, male, middle class and educated. Ironically it was this class that was seen as the vanguard of modernity in India that has now become a very conservative anfd even reactionary force.

The whole concept of Hinduism as a religion in its own right is really an imposition of Colonial rule, which grouped a diverse collection of competing and antagonistic sects into a single religious tradition; it is ironic that today Hindu nationalists repeat what is essentially a foreign classification in their discourse. This does raise some concerns though, as I fear that it is this very looseness and fluidity of Hinduism that in our current era of nation-states will always lead it to be defined against an Other – in this case Islam; which would serve to shore up the very indeterminacy of the Hindu category. Large sections of Hindu society which do not see themselves as Hindu, like the adivasis also present a problem as traditional aspects of orthodox Hindu society like abstention from beef and respect for Brahmins make no sense when applied to many adivasi societies – most adivasis consume beef without a problem and many clans are hostile towards Brahmins and signifiers of Brahminnical Hinduism (eg the Birsaite cult in Jharkhand and the Devi cult in western India). These divergent traditions are hostile to the project of representing a “national religion” and so the Hindutva groups must evolve a strategy to subsume/override them. I also think that at some point we can discuss “reverse Sanskritisation” the process by which non-Brahminnic religious practises become absorbed and made respectable for orthodox Hindu society. I think too much emphasis has been given on how lower castes supposedly emulate the Sanskritic practises of the upper castes as a strategy of upward mobility – this is insulting on several levels as not only does it imply that non-upper castes have internalised a social value system that demeans their way of life but it also very subtly overlooks how in fact many supposedly “Sanskritic” practises and rituals were themselves absorbed from these groups. This is also why many Hindus are embarrassed by the aboriginal sources of several elements in Hinduism like the now well-established Shiv-linga worship and the Kali cult. This kind of cultural amnesia I find highly distasteful and hypocritical.

I completely agree with Vikash, that the lack of Semitic characteristics and the absence of a codified unity or self-consciousness as a clearly demarcated religion in the pre-colonial era was one of Hinduism’s great civilisational strengths, not a weakness and also one of the reasons for its influence in South East and East Asia as a philosophical and cultural force. It is part of the insecurity of the so-called Hindu Nationalists that instead of building on this great tradition they seek to always compare and measure themselves against the Semitic religions. The specific genius of Hinduism is that it can absorb and mix with other religions without losing its own essence. Examples of this intermingling and mixing abound: the Dance of Murgaon in Tamil Nadu can be seen as an ordinary dance to celebrate a regional deity but can also be seen as the Martyrdom of St. Thomas - as both Christian and Hindu tradition have blended since the 4th century. The great Sufi traditions of north India, cosmopolitan figures like Kabir and Tukurama all added to the rich tradition of devotional music and verse that have a hold on the imagination even today, one can find many Hindus worshipping at the sites of great pirs such as the Chisti-e-Ajmer shrine in Rajasthan. It is a well-known fact that everyone is welcome at most temples regardless of who they are or what religion they come from. The fluid and adaptable nature of Hinduism is part of its greatness - defining it like one would define Christianity or Islam would be to lose this very essence of Hinduism and diminish it.


:: Conrad Barwa 10:58 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Pakistani Election Results Raw Data:

Pakistan's recent legislative elections deserves some careful commentary as there have been some surprising results, despite the expected irregularities. (There are some inaccuracies in the numbers cited in the BBC report, the figures below are more accurate as far as I can tell). The Daily Jang has a state-by-state and provincial assembly breakdown of the elections.

At stake in this election: 357 Seats in National Assembly*

*Before MUSHARRAF dissolved Parliament following a coup in October 1999, the parliament was composed of two houses: the Senate (87 seats) and the National Assembly (217 seats). Following this election, the Senate will comprise 100 seats and the National Assembly 357 seats.

Description of electoral structure: 92 Senate members are indirectly selected by the provincial assemblies. Eight members representing the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) will be directly elected. Members serve six-year terms. Members of the National Assembly are directly elected to five-year terms. Sixty seats in the National Assembly are reserved for women and 25 are reserved for technocrats.

There are 70,755,379 registered voters, of which 29,572,712 (41.8%) voted in this election.

---

Main parties in the electoral race*:

Party: Pakistan Muslim League (PML/Q)
Leader: Mian AZHAR
Seats won in this election: 69 (25.7% of votes)

Party: Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP)
Leader: Makhdoom Amin FAHIM
Seats won in this election: 71 (25.8% of votes)

Party: Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA)
Leader: Maulana Shan Ahmed NOORANI
Seats won in this election: 53 (11.3% of votes)

Party: Pakistan Muslim League, Nawaz Sharif faction (PML/N)
Leader: Nawaz SHARIF (Chairperson)
Seats won in this election: 9 (11.3% of votes)

Party: National Democractic Alliance (NDA)
Leader: Maulana Kausar NIAZI
Seats won in this election: 12 (4.6% of votes)

Party: Pakistan Muslim League (PML/F)
Leader: Pir PAGARO
Seats won in this election: 4 (1.1% of votes)

Party: Pakistan People's Party (PPP - Sherpao)
Leader: Mohtarma Benazir BHUTTO (Chairperson)
Seats won in this election: 2 (0.3% of votes)

Party: Pakistan Muslim League, Junejo faction (PML/J)
Leader: Hamid Nasir CHATTHA
Seats won in this election: 2 (0.7% of votes)

Party: Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM)
Leader: Altaf HUSSAIN
Seats won in this election: 13 (3.1% of votes)

Other Parties: 6 (3.9% of votes)
Independent Candidates: 14 (14.1% of votes)

*Election figures based on the results by the Election Commission of Pakistan (as of 10/15/02)

Source: INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ELECTION SYSTEMS (IFES); ELECTION COMMISSION OF PAKISTAN

:: Vikash Yadav 9:40 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Political Uses of the Ramayana & "The Bridge" Discovery:

Conrad's post on the Political Uses of the Ramayana comes on the heels of a recent flurry of discussion amongst Hindus around the world about the discovery by NASA satellites of an ancient man-made land-bridge between India and Sri Lanka. Some news organizations have suggested a link between this bridge and the fabled kingdom of Lanka mentioned in different versions of the Ramayana. Obviously, it is highly speculative to argue that the existence of a land bridge "verifies" the existence of a fabled kingdom. Most scientists are probably more interested in what the land bridge signifies in terms of human population migration. Nevertheless, e-mails of this "miraculous discovery" are rapidly circulating. Even university professors at prestigious institutions have become caught up in disseminating the news of this "mysterious revelation" by NASA to their students.

Why is this discovery eliciting so much attention? Conrad's post reminds us that a project of "semitification/ossification" of Hinduism is currently underway. This process is useful for those political groups which want to use Hinduism as a political force to (1) stifle dissent within the majority community of India and to (2) organize Hindus to strike out against a perceived threat from Islamic fundamentalism.

The obsession of finding "factual" evidence to corroborate ancient religious stories is the hallmark anxiety of other religions, particularly Christian fundamentalism/literalism. Why are Christian fundamentalists so obsessed with finding proof of the life of Jesus and stories in the Bible? Because they want to establish their religion as truth and denigrate all other religions as myth. They also want to make a leap from physical anthropology to literalist interpretation of sacred texts (i.e., if some places/events are corroborated with artifacts, then the entire text must be true).

This strategy should not be followed by Hindus. Hinduism is special as a "religion" because it is so different from Judaism, Christism, and Islamism. Our sometimes absurd myths are our strength, we need not shove them under the rug if they are not verifiable. How else could we see the divine in all things if we were not able to imagine Garuda or any of the man/beast incarnations of Vishnu? The beauty and seduction of Hinduism is its ability to weave together various myths and traditions. Hinduism is open to reinterpretation and various practices. Whether the events described in some of the texts of this religion are true or not is irrelevant. The flux of beliefs that makes up modern Hinduism also empowers its believers to reform the faith and marginalize its most reactionary elements. This heterogenity should be encouraged. Let a thousand unverifiable and contradictory Hinduisms bloom. Hinduism's strength is its open, decentralized, amorphous, and self-contradictory nature. It will be sad if those who claim to be so concerned about protecting Hinduism, end up transforming it into little more than a stale replica of an orthodox semitic religion.

:: Vikash Yadav 5:14 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Shiv Sena Leader to be Charged:

Bal Thackeray, head of the Shiv Sena, is to be charged for provocative comments in which he allegedly called for Hindu Suicide Bomber Squads to be formed as the government was not able to protect Hindus.

The Maharashtra state government deserves praise for standing up to the fascist menace. However, as Conrad has pointed out in this forum, it is naive to believe that Shiv Sena and RSS is the "hardline" element and that the BJP is somehow less hardcore and communalist. The BJP is just as much of a threat to communal harmony as the RSS and Shiv Sena, and perhaps more so because of the "legitimate" face that they are able to give to Hindu chauvanism.

It is also important to continue to refute the growing discourse on "hindu victimization." While there is no doubt that Hindus have been victims, it is important to remind the majority that Muslims have also been victimized, lest their suffering be effaced by right-wing propaganda.

:: Vikash Yadav 4:17 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Haryana Policemen Provoke Mob to Kill Dalits:

This is the latest news coming out of Haryana about a mob that killed 5 dalits for supposedly killing a cow. The seedy circumstances surrounding this killing only highlight the ways in which Hindu symbolism is used to mask oppression and rank corruption.

:: Vikash Yadav 1:32 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

The Political Use of the Ramayana:

I have elsewhere entered into a debate on the use of the Ramayana epic in line with the Ramjhanbhommi movement that has been exploited by the Hindutva organisations to stir up religious passions amongst Hindus, especially in northern India. I thought it worthwhile to list some points of contention that may help clarify our own approach to the Ramayana epic as opposed to the propaganda that is being manufactured. Many professional historians within India like Romila Thapar and Ram Sharan Sharma and outside like JL Brockington and Paula Richman have added greatly to the historical knowledge and interpretation of the epic and Indian mythology in general; and I have drawn heavily on their work to distil some of the more salient points below.

Aspects of the Ramayana Tradition and its Interpretation

1) Ram has not been worshipped by many Hindus for a thousand years!! If one were to look at the religious map of India a 1,000 years ago we would see that Tantra, animism, Shramanic and Sakta worship were popular also some sects like Shaivism tended to come into violent conflict with Vaishnavaites - in fact there are many record of Shaivites and Vaishnavs burning each others temples etc. Let us not forget also Buddhism, which hung on quite late in Bengal and Punjab - in fact it is pretty well accepted now that most of Bengal went from being Buddhist to Islam, during the late medieval period - Hinduism was not predominant. Richard Eaton's magisterial work "Islam on the Bengal Frontier" building on the work of NN Bhattacharya has done pioneering work here. So this 1,000 year Ram worship that is commonl that is commonly asserted by many Hindus to justify the movement is an anachronism.

2) There is frequently also a confusion of different discourses - the Mahabharata for example is very much a genealogical-history - itihasa a recollection of events believed to have happened in the past, while the Ramayana of Valmiki is what is called a kavya - a literary epic or a poetic composition - it was not considered sacred or as a religious text - this is why later poets and bards have re-worked and added to it over the ages. The Valmiki epic was not even considered a text on dharma - unlike sacred books, which are rarely questioned or altered, the Ramayana has been repeatedly altered mainly for literary purposes. This become apparent in the different treatment given to the Vedas, which were considered sacred and therefore meticulously memorised using a range of mnemonic devices taught to and restricted to Brahmins. By contrast the Ramayana had a much more open method of conservation - its memorisation did not preclude changes and later interpolations on good government or the observance of certain social conduct. In fact the very act of converting the text from an epic poem to the story of Rama as an avatar of Vishnu, required that there be substantial additions.

3) Several early versions of the Ramayana - a Buddhist one a Jain one and several Jatakas. The Buddhist one was actually quite derogatory about the Sanskrit epic calling it "purposeless talk". The Jatakas fragments replicate many of the Ram stories in a different version. For example in the Dasaratha Jataka: Dasaratha is king of Varanasi (not Ayodhya) who has two sons Ram and Lakhan and a daughter Sita. Once one of his consorts insist that her son Bharat become king, Dasaratha becomes frightened for the life of Ram, Lakhan and Sita and urges them to flee to a neighbouring kingdom and claim their rights after Dasaratha has died. They go into exile and Bharat refuses to rule but goes in search of Ram instead, Ram refuses to go back before his period of exile is finished and gives Bharat his sandals instead. When hearing of their father - Dasaratha's death Sita and Lakhan faint but Ram preaches to them on the impermanence of life and stays in the forest. After the period of 12 years they return to the Kingdom, and Ram and Sita both rule jointly. There is also the Vessantara Jataka: where Vessantara is the son of the ruler of Sivi - and is the epitome of the gift-giving prince, since he bestows wealth in the form of dana on all those who ask for it. Finally he goes to the extent of giving his famous rain-inducing elephant to the king of Kalinga in order to terminate a prolonged drought in Kalinga. This incenses the subjects of Veassantara who banish him from the kingdom, the loss of this particular elephant symbolises the loos of prosperity. His wife, like Sita follows him into exile. Living in the Gandhamadana Forest he is still beset by greedy Brahmins - his children are taken away by a Brahmin from Kalinga and his wife is asked to work as a slave by another. Eventually Sakra appears and it turns out that the tribulations of Vessantara are a test of his generosity. The Valmiki version of the Ramayana differs obviously, from the Jatakas though the thematic continuities of exile, being tested etc. remain.

4) In the Jain version of the story - the Paumacariyam, there are many differences. Again Ram is a man clearly not a divinity, though he is seen as the "perfect man". The Jain version rehabilitates Ravaan and the Rakhshas, who are seen as having a very ordered society and Ravaan is a great patron of Jain temples and Shrines as well as being a pious man. He is clearly not a ten-headed blood-drinking monster and is seen as no less of a hero than Ram. The Paumacariyam is vehement in its denunciations of "false versions" of the Ramayana and criticises Brahmins for being heretics and preachers of false doctrines acquired through fraud. More reverence is given to princes, merchant with special reverence given to ascetics who withdraw from material society to the forest.

5) Now much depends on our definition of what an epic or kavya actually is. I would define it as a type of literature looking back to an earlier period, where vents and characters are fictionalised to such a degree that even if there is a kernel of history embedded in them, it is often not in conformity to the narrative. Epics are not religious documents in origin, but some versions of an epic story can be transformed into religious statements as was done in the re-writing of the Valmiki Ramayana. The first forms of the Rama story were the Rama-Kathas: a fluctuating form of bardic compositions that we no longer have in the original form. The earliest surviving pieces date back to the early Christian era and have been re-worked from different perspectives e.g. Jaina, Buddhist etc. The original bardic songs were composed as part of an oral tradition recited at feasts, sacrificial rites and at the courts of kings and chiefs. Its origin has been seen as mainly eulogic in nature - you know praising the families of Kshatriyas and narrating the rise of fall of royal families, individuals etc. In these references the Ram-Ravaan conflict mirrors that of Indra and Vritra in Vedic lore and was seen as an earthly reflection of this divine conflict - of course here Ram was a human hero and there is no question of being identified with Vishnu.

6) The Rama-Katha as in the Jain and Buddhist versions point to the fact that it was a well-known popular story, which was picked up and re-interpreted by different interests at different time for various audiences. These themes found their way into poems and plays written for royal courts and the literati: conforming to Sanskrit conventions of courtly literature. For example the 9th century Ramacaritam of Sandhyakarandin written in the court of the East Indian king Ramapala can be read as the story of Ram or as the biography of the king, such compositions treated the Rama-Katha not as a sacred text but as a source for literary themes and demonstrations of poetic skill. The spread to different regions also captured different tellings of the story and the treatment of Ravaan in many of these versions is that of a hero in decline rather than as a villain and is very different from Valmiki. The rapid spread of the Ramayana by the early second millennium AD had less to do with Rama-Bhakti than the powerful cultural idiom, which allowed it to be widely understood in many different languages. For example in the Malaysian version Ravaan is exiled to Serendib where Adam sees him and pleads to Allah who grants him a kingdom!!!

7) There are also political reasons why the story was so popular. Little kings and chiefs aspiring to gain more territory wanted to shore up their legitimacy by making claims to an ancient genealogy. The expansion of many of these kingdoms came from the steady growth of the agrarian settled agricultural economy into erstwhile-forested regions. Forest tribes were subjugated and annexed and the triumph of Ram over Ravaan provided a powerful metaphor for this process of state formation. Where royal courts came into existence the Brahmins legitimised the king by providing him with a genealogy and by performing rituals through which his divine status was proclaimed. The most frequent used lineages were the Suryavamsa and the Candravamsa, those from the former could claim Ram as a distant ancestor - the Ramayana would then become the story of the royal ancestor. Making the ancestor an incarnation of Vishnu obviously helped underline the divine sanction given to the current ruler.

8) The Ramanandins grew at this time as well as an influential sect focusing on the worship of Ram. For them Ram-Bhakti was the most influential way of devotional worship and ensured the salvation of the individual. What was new in this tradition was the emphasis not so much on the narrative of the Ram-kathas but the potential for Moksha that lay within the worship of Ram. The Adhyatma-Ramayana from the 15th century advocates within this tradition that in fact the very story of Ram is an illusion and that the importance of the text is less the story than what the text has to say about devotional worship. This version is set by Shiva telling the story to Parvati - obviously here the historical existence of Ram is considered as a non-issue and pretty much denied. The Ramanandin sect also started to promote the site of Ayodhya as a pilgrimage centre for Ram-Bhakti at this time.

9) Of course the most famous version of the Ramayana in northern India is the Ramacaritamanas of Tulsidas. It was composed in Hindi to reach a large audience, as Sanskrit was only known to a few. For Tulsidas Ram was a divine being, and he is continually adored by all who come into contact with him. Tulsidas played a crucial role in the growth of devotional worship of Ram as a god. Tulsidas saw in his own period as a time of declining morality, the fall from a golden age to the present age of iron -the Kaliyug accompanied by the inevitable decline in social and ethical norms. He states that caste rules are ignored; upstarts and low-caste people have risen to prominence and have gained power through fraud and cheating. It is a world devoid of values and the only consolation is the worship of Ram -who alone can bring back a golden age. Some have seen this as a protest against Mughal rule by Tulsidas, but this is debatable as the Kaliyug imagery was always wheeled out Brahmins when they felt that Brahminnical authority was being questioned and this had happened before the Islamic intrusion into India. Tulsidas may have been upset by many of the other prevailing religious movements at the time, which denied the authority of the Brahmins and the texts, which they respected. Sects derived from Puranic and Sakta worship were often opposed to the more conservative Brahminnical tradition and drew large numbers of followers. This points towards the vibrancy of Hinduism under Mughal rule, which instead of being moribund actually saw a proliferation of sects and new movements.

10) There is therefore no single authentic version of the Ramayana tradition - for different versions are regarded as authentic to different audiences. When included in the canon of different religions like Buddhism or Jainism it was never regarded as a sacred text; I remember a visit to Indonesia where despite it being a strict Muslim country - the Ramayana is still performed as a shadow play with puppets very popular amongst children and a prominent form of storytelling (the Indonesian national airline is also called Garuda). It has never been treated as a sacred or holy text until the very late version of Tulsidas, which was a reaction to the increasing impetus of other sects and Indic traditions.

11) The characteristics of a Semitic religion like a historically attested teacher or prophet, a sacred book, a geographically identifiable location for its beginnings are all very different to the way that Hinduism was practised in the past and to the Indic tradition. This was the political use of Ram by the BJP - which elevated Ram to the position of an all appealing God, ignoring the fact that he is not universally worshipped nor has always been regarded so, the insistence on an exact geographical location such as Ayodhya is another Semitic element as in earlier times the historicity of the deity being worshipped would not have been a matter of significance; there is also the building of an ecclesiastical support base as the VHP Dharma Sansad of Mahants and Shankaracharyas showed. This is a political exploitation of belief for power nothing else and ironcially seeks to Semitise Hinduism by replicating the structure and logic of the Semitic religions: this is a move that should be reviled and contested not only by Secularists but also by devout Hindus themselves as it seeks to save their religion by destryoing it's most essential characteristics.

:: Conrad Barwa 5:07 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Caste Politics in Uttar Pradesh:

With regards to the recent discussion we have been having on caste politics I think it may be a time to look at how they play out in Uttar Pradesh; the following story from Frontline; confirms some of my fears about coalition-building between different lower caste groups. In Uttar Pradesh the Backwards and the Dalits should dominate politics given their numerical preponderance (roughly 20% Dalit and 20% OBC) which together with the Muslim vote should easily defeat the BJP; but what instead has happened is a fracturing of the non-upper caste vote between these two main blocs represented by the BSP and the Samajwadi Party (SP). The rivalry between the two exists at several levels, superficially the leaders of both groups Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav detest each other but there are more serious conflicts: the economic one with OBCs being important cultivators and employers of rural labour and the Dalits being in the main the rural proletariat as well as the more ideological differences outlined below. Yet these arguments only partially convince me and none of them provide a completely satisfactory explanation – after all the BSP leadership is largely an urban middle-class one and their economic programme where they could have had a large impact on the lives of many rural Dalits has been very disappointing to say the least. Kanshi Ram the political leader of the BSP has made it very clear that socio-economic revolution is not part of the BSP’s agenda and that it seeks to resolve things at the political level. To me this is attacking the symptoms rather than the causes of inequality as without some sort of socio-economic transformation there can be no substantial improvement in the lives of most Dalits. Reservation in the public sector alone will hardly help in this regard for the whole community as it was meant as a social reformist tactic not as a poverty alleviation measure. The failure of the BSP or the SP to provide a concrete policy platform to attack rural poverty or exploitation is one of the more depressing aspects of the changes in UP politics. It is time to move beyond the Politics of Symbolism and aim for some tangible changes at the ground level.

We still have a long way to go.

:: Conrad Barwa 2:59 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............

Re: Dalitism

Vikash, I do think the discourse of the two movements if you like need to be differentiated, as they are not the same and currently the two projects are represented by different political parties. You are completely correct when you query how successful the Dalit movement has been in translating its goals into actual political action as this has not happened so far and where Dalits political groups have been in a position to influence politics the results have not been particularly inspiring for several reasons. However, the critique emanating from the movement is very piercing and much more embracing than that from many other quarters and provide the intellectual foundation that later action can build on, moreover formal politicisation of the Dalit movement is still in the early stages at the national level and has a long way to go – no Dalit party has held power on its own at the state level anywhere so far, they have always been in coalition with either Backward Caste parties or the BJP. Looking at the largest national Dalit party the BSP, a study of its origins will show how the Dalits have resisted being co-opted by the policy of reservations. The Republican Party and Independent Labour Party of the Ambedkarite movement failed to make much impression electorally outside Maharashtra immediately after independence, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) grew out of organising Dalit employees in the public sector from the late 1970’s and actually started as BAMCEF a federation for the interests of Dalits within government service who felt that they could not get their interests heard in a normal forum. BAMCEF moved slowly from being a trade association, which sought limited gains for its members to a more assertive political organisation. The argument of scholars like Kanchan Chopra is that the policy of reservations allowed a small nascent middle class to emerge that provided the source of leadership, cadres and funds for a viable pan-national Dalit party to emerge; with this gestation period and insulation there would not have been a base upon which a Dalit political movement could have built and I am sympathetic to this approach. Reservations here instead of co-opting the Dalit movement have instead provided the basis for its increasing politicisation and independence from the old patronage networks.

I also agree that there is a problem with believing in radical movements – and in this regard it is best to realise that the BSP is a very bourgeois party so one should not expect anything too radical from it; in this sense one has to wait for a more radical alternative to emerge, which obviously takes time. There is no guarantee that radical movements will not compromise when they achieve power – there never can be for a revolution cannot be a revolution if its success is assured beforehand. I disagree with the example of the Nationalist movement, the behaviour of the United Provinces government of the Congress under dyarchy in 1937, the worsening nature of Hindu-Muslim relations, the rising influence of the Hindu Mahasabha, riots etc. should have been enough to give indications of how conservative as an organisation the party really was. If further proof was needed one can see it when the interim government was to be formed in 1946 and when the choice of Congress president was to be made (an extremely influential position as whoever was selected would have been the Prime Ministerial candidate for the first government of independent India and be in a position to shape government policy) overwhelmingly the choice of the Congress Pradesh committees was Vallabhai Patel as well as the Congress Working Committee, they were overruled by Gandhi who selected Nehru instead – given Patel’s well known prejudices and bias this should be a good indication of the personal and institutional nature of the Congress at the time (when the interim government was formed Patel became Home Minister, with the eye on harnessing the internal security apparatus of the Colonial state and redirected the Indian Political Intelligence Service towards carrying out surveillance on the Muslim League and various leftist organisations and individuals – so the “realpolitik” of the Nationalist movement began even before independence). This also accounts at least in part for Gandhi’s wish that the Congress be disbanded after independence was achieved and his increasing disillusionment with the behaviour of government towards Pakistan, refugees, Muslims etc. It would an extremely rosy and distorted view that would see the Nationalist movement that acceded to power in 1947 as one that even seriously would consider an ethical-moral policy over a realistic-pragmatic one – the Nationalist movement had long been purged of its radical elements and those who remained were carefully marginalised.

I also don’t think that distinguishing between the Dalit and OBC movements severs commonalities between the groups – both groups have experienced discrimination and suffered from an inequitable social order, they also need each other in order to gain power. This is why most Dalit thinkers will talk not of a Dalit movement but of a Dalit Bahujan one – i.e. one that includes the majority of society under its rubric as suffering from sort of disability/failure to reach one’s full potential. The political strategy of the BSP follows this logic as electorally unless there is coalition building between the two groups they cannot win power on their own – against the upper castes it is a case of united we stand divided we fall. The problem remains to overcome the internal contradictions that any such coalition-building move will encounter – the example of Uttar Pradesh is a good example of the problems that can be encountered. We may need to return to the thought of that “other Mahatma” Jyotirao Phule, himself an OBC in modern terminology, to see how an effective broad coalition can be built.

I completely agree with you on the relative threat assessment of the OBCs and the Dalits, from the point of view of the Indian middle classes. The OBCs are a much greater immediate threat to the established order and that is why despite the constitutional assurance given to them and the setting up of the Karlekar Commission in the 1950’s, they were denied reservations – and any efforts to do so were sabotaged. OBCs have acquired a strong position in the agricultural sector and the countryside in many states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh from which they have since the 1960’s eroded the upper caste stranglehold on power. In this sense they had a base from which to mount a political challenge unavailable to the Dalits; in states such as Uttar Pradesh it is well known that the Congress was effectively a Brahmin-Dalit party, with the OBCs gravitating towards the Janata Dal, Lok Dal and other parties representing rural and farmer interests and also why when the Dalits moved towards the BSP and the Brahmins to the BJP the Congress effectively collapsed as a political force in many of the northern states. But two points need to be borne in mind. Firstly, the initial declaration of the implementation of the Mandal report created a huge outburst of rioting and agitation in urban India (interestingly Vikash you should also note that in most cases the violence was directed toward the Dalits not the OBCs) in 1989 and caused the downfall along with the Ayodhya incident of the VP Singh government. The contentious issue was put on the backburner pending a Supreme Court judgement which only delivered its judgment at the end of 1991 – yet this time outburst and demonstrations were much more muted and by nor all parties had accepted the recommendations of the report. What had happened in between to lead to such a collapse in resistance? Had the OBC become more powerful, or had the upper castes just accepted the inevitable and accepted defeat gracefully? Either is highly unlikely, the true answer I believe lies in the liberalisation programme of the Narasihma Rao government which formally changed the direction of economic policy within India – now the public sector was to take a back seat with the expansion of the private sector. I think the implications was not lost on the middle class who realised that future job creation would be more attractive and more expansive in the private sector that in the old public sector bureaucracies with the decisive shift in policy – which is why they were now much happier to abandon it to the OBCs. Obviously with the need for access to networks of contacts and connections and educational qualifications both the OBCs and the Dalits would be severely handicapped in competing in this sector vis-à-vis the upper castes.

Secondly, I do not agree that this is a zero-sum game – where either we have to choose between the OBCs or the Dalits; I don’t see why letting the subaltern speak necessarily silences other marginalised/oppressed groups. The solution is to push forward for reform on both fronts, as favouring either one alone will not be in itself effective enough to transform and destroy social inequality in society. Also while I accept the dangers in privileging one discourse over another and am aware of the divide and rule tactics of several upper caste entrenched interests, I myself have not seen it in rather the same terms. The upper caste individuals I have encountered when forced to ally with one or the other groups tend to prefer the OBCs because though they pose a real challenge by virtue of their numbers and position they also share many of the prejudices of the upper castes themselves with regard to religion, morality, women etc. What the upper castes really object to sharing is power with the Dalits at any meaningful level as they know that this will not only mean power-sharing but will undermine their whole way of life sooner or later. Why else would an inveterate opponent of reservation like Arun Shourie who stoked up passions by incredibly jaundiced editorials and reporting when he was at the Indian Express during the Mandal agitation, choose to target Ambedkar in his awful tract “Worshipping False Gods” and the Dalit community and not instead direct his ire towards the OBC or some OBC thinker? Given Shourie’s history and behaviour as a maverick and enfant terrible, I do not think it is because of any love or strategic cosying up to the OBCs. It is because the entrenched upper castes know their true enemy when they see them and they know very well that in the long run it is the Dalit movement which are their real enemies.

We should also look at the situation of the Dalits where they have joined hands with the OBCs. For example in southern India through the Non-Brahmin movement reservation policy and the OBC-Dalit coalition came to power much earlier and by the end of the 1960’s the upper castes had ceded power in most southern states. This is partly due to the peculiar social structure of the south where only a thin stratum of Brahmins accounted for the whole upper caste group and could be easily manoeuvred out for power. However, closer examination of the history and development of the movement shows that having acquired power and replaced the old social order, the Dalits did not receive much by the way of benefits and in fact their position did not improve substantially at all with one form of marginalisation being replaced by another one – this has led some Dalit thinkers to argue that the OBCs are just “neo-Kshatriyas” and simply replace the old upper caste elites when gaining power. This also has led to Dalits seeking representation in their own political movements and carrying on their struggle against the Non-Brahmin elite. Similarly moving to northern India, we can see how castes traditionally seen as part of the OBC strata like the Patidars in Gujarat and Marathas in Maharashtra have successfully elevated their status and socio-economic position to become the dominant caste in their region, the position of these groups has also allowed them to be co-opted on a wholesale level by the Hindutva movement and these groups have become key foot soldiers in the saffron movement within their respective states. My argument would be that the cultural and philosophical weakness of the OBC movement allows sections of it to be effectively “sanskritised” and incorporated into the Hindutva movement or by the upper castes; co-option takes place from the Dalits as well but it follows a different pattern as Dalits cannot be co-opted as a group but selectively and hence leaders are chosen to represent their communities and show that the BJP is not just a vehicle for the upper castes – a form of tokenism. Sanskritisation strategies of upward mobility have never worked for Dalits as a collectivity and this is know by the upper castes, who distrust them for this very reason – they can never be satisfactorily incorporated into the old order.

Lastly, I think the Dalit movement is more successful in trying to encourage a national Dalit consciousness – the self-awareness of being a Dalit no matter which state you are in, which caste you belong to or what linguistic region you inhabit. The OBC movement has not managed to this on the same level – the non-Brahmin elite see themselves as the counterparts of other non-Brahmin upper castes in northern India; while Patidars and Marathas will reject any classification that seeks to locate them within a broader OBC category and prefer to see themselves as members of the dominant caste in their own ethno-region; this is why the Shiv Sena was the only party that could afford to oppose the Mandal report quite happily without any fear of the electoral consequences and why elsewhere once dominant castes had been given OBC status like the Jats and Patidars in Rajasthan resistance died down. The OBC category is in itself a problematic and fractured one that cannot account for the national diversity across different ethno-regions. For example, koli and other “backward Kshatriyas” in Gujarat would prefer to remain within the Rajput fold and exert their political influence through caste Sammelans that join the OBC movement; in places like West Bengal also castes like the kayasthas, baidyas who could once have been categorised as OBCs now have been so incorporated and integrated into the bhadralok culture that it will not be possible for them to be seen as OBCs in any meaningful way and a similar story could be told of many of the elite non-Brahmin castes in south India. We also should note that the OBC movement and parties are in general not willing to address or even confront the problem of exploitation of others in the social hierarchy by the OBCs – the sheer refusal to face this problem shows the unwillingness of the OBCs to deal with this thorny issue.

The Dalit category is sharper simply because of the notional pollution barrier and the fact that not Dalit caste has ever surmounted the social dived or been successfully incorporated into the ethno-regional order as a caste. Also the OBC is a collection of castes whose spread, history, occupational associations and social structure vary from one ethno-region to another and in many it does not make sense to speak of an OBC category at all; while the two relative constants of the caste hierarchy that are omnipresent in every state and ethno-region are the Brahmins and the Dalits – they represent the polar opposites of the spectrum and also why the Brahmins have been so effective in dominating the upper caste bloc nationally, the Dalits needless to say will be able to draw on the same strength as time progresses.

Finally I have not paid much attention to conflicts between the OBCs and the Dalits. In the northern Hindi states this stems from economic conflicts in part with the OBCs being cultivators and employers of rural labour and the Dalits being generally landless labourers; in this sense OBC landlords and employers have been no different than upper caste one in their exploitation of Dalit labour and the history of caste massacres for example are a sombre reminder that non-upper caste landlords are just as willing to brutally put down any assertiveness on the part of the Dalit rural labour force. Another element which should be mentioned is that of Adivasis who also form a somewhat separate category and have their tensions between the OBCs and the Dalits as well; in regions such as Jharkhand OBCs in particular have come to be seen as not much better than the upper caste outsiders and both tend to be classed as “dikus” external exploiters (of course categories here are shifting as landowning OBCs come in for this treatment but those that are artisan in their occupations such as the Lohars, Kurmis etc. are seen separately) hence the odd politics of the region where the BJP is preferred to the RJD. Moreover, the gulf between the Dalits and the OBCs and conflicts over reservation as well as the different social and cultural outlook of the two groups have prevented a coalescing of interests here as well; at the recent Durban conference on Racism in South Africa it was quite surprising that the Dalit lobby sought only to represent the interests of the SC and ignored the adivasis more less completely – even intellectuals such as Kancha Illiah were of the opinion that the adivasis should represent themselves separately. Not only does this attitude weaken any progressive bloc it also undercut the whole attempt to represent casteism as racism at the conference as having and using the adivasi cause would have been a much stronger tactic to use by the Dalit lobby that went there.

There is I think a deeper internal struggle in many of these movements, especially in their political guises, for example in the Dalit movement there is debate over who really is a Dalit – the term means oppressed so should be a loose ontological one that is capable of transcending narrow caste boundaries. That is has failed to do so is an important limitation but one over which there is contention as Dalits themselves are divided over who can and cannot be included in the concept – while politically for pragmatic reasons a narrow definition based solely on caste criteria had been adopted by many parties such as the PMK, and the BSP, I think as a movement there is far more pressure to broaden the category – this struggle is yet to occur. For example the statements of the Dalit Panther movement in Maharashtra and the Dalit literary thinkers does not define Dalits as merely the SCs and does not draw on a mere linguistic construction but is based on a more materialist epistemology and sees it as a historical construction through revolutionary and continual struggle. It also explicitly has the ontological ability to encompass others within its embrace –women, adivasis and toiling classes. Other Dalits define the category as representing those who have been broken down and ground down by social groups above them in a deliberate manner (echoes of Ambedkar’s “Broken Men”); this captures the element of protest against an inherent denial of dignity the practise of untouchability and pollution norms and the karma theory of the caste hierarchy. Similarly within the Jharkhand movement there is a struggle between those who see it as only inclusive of the Oraon, Munda and Santhal tribes along with a handful of outside sympathisers and the “Lalkhandis” who broadens the rubric to a class as well as ethno-regional level and include non-dominant OBCs, labourers, workers and those who support the struggle ideologically. Needless to say the Lalkhandis are unimpressed with the policies of the Jharkhand government since the creation of the state and they have not dissipated their energies the way the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha has as their programme includes a social and economic aspect as well – pure statehood was never their sole objective.

The more dynamic and expansive concept of these categories of Dalit or Lalkhand move beyond the legally constituted identities of SC, ST or OBC, while on the surface these state assigned labels may seem well intentioned and secular they remain a deliberate and artificial construction by the state. As such they have certain drawbacks: they tend to entrap the recipients into perpetual passivity and subordinates them to the structures of patronage controlled by the state; the access to these doles and state-sponsored subsidies constitutes the recipients as the subjects of charity and uplift rather than parity as citizens and these state labels are used for social planning rather than any direct theoretical treatment of the social context in which these identities are rooted. This is a state-controlled domestic discourse, which tends to preclude the emergence of an autonomous political identity and creation of a free discursive space where the SCs, OBCs and other groups can participate to find solutions to their own problems. The category of Dalit stands against this kind of state controlled domesticated discourse.

I suppose in some way the very looseness of a category like Dalit in who it can include allows it to escape the majority-minority framework. By not perceiving its collevtivity as a simple aggregate of numerical entities it can escape manipulation by Dalit-Bahujan power brokers or poll pundits; as it does not exist as a ready made category, either for statistical jugglery or electoral arithmetic, it has to be constructed and negotiated actively with other identities and across dynamic and vibrant social and ideological spaces. This does leave some potential for it to undermine the pragmatic power politics of opportunist forces, both within the Dalit movement and outside it. It calls into question the attempts, which try to dissolve in a forced and artificial manner, social groups into arbitrarily and intentionally constructed communities. By not assuming an explicit character, it does not close its linkages to other categories, which also seek to describe reality at different levels and capture different experiences of oppression and marginalisation – by this logic the category of Dalit is not immune to its own contextual transcendence.

It is ironic that we have moved from a position of querying whether we can hear the subaltern speak (referring back to our earlier posts on the subject) to one of complaining that we may be in danger of listening to the voice of the subaltern to the exclusion of others!! I think we should be very aware and self-reflective of our own positions and avoid strategies that seek to paper over exploitation where they occur or let a concern for “genuine voice” prevent the basis for actual action from emerging. It is a tricky path but one that needs to be followed.

Desire and Repression:

I am not sure that what I outline is a repression hypothesis. If it is then I should make clear that I don’t accept power as a repressive force either; but at the same time I seek to move beyond the techne of power relations that is usually offered. I am more than happy to accept that power is productive and produces desire – indeed it cannot be otherwise for if power was not productive then desire would force it to be so. I am more interested in looking how desire operates as to my mind it is not power that produces desire but desire that replicates, expands and grows through the structures and exercise of power. Being situated in language and in a sign system not of our own making creates and imbues us with desire and desire can be articulated in a number of ways through language, power and thought. In fact I don’t think desire can successfully repressed at all for like energy it cannot be destroyed only transformed; my thoughts on this topic are not fully mapped out and I will need to give it more attention but this is the direction I am proceeding down.

Yes there is not a limited quantity of desire in any subject simply because of his class position – desire cannot be quantified in these terms. However, let me clarify the notion of sacrifice which I see in more the terms of Bataille’s notion of the giving up of something valuable to the Other in order to sustain the symbolic order, outlined in an earlier post. The basic contention is that this sacrifice gives up something valuable in order to gain something even more valuable – the sannyasi renounces his wealth and worldly attachments usually from a position of prosperity and takes up the life of an ascetic moving from the realms of kama and artha to that of Moksha and gains something more in return which he would not have had while retaining his worldly goods and old lifestyle. Obviously this means one must have them to give up in the first place and why I don’t think it is as appealing to the poor/marginalised as a creed however successful it can be as a policy. In this sense the propensity to use non-violence as a tactic/way of life can be seen to be a middle-class strategy due to the initial conditions necessary in the Bourdiean sense of the term.

The other criticisms are quite cogent but I still remain unconvinced as the power of non-violence as a generalised tool. It does not surprise me that the Nazis encountered resistance when rounding up Jews in fact it would surprise me if they didn’t. The adoption of non-violence by small groups in an environment filled with violence is almost certainly a guarantee of their eradication – the Anabaptists in the Thirty Years War are a good example, they were largely wiped out in many parts of northern Europe due to their pacifist beliefs which made them vulnerable to others. Within a totalitarian state, I am sceptical as to how far non-violence will be effective and how it may in fact just make the authorities job easier – another example of the Althusserian conundrum of how do we know that we are really opposing authority if by the way we rebel we may just be doing exactly what they system wants? In other words I am not convinced that non-violence can always make one a “bad subject” and allow one the possibility of not playing the game (or indeed of allowing the game to play us). However, this needs more thought on my part.

:: Conrad Barwa 2:39 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
..............