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India’s Brahmin, Baniya profited from English. BJP-RSS want to deny that to Dalit, Adivasis
First Brahmins benefited from the pro-English agitations of Tamil people. Now Amit Shah’s agenda is harming Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi global job prospects.
Union Home Minister and BJP president Amit Shah | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s agenda of ‘One nation, One language’ is back, and with that, the Narendra Modi government’s plan to pressure the South and Northeast India to accept Hindi as the ‘national’ and ‘official’ language. But it’s not just that. Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent statements indicate something more serious — alongside the nationwide Hindi imposition, there is also an anti-English agenda being promoted.
In his capacity as the chairperson of the Official Language Committee, Amit Shah, on 7 April, said: “People from different states should speak Hindi, not English”. Significantly, he completely ignored the private sector, where English is usually the primary language of communication. Just a day before, the chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC), M. Jagadesh Kumar, announced that there was a plan underway to enable foreign universities to set up campuses in India. Will the students and teachers within these campuses speak Hindi? Will students of certain caste/class be excluded from these universities on account of the language barrier? Did Amit Shah ask Ashoka or Amity universities to teach in Hindi and not English? These are questions that need to be asked. Clearly, the home minister would like to see JNU and Delhi universities converted into Hindi-medium institutions. The process is already on.
Implication for Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis
Before we start worrying about the future of linguistic pluralism in India, it’s important to see the serious implications of opposing English in the government sector for the country’s Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi communities. Amit Shah is one of the strongest proponents of privatisation of the government-sector industries and educational institutions. School and university education are also not untouched by it. But what the home minister is conveniently ignoring is that most private-sector educational institutions run English-medium schools and colleges. What does Amit Shah do there? How does he plan to impose Hindi on software companies that are a big source of revenue for the Indian economy? Much of the software industry is in private hands and operates only in the English language? Will the industry survive if it is barred from using English?
If the South and Northeastern states are forced to speak Hindi, their reach and exposure will suffer. This is not the first time that the central government has tried to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states. Even the Congress government had done so when English did not command the same status in internal and external economic relations. Now that the language has become a real engine of survival for India, how does Amit Shah solve this economic conundrum?
How Tamil Brahmins benefitted
Between 1937 and 1940, C. Rajagopalachari, the first chief minister of Tamil Nadu, tried to impose Hindi on the state’s population and caused a major anti-Hindi agitation. Rajagopalachari was a soft Hindutva man in the Congress camp and was essentially representing a Brahmanical view of Indian civilisation. His stance on Hindi also divided the Brahmin Congress ideologues. T.T. Krishnamachari was a strong anti-Hindi and pro-English leader. However, Periyar Ramasamy Naicker mobilised the Shudra/Dalit masses against the imposition of Hindi and succeeded in resisting it. In 1965, when the Lal Bahadur Shastri government-imposed Hindi, it led to massive agitations, firings and several incidents of self-immolation in Tamil Nadu. More than 70 people died and as a result, the Congress lost in the 1967 assembly election when Annadurai of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) became the chief minister. The rest is history.
Who benefited from the pro-English agitations of Tamil people? The Tamil Brahmins, most of whom studied in private Christian missionary schools. In a recent memoir — Land, Guns, Caste, Woman — Gita Ramaswamy, a Tamil Brahmin woman who rebelled against Brahmanism, said that her childhood was led by diametrically opposite beliefs at home and in the English medium school where she studied. She says that she was a ‘Brahmin at home and a Catholic in school’. The Brahmin home taught her that her menstruation was ‘a horrible pollution’ that could ‘break idols of gods’ if she touched them during her menstrual cycle, while her school taught her that menstruation was a process of her ‘procreative energies’. English, in a way, liberated Brahmins and Baniyas more than other castes. Today, the top Bania industrialists operate only in English and also run world-class private English medium schools and colleges. Does Amit Shah plan to close them down too?
English-medium education is critical
The Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis are just starting to absorb English but Amit Shah wants to deny them even the hope of getting into the global job market. Within India too, because of the lack of command over spoken and written English, these communities are denied private-sector jobs. If they do not speak English, how would they ever learn it?
It is because of this English education that Tamil Brahmin-origin Kamala Harris is the vice president of America and Sunder Pichai is the CEO of Google. Not only that, but because of their strong English-medium education, the Tamil Brahmins have historically held high positions in successive central governments. In the Modi government, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar are a continuation of that English education legacy.
Amit Shah seems to be working out another agenda that could light a fire. India and China are now competing in the global markets with an expanded English language base. Whatever the nationalistic rhetoric, if it’s set against learning English, it will invariably push India backwards.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. He has been campaigning for English-medium education in government schools across the country for the last 30 years. Views are personal.
(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)
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How English Language Initiated the Idea of Nationalism in India | NewsClick
India got Mahatma Jotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule and BR Ambedkar, the first Shudra and Dalit intellectuals, only after their communities could access English medium schools.
01 Apr 2022
India got consciously organised no earlier than from the mid-19th century onwards. If we seek a benchmark period for the modern Indian nation-state that is a clear successor of the present landmass, then it would be that of the first rebellion against the British colonial rulers in 1857. Now, which forces invested their physical and mental energy to organise and enforce that revolt. The forces that contributed to protect the land from the control of the British imperial power mainly were the Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis. Without their peasantry and youth employed in different regiments of the British Army, the rebellion of 1857 would not have been possible.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and liberal Dwija writers wrote history, but no Brahmin books such as the Vedas, Ramayana or Mahabharatam were responsible for the rebellion, nor were their sentiments about cow and pig fat. The peasants who suffered under the yoke of the British tax regime and exploitation by the British colonial government—for whom many Dwija officials worked—forced the farming communities to rise in rebellion right from the village level. Hardly any Shudra, Dalit or Adivasi officials worked for the British regime at the time.
Even before the British came to India, Brahmin, Kayastha, and Khatri communities formed the officialdom Mughal administration, apart from the Muslims. The Bania or trader communities continued their village and town-level businesses throughout British rule and pre-Mughal and Mughal rules. Of course, all Muslims were not rulers, and the poor Muslims suffered along with the Shudra, Dalit, Adivasi productive masses. It is well documented that the accumulated wealth of present-day Banias has a centuries-long history owed to the ‘reservation’ in their favour in businesses and professions. Besides, the Shudra, Dalit and Adivasi people never got entry into government jobs in those days because no rulers in this land overturned the Brahmanical dictum against educating these communities.
The Shudras, the most significant human mass of India that is Bharat, as the Preamble of the Constitution calls it, are the lifeblood of this nation. Only if the body and brain of an entire people function on a philosophical foundation that is humanitarian can it secure the release of the landmass from foreign bondage, then seek sustenance as a nation. After all, a land would need to design modes and methods that can release the energies required to take back their land from an occupying force. The Shudra, Dalit and Adivasis played that crucial role even though they were prevented from educating themselves.
In the last decades of its rule, the British administration opened up school education to these groups. This change is how Mahatma Jotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule and BR Ambedkar could emerge as the first Shudra and Dalit intellectuals who challenged the millennia-old Varna-Dharma-Jaati exploitation and oppression. For the first time in these communities’ living history, they got educated intellectuals who could read and write in a globally understood—not just national—language, which is English. It is now that they took their first steps toward liberation.
But even this process of liberation was manipulated, and after India attained freedom, Nehruvian governments introduced the dual model of education. They made English the medium of instruction in private schools and “regional” languages the medium in government schools. The result is that the productive castes still suffer an unequal existence in all spheres of life. When English became the language of the British rulers in India in 1835, the Shudra, Dalit and Adivasi people were entirely left out of the education system.
Brahmins did not permit the emergence of a universal educational system. Even after the first English medium school started in Kolkata in 1817, the colonial language first went into the homes of the Dwijas, who had controlled the Sanskrit language until then. For example, Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), from a Bengali Brahmin Zamindari family that interacted with British officials, learned English in the late 18th century. There was more than a linguistic relationship between the Sanskritic Brahmins of India and the beef-eating British English-speaking administrators. Roy was the son of Ramkanta Roy, a zamindar from a so-called noble Vaishnavite Brahmin family from Radhanagar. The father, too, was educated in the Sanskrit tradition and had also learned Persian and English. Roy was trained as a pandit to reach a Shastri’s position and was also taught Sanskrit, Persian and English from childhood. In those days, his education in a new language like English would not have been possible without a tutor, perhaps a British one.
At any rate, Brahmin life was strictly Varna-dharmic in those days, and it was accompanied by the merciless practice of untouchability against fellow human beings. That Brahmanical parampara or tradition was imposed at will on the Shudras and Dalits. Brahmanical noble-ness was never humanitarian. Central to sustaining its imposition was ensuring the lack of education of the Shudras and Dalits, though they lived in the same village and urban societies. The Adivasis, for a long time, were away from village and town life that was the centre of production and distribution of goods and commodities. The Shudras and Dalits were part of that life, so they suffered its graded caste and cultural impositions. In any case, English language education started in India with Ram Mohan Roy, who made it a part of the school education system, with William Carey, a British missionary who had settled in Bengal.
The second most significant man in modern India was Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917). He was born in a Parsi Zoroastrian Gujarati family. Educated at the Elphinstone Institute School, perhaps one of the earliest English medium schools in the Bombay province, he was patronised by the ruler of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad III, who made him diwan or minister of his state. The Parsi community, though small in number, was highly educated. Naoroji became a member of the British Parliament and took the lead to establish the Indian National Congress in 1885 along with the Scottish Indian Civil Service officer AO Hume, who wanted to reform the Indian administration with help from educated Indians. So even though Naoroji was more or less the same age as Mahatma Jotirao Phule (1827-1890), because of his community’s educational background, he got help not just from the ruler of Baroda but from British officials.
It is also interesting that the maharaja family of Baroda was Shudra, but it was given Kshatriya status because it had a ruling position. Brahmin prime ministers and head priests ran all Shudra kingdoms. Even such a king never educated his children in English medium schools in India nor sent them to England for higher studies. Yet, this family later financed Dr BR Ambedkar’s education at Columbia University in the United States.
We must understand this phenomenon: Irrespective of economic status, the Shudras were frightened of education as it was said to be un-Shudralike to get educated. Rumours would spread about how the gods would get angry if the Shudras started reading and writing. The Brahmanical ideology of control through caste made myth and superstition a part of India’s historical heritage. Over millennia, they injected the fear of education within the Shudra, Dalits and Adivasis. They fostered the psychology of fearing education, which confined all—except them—to local languages or oral traditions and prevented them from reading and writing even in colonial times.
The author is a political theorist, social activist and author. He has been campaigning for English medium education in government schools for 30 years. The views are personal
https://www.newsclick.in/how-english-language-initiated-idea-nationalism-india
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Mayawati & BSP’s political ‘evaporation’ certain. Blame it on shift to ‘Sarvajan Samaj’ in 2007
Changing Kanshi Ram’s fundamental slogan of ‘Bahujan Samaj’ to ‘Sarvajan Samaj’ has cost Mayawati and BSP. UP and Punjab election results were expected.
File photo of BSP chief Mayawati | PTI
In the recent Uttar Pradesh and Punjab elections, the Bahujan Samaj Party, headed by Mayawati, remained almost invisible like the Left parties of India. In UP, where Mayawati was a chief minister for one full term from 2007 to 2012, and before that, for three short terms, she did not undertake a visible campaign. The party did not win seats, and its vote share dropped to the lowest. But that was expected.
There are both knowns and unknowns behind Mayawati’s inactivity. We know that the Narendra Modi government might raid her properties. What we don’t know, however, is if the threat of a raid existed even before the 2019 election when the BSP contested in alliance with the Samajwadi Party and Mayawati was still an active player.
Also Read: Beyond minor tweaks, BJP, SP, BSP are still following old caste, religion formulas in UP
BSP’s ideological shift
Is there any other reason for her inactive political life? Yes. The party rank in Uttar Pradesh has become so weak that she cannot run an effective and visible campaign. In fact, Mayawati punctured her own ideological tyre just before the 2007 election. She, along with her new ‘ideological mentor’, Satish Mishra, a Brahmin leader, changed the fundamental slogan of Kanshi Ram from ‘Bahujan Samaj’ to ‘Sarvajan Samaj’.
The idea of Bahujan Samaj was a new electoral combination of Dalit/Other Backward Classes/Adivasis with the support of minorities wherever possible. Moreover, it was supposed to be a sociopolitically transformative slogan with a systematically worked-out agenda drawing heavily from Ambedkarism. Even though a parallel OBC party came into existence in UP in the form of the Samajwadi Party, the BSP was the main ideological strength for all oppressed communities in terms of ideology.
The BSP won the 2007 election by roping in the Brahmin community, not so much Kshatriyas. The Kshatriyas remained with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the post-Congress phase in the state and completely owned the Ram temple controversy as more of a community issue than religious. The stable position that the Kshatriyas occupied in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh/BJP gave enormous strength to Yogi Adityanath. Meanwhile, the Brahmins lost bargaining capacity in the BJP because of their association with BSP from 2007 to 2012. More significantly, however, the BSP lost credibility among the Dalit/OBC ideological forces and also among voters because of its political marriage with the Brahmin community.
During her tenure in power from 2007 to 2012, Mayawati did not show any major policy reforms that could become a model among the poor and lower-middle classes in the country. The only ‘change’ she brought was distributing land among Dalits and building some monuments around Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram, and of course, her own self. The Brahmins were upset with monuments, though they got some state benefits like jobs along with Dalits and OBCs. There was a view that in the general category jobs, Brahmins were preferred not Thakurs and Jats during her regime. However, by the 2012 elections, the Brahmins moved away from the BSP. The non-Yadav OBCs who were with BSP also seemed to have become frustrated with her politics and personal behaviour like putting note garlands around her neck in public meetings, not caring for ministers, etc, and moved away.
In 2014, the RSS/BJP changed their ideological position on caste and roped in many non-Yadav OBCs along with non-Jatav Dalits into their electoral base. Mayawati and her mentor, Satish Mishra, lost out on all fronts. They did not know where to go and which combination would work in their favour. The Muslims are still aligned with Samajwadi Party — they were never strongly with BSP even during Kanshi Ram days because, for a long time, they did not buy into the caste ideology.
Also Read: Is the game over for BSP? Mayawati’s politics pales in the face of Kanshiram’s legacy
Lack of structure
The BSP, as a party, has never built a structured organisation with proper central and state bodies, despite its presence in many states. When Kanshi Ram was alive, he was the BSP’s ‘all-in-one’, and after his death, Mayawati became the party’s ‘everything’ as the party president. But at the same time, she lost her decision-making capacity and started relying on Satish Mishra. A party that came into existence with a Dalit centrality was thrown into the lap of a Brahmin who was never known for any social reform work. There was no second Dalit leader in that party, at least to represent the ideology with an organic social base.
This kind of structure, except individual leadership, though not dynastic, does not even have the scope for survival that the communist parties have in an adverse political atmosphere. While the communists became irrelevant in a caste identitarian environment and stuck to their class theory, which had hardly any takers, the BSP gave up its ideology of ‘Bahujan Samaj’ within a short time for the sake of power in 2007. The power came with the Brahmin alliance, but the party’s death began from that very position of power between 2007 and 2012.
Soon it was not just the power that it lost, but its political, economic and moral support base as well. Unlike many regional parties, the BSP did not come into existence just for power within the welfare ideology of the Congress or the BJP. It came with a definite anti-caste ideology. Unfortunately, the ideology no longer plays a part within the BSP. It has become a Mayawati-Satish Mishra party.
Also Read: Calling BSP ‘BJP’s B-team’ shows caste bias. Here are four reasons
Mayawati’s shortcomings
Mayawati is not a great ideological leader with an all-India reach like Kanshi Ram. She has oratory skills but speaks without an ideological standpoint and is a politician who cannot inspire the cadre. She has gradually become a ‘script-reading leader’ even in public meetings. It is a sad state of affairs. Illiterate, semi-literate and even educated Indian masses need a leader who arouses emotions in public meetings.
Mayawati’s failure to retain an all-India leadership role is because she and her party confined themselves to Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Despite having activists working and living for the party ideology in other states, it wasn’t much use. It has no leader who could sustain the ideology of Kanshi Ram in the present political environment.
To me, it appears that even though the communist parties — Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India — have become irrelevant, they still have organisational structures and hang on to their classical ideology. The BSP may gradually evaporate as the only known leader has given up on its Bahujan (read: anti-caste) ideology and there’s no second-level leadership and structure to take it forward. It is a great tragedy that Kanshi Ram’s labour and love of Bahujan liberation has been dragged down so soon by someone he chose with so much hope.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His book God As Political Philosopher — Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminsm was written to strengthen anti-caste ideology in the 1980 and 90s. Views are personal.
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The Russian Orthodox Church And The World Crisis
in World — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Extreme religious or anti-religious engagement of the ruling political forces in modern times would have serious negative consequences for the society as whole and the state apparatus. The Russian experience shows this very clearly. The communist phase of Russia was completely anti-religion. Now Putin’s Russia is deeply associated with the Orthodox Church that suffered a lot during the communist regime.
Vladimir Putin’s relationship to the Russian Orthodox church and the present global crisis bear testimony to this. From the early 20th century onwards the Russian society and state have gone through very extreme positions on the question of religion.
After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia the anti-religion campaign was so rigorous that church symbols and church buildings were pulled down. The communists thought that all people must practice atheism, though at the ground level the people were still religious. Now Putin pushed the people to believe and practice religion as a matter of state policy. The Russian Orthodox Christian church, headed by a classical kind of patriarch, which is different from Roman Catholicism, is not only fully supporting the authoritarian regime of Putin but fully supporting and mobilizing forces to fight the Ukraine war. Putin has become a regular visitor to the church, and has become a part of orthodox activities. He has been financing construction of new churches and organizing orthodox congregations.
The Church’s interpretation of Russian history and nationhood is exactly on the lines any other theocratic religion would interpret. When religion becomes the key source of defining a nation, fundamentalism creeps into every aspect of the society and the state. The Russian orthodox patriarchs believe that Ukraine is part of Russia, because the Orthodox church was first born in the present Ukraine region in the 10th century. St Andrews was said to have established the first church at Kievan Rus around, perhaps, the present capital of Ukraine. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were said to be the Orthodox Akhand Russia. This is like what many RSS leaders earlier were talking about Akhanda Bharat that consisted of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Putin bought this theory from the Orthodox patriarchs who seem to think that the peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Union should not be accepted and at least these classical Orthodox church centred Russia should be re-united whatever could be the cost. Though there are dissenters within the orthodox church, who oppose the war but most orthodox church leaders are with Putin. The whole world is talking about Putin but the problem is not just one Putin. The religious nationhood of whole orthodox patriarchs is the problem.
Once he used the starving Orthodox Church for his consolidation, he could easily undercut the democratic process and he slowly emerged as a new model dictator. The Russian election system is not at all democratic. It is totally stage managed.
There are some fundamental issues on which the Orthodox Russian Church differs with the Roman Catholic Church and much more with the Protestant Church of the West. After Putin became the unchallengeable leader of Russia on some of those issues, with the support of the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholics within Russia were persecuted and attacked. Since the Roman Church is taking a liberal view of abortions and homosexual marriages, liberal dress codes and so on the Orthodox Church thinks that these are all spiritual immoralities that crept into Church in the post-modern phase of the Western world. All such things should be opposed.
The Orthodox Russians see the Western liberals as the enemies. Though one cannot say that Russians as people are opposed to democracy. The very idea of proletariat dictatorship during communist phase has a negative impact on their psyche. Their experience during the communist regime, particularly the religious orthodox people feel more assured in an orthodox dictatorial political regime. Though Russia cannot be called a theocratic state yet, Putin kind of ambitious rulers easily can turn such a convenient orthodox environment into a theocratic dictatorship. If he wins the Ukraine war the chances of Russia becoming a more dangerous theocratic regime with so much nuclear power at its command poses a major threat to the world’s democratic order.
The Orthodox Church is not only opposed to communism and socialism in any form but they also oppose liberal democracy which would bring in anti-Orthodox values into Russian society. Such religious nationalist schools think that conservative authoritarianism of the Putin type is very useful. They see the Ukrainian democracy in the neighborhood is going to have a corrupting impact on their conservative, nominal election based dictatorship. It is this politico-spiritual social base that made Putin what he is now.
The problem is not just Putin but it is the Orthodox Christian nationalism that is posing a threat to the Western liberal democracy and globalized capitalism. Russians also do not want a China type of market communism. Since the communist regimes crush the spiritual autonomy of people and the state must direct every aspect of life the Russian conservatives want authoritarianism which combines the state and religion into one whole. This post socialist Russian hunger for a religious state where there should not be any space for separation of the state and religion is fully backing Putin.
Most Muslim nations also operate in this kind of spiritual authoritarian states. They do not want to engage with secularism discourse at all. The Afghan Talibanism is only an extreme form of it.
Religion and state mixed authoritarianism look for wars with neighbours who want to practice different socio- political systems. The Russian-Ukrainian war is similar one. Once religious fundamentalism controls the ruling oligarchs’ mind the destruction of war does not appear to be a problem.
Once the socialist systems collapsed, the world has come to pre-socialist conflict stage again. In Russia spiritual nationalism, not democratic welfare nationalism, decides the nations’ actions. Though Russia is being described as a Rogue State by the West it does not seem to bother about that label. The mass psych could be more easily maneuvered with religious fundamentalism. Russia seems to show that direction within the Christian world. Since Ukraine is also a nation of similar Orthodox Christianity which accepted the democratic model with a weak separation of the state and church, we will have to wait and see what happens in this war.
The world is now encountering many forms of spiritual fundamentalisms like Afghan Talibanism, Russian Orthodoxism. In India though Hindutva forces repeatedly say we believe in democracy and as of now operating within the framework of the Indian constitution, we are not sure which direction religious fundamentalism drives those forces. If religion is thoroughly mixed with the state operation and once a ruler is convinced that he should become life time ruler and the religious forces militantly control the civil society and the election system could be manipulated or abandoned any system is likely to get into dictatorship. Every nation now needs to be cautious about deeply mixing religion with the state.
If Russia wins and dismantles the Ukrainian democracy the Christian world will enter into a new phase in their experimentation of nationalism, democracy and secularism.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His book God As Political Philosopher–Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism, deals with spiritual democracy as new idea
https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/the-russian-orthodox-church-and-the-world-crisis/
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Statue Politics and the Myth of Ramanuja’s Equality
The name given to the statue is meant to mislead the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, who have their own spiritual symbols in Telangana and also have major spiritual icons like Mahatma Phule, Savitribai Phule & Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
Narendra Modi at the inauguration of the “Statue of Equality” in Hyderabad. Photo: Twitter/@narendramodi
Earlier this month, a 216-foot high statue of Ramanujacharya – founder of the Vishishta Advaita school of Vaishnavism in 11 century South India – was unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The statue is named ‘Statue of Equality’, presumably on the lines of the Statue of Liberty in New York. Modi said Ramanuja’s Statue of Equality and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel’s Statue of Unity will change India.
The main institutionaliser of the latest statue is Chinna Jeeyar Swamy, said to be the guru of Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao. Jeeyar Swamy’s background is not mentioned anywhere but he is from East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. Indications are that he himself comes from a Brahmin family background.
Though Ramanuja established his sect of Vaishnavism with the idea of human equality about 1000 years ago, the impact of this drive for equality ought to have been visible in present day Tamil Nadu and Kerala – the region he taught his philosophy and lived his long life. Especially since we know there was no elite or violent counter-reaction of the kind which Buddhism faced. Ramanuja’s main preaching happened around the Srirangam Ranganatha temple in Tamil Nadu. For about 900 years after his death, by the time Periyar, Ramasamy Naikar, Sri Ayyankali and Srinarayana Guru started their struggles for equality in the same region, the Tamil and Kerala Dalits and Shudras experienced little socio-spiritual equality. If anything, their condition was worse than any other part of the country.
If the Vaishnavite Ramanuja opposed the Shaiva casteist tradition of Adi-Shankara and started a movement for equality, what does the caste-cultural history of that region tell us? Chinna Jeeyar Swamy claims and the prime minister of India affirms, that a great spiritual movement of equality was launched, but then why was untouchability in those areas even more widespread than the rest of India – with even some of the Shudra castes like the Nadars of Tamil Nadu and Ezahvas of Kerala too being treated as untouchable and unseeable? This was only region where the Shudras were treated as untouchable till the early 20th century.
For those looking to build statues, there is no shortage of true icons of equality. Ayyankali (1863-1941), who was a Dalit himself, started a movement for allowing Dalits of that region to be allowed to walk in the village streets. Narayana Guru (1856-1928), who came from a toddy tapper community, started a movement to fight for the Shudra ‘Right to Religion’ by establishing his Linga and finally established a mutt of his own. Periyar Ramasamy (1879-1973) a Shudra agri-businessman, finally delivered a major blow to the forces of inequality in the region. Where was the influence of Ramanuja’s equality in all this? If the ‘equality’ claims being made today were true even in the spiritual domain, why were Dalits not even allowed to walk on the roads where Vaishnava temples like the Padmanabha temple of Kerala stood?
It is a known fact that Ramanuja was by birth a Brahmin and never left the Brahminic socio-spiritual practices within temple and outside. He was the opposite of Basaveswara, a Brahmin by birth who rebelled against Brahmanism to establish a spiritual system of human equality in Karnataka.
Adi Shankara started his Shaivite movement in the 8th century CE in the context of the inroads Buddhism, Islam and Christianity had made. But that did not stop the growth of these religions. The Brahmins of that region thought that promoting Vaishnavism would stop religious migrations as the Ramayana and Mahabharata were more usable mythological texts. In the absence of any concrete Shaivite mythological text, they promoted Vaishnavism. Both the Ramayana and Mahabharata were composed around Vishnu’s avatar narratives. Ramanuja in that situation worked to promote the Vaishnava cult with vague talk of human equality – in the hope that it would stop the Shudra/Dalit migration to other religions. But the rigidity of Brahminism did not allow any change and untouchability and Shudra inequality were rampant till reformers like Narayana Guru, Ayyankali and Periyar emerged.
The philosophical discourse of Ramanuja did not raise the issue of dignity of labour and respect to production in the Vaishnava system as well. After all, caste inequalities and human untouchability were rooted in productive occupational discrimination. He tried to re-define Brahmanism without differentiating between Brahma the God and Brahmin the human, with a new form of worship but it had nothing to do with equality.
Why then have Chinna Jeeyar, KCR and Rameshwar Rao (the richest Velama real estate business man) planned to establish a Rs 1200 crore spiritual centre with a huge statue in Hyderabad? Does Jeeyar himself believe in human and cultural equality?
Since KCR comes from a Velama landlord family, which also thinks that the Velamas have Kshatriya heritage, they started promoting the Vaishnava sect of Hinduism in Telangana. However, the relationship between Jeeyar Swamy and the RSS/BJP is well established. The financial supporter of this project is Jupally Rameshwar Rao, a billionaire, and real estate monopolist of Telangana. Since there is no political support to Ramanuja’s ideology in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, they chose Telangana but the ‘Statue of Equality’ name is meant to mislead the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, who have their own spiritual symbols in Telangana and also have major spiritual icons like Mahatma Phule, Savitribai Phule and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
Modi’s assertion that Ambedkar was a follower of Ramanuja is totally misleading. He was never a follower of Ramanuja.
What KCR also did not understand is that Chinna Jeeyar is an RSS supporter. If he is really opposed to the RSS/BJP he would not have supported the whole agenda of Chinna Jeeyar. In 2013, he “presided over inaugural ceremony of the 32nd state conferences of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP),” the student wing of the RSS, where he said that “the ABVP was guiding the student community and inculcating patriotism among them.”
The country knows what kind of educational values and patriotism the ABVP promotes across Indian universities. In Telangana,, the ABVP was born in Osmania University before the Bharatiya Janata Party was formed in the late 1960s. However, not a single serious scholar has emerged from this organisation so far. The situation in the rest of India is not different.
Jeeyar himself does not believe in human and cultural equality. A key component of equality is respect for the food and work culture of different caste-community people.
Jeeyar said in one of his sermons just before the inauguration of the Statue of Equality:
“If you eat pork, you would only think like a pig. If you eat mutton, you would only follow the herd like a goat as your own brain stops working. If you take eggs, you would only behave like a chicken – peck in the dirt, place to place, and eat from it”.
With this statement, Jeevar Swamy insulted the food culture of the majority of Indians. He disrespected the blood in the body of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis, apart from Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Lingayats and so on. Even his own follower, KCR, eats meat.
Is this the kind of equality that Ramanuja practiced and taught? Even after a thousand-year-long spiritual and cultural legacy, this kind of human intolerance and inhuman cultural traits survive among followers of Ramanuja whose statue is now called ‘Statue of Equality’.
This means they are coming out with a new meaning for the concept. Equality now means the practice of Varna Dharma, casteism and untouchability.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and writer: His well known books are: God As Political Philosopher – Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminsm, Buffalo Nationalism –A Critique, and Spiritual Fascism and the Shudras –Vision For a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Kuruppusamy
https://m.thewire.in/article/caste/statue-politics-and-the-myth-of-ramanujas-equality
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A New Civilisational Discourse for India | The India Forum
UPDATED: 11 FEB 2022ISSUE: MARCH 4, 2022
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political thinker, social activist, author, and socio-spiritual reformer.
The Great Granary of Harappa, dated to 2450 BCE. Much before the Aryans came to the subcontinent, the Harappans had built an advanced urban civilisation. | Wikimedia
A right-wing nationalist agenda would make us believe Dwijas alone were civilisation builders in India. But Indian civilisation began with the Harappan culture, whose inheritors are the present-day Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis.
Where and how did Indian civilisation begin? What is its status in the 21st century world? Who were the people who originated civilisation in India?
I would not have entered this discourse had the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) not come to power and imposed their extreme Dwija right-wing nationalist agenda on India and its education system. They would make us believe that Indian civilisation started with the Vedas. All sections of people — Shudras, Dalits, Adivasis, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, and so on — are forced to accept the Vedic civilisation as India’s originary civilisation. By implication, they create a make-believe theory that the Dwijas alone were the builders of the Indian civilisation.
The earliest Brahmin books — the Vedas — were composed in Sanskrit beginning 1500 BCE after the migration of the Aryans to the Indian subcontinent. But before the Aryans arrived, composed the Vedas, and divided Indian society into four varnas, a very advanced civilisation had already been built on the subcontinenent by the Harappans.
The present-day Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis are the real inheritors of that civilisation — not the Dwijas. This is the reason the Dwijas overplay the Vedic civilisation and either ignore or undermine the Harappan civilisation.
The book and the spade
If the Vedic civilisation can be symbolised by the books it produced, the Harappan civilisation could be symbolised by the spade. The Harappan urban civilisation was not only built using spades but also grew through revolutionising agriculture with the help of the plough — an advanced form of the spade. The Harappan spade civilisation has a life of 1,000 years of pre-book Vedic civilisation in India. Therefore, the spade, rather than the book, should be treated as the original symbol of Indian civilisation.
A book is not an instrument of civilisation building. On the other hand, the spade is an instrument with which civilisation is built. A book can only tell us about a particular aspect of the civilisation that a spade as an instrument builds from time to time. In the process of the growth of human civilisation, the spade continues to play a central role in the production and development of resources. A spade is not a messenger of a particular civilisation but a key instrument with which civilisation-building work is done. It represents the genealogy of technology in each stage of human civilisation.
The Hindutva school does not want to learn and teach about the knowledge of production, as the Brahminical forces are against it. They want to include the history of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis as part of Brahminic knowledge.
A spade may change its shape. Once it was used by a human hand, and now it might be mechanised. But a spade remains a spade. While the book plays a critical role in improving and spreading civilisation in vast areas, even without a book a civilisation can survive and its culture of production can spread from region to region.
The Brahminical ideological heritage will not allow the spade civilisation to be part of history. The Hindutva school does not want to learn and teach about the knowledge of production, as the Brahminical forces are against it. They want to include the history of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis as part of Brahminical knowledge.
This way of reading of Indian history does great injustice to the spade civilisation built by Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis before the Aryan arrival. The Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, and Mahabharata do not reflect any aspect of the spade civilisation that has its roots in the Harappan civilisation. The Vedic culture did not teach anything new in the production and construction realms, but rather, pushed us backwards by constructing a myth that production is pollution. It did not develop any urban centres like those of Harappa. Indeed, the next urban rise in the subcontinent was only around 600 BCE, with the Magadhans, around the same time as the development of the Shramanic Buddhist civilisation.
Every generation has to know of the Harappan roots of India’s production and construction knowledge. For that is the foundation of our civilisation.
Harappans and the pre-Aryan economy
In Early Indians—The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, Tony Joseph writes: “By the time the last migrants, the Aryans, arrived sometime after 2000 BCE, Indians in the subcontinent were already one of the largest modern human populations on earth (if not the largest); had already led an agricultural revolution and then an urban revolution leading up to the creation of the largest civilisation of its time; and were spearheading an agricultural transition in almost every region, in the north, south, east and west. It would be accurate to say that the very foundation of India as we know it was laid during the period of the Harappan civilisation.”
The Harappan civilisation was a continuation of the hunting, fishing, pastoral, and agricultural economy that the pre-Harappans built. The advances in agriculture were accompanied by advanced human cultural relations and Harappa emerged as one of the earliest urban civilisations in the world. This civilisation was built with the skills, labour, and instruments that formed the earliest forms of technology on the Indian subcontinent.The making of bricks, pots, and bronze tools, or the crafting of wood required proper planning by enthusiastic people, curious to innovate things with available materials like earth, wood, ores, and so on. The construction of houses and urban centres requires a range of technical tasks that need to be performed by a large number of people, who made significant contributions in building that civilisation.
A pottery artifact from Harappa on exhibit at Krishnapuram Palace, Kayamkulam | Wikimedia
Building the Harappa and other cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation, like Mohenjodaro and Dholavira, would have been possible only when surplus food generated by collective production activity was available for those focused on improving technology. For these tasks — house construction, pot making, vessel making — are done by specialised artisans who practice their occupational tasks full time. Brick and pot makers, carpenters, ironsmiths and goldsmiths, or barbers are not involved in the direct food production, animal economy, or fishing. Farmers produce food for them, in return for implements like spades, ploughs, pots, cloth, and iron and wood instruments.
Since artisans depended on others in society for surplus food, there would have been a collective engagement with the production and distribution of commodities among agriculturists and artisans. As the Harappans went about building their civilisation, they would have been a collective social force, with the division of labour similar to that seen in present-day tribal and plain agrarian collective production processes.
Is not the Shudra mind a library?
The production and construction knowledge — of the Harappan vintage or of the present — is not considered as legitimate knowledge by Brahminical pundits.
In a recent article, Devdutt Patnaik, a writer on Brahmanical mythology, claims that Brahmins “were men who memorised and transmitted Vedic chants and Vedic rituals. Killing them was akin to destroying a library as writing was unknown in the Vedic times, and all chants were passed down by word-of-mouth. So, the concept of Brahma-hatya-paap, the grave sin of killing a Brahmin, gained popularity.”
Were the minds of Shudras and Dalits not human libraries which played a very fundamental role for the survival of human communities?
If Brahmins who memorised the Vedas were human libraries, what about those people who kept the whole production and construction knowledge in their memories and passed it on to several generations? Were the minds of Shudras, Dalits, or Adivasis not human libraries which played a very fundamental role for the survival of human communities? Historically it was these communities who grew food and engaged in production-related technologies. Few Dwijas — whether they be Brahmin, Banias, Ksatriyas, Kayastha, or Khatri — undertake these tasks even now.
Skilled workers continue to be part of modern Shudra, Dalit, or Adivasi communities. Their knowledge is not of myths. Artisans are both theoreticians and practitioners, with enormous skill and expertise. Experimentation is part of their profession. It is more real than the Brahmanical book-based based knowledge, which is transmitted by seniors to juniors merely by making them memorise mantras. This teaching of Vedic knowledge needs verification through re-recitation, but it cannot be verified whether that teaching has really produced concrete results in form of punyam — sacredness.
On the other hand, productive and constructive knowledge needs to be taught at two levels to produce concrete results. First, it needs to be explained theoretically and has to be memorised by the younger generation. At the second stage, it needs to be tested in the field. A senior pot maker first teaches a younger person the principles of how to make a pot, which then needs to be verified in practice — whether that method really produces a pot. Agrarian production needs a concrete study of the relationship between soil and seed in each geographical context. It does not give practical results merely from memorising the method of cultivation. That knowledge has to be tested in the praxis.
Stamp seals from Harappa engraved with images of animals on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Wikimedia
The Brahmanical idea of parampara has nothing to do with this knowledge. In fact, it is against this productive knowledge. Brahmanical writers never bothered to understand the importance of this knowledge. Hindutva Brahminism does not want that this knowledge to be brought into books and taught to young Indians.
Further, Brahmanical knowledge is not taught to all those who want to learn, whereas anybody could learn pot making or carpentry or animal grazing or tilling. A Brahmin is free to go to a Shudra to learn how to produce food. But they do not want to learn that knowledge or do the work of producing, as it is seen as polluting. This kind of spirituality is not a religion but superstition, and condems India as a nation to be superstitious. No Brahmin realised that this anti-production disease weakened and damaged the nation and its people for millennia.
Sanskrit as anti-spade
Spade civilisations constructed spiritual systems without undermining the animal economy and agriculture. They are organically linked to the language of communication. They produce texts that do not separate spade and book as antagonistic civilisational entities, as did the Brahminical culture. It is very possible that ritual work in the Harappan civilisation was carried out by almost everyone in the community, as they do in Indian villages even in our times, with no separate group whole time on that job. The present village practice of productive work and spiritual operations carried out by the same people seem to be a legacy of pre-Aryan Harappans.
In contrast, Brahmins became full time ritual specialists, keeping themselves out of production and construction work. This gave birth to an anti-productionist spiritual agenda that kept the nation stagnant. It was not an accident that the majority of the Indian population, the Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis, were kept away from reading and writing and exchanging ideas. Sanskrit was denied to the tillers of the land for their day-to-day productive life. It was a rishi’s language but not a language for krishi. The prohibition on the usage of Sanskrit was enforced by violent means: as evidenced by historical Shudra and Dalit productive life and by Brahminical texts like Manu’s Dharmashastra. Even into the early 20th century, no Shudra or Dalit could learn Sanskrit in gurukulas.
Brahminism, by separating the spade and the book, made Sanskrit a non-accessible language and stopped the growth of production and distribution of knowledge processes.
In this system of control and management not only Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis, but India itself suffered a great civilisational loss. Brahminism, by separating the spade and the book, made Sanskrit a non-accessible language and stopped the growth of production and distribution of knowledge processes. Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis in the past did not have a common, pan-Indian link language to exchange their ideas and knowledge. Even after they got literate in their local languages, their knowledge could not be communicated to people outside their linguistic zones. This restricted the spade civilisation’s mobility and innovations in knowledge and technology. Many innovations and technologies died out because their form, content and use value could not be transmitted beyond their locations through a common language.
This is the contribution of the Brahminical parampara, which the RSS and BJP wants to teach all young Indians.
Writing about productive minds
After Vedic Brahminism emerged, all the spade civilisation builders were declared as the fourth varna: the Shudras. The Shudra masses came to believe that Brahmins were God-sent people to rule over them spiritually. By consenting to be spiritual slaves and labourers, they handed over economic, social, and political power to the Brahmin. Even when they occupied royal positions, Shudra kings were controlled by Brahmin priests, prime ministers and intellectuals. They imbibed the Brahmanical superstition against Shudras, assumed Kshatriya status, and sought ritual acceptance from Brahmins. The famous case of Chhatrapati Shivaji is an example. This fear psychosis played havoc with the Shudra civilisation. Shudra kings were alienated from the rest of the Shudra masses and were only agents of Brahminism.
What the spade meant as a civilisational heritage was never written into books. That greater civilisational stream never got talked about in historical terms. Few Dwija scholars in the post Independent India felt the need to research the productive knowledge of the spade civilisation. The Shudra, Dalit, and Adivasi mind-library in its multi-dimensionality has not yet been fully recorded in writing. India as a nation lags because their productive thinking and application processes have not been engaged with.
Critical engagement with knowledge is possible only when productive minds are written about and analysed. Writing on Brahmin rishis and Ksatriya kings, without any relationship to the constant struggle with nature for producing goods and commodities, does not enlarge the social knowledge base. What constructs a civilisation is not books, but the collective labour power of people.
The RSS has become a modern instrument of classical Brahminism to keep Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis under its grip, through spiritual, linguistic and also political power mechanisms.
The Shudra question does not just deal with historical oppression as an issue of human rights. The Shudra question is more about discovering unwritten production knowledge, skills, technologies, innovations, successes and failures in the process of human engagement with nature itself. The Shudra, Dalit, and Adivasi mind still remains unwritten because the Brahmanical mind thought that it was not worth writing. Now that the Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis come to realise their great loss, the RSS and BJP do not want that knowledge to get into books for schools and colleges.
The RSS has become a modern instrument of classical Brahminism to keep the Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis under its grip through spiritual, linguistic and also political power mechanisms. From power positions in Delhi both the RSS and BJP want to impose an educational syllabus on Indian civilisation that draws only from Vedic, Puranic, and epic sources, in which Shudra, Dalit, and Adivasi productive, creative and human centred life activities are absent. They do not want to allow future generations to know about the spade civilisation, but want only their book civilisation to be presented as Indian civilisation.
Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis should reject such one dimensional understanding of India, past and present. Unfortunately, some Dalit writers aligned with Hindutva nationalism have joined the stream of Vedic nationalism. In August last year the RSS ideologue and leader Dattatreya Hosabale — who comes from a Kannada Brahmin family background — launched Makers of Modern Dalit History, a book written by Sudarshan Ramabadran and Guru Prakash Paswan. The book claims that Veda Vyas, the composer of the Mahabharata, and Valmiki, the composer of Ramayana, were Dalits. The authors came to this conclusion by accepting the Brahmin view of history and civilisation.
How can Dalit writers construct Brahmins and Kshatriyas as superior people, without giving any dignified place for their parental community which was involved in various productive activities? How do these Dalit writers believe in books which do not discuss the sources of human survival but see labour as mean? How do Dalit writers believe that their own self is worthless? They might be great writers but they could in no way be called Dalit. This is ‘Dalit history’ coming from Dalits who have power positions at Delhi and Nagpur. They do not know that history does not change because they write from power.
Brahminical writers argue that Brahmanical heritage is the real civilisation and culture of India. But without production no civilisation or culture could develop. Even as the Brahmanical texts were being composed, the production and distribution of food and other production resources continued. If that was to cease life would have come to an end. Books would not have saved the nation if production and distribution halted.
It is the continued Shudra and Dalit culture of production and construction in the face of Dwija anti-production that brought India into the 21st century. The RSS’ attempt to push its favoured books as the only real nationalist syllabus, leaving out the whole history of knowledge of production and construction, will only push the nation backwards.
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Telangana CM’s idea of a ‘new Constitution’ is self-destructive. It echoes RSS propaganda
KCR himself has many streaks of Hindutva thinking. Perhaps the call for a ‘new Constitution’ was his way of appeasing the RSS while opposing Modi.
Illustration by Soham Sen | ThePrint Team
India always knew that there was, and perhaps still is, a threat to the Constitution from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS, because they are rooted in the ‘Sanathan Brahminic’ spiritual system. Their theoreticians and founding leaders disapproved of the Constituent Assembly, the drafting committee and B. R. Ambedkar heading it. K. B. Hedgewar and M. S. Golwalkar spoke and wrote about their disagreement with the Constitution as ‘un-Indian’. Their idea of ‘Indianness’ was a constitution affirming caste order, but not one that enshrined the steps to abolish the Varna system and drive the socio-economic system towards equality.
The Indian Communists also opposed the Constituent Assembly and attempted to oppose drafting of a democratic constitution calling it a “bourgeoisie attempt.” But fortunately, they too failed, and the present Constitution came into being on 26 January 1950.null
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on 22 February 2000, constituted a national commission headed by Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah to review the entire Constitution, not just sections of it. This idea was/is different from amending its provisions — wise to suit the needs of the changing society. But the move was rejected by vast sections of Indians. The review committee died a natural death.
After the RSS/BJP came to power in 2014, they didn’t talk about changing the Constitution, but sections associated with the Sangh system keep talking about removal of the Constitution. Most people, though, have been ignoring this threat.
KCR’s ‘new Constitution’
A few days ago, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) said in a press meeting that he is opposed to the present Constitution and will start a movement to change it. While talking about the Budget, he asked the mediapersons present there on 1 February 2022 to write that he is “opposed to the BJP and Congress rule and also the present Constitution”. When some media people tried to ignore it, he said he was serious about it: “Let there be a debate about changing the whole Constitution” and “we need a new Constitution”. There are two ways we can approach this: either ignore such a plan by a small regional party leader’s idea of a ‘new Constitution’ for a country like India or see it as a serious attempt to appease the RSS while opposing Modi. Whichever way you look at it, one thing’s certain: this very talk by a sitting chief minister of a state is disturbing. Because no other chief minister has made such a proposal.
KCR himself has many streaks of Hindutva thinking. He is deeply religious; spends a lot of money on yagyas, yagas and kratus and temples. He is a serious follower of Vaishnava peetadhipathi (head of a Vaishnava mutt) Chinna Jeeyar. Though he comes from a Velama landlord (Shudra dominant caste) family, touches the feet of only Brahmins; sometimes prostrates at their feet in public. He touched the feet of Pranab Mukherjee, when he was president, and E. S. L. Narasimhan, when he was Telangana governor, as both of them were Brahmins. He did this in public at the airport, on podiums and other places. But he never touched the feet of Ram Nath Kovind (the present President, a Dalit) or Tamilisai Soundararajan (present Governor of Telangana, an OBC woman). He is also spending about Rs 130 crore state money on Yadadri temple reconstruction. It is this deep religious dimension of his personality that makes him get into the grey areas of questioning the Constitution He is also known for his feudal behaviour, even in public.
It’s not that KCR does not have a right to hold such views personally. But as a chief minister, who swore by the Constitution, cannot start a movement to change it. Many of its founders lived in jail for years for the sake of India’s freedom. They were part of the Constituent Assembly, which drafted this Constitution after a lengthy debate on every major issue that the country has encountered historically.
Issue with RSS’ Gana Rajya system
The other day Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS suggested that there was a better democracy in the ancient Gana Rajya system. This is a new myth being spread with so-called nationalist propaganda. Several indirect remarks are being made about this ‘colonial model of Constitution.’ Gana Rajyas were small tribal units with equal distribution of power that operated on a local level. The best example of that is the Vajji tribal Gana Rajya democracy that existed during Buddha’s own lifetime. He protected it from Magadha state usurpation. That is not at all comparable with the modern constitutional democracy of India. (I’ve previously discussed this in my book God As Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism)null
Our constitutional democracy is an unparalleled experiment in India and the world, with a population of this size (1.3 billion people). Any attempt to dismantle it is a dangerous proposition. All welfare schemes that the oppressed, exploited masses are receiving will be hampered. India, because of its caste system, untouchability and tribalism, did not have universal education before 1950. With the adoption of the Constitution, the exploited masses got opportunities that they had never known before. We are fortunate that Ambedkar crafted this Constitution and the other founders accepted it. Small, power-hungry leaders like KCR, or other Hindutva forces and ideological folds should not be allowed to steer off the Constitution.
At one stage in life, I too, was part of a Left-wing ideological force that was working for abolition of constitutional democracy. I was fortunate to realise quite early, by the time I wrote my well-known book Why I Am Not a Hindu in the early 1990s, that ideas like these were a self-destructive political and ideological process.
India needs the unending functioning of this Constitution, just as the American constitution has been working for hundreds of years. I am glad that people all over Telangana are disapproving of KCR’s idea and the opposition parties and social organisations are protesting against it. He will do well to remember that even for him, it is a self-destructive idea.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His most known books are Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Shudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy, and Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution. Views are personal.
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The rise of Akhilesh Yadav amid Dwij jeers
Historically, Hindutva forces have treated the Shudras and Dalits and Adivasis as enemies. The minorities are only a late addition to their list of enemies. They created the caste system and nurtured it to perpetually enslave the food producers. This enmity of the Dwijs with Shudras is millennia old, writes Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Notwithstanding the results of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, it is now clear that Akhilesh Yadav has emerged as a major leader in national politics. The way he challenged the top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and their massive network in Uttar Pradesh with courage, confidence and tact has made him a new hero of the youth across the country. Particularly, the youth of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) see him as a man who can challenge Narendra Modi in the future.
Narendra Modi projected himself as an OBC leader to win the lower OBC votes, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, in 2014. There is now a feeling that he has not been true to himself and the public. He never supported the OBC cause at any time in his life before the 2014 elections. The RSS/BJP networks, which never supported the Mandal Commission’s recommendations for carving out an OBC category for reservations, suddenly projected him as OBC for the sake of votes.
Akhilesh comes from an OBC family that has contributed greatly to the self-respect and political upward mobility of the OBCs in Uttar Pradesh. The nation knows his father Mulayam Singh’s stern handling of the Ram Rath Yatra led by L.K. Advani, in which Modi participated, as it tried to derail the Mandal train. In fact, Akhilesh – educated in a modern English-medium school and college system, including abroad – has proved to be far more deft than his father.
The BJP/RSS central and state governments have become pawns in the hands of what the BJP leader and former minister Arun Shourie calls tycoons in the industrial economy and of sadhus and sanyasis for whom abusing Mahatma Gandhi has become normal behaviour. As they are privatizing the Public Sector Units (PSU) to deprive the Shudras (OBC), Dalits (SCs) and Adivasis (STs) of jobs, the tycoons are taking over many of these industries at throwaway prices and investing their money in foreign countries. They are also buying massive houses in safe havens (Ambani house in London is just one example) for such a time when the nation realizes it has been hoodwinked. Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi have already done so under BJP rule. Gautam Adani’s investments in many countries is well known. The private companies do not employ Shudras and Dalits and Adivasis. The private sector in India means jobs only for the Dwijs – Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Kshatriyas. The notion of merit has become a tool of manipulation.
On the other hand, the RSS/BJP associate sadhus and sanyasis are organizing their own Parliament (called Dharam Sansad) to declare war on the food producers and also on the democratic system. After the farmers’ struggle of 2020-21, the political discourse has shifted from the minorities to the Shudra, Dalit and Adivasi food producers. Historically, Hindutva forces have treated the Shudras and Dalits and Adivasis as enemies. The minorities are only a late addition to their list of enemies. They created the caste system and nurtured it to perpetually enslave the food producers. This enmity of the Dwijs with Shudras is millennia old.
ALSO READ: THE FARMERS’ PROTEST AND THE NEW SHUDRA CONSCIOUSNESS
The RSS/BJP associate tycoons swindle the food producers and the sadhu-sanyasis eat without participating in any productive activity. And in the RSS/BJP theoretical realm, the food producers are anti-nationals and the parasitical swindlers and consumers are nationalists. This is their theoretical paradigm. Ram Madhav and other Dwijs theoreticians write that this new paradigm of nationalism has ancient roots.
The time has come for the minorities – Muslims and Christians – to support the Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis. The 14-month farmer agitation and the deaths of 750 food producers during the agitation was treated as the puppy being run over by the Hindutva rath. The battlelines are now drawn between all the food producers of India and RSS/BJP Hindutva anti-farmers. The likes of Asaduddin Owaisi are out there to assist the RSS/BJP even in this battle – which is very sad for Muslim intellectualism.
Akhilesh Yadav takes out a cycle yatra in Lucknow
It is this new battle that Akhilesh, born into a productive caste, is fighting organically. If they shouted Ram Rajya, he countered with Krishna Rajya; if they claimed that the BJP was for the OBCs, he said the BJP was the biggest seller of lies. He explained to the people how in their own life experience lies are sold as truth. The Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis have not got anything from this regime. In the absence of Mayawati in the battlefield, as Rahul and Priyanka described themselves as Brahmins of yore, Akhilesh went to the non-Yadav OBCs and Jats and urged them to work for Naya Samajwad (New Socialism). He took the Samajwadi Party out of the confines of the Yadav camp and sidelined all those in the party who were known as corrupt.
Most praiseworthy is the way he handled the Hindutva media with firmness and dexterity. He has nullified the tendency of the media to paint the Yadavs as being inclined to gundagiri and managed to convincingly portray Thakur Raj as Terror Raj. The people have now come to see the difference between Akhilesh’s term as chief minister and that of Yogi, who loves cows more than humans.
The Hindutva media spread lies for decades, starting from the days of Mulayam and Lalu Prasad, that Yadavs are only good for grazing cattle but not for ruling. Now, Akhilesh and Tejaswi Yadav have disproved the theory that Mandalwalas are useless and meritless and only the Dwijs are meritorious.
Even amid the Modi-Shah threat of raids and deployment of muscle power, Akhilesh emerged as a leader who could give confidence to young, secular and liberal leaders all across the country. With an absolutely weakened Indian National Congress and the communist parties failing to provide a national alternative to the RSS/BJP, Akhilesh Yadav, powered by a successful farmer’s struggle, is a ray of hope.
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The rise of Akhilesh Yadav amid Dwij jeers
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Telengana Armed Struggle Hero Bandru Narsimhulu Dies At 106
in Life/Philosophy — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
On 22 January, 2022 a 106 years old Bandru Narsimhulu died in Hyderabad with a heart attack. Otherwise he was still active. When he was much active he entered into an agreement with Mahabub Nagar district Government hospital, to give his body for research use. On the very day of his death after his friends, political supporters and relatives saw his body the hospital officials took it away to dissect his body and brain, maybe to find out how he lived so long with good health.
It was this man during the Telangana Armed Struggle (TAS) between 1946-48 made waves for his militant gun fight as a Dalam leader against the landlords working to protect the Nizam state in Nallagonda district. Born on 2 October, 1915 at Aledu a small town on the way to Warangal from Hyderabad in a poor shepherd family, he was never sent to school and started working from childhood. He worked as an amali (heavy bag lifter) at a local rice mill. Along with his mother in very early age he fought against the village Bania business family that took away their small piece of land and won in the court.
His bold mother Badru Komuramma was said to be his inspiration. In all his communist life he was in jail for seven years. During the Armed Struggle he was arrested and tortured by the police yet Narsimhulu remained very strong willed person, constantly worked for his revolutionary ideological beliefs. He remained a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. He made his whole family, if not forever, for a good number of years follow his path. As of now his youngest daughter Vimala, popularly known as Vimalakka, is a model revolutionary singer and political activist owning her father’s heritage. She is the most popular revolutionary female singer in India.
Narsimhulu lived and fought through several generations. When he started his rebellious life as an young labour boy Telangana was a feudal state with Nizam ruling with local Muslim, Reddy and Velama landlords as his agents. They were exploiting the people as if they were chattel. The Telangana bonded labour (Vetti-Chakari) system was one of the worst in India. Narsimhulu joined the early armed squads to fight landlords, but the Telangana state was integrated with Indian Union in 1948. A section of the communists still wanted to fight the Indian state. Narsimhulu was for that fight without leaving the arms. But finally, they surrendered the weapons in 1951 and decided to participate in the 1952 first general elections.
He lived through the electoral system himself, contesting the 1967 elections for assembly and 1984 for parliament from Miryalaguda. Telangana state went through several stages in his own life. It was merged with Andhra Pradesh in 1956. Several agitations for separation and bifurcation followed. Telangana state again formed in 2014 when he was still conscious and active at 99. On 2 October 2015 his hundredth birthday was celebrated in a major programme in Hyderabad with 101 songs, speeches and other activities. He was in good health by then. I was one of the speakers along with many others. For all of us Telangana Armed Struggle of the 1940s was a boon because that lead to the liberation of state from the feudal Nizam monarchy, though the last Nizam, Osman Ali Khan, was better than many of his predecessors, who established the Osmania University where many of us studied and became what we are.
Vimalakka, the most well known female singer in the revolutionary movement led the cultural team on that day. It was a treat of songs around people’s struggles as the old man sat and heard all through the programme. His energy at 100 was unbelievable. He himself drew all his children into the most risky Naxalite movement and his youngest daughter having got married to a CPI (ML) underground leader, Koora Devender, who came from a poor fishing family of Telangana, is well known face of the party with a vibrant cultural movement. She says ‘my father fed perugannam (curd rice) when I met him underground in my childhood and made me sing for people liberation’. She carries her father’s red-revolutionary flag with a melodious voice.
As revolutionary patriarchy would have it, he gave birth to five children and left to his wife Narsamma to work, feed and educate them. Added to that she also carried the burden of looking after her husband’s fellow revolutionaries. Thus Narsamma nursed him, children and the revolution and died much before him.
His was a long life that saw several ups and downs. His militant spirit that has shaken the Telangana feudals, including the Nizam Government and the Razakar army has remained the same, though they surrendered the weapons in 1951 because of a new assessment of the Communist Party of India that armed struggle would not succeed in the post-independent India. Later he joined the CPI (M) which reassessed the question of surrendering arms was a wrong step, but that party again split in 1969. Narsimhulu went with the new revolutionary force led by Tarimela Nagireddy and others.
Narsimhulu has every reason to become a rebellious and took to guns both for general anti-feudal and anti-Nizam atmosphere, and also as an young man coming from the shepherd (Kuruma) community who faced every day landlord atrocities and brutal exploitation, as the sheep and goats needed to be grazed in the open lands. Almost all the lands around villages in those days were claimed by the landlords (mostly Reddys and Muslims) as theirs. During the Nizam feudalism there were hardly any land records to separate private lands and Government lands. Whatever lands the landlords claimed were supposed to be treated as theirs. The general bonded labour apart, this kind of caste specific exploitation of the shepherds (consisting of two communities Kurumas and Gollas) drew many conscious shepherd youth into armed struggle. The first great martyr of TAS was Doddi Komuraiah in 1946 and he was a shepherd youth (Golla), who in the recent past, particularly after the Mandal movement became hero of Telangana along Chakali Ilamma (a washer woman heroine). Earlier the caste-blind communist parties treated them as marginal figures. But after the Mandal movement that situation changed as it started a new movement of re-writing wronged history OBC/Dalit/Adivasis.
The artisanal communities like Toddy tappers (Gouds), Golla-Kurumas, kummaries (pot makers), Chakalis( clothes washers), Shalas (weavers) and so on were horribly exploited by the landlords. From among the Gouds two prominent armed struggle leaders emerged–Dharma Bixam 1922-2011) and Vardelli Buchi Ramulu (1935- 2019). Thus Chakali Ilamma, Doddi Komuraiah, Dharma Bixam, Buchiramulu, Bandru Narsimhulu and Mallu Swarayam (only living armed struggle heroin born 1931) made history by fighting for our liberation in those difficult days.
In every communist party and group there is a conscious OBC/SC/ST force that does not allow marginalized treatment to their own heroes and heroines.
Now Narsimhulu’s own village has become a big town with booming real estate around. Though Telangana still sustains remnants of feudalism he fought against, it is mainly capitalist now. The post-globalization capitalist economy all around him when he died in Hyderabad does not leave any scope for agrarian revolution that he fought in his youth.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political thinker, social activist , author and socio-spiritual reformer. His books Why I am Not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India, Buffalo Nationalism, God As Political Philosopher–Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism, From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual and The Shudras–Vision For a New Path co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy are meant for the socio-spiritual change
https://countercurrents.org/2022/01/telengana-armed-struggle-hero-bandru-narsimhulu-dies-at-106/
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How Dalits Were Separated from Shudras? | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd – Mainstream
How Dalits Were Separated from Shudras?
Friday 21 January 2022, by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Dalits are historical Shudras. They were part of the Harappans who built the pre-Aryan agrarian and urban civilization by 3000 BCE. But now in our times despite the fact that we all live in modern constitutional democracy, not only the Dwijas, but Shudras also treat them as untouchable. There is no social cohesion among Indians in spite of the fact that this great democratic constitution was given to us by Dr.B.R Ambedkar who was born as an untouchable. But later he liberated himself and engendered a new ‘Idea of India’ where there should not be caste and untouchability. For this to be achieved the realization of the Shudras how their own fellow productive Dalits were separated from them . They should also realize through this division how the Dwija control over both of them got tightened.
The Dalits were separated from Shudras and rendered untouchable sections of the Shudra varna with a design of negative spiritual ideology, which was/is more a superstition. In contemporary India the Shudras constitute 52 per cent of the population and Dalits, as per the 2011 census, constitute 16.6 per cent. Though the Dalits constitute more in number than the Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Skatriyas together who roughly might constitute about 5 per cent or so, they are made modern untouchable slaves. As per the 2011 census the total population of Hindus is 79.8 per cent [1]. What exactly is the number of the Shudra/OBCs and Dwijas will only be clear when caste wise census is taken at some stage in future. As of now the numbers are hazy. But one thing is certain that the caste contradictions pose a serious developmental issue to India as caste played a very negative role throughout known Indian history. The problem started with writing of Rigveda as a spiritual book of Brahmins around 1500 BCE. The builders of the Harappan civilization were made the slaves of non-food producers and were made their slavery permanent. They were divided into touchable and untouchable slaves and further into many castes.
The social disease of untouchability, it appears, was not there in early Vedic Brahmanism as the Rigveda did not mention untouchables with any name and called it fifth varna. The Shudra varna was the last and its assigned duty was to work hard around all kinds of productive domains and serve the three above varnas—Vaisya, Skatriya and Brahmin. That itself was a slave status of the Shudras [2]. At that stage there could not have been a lesser social section than that. It only shows that the present population of Dalit was part of the Shudras for long time in ancient India.
It appears that once Brahminsm declared leather and leather related instruments untouchable and the section of Shudras who specialized in leather related industry were declared untouchable [3]. It was, however, certain that during the Vedic period, though the economy was called pastoral, we can assume that leather instruments were part of the economic life. Evidence for the work specialization comes from our present Adivasi society which is very similar to the Vedic pastoral society.
Even in our own time Adivasi (Tribal) deep forest village economies also developed specializations in work. To make the leather instruments a group of people have specialization in transforming animal skin into leather and also leather into bags, ropes and other essential commodities. All the Adivasi adults cannot handle this specialized task of making leather instruments. Many Adivasi villages used leather instruments which are prepared within their own community of the skin of the animals they hunt and also by using their own domesticated cattle after they are dead. In all ancient histories the Adivasis covering their body with leather could also be seen among certain tribes. The Adivasi God Shiva who later was included in the Brahmin-Kshatriya pantheon of Gods always, though semi-naked, appears in leather clad form, with a snake around his neck. But in the Adivasi society the specialists in leather technology are not treated untouchable to the rest of the society. They are part of them. This is a universal process of growth of human societies. But Brahminsm in India introduced new principle called human untouchability which is worse than slavery.
Leather As A Marker Of Untouchability
In modern times all over India leather industry is a Dalit industry and only Dalits work in that industry [4]. The leather work is talked about as a marker of untouchability between Shudras and Dalits in village India. Of course, after Islam came to India the converted Muslims, without having a clear caste identity, also worked in the leather industry. The Dwija and Shudra/OBC do not work in the leather industry now. The entire village level leather instruments like ropes, bags, chappal, shoe, belts and so on are products that are made by only Dalits [5].
At what stage the leather related artisanal occupation was made untouchable to Shudras is not known. But it is presumable that the practice came into being with the intervention of Brahminism through ritual segregation into the labour process making leather related work as a marker of human untouchability between Shudras and Dalits. They also treated production related field work as pollution as it was being done by the Shudras. Thus, division between Shudras and Dalits with an added layer of human untouchability, apart from the Shudra and Dwija division, on caste/ varna basis, is a Brahmin ritual introduction and it went into the human psyche very deep now. Historically this idea of human untouchability took root because of several layers of brainwashing to practice the Brahminic superstitions among the Shudras. This inculcation took place, over a period of thousands of years of Brahminic ritualism, more as a superstition than as a religious practice. Brahminism essentially is superstition but not a religion.
The RSS/BJP networks that function with Brahminsm as their parampara do not have an agenda to abolish untouchability. The solution to this problem should come from a combination of Dalit and Shudra philosophers who could study the Indian history of production very carefully. Even today the Dwija forces are outside production and in fact they are anti-production by evolution and training. Positive egalitarian principles cannot come from those who have no roots in production and struggle with nature. It is nature that would shape up our relations in our day to day engagement with it. The touchable and untouchable relations were not an everlasting human relationship. If we start working for the abolition of such inhuman relations they will disappear from this land.
In the early Vedic period the Shudras being majority they must have divided themselves into several occupational specialists because human interests, skills do not develop in uniform ways even among the Tribal societies. Interests and specializations form in any society that is collectively operating and struggling with nature to use it in different modes for their survival. Work specializations develop even in the pastoral or tribal economies. Until perhaps the Brahmin priestly forces declared that the leatherwork as more impure than cattle rearing and doing early agricultural work of the pastoral economy itself, the entire Shudra community would have lived as one unit of the Shudra slaves to the Dwija forces—that is to the three other varnas— Bania, Skatriya and Brahmin. The Brahminic books—Vedas, Upanishds and also epics do not tell the story of different occupations and their production related activities. They are completely silent about the whole animal and agrarian production systems. The Shudras who were the main food producers do not find much place in Vedas or in epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, except in very marginal ways. The Dalit life stories also do not figure in those textual narratives. There are no parables or proverbs that give an idea of these communities in those texts. They mainly deal with their gods, Brahmin rishis, Skatriya kings, wars, yagyas, yagas kratus and wars. Production and distribution of goods and commodities where the Shudras and Dalits operated do not figure in their narratives [6].
There is no divine solution to the problem of caste and untouchability in any Brahmnic book. Generally religious books provide solutions to all problems suggesting ways and means through divine intervention. But Rigveda created a problem of social division, which later led to graded caste inequalities and also human untouchability, but it did not provide a solution. In other words the Shudras and Dalits are made to believe in books wherein they do not exist, except to tell them that they were/are unworthy to be treated as human beings. Their whole production work, their human relationships are kept out of the Brahminic Sanskrit books.
The RSS and BJP are now telling the Shudra/Dalit masses as part of their political propaganda that they must treat the Vedas, Uapanishads, and epics as their books as well as their own ancient book based civilization and as their parampara too. Their children are being forced to read them as part of their studies all through school, college and university education. If a Shudra or a Dalit owns Rigveda it should show them a way for his/her historical problem of untouchability and inequality. If a spiritual book does not show any solution to the problems that itself created then the society suffers as the Indian society suffered for millennia. No spiritual book in the world created a structure like caste and untouchability and put the nation to a huge loss and suffering.
This is a common modern problem before all the Shudras/Dalits and Adivasis that what is not theirs is being forced to believe as theirs. They are all now called Hindu, without showing any evidence that they are part of Dwija history. However, let us focus on the occupational divisions and how the Shudras treated Dalits as untouchable even to them. This is a major problem now. Until and unless the Shudras join hands with the Dalits to abolish untouchability and caste system they will not get into a new phase of life.
Why Writing On Leather Scrolls Avoided?
Of all the tasks, the involvement in leather work by people is a key issue in institutionalizing human untouchability. But it is a most surprising thing that in the history of human development leather was a key part of the agrarian activities in the whole world. Leather played a key civilizational developmental role in human life. The Brahminic writers treated leather so untouchable that they did not write any of their books on the leather scrolls [7]. Instead they chose to write on palm leaves called Talapatras [8]. Vedas for a long time were only orally recited. Only around 2-3 century BCE were they written on Talapatras [9]. Obviously Talapatara as an ancient instrument for writing cannot be compared to the leather scroll which was used by all great writers of the ancient world. Bible, Greek philosophy and early philosophical books of Egypt were written on scrolls. Chinese thinkers like Confucius and others also wrote on leather scrolls. Taoism as a Chinese religion came into existence based on books written on scrolls. Though I am not sure whether the Quran was also first recorded on leather scrolls. It said that the Quran was first written on Vellum which is a more sophisticated version of leather scroll [10]. The view that the Quran first was recorded on Vellum. (Historically, vellum was made by stretching calf skin over a wooden frame and processing it ) [11]… But no other country used talapatra as a writing template.
The disadvantage of writing on talapatra, which is a small sized leaf, is that its durability would be far lesser in time frame than that of leather scroll. Preserving talapatra text is very very difficult. Scroll was the best writing template that the leather makers made for writing when there was no printing paper in the ancient world. The books, that too spiritual books, remained for a longer time if written on scrolls whereas written on talapatras suffered major losses. Sustaining a written word on leather scrolls was more durable than the written word on talapatra. The Brahmin writers chose talapatra because leather was defined as spiritually untouchable. If only the Shudras and Dalits were allowed to read and write perhaps they would have used leather scrolls in ancient times for their writing. But gradually the disease of untouchability around the leather industry that the Brahmin thinkers and writers practiced was extended to Shudras through brain wash mechanism by invoking spiritual authority of the Brahminic divinity. Campaigning about divinity that promotes human equality helps the process of economic development. But imposing the ideology of divinity that promotes human inequality also destroys the productive abilities of the people. This is what exactly happened in India. Not only Dalits but even the Shudras fell victim to this spiritual ideology of Brahmanism. As a result the productive forces of India were so weakened even if other forces were not to intervene also India would have been a very backward country.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was of the opinion that the present day untouchability came into existence in the process of persecution of Buddhism [12].
According to him all the Buddhists were declared untouchable as Brahminism started persecuting them. In other words the present Dalits were outcast Buddhists. Though he cites other reasons along with this, one major historical problem with this argument is that by the time Ambedkar entered into research and politics hardly Buddhist symbols were seen in Dalitwadas. If they were deeply religious Buddhists some symbols should have survived in some Dalit families, at least. In Tamil Nadu region Ayothee Dass (1845—1914), a Dalit icon,who died few years after Ambedkar’s birth embraced Buddhism and propagated it. But at the mass level among Dalit families Buddhist presence was not there in nay part of India. Of course, after Ambedkar embraced Buddhism it spread quite fast in Maharashtra and also in other states. In Punjab and other parts of Western India Dalits embrace Ravidasism a few hundred years before Ambedkar started his conversion programme. Because Guru Ravidas (1450—1520) lived and taught his version of Sikhism along with abolition of untouchability in late 15th and early 16th centuries. Ravidas as a Dalit Guru was present in many Punjabi Dalit families by the time India achieved independence. Religious foot prints remain quite strong in human social and family life for a long time.
The leather work untouchability remained in every village for millennia. Even now that can be seen in the villages as a marker of human and social untouchability. Brahminism constructed very deep spiritual touchable and untouchable relations around occupational work. Graded inequality among the Shudras also is based on their caste occupation. For example, no other caste except dhobi caste would take up cloth washing of other families. Similarly no other caste would take up body shaving except nayee (Barber) in the villages. They are lowest in the Shudra caste hierarchy. Thus, occupation played a key role in fixing the social status and changing occupation in ancient and medieval times was almost impossible, because of brahminical restrictions.
What We Lost By Not Writing On Leather?
In the most ancient times when the writing was just starting leather scrolls were the most scientifically advanced material for that purpose. That was the age in which the human being was just learning how to develop a natural paper and pen to write and leather scrolls and plant liquids to write with bird feathers as the process began. Human beings were just developing the scientific tools of advancement. Once the leather workers were declared untouchable by the Brahmin pandits the division of the Shudra agriculturalists and Dalit leather workers would automatically start because Brahminism declared a great ancient scientific instrument itself untouchable. The Shudras must have thought that the Brahmins were great people since they were not involved in such untouchable work. The theory of productive and technological work untouchability gradually reached to tilling of land and harvesting crop in a most destructive manner. It created a psychological tension both among the Shudras and Dalits. This happened exactly when in Israel, Greece, Egypt and China writing on leather was taking place by constructing a philosophical vision for human advancement. Agriculturalism was reaching a positive philosophical status in China and Europe. It was assigned the topmost position in the realm of God in Israel, Europe and China.
Ancient Greek history tells that they wrote books on leather scrolls much before any religious idea around God took a definite shape in that country. That could be much before the Brahmins in India composed the oral Rigveda. Israelites wrote their early Old Testament on leather scrolls starting with Moses, who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament— Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy— much earlier than the Brahmins even evolved an idea of Brahma the Purush. The evidence for such a situation comes from the content of the writings of the early Brahmins. The Greek thinkers wrote about fine tuned philosophical issues whereas the Rigveda, the first book is about praise of Brahma, Indra, Agni, Vayu and so on. All of them had no positive philosophy for human survival and development. The Shudras could not understand what was going on in the world and Dalits were being crushed for developing the leather technology. Because the negation of science by the top varna—the Brahmin— only composed Vedas orally for memorization purpose. Actually writing of those books on Talapatras took place much later around 3rd century BCE, according to one version. There is a view that Kautilya’s Artha Shastra was the first book that got written on Talapatras [13] and subsequently the earlier books were put into text form on Talapatras. That also means writing took shape in India centuries later after it was done in other countries. In Israel the scrolls of prophet Isaiah’s writings that appeared as Book of Isaiah in the Bible, who lived and wrote in the 7th century BCE, were discovered at the end of the 20th century. They are now preserved in a museum of ancient Israel manuscripts. [14] The RSS Dwija leaders are now propagating that Brahmins are Viswva Gurus (teachers of the world). Millions of Shudras and Dalits—that too educated ones—believe them not knowing that the guruhood they performed was spreading myths, mythology and anti-science. That guruhood was meant to sustain the Shudra/Dalit slavery.
This leather untouchability was the starting point of the negation of development of science in India. No religion in the world did this. Israel was the birth place of the biggest religion in the world. Jews were people who created a first coherent book of religion. They never lived a stable life like that of Brahmins. They were homeless for several centuries. They lived a migrant labour life all over the world. Yet they, apart from writing a coherent religious book, Bible, on scrolls, paved a way for scientific development in many fields. But Brahmins in spite of such stable life and command over the Indian spiritual and social system and also on the Shudra slaves went on producing anti-science ideas and went on implementing them. The same underdeveloped minds of Shudras went on accepting their ideas and lived a dehumanized life. The Shudra philosophical underdevelopment is a unique thing in the world. The Brahmin operation is a global exceptionalism, which made the Shudras to walk on their heads. That mental status of the Shudras kept the Dalits physically and mentally oppressed by Brahminism. If the Shudras were to reject the Brahmin control, human untouchability would have disappeared from India a long time back.
Agrarian Work Is Still Common For Shudras And Dalits
As of now even the Shudra castes distinguish leather work, removal of town (there is no such need in the villages) level night soils, village, town. city cleaning and beef eating and other agrarian tasks in which they too involve along with Dalits. They treat the leather and cleaning of public spaces as Dalit tasks and culture but not Shudra tasks and culture. Shudras would not take up them as they see them as pure Dalit tasks. But agrarian field related tasks were/are shared by all Shudra castes, Dalits and Adivasis including Reddys, Kammas, Jats, Patels, Marathas, Lingayat, Vokkaligas, Nairs and so on depending on their economic need. It is the class status of the Shudras that determines their involvement in field work. But there is no notion among them that field work is impure and those who do it should not be touched or interacted with. Family relations between the poor Reddy or Kamma or Velama, or Patel or Jat, who perform wage labour or agrarian tasks and those Shudras who employ them to do those tasks determined by caste status. Even marriages are possible with two classes but not within two castes.
The Dwija castes—Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Skatriyas— on the other hand, treat agrarian field work as Shudra/Dalit untouchable work. This is a very critical occupational and spiritual human touchable and untouchable relationship that the caste system brought into operation. This ideology of agrarian production getting treated as untouchable has worked as a major barrier in the developmental process of this nation from ancient days and even today this is a major problem. The RSS/BJP as religious socio-political networks do not have new solutions to this problem. Rather they want to reinforce the classical Shudra/Dalit and Dwija relations in many ways. While the 75 years of constitutional democracy, operating on secular principles has weakened the touchable and untouchable relations between the Shudra/Dalits, the RSS/BJP want again to strengthen the pre-democracy values by re-imposing the Sanathan values. Their essential direction in opposing what they call the Western values and culture is to take India back to ancient relations.
While the Shudra- Dalit relations in the agrarian fields are positive their social relations in the villages and markets is negative. The village and market relations are guided by Brahmin in the temples and also occasional ritual activities that the Brahmin priest performs in the homes of Shudras. The priest constantly reminds them of the touchable and untouchable relations as necessary spiritual condition to the Shudras and he normally does not go to Dalit homes. Those Shudras who accept this ideology of Brahmin are only considered Hindu. Some of such Shudras are also part of the Hindutva networks that are used against Muslims and Christians. At the same time the RSS does not want any changes in the Brahmin/Shudra/Dalit relations as they were constructed by ancient Brahmin rishis. The fact is that among the rishis that RSS leaders talk about, there are no Shudra or Dalit rishis. Brahminism encircled the Shudras and Dalits from all sources and the RSS uses that historical encirclement for its advantage.
The Land Question
Apart from this the economic issues that crop up between the Shudras and Dalits are rooted in the land question. The Shudras own agrarian land in sizable quantities as they are main tillers. Among the Shudras there are a few landlords, BUT large numbers of them are middle farmers and also landless labour. The Shudra landed to try to exploit the chief labour of the Dalits, which became more vulnerable because of the landlessness of the Dalits. It is here that caste and untouchability have been interlinked and it works against the interests of the Dalit landless labour in a very inhuman manner. As long as human untouchability remains, the labour of Dalits would be cheaper than Shudra labour. But the real landlords are the Dwijas in all part of the country. The monopoly capitalists who happen to own vast areas of land. And more and more land is shifting into their hands. Caste and untouchability are market managers. Thus caste and untouchability have deep links with Hindu spiritual system and also economic markets. This socioeconomic system is quite useful for the RSS/BJP forces because they can use one caste against the other and collectively they use most Shudras against the Muslims and control all. However, they cannot remove Islam from India or from other countries. Their main aim is to sustain caste and untouchability so that the Dwijas can control the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces for longer time to go.
Shudra Feudalism And Caste RelationsThe Shudra Dalit gap widened once the Shudras in an historical course differed in ownership of agrarian land. As I said earlier across the country the Shudras, though divided into several classes, maintained social and personal distance from Dalits both human untouchability and also ownership of land. A section of Shudras own land and most Dalits along with landless Shudras work as labour in Shudra owned fields. It is difficult to estimate exactly at what stage the Shudras started owning land by overcoming the dictum of Manu Dharma Shastra that Shudras should not be allowed to own land as they were feet born fourth varna in the Vedic system. However, by the time India became independent the Shudras had the right to own land legally and Dalits also have legal rights but in reality many Shudra agrarian castes owned land and very few Dalit families owned cultivable land in the whole of India.
There were landlords or rich peasants from castes like Reddys, Kammas, Velamas of Andhra pradesh and Telangana. Jats, Patels, Maratas in North India Lingayats, Nairs and Naikars in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. At the same time in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Odissa most landlords are Dwijas—Brahminis, Kayasthas, Ksatriyas and Bhumihars. Brahmin temple and land control is historical even much before Shudras were allowed to own land. Indian feudalism is essentially Brahmin feudalism which fundamentally differs from European feudalism. In India the Brahmin feudalism was rooted in the caste gradedness and also inhuman untouchability which destroyed many productive knowledge systems that the Shudras and Dalits discovered from time to time. The Brahmin spiritual system always looked down on agrarian scientific discoveries. If the whole world was to have similar caste and human untouchability even the capitalist advancement would not have seen the day. Because the religious institutions also need to recognize and co-operate with scientific experiments that take place in the fields of production. Brahminism never allowed such experiments to happen. When people experimented once the Brahminic forces came to know about such experiments they stopped them with social, spiritual and legal threats. The RSS owns that kind of past as great parampara. They never critique that past as negative and India should look for a scientific future.
The Shudra landlords too were not educated and the Brahmins refused to teach them Sanskrit and Muslims also did not teach them Persian. They mostly were illiterate with a feudal cultural aura. The land rights and actual ownership to Shudras must have come in two historical phases. 1) Shudra individuals after the monarchical systems were established became kings and they were isolated from the community and were given the Ksatriya status by the Brahmin priests. In spite of the fact that such individuals were relocated in Kshatriya status, such Shudra kings must have overlooked the dictum of Manu Dharma and Vedic injunctions and granted land rights to Shudras as their caste connections cannot be cut so easily. If an individual became a king his relatives still remained as Shudra agriculturists. Social and caste relationships are long established. The historical records show that from Maurya Chandra Gupta onwards several Shudra individuals were said to have become kings. Several generations of individuals from those dynasties ruled big and small kingdoms. There were Yadava, Reddy, Velama, Maratha dynasties that ruled in small and reasonably big states in different stages of history. For example, Shivaji was a Maratha ruler. By the time India achieved independence several Shudra kings were ruling small kingdoms with a subordinated status to the British Raj. Kolhapur, Baroda, Mysore states were under the Shudra rulers. But records do not show that there was any Dalit ruler in any part of India at the time of independence. The point, however, is that the Shudra rulers must have granted land rights to Shudras who were actually in the tilling profession. The Dalits, on the other hand, were till then also not allowed to own land in many parts of India. The problem of untouchability and landlessness made the Dalit-Shudra relationship problematic.
The Shudra Feudalism Was Embedded In Brahmin Feudalism
However, during the British colonial Raj more and more lands were brought under agriculture and the need for expansion of farmer society increased. Deforestation of lands and bringing them under plough was mainly done by the Shudras, though in many cases, they used the forced labour of Dalits both in deforestation and cultivation activities. The Shudra land ownership expanded during the colonial agrarian operations, both for native use and export to Europe. The Brahmin temple economy also expanded in the rural areas during that time, as they too had Agrahara temple lands, which even the British approved and granted pattas in the name of Brahmin priests and families. The North and South Indian Brahmin feudalism expanded quite hugely during that time. The Brahmin anti-production values were injected into Indian feudalism where the development of capital from the womb of feudalism was stalled. The feudal surplus was used on the Brahmin rituals and massive consumption. The Shudra feudal lords also followed the same lifestyle and British rulers used that negative culture as an advantage. Brahmin incomes have grown up both because of feudal and ritual economy. By the time India was entering into the anti-colonial struggle phase the Dwijas —mainly Brahmins and Baniyas entered into English medium education both in India and England. The English education spread within the Dwija communities—leaving even the Shudra landlords unexposed to English education. Macaulay, whom they abused later, put the Dwija forces on the international map and now they share power and positions in the Christian democratic world, leaving the Shudra/OBCs in the lurch.
The Shudra/OBCs did not get into English education much later also. Neither the feudal Shudra landlords nor the Shudra kings sent their children to study in England while Gandhi and Nehru, along with many other Dwija youth were studying there. An exposure to Western and Christian religious values would have engendered a new philosophical vision among the Shudra youth. But quite unfortunately Shudra rulers and landlords did not send their children to the West and got them educated. The only Dalit, Dr.B.R Ambedkar, who went and studied in America and England became a philosopher, economist, sociologist and legal expert and went on to write many great books and also the Indian constitution. But not a single Shudra young man or woman went and studied abroad and emerged like Ambedkar, Gandhi, Nehru and so on. They were content with local landed power.
Without a philosophical vision opposing a deep seated practice of untouchability and caste inequality would be impossible. It required a serious study of the Brahminic books either in Sanskrit or in English as they were first translated into English during the colonial rule. The Shudras of India have not waged war against their own community’s historical ignorance, against Brahminism and also caste practices. Shudra landlords were ignorant and arrogant at the same time. By and large Shudras remain in the same ignorant status in the 21 century. Some landed wealth or feudal control over the poor with power to oppress Dalits and other Shudras is not good civilizational status of a given community.
There is a need for a socio-spiritual revolution in Indian society. The Shudras need to take a philosophical control of the spiritual system by sidestepping the Brahmins. This needs an educated civil society within their own communities. The regional parties that are controlled by the Shudras must introduce English medium education in all the Government schools and a massive cultural re-positioning has to take place.
Temple, Food And Human Untouchability
At what stage of Indian history the Shudras and Dalits became untouchable to each other is not exactly known. As I said earlier Dr.BR. Ambedkar’s argument was that the present form of Dalit untouchability came into in its full form after persecution of Buddhists. The persecution continued over a long period of time from Pushyamitra Shunga’s period to Adi-Shankara’s period. He thought that all the present Dalits are former Buddhists and imposing untouchability on them became the ultimate persecution. Since most Buddhists were forced to become untouchable to the rest of the society, Buddhism also did not get the support of the Dwijas and Shudras. The second reason he talked about was that Dalit were eating beef, mainly of dead cattle’s and that also became an added reason for untouchability. He never mentioned the role of leather and Brahminism treating leather work as untouchable from Vedic times onwards. If Brahmin writers claim that they wrote books or their scriptures much earlier than the Israelites, Greeks and Chinese and if they were not practicing leather and dead animal body related work as untouchable, why they did not write on leather scrolls but wrote even by that time on an unscientific instrument, Talapatra?
The post-Aryan migration and formation of varna dharma theory and the division of the society into four varnas itself was in a way the beginning of practice of untouchability of all food production and development of scientific instrument process. The Shudra untouchability gradually limited to leather workers’ untouchability because the service of the Shudras for the Dwija castes would have been impossible unless they were treated humanely touchable and spiritually untouchable. This process of Shudra spiritual untouchability continued for long time till the Muslim kingdoms were established. As large Shudras were becoming Muslim slowly the Brahminic temple entry of Shudras was allowed because of if all Shudras become Muslim there will be none to feed them by producing food. The ancient and early medieval food of all Indians included beef. Without eating beef along with other food items that were naturally available in nature even the Brahmin/Bania/Skatriya survival would have been impossible. However, the most negative development that happened with Shudra life was, apart from denial of education, their food culture was/is being controlled by the Brahmin priest who has no love lost to them.
But it is unthinkable that Shudras and Dwijas never ate beef from the days of writing the Brahminic books, mainly Vedas. Vedas themselves are telling that beef was part of ritual offerings and part of human food culture at that time. More importantly in Harappan civilization, the present Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis mainly depended on animal food, including the meat of bulls, cows, buffaloes, sheep, goat,deer and so on. Their food also consisted of fish and milk at that time. The human food surplus mainly came from dried animal meat, which still is a source in many Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi homes. Our Adivasis kill many animals whenever they could get them and both the skin and meat are processed for long time use. In plains of India all shepherd and Dalit families preserve dry meat called Vatti Tunukalu and also dry fish called Vatti Chapalu even today. Meat and fish are not untouchable foods in all Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi temples. They are not untouchable even in Bengali Brahmin, Kayastha families in the temples. Their food offerings consist of fish items. It is mainly the South Indian Brahmin-Banias and now the RSS/BJP and their sister organizations propagate pure vegetarianism in temples, marriages and other rituals. Both Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign in the freedom movement, with almost a Jain adherence to pure vegetarianism, and subsequently the RSS and Hindu Maha Sabha headed by mainly Brahmins and other Dwijas expanded the pure vegetarian practice by weakening the physical and intellectual strength of India. This happens more among the poor vegetarians who cannot eat rich vegetarian food like Ghee, milk products, fruits and also would not eat cheap more protein meet foods by force of childhood training. In both physical and mental health, we are no way comparable to China.The Brahmin priest and the RSS Dwija leaders have now converted India into a vegetarian weak country.
The Shudras, more so in North India, have fallen into the trap of Brahminic-Hindutva forces who fed them with an idea that any meat eating is anti-divine and now most Shudra/OBCs are unable develop their mental and physical faculties that could overcome the Brahminic tricks. The post-modern identity and self respecting cultures of all brahminic practices and values and their spiritual and philosophic guidance needs to be rejected by the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, if they want to overcome the historical mental and physical backwardness. They cannot surrender to Brahmin gurus and overcome their superstitious mental blocks. It is here that we must examine the Shudra backward mind set that treats fellow human productive forces, Dalits as untouchable, a culture imposed by Brahminism. This practice can be abolished by philosophical repositioning by the Shudras first. There must be a Shudra philosophical rebellion against Brahminic superstition in general and the RSS/BJP cultural and political ideology which essentially came from the Brahmin brain. There is no contribution of Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi brain to that philosophy and ideology. There is no single thinker who wrote a book about Hindutva philosophy from the Shudra/OBC background. They are only being used as muscle power for the Dwija advantage.
Of course, it is the Shudra who treats a Dalit as untouchable not not Dalit that treats a Shudra as untouchable. This situation deformed the cultural history of India and it has impacted the historical development of science and production negatively. Any nation that treats its own people as touchable and touchable that nation would suffer massive talent and organizational loss. The RSS/BJP which mobilize masses in the name of nationalism but do not want unity of people by completely erasing the old compartmentalization of the nation is going to lose but not gain. For example China, Bangladesh and Pakistan do not suffer from these spiritual and superstitious blockades. Human mind and body need a lot of protein food and open scientific thinking. Historical Brahminism and the present RSS/BJP and their other networks are meant to control the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces from not developing into scientific thinkers and writers. For the last hundred years the RSS successfully did that by all means. The secular and liberal Brahmins also were fully with them on this particular issue. Though the RSS/BJP were telling that the beef and meat food culture is Islamic not of Hindus, the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis were/are meatarians all along. The real sufferers with that campaign was not Muslims but it were/are the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. Philosophically the Muslims did not get influenced with RSS/BJP Brahminic spiritual and social thought. Their thought and ideology are intact, as they were globally well connected.
Brahminism exists only in India and Nepal and both countries suffered its superstition for millennia. The Shudras got influenced and the practice of human untouchability by such a large community destroyed its creative energies. The practice of untouchability does not only destroy the energies of the untouchables but it destroys the energies of touchables. Since every person has hidden philosophical and scientific energies, caste and human untouchability have killed the scope of getting people educated and experimenting with new ideas. That is what happened to the Shudra mass intellectual energies. That is the main reason why there are no great Shudra intellectuals. Unless the Shudras realize this problem it is impossible to overcome this historical tragic trap that the nation is in. Without Shudra intellectuals emerging from central and state universities continue the mantle of massive research and continue the life time work of Phule, Savitribai Phule, Ambedkar, Pariyar and so on it is impossible to overthrow the control of Brahminism from the Shudra lives.
In my view the ritual purity and pollution ideology was certainly a Brahmin destructive theory. Such ritual theory also seems to have existed in Israel at the time of Jesus. The Samaritan community was an untouchable community with whom Jesus interacted. After that interaction the Samaritans became his followers and gradually that practice of untouchability seems to have been abolished, as there is no such practice among Jews now. But in India once the brahminic ritual practice, in a superstitious manner, was set up the touchable and untouchable relations, those relations passed on through several stages of Indian life. In everyday life while drinking water, eating food, touching one’s body in the daily routine functions of production and in man-woman relations the touchable and untouchable relations determined social interactions and rankings. But the final form of it got expressed in the temple system. The Sanatanic Brahmin temples are now called Hindu temples. The temple entry has passed through several stages of both Shudras and Dalits getting treated as untouchable for a long time. But now the human untouchability has come to a stage only Dalit get treated as untouchable in the temples. The idea of not allowing Dalits into Hindu temples comes from the priest—who is invariably a Brahmin, but the Shudras do the physical act of stopping them from entry. Thus the Shudras do the job of spiritual policing as against Dalits at the command of the Brahmin priest. The Brahmin priest operates as a mythological god and a Shudra mind never grasped this unproductive man controlling their brain and body. This lack of philosophical grasp of the Brahmin mind destroyed the Shudra brain more than any other organ.
This is where the role of the RSS should have been actually nationalist. It should have declared that human untouchability, food taboos, spiritual and social casteism are anti-human and also anti-national, if its leaders have any respect for the land, as the source of our food that we all live by. They should have proclaimed that all tasks and commodities, leather or spade, mud or woman’s menstruation all are the source of life. But its ideology and day to day practice and the organizational structure shows that more than nationalism this organization is brought into existence to protect the Indian parampara, of which caste system is the main, and see that the oppressed caste do not go into Islam or Christianity. The threat to Brahminism came from these two religions, which operated with a spiritual idea of God/Allah that is abstract and universal. There are minimal obstacles to the scientific experiments. Islam and Judaism have pork food taboo but that is being opposed within those religions. Whereas Brahminism operates on the spiritual idea that Brahma is Brahmin and Vishnu is a Ksatriya. Their gods themselves are fixed in a caste. The idea of leather untouchability and beef and meat untouchability and violence around food culture has broken the back of the Indian civil society.
The RSS in its more than 5 years existence never took up a campaign against any form of untouchability as much as, at least, Mahatma Gandhi took up during the freedom struggle. Ambedkar, though himself organized a temple entry movement in early days of his activism, he treated such a movement with disdain later when Gandhi was organizing the temple entry. Because he thought that the Brahminic forces would not change hence it was a futile exercise. He also must have thought the Shudras who have not produced a philosophical mind of his stature, they too do not stop putting their physical strength both in numbers and in terms of handing over wealth in Brahmin cause. They collect money through ritual tasks and also own a huge amount of land and other movable and immobile properties. Through their ownership of landed property they constructed such feudal values that abolition of untouchability in the civil society and temples was/is impossible. Pandit Nehru remained totally away from the caste problem as if it was no issue at all. Sardar Vallabai Patel also remained indifferent to that activity because the Shudra Brahmin collaboration was needed for achieving freedom from the British. Unfortunately he also did not proposed any philosophical agenda for abolition of untouchability for the future after independence was achieved. He has not written anything philosophical in his long life of seventy five years. He just remained an iron man. What does Ambedkar do in such a situation of national Shudra leadership. Periyar Ramsamy Naikar was an atheist without much English writing to support Ambedkar and was largely a regional leader. The Shudras had no national level intellectual brain at a time Brahmins started the RSS for continuing their hegemony for a long time to go.
But the RSS remained totally indifferent to even that movement and mainly focused on anti-Muslim and Christian campaigns. In a country of historical inequality, oppression, human untouchability and man-woman inequality, the forces in power must constantly strive for social reforms and economic development. The RSS/BJP are anti-social reform and have no theory of their own about economic development as they never had a theory of both these democratic agendas. It is in this situation of our nation we must examine the role of Shudras in spiritual and intellectual domains. The Congress Party in its long rule of the nation, the power was mainly handled by the same Dwijas with a secularism as their theoretical arm, where the religious inequality and human untouchability were conveniently overlooked. They were hiding themselves under the cover of secularism and vague socialist ideas that both the Marxwadi Dwijas and the Congress Dwijas promoted. On the question of caste and untouchability both Manuwadi Dwijas and Marxwadi Dwijas had similar opinion— silence. And they also did not allow the Shudras to enter into sophisticated global English medium education and hence no philosophers and thinkers who could shake the system emerged from them in any region. Thus, lack of philosophical vision among the Shudras sustained the Shudra-Dalit untouchabe relations and oppression. This human untouchability was conveniently used to exploit Dalits more brutally than they could exploit Shudras.
Atrocities On Dalits And The Shudra Imbroglio
As of now the tension between the Shudras and Dalits is more in the rural agrarian fields and villages. Across India the Dalits, by and large, are agrarian labour whereas the Shudras are divided into various classes. The Dalitwadas are also generally outside the village where the rest of castes live inside in caste clusters. Among Shudras there are landlords, rich farmers, small farmers and also huge numbers of pure agrarian labour. Apart from these, there are various cultural castes with nomadic and semi-nomadic life among the Shudras. Their caste status changes from state to state. Yet the human untouchability between Dalits and all classes of Shudras is a common phenomenon. This deepened the practice of caste based graded inequality and untouchability that went beyond the temple and priest controlled mechanism of spiritual untouchability. Most post-Independence atrocities, including rape and killing of Dalit women and men came from the deepened untouchability consciousness of the Shudras. Major post-Independence atrocities like Belchi (Bihar), Karamchedu and Chunduru (Andhra Pradesh), Kharlanji (Maharastra), Una (Gujarat), Jajjar (Haryana) and so on were mainly committed by the Shudra youth and post-Ambedkarite Dalit movement fought these Shudra atrocities in a more organized way than ever before.
Such Shudra-Dalit conflicts also lead to huge number SC/ST Atrocity Act related cases against Shudras. This confrontational situation created a anti-democratic atmosphere in the country. In the urban areas in the Government and private offices and other industries where the employment is under the roof, the Dwijas are involved in more atrocity cases than Shudras. Educated Shudras, particularly those Shudras who got jobs because of reservation tried to co-exist with Dalit employees as all of them face discrimination from the Dwija officials. In the non-productive public service employment the Dwijas—i.e.Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Ksatriyas and Khatris— who involve in sophisticated atrocities, through various forms of discrimination. Many upper middle class Dwijas and the Dalits working within the urban offices clashed in the office spaces and the SC/ST Atrocity Act related cases against Dwija officials are normally seen. However, the question is unless the Shudra-Dalit relationship changes in the rural India serious change in the socio-cultural and also economic system would not take place in India. Once the Shudras stop treating Dalits as untouchable, the urban setting will also change. However, the religion and temple remain the key message senders on the questions of caste and untouchability. So long as the Shudras do not take control of the religion the priestly Brahmin keeps on playing tricks and abolishing caste and untouchable relations become impossible. Thus, the Indian civil society became an enmeshed cobweb.
Shudra-Dalit Intellectual Relations
There is no intellectual crop among the Shudras. When we are talking about intellectualism we are not talking about the food production intellectuality. We mainly talk about writing texts about ourselves and their history. The Shudras were kept out of this activity even in modern times—more particularly during the freedom struggle and also in post-independence times. The historical brahiminic forces and more particularly the Hindutva stream of thought brainwashed them that their main role, apart from food production, is in physically fighting the Muslim and Christian, Other. The intellectual field was divided among three schools in modern India—the liberal Brahmininist, Manuwadi Brahminist and Marxwadi Brahminist. The only challenging school that emerged in text writing intellectual domain is the Dalit intellectual force. There is a fairly good crop that emerged to carry the intellectual mantle of Ambedkar in post-independence India. But over a period of last two-three decades the Dalit intellectuals were concerned about the Shudra atrocties on Dalits, even at the cost of electoral and intellectual alliances between Shudra/OBC and Dalit masses. The relationship between the Dalit intellectuals with sparsely emerging Shudra/OBC intellectuals in the universities and literary realms is not very intimate with an understanding of abolition of caste and untouchability as a goal.
The Shudra exploitation and atrocities on Dalits is a serious problem of India. At the same time the Dalit intellectual disengagement with the Shudra slavery and intellectual bankruptcy is equally problematic. There is no systematically written Shudra/Dalit history. Particularly at a time when the RSS/BJP are pushing the Hindutva brahminic literature as main teaching material in the schools, colleges and universities writing of history from the Shudra/Dalit point of view is a critical project. The Dwija intellectual history shows that both Shudras and Dalits do not exist in that. Now the Hindutva ideology will make them perpetually non-existent. Hence the need for going to the roots of construction of the idea of untouchability and how it sustained through the sustained process of deployment of brahminical manipulative hegemony. The RSS/BJP is the most organized network that controls the national power. Such a situation demands a collaborative intellectuals battle by both the Shudra and Dalit intellectuals.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+Hindus+in+india+as+per+the+2011+census&rlz=1C1CHBF_enIN858IN858&sxsrf=AOaemvJHpIfTnnAyrFxnNoX0LJMM-ZY8fg%3A1638347972014&ei=xDSnYaEkhpqx4w_f1rnIDA&ved=0ahUKEwihlo_nmcL0AhUGTWwGHV9rDskQ4dUDCA4&uact=5&oq=population+of+Hindus+in+india+as+per+the+2011+census&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAM6BwgAEEcQsAM6BwgjELACECc6CAgAEAgQBxAeOgYIABAIEB46BQgAEM0CSgQIQRgAUN1PWJuIAWDInwFoAXACeACAAZIBiAHyE5IBBDAuMjGYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz
[2] The first mention of Varna is found in the Purusha Suktam verse of the ancient Sanskrit Rig Veda. Purusha is the primordial being, constituted by the combination of the four Varnas. Brahmins constitute its mouth, Kshatriyas its arms, Vaishyas its thighs, and Shudras its feet. https://www.google.com/search?q=four+varnas+in+the+purusha+suktam&ei=ah3QYdjTCPaaseMPl8iH6Ak&ved=0ahUKEwjYsNOmnZD1AhV2TWwGHRfkAZ0Q4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=four+varnas+in+the+purusha+suktam&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQghEKABMgUIIRCgAToHCAAQRxCwAzoHCAAQsAMQQzoHCC4QsAMQQzoICAAQ5AIQsAM6CgguEMgDELADEEM6BAgAEEM6CAguEIAEELEDOgcIABCxAxBDOgUIABCABDoHCC4QsQMQDToECAAQDToICAAQCBAHEB46CggAEAgQDRAKEB46CAgAEAgQDRAeOgUIABDNAjoICCEQFhAdEB5KBAhBGABKBAhGGAFQ4gtYwsUBYOnYAWgBcAJ4AYABmAaIAfIrkgEPMTAuMTUuMi4wLjEuMi4xmAEAoAEByAESwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz
[3] Dalits in the Telugu villages are known as Tolupanollu (leather workers) and they are treated as untouchable mainly because of that work.
[4] See Kancha Ilaiah, Post-Hindu India—A Discourse on Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution, Subaltern Scientists pp 25—48, Sage, (New Delhi), 2009
[5] Ibid
[6] In the Ramayana and Mahabharata, which are made very popular through multi-media propaganda, Shudra and Dalit life, their productive struggles with nature, do not figure in any meaningful way. In Mahabharata, for example, only when reference to Karna comes, his Shudra background is mentioned. But he was also shown by birth a Ksatriya as he was a son of Kunti herself. In Ramayana Sri Rama and his family represents the Ksatriya community and all other rishis represent the Brahmins. No significant figure represents Shudra or Dalit communities, who were the main food producers of India.
[7] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-wrote-the-dead-sea-scrolls-11781900/ The earliest biblical texts were written on scrolls made from papyrus (a plant-based paper) or parchment (animal skins that had been scraped, burnished, and stitched together). It is very likely that all biblical books were initially written on scrolls. Only in the second or third century C.E. did scribes begin to write on papyrus or parchment that was folded and stitched into a codex, which more closely resembles our modern print book. After the invention of the codex, Christians tended to copy their scriptures into codex form, whereas Jews traditionally continued to copy their scriptures in scroll form. (https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/bible-basics/how-was-the-bible-written-and-transmitted)
[8] Palm-leafmanuscripts are manuscripts made out of dried palm leaves. Palm leaves were used as writing materials in Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia reportedly dating back to the 5th century BCE. Zhixin Shi; Srirangaraj Setlur; Venu Govindaraju. “Digital Enhancement of Palm Leaf Manuscript Images using Normalization Techniques” (PDF). Amherst, USA: SUNY at Buffalo. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2009-06-23.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-leaf_manuscript)
[9] The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques. The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics, and are considered to be “primordial rhythms of creation”, preceding the forms to which they refer.[25] By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, “by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas)
[10] verses 282-286, from an early Quranic manuscript written on vellum (mid-late 7th century CE), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Quranic_manuscripts
[11] https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+vellum&rlz=1C1CHBF_enIN858IN858&sxsrf=AOaemvJF7i0ZBahh6lQMcodVEb_aiaM7mA%3A1639058624961&ei=wAyyYerDOayWseMP0Lqz0Aw&oq=What+is+vellum&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQ6BwgjELADECc6BwgAEEcQsAM6BAgjECc6BwgjEOoCECc6BwguEOoCECc6BwgjECcQiwM6BQgAEJECOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToICAAQgAQQsQM6BAgAEEM6BQguEIAEOggIABCxAxCDAToFCAAQsQM6BwgAEIAEEApKBAhBGABQxhFYl1pgkosBaAJwAngEgAH7AYgBxBmSAQYwLjE1LjSYAQCgAQGwAQrIAQm4AQLAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz
[12] See Dr.B.R. Ambedkar, The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchable? Chapter 9 to 14 wherein he says “The Broken Men hated the Brahmins because the Brahmins were the enemies of Buddhism and the Brahmins imposed untouchability upon the Broken Men because they would not leave Buddhism. On this reasoning it is possible to conclude that one of the roots of untouchability lies in the hatred and contempt which the Brahmins created against those who were Buddhist”.
[13] https://www.livemint.com/news/india/neglected-and-decaying-the-original-arthashastra-may-soon-be-lost-forever-11574012580117.html
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Scroll
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Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd 