Clash of Cultures in India

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

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With the BJP coming to power in 2014 and also in 2019 for the second time the Clash of Cultures in India is increasing day by day. After it came to power under the leadership of Narendra Modi, who is known for his political upbringing in the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which historically is known for upholding the anti-agrarian and artisanal productive culture, a serious need for looking at the scope of clash of cultures.    Modi declared himself as an Other Backward Class (OBC) person, without telling the nation whether his family/caste has roots in the Shudra or Bania (as many Banias also acquired OBC certificates) heritage. The Shudra/OBC masses have a culture of production of a whole range of food and civilizational commodities, technologies and instruments which is  different from what the RSS/BJP top leaders believe and practice. That itself will lead to cultural clashes as the RSS/BJP top leaders keep hegemonizing their own culture.

The Muslim society of India also has a different socio-spiritual culture which has no serious discourse in production of food and technologies. Their opposition to man-woman equalization civilizational ethic would also cause concerns in the realm of economic development. Though patriarchal controls on women are common in every caste and religion in India the Muslim male control on women is much more rigid and anti-production. They do not want Muslim women to work with other men and women in the agrarian and industrial sectors. Such controls on women’s labour power has huge implications for development.

The Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi spiritual culture and divine heritages are deeply rooted in production and fair distribution with social justice at the core of their history. The Dwijas–Brahmins, Banias, Kayastas, Khatris and Ksatriyas–do have a history of the opposite– anti-production and worshiping violence- socio-spiritual cultural swabhava ( nature). The Dwijas developed a swabhava that does not allow them to participate in agrarian activities. This swabhava has developed from their anti-production spiritual texts and social life.

The nation, just before the 2019 elections, seemed to be on the verge of a severe clash of cultures. On many fronts the Hindutva culture, at the core of which is the Brahmin, Bania, Khatri, Kayastha and Ksatriya (Dwijas) culture, and the productive cultures of the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis have many clashing aspects. Even the spiritual cultures of the masses who pray or worship God/Goddesses who are creators, producers and protectors and the spiritual culture that worships only war heroes are poised one against the other. The universal and the Indian productive mass belief that God/Goddess is a creator, producer and protector but not destroyer. The Indian Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi masses will realise this conflict between positive spiritualism and negative everyday worshiping violence spiritualism as more and more Shudra/OBC get educated. The relationship between those who love and treat their neighbour equal with themselves and those who treat other human beings as untouchable and unequal can never be long lasting. Those who worship violence and do not soil their hands and consume the labour power of others constructing a theory that God gave us the authority to eat but no duty to work in the food  production fields are actually destroyers not only of others, but themselves too.

The notion of the Indian history of culture itself is an issue of clash. The food culture, the culture of man-woman relationships, the relationship between the divine agencies like Ayyappa and women rocked like Kerala in the recent past. The historical food culture of the majority of Indians and the BJP/RSS vegetarianism resulted in huge clashes.  Nowhere in the world communities were so seriously divided on human food culture on the lines of meatarianism and vegetarianism. Though meatarianism includes all vegetarian food items the vegetarianism is exclusive and negative towards other cultural human beings. The vegetarians want to live by the sweat of others’ brow and yet claim cultural superiority over them. This is a unique human cultural practice that Brahminism developed.

The question of spiritual rights of the Adivasis/Dalits/Shudras  will clash with the Brahmin-Bania spiritual culture which is exclusionary and spiritual fascist.  The Adivasi/Dalit /Shudra masses  hoped that a Hindutva political party like the BJP would work for equality of all castes and Tribes, if it comes to power under the leadership of an OBC Prime Minister as Modi himself claimed. But in practice it established the Dwija hegemony in a systematic way. For the first time in Indian history the agrarian Shudras like Jats, Patels, Marthas, Kammas, Reddys, Velamas, Lingayats, Vokkaligas, Naikar’s, Nairs, Mahisyas   and so on are rebelling against the Brahmin-Bania hegemony. This trend will grow more and more if the caste census are taken on the lines of the 1931 census and the Mandal Commission headed by a Yadav, B.P Mandal, desired in order to establish each caste community’s numbers by a national caste count. The counting of humans caste- wise is never part of the Hindu Brahminism and also even Islamic culture. Only Israelis have had a human enumeration culture from ancient times. In the Bible the book of numbers clearly indicates that there is a culture of counting humans in Israel from ancient times.

At times it appears that the caste cultural antagonism  may lead to a civil war of cultures within the nation. But that has been avoided time and again. Yet Brahminism does not seem to be agreeable to a serious change.

Based on spiritual and socio-political clashes the Indian subcontinent disintegrated in the past  and three nations—India, Pakistan and Bangladesh– got formed. Let me briefly examine its recent history of disintegration.

India as a nation is carved out from the larger Indian sub-continent which included,  Pakistan and Bangladesh. Based on the religious-cultural confrontation within a short period in 1947 and 1971 , Pakistan and Bangladesh emerged as independent nations, reducing the size of the land and population base of the larger Indian nation, which otherwise would have been bigger.  In 1971 even Pakistan got divided into two nations—Pakistan and Bangladesh. The first disintegration was based on religious and cultural conflicts between Hindu Brahmanism and Islamic monotheism. Apart from those reasons there could be several cultural and political differences that caused the disintegration. The disintegration of Pakistan and Bangladesh is because of geographical distance between the two countries. But those two countries have major economic problems and class and sect conflicts as of now. However, India is facing caste, religious-cultural problems of serious nature. The Dwija culture is clashing with other caste cultures as well as other religious cultures.

The history of the present Afghanistan also shows that before Islam took shape there it had Hindu and Buddhist religions. But that nation has completely gone to Islam long before the 1947 partition of India and became an Islamic tribal nation which suffers instability till now. Luckily after 1947 the Indian masses accepted constitutional democracy. We must see that the constitutional democracy survives, with a conscious understanding that the RSS/BJP kind of casteism does not further disintegrate it by disrespecting the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis.

Though India has a population comparable to only China but because of cultural unity China has become a super power in Asia within the same period as we were a democracy. China speaks one language, Mandarin, across the country. Now China is allowing English to become its second national language.  Its food culture was/is always multi-cuisine without any conflict or food cultural discrimination within the civil society. Intellectualism and multiple social forces writing books about their own strengths and weaknesses was allowed in that country for the last two thousand or more years. Whereas Indian caste culture did not allow such intellectual plurality to grow. Intellectual plurality could bring many experiences and experiments into play at the national level. Imagine what an intellectual loss India incurred as 52 per cent of Shudras, 16.5 per cent Dalits and 7 per cent Adivasis were not allowed to join the the ranks educate themselves and some of them to join the  intellectual cream, who have much more rational, scientific and productive experience within their civil societal body. Their knowledge was never allowed to become a national resource by way of recording and transmitting it. What misfortune of a nation!

India is suffering from a serious cultural drag of the Dwija anti-labour and pure vegetarian unethical spiritualism. The Dwija thinkers constructed an anti-productive, pro-leisure living process as a nonviolent life process. At the same time they live on pure exploitation of other communities’ labour power. There is something fundamentally wrong with the evolution of the the Dwija  culture. Nowhere in the world such a leisure loving community has emerged in the name of God. Nowhere in the world the entire productive communities were condemned to be inferior in the realm of God and were exploited for millennia. There is no sense of shame and guilt among these community members about such an unproductive cultural evolution. This cultural system was responsible for driving away the Buddhist culture from India , which is known as Shramana culture, from the Indian subcontinent. What was a loss of India became a gain of China and other Buddhist countries like Japan and Korea, North and South.

Because of the largely unified cultural, historical heritage of China, it by and large remains a Confucius-Buddhist cultural nation before and after 1949 revolution. Though there are ideological variations between the Buddhist and Confucius cultures they managed to keep them side by side without leading to conflicts between them for millennia. We saw how Catholic and Protestant sects fought in Europe. We saw how Shaivites and Vaishnavaites fought bitter battles in India. We also saw how Shia and Sunnis fought in the Islamic culture. Such bitter battles are not known among Buddhists and Confucians. That only shows the Chinese capacity to fuse old and new cultures with rational thinking.  It retained its oneness  and cultural continuity. Over a period of time the Confucius-Buddhist cultures expanded to Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and so on. The influence of China on Nepal is also increasing both because of Marxist and Buddhist connections and material and ideological relationship between China and Nepal. As a result the Confucius-Buddhist cultural empire has expanded quite significantly. China is a super power in this region because of its cultural and civilizational strength. Its  ancient civilization that dominated  vast regions gave is strength, but its power today is also from its material might and military strength, which India is lacking. One of the main reasons for the backwardness of India is Brahminism. It propagated absolutely un-divine  issues like touching soil to produce food is pollution and also eating meat foods also causes spiritual pollution.  There are very uncommon cultural patterns that the Dwija communities of India evolved.

China synthesized communism with Confucius-Buddhist philosophies and succeeded in co-opting Western capitalism into the Chinese mode of socialist capitalism. Thus, it has  established a new model in the world. This model was not even predicted by Karl Marx and Lenin. This is a phenomenal achievement of a nation that suffered under several modes of colonialism and feudal exploitation. All this happened because of the cultural character of China.  For a long time it had and still has a unified Pan-Chinese culture with diversities that could be absorbed  and the cultural accommodations could easily be made. While it is true that it is a repressive one party system and also its achievement and cultural cohesion is something that must be acknowledged.

India as opposed to the Chinese mode of cultural unification from ancient days gave rise to multi-cultures that constantly remained in conflict. All through the post-Rigvedic period till now there is conflict between the Shudra productive culture and the Brahminic anti-production culture. There is also conflict between Ambedkarite Buddhist culture and the Brahminic Hindutva culture. Apart from these caste based cultural conflicts the Hindutva and Islamic cultures always lived one against the other. The Indian sub-continent has had an advanced culture and civilization of organized labour, advanced in technology, constructing urban settlements as early as 4900 BC. The culture and civilizations of Harappa shows that the Dravidian races (originally Indo-African) established not only settled living but constructed early urban civilization and culture in the Indus valley region. It began to construct its own language script perhaps much better than that of Chinese. Somehow it got destroyed and the ancient Dravidian race could not produce a school of thought of Taoism’s stature  in India. That was most unfortunate.

Subsequently the Aryans who migrated to India not only hegemonized violence as against the Indian productive and positive philosophy they seem to have destroyed the advanced cultural spheres of Dravidian races particularly in the whole of North India (see Tony Joseph, How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate. (The Hindu, 17 June, 2017 )

In order to establish very violent cultural systems as against nature harvesting labour based science and technology of the Harappans, the Aryans constructed violent texts as spiritual canonical books. Both Harappans and Dravidians were known for their hard labour, domestication of animals like sheep, goat and buffalo, building instruments of production, science and technology of ancient nature. The Aryans pushed this land into constant conflicts and cultivated a culture of violence and the Harappan masses were divided into various castes and reduced them into Shudra, Chandal slaves. They are all divided into thousands of castes, which work as spiritual, social and economic slaves under the control of Dwija Brahmin thought and ideology. They wrote Vedas and also Vedantic philosophy that has not examined the human relationship both with God and Nature. They always treated human being as an agent of violence. They never understood the idea that God created all humans equal. The Banias and other Dwijas like Kayasthas, Khatris and Ksatriyas accepted the Brahmin anti-human philosophy. Historically the  Banias emerged as  capitalist accumulators of wealth.

It was the culture of modern day Dravidians that built the earliest city of Harappa with baked bricks, properly cut stones, advanced wood crafting and also making most advanced pottery and so on. They have constructed the earliest canal system and worked for the road laying scientific processes as it is evident from the Harappan excavations now. This was possible because by then there was good animal husbandry, sheep, goat and buffalo breeding, and building up food resources not around grains and vegetables but by building up milk and meat stocks. Their sheep and goat flocks, buffalo herds were their repositories of meat and milk economy. Though there is evidence of early forms of agriculture getting deployed by Harappans, their main food was animal meat.

It is a common sense knowledge that the earth at that time was much cooler than what it is today therefore, their meat food stock even of slaughtered buffalo, sheep and goat remained for a longer period to be roasted and eaten. The fact that they constructed scientific pots, bricks, wood houses, canals and so on indicates that they started cooking their meat food by overstepping the earlier mode of eating roasted meat. We have, thus, developed the earliest food cooking methods. But in the post-Aryan times all that science has gone out of existence. The Sanyasis after they emerged in the process of composing Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata and so on  have killed science and anti-production and anti-science culture became part of Vedic civilization. The society has been set back since then.  The Hindutva brahminic forces want to make that anti-production literature as the foundational syllabus in the schools, colleges and universities. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis have every reason to oppose such imposition as that will weaken the productive culture of the nation. Nationalism for Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis must be understood in terms of the productive spiritual ethic

Though we do not have full details of the Harappans’ social life it could be easily inferred  that there was a marriage system in their civilization. Their men and women were living in properly constructed houses. Without there being a family system how do people live in homes that were small family quarters. The Harappa Township shows that there were even rich and poor in that city as there were bigger houses in uplands and smaller houses in the lowlands. There must have been a good child care system based on community taking care of children otherwise the community would not have built cities like that. City life became possible only when a properly established family system, with guaranteed production of goods and commodities was done. All this certainly necessitated some kind of marriage system also.

Aryans who migrated to India did not show any cultural love for physical labour and hard work to harness nature. As they were mainly invading warriors with horse and iron resource power at their command they seem to have focused more on destroying what was already built. They could therefore defeat the Harappan  civilization builders in the wars but never seem to have built a culture of coexistence of physical labour of man- women in harmony and sought human development as their goal. This can be understood from the simple fact the Aryan books do not show any respect for labour and material resource building. The Harappans on the other hand have proved by developing animal and agrarian economies and building cities that were far more advanced than the cities in other parts of the world at that time.

The Aryans later on seem to have established the culture of living on the labour of suppressed Harappans, who subsequently declared  Shudas in the Rigveda as slaves,  who were forced to look after the cattle, sheep and goat, buffalo and cow and bull herds without involving in reading and writing. While the Aryans remained war heroes and leisure centred love makers (Kautilya’Arthashastra and Manu’s Dharmashastra and Vatsyayana Kamasutra were written towards that end), their writings starting with Rig Veda were done around those themes. The Aryan period of pastoral economy appears to be based on the Aryan culture of oppression and exploitation of Shudras, who were nothing but the modern Dravidian  masses. It was during this leisure time that they must have constructed their spiritual books called Vedas, Upanishads and so on, over a period of time. They do not show any semblance of physical labour for producing food or building up productive technology. Their post-Independence life in the 20^th century also did not change much. All five Dwija communities–Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatri and Ksatriya–did not get into agrarian food production tasks even in that period. They took control of educational institutions, both English and regional languages, state apparatus and businesses and kept the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis in the agrarian and artisanal sectors. The Shudras who had better means of livelihood in the form of landed assets did not realize what was happening to them. They remained under the control of the Brahminic spiritual practices and Nehruvian brahminic state.  The Nehruvian Brahminic state adopted a language of secularism and liberalism but actually it was fully under the grip of the Dwijas.

The entire Vedic literature does not show any evidence of dealing with pot making, wood work, leather work, cattle rearing, constructing villages and towns. The Rig Vedic text which is considered to be earliest of the Aryan literature does not have any evidence of respecting and owning the Harappa and Mohanjo Daro and Dholavira kind of cultural heritage nor does it talk about building of new cities with involvement of Aryan and Shudra masses together.  It mainly talks about Brahma the Purush, Indra, Agni, Vayu and so on as great war hero gods. Though it has prayers and praises for Aryan hero gods it never mentions about God being present among the Harappan labouring people who were described as Shudras in that text.  The cultural conflict between the Harappan (Dravidian) civilization builders and the Aryan civilization destroyers is very clear and that conflict got carried into modern times up to our age. The Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janatha Party and its allied organizations work to upkeep that Aryan anti-production, anti-Dravidian culture. The Hindutva forces–particularly the Dwijas working in that network keep on talking about  greatness Aryans only with reference Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and so on. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis do not figure in those texts.

In opposition to Aryan culture two significant Indo-Mongoloid schools emerged: one was Buddhism  and other was Jainism. Gautama Buddha and Vardhman Mahvira built two different cultural systems against the existing Dravidian and Aryan cultural systems. They also got carried into modern times up to our generation. The former is popular among Dalits ( though majority Dalits are not yet Buddhists)  and the latter is popular among Banias (Majority Banias are not Jains but most Jains are Baniyas) of India. The contemporary Buddhists are meatarians whereas the Jains are very strict vegetarians. These two religious groups have totally opposite cultures of food, dress code and so on to each other. The Jains along with Brahmins were anti-agriculture and anti-productionists. Both of them are strong ideological   vegetarians who consume grains, vegetables and fruits without soiling their hands. In food cultural domain they find themselves totally opposed to Muslim beef and meatarianism. On the other hand, the Indian Muslims prefer meat more than vegetables. The Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis of India eat both meat and vegetarian foods. The Jains played a key role in organizing anti-Muslim campaigns as part of the RSS/BJP ideologues and also finance contributors. Their food, prayer and human interaction modes are also different. The Jains are very powerful business force working in the ranks of RSS, VHP and BJP and the Buddhists are strong supporters of Ambedkarism. Slowly Buddhism seems to be emerging as Dalit religion as the Shudra/OBCs not yet thinking of moving away from multi-idol worshiping culture of theirs. As the RSS/BJP are working from a power position with a strong Hindu fundamentalist –called Hindutva–ideological framework, by giving up the post-colonial secular, liberal and democratic institutional framework  the clash of cultures will hasten.

Subsequent to the development of Buddhist and Jain religious cultures, India has also acquired the Christian cultural heritage from 1^st century AD with Saint Thomas, a disciple of Jesus Christ, coming to India. Since then Christianity established its roots side by side with the Dravidian, Aryan, Buddhist and Jain cultural systems. Its growth is slow but steady. Its  expansion in the South and Northeast India created several Christian cultural centers. The advent of colonial rulers from Portuguese, Britain and France created different versions of Christianity and acquired a pan Indian base. By the time BJP came to power in 2014 the Christian cultural and educational institutions had established strong influence over the Indian education system, food culture, dress code and so on. The BJP wants to undo what all the Christians did in the education field and take India to the Aryan mode of gurukula education. There is a well English and Sanskrit educated saint and Hindutva Brahmin intellectuals force (Sri Sri Ravi Shakar, Jaggu Vasudev, Osho, Jiddu Krishna Murthy and so on highly Englih educated Dwijas)  who want an anti-Muslim and Christian educational ethos to develop on the model of ancient gurukulas. They want to see that the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis cannot get English medium education through the Christian institutions. A section of Catholic Jesuits are being roped into the RSS/BJP networks and they are willing to serve them. Similarly a section of Shia Muslims (The majority of Indian Muslims (over 85%) belong to the Sunni branch of Islam while a substantial minority (over 13%) belong to the Shia branch) are roped into the RSS/BJP ranks and they  played a critical role in stabilizing the RSS/BJP.  With this kind of cultural conflicts getting sharpened during the BJP/RSS rule, India is likely to enter into unstable and conflicting civil society and even the democratic state may be slowly subverted.

Islam which occupied vast regions of the Indian sub continent built a strong counter culture to the age old Aryan Brahmanic culture. In a way Islam weakened Aryan Brahmanism more than Indian Christianity because Islam took away Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh historically  from the fold of Aryan Brahmanism and established a big Islamic cultural Asia. Within mainland of India Muslim population is quite sizable.  Its egalitarian spiritual book, one Allah and entirely anti-Brahmin food, dress, man-woman relationship attracted the Adivasis, Dalits and vast number of Shudra castes, who were being exploited and humiliated by the Aryan Brahmanism. Though  the Muslim man-woman relationship is regressive and not at all what would suit Shudra/Dalit Adivasis now the fact that huge population of South East Asia got rid off Brahminism is a significant thing. A lot of Dravid Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses have also gone into Islam all over India. There is a cultural clash between Indian Muslim culture and also with other cultures including the Dravidian Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi culture now. Aryan Hinduism, however, was/is the central enemy of Islam. Of course, the cultural conflict between Muslim food, education, man women relationship and the Aryan Brahmanic food culture, dress code, physical appearance, and man women relations have many conflicting zones.  Both religions subordinated women  and the whole of living process of men and women is in bitter conflict after the feminist ideology emerged . The Hindutva understanding of man and animal relationship particularly cow and its progeny has become a source of several communal riots, mass murders and it is likely to lead to civil war if the BJP remains in power for more years at the centre and in the states.

The very birth of Indian Islam did not take place because of Muslim evangelical ideology but it took place because of strong desire of the Dravidian Shudras to join a universal religious culture, as a revenge to the Aryan Hindu isolationism. Around 622 AD a Shudra king in Kerala by name Cheraman Perumal made a revolutionary voyage to Mecca and met Prophet Mohammad and became a Muslim. He, thus, brought Islam from Mecca and the culture of building Masjids in India got established in 629 AD. The Muslim Masjid culture challenged the Brahmanic Hindu caste and untouchability based temple system.   This entry of Islam in the South combined with the other invasive Islamic campaigns from the western side expanded Islam in a massive scale and over a period of time the whole of Afghanistan, Pakistan in Bangladesh  in the East have become independent Muslim nations themselves.

By 1925 when the Hindu Mahasaba and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak  Sangh were established Afghanistan already became an independent Muslim nation but Pakistan and Bangladesh were part of mainland India. The birth and aggressiveness of the RSS and Hindu Mahasbha led to serious cultural conflicts between the Brahmanic Hindus and Muslims at ideological level. The vegetarian Brahman-Baniya leaders of India in the course of freedom struggle realized that Muslims and Dalits will pose a major threat to their hegemony after the British leave India. They were confident that the Shudras (there was no OBC category by then) were fully under the spiritual spell of Brahmins and with Bania money power that can be strengthened after Independence. A constant fight with Muslims would keep the Shudras fully under their control. A similar view was part of Brahminic mind in the Congress too. There was a caste connection between the Congress forces and RSS/HM forces. They saw to it that Pakistan and Bangladesh go away from India and the Dalits get accommodated with reservations. There was a serious conflict between the Brahmin Baniya leaders and Muslim leaders leading to partition. (The Shudras had no major role in that conflict). Though some Muslim leaders were anti-partition the major Muslim leadership went with Jinnah and made the partition a reality.

By 1947 that political conflict and also British policy led to the creation of Pakistan. And in 1971 Bangladesh became an independent nation from Pakistan. What is surprising is that before Bangladesh was born as a Muslim nation in the East there was no such big Muslim country in that part of Asia outside of Indonesia. The Bengali Brahmins because of their strong Hindu agenda starting with Rajaram Mohan Roy and Bankimchandra Chatterjee, without acknowledging the caste oppression against the Shudras and Dalits constructed a culture of oppression and inhumanity. Even the so-called Bengal renaissance did not make them caste free.  It helped them to consolidate the three Dwija castes–Brahmin, Kayastha and Baidhyas. Now they call themselves Bhadralok.

It was  Bengali Brahmanism that has driven massive number of Shudras–like Gandabaniks,  Suvarnabaniks, other trading castes, then some agricultural ones like Sadgops– Namashudras  and tribals into the fold of Islam and many also into Christianity. The emergence of Bangladesh as Muslim nation with very positive relations with China in the recent past, Malaysia (the majority Muslim nation) and Singapore (which significant number Muslms) will have huge implications for South East and for Eastern nations. Though there was Indonesia as a major Muslim nation in that region the location of Bangladesh is more important for expansion of Islam in the main land India. The Bengali Islam has created its own cultural variant. The Bengali Muslims speak Bengali language and dress like non-Muslim Bengalis and are also hugely fish eaters. The RSS is worried about the expansion of that kind of Muslim population.

All these factors lead to constant clash of cultures in India between different religious cultures and ethics. To these cultural clashes a new dimension was added with the emergence of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar during the freedom struggle. The untouchable masses in India who by and large have the Shudra/Adivasi Harappan heritage  have launched  a massive counter cultural movement for abolition of untouchability and expansion of neo-Buddhism in 1956. Though Ambedkar himself was the author of Indian constitution he realized that the cultural clashes will be more aggressive in future because of the democratic polity. So he opened up a more organized religious front for Dalits by embracing Buddhism. Though he tried to minimize the racial conflict between Dalits and the Brahmanic Hindus by tactically avoiding the Dravidian Aryan race discourse, he established a very serious ground for cultural battles by evolving Neo-Buddhist religion and the reservation policy.

In the post-independence period the Indian National Congress that ruled India adopted a principle of secularism to rule the country. Even the left parties used the notion of secularism to balance with their class war communism and negotiated with several conflicting cultures within India. But that secular approach both of the congress and the left parties and groups helped Hinduism to sustain as a caste cultural socio-spiritual system. At the same time they did not work out any instruments to abolish caste inequalities and untouchability. But they have checkmated the process of lower caste going into either Islam or Christianity. Because once secularism was made the ideological anchor of both liberals and the communists, the Shudra/OBCs/Dalits thought that a gradual process of equalization of castes and communities would happen. But all the political structures that believed in secularism did not disturb the cultural control of Brahmins and Baniyas in both spiritual, cultural, business and social systems. The partition of India with a massive Hindu Muslim conflicts and murders helped them and they could convince the Shudra masses that they would get liberated from all forms of oppression through secular mode of administration, education with a grumbling acceptance of the reservation system.

The upper caste intellectuals working in the left and Congress platforms did not see the cultural conflict between the Shudra/OBC/Adivasis and the Dwijas who live in opposite forms of ‘labour as life’ and leisure as life’. The Brahmin Baniya intellectuals and political leaders, who came from the culture of ‘leisure as life’(that is they were never involved in Agrarian production and artisanal productive occupations) did not see any problem in their own social location.This led to stagnation of the social transformation in the country. The productive masses, who mainly constitute the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis of India, did not get liberated from the clutches of the caste oppression started organizing themselves into political parties like the Bahujan Samaj, Samajwadi party, RJD, DMK, Telugu Desham, YSR Congress and so on. Apart from these parties hundreds of Dalits, Tribal, OBC organizations were formed. They began to challenge the Brahminic Bhadralok structures across India in all spheres of life. Added to this a strong women’s movement has also shaken up the foundations of the patriarchal structures that controlled the women’s body and mind. Both the reservation movement after 1990   and the women’s movement  that were ongoing by then, have created a parallel consciousness of liberation and equality. This in turn led to weakening of the Congress and also the communist parties.

Marginalizing Minority through Vegetarian Food Culture

Meanwhile the Muslims and the Christians of India, both socially and politically, got marginalized. A long drawn out campaign by the Hindutva forces that Muslims and Christian are un-Indian has its impact on their psyche. Their food culture came under huge attack. The Muslims were attacked as beef eaters, pro-Pakistanis and the Christians were attacked as proselytizers by supplying dollars. The Shudra/OBCs started believing in this propaganda as there were not many intellectuals among them to verify the propaganda from their point of view.  Using this situation the BJP and RSS and their sister organizations took up anti-Muslim and anti-Christian campaigns by massively deploying the vegetarian food cultural practice of a section of Brahmins, Baniyas and Jains and projected India as a vegetarian nation. It is here that cow came to play a critical counter cultural revolutionary role. The assumption of the Sangh Parivar leaders that only Muslims and Christians eat beef in India is wrong. Actually the Adivasis, Dalits and sections of Shudra/ OBCs (some of them would be nomadic and also semi-nomadic) are the largest number of people who consume beef. Even in remote villages beef is a staple food of the Adivasis and Dalits. This anti-beef campaign may in the long run create huge food crises in the Indian food market.

After the BJP came to power in 2014 in several states the state governments enacted very stringent laws to prohibit beef economy in India. The beef economy is not just about beef food. The entire leather industry and growth of leather technology, the animal bone economy and thousands of people who got jobs in that economy. The Hindutva ideology hugely affected the very right to life of millions of Indians.

The strong anti-beef cultural conduct of the Sangh Parivar forces, of both from state power and outside, is based on the Sangh Parivar’s pure vegetarian culture that it adopted from the culture of vegetarian Brahmanism of the Western, Southern India and also North Indian Brahmin food culture.  The Baniya food culture and also the Jain food culture is the same. In other words, they are trying to project India as a vegetarian Hindu nation in the whole world. They have completely negate the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi food culture. The vegetarianism of the Hindutva forces is bound to weaken the food resource of the country forcing the masses to starve.

This runs into a serious contradiction with its ideology of “Dheer Bharat” brave and strong Bharat of the same Hindutva forces. They must explain to the nation how the citizens of India without eating good protein food from childhood onwards become dheer; how do the youth of India become brave and strong? When they have taken away a protein rich food item- beef and meat from their menu how do they become strong and courageous? And also if India is made pure vegetarian there will be food scarcity because vast sections survive on meat foods both of naturally available and consciously cultivated. The meat food consists of animal and bird flesh. For example sheep, goat are a source of food for millions of people and these animals are grazed within the natural resources available in their surroundings. Similarly chicken. Huge amount of food resources comes from chicken grown as a family bird in the rural setting without investing any finances. Masses in our tribal areas live more on meat foods but not so much on vegetables.  In fact it is unnatural to bring up children only with one kind of–meat or veg– food. Human beings should eat many kinds of food. Creating cultural conflicts among people of a particular nation around food culture certainly creates social and cultural tensions. Whether Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Christian food culture must be left to the individual choice of persons.  In fact every house must keep its kitchen free of food taboos, irrespective of their religious beliefs.

The children should be fed with all food items, meatarian and vegetarian. After the children grow into adulthood if they choose to become vegetarian on a rational ground such a decision should be definitely respected. Democratic values within home would enrich democratic values in the civil society and also in the state structure.

But in Brahmin, Baniya and Jain families the children are being fed with vegetarian food from generation to generation. That has not only become their family, community food culture but also become their  spiritual, divine food culture. However, can they make it a regular food culture of the Indian army? They cannot. If they do so the army will have very weak physical strength. No sensible country can make its army confined to pure vegetarianism. The army has to sustain in varied weathers and and live and fight in varied terrains.

Only the Brahmanic cultural system is operating in pure vegetarianism and the Hindutava forces coming from Brahmin, Baniya families would be comfortable with it but what about the Shudra/Dalit/Adiavasis drawn into that network? They will have to be forced to become vegetarian. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi historical food culture cannot be humiliated like this.    No nation’s strength would be judged based on the technological energies of the army and other state institutions; it is the physical energy of people that matters. The physical energy of people depends more significantly on their protein food intake and the exercise that they do. That is the reason why all over the world people consume both meatarian and vegetarian food to balance between strength and also the other life longevity issues. It is important that up to a certain age for humans to have meat foods, which have high protein, in more quantity. In older ages they can consume more vegetables and less meat but people should not live only on vegetarian items in their young age. Though some medical experts who themselves are vegetarian are trying to argue that humans live longer with pure vegetarian food. But the history of human evolution does not support that argument. In the process of evolution humans ate both meat and fruit food. Where was agriculture to produce the modern vegetables in prehistory and ancient times?

In the villages there are a number of proverbs that tell us pure vegetarians are timid people. For example the proverb that so and so ‘Pappuwala’ (Pappugadu in Telugu) is only to tell that those who eat dals and pure vegetables are timid because they are both physically and mentally weak. People also talk about how people cannot do hard physical work by eating vegetarian food. The food culture of the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, the Muslims and the Christians is in a clash with the Brahminic pure vegetarian food culture. As the modern education advances the clash will increase.  Once more and more Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses get modern education and realize that their own food culture historically never was pure vegetarian the clash will increase.

The only mainstream state that resists this Aryan Hindutva cultural campaign is Kerala. The conflict between the Kerala masses and Hindutva Aryanism is leading to a lot of conflicts. It is in this state that a democratic multiple synthesized cultures are surviving with a blend of  co-operative democratic pluralism. The co-operative democratic pluralism allows individual choices to operate freely with one another. In Kerala this exists with a strong base. May be because the development of different modes of left and Congress ideologies in this state and also multi-religious cultural modes of life lived side by side without leading to clashes. The Kerala civil society and left and liberal parties that have been coming to power alternatively have preserved that social structure. The Shudra/OBCs have played a leading role in the left democratic movement of Kerala. Because of the social reforms that were started by Narayana Guru, Ayyankali and other leaders and thinkers made Kerala ‘God’s Own Country’. The BJP is trying to disturb that plural co-operative and deepened democratic relations in every sphere of life—spiritual, social and food culture in Kerala. The BJP wants to use violence as a weapon to disturb that cultural coexistence. If the BJP is going to continue in power for a longer time at Delhi the violent conflicts in Kerala may increase and even the whole South India that has more democratic civil society than North may get drawn into these cultural  conflicts.

Though the vegetarian cow vigilantes have been unleashing terror on meat and beefarians ever since the BJP came to power in 2014 because of the state and police support the resistance movements are keeping the civil society hugely undisturbed. If the vegetarian vigilantes are so strong and capable of defending the nation they should be sent to the China and Pakistan borders to fight against the China and Pakistan army. In the recent past they have lynched many helpless individuals in the streets who were out to do their day to day human activities. They did that in the name of nationalism. In fact that has nothing to do with nationalism. Once the historically food producing Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses realize how this kind of food related violence works against their interest they can easily stop it.

THE LONG TERM IMPACT OF FOOD CULTURAL CONFLICTS

India as a country of ancient civilization consisted of social groups that had diverse food cultural habits– meatarian, beefarian, fisharian (all of them also eat vegetables) and so on. India produces a lot of meat and fish food. Even then no social group gets enough meat food required for healthy survival. There are many communities that like only meat curries in every meal. If India is forced to become a vegetarian nation, which though is impossible, many social groups face a major food crisis.  On the other hand there are pure vegetarian social groups like Jains but they do not participate in productive labour. There are South Indian , West and North West Indian Brahmins who are pure vegetarian. There are non-Jain Baniyas across India who eat only pure vegetarian food. They all do not share the labour work which is essential to sustain India as a nation. Yet if they continue to attack the labouring masses because they eat the food that enables them to work in all seasons the nation will collapse within a short span of time.

Even the food cultural ritualism varies from community to community. No social group has a right to impose their food culture on others as superior and insult other food cultures as inferior. The present ruling establishment under the leadership of BJP is trying to hegemonize vegetarianism over other food cultures. The Indian Muslims and Christians as a religious practice like meat food culture. The Muslims for example sacrifice sheep, goat, camel, bull, bullock, cow and so on as ritual practice once in a year on the day called Bakrid, but they never offer any vegetarian food item to Allah or even in any Dargah. Similarly many tribes and Shudra?Dalit/Adivasis sacrifice animals on their festivals, but never impose that culture on others. For example they never try to impose that culture on Jains, Brahmins or Baniyas. Any such imposition would lead to a cultural clash in India. Once this clash leads to violence that violence will continue in the society for long. This conflict will also weaken the food basket of the nation. In the process the children and old people would starve.

Dress Code and Cultural Clashes 

India is a nation that evolved with multi cultural dress codes. Historically each caste has varied dress codes based on their work and culture. Many Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi castes and communities have their own dress codes which are completely opposite to priestly Brahmin dress codes. Several Hindu Sadhus roam naked (Naga Sadhus for example) and semi naked. Generally the Hindu priests in Temples live without shirts and only use un-stitched garments. The Shudra/OBCs have varied dress codes based on their work ethic and occupational practice. Dalits and Adivasis also have their dress patterns. Uniformity of dress codes was never the norm for Indians.

Muslims on the other hand wear their own cultural variant dress depending on the region and area but there are some common Islamic norms for dress code. Their women’s dress code–particularly, burqa and hijab, is under attack in many parts of the world. The Hindutva forces in India are attacking the burqa and hijab system. That dress code also is also under attack in many other Asian and European countries. The separate identity of Muslim school and office going children and women through burqa and hijab dress is under attack in several countries. In countries like Afghanistan because of dress code the Talibans are attacking many women. If women are seen in jeen pants they get killed. The Christians would have mostly western dress code. However, their dress code has been allowed to change as times change. The Indian Christians allow different dress codes without much interference.

Several tribes have their own dress codes, in everyday life and also in times of their ritual performances. Particularly women of different castes, tribes, religions have different dress codes for their day to day life and also for their special ritual occasions. Unless each caste group or religion agrees for the peaceful coexistence of these varied people’s dress codes even this can lead to clash of cultures. Already the conflict between Muslim dress codes and in Hindutva perception of that dress code is leading to lot of classes. Though  globalization has made most people switch to western dress codes, religion still plays a key role in defining what is nationalist and what is anti-national; what is good and what is bad. The Hindutva school keeps on attacking Muslim cultural codes, though many aspects of that codes have developed within the Indian geo- environmental  context and also time frame. It attacks their cultural codes without realizing that as a reaction to such constant attacks they get into more and more Pakistan-Afghanistan mode of Islam. This is very clear after the brazen display of Hindu saffron clothes, threads on wrist, tilak on the forehead the Muslim men and women getting into more and more Afghan-Pakistan kind dress, body styles like wearing burkha, hijab by women, long beard with shaven upper lips, Afghani-Pakistan pyjama and long kudta and so on by men. Polarized visibility of Hindutva forces and Muslims could be seen in the streets and market, educational institutions. Muslims do not imitate Brahmins as the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis do. Because when they were in power for hundreds of years they themselves made the Brahmins to adopt their cultural codes.

Cultures of Marriage and Death 

There are different kinds of marriage rituals in different castes, different tribes and different religious groups. People’s  practices at the time of child birth and marriage and also death differ from religion to religion and also community to community. The rituals of Brahmins, for example, at the time of birth of a child are totally different from that of Dalits or many OBCs. In many Brahmin families the employment of midwives from that of Shudras/Dalits and Adivasis was not allowed, when deliveries were taking place at home. In some castes a Brahmin blessing is necessary immediately after the birth of a child. Some castes do not even allow the Brahmin to come to their house on the occasion of a child birth. Some invite a Brahmin and perform a ritual. The menstrual untouchability and child birth untouchability for women among Dwija  is a serious issue. Among Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis also there are different birth and death ritual practices.

Muslims have their own child birth related rituals. For example, a newly delivered woman is not allowed to do Namaz for forty days. After the monthly menstruation a woman cannot do Namaz for seven days and should not read the Quran. This practice is, perhaps, with the view of ritual pollution. It is written that “ During nifas going to a mosque, doing tawaf, reciting the holy Quran or touching it is forbidden.” These anti-women cultural practices in religions and castes have a huge conditioning impact on women’s life and also democratic relations between men and women within the family and also in the civil society.

The very idea that childbirth and menstruation are spiritually pollutants is destructive and anti-human and against the idea that God created women equal with men. The ideology of purity, pollution in every religion has a serious implication for production and development of material resources for human advancement. Though these anti-women and anti-God values were part of Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism slowly Christianity has overcome some of them.

The Christians have their own method of praying on the occasion of child birth and also mother’s well being.  Because India is a vast country with a huge number of people in every religion the cultural clash happens frequently. There are different living modes and  methods of cultural practices; if one group hates the other and one culture claims superiority over the other, there  will be a clash. Cultural clashes can easily escalate into riots, mayhem or a civil war. Because culture is seen as the soul of a social group.

Even in a marriage also there are varied methods and practices within the framework of religion or the cultural history of castes or tribes. If any political party or social organization tries to homogenize them with or without the support of some people within that group even then a clash of cultures is likely to occur.

Similarly, there are varied, sometimes opposite death ceremonial practices, some of them rational and some of them are irrational. But if one group feels that their death related rituals are superior and others are inferior that may also lead to clash. In many places the Hindutva forces are opposing the burial practices of Christians and Muslims and want them to burn the dead bodies like they do. The practice of burying the dead is also there among many non-Muslim or non-Christian castes and tribes. Many bury their dead. The Hindutva forces project mainly the Brahmin or Dwija practice as Indian or of Hindu. They did that with regard to vegetarianism. The Dwija Hindutva forces made the world believe that India is a vegetarian nation. This kind of cultural construction may lead to major clashes. Religions do not compromise on some of these basic cultural heritages.  Only markets can change societies in a slow and systematic manner without leading to violence.

Memory and Culture

Throughout human history it is proved that a human being’s identity with culture is much more emotionally linked to survival than the identity with wealth. As the famous Italian thinker Machiavelli said that human beings easily forget taking away one’s own property or even killing one’s own father but will not forget cultural humiliation of his/her being. Unfortunately the Sangh Parivar, ever since it got hegemonic place in the socio-political society of India, it has been humiliating the Muslims, Christians, Dalits/Shudras/Adivasis in terms of their culture as I have shown above. They  humiliate the Shudras with many of their Dwija  cultural practices. Food culture, dress code, and religious ritual practices and their man women relations are attacked. The  memory of cultural attacks will remain with the victims for centuries. Though they have recruited many Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis into the RSS they function within the Brahminic cultural domain that the Dwija leaders prescribe. For example, all of them have to eat only vegetarian food in their meetings, or camps or in collective living places. All of them have to respect only the Brahminic God/Goddess images. The Shudra/Dalit God/Gddesses do not figure in their history and memory. Whatever rules and regulations the Brahminic head of the organization prescribes they have to follow. The head invariably would be a Brahmin, at least till now.

More than any other cultural issue the food culture is very dear to human beings. It is linked to their living environment and civilizational growth. If any groups’ food culture is rubbished or attacked or humiliated the retaliatory feelings remain for long.  The Brahmanic abuse of others food culture as impure historically remains very strong with Dalits and Shudras. Even though the Brahmin priesthood, the Brahmin Peethas, the Brahman headed temples, Ashrams have insulted the Shudra/Dalit food culture, dress code, marriage rituals, and death practices and so on they remained spectators for long. The Brahminc forces constructed everything of theirs as pure and everything of others as impure. This humiliated memory of the Shudra/Dalits is surfacing in many forms of counter cultural movements.

The control of Brahmins was established by telling a lie that they were sent by God to lead these people. Since the Shudras and Dalits were not educated they obeyed the Brahmins treating them as bhoodevatas. There is a corrupt consciousness among the Shudras and Dalits. But that will not remain so for long.

So far it may not have resulted in a massive civil war between the Shudra/Dalit forces and Brahaminic forces but the cultural conflict between these forces is on a position of war of nerves on the battle ground. The Sangh Parivar forces are trying to divert this battle to a battle ground of Hindus versus minorities namely Muslims and Christians. They are using the international and national tension between Muslims and Christians to their advantage. The disunity and unfriendly atmosphere between Muslims and Christians helped  the Sangh parivar to win the 2014 elections. And subsequent to that election they have mounted a series of cultural attacks on Muslims and Christians through their campaigns of Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad, Cow protection, beef ban,  Triple Talaq,  Uniform Civil Code, FCRI issues and so on.

The Sangh Parivar intellectuals though celebrate, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” thesis  which predicted a major clash between the Christian and Islamic civilizations but actually what Huntington was talking was about two biggest religious culture of world namely the Christian culture and the Muslim culture.  They think that such a clash between the Christian culture and Islamic culture would give scope to the  Brahmanic culture to weaken the Muslim culture and civilization in India.

But their Ghar Wapsi agenda has attacked the Christian culture of proselytization than that of Muslim culture because Indian Islam does not believe in open conversation. By attacking the Christian culture they indirectly attack the Dalit and Tribal culture because the Dalits and Tribes are more inclined towards Christianity.  When Christian world reacted very sharply against the Ghar Wapsi programme the Hindutva rulers shifted their agenda to Beef ban thinking that this would directly attack the Muslim food culture. But what they did not realize was that the beef food culture is far more embedded in Dalit and Tribal food cultures of India. Having realized about the unintended consequences of Dalit getting alienated more and more their focus shifted  to Triple Talaq issue because it directly involves the Muslim and only Muslim man woman relationship.

The last few years of BJP governance with full majority in Delhi and also in many other states has proved that they were pushing the cultural agendas more and more on to the multi cultural , plural coexisting Indian society than any economic development agendas.  The BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his deputy Amith Shah will be judged more for their cultural campaigns more than their economic development agendas.

HOW DO WE OVERCOME THE CLASH OF CULTURES?  

To end this long saga of clash of cultures India has to turn to the discourse of production and its historicity. Let us not forget the fact  that both the Hindutva thinkers and writers and also the Muslim thinkers and writers do not seriously engage with the discourse of labour, production and organization of economy. God for both the schools is not a guiding force in improving the skills in labour, technology and science. God for them is mainly a guide on cultural issues  in this life on the earth and hereafter, in heaven. The Hindutva thinkers and writers have come from mainly Brahmin backgrounds. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis earlier were not allowed to think, read and write any strategic literary texts. Strategy and ideology came from Brahmin thinkers. Among Muslims also, historically, the Dwija converts have become thinkers and writers. If the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis were not allowed to read and write by Brahmins, among the Muslims the duel mode of madarsa education in Arabic, for spiritual purpose and Urdu for speaking and writing purpose, did not allow thinkers to emerge from the Shusra/Dalt converts.  The cultural codes and spiritual interpretations are simply imposed from the Dwija converts within Indian Islam.

In the Hindutva school the historically hegemonic Brahmins have total control on Sanskrit and English even today. They impose the cultural codes and spiritual interpretations from a centralized organization–RSS and temple system.  The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis have no role in constructing the Hindutva philosophy at all. If the Hindutva forces continue the anti-Muslim campaign and the Muslims get drawn into Afghanistan – Pakistan kind of Islamic mode of rigidity the clash of cultures will definitely reach to higher levels in future. If the Hindutva forces think that the Muslims could be controlled as they controlled the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, they are mistaken. The Muslim community has both spiritual and cultural relations with rest of the Muslim world–good and bad.

If 200 million Muslims of India get drawn into medieval mode of self-defence the clash of Brahminic Hindutva culture and Muslim culture will take a serious turn. It could even move into a serious civil war situation. About the possibility of such a civil war I have examined in my book Post-Hindu India. The Hindutva and Brahminic writers never imagined the possibility of a cultural clash leading to civil war in India. Because the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis never challenged the Brahminic forces and they have never witnessed a civil war against their hegemony and control. But the Muslims have  a different cultural and historical evolution.  Civil wars within Muslim nations based on the sect politics–Shia and Sunny– and differences are common in the twenty first century as well. Similarly oppression and control over Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis by Dwijas in the twenty first century is as bad as it was earlier. The Dwija false anti-production merit theory did not allow even the top Shudra communities like Jats, Patels, Marathas, Kammas, Reddys, Velamas, Lingayats, Nairs, Nayakars, Mahisyas and so on into any central institutions of higher learning. All the major positions of central governance are in the hands of Dwijas.

The Indian Muslim leaders also do not allow the Shudra/Dalit/Adivas converts into any key position within their institutions of higher learning. They never allowed the poor Muslims to learn English. Thus, Hindutva Brahminism and Muslim Brahminism are poised to keep India stagnant and underdeveloped. Neither the Shudras in the Hindutva camp nor the Shudras in the Muslim camp understood this strategy. Both of them constantly look towards Pakistan, which could not strike deep roots of democracy in that country for the last seventy five years. Only the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis can save the nation from the impending danger of cultural conflicts by overthrowing Brahminism in India.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is the author of many important books like God As Political Philosopher–Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism, Why I am Not a Hindu, Buffalo Nationalism, The Weapon of the Other, Untouchable God, From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual–My Memoirs and The Shudras–Visison for a New Path,  Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land–Dignity of Labour in our Times. 

https://countercurrents.org/2021/10/clash-of-cultures-in-india/

PoliticsThe US president is pointing to the danger to democracy in India from Hindutva, just as the white supremacism of the Trump era was a threat to the US.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with President Joe Biden meets in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Washington. Photo: PTI

A major takeaway from the meeting between Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House last week was that the president of the United States saw fit to remind India’s Hindutva leader about the relevance of Gandhi and Gandhism.null

Biden didn’t just recall Gandhi – killed on January 30, 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a Hindutva Brahmin from Maharashtra – in the abstract. The US president made it a point to tell the world – and Modi, who was seated next to him – that the Mahatma’s “message of non-violence, respect, tolerance matters today maybe more than it ever has”.

The US president’s words highlight the fact that his government is not happy with the human rights situation in India under Hindutva rule.

Donald Trump, who, as US president, shared many values of Hindutva politics, would never have invoked Gandhi to preach tolerance, non-violence and respect. One of the only times he invoked Gandhi in public was to cite a fake quote. “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” Trump had tweeted in 2016. When he visited the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad in February 2020, he thanked Modi and forgot to mention Gandhi’s name. And later, even as Delhi was convulsed by anti-Muslim violence, the Washington Post noted that he praised “Modi’s record on religious tolerance”.

So now, for President Biden to signal to the world – in Modi’s presence – that his government is not following the principle of tolerance and non-violence is definitely a shocker to the RSS/BJP back home. Though Modi keeps quoting Gandhi – and not Savarkar or Golwalkar – in international forums, the US president’s reference to Gandhi was a diplomatic way of telling his visitor that India has become an intolerant country on many counts. Biden knows what he is talking about. After all, the Democratic Party fought Trump’s intolerance and white supremacism in an open confrontation, during the 2020 election and thereafter on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol Hill.

The Biden administration has a large team of Indian origin personnel, including Vice-President Kamala Harris herself. The Biden team knows how to communicate to the Hindutva fold back home and to its supporters in the diaspora.

In recent weeks, there was a global discussion on the nature and character of Global Hindutva, including the American Hindutva groups, which are by and large not only anti-Muslim, anti-Ambedkarite and anti-reservation but also anti-Gandhian. Their pet heroes are Savarkar, Hedgewar, Golwalkar and Godse.

Modi himself is facing some opposition from anti-Gandhians within his Hindutva school, ever since he started trying to invoke Gandhi’s name. Some of them keep insisting that Nathuram Godse was a better nationalist than Gandhi, the most recent one being Pragya Singh Thakur. Modi and Amit Shah themselves gave her a ticket and saw to it that she comes into parliament, so they cannot now complain about her utterances.

Gandhi was killed not just because he stood for an inclusive democracy in which Muslims would be equal citizens. He was engaging with Ambedkar on caste and untouchability reform issues. No other leader in the Indian National Congress, especially the Maharashtra Brahmin leaders, were in favour of this. Bal Gangandhar Tilak himself was opposed to Mahatma Phule’s reforms. His son, Shridhar Balwant Tilak, took his own life in despair after being harassed for supporting Ambedkar’s reform agenda.

Gandhi was seriously sympathetic to the abolition of untouchability and reforms in Hinduism, if not for abolition of the varna system. This was not liked by the Maharashtra Brahmin leadership of the time. Hence there were many attempts on his life earlier to the final act of killing him in 1948.

Savarkar and his followers set out a theory of Hindutva which was different from that of Bengali Brahmin leaders and thinkers like Rajaram Mohan Roy and Rabindranath Tagore. The same Maharashtra Brahmin school which opposed Gandhi started the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Hedgewar, Golwalkar and Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras led that organisation with a Hindutva-Brahmin supremacist ideology. They were all strong anti-Gandhians. Mohan Bhagwat is cut from the same cloth.

American democracy thrives on the backs of Lincoln and Martin Luther King, just as Indian democracy thrives on the backs of Gandhi and Ambedkar. Ambedkar was not martyred but his sacrifices for the sake of Indian democracy were enormous. Obviously, because India is the biggest democracy with 1.3 billion people surrounded by China and Pakistan, the survival of its inclusive democracy is important to the United States.

Serious democrats in the US saw a threat to their own democracy from the Trump school of white supremacism. During his rule, the Black Lives Mattermovement shook the West. So also serious democrats in India and the world over see a threat to democracy in India from Hindutva supremacism. This is where US Vice-President Kamala Harris’s worry about the survival of democracy in both countries in her joint statement with Modi makes global sense. She said:null

“As democracies around the world are under threat, it is imperative that we defend democratic principles and institutions within our respective countries and around the world and that we maintain what we must do to strengthen democracies at home. And it is incumbent on our nations to, of course, protect democracies in the best interests of people of our countries.”

This is a strong warning from Washington about the impending danger to democracy in India from Hindutva, just as the white supremacism of the Trump era was a threat to the US.null

Narendra Modi, who has been shaped by the Hindutva worldview since a young age, climbed the political ladder and moved up to prime minister’s position in 2014. As a Gujarati, he may not have as pronounced an anti-Gandhi streak as others in his fold, but he cannot repudiate his RSS legacy. The Biden team, especially those of Indian origin, knows this.

By invoking Gandhi’s emphasis on respect, tolerance and non-violence, the US president is gently reminding the world about the series of anti-Gandhian shifts that have occurred on Modi’s watch since 2014: minority marginalisation, the targeting of globally respected NGOs that were working to provide humanitarian aid to the poor – mainly Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs, the violation of basic human rights by lynchings, the targeting of Muslims using the so-called ‘love jihad’ laws, ‘ghar wapsi‘ and anti-beef campaigns and so on. All of these have undercut the plural democratic fabric of India.

During Trump’s tenure as US president, the Hindutva forces in India were emboldened because there was tacit support for their actions from that regime.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also taken its toll on right-wing politics. The world appears more receptive to liberalism and human rights. The RSS and BJP will find it difficult to navigate their agenda in this world. Leaders who promise equal opportunities and respect for all in every sphere is what people are looking for. With any luck, a political, social and intellectual atmosphere will be created for human equality and dignity. Neither Modi the individual nor his party/organisation, the BJP-RSS, have adjusted themselves to this post-Trump, post-COVID-19 pivot in the US and the world.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social activist and writer. His well known books are God As Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism and Untouchable God: A Novel.

https://m.thewire.in/article/politics/why-biden-brought-up-gandhi-in-his-meeting-with-modi

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

By October 5, 2021 English language life in India is 204 years. For the last few years the celebration of Indian English Day on that day is catching up. Ever since the first English medium school started in the then Calcutta in 1817 on October 5, India never allowed that language to die. It has been growing and growing not only in India but the world over. China, which is challenging all English speaking nations, owns English as Chinese language along with Mandarin. If both India and China teach all their child population English along with their native languages as, for example, Andhra Pradesh, a Telugu state, it will change the globe’s connectivity and scientificity in a manner that no human being could imagine.

Long ago an Israeli prophet predicted that one day the whole world will speak one language. But he did not tell what that language would be. Now one can say, with confidence, that it will be English.

As of now, it is the only language that is spoken, written and understood by the largest number of humans on this planet. In the history of human languages, there is no other language that matches its reach, scope and human developmental agency, in the world.

The history of languages–speaking and writing- of about four thousand years in the world, no language benefited the human race as a whole as much as English did. Because of English, the humans of all corners of the globe are more connected and knowledgeable about each other than ever before in human history.

For a long time in their living history many tribes were living in small intra-group communicating language networks, without being in a position to communicate with other groups, within nations. But by and large English penetrated into many such groups in a small or big way in every country. English is just one language that reached several such groups with words and sentences that enable them to communicate in larger markets and in hitherto unknown places.

India is a classic example of thousands of small language speaking groups without communication with one another. It has tribal and hill living small groups of people without much exposure to other groups and urban markets. So far language remained the main barrier of all the productive masses of India, living in remote corners to expose themselves to new cultures. But English has removed that language barrier in a short period of 200 years, more so within the last 30 years, with globalization linking the global markets. It was not Governments that taught English to people in structured schools, but it was the market that taught English even to illiterate individuals and groups across the world.

Take for example, very significant life saving things when needed in a society or a market though one cannot speak or write English as a language that we understand in normal sense know words like water, food, bus, train, salt, rice, ticket, milk, tea, bed, phone, tea, liquor, train, plate and so on. This is not only in India’s nook and corner, but it is so in every nook and corner of the world.

In any Telugu speaking village or hamlet even in most backward locations every average illiterate labourer knows about 250 to 300 English words. All over India rickshaw pullers, auto-drivers, taxi drivers, grain and vegetable vendors, and workers know more English words than any other non-native language words. In India Hindi is the largest Indians’ speaking and writing language. But many English market words are more known than Hindi words in every nook and corner of the country.

Knowing 250 to 300 words in a normal conversation mode in varied accents is enough to communicate with others in a strangers market. Thus, if we deport a labourer from an Indian village to an African or a Latin American country she/he can survive for a long time without learning the native language with the help of those English life saving market words. If one learns that native language and also improves his/her English one can survive much better. No other language in the world provides such a survival scope in the world just by knowing a few words.

How and why do the English words and language spread across the world even to remote places? It spread through a globalized market. The Brahmins and other Dwija castes, who historically controlled the spread of Sanskrit  are now trying to control English with a design, in whichever party or organization, they are . The high end English has already become their preserve like Sanskrit in ancient times. The Rastriya Swyam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) through Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 74^th Independence Day speech told the nation that all Government schools, colleges and universities where Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi and poor people’s children study ‘mother tongue’ (non-English) will be the medium of education. The RSS/BJP central Government is trying to make Hindi as a medium of teaching writing even Ph.D dissertations in Hindi in central universities and institutions. At the same time the central and state Governments are allowing private universities and institutes, schools and colleges to crop up to teach and do research only in English.

All the monopoly industrial companies owned by the Dwijas (Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris, Ksatriyas) have established high end private universities like Ashoka, Amity, O.P Jindal and so on. They are adopting only Euro-American syllabus to teach in English medium. The RSS/BJP are planning to make all Government educational institutions regional language, mainly Hindi medium, institutions. This will make the Dalit/OBC/Shudra/Adivasi youth completely immobile. They do not want English reading and writing intellectuals among the productive castes and communities to emerge.

The youth studying in central universities and institutions must celebrate the Indian English Day in a big way and defeat the the forces that are against the Dalit/Adivasi/Shudras learning the global language on par with the rich Dwija youth. Let rural India Read, Write and Fight.

(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist. His well known books are From a Shepherd Boy to An Intellectual–My Memoirs and Untouchable God)

https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/what-english-has-done-to-india-and-the-world/

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

The debate on caste, not just OBC, census is becoming a serious political issue in the country. But the secular, liberal and left intellectuals–economists, sociologists, political scientists– are behaving as if they are a neutral force on this issue. Would they have behaved in the same way if the Government were to say that it would not do religion census as well? I am sure they would not. They would have filled the pages of newspapers, the TV channels, particularly the English ones, would have debated about secular and communal conundrum. They would have  cried host and the social media would have filled the Indian minds about the conspiracy theories and how it would be an anti-democracy step. But on the question of caste census they behave as if they cannot take a stand. This is the reason why the Shudra/OBCs do not respond to their secularism discourse.

If the religion census were stopped, the Bengali and Odia bhadralok intellectuals, particularly, would have dug up the history of the census, of course, and beyond: why in a country of multi-religious society counting population on religious basis is important. They would have pretended as if they stand by minorities and would have said that numbers are very important to standby minorities based on accurate data.

Their silence about caste census speaks of the Dwija intellectual well known theory that caste census is part of ‘conspiracy of opening caste wounds, perpetuating the colonial legacy’. The caste census data in 1881 must have shocked the British rulers and re-shaped their understanding of the Dwija, particularly the strength of the Brahmins. Before the census were enumerated there was a possibility that the British policy makers considered the Brahmins as the majority caste across India. Because the Brahmins were only educated in all the regions. They were the main advisers and were part of the British bureaucracy. They were controlling Hindu major temples all over India. They were only the writers of all books that the British read. As very thinly spread caste from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Gujarat to Bengal would speak in one tone and language. There was no single Shudra caste spread across India with the same name and with an educated background to interact with the British rulers. “A report on the 1881 census of British India says that it was “the first … Of the total Hindu population of 187.937 million, Brahmins constituted 13.73 …”1 That is about 7 percent of Hindu population. If seen in relation to the total population that includes Muslims, Christians and so on it would be much less. The British rulers also did not know that the Brahmins and Dwijas do not go for any productive work in the fields and also cattle grazing. They must have also come to know that the Brahamins do not allow the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis to go to school and educate themselves.

Given the non-availability of rural and forest living Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses at their home during daytime in 1881 their enumeration would have been very very difficult. Contrary to that the Brahmins and other Dwija like Kayastas, Khatris, Banias and Ksatriyas must have been enumerated more accurately than other castes. Brahmins by then were more urbanized and all the time available in the city/town/village for enumeration unlike the cattle grazing, artisanal and land tilling masses. Brahmins were never part of the agrarian, artisanal and animal grazing people though they were cow worshipers. Home, temple and school, office were the main places where Brahmins were available. That kind of under the roof life would have made their enumeration easy unlike the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses who work under the sky. Even then their population ratio within the Hindu society was just 7 per cent. But In 1931 (the last Indian census to record caste), Brahmans accounted for 4.32% of the total Indian population.2

This fall of the Brahmins in percentage terms is both because by 1931 better enumeration of other castes must have been done and also it is seen as against the total population. But within the Hindu population also it will be much less than 7 percent in the 1881 census.The British rulers, thus, learnt because of caste census that Brahmins who were seen everywhere in the top layers of Indian society actually constitute a small minority and they were benefiting from British education and state employment.

However, the Brahmin opposition to the British increased from then on because they exposed their minority human base among the population and huge control of spiritual, social, economic and political life of India. They had no sense of shame or guilt for exploiting the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. The British then worked out a school education system in the Government domain for all castes and communities. This was later attacked by them as a Macaulay conspiracy. Throughout Indian history any attempt by anybody for equalizing the socio-spiritual living of Indians the Dwija intellectuals said it was anti-Indian tradition. They projected any progressive step as a conspiracy against the whole nation.

They saw their unequal authoritarian existence in every sphere as nationalism. The Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis failed to contest them at any point of time in Indian history. They performed all the hard work for nation building and remained under the firm grip of Brahmanism. Even the liberal, secular, communist Dwija intellectuals did not get over that historical legacy.

Similarly if caste census are enumerated this year their actual number will come out, which will become a tool of understanding their control on the Indian state, civil society and religion. The secular and liberal intellectuals, who came from that background, whatever could be their political affiliation know this fact very well.

Highly educated intellectuals in foreign and Indian universities would consist of Roys, Benerjees, Mukharjees, Chatterjees, Sens, Boses, Patnaiks, Mohantys and so on. From Western India many Desais, Sirdesais, Bhagwats, and from middle countryChaturvedis, Dwivedis, Trivedis, Shastris, Sharmas, Varmas, Thakurs, Chopras, Guptas and so on . From the South they constitute Iyers, Iyengars, Sharmas and Shastris. Even those who write in the mainstream media come from that background. They all do not think that such names would reflect casteism, but they only reflect the secular heritage of their family history. They dislike any discussion on caste, reservation and caste census. If they discuss or write on those issues only to oppose those policy issues. When the entire Brahminic literature survives on hierarchical structures of caste, why does caste census generate fear, anxiety and anger among Brahmins in particular and Dwijas in general? Do they not know that the census should be enumerated to know all forms of identities– religion, gender, class, caste and race? Justice– spiritual, social and economic– should be achieved in every society on a fair and equitable basis.

Some of them have very high intellectual status in Euro-American countries. For example, Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee as Nobel Prize winner economists have stature but popularity. But never spoke about caste census. The other very popular economists working in American universities, like Jagdish Bhagvati, Arvind Panagariya, Kaushik Basu, Raghuram Rajan, also seem to have no stand on caste census. Among sociologists, political scientists and historians there are Subaltern Studies scholars mostly living abroad. Their volumes were as silent about caste as the RSS books and documents were. Even now they do not want anything to say about caste census. What Subalternness is this? Are they silent about caste because Antonio Gramsci did not talk about caste culture? Or their Dwija roots blind folded their intellectual eyes?

No great Indian economist, sociologist, political scientist or historian worth the name before or after Ambedkar (who himself was an economist with a Columbia Ph.D and London School of Economics D.Lt) raised the question of social justice in post-colonial Indian developmental process. They kept on telling us that poverty alleviation will take away caste inequalities. The Marxist social scientists remained more Euro-centric than Europeans themselves. They repeatedly told the nation that once ‘class war’ is successful all evils of India will disappear. They went on telling that caste is no longer, rather, never a valid category of understanding India. Thanks to their Un-Indian vision they are a disappearing lot now.

The Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis understood the importance of numbers much better than all Dwija economists, sociologists and numerologists. Their productive fingers now, not only know how to count plants in the fields, cattle in the grazing meadows but themselves in every village and city. Is this awakening of the Shudra/OBCs anti-national or anti-developmental? Let Hindutva or left liberal social scientists tell us?

The RSS/BJP used the Shudra/OBCs as a muscle power force against the minorities and used them as vote power in 2014 and 2019 elections to come to power speaking in two opposite voices. The Shudra/OBC ministers in the party say the BJP is not against caste census. Dharmendra Pradhan to G.Kishan Reddy speak in favour of the caste census. Even Prime Minister Modi gave a positive signal by willingly meeting the Bihar all party Shudra/OBC leaders.

But an unnamed RSS leader says:

“that a census (meaning caste census) will inevitably reconfirm the numerical majority of the OBCs. That will overturn social equations and consign the upper castes (meaning the Dwijas) to a twilight zone of marginalisation. The RSS won’t accept it.”3

Which RSS is he speaking about? Is it that of Mohan Bhagwat and Ram Madhav?. But what about the Shudra/OBCs within the RSS? How long do they want to be used only as muscle or vote power?

What about Congress in this situation? It is at ideological cross-roads on many issues. Its experienced and aged leaders–foreign or Indian educated–  and active policy makers, with Sonia Gandhi as president, are the same old Dwija intellectuals who have no roots in the voting masses, particularly the Shudra/OBC farmers and artisans. They read and write only about secularism, minorities and, at best, some sentences about Dalits. Their view on caste census is exactly the same as that of the unnamed RSS man. They avoided the issue even after Mandal reservation was put on the national map by the V.P. Singh Government. Thereafter the Congress Dwija economists, policy makers lead that party to their Shudra/OBC vote loss.

Only Modi and Amit Shah seem to know that so long as the Shudra/OBCs do not shift from the regional parties and the BJP to Congress they will not lose power. The Congress seems to have not learnt a lesson from the CPI(M) how that party was destroyed by the leaders promoted from JNU to politburo to leadership without having any grass root mobilization experience. If the Modi-Shah go for caste census Delhi may be in their hands for a long time to go. Let us wait and see!

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and writer. His well known books are Why I am Not a Hindu and Post-Hindu India

https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/caste-census-and-secular-intellectuals/

Telangana’s project shows that caste census can benefit Dalits and OBCs. But parties like BJP and Congress are too busy with their Dwija networks.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

File photo | Officials collect Census data | Photo: censusindia.gov.in

The demand for caste census is catching up. Almost all regional parties have agreed to it. This is because some regional parties have already collected caste-wise data for internal usage. For example, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) collected caste data with individual enumeration the moment it came to power in 2014. Though it was named Samagra Kutumba Survey, it also collected caste details. It took up a massive exercise by asking the migrant Telanganites to be in the state even if they were in other countries on 19 August 2014. Many from the gulf countries, the United States and faraway places travelled back to their villages to enumerate themselves on given dates. Telangana villages saw new faces on the streets. Parents of many children who were born and grew up in their migrated homes wanted them to be enumerated back in their villages.

The ‘Telangana All family Census 2014’ reminded me of Joseph and Mary (the parents of Jesus Christ) travelling to Bethlehem from Nazareth to get counted in their own place. According to the Bible (Luke 2:1-7), “Joseph and Mary’s trip to Bethlehem is undertaken in order to satisfy an imperial command that all individuals return to their ancestral towns… Since Mary was pregnant with Jesus at the time the command had to be carried out”. So it was a census that led to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, in a shepherd shed.null

Israel has a history of counting individuals through the census from the days of Moses.

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Also Read: India needs a caste census to see if we have conquered the social evil or merely hidden it

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Caste census in India

India despite having one of the greatest civilisations of Harappa, did not have that sort of an individual counting system. Fortunately, like the imperial command of Israel from Jesus’ time, the British colonial government conducted a census with its own tax collection interest, between 1865 and 1872. But the first synchronous census was held in 1881. From the census of 1872, they enumerated people on the basis of caste.

The Dwija pundits, mainly Brahmins, opposed the idea of the census, especially caste census, because they were the interlocutors between the British rulers and Indian masses. They did not want the world to know that they were a small minority in the Indian population that represented India as a whole in every higher sphere of governance. They were not a part of the production fields and urban working-class population. The Dwijas — Brahmins, Banias, Ksatriyas, Kayasthas and Khatris — who constituted a small minority, were the only Sanskrit, Persian and English-educated people. The Kshatriyas were still holding their princely power and constituted a very small number of the Indian population but controlled huge amounts of landed property and had financial clout. They all opposed the census in general, and the caste census in particular.

Now, too, the intelligentsia from the same five Dwija communities are opposing the caste census. The same intelligentsia opposed the implementation of the Mandal reservation.

Actually, many liberal intellectuals like Pratap Bhanu Mehta and others argued strongly against the caste census. During the Mandal movement, many argued that caste is/was a British creation through caste census in the 1800s and after. They tried to infer that the collection of caste census was the beginning of the caste system in India. What was strange for many of us who supported the Mandal movement was that all the Dwija intellectuals, irrespective of ideology — Left, liberal and conservative — argued as if the caste system was created by the British colonialists themselves. They did not think about what came into existence as varna/caste division of the society through the process of composing of Vedas — particularly, Rigveda — writing of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Manu’s Dharmashastra. Many nationalist scholars praised Manusmriti as a great ancient legal text. The Indian Communist Dwija thinkers and academics also did not dispute that argument, and went along with it.

The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis hardly had any foreign or university-educated scholars or leaders like P.V. Kane, K. P. Jayaswal, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, to put forth an opposing view on caste and Indian civilisation until B.R. Ambedkar emerged as a thinker and expert in many subjects of social sciences and challenged them on many fronts.

The 1931 caste census enumeration was dropped from the census because of the world war and famine situation in India till 1951. In that census, even Nehru and his team of intellectuals supposedly did not want to enumerate caste. One of the meaningless theories espoused was that caste census would open caste wounds in society. Nehru seems to have gone along with such views on both caste census and OBC reservation as he refused to implement the Kaka Kalelkar report too.

When Nehru himself opposed caste enumeration, even Ambedkar could not do anything, though he was in Nehru’s cabinet by 1951.

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Also Read: Caste census is important — whether you are for or against reservation

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Lack of Shudra/OBC intellectuals

The Communist Dwija intellectuals like P.C. Joshi, Sripad Dange, B.T. Ranadive and all Bengali bhadralok intellectuals of the Left-wing also seemed to have silently agreed with the Nehruvians. Of course, this view was very much acceptable to the top Hindutva intellectuals like K.B. Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar.

Once the British went away, the entire intellectual, administrative and political structures were in the hands of the Dwija intelligentsia. There was no Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi intellectual or conscious political force in the high-end structures of the administration. People like Sardar Patel were at the top of the Nehruvian system but were cautiously working with the Nehruvian network because there was no top intellectual network of Shudras around to convince them that caste census would be useful for democratic welfarism.

Ambedkar did not fight much because both Dalits and Muslims got the right to be enumerated as separate categories. Dalit reservations, in principle, came into existence in 1947 itself. The Nehru administration, because of Partition problems, satisfied the Muslims by continuing the minority census and including the top-class English-educated Muslims in the administration. But the Shudra/OBCs had no lobby to fight for the caste census or reservations.

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Also Read: Caste-based headcounts won’t be enough. India needs a full-blown ‘caste census’

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Why are Dwijas still opposing it?

Why are the Dwijas opposing the caste census when the majority of Shudras support it even now? They know that despite reservations for OBCs, all structures of administration in top institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Management, and the central universities are under their control. The New Delhi administration, including the embassies located in foreign countries, are virtually run by them. Once the official data of the caste gets released, even the Shudra ‘upper’ castes like Jats, Gujjars, Patels, Mahisyas (West Bengal) and communities like that in the North and in the South will realise that they do not exist in any of the major administrative structures that run the country from Delhi.

The caste census will radically change the idea of democracy in India. Cutting across party lines, Bihar regional leaders met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask for a caste census — they have the example of K. Chandrashekar Rao’s caste-wise data collection. Both Rao and Siddaramaiah used that data to work out their own welfare agendas based on caste numbers. Rao, for example, identified the Gollas-Kurumas and Mudirajs as the first and second-largest communities in Telangana, and by the next election, started two independent welfare schemes — the sheep distribution programme for Gollas-Kurumas, who are traditionally shepherds, and fish economic growth for Mudirajas, which is their traditional occupation. In return, he reaped the votes from them in the 2018 Telangana election.

Regional parties have such plans and the masses have their own benefits with the caste census. National parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress and Communist Party are sensitive to their Dwija networks that are opposed to counting them as castes.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. He is the author of ‘God As Political Philosopher’ and ‘Buffalo Nationalism’. Views are personal.

https://theprint.in/opinion/upper-caste-networks-of-political-parties-are-resisting-caste-census-but-not-for-long/726540/

The Dalit with White, American Skin

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd Aug 25, 2021

As  a Marxist  academic-activist,  I  was  surprised  how  a  white  woman  could  be  so  knowledgeable,  so  concerned  about  every  aspect  of  caste  and  women’s liberation Gail  Omvedt,  81,  one  of  the  greatest  scholars  on  caste  and  gender  studies,  passed  away  on  Wednesday,  August  25,  in the  early  hours  in  Kasegaon  in  Maharashtra. 

For  more  than  five  decades,  this  American-born  Indian  scholar, sociologist  and  human  rights  activist,  educated  the  world  with  her  writings  on  Dalits,  OBCs  and  Adivasis  and  changed the  landscape  of  scholarship  in  India  with  her  rigour. 

Gail  Omvedt  was  so  rooted  in  her  work  that  she  morphed  into  a  Dalit  in  white,  American  skin.  She  taught  many  of  us in  the  writing  and  fighting  field  how  to  do  it  without  compromising  principles  and  without  diluting  standards.  She turned  Indian  universities  into  positive  learning  fields.

When  she  was  attending  seminars  in  far  off  places,  she  worried  more  about  her  mother-in-law  than  her  daughter. She  taught  India  how  to  fight  patriarchy  while  being  a  concerned  wife,  mother  and  daughter-in-law.  Though  Gail leaves  this  land  today,  she  will  be  with  us  in  all  our  fights  against  inequality  forever  in  the  form  of  her  books,  articles and  speeches.

I first met Gail at a seminar in Pune as a young academic-activist in the early 1980s and was surprised by her command over Maharashtra caste compositions, social movements and history of politics. Until then, I never knew a foreigner who was so concerned about the lower castes of India. Everyone in that gathering was looking up to her to shed more light on the Satyashodhak Movement and Ambedkar’s agitations and writings.

As a Marxist academic-activist, I was surprised how a white woman could be so knowledgeable, so concerned about every aspect of caste and women’s liberation. At that time, the feminist movement was more in the discourse than inDalit, OBC ground movements.
I later learnt that she was married to Dr Bharat Patankar, an activist-scholar who has devoted his life to serving the oppressed and the poorest of the poor.

Two decades ago, the couple adopted Buddhism. That itself said a lot about who she was, going beyond what was apparent — a woman who came all the way from America to educate, organise and agitate for the liberation of the untouchables and Adivasis in India, following in the footsteps of Phule andAmbedkar.

It was then that I started reading her works. It was like a new light emerging out of a dark house. She inspired thousands of students in India and abroad through her writings and lectures. She was not a great speaker. She was a patient educator, who spoke in a difficult-to-follow accent. Yet, people came and waited to listen to her.

Born in Minneapolis, USA, Gail studied at UC Berkeley University and got her PhD in 1973. An anti-imperialist, shechose India to prove that nationalism cannot be defined only by birth. That it can be adopted and nurtured. In doing so, she proved the Hindutva school of thought is totally wrong in understanding what nationalism is.

She was a prolific writer and published numerous books. Her PhD thesis introduced Mahatma—

Phule’sSatyashodhak Movement to the world and her magnum opus ‘Dalits and Democratic Revolution’ became a handbook for every young student in colleges and universities across India and also in the South Asian study centres around the world. Until her arrival, the great Mahatma and his wife Savitribai Phule’s lives had not been studied enough.Most of the scholars were preoccupied with the other Mahatma – either adoring or abusing him.

In  the  known  history  of  India,  four  women  from  Europe  and  America  left  an  indelible  mark  on  the  lives  of  people  in this  country—  Annie  Besant,  Mother  Teresa,  Gail  Omvedt  and  Sonia  Gandhi.  Of  the  four,  the  first  three  fought  for  the oppressed.  Annie  Besant  (1847-  1933)  was  a  British  socialist,  theosophist,  women’s  rights  activist,  writer,  orator,  and educationist.  Mother  Teresa  (1910-1997),  was  an  Albanian-Indian  Roman  Catholic  nun  and  missionary.  Sonia  Gandhi  ( 1946),  an  Italian-born  Indian  politician,  is  too  well  known  to  comment  upon. 

Gail  and  her  husband  started  two  organisations  —  Shramik  Mukti  Dal  and  Stri  Mukti  Sangharsh  Chalval  —  and worked  very  actively  in  the  villages  of  Maharashtra. 

All  of  us  who  worked  with  her  in  a  long  journey  of  Dalit/OBC/Adivasi/women’s  liberation  for  the  past  forty  years  will celebrate  her  life  and  work  as  proud  Indians.

Kancha  Ilaiah  Shepherd  is  a  political  theorist,  social  activist  and  author.  His  most  known  books  are  ‘Why  I  am  Not  a  Hindu’;  ‘PostHindu  India’;  and  ‘God  As  Political  Philosopher—Buddha’s  Challenge  to  Brahminism’)

https://m.timesofindia.com/india/the-dalit-with-white-american-skin/articleshow/85626168.cms

in Annihilate Caste — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Shahu Maharaj

But for the accidental reading of Shahu Maharaj’s letter to the retired Governor of Bombay presidency, Lord Sydenham, written in 1918, I would not have thought of writing this essay. In my life time experience of writing about the Brahmin-Bania power in contemporary times at the expense of life threats and cases in various levels of courts the Dwija pundits tried to dismiss my arguments about the Brahmin-Bania power over the society and state in post-independence times and in the past–medieval and ancient– times. Many Brahmin-Bania liberal intellectuals keep arguing that when so many Shudra kings ruled the Indian states in ancient, medieval times how could Brahmin-Banias control the system. For a long time, they also dismissed Babasaheb Ambedkar and Mahatma Jyotirao Phule’s arguments about the control of Brahmins on the state and society on the same ground. But Shahu’s lengthy letter in his own words, reproduced in this essay, as a king of a very important Princely State that existed till 1947, as a descendant state of great king Chatrapati Shivaji provides an indisputable testimony, how the Shudra kings suffered under the spiritual and intellectual yoke of Brahmins. This control of Brahmin priestly forces who turned, apart from being head priests in every kingdom, the Prime Ministers of all Shudra monarchical states and other bureaucratic networks from the days of Kautilya, the author of Arthashastra –a book of dangerous statecraft shows the real mirror image of Indian history.

This essay looks at the history of Shudra kings and their fear of Brahmins from the days of Chandragupta Maurya’s kingdom, in the light of Shahu Maharaj’s letter.

Kautilya’s Arthashastra stipulates that the state has to maintain the caste system in the following order:

“As the triple Vedas definitely determine the respective duties of the four castes and of the four orders of religious life, they are the most useful.

The duty of the Brahman is study, teaching, performance of sacrifice, officiating in others’ sacrificial performance and the  giving and receiving of gifts.

That of a Kshatriya is study, performance of sacrifice, giving gifts, military occupation, and protection of life.

That of a Vaisya is study, performance of sacrifice, giving  gifts, agriculture, cattle breeding, and trade.

That of a Sudra is the serving of twice-born (dwijati), agriculture, cattle-breeding, and trade (varta), the profession of  artisans and court-bards (karukusilavakarma)”[1]

“This people (loka) consisting of four castes and four orders of religious life, when governed by the king with his sceptre, will keep to their respective paths, ever devotedly adhering to their respective duties and occupations.”

He further says “the observance of one’s own duty leads one to Svarga and infinite bliss (Anantya). When it is violated, the world will come to an end owing to confusion of castes and duties. Hence the king shall never allow people to swerve from their duties; for whoever upholds his own duty, ever adhering to the customs of the Aryas, and following the rules of caste and divisions of religious life, will surely be happy both here and hereafter. For the world, when maintained in accordance with injunctions of the triple Vedas, will surely progress, but never perish.”[2]

Having stipulated strict caste duties and condemning the Shudras to serve Brahmin, Ksatriya and Vaisyas by investing their labour power forever Kautilya makes a false spiritual promise of granting moksha/heaven to the Shudras. This kind of false written word was also believed by the Shudra masses that if they do not practice caste order they would also be punished by Brahmin Gods both in this life and hereafter. Nowhere in the world religious book writers played such a satanic mischief on the life of innocent productive masses, who were illiterate and ignorant. By using Vedas as divine books both Kautilya and Manu created a barbaric civil society and State. The subsequent Brahmins practiced the spiritual and political ideology formulated in those books. No book of divine source would divide people into such inhuman categories and create fear generated by the combined institution of religion and State and also promise heaven if they remain slaves. No slave in the world other than in India would believe this kind of barbaric book knowledge as God-given. The Shudras and Dalits of India followed this so-called divine sanction for millennia.

Shudra Kings under spell

The Shudra kings of India from ancient days, particularly from the times of Chandragupta Maurya to the present came under the mystic spiritual spell of Brahmin writers. Though they knew that the war strategies and the abilities to fight nature and produce food were with Shudra masses they surrendered the written word to the Brahmin and internalized a psychology of enormous fear and slavishness. The fear of God was attached to a human person, a Brahmin, and the food producers believed that he has all the powers that God is said to have. While the idea of God evolved in the process of human transformation from one state of life to the other, hunter-fisher to animal domesticater to agrarian producer, the Brahmin superimposed himself as Bhoodeva with an uncommon mystic wisdom on them. This distorted the very nature of religion in India. Kautilya projected this Brahmin divine power onto the state as far back as the 3^rd century BCE.

Kautilya forecloses any transcendentality of castes into one another in administering the state institutions. Even the occupational change was also arrested. To maintain caste hierarchy, the state was made to be violent and ruthless. He established a complete control over the state resources in the interest of the Brahmin, Kshatriya and Bania forces by totally disarming the Shudra/Dalits who were the main productive force all through the Indian history after this book was written. By various estimations by scholars we now come to know that Manu’s Dharmashastra belongs to much later periodicity than that of Arthashastra from Mauryan dynasty of the 3^rd century BCE. The Brahmin power on the state structure got tightened from then on. The animal economists and agriculturalists broadly known as Shudras from the days of building of Harappan civilization were pushed to the status of slaves once the Vedic civilization was established as Aryan divinely ordained and the Arthashastra pushed that system into the state structure with a full force of fear of God and also violence of the state.

Even in the case of Shudra kings, they were forced to suppress their own brothers and sisters, who were toiling in the productive fields. Kautilya gave full freedom and leisure time to Brahmins by living a good life while constantly receiving gifts from the state and Shudras at will. The duties that he assigned to the Shudras, Vaisyas and Ksatriyas that they have to give gifts of wealth to the Brahmin as a duty shows the Brahmins were completely made free from labour and production process.

The so-called mental labour they were assigned was very negative. If the Shudras did not give wealth in the form of a gift he said the state has to punish them. The Shudras had to pay taxes to the state for its maintenance and also provide for the labour free good life of the entire population of Brahmins. The Brahmin is only receiver but never a giver at any time in Indian history. This idea Bhoodeva is opposite of the universal God who gives the humans life, wealth and the knowledge to produce food from the earth and a human family life. Both the Brahmin God and also the Brahmin himself are opposite of this universal spiritual ethics and morals. Once the Shudra kings were made to accept it they lived against themselves, framed laws against their own people.

Constitution vs Manudharma

In this background of Brahmin written word and its mystic power in the past it is important to understand the present ruling Hindutva forces projecting only Vedic and Post Vedic books written by Brahmins like Arthashastra and Manu Dharma Shastra and also Vastyanana’s Kamasutra as the source ofIndian civilization. They are trying to re-establish the Arthasatric state and Manu Dharmic civil society even in the 21 century. Not many Shudras understand this historical process that they are part of. As we have shown in The Shudras–Vision for New Path, Hedgewar the founder of Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) praises Manu’s laws as greater laws than the laws written by Lycurgus and Solon and says “To  constitutional pundits that (Manu’s laws) means nothing” (Introduction XXV) He had no respect for the constitution that Ambedkar has instituted which made an Other Backward Class (OBC) Narendra Modi ( a man of their own party) the Prime Minister of the nation in 2014. As he was still the Prime Minister Ram Madhav an RSS young leader in his book Because India Comes First–Reflections on Nationalism, Identity and Culture (2020) in the very introduction says “Through its living history of over five millennia, India has offered invaluable gems of wisdom enriching all of mankind…This widom proclaimed in Manusmriti, one of the oldest constitutions of India”. He further quotes a Sanskrit sloka from the Manusmriti to say “ Men all over the world would come to beseech lessons in character through the lives of the great men born in this country”.[3] According to him Manu was the greatest wise man of India from whom great men of the world should learn how to institutionalize, perhaps, caste and untouchability. He knows pretty well that Ambedkar burnt this ‘great constitution’, treating it as the most barbaric book that does not deserve to be positively talked about. This middle aged RSS Brahmin leader from Andhra Pradesh, knows that the Shudras and Dalits all over the country treat Manuwadis as anti-national as this book made them perpetually slaves. The BJP’s own Prime Minister Modi never takes the name of Manu, rather he takes the name of Gautham Buddha on international platforms, but Ram Madhav tells the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis working in both RSS/BJP, leave alone outside their fold, that they should follow only the Manusmriti that Ambedkar burnt but not the Ambedkar’s constitution which gives them equal rights with Brahmins, at least in the state institutions. In the Hindu spiritual system still Brahmins control everything. Even the RSS Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis cannot become priests in the Hindu temples even now. This is where the Shudras/Dalits and Adivasis working in the Sangh Parivar must realize even in the 21 century the Brahmin leaders of RSS from Hedgewar to Ram Madhav worship only Kautilya and Manu, certainly not Ambedkar who wrote a constituted that liberated them in the political and legal domain.

Orthodox versus secular Brahmins

The Hindutva Brahmins quite openly own Kautilya and Manu but the secular, liberal and left Brahmins by and large remain silent about them. They pretend as if the ancient thought of Brahmins does not matter. In the literary sources there is no left-liberal and secular critique of these authors written in a manner that we could use to counter the Hindutva Brahmins. The silence of left-liberal Brahmins must be treated, for all practical purposes, as agreement with the Hindu Brahmins and hence the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis must suspect their liberalism, secularism and socialism. There is however, a fundamental problem with the Shudraness and Brahminness which I will examine at the end of this essay.

In the latter half of the last century, many leaders from Shudra castes have become the Chief Ministers in different states and also ministers of  different State as well as Central Governments. For them a question lies unanswered: for how long in Indian history the Shudra kings were made the slaves of the mystical powers of the Brahmin books? By their calculated silences, RSS wants that mystic power of the Brahmin should remain unchecked. The RSS Brahmin leaders know enough now to let go of the Manu and Kautilya who gave them enormous power in the political domain.

The Tyranny in Arthashastra

The Arthashastra does not talk of Chandal and Adivasi as separate categories. As per the Kautilyan classification, the Dalits and Adivasis are part of the Shudra category. In his socio-legal formulation all agrarian and artisanal masses are Shudras. But at the same time they all are fragmented based on their occupations and Kautilya asks the state not to allow them to move out of each one’s occupation and caste boundaries. This kind of long enforcement of caste-occupational rules by the Brahminic state power by all the rulers the Shudra masses who constitute about more than 52 per cent population of modern India believe that they must surrender to Brahmin authority, spiritually and socially, even now. It does not matter what their economic and political status in modern India is. They treat Brahmin as Bhoodevata. Such a mental surrender does not allow their intellectual, philosophical and spiritual energies to evolve even now. The Shudra and Namasudra submission to Bengal Brahmins and Kayasthas, whatever their ideology, left or liberal or Hindutva is a strong case in point.

Though there has been a lot of discussion about Manu’s role, through his socio-legal text– Dharmashastra or Manusmriti– in controlling the productive Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses with an iron grip of brahminism there is not much discussion around Kautilya’s Arthashatra in terms of its role in controlling the state institutions by the brahminic ideological apparatus in terms of human management by the hierarchical Varna system. In his very serious critique of the Hindu Social Order, B.R.Ambedkar, examined numerous key texts of Brahmanism except that of Arthashastra. But this is the text that strategized their perennial control over the state structure of India. They got far higher control on the state institutions even in our times because of the Kautilyan varna classification acted as the normative principle that guided the state. The so called secular and liberal Dwija scholars tried to hide this aspect of the Indian state as this was providing them enormous scope to control in the post-Independent state institutions and also the civil society.

Many get misled with the title of the book Arthashasatra thinking that it is about science of economics. It actually is a book that gives hegemonic control to brahminism in every field of the state activity. Thus, it weakened the potential of the productive forces–the Shudra and Dalits in a long history of India. It was also meant to suppress all tribal transformation processes into normal civil society with an iron hand.

The mischief in Kamasutra

The third book that another ancient Brahmin author Vastayana wrote – Kamasutra – was meant to control the Shudra/Dalit masses–particularly women. He has converted Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi women into sexual objects without giving them motherhood agency too.

On the contrary Wendy Doniger, a well-known American Sanskrit scholar writes “The Kamasutra is almost unique in classical Sanskrit literature in its near total disregard of class (varna) and caste (jati). Of course, power relations of many kinds – gender, wealth, political position, as well as caste – are implicit throughout the text. But wealth is what counts most.”[4] But that is not true if we look at that social distinctions mentioned while discussing sexuality.  It is primarily a book for anti-production leisure Brahmin Kshatriya ruling class and Bania business men

Kamasutra stipulates that the Brahmin women should be wives of only Brahmin men but the Shudra/Dalit women should work as Granikas (sex workers) for nagarikas (the urbanite Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya leisure-centered male citizens)

No Shudra king in such a long history could dare to oppose the Brahminical hegemony. Neither he was ingenious enough to record or authorize the history of the spiritual system of the productive masses that existed outside the brahmanical fold. Nor did they establish schools for the Shudra children and commissioned writers to write books of their own, history, culture and civilization. The Shudras and Dwijas were not living like one national people but of two different cultural and civilizational entities. Even the kings were made to obey the Brahmins unquestioningly as they themselves treated the Brahmin as god — Bhoodeva. Even the kings were living like socio-spiritual slaves without any rights to read and write books. After getting the Kshatriya status some could learn reading and writing but they too were forced to isolate themselves from the productive masses by injecting fear of the Brahmin controlled Gods. The Shudra kings never realized that their own ancestors had their gods/goddesses different from the god images that the brahmins constructed in their books. The gods in their books were mainly their own war heroes. The Shudra gods/goddesses were evolved mostly from the Shudra production and science and development (See Why I am Not a Hindu, Our Gods and Goddesses and their Gods and Goddesses) processes. But the Shudra kings and rulers even of our times are forced to believe only the Brahmin Gods. Brahmins went on telling the kings that they themselves would curse the king if he does not obey them or their god will punish him if they do not obey the Brahmin. This whole spiritual ideology was a myth constructed to acquire wealth and power without getting involved in agrarian or artisanal production.

Shudras as human beings like any other human beings on the earth should have doubted this spiritual theory though it was being propagated both in oral and book form. The Shudra kings were also made to fear books that the Brahmins wrote as if they were god’s words and truth. When Brahmins told them they should not even touch their spiritual books the Shudras remained away from those books. Such a dictum is patently a historical fraud committed in the name of spiritual theory. Once the right to read was forbidden for the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses, their fears of Brahmins and their Gods increased many fold.

Fortunately for us, Chatrapati Shahu Maharaj, the grandson of Chatrapati Shivaji, left evidence of the Brahmin grip in his state even though he was a revolutionary ruler with a vision of his own to change the caste hierarchy. He told the story of his own kingdom and the Brahmin hegemony and control in all spheres of the state. His full letter to the former Governor of the Bombay Province is given below to understand the role of Brahmins in that state. This is the only document available written by a king from the Shudra community with a commitment to their development.

Perhaps from the third century BCE onwards, ever since Kautilya became the Prime Minister of Chnandragupta Maurya the kings who came from the Shudra varna were virtually under the control of Brahmin PM and also the head priest. The situation did not change much both even after the Muslim rule and also that of the British. It is a known historical fact that the Shudra agrarian and artisanal communities never rebelled against the varna dharma order that Vedas, Arthashastra and Manudharma Shastra ordained through written codes. Until the British came and opened school education for the Shudras they had no right to educate themselves and write what their point of view was. The Shudra masses could never organize themselves cutting across the internal caste-occupation divisions. The growth and transformation of the food producers who were the main source of the national wealth production was stalled by the written knowledge of Brahmins rather than help them advance.

Even the stone pillars or epigraphic evidence that come from the Shudra kingdoms also were written by Brahmins. Except Ashoka, no other king could reject the Brahmin authority. King Ashoka did that only after he became Buddhist. Quite ironically after Ashoka’s ancient Buddhist revolution and his pursuit of a welfare administration again the Brahmin counter revolution took place with Pushyamitra Shunga capturing power. Since then Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Manu’s Dharmashastra were systematically used to suppress Shudras in all fields of life. From that period to Muslim rulers all the kings ran the state apparatus with Brahmins as the real drivers of administration.

I have examined in detail the fundamental difference between the Buddhist political and social thought and the Brahmin thought in my book God As Political Philosopher–Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism (2000). After Buddhism became a major religion it influenced the kings who ruled India till Kautilya wrote Arthashastra. In its core, Arthashastra changed the State structure in favour of the Brahmin ministers and priests whoever was the king. From Magadha rule to Nanda rule i.e. till the 3^rd century the Brahmin authority was not allowed to direct the state structure. Kautilya systematically planned to overthrow the Nanda dynasty and established the Mauryan Chandragupta rule, which was Shudra, under his control. Thereafter the Brahmin authority was established over the kings, as himself became the Prime Minister and head priest. That authority and power continued into the post-colonial period as well.

It was a surprise to those of us who were born and brought up in Hyderabad in Nizam’s state, how the Brahmin authority over the civil society continued to play a critical controlling role, in such a Muslim state. Though more than 300 years Muslim rule existed here once the Nizam rule ended in Hyderabad state in 1948, a Brahmin, Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, became the first Chief Minister and the Brahmin control over the Telangana state and also united Andhra Pradesh existed with iron grip for several years later. The reason was very clear during the Satavahana (the Kummaris–pot makers even today claim that Satavahanas belong to their community, which is of lower Shudra order) rule and later Kakatiya (from 13^th Century AD onwards), rule the Brahmin bureaucratic and priestly power continued unabated. Kakatiyas were Shudras, with several Shudra castes claiming their community heritage.

The Kakatiya stone edicts were written by Brahmins by making fourfold varna order a strict rule. ( There is a strong claim that Kakatiyas were Kammas and also Mudirajas in their organizational writings).

Even the kings who were ruling small princely states during the British colonial rule could not reject the Brahmin authority over what is now known as the Hindu system. The Shudra kings who fought brave battles with enemies were also dead scared of the Brahmin spiritual power. All the Shudra warriors who won wars and became the kings were forced to take the Kshatriya status without which they said gods would punish them. Once they were declared Kshatriya they were told to remain away from the Shudra masses and follow only what the Brahmin priest tells and run the state according to the Brahmin Prime Minister’s directions.

In the religious domain the Brahmin head priest was guiding the king. The priests were regularly taking gifts from the king. In many cases they got a huge amount of cultivable land as the temple Agrahara land. This land over a period of time was made the private property of the priest family. Again this land was also cultivated with the free labour of Shudra masses. The priests and the ministers made the kings to build massive temples for the Brahmin gods with the state money in accordance with Agamashastras and the priesthood rights were taken in the name of families around that area.

In West Bengal the famous Shudra woman queen Rani Rashmoni built a Dakshineshwar Kali temple on the riverbed of Ganga at Hooghly in the 19^th century. She bought 33 acres of land around the temple. But the Bengal Brahmins did not allow the queen to inaugurate the temple from her position as queen. They forced her to write off the whole land and the temple to a Brahmin to make it functional. She wrote off that land and the temple to Ramakrishana Paramhamsa’s elder father Ramkumar Chattopadhyay and Paramhamsa inherited that land and the temple and his spiritual image was built from that temple and its property. Gradually they displaced the queen’s history itself. Amitanghush Acharya in his article in The Hindu says “As upper caste (Brahmin and Kayastha) Rajaram Mohan Roy, Easwar Chandra Vidhyasagar, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Vivekananda gained prominence Rani Rashmoni was one of the most influential icons of the 19^th century was relegated to the margins of history”[5]

Thus Kautilya’s book gave, in addition to such power to Brahmins, free lands, free labour and exclusive rights for  education which continue being the most important property of that caste and it was given both by state and the civil society. Their power was acquired from books--Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Arthashastra and Manusrimiti. They would not have retained such vast powers with physical strength  or through any other method, except for the mystic power of written word. With all that power and property the Brahmins entered the free India after 1947 with a clever shift from Sanskrit to English as their private educational language. Under the leadership of Pandit (a Brahmin with Kashmiri roots) Jawaharlal Nehru the Brahmins mostly educated in England captured the state and civil societal institutions and the Brahmins who could not go to England for English education remained here either studied in locally available English medium schools or in Sanskrit Gurukulas and became officers and priests in the temples. They defined all Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis as Hindu for keeping their political hegemony in a democratic polity without giving them the basic spiritual rights. The entire Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces were forced to remain either illiterate or regional language literates.

Historically productive mass community relationship with the king was quite consciously cut off by the Brahmin priest and the Prime Minister during the monarchical phase. The Shudra kings could not do anything to weaken the power of the Brahmin. The issue of graded inequality and caste based human untouchability could have been gradually abolished if only the Shudra kings were to rebel against the Brahmin spiritual, social and political power. But that power was so deeply entrenched even the kings were terribly scared to oppose the Brahmin because of the spiritual hold over the idea of God. The Shudras–both rulers and masses–did not realize that they had a spiritual tradition of their own, independent of the Brahmin tradition but that had no recorded book version and with a systematically trained priesthood with a written book to read. But that was so because the Brahmins refused to educate them in their gurukulas and did not allow the Shudra kings to open parallel schools. The Shudra kings also naively believed that if they open parallel schools the Brahmins and their gods would curse them. There are many examples where great warrior Shudra kings surrendered to the Brahmin power of spiritual letter and mantra.

Famous Chatrapati Shivaji of the present Maharashtra region was made to surrender to the Brahmin power and was made to take Kshatriyahood under the leadership of Brahmin priests. When the local Brahmins refused to coronate him as he came from an ordinary Maratha family he was desperate to get coronated by the Brahmins. He imported a group of Brahmin priests from Kashi and got himself crowned and surrendered to their spiritual authority. Even such a brave man could not think of training Shudra priests and keeping the religion under the Shudra control. A man who fought Mughal rulers could not oppose the Brahmins who controlled the domain of mystic power. In fact, such a mystic power which was not open for all human beings could not be defined as religion. But the same Brahmin and Bania intellectuals defined Hinduism as a inclusive religion like other religions in the world where caste kind of system was not accepted. The Shudra kings treated a Brahmin as god and whatever he asked was gifted as the Kautilya stipulated in Arthashastra.

Take for example the Baroda king, Sayajirao Gaekwad, who sent Ambedkar to America for higher education. He was a Shudra king. He was a visionary enough to send a brilliant Dalit student for his higher education to America. In fact, the scholarship given to Ambedkar came with the obligation of working for the State of Baroda after he finished his education abroad. Despite this, the Brahmin intervention came at a stage when Ambedkar was to work in Baroda’s administration. Brahmins, even as late as the twentieth century, could not come to terms with the fact that a Dalit man has become a superior/colleague of them. The fact that Ambedkar studied in Columbia and London School of Economics mattered little for them. So the priestly caste forced the king to send him away, as it was not agreeable for them to provide him a house for Ambedkar within the city. Within four days, in 1917, Ambedkar had to leave the job and go away to Bombay. That was the power of Brahmins in the kingdom of a Shudra king who was sympathetic to the education of the exploited castes–including Dalits.[6]

However, for the first time as I said earlier Shivaji’s  grandson tells the story of their control in a letter that he wrote to a top British official. Once such a gimmick was done by injecting enormous fear into their kingdom itself, then Brahmins were able to control every other aspect of the civil society and state life in his kingdom also. After the king becomes a Kshatriya a Brahmin becomes the PM of the state and another Brahmin becomes the head priest and spiritually controls the day to day belief systems of the king and his family.

Even when the Muslim empires controlled the whole nation there were Shudra local rulers and they depended on the same from Brahmin, Kayastha or Khatri knowledge of Persian language. The Muslim rulers were also dependent on the Brahmin forces for the simple reason that if they were not happy they would instigate the Shudra masses against the state. Hardly any Shudras learnt Persian during the Muslim period of Indian history. Maybe because of the fear of learning letters that the brahminism injected into their psyche, they remained away from Persian education also. There is no historical evidence that the Muslim rulers started Persian schools to teach the Shudras in the villages who were main tillers of the land, builders of artisanal and animal economy.

But for the accidental reading of Shahu Maharaj’s letter to the retired Governor of Bombay presidency written in 1918, I would not have thought of writing this essay. In my life time experience of writing about the Brahmin-Bania power in contemporary times at the expense of life threats and cases in various levels of courts–from a Sessions court at Korutla, Hyderabad, and the High Court of Telangana and the Supreme Court of India–the Dwija pundits tried to dismiss my arguments about the Brahmin-Bania power over the society and state in post-independence times and in the past–medieval and ancient times. Many Brahmin liberal intellectuals keep arguing that when so many Shudra kings ruled the Indian states in ancient, medieval and contemporary times how could Brahmin-Banias control the system. For a long time, they also dismissed Babasaheb Ambedkar and Mahatma Phule’s arguments about the control of Brahmins on the state and society on the same ground. But Shahu’s lengthy letter in his own words as a king of a very important Princely State that existed till 1947 as descendant state of great king Chatrapati Shivaji provides an indisputable testimony of how the Shudra kings suffered under the spiritual and intellectual yoke of Brahmins.

It is true that from Chandragupta Maurya to the princely states during the colonial times and also the present Chief Ministers of many states were Shudras. Yet, they could never control the spiritual power in India. Not only that, their political power was heavily circumscribed by Brahmin bureaucrats and priests. The kings and the Chief Ministers were virtual slaves of the varna spiritual control that the Brahmins imposed and that grip remains very strong as the Hindu spiritual system is not democratized.

Why were they so afraid of the Brahmin population which was so small without directly controlling the armed strength? Very rarely they were in the army. They had no role in food production and improvement of its technology from time to time. They in fact hated productive work in the fields as work of pollution. Yet their control on the Shudra masses and rulers was unbridled. As I said earlier their spiritual power came from their written word. They spread all over India with the common Brahmin language–Sanskrit–and the Shudra masses were forced to live in disconnected regions without a common language. Not that they did not learn the local languages. They learnt and also gradually Sanskritized them. Today all the regional languages which were developed by the productive masses over a period of centuries got Sanskritized by varying degrees . Because these languages were brought into written text the Brahmin writers jumped into the task to inject Sanskrit vocabulary into all regional languages. At the same time, they saw to it that the Shudra/Dalit masses do not learn Sanskrit or Persian during the Muslim rule and English during the British rule. Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar’s lives show how difficult it is for them to learn Sanskrit or English. Ambedkar had to learn Sanskrit in Germany.

Even the children of Shudra kings did not become well educated in Sanskrit, Persian or in English by the time India achieved freedom. Only the Dwijas whom Brahmins–particularly Kautilya and Manu– historically given the status of three upper varnas which need not do the agrarian production or practice animal husbandry became most educated by 1947. Mahatma Gandhi, a Bania from Gujarat who was a son of the Prime Minister of a small princely state and Nehru a Brahmin a Brahmin with Kashmiri roots became the main pillars of independent India. No Shudra king could get English education like these two leaders. Sardar Vallabai Patel a peasant Shudra and Ambedkar a Dalit competed with them with foreign degrees but they were not allowed to run the real system.  Ambedkar became a Buddhist and died and Patel died as an equal Shudra.

However, to understand the role of Brahmins in the states where Shudra kings were ruling during the British colonialism it is important to carefully read the full text of the memorandum that king Shahu Maharaj (1874–1922) wrote to Sydenham the former Governor of Bombay province. what follows is the only written record that a Shudra king left for understanding the cunning role of Brahmin intellectuals in the whole of Indian history and it speaks volumes:

“SHAHU Maharaj TO SYDENHAM FORMER GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY ABOUT BRAHMIN CONTROL OF THE SATE AND SOCIETY

Kolhapur
September 1918

My Dear Lord Sydenham,
I have to thank Your Lordship for championing the cause of the dumb millions of India. Your close acquaintance with India and especially with Bombay, which is the political storm-centre of the country, has enabled Your Lordship to gauge the situation correctly and to see the fallacy of applying the Western principles of equality to the priest-ridden and caste-divided illiterate millions of India. The Deccan has been for centuries groaning under the tyranny of the Brahmin priest, who has seized supremacy in every way in religious as well as secular matters, politics, commerce, education, banking, etc and so on. The masses of the country are not, therefore, free agents and unless special precautions are taken to safeguard their interests they are sure to fall an easy prey to the tyranny of their Brahmin masters. Communal representation is the only way for safeguarding their interest in the Provincial and Imperial Councils. I may state some of the reasons why the Marathas (a caste to which king Shahu himself belonged to. This community is now demanding for reservation in education and employment both at Delhi and in their own state Maharashtra–italics and emphasis are mine) are greatly in need of it:

FIRSTLY. Although the British are the rulers of the country, the real power rests with the Brahmin officers who pervade every rank of the service from the meanest clerk and the village accountant, the Kulkarni, to the highest offices and predominate even in the Councils. The other communities have to submit to this Brahmin bureaucracy and their tyranny is beyond description. The grievances of the non-Brahmin communities do not reach the British Officers and even when they go to them the Brahmin subordinate is a past master in the art of prejudicing his head against the complainant. Under such a bureaucratic rule of the Brahmins, the Marathas and other backward communities have no chance to send their representatives to the enlarged Councils. The non-Brahmins will have to vote in favour of Brahmin candidates whose caste-men know all the tricks of threatening, cajoling or inducing them. There is no remedy except communal representation, for a limited number of years at least. The elections for the Councils, Municipal and Local Boards are instances in which a Maratha very rarely succeeds.

SECONDLY. The Congress agitation forced the Government to enlarge the Councils under Morley-Minto-Scheme. The Congress has up to this time devoted its energies to further the cause of the Brahmin bureaucracy and the British Government has also unwittingly played into their hands. The Congress has closed its eyes to the needs of, and done nothing for, the submerged classes, and the aims of their leaders are to strive to keep down the masses to perpetuate the bureaucratic rule of their community. Tilak’s organ, Kesari, is condemning free and compulsory primary education and the Maharaja of Darbhanga is opposing tooth and nail in the Council of Behar any scheme of popular education. This is one done with no other object but the preservation of the despotism of their community. And if, Government persists in refusing communal representation the result will be to flood the Councils with the Brahmins, whose ideal leaders are the two worthies who barefaced oppose the interests of communities other than their own. This is sure to degrade the position of the non-Brahmins more and more. Communal representation is, therefore, necessary to counteract all such tendencies.

THIRDLY. It might be urged that the Government will nominate members from the Maratha and other backward communities if they do not succeed in the general election. But I think that this expedient will not be very useful. Such a nominated member generally lacks the confidence which a successful fight at the poll gives. He is, moreover, most likely to play into the hands of those the poll gives. He is, moreover, most likely to play into the hands of the powerful priestly bureaucracy. He may not care for the interests of a community which does not elect him. Moreover, the very fact that he is a Government nominee takes away from him the value of advocacy, however disinterested it may be. The Brahmin bureaucrats are in the habit of accusing nominated members of being partisans and slaves of Government and thus try to lower such members in the popular esteem. An election through a limited communal electorate will create confidence in the Councillors who will be more and more self-reliant. And this the Brahmins do not want and hence their opposition to communal representation is due to this fear.

FOURTHLY. I may quote an instance to show how the Brahmin bureaucracy kills self-respect. One Mr Bagal, a Maratha LLB, was a Mamlatdar here and that time he was very enthusiastic in the cause of the masses and was against the Brahmin supremacy. But when he left service and commenced to practice at the courts, he found it expedient to change his angle of vision in order to curry favour with the Brahmin Judges and Magistrates and now he is noted Brahmanophil in public. He dares not give expression to his real feelings. Mr Latthe too, after commencing practice at the bar, has become altogether moderate in his attacks against the Brahmins. He was a zealous advocate of non-Brahmins.

Many a time I have found to my mortification and chagrin that orders against the interests of the Brahmin bureaucracy are intercepted or were so watered in the passage that they became useless. The reason was that the Brahmins were in possession of the records and they can quote precedents to support Brahmin claims and can suppress the precedents that will go against them.

Even high British officers and non-Brahmin States are powerless against the Brahmin bureaucracy. They dare not make any move lest the Brahmin press will raise a howl against them and they are afraid of the higher officers whose Brahmin assistants take precious care to have them prejudiced against innovation. This has come to such a pass that the British officer or State who dares to go against the Brahmins is looked upon as foolish or imprudent; for he forgets that he is standing on a very slippery ground. His Brahmin subordinates are to join with his enemies and bring him into trouble.

FIFTHLY. The principle that majorities have no need of separate representation does not hold good in a province where a selfish minority is likely to get the power, which is sure to be used to hold the majority in perpetual vassalage. The Maratha community is numerically very strong in the Central Division. But it is weak as the number of men of independent views is very small. It can of course boast of a very small number of legal practitioners. The few that now practise, realise that the whole weight of the Brahmin bureaucracy will be thrown against them if they resist and therefore young men are unwilling to begin practice at the bar. There is not, nor will there be, in my lifetime at least, a single Maratha leader in the whole of the Bombay Presidency. This shows the necessity of some special provision for the numerically strong Maratha community to secure an adequate representation of their grievances.

It is difficult to realise the tyranny to which the millions of Marathas are subjected. In the villages, as Your Lordship knows, the Kulkarni or the village accountant reigns supreme and none dare raise his voice against him. The village priest and the astrologer and their caste men are looked upon as Gods and the villagers have to feed them and pay them fees equally on joyful and sorrowful occasions. The secular and religious bondage is so very complete that the Maratha can hardly think for himself much less act for himself. But for the inborn loyalty of the Maratha, the wily Brahmin would have made a tool of him in his reasonable acts. It must be said to his credit that although the Maratha was never the recipient of any special favours at the hands of Government, he has ever remained loyal. To refuse communal representation to such a community who have been profusely shedding their blood on the fields of battle in the three continents in the cause of the empire is tantamount to consigning these faithful people to the tender mercies of their hitherto oppressors. The Councils will be flooded with Brahmins who will have a dominating voice in the affairs of the departments handed over to them. All these departments will be exploited to the advantage of the favoured community and to the prejudice of the real supporters of Government. The non-Brahmins will ultimately have to submit to Brahmin influences and sacrifice their loyalty.

I, for myself, have done my best to completely free my subjects from the tender mercies of the village Kulkarni, Bhat (ritual priest) and Joshi (hereditary village astrologer). The services of the first are commuted and are replaced by paid agencies mainly recruited from non-Brahmin ranks who were specially trained for the work in anticipation of the change. By a proclamation the rayats (farmers) are informed that they need not employ the village priest or the astrologer who will have no claims against them if they do not employ him. Thus liberty of conscience is given them. In the same way liberty of action is also given to them by abolishing the hereditary rights of the village artisans whose inefficient work was very dearly paid for, by a portion of the produce.

I have also cancelled the rules that pressed very heavily against the Mahars and Mangs and Ramoshis who were described as the criminal tribes. The restriction upon their movements resulted in preventing them from taking to trade and forced some of their members to take to dishonesty and violence. By the way I may mention that the Boarding Institute for the untouchable classes named after your beloved lamented daughter is quite flourishing. I am sending a photo of the building from which Your Lordship will see that its inmates do not despise manual labour as they were apt to do when they took to books.

Very few can realise the influence of the Brahmin bureaucracy as your Lordship does. Being very strong in every branch of the service, high or low, it has its way and means to keep other communities down, who have to submit to their ex-actions and dare not raise a protest even when flagrant injustice is done to them. A merchant of Kolhapur was cheated by a Brahmin leader. When asked to prosecute the latter, the former said that he had no chance of success as the judges were Brahmins, the Police were Brahmins, the clerks were Brahmins and that instead of getting any redress of injustice he would make himself a marked man and that he would have to bear the consequences of Brahmin revenge. Even when I asked him to prosecute the pleader he begged to be excused and refused to move in the matter. Similarly, one Mr Gandale, a Brahmin, preached in public that it was good for the untouchable classes to remain so, because a new mixed caste is seen springing up as a result of illegitimate connections between the two castes of Brahmins and Marathas, as the two castes are touchables. I tried to bring Mr Gandale to court for making such defamatory statements but no one dared take up the prosecution. This fear of the Brahmin bureaucracy is not entertained by the merchants or such other people alone but it haunts even Princes. I crave your Lordship’s indulgence for a little piece of personal boasting. I am the only Prince who is openly fighting against the Brahmin bureaucracy although I do realise their power. They do not come forward themselves but they instigate the subjects against their Prince whose black side only the Brahmin bureaucracy exposes.

The best way to break down this citadel of Brahmin power is to grant communal representation, not only in the Councils but also in all branches of the service, high or low. Whenever a chance occurs, preference should be given to qualified non-Brahmins. It will not appoint a few non-Brahmins in important places. This remedy is worse than the disease. Such an office is between the anvil of his Brahmin staff and the hammer of the similar staff of the higher office. His staff forces him to take measures even against the interests of the masses and the poor fellow has to bear the responsibility. The remedy lies in granting proportionate communal representation in the subordinate and clerical staff also. Recruitment for the posts of the lowest clerks should be made from non-Brahmins and for this purpose a list of eligible candidates from those communities should be maintained, and appointments made from among them until the non-Brahmins get a percentage of posts in proportion to their numerical strength.

In the educational department also the Brahmin bureaucracy comes in. All the school-masters are Brahmins. The Brahmin bureaucracy here is not like the priestly bureaucracy. In priestly bureaucracy not only caste but learning is also necessary. A learned Brahmin becomes a priest. In the Brahmin bureaucracy it is the caste alone that is required. However low, wicked, unhealthy, immoral a man he may be, being a Brahmin, he is supposed to be higher than a Prince or a General or an Admiral or any learned man of another caste. The Brahmin bureaucracy for ages past had ordered that no non-Brahmin should be taught anything, even the three ‘R’s’ [reading, writing, arithmetic]. The consequence is almost all the colleges and high schools are for Brahmins though they are cosmopolitan. There are all Brahmins in them. Untouchables are not allowed to come in their precincts. Some other castes are allowed but their percentage is 1 to 100. Again I say there should be communal representation in service as there must be in councils at least for another 20 years. If no step is taken in that direction it will not be correct to say that the Princes ruled India or I may even say that the British ruled India but on the contrary it will be right to say that Brahmins rule India. Communal representation is the only remedy.

If communal representation is not granted to the non-Brahmin communities in Maharashtra, all this trouble of Political Reform will end in strengthening the Brahmin bureaucracy at the expense of the really loyal and faithful subjects of the Government

The Shankaracharya of Kolhapur (Dr Kurtkoti) is a learned man, but I must say that at heart he is a Brahmin of Brahmins. The other day he presided at a meeting held to support the Durbar in their action of doing away with Kulkarni and the president refused to communicate to me the resolution passed at the meeting to request the Durbar to investigate the conduct of the Kulkarnis and to give relief to a certain extent to the people who had to suffer at their hands. He has now openly joined the extremist Congress. As a religious head he ought not to dabble in politics; but a Brahmin is very rapacious and wants to be supreme everywhere.

Even such an educated person like Mr Rajwade, who poses to be a great historian, is partial to his own caste and so envious towards other castes, that he has published some false and defamatory matter about the Chandrasenia Kayastha Prabhu caste and the Mohamedans. Of course they are going to take steps against Mr Rajwade but I only refer to the incident in order to show you the Brahmin character.

I should have very much liked to speak and discuss these matters personally with Your Lordship, but my only chance to do so seems to be if I am sent up by Government like the Maharaja of Patiala.

This letter has become very lengthy and I must now close, not, however, without making apologies to Your Lordship for its unusual length, for which my only excuse is the gravity and urgency of the situation and the momentous issue involved.

May I request Your Lordship kindly to convey my respectful remembrances to Lady Sydenham, and with warm regards.

Believe me,

Yours Sincerely,

[Signed]

PS: I hear that Sir John Hewett is coming over here in India. May I request Your Lordship kindly to send to me a note of introduction to him?

I herewith enclose a few copies of my letter so that you may please give one to Sir John Hewett and Sir Valentine Chirol and, if you think it unobjectionable, to Mr Montagu, with a request to all in my behalf to treat this as confidential as I do not want my name to come forward.”[7]

Shahu Maharaj realized that the priesthood was critical in controlling civil societal life. He says “they control the religious and even the secular life of the people”. According to him a Brahmin is only for Brahmins. He describes the Indian society as “priest-ridden and caste divided”. He calls the Deccan as a society that was groaning under the tyranny of the (Brahmin) priests” They help each other at every place, in the darbar and in the court. They were the village land revenue officers called Kulkarnis. They exploit the tillers all along. A similar system was also there all over India including Telangana where a Muslim ruler was ruling. The revenue system was under the control of Brahmins by my childhood in Telangana state. He thus came to a conclusion that unless a proportionate reservation system is placed in his state he cannot do justice to the non-brahmin productive population. But that day to present, the whole issue is revolving around jobs in the Government sector whether it is small or big. But there is no demand from Shudras at the base structural level—the priesthood and handling the spiritual philosophy–for a share in every aspect of Hindu life.

Brahmins established their hegemony through the spiritual system and that system got institutionalized through philosophical written text. But philosophy and understanding the role of each symbol in a religion requires very critical reading of the religious texts. The Shudras, whether they were rulers or tillers or artisanal operators, have not focused around that fundamental issue of equality in religious life. For example Ambedkar in his seminal work, Who Were The Shudras: How They Came to Be the Forth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society says:

“1) The Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the Solar race. (2) There was a time when the Aryan society recognized only three Varnas, namely, Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. (3) The Shudras did not form a separate Varna. They ranked as part of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society. (4) There was a continuous feud between the Shudra kings and the Brahmins in which the Brahmins were subjected to many tyrannies and indignities. (5) As a result of the hatred towards the Shudras generated by their tyrannies and oppressions, the Brahmins refused to perform the Upanayana of the Shudras. (6) Owing to the denial of Upanayana, the Shudras who were Kshatriyas became socially degraded, fell below the rank of the Vaishyas and thus came to form the fourth Varna”[8]

In this sum up Ambedkar puts the Shudras as part of Aryan society. That may be because by the time he was writing this book the race question was not well studied with advanced methodological tools–archeology and DNA studies. Now that question is settled that Shudras are Indo-Dravidians with Indo-African roots. The significant question, however, in his thesis is his importance to the spiritual symbol, Upanayana (so called sacred thread). The Brahmin priesthood is still linked to this issue. Even now when the RSS is defining all Shudras as Hindu whether it wants all of them to get this right to Upanayana is not allowed to come up for debate. The Shudra kings who were given the Kshatriya status got the Upanayana right yet they did not have the right to priesthood, why? This fundamental control over the religious power is exclusively kept in the hands of Brahmins. The Kshatriyas and Vaisyas in  modern times, while claiming to be Hindu, rather militantly, also do not ask for the priesthood right. But they ask for reservation in the state and in fact several Bania castes got the right to reservation as they defined themselves as the OBC.

The long history of political systems, monarchical and post monarchical, the role of the spiritual system and its exclusive control in the hands of Brahmins made India a very stagnant nation. Even the priestly class could not face competition and never improved the systems in any meaningful direction. The Shudras and Dwijas, particularly Brahmins, remained frozen. The Shudras and Dalits got stuck not only in social fragmentation but illiteracy, spiritual backwardness and lack of national and international exposure. Both the masses and rulers remained helpless in their unorganized way of life. Both the Brahminness and Shudraness became shackles and kept the productive forces, market relations primitive even in modern times. No revolutionary movements sprang up from the Shudra forces and the Brahminness did not allow the priestly forces to self-reform with an understanding of universal changes. Even with their violent colonialism, if not for the British and their globalized knowledge system, Brahmins would have been even more regressive social forces in the subcontinent without any outside exposure. The Sanskrit language would not have given them any additional advantage than the spiritual control over the Shudra masses. All Indians lived a very fate bound life.

Dynamic spiritual discourse involving all masses would have changed every other sphere from time to time. But Brahmanism was uncannily successful in assimilating and swallowing up all the revolt against its oppressive spiritual conspiracy. The only major shakeup that the Shudra and Dwija masses encountered collectively in their living history was the freedom struggle. Even the arrival of Islamic rule and its existence in India did not bring any significant revolutionary change in Indian life. The Muslim rulers and the Muslim ruling class remained more aligned with the Brahmins and other Dwijas than the Shudras all through the Indian history, ever since they established their administrative authority either in the whole of India or in different regions like Telangana, Mysore, Junagadh and so on. This question needs a study of its own.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is the author of Why I am Not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India and The Shudras–Vision for a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy. I thank Karthik Raja Karuppusamy for his editorial assistance.

[1]Kautilya, Arthashastra, Shamahastri’s translation, p 10

https://ia802703.us.archive.org/13/items/Arthasastra_English_Translation/Arthashastra_of_Chanakya_-_English.pdf Page 10

[2]Ibid, p 10-11

[3]  Ram Madhav, Because India Comes First: Reflections on Nationalism, Identity and Culture, (Chennai, Westland, 2020)

https://www.amazon.in/Because-India-Comes-First-Reflections-ebook/dp/B08LDMMV2X?asin=B08LDMMV2X&revisionId=5e8f7294&format=1&depth=1 kindle version

[4] Wendy Doniger, What is the Kamasutra really about? Wendy Doniger reads the classic text, Scroll, Aug 06, 2015

[5]https://www.thehindu.com/society/the-shudra-queen-rashmoni-and-a-sacred-river/article34847554.ece

[6] http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_waiting.html

[7] This letter has been excerpted from ‘Chhatrapati Shahu: The Pillar of Social Democracy’, edited by P.B Salunkhe and published by the Education Department, Government of Maharashtra

[8] Ambedkar BR, Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, Volume 7, (Bombay: Government of Maharastra, 1990), 11-12

https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/the-shudra-kings-and-brahmins-a-mirror-image-of-history/

Scholars study her books to understand the question of caste and untouchability, and also to change the caste system.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd    

Gail Omvedt. Photo: Shramik Mukti Dal

Dr Gail Omvedt (81), one of the greatest scholars on caste studies, passed away on August 24, 2021 evening in her village, Kasegaon, Sangli, Maharashtra.

Omvedt has pioneered caste studies having come as a student from the US and settled down in India in the 1970s. She later married Bharat Patankar, a Marxist scholar and activist; both of them lived in his village over these years. She came to study caste and Mahatma Phule’s movement in Maharashtra as a PhD student, and was moved by the kind of caste and untouchability system she encountered in India. Omvedt settled down in this country to work for the liberation of the oppressed castes.

As an American-born Indian scholar, sociologist and human rights activist, she was well known all over the world for her writing on Dalits/OBCs/Adivasis.

Also read: Gail Omvedt on the Indian Feminist Movement and the Challenges It Faces

She was a prolific writer and published numerous books. Her PhD thesis introduced Mahatma Phule’s Satyashodhak Movement to the world and her major book, Dalits and Democratic Revolution, became a handbook in every young student’s hands in the colleges and universities across India, and also in the South Asian study centres of the world.

Scholars study her books to understand the question of caste and untouchability, and also to change the caste system. She was a great Phule-Ambedkarite, who led many movements from the front. The Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi movements all over India will be indebted to her lifetime of work.

All of us who worked with her in a long journey of Dalit/OBC/Adivasi/women’s liberation movements for the last 40 years, along with her husband Bharat Patankar and daughter Prachi Patanakar, will celebrate her life and work as proud Indians.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social activist. His latest book is The Shudras: Vision For a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy.

The Wire: India Will Remember Gail Omvedt Forever. https://thewire.in/caste/india-will-remember-gail-omvedt-forever

CM Jagan Mohan Reddy has made sure that students are taught in the English medium at all levels, from anganwadi to university. That is a quantum jump in India’s educational language policy.

Written by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd |August 17, 2021 5:02:46 pmThe Andhra government’s education policy has parallels with the British model of educational welfarism. (Representational)

Andhra Pradesh’s education policy appears to be birthing new hope among its people, especially those sections historically denied equal opportunity in the Indian education system. The hope comes from the repeated stress of Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on investment in school, college and university education and his claim that he wishes to provide education as “property to every child in the state”. His policy has three major aspects:

One, the CM is saying, rather repeatedly, that quality and equal education in all respects is the best asset that the government could give to the younger generation.

Two, never before, including the period after Independence, have Indians got a one-language education with uniformity of learning opportunities. In this case, he has made sure that students are taught in the English medium, with one subject Telugu, at all levels from anganwadi (pre-school) to university. That is a quantum jump in India’s educational language policy.

Third, the government is creatively spending a substantial amount of money on the education sector. The data provided here gives a clear picture. The amounts given here were spent in two budget years after Jagan Mohan Reddy came to power in 2019. Under the Jagananna Amma Vodi scheme, it spent Rs 13,022 crore, which went into the accounts of poor mothers to spend on their children’s school education. It benefited 44,48,865 families. Under the Jagananna Vidya Deevena scheme, it spent Rs 5,573 crore, which went into mothers’ accounts of college-going youth. It benefited 18,80,934 families. Under Jagananna Vasathi Deevena, Rs 2,270 crore went into 15,56,956 women’s accounts to spend on various miscellaneous educational and family expenditures. Under Jagananna Gorumudda scheme, Rs 1,600 crore was allotted for the provision of quality midday meals in schools. Under yet another scheme, Jagananna Vidya Kanuka, it spent Rs 650 crore on books, bags, shoes and so on. The state government also initiated a programme to build good school infrastructure. In all, so far on, the government spent Rs 26,678 crore in two financial years on education.

This expenditure is over and above the teaching and non-teaching staff salaries. In a country of massive poverty, this is a game-changer.

The Indian education system has been caste and class biased. Indian democracy has not yet realised the importance of investing in quality school education. No state or the Centre has realised that the nation has to be united with one-language education. For this, a bold decision is needed to appoint English as the main national teaching language. Recently N R Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, said English must be recognised as an Indian language and taught in all schools as a national priority.

The so-called bold and progressive chief ministers like Congress’s Siddaramaiah and CPM’s Pinarayi Vijayan shrank from introducing English-medium in government schools in their states. In Telangana, K Chandrashekar Rao promised KG to PG English medium education and went back on it. Mamata Banerjee too has not done anything innovative on that account. Even in Maharashtra and Gujarat, where the rich educate their children in English medium, Maratha and Gujarati sentiments keeps poor Dalits, Shudras and Adivasis in regional language education. This is where Jagan Mohan Reddy’s bold step must be appreciated.

The Andhra government’s education policy has parallels with the British model of educational welfarism. However, this policy is not backed by the central government. So long as Delhi does not push for a switch to teaching in English, quality education for future generations will not be possible. The AP government is showing a way.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist. He is the author of From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual–My Memoirs 

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/why-andhra-pradeshs-education-policy-deserves-to-be-scaled-up-nationally-7458123/

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/why-andhra-pradeshs-education-policy-deserves-to-be-scaled-up-nationally-7458123/

The RSS knows that Shudra agrarian communities across India are re-assessing their status in all spheres of life — spiritual, social, educational and economic.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD17 August, 2021 11:25 am IST

Illustration by Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint 

Just a day before the Indian Parliament passed the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Seventh Amendment) Bill on the question of Other Backward Class reservation, the general secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Dattatreya Hosabale, gave an unusual statement, given the history of his organisation. He said that reservation is a historical necessity for India, it should continue as long as there is inequality being experienced by a particular section of society. He also said that “the history of India would be ‘incomplete’ without the history of Dalits”.

The statement of its new general secretary goes against the repeated statements that Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has given against reservations. On 10 August 2021, the OBC reservation Bill, which is meant to uphold the Maratha and other state-level caste reservations, was passed unanimously with a two-thirds majority in Parliament at a time when the Parliament did not do any other useful work by Narendra Modi’s BJP government.

This Bill put the Congress in a fix, because when it was in power, it never took such a significant step.

The RSS knows that the Shudra agrarian communities across the country now are in a mood to reassess their status in all spheres of life — spiritual, social, educational, and economic. 

The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to appoint trained archakas (priests) from all Shudra/Dalit castes also goes against the very traditional (in the garb of nationalist) idea of Hinduism of the RSS. It never openly stood against the practice of only Brahmins getting priesthood in the temples. But now it cannot go against such a move because it knows that to remain in political power in Delhi and also in other states, the Shudra/OBC votes are critical.

It also knows that all its anti-Muslim battles were physically fought by the Shudra/OBCs with the hope that they will get equal rights in Hinduism with the support of RSS. If they do not get equality when they are in power, the Shudra/OBCs will rebel against the RSS’ Brahminism. This is why the strongest anti-OBC reservation forces in that network are grudgingly silent.

The issue of caste census

Another very contentious issue in the organisation is the caste census. Since the Vajpayee-Advani days (1999-2004), the RSS has been resisting the demand for a caste census. But the statement by Dharmendra Pradhan, the current education minister, who is an OBC himself, shows a serious intent that has otherwise been missing all these years. He said during a debate in the Rajya Sabha, “caste-based census is a revolutionary process.” At an ideological level, the Shudra/OBC demands of extending reservations in education and jobs, access to temples, priesthood to all Shudra/Dalits who accept themselves as Hindu, and caste census, have existed irrespective of parties. There are more such people in the Bharatiya Janta Party and RSS than in any other group as of now.

These issues are not that of the RSS. The sangh parivar’s issues were the Ram temple, abrogation of Article 370, the Uniform Civil Code, and so on, which have implications for the Muslim community. The theory of RSS came from the Brahmins, but in practice, the anti-Islamic muscle power came from the Shudra/OBCs. Ever since Narendra Modi claimed that he was an OBC, just before the 2014 election, the Shudra/OBC forces felt that the future government would be theirs. In the latest cabinet reshuffle, Modi has included more OBC/Dalit/Adivasis than ever before.

This kind of caste-identity issue was not anticipated by the RSS theoreticians who officially owned Manusmriti as their great ancient constitution. K. B. Hedgewar, M. S. Golwalkar, even and later Sarsanghchalaks were not at all convinced by the present Constitution, which could empower the Shudras, OBCs, and Dalits in Delhi and other states, and even shift the power base. The Congress also resisted such a shift in power, which some liberal intellectuals lament as a ‘total shift in power elite.’ While the Shudras/OBCs/Dalits do not understand the Euro-American jargon, they do now know the power of caste and numbers. The Left-liberals, coming from the dvija social background, think the Modi era has disempowered the so-called well-educated power elite.

Ideological opposition in BJP and RSS

An ideological opposition to Modi and Dharmendra Pradhan kind of OBC practice can be seen in the recent writings of Ram Madhav. Madhav, who is a Brahmin from Andhra Pradesh, came from the RSS to the BJP after Modi became prime minister and went back to the RSS with definite ideological differences. In many of his recent articles talking about the dangers of ‘elected authoritarianism dictatorships’, it is easy to understand who he is referring to. He bemoans how a democratic government cannot be run by elected representatives alone. Perhaps he wanted to be a Pramod Mahajan in the Modi government but was not allowed to. In his recent book, Because India Comes First: Reflections on Nationalism, Identity and Culture (2020), Ram Madhav upholds Manusmriti in the same ideological reverence as Hedgewar when speaking about Manu’s laws.

As I have written in The Shudras: Vision for New Path, Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, praised Manu’s laws as greater than those written by Lycurgus and Solon and says,  “In our constitution, there is no mention of the unique constitutional developments in ancient Bharat. Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia…. But to our Constitutional pundits, that (Manu’s laws) mean nothing.” (Introduction XXV) He had no respect for the Constitution that Ambedkar instituted.

However, it is the same Constitution that enabled an OBC, Narendra Modi,  to become the Prime Minister of the nation in 2014. Since Modi is still the Prime Minister, Ram Madhav in the very introduction of his book, says “Through its living history of over five millennia, India has offered invaluable gems of wisdom enriching all of mankind…This wisdom was proclaimed in Manusmriti, one of the oldest constitutions of India.” He further quotes a Sanskrit sloka from the Manusmriti to say “Men all over the world would come to beseech lessons in character through the lives of the great men born in this country”. No Shudra/OBC/Dalit man or woman can accept this view of Manu even if they are from the RSS/BJP fold. In one of his articles in the Indian Express Madhav says, “this pandemic has become an excuse for some leaders to usurp more powers and become more authoritarian”. In his book, he develops this line of argument further.

In a 2014 internal RSS meeting, Bhagwat also said that “the Sangh should not get into eradicating or opposing caste. Caste is a system (though now perverted) that exists in society. It would remain until the society believes in it.” Hosabale’s view of caste and reservation is opposite of this view of Bhagwat.

We know that Brahmin intellectuals working with all parties and institutions share similar sentiments about Manu, Kautilya and the caste system, but no Shudra/OBC/Dalit who has studied them and experienced caste oppression can agree with that view.

The opposition to reservation and caste census comes from such Brahmanism and its support from Shudra/OBC/Dalits comes from their socio-spiritual and historically oppressed status. The Shudra/OBC/Dalits working in the RSS/BJP have more serious reasons to ask for equality in every sphere because they have invested their energies and resources in anti-Muslim campaigns. Modi’s location as a ‘claimed OBC’ and Ram Madhav’s location as a Brahmin ideologue of the RSS seem to clash on such issues.

However, one can see there are two strong opposing ideological positions in the RSS and BJP. Let’s wait and see what happens in the future.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist and social activist. He is the author of The Shudras: Vision For a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy. Views are personal.

(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)

https://theprint.in/opinion/bjps-obc-line-has-silenced-rss-brahmins-but-shudras-key-to-anti-muslim-battles/716709/