Caste What is the use of a new theory, if within it, the present status of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis will not change?Nov 16, 2021 | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Intellectuals of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party are foregrounding the theory of integral humanism that Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916-1968) is said to have propounded.null

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale and secretary Ram Madhav have been repeatedly talking about Upadhyaya’s integral humanism, defining it as the core philosophy which will guide their future in power.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also occasionally talks about this philosophy as his government’s beacon. The latest invocation of this theory was at the book launch of Ram Madhav’s The Hindutva Paradigm: Integral Humanism and Quest for a Non-Western Worldview. At the launch, Hosabale said, “Hindutva is neither left nor right, integral humanism is its essence.”

The question, however, is how this philosophy of integral humanism makes the RSS and its ideologues different from what they were earlier, as followers of the likes of V.D. Savarkar, K.B. Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar. It is important to examine this philosophy not only for the interest of India’s minorities – whom the RSS has traditionally reviled – but especially for the interest of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis, whom they use as muscle power against Muslims and Christians without giving them equal status in the varna dharma parampara (the tradition of caste-based religion) that the Brahminic Hindutva philosophers so far have been following.

From left to right: RSS ideologues K.B. Hedgewar, M.S. Golwalkar, Deendayal Upadhyaya

Deendayal Upadhyaya was an RSS worker, who later in life became the second president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political wing of the RSS. He was a Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh, brought up in the same environment that Bhagwat, Hosabale and Ram Madhav spent their childhood in, as all of them come from the same caste background, though born in different states.null

The growth of caste culture that takes place in an Indian’s personality in childhood remains with her or him for the rest of their life.

There are many traits of Brahminism that go against human equality, even within the scope of Hindutva, and which are a byproduct of the varna dharma casteism of the Brahminic tradition. In many of its earlier theoretical writings, particularly of Golwalkar, the RSS elaborated a whole system of Hindutva parampara. Both Golwalkar and Hedgewar had a Brahmin background, and so far, there is no Shudra, Dalit or Adivasi theoretician from among the Sangh’s ranks.

An upbringing within the caste culture eschews any integral co-existence with other caste beings. Caste divisions are enforced more rigidly than divisions with persons born and brought up in different religious cultures. Can integral humanism serve the purpose of making India an individually equalised cultural nation? Only if it incorporates the goal of making Hinduism a democratic religion.

Upadhyaya was opposed to both western capitalist individualism and Marxist socialism, though he supported western science selectively.

Any science – western or eastern – is rooted in the dignity of labour and production of goods and commodities without involving purity and pollution principles around human production, including agrarian and artisanal activity.

As an organisation deeply rooted in Brahminism, the RSS’s notion of Indian tradition is constructed around the Brahminical values of purity, pollution and the graded inequality of caste and gender, along with human untouchability.

Upadhyaya has not problematised the question of caste in the same manner as Marxist and liberal intellectuals from Brahmanic backgrounds did. Nor do the contemporary RSS or BJP intellectuals problematise caste culture by integrating the ideology of Mahatma Phule and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, in which abolition of caste and human untouchability in all spheres of human life is a cardinal principle.

What Upadhyaya tries to do is combine Mahatma Gandhi’s sarvodaya and gram swaraj. Why Gandhi and not, say, Phule or Ambedkar? Because Gandhi too was a supporter of Hindu varna dharma, if not human untouchability.

According to one critique, the integral humanism theory of Upadhyaya followed the tradition of advaita developed by Adi Sankara. Though the advaita school talks about non-dualism of the divine essence, it did not go against the worshiping of deities that have Kshatriya (Vishnu, Sri Rama and so on) and Brahmin (Parashurama) roots in the Puranic and Ramayana mythological tradition. The Ram temple movement – with its ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan and  violence against minorities as an acceptable norm – was the RSS’s creation itself. RSS intellectuals know that Ram came from a Kshatriya dynasty which did not believe in the abolition of caste but in the perpetuation of it.

A statue of Ram in Ayodhya. Photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

How does the idea of integral humanism become possible when the divine deities they promote and institutionalise have roots in caste spirituality? The idea of non-dualism should operate, at least, in the principle that there is only one god and that god created all human beings – men and women – equal. The major challenge before the Shudra, Dalit and Adivasis working in the Hindutva school – even with the newly emphasised ideology of integral humanism – would be in negotiating their place in that spiritual and cultural nationalism.

As the integral humanist philosophy being propagated by RSS and BJP intellectuals does not have an agenda for abolition of caste, gender inequality and untouchability as part of its core ideology, what will happen to the unequal status of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis in the Indian system and also within the Hindutva organisations?

It is not a coincidence that within their networks, they did not allow any Shudra, Dalit or Adivasi intellectual to emerge and offer a reflection of their own self-status.

The RSS and BJP have so far not accepted that dignity of labour, even in the Hindu spiritual domain, is part of their ideological agenda. Even if you ignore caste language, a Hindu shoe maker, pot maker, sweeper, scavenger or shepherd cannot become a priest in a Hindu temple even if the person is qualified. How does integral humanism overcome this historical problem? Without a theory of human equality what does integral humanism mean?

Upadhyaya’s integral humanism theoretically talks about the organised attributes of body, mind, intellect and soul. Does it include the mind, intellect and soul of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis, who are organised into the Hindutva organisations? As of now, they do not have equal spiritual rights in Hinduism and equal intellectual status to that of Brahmins who are propounding these theories.null

Also, how does integral humanism deal with the food culture of all Indians?

Both modern Brahminism and Hindutva organisations believe in vegetarianism.

Universal humanism, a known philosophical postulate, does not discriminate against human beings based on their food culture, whether in civil society or in spiritual society. If the RSS’s integral humanism is like universal humanism, what will it do to its long history of (about 96 years in the present form) stressing about vegetarianism?

Upadhyaya’s integral humanism opposes individualism, thinking that it is of Western origin. It appears that its opposition to individualism is based on its belief in casteism or communalism. But the Indian constitution itself functions based on individual rights as every individual is a citizen with one vote and one value. Is not, then, the RSS’s integral humanism opposed to the present constitution?

Representative image of protesters holding up a picture of B.R. Ambedkar. Photo: PTI/File

Herein lies the threat to Shudra, Dalit and Adivasi rights, apart from minority rights, in this philosophy.

Look at the paradox of Hindu society. Except for Brahmins and other Dwijas, both theoretically and practically, Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis are considered to be people of only body but not of mind, intellect and soul.null

In the Rig Vedic theory of four varnas – Shudra, Vaisya, Kshatriya and Brahmin – the Shudras were assigned the role of slavery (what was called ‘service’ to other three varnas) without allowing them to use their mind or intellect. They were denied their spiritual soul. The notion of the soul is that it is a separate entity within the human and is supposed to exist independent of the body.

The Hindutva school that believes in religious dogmatism and wants to use it in political domain as well, still does not believe in promoting Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis as priests in Hindu temples. Thus, they are still being treated as soulless beings.

Again, how does integral humanism generate a Soul among the productive masses who constitute the food producing farmers of India? They are the vast majority and the Brahminic integral humanism of the RSS does not show them any new path of liberation.

Kautilya’s Arthshastra, Manu’s Dharmashastra, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have all affirmed the status of castes. These books are being promoted in schools, colleges and universities under the present regime.

What kind of integral humanism will be taught in our educational institutions where there is no syllabus that teaches castelessness and dignity of labour? Silence about the systemically institutionalised caste and deeply entrenched indignity of labour that promotes human untouchability does not serve any purpose of transformation.

I am of the strong view that the RSS and BJP are anti-transformational structures. How does this theory of integral humanism make them transformational if within it, the present status of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis will not change?

If Mohan Bhagwat, Dattatreya Hosbale and Ram Madhav let the nation know how this theory of integral humanism which is being newly propagated is different from Hindutva Brahminism and how it solves some of the major issues raised here, the nation will be certainly thankful to them.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His books God As Political Philosopher, Buffalo NationalismandPost-Hindu India have dealt with the philosophy of spiritual democracy in detail.

https://m.thewire.in/article/caste/rss-may-want-to-peddle-integral-humanism-now-but-its-core-is-devoted-to-brahminism

  Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

The Idea of The God

The idea of God even in the twenty first century rules the global human mind more than the state, and the constitutional laws. There is also fear and reverence of God more than just the idea of God. Though rationalism, secularism and liberalism emerged as a powerful alternative to human consciousness, the broad spectrum of human ideas still dominantly operate around the notion of God more than anti-God or out of the domain of the God. Four major religions of the world–Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism–have varied visions of the God. Though the idea of the God existed for several millennia ever since that vision of the God was written into spiritual books, by and large, it is the book view of the God that governs human consciousness as of now, as human knowledge level has grown into written discourse. And that will be around for several centuries to come. However, I would like to look at the vision of the God that Jews of Israel institutionalized and also the vision of the God that the Brahmins of India institutionalized.

How Does The Jewish and Brahmin Ideas of The God Clash?

The Jewish vision was constructed in the Old Testament to start with and expanded into an advanced form in the New Testament. The Brahmin vision got constructed in the Rigveda to start with, and expanded in the Puranas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. The first difference is that Jews visualized God in an abstract mode, without any form, without human relationship, as a creator of the entire universe, including Adam and Eve as first humans. God was neither Jew nor Israelite. Also the first Man and Woman that the God created were not created in any modern nation state. They were created in the universal garden. They were created neither as Jew, nor were they created white or black; nor were they created in any caste or creed. They were created as Man and Woman, as universal beings.

The Brahmins’ first idea of God was that of Brahma and his wife Saraswati as man and woman, as  God/Goddess themselves. They have names and human form. There is no God above them. It could be easily traceable that Brahma is an Indian Aryan. They called India Bharata Khanda or Bharata Varsha in their Sanskrit books. It was from the mouth of this Brahma—the Purush, (man)- Brahmins were created, not from his wife’s womb. So the first God that they visualized was from their own Brahmin caste. Colour wise, in all portraits and also in statue forms, both Brahma and Saraswati are shown as brown in colour, or what is known as Aryan racial colour. He has three heads and four hands. There are temples for Brahma with a statue of this image inside the temple, the most famous being Pushkar temple, Rajasthan.

Racism and Casteism

Racism and casteism were written into the very origin of the creator God, Brahma. This was the beginning of the caste system in India. God himself belonged to a caste. India became a country with a caste system thereafter. Even in our times, such a caste based human society does not exist in other countries in the world. The Brahmin God exempted the Brahmins from physical labour. Brahma’s story also does not talk about his involvement in physical work.

The God of Jews worked for six days to create the universe including all life on the earth. And on the seventh day the God took rest, guiding humanity that they should live by working and also resting. If God worked to create the universe and life, the humans have to work on the land and in the nature that God created to eat, drink and live. Human body, according to the Jewish divine imagination, is meant to work and at the same time it needs rest in the nights as well as one full day in a week. This process is to recreate energy in the human body as long as he/she lives. In the case of the Brahmin God, there is no notion of working or resting. Rigveda is silent about Brahma’s own work culture. Once work culture is not part of the creation, only the culture of resting remains as a divine method of living. This process of living without working goes against the very philosophical foundation of spirituality and also religion.

But this very Brahma was said to have created a separate varna–Shudra– (varna in Sanskrit, in which the Rigveda was written, means colour) maybe in black or dark colour to be different from Brahmins. It appears that the pre-Aryan Harappans who built the Indus Valley Civilization were described as Shudras, as their colour was darker than Aryans. They were also said to have been born from the feet of Brahma. They were condemned to be the slave/labour force by the Brahmin divinity. There were two other groups called Ksatriyas and Vaisyas in the very creation story, whose colour in some narrations comes out as blue. Later on, Vishnu was created in blue colour in the Ksatriya caste. In a series, other God-Heads were added up to the divine narratives of Brahminsm. They were given both Ksatriya and Brahmin caste identity. Rama, for whom they are building a temple now, which is being described as the Vatican of Hinduism, is part of the Ksatriya caste. The spiritual ideology that the Brahmin writers constructed created God images from Brahmin and Ksatriya castes. In the life process they believe that physical labour is pollution. One who believes in Brahmin and Ksatriya gods should live without soiling their hands. By implication, the Brahmin spiritual theory says that the earth itself is untouchable as it consists of dust and mud. How do human beings survive with this philosophy?

The pre-Rigvedic spiritual philosophy of Harappans, who built a great civilization of agriculture and animal economy, much before the arrival of the Aryans, was made to be forgotten as it survived without a written text. Perhaps that spiritual philosophy would have operated around the idea of a productive God. The Brahmins later seem to have treated all those labouring masses as Shudras and their spiritual philosophy was discarded. The Shudras in reality were forced to be the slaves who toiled for the well being of the Brahmins, Ksatriyas and Baniyas. The modern Dalits, who not only suffered slavery along with the rest of the Shudras also suffered human untouchability. The Brahmin divinity stamped a seal of approval on this unusual barbaric civilizational practice and forced the rest of the Shudras to practice and enforce it. The state administration till 1947 was under the rule of both Ksatriya and Shudra (who were given ksatriya status after they became rulers; this happened till the princely states were abolished after independence) rulers, who were made to implement the caste laws codified by Manu, a Brahmin himself. The Brahmin head priest and prime minister were overseeing the implementation of the caste laws. Every caste practice was given a written codification with a direction that it was Gods’ command, as those Gods themselves were rooted in the caste system. Their books did not allow any re-interpretative gateway also. Thus, India as a nation was made a jail with a full blown caste structure and the head of the jail was always a Brahmin. Within this jail the Shudra/Dalits were forced to produce food, other goods and commodities and the other three castes, Brahmin, Ksatriya and Baniyas, consumed that food, goods and commodities. Knowledge hybridization was completely arrested therein. The Jewish spiritual textuality, on the other hand, allowed scope for interpretation and re-interpretation and each prophet went on changing the spiritual, social and economic knowledge system based on the need, geography, times and conditions as it became global.

This being the central philosophy of the Brahmin spiritual books one does not have to laboriously read those books in terms of contradictions, positive and negative ideas that they contain. Their fundamental thesis is anti-labour and caste centered: that automatically goes against human advancement. The great spiritual, legal and socio-political thinker of modern India, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, very laboriously examined those books and said that they would not allow change in the Indian spiritual and social system. Hence they would not allow human equality and economic development. What needs to be studied very carefully is: how among the Shudras/Dalits and Tribals of India an alternative spiritual philosophy still exists. The Brahmin literature, both spiritual and social, does not mention about the parallel existence of a positive productive spiritual philosophy in India. However, it exists, otherwise Indian people would have starved and disappeared from the earth.

This also shows that the early Jewish spiritual literature like Genesis of the Bible could have been written much earlier than Rigveda, otherwise they too would have been influenced by the Brahmin spiritual thought of God being anti-labour. The Jewish spiritual book related ideas spread far and wide in the world, whereas the Brahmin spiritual literature remained confined only to India.

Producers and Prophets

Jewish spiritual thought talked about the narratives of humans as commoners and prophets. After Adam and Eve their children–Cain and Abel– were born as commoners from Eve’s pregnancy. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. Both of them are equivalent to Shudras in Brahmin sacred books. Agriculture and animal economy became part of the Jewish sacred book, the Torah or the Old Testament. This follows the whole development of human productive labour, struggles, and advancement of human civilization, as it happens in the human history of any society.

Abraham, a shepherd (in Indian context, a Shudra), emerges as a prophet and a leader, who built the first society or nation. He was a human and a member of Adam and Eve’s dynasty. Both shepherding and agriculture remain part of his and his children’s life. Then, of course, the population multiplies in a system of human production and procreation process. Labour, human and animal positive relations, conflicts, and advancement of society remain part of the Bible.

The Brahmins have excluded themselves, in all their writings, from production. The other caste group, Ksatriyas, was assigned the role of ruling the society and state strictly under the guidance of Brahmins. The Shudras had no spiritual, social and economic rights. The Vaisya caste was assigned the work of agriculture and business in the beginning. Gradually the Baniyas also eschewed productive work and started confining themselves to business and accumulation of wealth. The Shudras were spiritually given the role of producing food of all varieties without allowing an access to Brahmin Gods. The Jewish spirituality assigned all varieties of food production to all humans, including prophets. Thus, it left scope for the emergence of social classes but not social castes. And also it led to creative thinking about productive science. Historically social classes competed in discoveries and social castes had no way to compete with other castes. The Brahmin spiritual theory arrested humans by binding them to caste boundaries. Caste became part of Brahmin blood, bone and body.

The Bible gave the story of Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah and finally the birth and growth of Jesus. Of course, from Abraham to Jesus their nationality was shown as Israelite and Israel is written about as the chosen land of God. But at the same time the Israelites were said to be slaves in the hands of Egyptians and hence God took the responsibility of liberating them. But all of them were humans and by their conduct, acts and teachings have come to be known as that of prophets but not of God. Prophets taught about God’s commands or teachings to shape the moral and ethical conduct of people in a manner that the human society lived with civilized relations. Moses and Jesus’ teachings show humanity how societies were moralized. Each human being lived a life of poverty, struggle, survival by sharing everything with other human beings. From there the societies moved towards prosperity. Labour was integral to their life. Many things in those stories resemble the human life stories of modern times–tilling the land and cultivating, heavy rains and droughts, human quarrels and dispute resolution were written about, in the form of stories and parables. Men and women shared everything. There is a social science in that spiritual narratives. There was no race preference in God and prophets. However, gender inequality was written into the Jewish spiritual books. But commoners became kings and prophets in the Bible. Moses was an ordinary shepherd and King David too was a shepherd who becomes a king by displaying courage and sacrifice. These are outstanding examples. In the Brahmin spiritual writings, quite opposite to the Jewish spiritual system, God enslaves the Shudras from the very beginning. Thus, in the Brahmin spiritual narrative God is an enslaver but not liberator. Commoners’ life struggles, pains and pleasures do not figure at all. The Shudras and Dalits remain invisible and history-less in those narratives all through.

Priest and Labour

The Brahmin books were always concerned about Brahmin labour-free life, and also their hegemony over the rest of Indians. Of course, the Brahmin books negotiated with colour questions by constructing Gods as blue and black also. The third major God, Shiva, appears in black colour, though his wife Parvati is shown in brown Aryan colour. All Brahmin books depicted women only in brown colour. We, therefore, get a doubt that black or blue women are not fit for marriage. In the Jewish portraits, men and women appear in the same white Israelite colour.

In the visual portrayal of Vishnu, Rama’s blue colour was shown as God’s colour. But never were they said to have compromised with the caste system.

In the Brahmin spiritual literature caste was constructed as part of its blood, roots, bones and body. Caste was made an inescapable institution by the divine agencies themselves. Labour was not allowed to be a universal human survival base but forced upon the Shudra/Dalit social forces. The tribal communities were left to themselves without giving them any scope to come into the spiritual domain of Brahmins. Hence there is still tribal society within the forest zones in India, which does not exist in Africa or Latin America where the Jewish Bible spread. The Jewish spiritual literature gave scope to any human being to enter into God’s domain. A tribal could come into religion and become a priest without any social hurdles. In Brahmin literature and practice such entry is strictly prohibited with a fear that the new entrants could claim equality and change the spiritual and social structure they constructed in their spiritual books. Thus, the spiritual books that they wrote were made fortresses to sustain their unproductive living process.

Jesus and Shambuka

The rich and high powered people controlling God without allowing the poor to enter the high pedestal of the religious system was broken by Jesus in the Jewish system. He was an ordinary shepherd woman’s son (equivalent to the Indian Shudra), who worked as a carpenter with his father, Joseph, who adopted him, though he was born before his marriage with Mary. He broke that powerful class controlled spiritual system with a spiritual and social revolution. He did that by declaring himself as the son of God. He walked most of the time on bare foot or rode a donkey. He lived in tattered clothes. He had no chariots and no weapon wielding armies. He lived among fishing folks, shepherds and broken women. No Shudra in Brahmin literature could declare that he/she was son or daughter of Brahma or Vishnu or Rama because of their caste location. No Brahmin saint lived among fishing folk, shepherds and helped women who were condemned and suffering with object poverty and exploitation because of caste and isolated food culture–pure vegetarianism.

Jesus changed the class status of poor into rich and rich into poor. He lived in poor people’s houses and ate whatever food they offered. He never believed in the theory of purity and pollution of human occupations and food items. This revolutionary process is seen in the New Testament.

Contrary to such practices of Jews, any attempt to change in the Brahmin religious system was violently stopped. The case of Shambuka, a Shudra, in Ramayana is a case in point. Shambuka was a Shudra who wanted to realize God through tapasya. The Brahmin gurus of Sri Rama advised him to kill him, as he was Shudra hence not permitted to negotiate directly with God. Rama kills him. The whole of Brahmin literature is silent about Shudra/Dalit hunger for spiritual equality and liberation. Or it tells the stories of tortures and killings of Shudras who asserted their right to religion. If Jesus were to be born in India he would have been killed at an early stage in life. He would not have had any Brahmin followers. But many Jews, including a royal Jew like Paul became his followers and spread his message across the world. Saint Thomas who came to India as a follower of Jesus was a Jew and was killed by a Brahmin.

Survival of Jews in Europe

After Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection Christianity was formed as a religion. Some Jews accepted it and some did not. Once Islam got constructed as a separate religion from the very source of the Jewish Old Testament, conflicts between Christianity, Islam and Jeudaism got sharpened. Finally Jews of Israel lost their nation. The Jews spread all over Europe just with the hope of surviving with labour and their spiritual books in their hands. Until the 1948 resettlement in Israel, their knowledge was used in Europe in many spheres. They produced great intellectuals, scientists, industrial innovators even in that torturous life. Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein are just a few outstanding examples. They worked for global transformation, human enlightenment and progress. After resettling back in Israel they built their nation within a short time with a combination of hard labour and creative knowledge. Today’s Israel is a powerful nation with just 9.2 million people. With a combination of labour, science and wisdom the Jews built a very powerful modern nation within just 70 years. India is dependent on Israel for many scientific innovations.

The Brahmins were never displaced from this land. They lived a comfortable life with the labour of the Shudra/Dalit/Tribals. As of now a rough estimation of the Brahmin population is about 4 per cent of the total Indian population of India. In other words the Brahmins constitute roughly about 50 million. Their labour power contribution in the agrarian and other productive economy of India is negligible. They have not contributed by educating the actual tillers as they believed that if the Shudras get education they will not accept a slavish life and live under their control. Not allowing Shudras to educate themselves was to see that skilled intellectual leadership could not emerge from the agrarian masses. An organized rebellion would then be possible against the comfortable leisurely spiritual and social life of Brahmins. No Jewish leader could think of such a strategy because everyone in the Jewish community could work in any field of life. In one Jewish family there could be a shoe maker, there could be a rabbi, and there could be a shepherd. A Brahmin household cannot think of having in the same family a shoe maker or a shepherd or even a tiller together.

Does a Brahmin nation survive?

The Brahmins opposed soiling their hands with a theory that the Vedic Gods treated soil itself as a polluting substance for hands, thereby the human body. Hence the entire production work was forced on the Shudras since then. Till today that theory is alive and operates as a spiritual norm. They have also not produced intellectuals who could match the Jewish intellectuals, with all their spiritual literature at their command. Historically they were against combining physical labour and mental labour. As I said earlier they treated physical labour as spiritually polluting. Let us ask a hypothetical question: can these 50 million Brahmins constitute a nation and develop it as Israel was developed by Jews? Can they develop that nation like the Jewish nation and make it globally visible? The Jews built enormous vitality in themselves by combining physical and mental labour power as historical spiritual and social processes. The Brahmins, on the other hand, reserved intellectual work but could not advance because of the disconnect between physical labour and mental labour. Neither in the realm of God nor in the realm of nature such a disconnection is acceptable and allowed.

In my opinion it is impossible because of the Brahmin anti-labour casteist intellectuality, which does not allow them any open creative thinking. Their knowledge and literature never were positive. Lot of Brahmins in the twenty first century migrated to various countries in the world, not as labourers but as middle class intellectuals with the same caste controlling spiritual literary heritage as their property. Does the Western world treat them as valuable as Jews? I do not think so. The Jews suffered holocaust and barbaric German fascist attacks, humiliation, labour camps yet sustained their civilizational strength. They retained their positive will of spirituality, humanity, labour and scientific approach to life. Would Brahmins have recovered form that holocaust trauma and built a nation of their own? I do not think so. Given their negative spiritual history of caste, anti-labour and human untouchability they would have lost their historical existence. Unless one’s spiritual book gives that strength and positive will to work, suffer, eat and rest and start working again no human community can reconstruct themselves as the Jews did.

In my sixty nine years of life, I have worked with many Brahmins. I have seen the Brahmins who are known as spiritual, left, liberal and so on. Some claimed thems to be secular, democratic, radical, rationalist and so on. But I have not found them honest reviewers of their spiritual and social history. I have not known even one Jew personally. But I read their writings and their history. Their commitment is to physical labour, intellectual honesty and positive will for human equality.

The communist Brahmins knew that there is something fundamentally problematic with their ancient civilizational roots. Many of them read Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Einstein and other Jewish thinkers who changed the civilizational paths of the world. But they have not tried to look at their own anti-production divine, social and cultural ethic. They know that many Jewish scholars and thinkers contested their own philosophical evolution, in spite of its inclusive culture and positive production and labour ethic. But no Brahmin in such a long history opposed their living process and the kind of spiritual, social philosophy they constructed. Thus, India was made to be a stagnant nation. Theirs is not love for the nation but it is love for their own community. This ancient civilizational nation is built by the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi labour. But they were never allowed to emerge as thinkers, philosophers and prophets. It is their turn to change the nation and the world with a positive spiritual, social and scientific thinking and writing in a globally understandable language, English.

~~~

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is the author of Why I am Not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India, The Shudras–Vision for a New Path (edited along with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy) and other books. He is a political theorist, social and spiritual reformer and a follower of Mahatma Phule and Dr.B.R.Ambedkar.

https://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10220:the-god-clashing-vision-of-the-jews-and-brahmins-kancha-ilaiah-shepherd&catid=118:thought&Itemid=131

The RSS, which carries the ‘one nation, one culture’ slogan, has never allowed a farmer’s son to head the organisation in its 96 years of existence.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD15 October, 2021 8:18 am ISThttps://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=https://theprint.in/opinion/suv-over-protesters-in-lakhimpur-kheri-shows-how-rss-looks-at-farmers/750791/&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=105&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=21

An SUV that was destroyed when violence erupted during farmers’ protest in Lakhimpur Kheri | PTI Photo

The Lakhimpur Kheri incident, in which Union minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra has been accused of crushing four protesting farmers to death, raises fundamental questions about the culture of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its associates.

The BJP is the political wing of the RSS and the training of leaders on their behavior and motives comes from there. Ajay Mishra and his son are part of this organisational structure.https://ddf2dc66f4ec5ab1ae52d0a49f3c5bcf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Though there is discussion on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on the issue, the RSS’ quiet on the Lakhimpur Kheri violence too speaks a lot. Neither Mohan Bhagwat nor Dattatreya Hosabale has spoken a word on it. This raises a fundamental question on the character and outlook of the RSS vis a vis the productive masses of India — farmers and artisans who mainly constitute the Shudras and Dalits. Are human rights, democracy and the Constitution of India safe under the thumb of this organisation?

Here, I examine the fundamental differences between the Indian National Congress, the party that led India to freedom and kept democracy surviving, and the RSS, in the context of their respective outlook towards farmers and other productive masses of India.

The INC

The Indian National Congress was formed by both Indian and Scottish anti-colonial freedom lovers in 1885. Dadabhai Naoroji, Allan Octavian Hume, Dinshaw Edulji Wacha were among the first founders of the INC.

While Dadabhai Naoroji and Dinshah Edulji Wacha were Parsis, Hume was a Scottish libertarian. There was no Indian Brahmin or Bania leader in the beginning. The lamentation of Wacha, a famous cotton businessman who had many things to lose in confronting the British rulers, was “how many figures, such as Pherozeshah Mehta, who would have made capable leaders, eschewed total alliance with the Congress for fear of damage to their private careers”. Despite this lack of support from Indian leaders, Wacha did acknowledge “the vital role that the Scotsman, Allan Hume, played in maintaining the Congress” in between sessions. Wacha had said: “He is the man to give us steam.” Pherozeshah Mehta was another Parsi leader who was working for the Congress. He was a lawyer turned politician for the sake of freedom.

By that time, there were many Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas and Khatris in India who got educated in England and were practising law. Most of the English-educated Dwijas were working with the colonial government as officers even when the British administration was running in Persian language, and after it shifted to English in 1835. Dwijas were eschewing an alliance with the Congress, keeping their careers in mind. Of course, they joined the party once it gained momentum and became its leaders.

But for Shudra farmers, English education remained inaccessible. The first English-educated Shudra farmer, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, was born in 1827. He was educated only up to 7^th grade. In government service and courts, only the English-educated Dwija youth were working and making money. The Shudras were mostly involved in farming and artisanal tasks. Yet, the peasant revolts against British taxation took place in several parts of India, even before 1885 — Bardoli and Champaran being the most well-known.https://ddf2dc66f4ec5ab1ae52d0a49f3c5bcf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The first English-educated Shudra farmer to became a lawyer and join the Congress was Vallabhbhai Patel in 1917. He had shown a way to the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi on how to organise the farmers. Patel, a good lawyer with a good practice, led several peasant movements in Gujarat, including in Kheda and Bardoli. It was he who made inroads into the villages and into the minds of the farmers as an organic intellectual, though he took a Right-wing path within the party in an era of socialist peasant revolutions.

But it was not until 1931 that he became the president of the Congress. After becoming the first person with a farming background to become the INC president at the Lahore conference, he said: “You have called a simple farmer to the highest office to which any Indian can aspire”. Historian Ramchandra Guha writes that “in 1931, the Congress had been in existence for more than four decades. Yet in this time, it had never before elected a person born in a peasant household to head the organization, this despite Mahatma Gandhi’s own claim – and exhortation – that ‘India lives in her villages’.”https://ddf2dc66f4ec5ab1ae52d0a49f3c5bcf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

---

And the RSS

The RSS was established in 1925 by Maharashtra Brahmins with no Parsi or Sikh or Buddhist on board — leave alone a Muslim. It never said anything positive about the farmers and artisans in any of their ideological documents. They never participated in any of Sardar Patel’s farmer movements. Even after Independence, they never organised any farmer agitation. How and why the farmers and artisans, broadly known as Shudras, trusted them once the RSS came up with the Ram temple issue, is a mystery. Now they are seeing the real face of the RSS.

The RSS, which came with the slogan of ‘one nation, one culture and one ancient heritage’, has never allowed a farmer’s son to head the organisation in its 96 years of existence. It seems for the RSS, the farmers aren’t part of the nation or its ancient heritage. This is the difference between the INC and the RSS. The INC was part of many farmers’ struggles in its living history, not the RSS. The organisation is drawn only as a muscle power force to fight against the minorities.

The farmers’ agitation—on issues that affect their survival—has been treated by the Right-wing as anti-national, as if India belongs to a small section of Hindutva forces who have nothing to do with farming. Their cultural nationalism does not consider agriculture as part of nationalism and it is limited to Hindu temples where the children of farmers have no right to head and lead. The RSS’ nationalism exists in ancient Sanskrit books that do not talk about agriculture and Shudra/Dalit masses.

Ashish Mishra’s confidence that he can allegedly drive his vehicle over food producers of the nation, as if they are less worthy than street dogs, came from this heritage of the RSS, one that is based on caste, culture and organisational support lent to arrogance. The farmers’ heritage includes food production by Shudras, for the whole nation. But they haven’t understood this difference yet.

It is time that the nation understands Ashish Mishra’s heritage. The farmers and the whole nation will have to survive. The RSS as an organisation came into existence without farmers being part of it. Its cultural nationalist agendas have no love for farmers and farming. Yet they are ruling the nation with the same farmers’ vote. This is a paradox.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book The Shudras–Vision for a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Kuruppasamy. Views are personal.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

https://theprint.in/opinion/suv-over-protesters-in-lakhimpur-kheri-shows-how-rss-looks-at-farmers/750791/

Clash of Cultures in India

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Share onWhatsAppShare onFacebookShare onTwitterShare onTelegramShare onRedditShare onEmail

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.

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

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