in COVID19 India — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Ever Since the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine came to power in 2014 the deepest crisis it is facing is the Covid-19 dance of death. As of the end of April 2021 India has become the most Covid infected nation in the world and the prediction is that India will suffer the biggest human loss in the pandemic. Its vaccination programme is the slowest in the world. Given the human numbers (1.35 billion people) by the time the vaccination reaches all vulnerable people the disease will kill a massive number of people. Scientific predictions are available that India will be the epicentre of the pandemic. But the present RSS/BJP Central Government does not believe in scientific prediction. They mainly believe in panchangam (astronomy) and Sadhu and Sanyasi opinions.

Prime Minister Modi seems to be the most pro-science man among the RSS/BJP forces, but even his life time training was in cow urine therapy as a cure for every disease. There is a deep Hindutva anti-science culture in their upbringing and also in the being. This therapy was taught to them in every Shakha (organizational gathering). That shakha training has gone into every member’s mind and of his/her family. Even the small kids are trained in the shakhas that cow urine would cure every disease on the planet–existing and also future diseases. Their mind is full of that theory right from an early age and taught in the nation for more than 95 years. This line of thinking destroyed the scientific spirit in the nation. Even doctors and scientists got influenced by this cow urine theory. Even after the RSS/BJP coming to power at Delhi when its members propagated cow urine therapy the central Government did not object.

The urines of both animals and humans have certain chemicals that are useful for one thing or the other. Even human urine has certain health use elements that was the reason why a typical Brahmin Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai, drank it everyday and lived for nearly 100 years on this planet. This kind of unique practice did not emerge out of scientific experiments that could be verified. They are aberrations. The cow urine therapy is the most unscientific aberration of Indian brahminism. This aberration propagated by the Hindutva Dwijas as medicinal destroyed the core principle of medical science. They have been testing the Shudra followers’ mental degradation level within their organization and in civil society by making them accept this kind myth. Unfortunately though no Shudra has written anything about the greatness of the cow urine therapy, many Shudras have become victims of this theory along with many other anti-human theories they constructed. The secular Dwijas have never opposed such theories. There is a caste cultural vested interest in promoting it by the Hindutva Dwijas and the secular dwijas silently allowing it. All of them have nothing to do with the animal economy and life process. Only Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi creative, productive and scientific thinking can negate this most destructive theory. In the long life of the Shudra agrarian experience it is well established that all animal urines improve the land fertility. This is verified, tested and proved. Cow urine is part of that use value but not human medicinal value. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis must be doubly careful with such theories than corona virus. The corona virus could be defeated with globally worked out scientific vaccines but cow urine theory is Indian Brahminic and the world does not bother about it. Such theories of the Hindutva dwijas must be fought when they are ruling India and when people are dying because of their unscientific cow urine cultural nationalism. Science is a secular domain. If secularism is killed science will also die. All religions have shown limitations in promoting science–particularly Hinduism and Islam have shown many limitations in promoting sience in general and medical science in particular.

The Dwija children read their literature and see their parents worshipping cows in their family pooja rooms. Over a period of time the Shudra parents also get this theory from the poojaris, peer groups and friends. Though most Dwija children do not see their parents taking care of the cow in its day today’s needs and survival they see the cow getting brought on a new house warming day and making it a Goddess in the new home. They otherwise see cows roaming on the roads in urban centres. Some of them may keep a dog or cat at home but never a cow for feeding and nurturing. The Dwija children were made to hate crop fields and cattle meadows. They were made to love gurukulas, now IITs, IIMS, Central Universities and private universities like Ashoka, O.P Jindal Global University. Cow urine theory, Ashoka. O.P Jindal kind private anti-reservation ( in essence anti-Shudra/OBC/Dalit and Adivasi) university nationalism, are quite amazing combinations. In this situation came Corona and hit the nation. Burning bodies everywhere has become the symbol of Hindutva nationalism. This has become the yardstick of merit.

The RSS is a deep down Brahminic organization with a belief that ‘Science is Shudra’ and ‘Belief is Brahmin’. This organization has drawn thousands of Shudra/OBC youth out of their Science tradition and trained them in belief tradition. They became an army of cow urine therapy propagandists. This has done a lot of damage to our scientific and medicinal thinking. Even during the Congress and coalitional rule before the RSS/BJP came to power the RSS forces were threatening the ruling forces from streets and communal vantage points to implement their theories. And also within the Congress and other regional parties there were cow urine therapists and they were in league with them.

Apart from this pure vegetarianism as spiritual and social pure food of Bharat has made India weakest in the world. Added to this they made the nation believe modern medicine is ‘English Medicine’. A kind of medical superstition was built all over India. Notwithstanding the limitations of pure vegetarianism in curing diseases and also its non-availability to vast rural masses, the Hindutva pure vegetarianism has done an added damage. They made the nation almost sick now.

Our health levels should be compared to that of China which has an equal number of people and is facing the same crisis of Covid-19 as India is. But see the difference in the number of Covid contracts and deaths in India and China. The RSS/BJP claim that they are the most nationalists but how does a nation’s health could be saved by cow urine as medicine? Their cultural nationalism that worked around cow urine, Kumbha Melas, vegetarianism, anti-agriculturalism has now brought the nation where it is. They did that not just after they came to power in 2014. All through the Congress and coalition rule before 2014 they held the cultural campaign fort. There were many such cow urine therapy believers, kumbh and pure vegetarian minds in the Congress and other regional parties, not just personal food taste but they want that nation should become pure vegetarian.

The leaders of these theories came from Dwija castes–Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Ksatriyas. They all had a vested interest in retaining power and want to control the nation. The Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis unfortunately became the mass followers of these Dwija forces.

Quite interestingly no authors of this theory came from the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis who grazed cow for millennia. The theory came from the Dwija pandits who never had an animal grazing experience and long time interaction with the animal life– its organs and products and byproducts. The Shudra farmers on the other hand had a huge animal interaction, experience and a lot of scientific observation about its birth, growth and death. But they never wrote a theory of cow urine medicinal therapy. They have developed several plant medicines to cure human and animal diseases. Though the Shudras work in the Hindutva organizations they are not accepted as theoreticians. They also simply follow what the Dwija intellectuals tell them. From Hedgewar to Mohan Bhagwat they became the directors and Shudras became the following actors. The drama has destroyed the nation with serious health consequences.

Unfortunately the Indian agrarian masses gradually fell into the trap of Dwija Hindutva theories and voted them to power. Though the Modi Government got an Indian vaccine made by Bharat Biotech but their cadres keep on promoting cow urine cure theory as a matter of their ideological agenda. For last 95 years (as the RSS was formed in 1925) the Dwija Hindutva theoreticians made the rural and urban Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses sufficiently superstitious by making them attend their Kumbha melas, ritual mobilizations, talking about only Vedic, puranic and mythological books as the national civilizational source and putting cow in the centrality of the national discourse. They never spoke about the science of agriculture, medicine, engineering and so on. This anti-science propaganda has gone deep down the national psyche.

The Hindutva forces have a great strategy to push the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis to a medieval status by allowing only Dwija children to learn English, eat good food and travel all over the world and survive by modern medicine. As they never looked after cows in their day to day life but projected cows as a divine animals they never cared for regional language education but tell the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis that they should study only regional languages. The Indian communists also believed this diabolical language sub-nationalism and propagated. While Hindutva theoreticians push the cow urine therapy into the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses who have only some regional language education they beleive it. Now people are dying for want of oxygen not cow urine. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis are being told that English language and English medicine are anti-national and they believe. Who discovered that oxygen can be produced in a factory and preserved whenever human beings need it ?

The Shudras were sent into the streets to campaign for cow urine, campaign against love marriages, and modern medicine . The strategy is to keep English medium global education and global cuture away from the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. If English language education reaches them modern medicine also will reach them. Let us build a nation that practices science survives but the one that believes in myth dies.

The author is a political theorist. His  new book The Shudras–Vision for a New Path co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy Penguin

https://countercurrents.org/2021/05/the-hindutva-cow-urine-cultural-nationalism-and-the-corona-crisis/

Caste and varna abolition is now in the hands of RSS/BJP, which claims to represent all Indian Hindus, not just Dwijas, the upper castes.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD8 May, 2021 12:44 pm ISThttps://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=https://theprint.in/opinion/marathas-lack-the-power-of-written-word-supreme-court-cant-ignore-it-like-communists-did/654482/&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=105&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=21

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Marathas are a large agrarian Shudra community in Maharashtra, constituting nearly 30 per cent of the state’s population. Maharashtra’s economic development, to a large extent, depends on the well-being of this community, along with other Shudra agrarian communities. The five-judge bench of the Supreme Court while striking down the 16 per cent reservation given by the state government has said that the latter had not cited any extraordinary conditions before allowing this reservation over and above the 50 per cent quota stipulated in the Mandal judgment of 1992. The court did not take into account the caste-varna system, which still functions against the idea of equality even in the case of a major agrarian community such as the Marathas.

The Marathas seem to have realised that despite the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose ideological parent is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), being in power since 2014, the community is still confined to the varna inequities. They could not compete with the Dwijas (the non-Shudra upper castes) in all-India services or in state services, one of the avenues available to them for their socio-economic upliftment.https://77d3c7d2725566da49f55c8f58415b28.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Many agrarian Shudra communities in India, like Marathas, Jats, Gujjars, Patels, Reddys, Kamms, Nairs among others, did not opt to be included in the Backward Class list in 1992. But some of them now realise that they cannot compete with the Dwijas (Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Ksatriyas) who had the historical resource of education in Sanskrit, Persian and English for a long time.

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Also read: New backward class lists to be drawn, 50% ceiling stays — what SC Maratha quota verdict means

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The leadership vacuum

Having played a mass-mobilisation role in the Hindutva movement in Maharashtra, the Marathas aspired to get their share in Delhi’s power pie if the RSS/BJP combine formed the government. But that clearly did not happen — the Marathas seem to have realised that they are nowhere in Delhi and their power influence is limited to Maharashtra. Not just the Marathas but many other agrarian Shudra communities who remained outside the Mandal list have a similar realisation.

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From the same state of Bombay, before its division into Maharashtra and Gujarat, Brahmins and Baniyas emerged as national leaders, top bureaucrats, scientists and intellectuals. But the Marathas did not get to share the Delhi power. Though among the Shudras, Sardar Patel did emerge as a national leader from the Patidar community, no Maratha could. The Marathas now feel that such a top man/woman was not allowed to emerge during the freedom struggle and even later, till now by the Dwijas. The RSS structure has shown them that control. Though many Brahmin Maharashtrians headed the RSS, not a single Maratha was allowed to reach at the top. They were confined to agrarian production, agribusiness and local power with a new definition of unified Hindu. Marathas were used mostly as muscle power against the minorities by the RSS.

After the exception of Mahatma Phule, who emerged as an early intellectual from the Kumbi Maratha community, India saw a stream of Brahmin leaders and intellectuals in the subsequent years from the Bombay province. While Mahadev Govind Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi (of Bania background) emerged from one stream, V.D. Savarkar, K.B. Hedgewar, M.S. Golwalkar and now Mohan Bhagwat came from the Hindutva stream — all Maharashtrian Brahmins and powerful national leaders.

The Marathas have not produced English-educated top national leaders and high intellectuals. This proves they were/are educationally backward. The Shudras, historically, were not supposed to learn, read or write Sanskrit. This historical limitation got carried to Persian learning as well during the Muslim rule. Even the modern English medium education eluded the Marathas — true of all the regional Shudra communities, except the Nairs of Kerala.

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Also read: MVA-BJP blame game begins after SC Maratha quota order, Uddhav nudges PM for ‘speedy decision’

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The historical gap

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The Supreme Court must consider the history of caste while formulating the idea of equality. How else could one explain the inability of the Shudra upper layer castes, who outnumber the Dwijas, in competing in the all India services. This is a limitation that history has placed on all Shudra communities — they are rural and have agrarian and artisanal backgrounds. How does the highest court not take this historical factor into account?

One must know that the Marathas were spread over vast rural productive land. It was the Brahmins, Baniyas and Kayasthas (who had limited presence in the province), who became early urban settlers in the Bombay province. This was also true of Calcutta and Madras provinces. English medium education was an urban phenomenon. The Dwija castes benefited from that urbanised English education life. Even the early Christian institutional English medium education benefitted only the Dwijas. This is very clear from their overwhelming presence in all national and international English-speaking platforms, and from the near absence of the Shudras.https://77d3c7d2725566da49f55c8f58415b28.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The judiciary should not commit the same mistake that the Indian Communist theoreticians did. They looked only at the land ownership and not the power of the written word. The Shudras of India owned some land and labour but not the power of the written word. Apart from the power of written word, the Brahmins of Maharashtra, particularly Desais and Sirdesais, had control over land resources. In parts of British India, Brahmin zamindars and jagirdars controlled the whole life — spiritual, social, economic and political — of the Shudra masses.

The idea of reservation is to distribute the power of the written word. All Shudra castes, including the Marathas, lack in this area, particularly English and the English-medium education. In all central services, judicial services and media, the power of written word placed Dwijas in advantageous position.

This is why it is important to relook at the 50 per cent ceiling of reservation in central and state services, and education. The debate on this limit should continue until caste and varna differences are abolished. Their abolition is now into the hands of the RSS-BJP, who claim to represent all Indian Hindus, and not just the Dwijas. Granting spiritual and social justice to all Shudras and Dalits is their duty. But they are not working towards that goal. This is the biggest worry of the Shudras.

The Supreme Court gives many legally enforceable judgments but does not ask for caste census. Why? The caste census gives a clear direction about every caste’s representation in every institution.

The court’s power is also located in the written word. And that power must also be distributed among all communities. Else both social and natural justice will suffer.

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

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

https://theprint.in/opinion/marathas-lack-the-power-of-written-word-supreme-court-cant-ignore-it-like-communists-did/654482/

What YS Sharmila’s leadership could mean for Telangana: Kancha Ilaiah writes

In some respects, YS Sharmila’s upcoming political party is the first of its kind in south India.

IMAGE: YS SHARMILA REDDY

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

In south India so far, a woman leader has not started a major party on her own and influenced the political scene of a state. Jayalalithaa ruled Tamil Nadu but she inherited MGR’s AIADMK because of her relationship with him. In East India, Mamata Banerjee conducted that experiment successfully. YS Sharmila’s upcoming political party in Telangana would be the first of its kind in south India.null

So far, the Telangana region has been ruled by only one woman — Rudramadevi — of the 13th century in known history. Historical evidence shows that she ruled the region from 1263-1289. Now suddenly, from an unexpected corner, YS Sharmila, the daughter of YS Rajasekhara Reddy and Vijayamma, seems to have a serious chance at claiming that place. Historically, Reddys are also Shudras just like the Kakatiya rulers. 

The Kakatiya dynasty witnessed many ups and downs when they ruled this region. The Kakatiyas rulers were known for their love of agrarian economics. The Ramappa and Pakal lakes as well as the plough and bull symbols that they adopted clearly show their agenda was influenced by agricultural development. During this time, a major tank and agricultural well-irrigation system also came into operation in the dry region.Featured Videos from TNM

Though they built few Shiva temples, agriculture was their main focus. Those who visit Ramappa and Pakal lakes, which still irrigate thousands of acres of lands, are a clear indication. As someone who has drunk the water from Pakal Lake and eaten the rice produced in my area, including in my own village, it offers definitive clues to their vision of irrigation technology and development. After Rudramadevi was killed by her Kayastha senadhipathi, Ambadeva, in 1289, no woman became a ruler after her.  https://f5ac434928683c91e8637d4eef21e4a4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Adivasi rulers Sammakka-Sarakka, who ruled within the Koya forest belt, were martyred by Rudramadevi’s grandson, Pratarpudra. They were great women symbols of Telangana, and the Sammakka-Sarakka jatara, which symbolises the duos’ significance, is worshipped and celebrated by Adivasis.

Sharmila, even before launching her party, has made an impact. The sight of her torn jacket at the April 15 dharna became a showcase of her fighting shoulder for police culpability. The more such mistakes the TRS commits, the more she will pick up the dust.

She has shown confidence of a leader by telling the Telangana people that someday, ‘I am going to be the CM of Telangana’. But it all depends on what kind of welfare agenda that she will evolve, which could put the TRS welfare schemes in poor light.null

The Congress and BJP as national parties cannot evolve regionally transformative welfare schemes which their Delhi masters do not accept. One such major welfare agenda in Telangana that Sharmila should project is the need to convert all government schools into English medium education, while promising the mothers that their accounts will get what I call Badi Bandu (school friend) scheme to the tune of Rs 15,000 to 20,000 per year.

Additionally, there could be full reimbursement of college fees and implementation of Arogyasree as her father did. The government schools that the TRS has left dilapidated should be turned into modern institutions.

The existing Rytu Bandhu has helped high-end rich farmers rather than small, medium and tenant farmers. A creative and workable restructuring is needed. Some water schemes have been implemented, no doubt, but a more pruned irrigation scheme has to be worked out. This is where existing schemes need to be assessed for their good parts and bad. And the new aspects, which the Congress and BJP parties cannot promise, need to be considered.

School, college and university systems of Telangana also need to be rehauled. As of now, that whole sector has been deliberately killed to suit Telangana’s old feudal vision — more serious education, more emergence of quality citizenry that opposes feudal practice and lifestyle at every level. Hence, KCR has killed education systematically. More English educated graduates are demanding good jobs. Killing the school, college and university education systems guarantees more power for his English-educated son and daughter, KTR and Kavitha. Incidentally, Sharmila communicates as a leader in English and Telugu as Ayyachaatu (father promoted) son-daughter leaders can do. Sharmila is an Ayyaleni (daughter of deceased YSR) bidda and is establishing a party on her own.

She has also moved deep into Telangana during her padayatra after the tragic death of her father, more so than the present Bathukamma-playing daughter and Chirragone (rural cricket)-playing son. She entered the game by playing politics, not Bathukamma or Chirragone. That is a powerful message for those Telangana Vaadis, who have managed to buy their Innova cars and leave their motorbikes behind within just seven years.

KCR knows that the people around him have not made any sacrifices for Telanagna, except make money and even still, he promoted them. Like a British monarch, he appears once in a while in public meetings or press conferences and withdraws into the newly-built government palace (Pragati Bhavan), not working on a daily basis as CM from the office. Sharmila has to evolve a different culture of ‘I love my activists as I love myself’, a moral principle that feudal casteism hates. She has to work constantly on the political chessboard.https://f5ac434928683c91e8637d4eef21e4a4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

It should be taken for granted that she has an uphill task ahead of her. But given her family history, she could be able to climb that hill. What is required is tenacity, fighting spirit and an emotional attachment to the welfare of the Telangana people. It does not matter which hospital she was born in — Telangana or Andhra or Delhi or even in New York — once she has the right to vote here.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist and social activist. His latest book is The Shudras — Vision For a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/what-ys-sharmilas-leadership-could-mean-telangana-kancha-ilaiah-writes-147519

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

A new way to fight Dwija hegemony

• 

 Rakesh Tikait holding The Shudras—Vision for a New Path book with his two hands at his heart shows a new shift in the Indian and more particularly in the North Indian agrarian caste sociopolitical consciousness.

North Indian Shudras more particularly the Jats, Gujjars, Patels became the backbone of the right wing human muscle and vote power in the post Mandal political churning. The Mandal Commission Report defined all Shudras, including Jats, Gujjars, Patels, Marathas and so on, as the Other Backward Classes, by shifting the historical category of Shudra into a constitutional category.

But the top agrarian castes, particularly Jats and Gujjars who are all around Delhi, opted out of being in the OBC category as it was seen as moving downwards but not up.

The rural intellectuals of the agrarian communities in the early 1990s wanted to claim Kshatriya status, as Skatriyas were the historical rulers.

They did not understand the role of reservations in producing an intellectual class from each Shudra caste. What university and college education—that too English medium education—and bureaucratic power produce could have come into the hands of substantial numbers of Gujjars and Jats. The newly English educated class in each caste plays a key role in running not only the Delhi system, it would have changed their attitude towards Dalits and other minorities.

Jats thought that their dominant agrarian base would give them power, knowledge and they could claim Skatriya status. They thought it would automatically give them national political power too. This proved to be totally wrong.

All the unreserved Shudra castes like Jats, Gujjars could have produced intellectuals that could play a critical role in central universities and research institutions. They have not so far produced political leaders with a national and international vision. This is because unlike the Dwijas the Jats and Gujjars never produced English educated intellectuals who see through the Dwija leadership.

Now there is a new awakening, as the right wing forces are running the Delhi administrative structures without much Jat, Gujjar or other Shudra agrarian castes within the power structures. Quite tragically even in the central universities run by Muslim minorities like Aligarh and Jamia Millia Islamia the presence of Shudra faculty members is minimal.

They were used for their anti-minority agendas but there few available intellectuals were not allowed to share power in national structures. And once in power the Shudras were further sidelined.

The Dwijas as defined in The Shudras—Vision for a New Path constitute Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Ksatriyas, who have no role in food or other agrarian production.

The Jats of UP, Punjab and Haryana were the main agents of the Green Revolution. But they could not become industrialists. Most Shudra castes in the country have not benefited in the massively grown industrial economy as is made very clear by the Shudra Team’s study in the book, in the chapter ‘Caste and Political Economy’. Jats and Gujjars around Delhi which runs the national power structures realise that at the Delhi high tables they have no share because of a lack of organised and modern educational efforts. Jats have no adequate representation in central universities like JNU and Delhi University.

In this situation the Shudra identity will give them a new way to fight the Dwija hegemony. Tikait seems to have realised the importance of the book.

Jats are the most active fighters against the new farm laws. Tikait seems to have realised the massive privatisation agenda is meant to de-reserve the jobs that OBCs, Dalits and Adivasis are benefiting from in a marginal way. Jats have been asking for inclusion of their caste in the reservation list. Whereas the dominant right wing is undercutting the reservation system.

The boook has initiated a conversation around all Shudras. They must assert their Shudra roots with dignity and respect. Tikait holding the book at his heart indicates the new mood of North Indian Shudras.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and editor of The Shudras: Vision for a New Path along with Karthik Raja Kuruppusamy

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/14/20235/The-Shudras-at-the-Heart-of-Tikait

in Annihilate Caste — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

A well-known Dalit scholar Gopal Guru, presently editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, once wrote that “Indian Social Science represents a pernicious divide between theoretical Brahmins and empirical Shudras’ (2002). But Shudras did not get much attention in his, otherwise useful article. He immediately shifted his argument to the question of Dalits. Nowhere he elaborated his understanding of the Shudra question in a historical sense. Maybe this was a conscious forbearance. Since he worked in a high end central university of India JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) he consciously used double edged language. Because social science discourses of JNU and also the Delhi University, which were known as the best in India, were more receptive for Western theoretical formulations but sidestepped a serious engagement with ancient, medieval Indian thought processes. They operated under a broad rubric of secularism, liberalism, Marxism, pluralism, modernism, postmodernism and so on. In the 1980s and 90s they deployed a language of Michel Foucault and Jaques Derrida, two French philosophers of post-structuralism and deconstruction, whose language is like Indian Sanskrit that could be understood only by Brahminic Gods but not by people around. Many Indian professors have become like poojaris reciting those theories and that helped the present Hindutva school to characterize them as anti-national very easily.

If we characterize that phase as the post-colonial left-liberal and in that phase the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi youth could hardly get jobs in the high end Indian universities as they could not satisfy the Western educated left liberals. The Indian educated also did not evolve a theoretical discourse around the historical production and humanitarian cultural ethic of Shudra/Dalit/Adivsi masses of India.

Huge number of reserved posts were kept unfilled by the same forces in central universities and institutes by brandishing the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis qualified candidates as non-meritorious. Most selection committees headed by left-liberals concluded in their selection committee meetings by submitting reports as “Not found Suitable” in almost every department, as the OBC/Dalit/Adivasi candidates with Ph.D degrees of even best Indian universities in hand went home to join the labour teams in Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Scheme in their respective villages. Their hard work to earn degrees even at the JNU and Delhi universities was proved to be of no use in MGNREGA labour university. The Dwija youth got well paid jobs in private and public institutes because they were born with merit, and many of them got degrees from foreign universities, while the children of the farmers, who are protesting on Delhi borders, are meant to drive only tractors in the fields.

The Dwija pandits never accepted that Dalitism, Shudraism, and Brahminism could also be deployed as social science categories in studying the Indian socio-spiritual and political ideas and institutions of ancient and modern times. The category Shudras was in existence from Rig Vedic times, but they never thought that Indian society could be analyzed with the help of the indigenous concepts.

The left-liberal intellectual phase officially ended from 2014 general elections. Now India is living in post left-liberal phase of intellectual discourse. In this phase the Sanskrit Vedism will dominate and the same Dwija youth (Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatri and Kshatriya) will get jobs in all those universities and institutions, both public and private. The agrarian youth’s historical knowledge would not get academic recognition in this phase also. That is the reason why even in JNU and Delhi University, Jat, Gujjar, Kurmi, Yadav and other Dalit/OBC youth did not get teaching positions — whether they came under reservation or not. In all newly established private universities like Ashoka, OP Jindal and so on a mixed intellectual environment will operate. Since there is no reservation there, they still work with Harvard ideology with a Hindutva stamp. The Hinduva forces will allow that because the children of ‘Vishva Hindu’ network that operates from Dwija homes will study there both for global and Indian employment markets. The Shudras farmers around Delhi also never suspected their nationalism and challenged them.

For a long time in the post-colonial India, the liberal and left Dwija intellectuals were quite comfortable with Brahminism and avoided any socio-spiritual and theoretical contending categories of ancient India, both in writing and teaching in the high end universities. They refused to teach even Gautama Buddha as a political thinker in Colleges and university courses. They too were comfortable with Vedas, Upanishads and the philosophies of Manu and Kautilya, with a total silence on caste and theoretical concepts that have been considered to be the root ideas. They have never examined historical conflicts between Shudras and Brahminism in the historical sense, for example, with an opposite ideological engagement with nature and production. Except opposing Hindutva communalism they were as anti-Shudra and anti-Dalits in intellectual discourse as the present Hindutva school is.

No Shudra intellectual emerged from these universities to challenge them. Though Ambedkar wrote a book — Who Were The Shudras? – way back in 1946, later intellectuals often failed to see the connection between Dalit liberation and the Shudras getting free from the feet born status that the Rigveda tied them down. Those Shudras who were working in the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were no exception to the feet born status. They too need to be liberated for the establishment of an egalitarian society.

Hardly any section of social scientists understood that without invoking the category ‘shudras’ as an ideological instrument of pro-production along with the hegemony of Brahminism, the pre-Buddhist ancient society does not provide a framework to examine the production relations during the Vedic, Epic and Puranic times. The entire Brahminic Sanskrit literature did not engage with production at all, as production was seen as a polluting domain that’s proper only to  Shudras . That literature talks about only Brahmin saints and Kshatriya kings. The Shudra food producers were completely absent. The Shudras built the pre-Rigvedic Harappan civilization and were responsible for putting India on a much bigger civilizational pedestal than China, Egypt, Israel and Greece. There was no caste/varna system in Harappan civilization.

There was no ideological battle around human untouchability in the pre-Buddhist India as Ambedkar himself admits that untouchability as a major social system was institutionalized in the process of elimination of Buddhism from India. According to Ambedkar, all former Buddhists were rendered untouchable in the battle against Brahminism. Shudras were slaves, oppressed and brutalized for a thousand years before human untouchability came into being. The Shudra producers suffered the Vedic and post Vedic ignominies for a longer time and once untouchability was constructed they seemed to have felt that they had a superior status than untouchables. Even the contemporary caste/varna system shows that Shudra/Dalit slavery and oppression continues as parallel systems.

The idea of God/Goddess in Vedism was anti-production. The idea of God/Goddess amongst Shudras was pro-production and an integral part of productive ethic and spiritual culture. If the Shudras were to live with a life of the same anti-production spiritual ideology and did not involve in production as against the Brahmanic anti-production ethic, the Indian nation would not have survived. The agrarian and artisanal production would have been completely abandoned. Even the Charvaka and Lokayata schools do not reflect the Shudra ideological, socio-spiritual and political ideas. In Charvaka and Lokayata schools also there was not much discourse around production. The communist scholars coming from the Dwija background examined the theist and atheist conflict between Vedic and Charvaka schools, but they were never concerned about the Shudra production and Vedic anti-production conflict. Nations are built with production systems and the cultures that emerged out of production process but not otherwise.

What many political thinkers who studied in India or in the Western universities did not realize is that in pre-vedic times between building of Harappan urban civilization and vedic-pastoralism there was a time gap of about 1500 years. It was almost the present Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis who were existing as indigenous people (Mulanivasis), who were actually Indo-Africans with some racial mutations. They were condemned as Shudras by Aryan Brahmins in Vedic times. The Aryan Brahminism constructed the four varna theory dividing the sub-continental society- Shudra, Vaisya, Ksatriya and Brahmin– in Rigveda. In pre-Rigvedic times there was no anti-production or anti-agrarian school in the Indian sub-continent. All were engaged in hunting, fishing and also agriculture. They built several villages and cities like Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira and so on much before China could reach such a stage. The development of such an advanced city construction in India with very advanced ancient technologies than that of contemporary ancient China, Israel, Egypt, Greece and so on, would not have been possible without advanced agriculture and village economic systems all around the cities. The Indian cities were never isolated ones, like ancient Greek cities from villages. They were always an extension of villages as we see today all over India. The builders of that pre-Aryan and pre-Vedic civilization definitely were the descendants of the present Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi Harappans.

In Indian university teaching ancient Greek city states and the master-slave relations occupied primacy than studying ancient Indian Shudra-Brahmin civilizational conflict and building of Harappan civilization prior to that. In the garb of political philosophy, more ancient Europe was taught than ancient India because a serious engagement with ancient India would involve serious research on the origins of the caste system and the Shudra slave question.

Now the BJP Government as part of its cultural nationalist package wants to deploy Vedic, Purnic and Epic history a serious focus on the pre-Vedic Harappan civilization is called for.

In the Hindutva history only Brahmins and Kshatriya kings, who worked under the mentorship of Brahmin rishis and writers would be shown as nation builders. The Shudra producers and Vaishya agrarian supervisors and commodity exchanges in pre-Buddhist times do not find place. The Indian nation will be shown as a country of mythological evolution. The Indian food producing farmers, artisans, Dalits and Adivasis will be invisibilized as non-existent social mass.

They not only completely discount the Muslim and Chritian history in India but they completely erase the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi history. The Dwija left and liberal intellectuals do not find any problem with the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi history not being in the teaching courses but they will talk more about minority history as that gives an international rights status. Particularly the non-existence of Shudra/OBCs does not become an issue because they are characterized ‘Caste Hindu’ and the Dwija existence in history is seen as living history of India.

The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi question has no international recognition as of now. The Dalit question has some visibility in the global stage since numerous studies were taken up and also it is rooted in most inhuman practice of untouchability And this forces the Indian State to feel loss of face on international intellectual forums. They try to support Dalit reservation but they never acknowledge the Shudra slavery at any time in Indian history. As of now the Shudra question is no issue intellectually, because Shudras themselves have not acquired modern English educational intellectual energy to challenge the Dwija hegemony in any field. When this was so when the liberal and left intellectuals were in control of the institutions of knowledge, the Hindutva intellectuals will undermine the Shudra question more systematically but they can be seen as white snakes in green grass. However, since Hindutva forces are in power the very intellectual environment in the educational institutions–particularly in the universities anti-Shudra intellectuality will be strengthened through ‘cultural nationalist’ paradigm. In this paradigm the Dwija history will be shown as Indian history. The entire food production and the Shudra civilizational heritage would have no value at all.

While the control of Brahmin over the Hindu temple was consistent from the days of writing of Rigveda to 21st century, the control of Brahmin over the State by becoming the Prime Minister of the state and chief priest of the State started with Kautilya becoming the Prime Minister and the head priest of Mauryan state. Chandragupta Maurya, though was a Shudra, was given a Kshatriya status and in the process of coronation by separating him from the rest of the Shudra productive masses. From then on to 1947 that system continued whether the state was small or big under Brahminism.

Even during the British period there were number of princely states under the control of Brahmin Prime Ministers and head priests while the rulers being Shudras. But they were given Ksatriyahood in a brahminic ritual. Baroda Maharaj who though sent Ambedkar to higher studies could not give him a house within Baroda city after he returned to take up a job in 1917. Likewise, Mysore king, Kolhapur king, Shahu Maharaj (grandson of Chatrapati Shivaji) had to follow the Brahmin priestly authority even though they were against Brahmins. Even the rulers from Shudra communities did not assert their spiritual autonomy against Brahmin priests. This process arrested the Shudra consciousness.

This kind of spiritual slavery kept them as slaves and subordinates to Brahmins all along. In crucial ways, a ruler of state was a slave of a Brahmin. That did not allow the Shudra rulers to get education and enlightenment. Even now the fear of Brahmin among Shudras is the most difficult knot of the Indian history. All Shudra Chief Ministers and ministers live under the spiritual control of Brahmin priest. Why a Shudra could not emerge as a spiritually independent being? How and why Hindu Gods stopped that change.

From Kautilya to Jawaharlal Nehru the Brahmin Prime Minister position remained unchanged. Sardar Vallabai Patel, a Shudra, could not become the first Prime Minister of India because only a Brahmin should be the head of an Independent Indian state. That principle was an insult to the entire food producers of India. Thus, the Hindu temple and the State became Brahmin property. Shudras never developed a rebellious consciousness against this tradition. No Shudra ruler asked a fundamental question: why a Shudra cannot head a temple as a priest where a Brahmin is part of? Why should a Brhamin not till the land and produce food? It was this question that would have resolved all other issues of Shudra slavery and subordination.

The issue of Shudra slavery is very much linked with the Dalit question. Once Shudra were to get priesthood rights, the authority to run the state on his own would have been realized. Once such questions were resolved abolition of untouchability would have become automatically a major question. Once the spiritual system gets democratized many fundamental questions of human inequality and untouchability would have got resolved.

Till today the Brahmin is avoiding the fundamental question of spiritual democracy within the Hindu order and the Shudra has no self-respect and no critical thinking to assert oneself. This relationship has its implication to modern education of the Shudras. A typical Shudra is afraid of English education like she/he was afraid of Sanskrit education. This is the fundamental reason why even the relatively better off Shudra castes like Jats, Yadavs, Gujjars, Patels, Marathas and so on cannot be found in high end central universities and institutions.

Philosophy of written word has become a fearsome issue for a Shudra. This is what Brahmin did after writing Rigveda. Till today that fear is haunting them. It is time that the Shudras gatecrash the central universities. They must get into teaching positions in all departments and acquire skills to run them efficiently. Let the Dwija youth drive tractors and produce food in the fields. Only this change will resolve the question that Indian courts are repeatedly asking: how many generations should the reservations continue? A simple counter question is for how many generations only the Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis should till the land and produce food? Let the roles change between Shudras and Dwijas and reservations can also end.

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

https://countercurrents.org/2021/03/shudras-and-the-central-universities/

 

Review

G. Sampath

This anthology brings the spotlight on challenges facing a people who form not only the majority of India’s population but also the majority among Hindus

The term ‘Other Backward Classes’, or OBCs, is an administrative category. It is typically deployed in the context of public policy and academic research. Is it advisable to construe the hundreds of sub-castes in the OBC category as a singular political community? Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karupusamy, political theorists and the editors of The Shudras: Vision for a New Path, seem to think so. While they acknowledge it could be problematic to see the Shudras/OBCs as a “monolithic unit,” it is this conceptual framing that informs the essays in this volume.null

Enforcers of an ideology

The narrative argument that emerges from this anthology can be summarised as follows: Majority of Indians are Shudras. Over millennia, it was the Shudras who performed the labour involved in the production of food and material goods. But they were denied the prestige and wealth that accrues from productive work. Thanks to their social and spiritual slavery under Hinduism’s varnashrama dharma, the non-productive, minority Dwija (twice-born) elite comprising the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas exploited them for centuries. When colonial modernity and democracy enabled social mobility for the Shudras, the Dwijas came up with Hindutva. Funded by Brahmin-Bania monopoly capital, Hindutva politics is about tightening the Dwijas’ grip over every node of power that has a bearing on education, employment and political representation. Paradoxically, it is the Shudras who are the biggest enforcers of an ideology whose biggest beneficiaries are their oppressors.

This narrative raises two questions: What explains this “Shudra conundrum,” of turkeys voting for Christmas, as it were? And how do the Shudras forge a coherent politics of social transformation?

On the first question, the contributors do a fine job of delineating why Hindutva — which appears to target only non-Hindus — cannot possibly end well for Shudras and Dalits. But there is no convincing explanation for why something that’s so obvious to these writers makes no impression on the millions of Shudras who are in thrall to an ideology that sanctions their degradation. Ilaiah suggests this is due to the Shudras’ intellectual backwardness and spiritual slavery — both rooted in the ritual denial of access to learning and resources by their Dwija oppressors.

While this is certainly a major factor, it doesn’t explain why even the relatively ‘advanced’ OBC communities, who have had avenues of learning open to them for quite some time, are seemingly keen to embrace their own “socio-spiritual slavery” by supporting Hindutva. Putting all the blame on the Dwijas alone is a theoretical dead end — the byproduct of treating Shudras as a unitary group abstracted from socio-historical context. In trying to circumvent this dead end, the anthology raises more questions than it answers.

Objecting to a tag

For starters, how to build a politics around ‘Shudra’ identity when influential Shudra communities think of themselves as Kshatriyas and would object to the ‘Shudra’ tag?

It is undeniable that historically, oppressed communities have had to ‘ethnicise’ and reinvent their identity as a precursor to emancipation. That’s what the Dravidian movement did, and it’s why the ‘Untouchables’ became ‘Dalits’. And yet, would self-identification as ‘Shudras’ sharpen or bridge the already violent fissures between Shudras and Dalits?

Further, given Hindutva’s proven capability to capture power by using ‘Hindu’ identity as a lever to both transcend caste and offer status elevation within the caste order, it is no longer obvious to the OBCs that supporting a Hindutva party is against their self-interest. From a Shudra perspective, the suggestion that they should support one Brahminical national party instead of another Brahminical national party because the former is ‘secular’ and the latter is not, makes little sense.

While neither party would be progressive from a Shudra perspective, there is a case to be made for supporting the one that’s more likely to offer the marginal rewards of representation simply because it’s more likely to win. In today’s India, this would make the BJP the national party of choice for many Shudras, and so it has.

Alternative to Ram Rajya

The Breitbart doctrine holds that “politics is downstream from culture”, and to change a people’s politics, you must change their culture first.

The rightwing knows this, which is why it’s displacing India’s plural traditions with Hindutva. The authors in this volume recognise it too. Therefore, they contend that Hindutva cannot be stopped unless Shudras are de-brahminised. They believe Shudra de-brahminisation requires them to rediscover and embrace autonomous Shudra traditions.

Drawing on the work of Jyotirao Phule, they see an alternative to Ram Rajya in the kingdom of Baliraja, a deity of Maharashtra’s peasantry. Shudras in other regions have their own versions of Baliraja, which brings us to the final contradiction: Should the regionally fragmented Shudras take on a homogenising national force by building an alternative homogenous politics around ‘Shudra’ identity? Or does it make better sense to fight an oppressive homogeneity with a renewed and fiercely federated pluralism?

Notwithstanding the analytical problems attending the ‘Shudra’ category, this anthology brings the spotlight on the challenges facing a people who form not only the majority of India’s population but also the majority among Hindus. The Shudras is a timely intervention that ought to be read by anyone exercised by the paradoxical status of OBC communities in a country facing Hindutva hegemony.

The Shudras: Vision for a New Path; Edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd & Karthik Raja Karuppasamy, Penguin Random House, ₹699.

https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-shudras-vision-for-a-new-path-review-the-paradoxical-status-of-obcs/article34168697.ece

 

The unity programme initiated by farm leaders can take the shape of a cultural revolution in rural north India.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

A supporter waves the tricolour at farmers’ gathering in Jind district in Haryana | Suraj Singh Bisht

One of the most significant developments in the ongoing protests against the Narendra Modi government’s three agricultural laws has been the decision of farmer leaders holding khap mahapanchayats in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and elsewhere. These rallying points have emerged as a great platform to unite the farmers, who are mostly Shudras, and the agrarian labourers, who are mostly Dalits. Although this unity between the historically divided Shudra-Dalit communities is primarily to fight against the three farm laws and the monopoly and capitalist control of agrarian markets, it will have a major transformative impact in India’s village economy by bringing about new societal relations.

In the agrarian sector, the cultivable land is largely in the hands of ‘higher’ Shudra farmers while most landless labourers come from Dalit families. There are several production-related tasks and a number of conflicting areas among Shudras and Dalits in the villages. But it is a truism that they worked together to sustain this nation in production fields. Their collective labour saved India during one of the most destructive pandemics of global magnitude.null

It is true that the Dalits suffered atrocities and humiliations at the hands of the multi-layered Shudra civil society in the villages for millennia, even as the Shudra civil society faced discriminatory and humiliatory treatment by Dwijas above them in the hierarchical caste system. Unless the Shudra farmers realise that they must fight for equality with the Dwijas, including for their spiritual rights for priesthood and ritual training, and grant equality to the Dalits by overcoming the brutal practice of untouchability, real change will not take place.

What this unity can do

The new farmer-labourer collective movement for the survival of the Shudra and Dalit communities as well as for the future of their children will be of immense value to the whole nation. It’s a matter of grave shame that even after 75 years of our constitutional democracy, human untouchability and caste-cultural rapes and murders of Dalit women take place. This cannot be allowed to continue. The ongoing farmers’ movement has the potential to re-shape societal relations among people in the countryside. Once change occurs in the villages, the towns and cities would follow the way.

Historically, human untouchability and graded inequality is imposed by the Brahmanic Hindu Shastras. From temples to the agricultural fields, it is practised as per a layered caste consciousness by the Brahmanical Hindu society. Although the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine claim all caste communities as Hindus, they never talk about abolition of caste inequalities. But now the initiative has come from the Shudra farm leaders to unite with the Dalits in the villages, which can potentially initiate a new course of social reform.

If the farmers who employ Dalits as labourers in their fields decide to abandon untouchability, then Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s vision of annihilation of caste will begin to take shape at a practical level. One Dalit leader suggested that at the mahapanchayats, farmers and Dalit leaders must hold the portraits of Ambedkar and Shudra leaders like Mahatma Phule and Chaudhary Charan Singh — the first Shudra-farmer prime minister of India whose cremation ground is called Kisan Ghat — and show a new path to the rest of the Indians. Charan Singh was the first Shudra leader to organise farmers and establish a regional party, Lok Dal, for their well-being and self-respect in north India.

Along with the the peasant-Dalit unity, India’s education system should start reframing the curriculum. Lessons of dignity of labour with respect to leather work or soil work or kitchen work must be taught to children in village schools. The classroom learning and field work practice right from the school days make our rural education more creative compared to the urban education system.

Expand the base

Members of the minority communities like Muslims must be integrated into this larger unity agenda so that their future generation can become part of the larger village production culture. In the agrarian fields, men and women work together. The sexual division of labour is not very marked in the productive fields. Muslim women should become part of these productive fields along with Shudra-Dalit women so that their isolationalism can be done away with. In the backdrop of so-called ‘love jihad’ laws in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, social interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims will get more and more restricted. This will also affect the production-related ties at the village level. The Shudra farmers and Dalit labourers’ unity is a perfect medium to draw the Muslim workforce into the production fields and build more integrated social relations.

The Hindutva ideology does not engage with production and labour issues. Their cultural nationalism mainly revolves around spiritual cultures. Temples, cow and ‘love jihad’ kind of issues do not improve production and India will face stagnation if they occupy the main space of discourse. The farmers’ agitation has, in a way, shifted discourse to the agrarian economy and the culture of people’s unity.https://3c7306ae37980589a90994a339cc509f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

India’s productivity has faced stagnation because a large section of its population, Dalits, have been socially excluded due to the barbaric practice of human untouchability. The unity programme initiated by the farm leaders can take the shape of a cultural revolution in rural north India. This is definitely good news.

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

(Edited by Prashant Dixit)

https://theprint.in/opinion/theres-a-new-shudra-dalit-unity-in-north-indian-villages-thanks-to-the-farm-protests/630067/

 

“If bhadralok judges do not feel for the chotolok as much as the white judges in America feel for the blacks, India will crack”

Bengal is an example of how the bhadralok treated the chotolok, but Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu show that reservations work very well.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Representative image of agricultural labourers. Photo: XJ/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“For how many generations will reservations continue?”null

The five-judge bench that is meant to examine whether the 13% Maratha reservation is valid or not, will also examine the 50% cap on reservations the Mandal Commission judgment.

This question only indicates that the Indian judiciary – in its present mode of thinking – is suspicious of the positive role of reservations in changing the caste-cultural inequality.

But so far, no Supreme Court judge has asked, “For how many generations will caste inequality continue?” from a sitting bench.More in Politics :Watch | Is Bengali Identity at Stake in This Election? Jadavpur Students Have Their SayAfter Parties Reach Compromise, Delhi HC Asks Man Who Assaulted Woman To Do Community ServiceIn New India, Muslims Break Part of Mosque To Avoid Conflict With Temple AuthorityPresident Kovind’s Condition Stable After Chest Discomfort, Being Shifted to AIIMSFirst Phase of Polls: 62% Turnout in Assam, 70% in West Bengal by 3 pmNHRC Issues Notice to Rajasthan Government, Police Over ‘Unabated’ Crimes Against Women

Let us see the conditions of Shudras or OBCs in places where reservations were treated as anti-meritocracy and also as going against socialist equality, for instance in Bengal.

Bengal in general and West Bengal after Partition, in particular, produced several leading intellectuals of India. Three castes –Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas – were the most educated, giving rise to what is known as the Bengal Renaissance.

In the process of their nationalist renaissance, they designated themselves as ‘bhadralok’ (great and gentle people). The rest of the Shudras and Nama Shudras were designated ‘chotolok‘ (or ‘chotalok’, small or low people, meaning ‘lower’ or ‘mean’ castes). This division of ‘bhadra‘ and ‘choto‘ further adds to the humiliation and oppression of the caste system, but the Bengal Brahminic renaissance accepted it as normal.

When Tamil Nadu initiated the reservation battle, the Bengali bhadralok intellectuals saw that as anti-modernist and anti-merit. No anti-Brahmin consciousness was allowed to emerge from Bengal. The Bengali bhadralok of all ideologies (that state was mainly divided into liberal and communist) hated the reservation ideology coming from the South.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakrabortyhttps://3edcd703ebeafae27ffcc223a6f68cba.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The chotolok never told the bhadralok that they, who were historically assigned the job of doing agriculture and artisanal tasks needed reservation in education and employment. The bhadralok, even now, does not put a hand to the plough. The bhadraloks‘ socialist and liberal ideologies did not change the caste-based work division.

The Bengali bhadralok was among the most educated in Sanskrit and Persian (during the Muslim rule) by the time British arrived in India. After the Raj was established by the English, they were the earliest English-educated Indians, starting with Raja Rammohan Roy. They were also first to cross the seas violating the Brahmin dictum never to doit. Roy was perhaps the first modern Brahmin to die in England.

No chotolok man or woman could become the chief minister of Bengal so far.

Bengal is the state which has given the least number of reserved jobs to Shudras, OBCs, SCs, STs following its own cardinal principle that reservations will destroy the sacrosanct ‘Bengali merit’.

The Mahishya community, which is the largest Shudra agrarian group, is for reservations and is tilting towards the BJP. The party has made a Shudra, Dilip Ghosh, the state party president and chief ministerial candidate.null

Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu

Against Bengal, the Maharashtra experiment shows a different way. In that too the Brahmins, Banias but also Shudras and Ati-Shudras got early English education and produced the likes of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, V.D. Savarkar and also Mahatma Jyothirao and Savitribai Phule.null

Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

There was also an early reservation and preferential treatment demand for Shudras and Ati-Shudras.

Chattrapati Shahu Maharaj, the ruler of Kolhapur, initiated the early reservation process which helped B.R. Ambedkar emerged from the Dalit community to give voice to multi-caste ambition. Today, the Marathas who were not for reservation in 1990 see the need for it. Now even Shahu Maharaj’s grandchildren are demanding it. A strong middle class and educationally ambitious social force has risen from all castes in Maharashtra because of reservation and others want to be part of it.

Similarly the Tamil Nadu experiment with reservations has improved the conditions of all castes. The Brahmins and Chettiars who are outside the reservation ambit did not get pushed down to the labour markets. They invented new ways of living a better life.

The Indian judiciary must see reservation in the light of the successful Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu mode of accommodation and diversification in every field of life by all castes and communities. On the other hand, West Bengal is a negative example of social stagnation because of lack of a drive towards reservation and educational motivation.

In a stagnant state, without much middle class formation among Nama Shudras and Shudras,  the BJP seems to be attracting the Shudras and OBCs. The left-liberal ‘no caste in Bengal’ theory is seen as a most regressive ideological step.

BJP supporters during Prime Minister Narendra Modis public meeting ahead of West Bengal Assembly Polls, at Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, Sunday, March 7, 2021. Photo: PTI/Swapan Mahapatra

The anti-identity politics of this bhadralok stream of thought is now paying a heavy price. Reserved candidates in every institution have brought the identity of community and its social status into focus and that played a transforming role. But the left-liberals of Bengal missed Ambedkar’s bus and were busy studying Marx and Tagore.https://3edcd703ebeafae27ffcc223a6f68cba.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The left bhadralok intellectuals held a strong view that reservations will undo socialist and democratic equal opportunities for all.

But no chotolok was allowed to think about the very fact that they were called “chotolok” which is insulting and dehumanising. Such a  status does not allow the chotolok to sit with the bhadralok in any institution. The English-educated chotolok men and women less in number compared to Bengali bhadralok intellectual in any major central university or IIT and IIM.

Jyoti Basu famously said, “There is no caste in Bengal” when the question of implementation of the Mandal reservation arose. We do not see a single visible OBC leader or intellectual on the national map from that state.

Bengal hardly has an equal, competing, educated middle class that could emerge from the chotolok. By and large, Shudra Indians still need reservations across the country.

Now the rightwing bhadralok of India joins the chorus of the left bhadralok and asks for how many generations the chotolok of India will enjoy reservations.

But they do not ask for how many generations the chotolok should till the land and feed the bhadralok without being equal in any field of modern, capitalist India. They do not ask for how long the bhadralok will keep away from production of food and teach theories of merit outside that domain. Or why colleges and universities do not talk about the merit of production, and just marks in the exam.

The Indian judiciary’s mindset comes from this bhadralok view of education, employment and caste blindness.

A view of the School of Physical Sciences building, JNU. Photo: JNU

The Indian Supreme Court never asks how many Jats, Kurmis and Yadavs, leave alone the artisanal listed OBC communities, who till the lands around Delhi, have became professors in JNU, Delhi University, the IITs, and IIMs. How many top bureaucrats from those communities are sitting in the central secretariat?

It is on the Jat lands of Haryana that the top private universities like Ashoka, Amity and OP Jindal exist. How many of their children are sitting in the classrooms of those universities?

In fact their youth, for many generations, were driving bullock ploughs and tractors. How many bhadralok children in and around Delhi till the land for food production?

This is where the social justice angle in judiciary matters.

If bhadralok judges do not feel for the chotolok as much as the white judges in America feel for the blacks, India will crack. The questions that the judiciary asks plays a very critical role in shaping the consciousness of educated Indians. An anti-social justice question from a court bench will be perceived as the eventual judgment in the making.

The question ‘for how many generations will reservations continue’ is exactly like the question, ‘for how many years will Muslim appeasement continue’. The merit theory of the bhadralok does not appear to treat the Shudra, Dalit and Adivasi as an Indian. And this despite their deep roots in this soil which date back to ancient times.

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

https://m.thewire.in/article/caste/the-supreme-courts-question-about-reservations-is-the-wrong-one-to-ask

 

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‘Where should shudra-OBCs go because of whom the nation is surviving?’More like this‘Reservation will outlive 2019, 2024 polls…’

Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters

On March 15, 2021, the Supreme Court commenced hearing into whether the landmark 1992 verdict in the Indira Sawhney case, which caps reservations at 50 per cent, requires a re-look by a larger bench.nullADVERTISINGnull

A five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, has given a week’s time to all states to submit their submissions.

The issue cropped up before the Supreme Court at a time when the Patels in Gujarat and the Marathas in Maharashtra have been putting pressure on their respective state governments to include their communities in the reservation list.

Rediff.com‘s Syed Firdaus Ashraf spoke to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, a prominent thinker on caste issues and author of several books, to find out why the Mandal verdict needs a review.

The judiciary seems to be revisiting the Mandal verdict after 29 years. How do you look at it?

After the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014 and as they are continuing (to do so), there is a steady process of dismantling the reservation system.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership and (its sarsanghchalak) Mr Mohan Bhagwat repeatedly said that they need to have a discussion and debate on reservation again.

This implies that reservations have to be re-examined.

Looking back to 1990, you see both the BJP and the RSS were opposed to reservations.

Within them there were backward classes and shudras who would come in the Mandal reservation category, but they mostly remained silent.

One example is Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

The view is that 50 per cent reservations is too high and unfair to general category people.

Fifty per cent reservation is not too much.

It encompasses 52 per cent of India’s population.

This population in Indian civilisation’s history were the main food producing shudras and artisanal communities.

They were historically denied education forcefully.

Unfortunately, during Muslim rule when Persian was the ruling language, even then shudras who are in the reservation list today, did not get any education then.

Brahmins, Banias, Kaysthas, Kshatriyas, and Khatris got Sanskrit medium education and even Persian education that time.

These caste people were also in the Persian administration.

These same castes then got complete English education through the private sector which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru himself introduced in school education.

Isn’t 70 years is too long for reservation to exist? I am sure all castes have got education till now.

How can 70 years be enough when these people produced food without education for 3,000 years?

These castes did not come from outside in 1947.

They were here working in India and building urban civilisations before Aryan Brahmins came here in the 15th century BCE.

These shudras built Harappa, Dholavira and Mohenjadaro.

Shudra masses were enslaved (by the Aryans).

Education was forcefully denied to them.

Even today, under the Hindu system at the national level governed by RSS forces does not give shudra and OBCs the right to priesthood.

In your writing, you have criticised merit too by stating in India we have Brahminical merit only.

Merit has two components.

One is the productive knowledge system.

When they come into education, the children who are trained through production process, they will automatically get better marks in education.

When you impose a syllabus in the name of anti-colonialism, even Left liberals imposed mostly Western syllabus which the productive masses from villages could not understand.

Now, the BJP-RSS combine is imposing Sanskritised education system which again the masses don’t understand.

Today, 60 per cent of posts are vacant in the Indian Institutes of Management.

Why?

Do you mean to say (OBCs) do not have merit?

What happened is a very big tragedy.

The RSS and the BJP show Muslims and minorities as enemies and use the shudra-OBCs as muscle power.

When it comes to reservations, these OBCs are more Indian than them, but they say you don’t have merit.

These people (the so-called upper castes) don’t know what is animal grazing process or brick making process.

This is not education or what?

Can marks not be given if you write essays on these issues?

Unfortunately, Muslim intellectuals too never raised these issues.

They were out of the production work process.

They are in their own Quran and Hadith.

They never debated on the production process.

Left liberals who were opposing colonialism were giving jobs to those who got degrees from Western universities.

Why?

Prime Minister Modi too said this without naming (Congress leader) P Chidambaram, that Harvard does not matter, but hard work matters.

I agree with the prime minister on that.

But what is he doing in his administration?

Is PM Modi giving jobs to hard working people or to those who come from Harvard?

Jats, Gujjars, Kurmis, Marathas and Patels were not part of reservation and still they never got jobs in IIMs, IITs or even in JNU because they were shudras.

These castes do not wear janaeu (the sacred thread) in Hindu temples and therefore they are shudras.

Read my latest book by Penguin, Shudras Vision for a New Path.

In Chaturvarna (the 4-caste system) they are slaves and now they are agrarians, small landlords or running diaries.

Let me correct you. The Patels, Marathas and other communities you just mentioned, they themselves did not list themselves as OBCs. How can you call them shudras then?

They are shudras.

They thought that in post-1947 India they will fill the vacant positions of the Kshatriya community.

All these communities are regional communities.

Marathas are in Maharashtra and Patels are in Gujarat.

Jats are in Western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and then you have Sikh Jats in Punjab.

You tell me, how many these Sikh Jats got jobs in these IITs and IIMs?

There are five communities — Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Khatris, Banias and Kayasthas — who get top jobs and are in Indian industries, governor or ambassador positions.

This happened in Congress rule.

In BJP rule too the same thing is happening.

So where should shudra-OBCs go because of whom the nation is surviving?

Why is there no anger among OBC leaders or their masses about reservations?

OBCs accepted 27 per cent because there was a split in the larger shudra-OBC community that time.

High end regional communities were outside reservations, like the Marathas, Jats, Patels and so on.

Now the BJP is ruling, and they need to unite them.

You journalists, you don’t see the link between religion and political power.

In Pakistan, can a Hindu become a prime minister?

In India, can a Muslim become a prime minister?

That is the co-relation between religion and politics.

Even in the USA, Catholics did not become a president except for two, one of them being Joe Biden.

These shudras do not have equal rights in religion, education, employment.

Now, even in the agri sector their rights are being taken away by high end monopoly bania control market.

So reservations will come in (now) different mode.

I say abolish reservations and along with that private education.

Like the British did for the education system.

Why did OBC leaders surrender to Hinduvtva and not find their own niche?

Except Jagan Mohan Reddy of Andhra Pradesh, other regional leaders like (Samajwadi Party patriarch) Mulayam Singh Yadav, (Rashtriya Janata Dal chief) Lalu Yadav did not understand the role of education and employment.

When Lalu and Mulayam were in power, they played negative games in education.

It is only Jagan Mohan who understood the role of the English language and implemented it in his state.

But I am talking of Hindu OBC leaders — Mr Reddy is a Christian.

So what?

He is a Reddy.

He is taking the country towards equality in education and abolishing reservations itself.

Let Muslim rulers do it in Kashmir. Why do those leaders hang on to Urdu for the masses?

(National Conference chief) Farooq Abdullah sent his son abroad for education while the masses were put to study Urdu.

By and large OBC leaders treat Brahmin priests as god whether they get reservations or not.

They don’t think god in an abstract form.null

A Brahmin priest is a god to OBCs. They bow down (to them).

Political power of regional leaders was surrendered to Brahmin priesthood.

This is what Hindu parampara (tradition) is and this is what the RSS wants at the national level.

https://m.rediff.com/news/interview/abolish-reservations-and-private-education/20210319.htm