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There’s a new Shudra-Dalit unity in north Indian villages thanks to the farm protests
The unity programme initiated by farm leaders can take the shape of a cultural revolution in rural north India.
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)
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The Supreme Court’s Question About Reservations Is the Wrong One to Ask
“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.
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.
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Penguin India on Instagram: “Kancha Ilaiah throws light on the predicament of the Shudras and suggests ways to reformulate their current positions as well as future…”
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Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd: ‘Abolish reservations and private education!’
‘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
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Watch “Why I am not a Hindu | Book Review | Dr Marium Kamal” on YouTube
PU Library Organized Books’ Introductory Talks
The Punjab University Library conducted its March 2021 Book Club program in which introductory talks on two books were presented. The books of the month were “Maqalat-e- Shams Tabrazi by Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Tabrazi” and “Why I am not a Hindu by Kancha Ilaiah” The program was attended by students and faculty members under strict compliance of Covid-19 SOPs.
The introduction to the Persian Book“Maqalat-e- Shams Tabrazi” was presented by Prof Dr Moeen Nizami, Professor Dept of Persian PU. His scholarly talk on the book was highly appreciated by the audience. He, in a brief and precise manner, presented the biographical sketch of the Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Tabrazi by narrating the author’s statements. Dr. Moeen rejected the immoral allegations levied by some European scholars on Shams Tabrazi, while presenting intellectual pieces of evidence from the book.
The talk on the second book “Why I am not a Hindu” was presented by Dr Marium Kamal, Assistant Professor, Centre for South Asian Studies, PU. She provided a critical yet interesting comparison of the ideologies of Hinduism and Dalits in India and its implications not only on India but also on the neighbouring South Asian countries. She also included some points from the book of Shahi Tharoor “Why I am a Hindu” to elaborate the concepts in depth.
Dr Muhammad Haroon Usmani, Chief Librarian PU Library, thanked the speakers and audience for their lively participation in the program and help in promoting PU Library’s vision of Book Reading and Loving Culture.
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A Book of the Farmers by the Farmers and for the Farmers
in Book Review — by Grant McFarland — March 8, 2021 A Review article on the recently launched book edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karuppusamy “The Shudras–Vision For New Path” number one bestseller on Amazon India’s farmers have sustained the largest protests in modern Indian history since Mahatma Gandhi and the independence movement. While Gandhi’s Khadi dhoti appeared in media worldwide, the farmers received relatively scant attention until cultural stars like Rihanna and Greta Thunberg tweeted and Disha Ravi, the granddaughter of a farmer, was arrested. Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents took the world by storm, but it failed to turn international attention toward the country that invented the caste system, India. Amazon’s newest bestseller, the recently released The Shudras: Vision for a New Path, edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karuppusamy, promises to accomplish what Wilkerson’s book failed to do. Christophe Jaffrelot, a European expert on caste, says, in a quote on the book cover. ‘The Shudras echos Dr Ambedkar’s question in Who Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946.’ Shepherd and Karuppusamy do more than echo the question; they answer it. The Shudras are the farmers who are currently building tents to prepare themselves to protest through the tortuous Delhi summer heat after suffering through the water cannons and bitter cold of winter. They are the productive castes whose labour has prospered the nation while leaving themselves with one foot in the cremation grounds. Shudra in Sanskrit means slave, and they are the largest body of enslaved people in the world today, comprising 52% of India, over 700 million people. Yet, just as they sit in protest today, they have always resisted their enslavement and can boast of a proud history of egalitarian aspirations. There have been works done (although not enough) describing the discrimination against and slavery of the Shudras in India’s past. There have been even fewer works done depicting the glorious contributions of the Shudras to Indian civilization. This book weaves together the humiliations suffered by the Shudras, ancient and modern, with the struggles they have undergone for emancipation and forms a vision for their path forward. The call is as necessary as it is bold: to promote an egalitarian India in opposition to the Hindutva of the RSS, to incorporate a spiritual-religious foundation for liberation within the political, social, and economic spheres, and to recognize and promote the Shudra culture over and against upper-caste historical hegemony. Academics have neglected scholarship about the Shudras and Shepherd and Karuppusamy ably fill the dearth. Discussions of human rights, discrimination, and atrocities always focus on the Dalits when spotlighting India. The Dalits, who are 18% of India, sit outside India’s caste system, the most dehumanised of all, and receive some aid and relief efforts by Indian and international agencies. Poor Shudras, at the bottom of the caste system, exist above the Dalits, yet neglected and unknown outside. The twice-born upper castes, who are 7% of India, and to which Gandhi, Nehru, and Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS belong get everything. In a veritable no-man’s-land, they are not eligible to receive any aid, nor the benefits of English education, capitalist wealth, religion rights, and political power at the national level. As an example of this from the chapter Caste and Political Economy, more 90% of industrial and business capital is in the Dwija castes’ hands. Despite dogged determination and massive appeal, not a single leader from the Shudras emerged as a national leader. They remain in provinces speaking minor regional languages and do not feature in English media, the bureaucracy, high-end business, or industrial wealth. With no national or international allies, the Shudras are forced to forge their own path forward; a path laid out in the book The Shudras. They argue that they have always had a spiritual-religious system that existed in opposition to Brahminical Hinduism by focusing on artisanal and agricultural production. Their gods and goddesses protect life and labour. Shepherd and Karuppusamy assert the need for all religions in India to link a relationship between God and production, a relationship the Shudra religious system has but is absent in Hinduism, Indian Islam, and Indian Christianity. The international audience, blinded by racism, seeks to project their own faults and shortcomings onto India’s caste system and communicate their findings to themselves in their own language. Thus, they create race-based conclusions from caste data but without establishing proper connectivity. Wilkerson, in her book, claims that caste originated in Germany, but Indian Brahminism birthed it in 1500 BCE with the writing of their Rigveda. There is no such textual evidence in Germany. The international audience has not lived in a religion like Hinduism and does not understand the spiritual-religious structures that create the caste system and sculpt a hierarchy different from race. Comparing caste and race is valid but insufficient. Shudras subsist below the Dwija castes but above the Dalits because “Hindu dharma (justice)” determines it from their previous lives’ sins, connected with productive work like leather tanning and tilling land. Hindu scriptures unanimously relegate the Shudras to slavery, poverty, and illiteracy. The RSS and their Hindutva family uphold the same tradition. If Westerners are averse to commenting on controversial matters like religion in India, then lend a supportive voice the Shudras to take the lead; learn from their movements and protests for an egalitarian and inclusive India. When the Delhi government laid spikes on the road to prevent Shudra farmers from entering Delhi, the farmers laid flowers on top, singing the songs of a 15th century Shudra saint-poet, For those sowing thorns in your path, you sow flowers You will have flowers all the way, but the other will have thorns The Dwija Indian thought has already influenced the world, but, as the Shudras show today, the lower castes have creative, inspirational, peaceful, and productive contributions to share as well. Allow Shepherd and Karuppusamy to guide you to the path the Shudras have chosen to halt the sinking of Indian democracy and to rebuild their country around its constitutional ethos, democratic character, secular nature, and inclusive spirit. Grant McFarland works with Truthseekers International, a caste reconciliation movement started by Mahatma Phule (to whom The Shudras is dedicated). He has an M.A. in History from Alagappa University and is pursuing a PhD from the Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology, Science -
Disha Ravi Is Nation’s Heroine
Disha Ravi Is Nation’s Heroine
in India — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd — February 25, 2021
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The nation must be thankful to Prime Minister Narender Modi and Amit Shah, more so to the RSS/BJP for giving this nation young leaders of future. Disha Ravi is definitely the hope and future of India. Leaders emerge only when the nation is in a crisis. Particularly very young leaders emerge when it is charged with emotion for freedom or equality and human dignity. When Kanaiya Kumar and others in Jawaharlal Nehru University, who were more grown up student leaders, gave the slogan Azadi I was not comfortable.
The struggle of Indian people, the Shudra farmers, Dalits and Adivasis is not for freedom but for equality and dignity. Freedom is achieved with Ambedkar’s constitution but not equality and dignity in every field of life. In modern India the RSS and its ideology has not shown indication that they are against varna dharma and inequality. The farmers who are mostly Shudra artisans are unequal and undignified in the varna system.The Shudras,Dalits and Adivasis will suffer more and more in this kind of a rule.
They did not stop with abrogation of 370 and CAA but moved on to enact the Farm Laws that would hand over the entire agribusiness to the Bania monopoly capitalists. The agribusiness which was in the hands of the Shudra agrarian castes and because of that economy there are a number of regional parties that are ruling the states checkmating the control of RSS/BJP. They enacted the farm laws to set the Shudra leadership across India almost to the pre-Independence status. Fortunately they understood that.
When the Modi Government arrested a young girl of 22 years, Dish Ravi for her support to farmers’ protest, I thought she would become a globally identifiable young leader like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai. Her ability to invite the attention of the global community to the plight of the food producers has shaken the rulers. The present ruling political forces that decided to hand over the labour power of farming families to the monopoly houses which never respected the farming community. That surprised the whole world. Unlike the race question the caste/class nature of the Indian food producers is not known to the world. Disha Ravi’s activism for environment protection like Greta seems to have realized that without good agriculture there would not be good greenery and without good greenery, there would not be a good environment in India and the world.
This young girl activist comes from Lingayat Shudra peasant family. She lives in Bengaluru with her mother as a single parent. Her grandparents are farmers in Tumkur district, Karnataka. For editing two sentences in an internet toolkit she was arrested, leaving her single mother behind and charged with sedition. This very same Government provides expensive security for Kangana Ranaut, a Ksatriya actor, who is abusing the food producers of India as terrorists. She is behaving like a queen on the Indian national scene.
There is a very good proverb in Telugu: chetilo daalu and ballem, vantipai kavacham, unte yuddam chyyadam kastama (when there is war robe on the body and knife and shield in the hands fighting in war field is not difficult) Kangana is fighting with all those weapons in the hands only on screen. In real life with the support of the central Government fighting poor food producers.
Disha is the real heroine of the nation fighting a massive battle with just a pen in hands–the battle for dignity of food producers. She is not acting but fighting on the street, in the courts. That gives a life to this nation.
Disha is an environmental activist as part of global young female environmental activists. The world environment is closely linked to agriculture. As Donald Trump disliked Greta Thunberg ,the European environmentalist Modi and Mohan Bhagwat seem to dislike Disha. But the entire farmers world does keep her in their hearts. She is a beloved daughter of this dharti.
What do her college mates from Benguluru say about her. She was organizing an environmental campaign through a network called Fridays For Future (FFF).
“Her sense of history is remarkable as she has drawn not only from her personal, familial history of farmer-grandparents and the difficulties they suffered due to the impact of climate change on agricultural practices. She has also drawn her inspiration to protest and lend her voice to farmers’ protests in the country from the greatest of people’s movements in India – the Independence struggle”.
What she said in the Delhi court has lit a lamp in the hearts of millions of young women and men of not only this country but of the whole world. She said “If highlighting farmers’ protest globally is sedition, I am better [off] in jail.” This only reminds us what 23 year old Bhagt Sing said in the jail and colonial court. This one statement of a young woman from a farmer’s family who were not supposed to read and write till Savitribai Phule and Mahatma Phule began a socio-spiritual and cultural revolution of ‘read and write and fight’ in the mid nineteenth century. She has proved what is the power of language that could communicate to the global mass.
She was arrested because there is a leader in her. If only the Delhi Police were not to arrest her the nation and the world would not have known this great girl, who is working for the welfare of not just India but the whole world.
Malala won the Nobel Prize, even though Pakistan did not like her. But see what Indian so called nationalist Government did? It shamed the whole nation by its conduct.
Disha I salute you. Your grandparents and your mother would be proud of you, as the nation is.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is simply an admirer of Disha Ravi
https://countercurrents.org/2021/02/disha-ravi-is-nations-heroine/
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Disha Ravi Is Nation’s Heroine
Disha Ravi Is Nation’s Heroine
in India — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd — February 25, 2021
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The nation must be thankful to Prime Minister Narender Modi and Amit Shah, more so to the RSS/BJP for giving this nation young leaders of future. Disha Ravi is definitely the hope and future of India. Leaders emerge only when the nation is in a crisis. Particularly very young leaders emerge when it is charged with emotion for freedom or equality and human dignity. When Kanaiya Kumar and others in Jawaharlal Nehru University, who were more grown up student leaders, gave the slogan Azadi I was not comfortable.
The struggle of Indian people, the Shudra farmers, Dalits and Adivasis is not for freedom but for equality and dignity. Freedom is achieved with Ambedkar’s constitution but not equality and dignity in every field of life. In modern India the RSS and its ideology has not shown indication that they are against varna dharma and inequality. The farmers who are mostly Shudra artisans are unequal and undignified in the varna system.The Shudras,Dalits and Adivasis will suffer more and more in this kind of a rule.
They did not stop with abrogation of 370 and CAA but moved on to enact the Farm Laws that would hand over the entire agribusiness to the Bania monopoly capitalists. The agribusiness which was in the hands of the Shudra agrarian castes and because of that economy there are a number of regional parties that are ruling the states checkmating the control of RSS/BJP. They enacted the farm laws to set the Shudra leadership across India almost to the pre-Independence status. Fortunately they understood that.
When the Modi Government arrested a young girl of 22 years, Dish Ravi for her support to farmers’ protest, I thought she would become a globally identifiable young leader like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai. Her ability to invite the attention of the global community to the plight of the food producers has shaken the rulers. The present ruling political forces that decided to hand over the labour power of farming families to the monopoly houses which never respected the farming community. That surprised the whole world. Unlike the race question the caste/class nature of the Indian food producers is not known to the world. Disha Ravi’s activism for environment protection like Greta seems to have realized that without good agriculture there would not be good greenery and without good greenery, there would not be a good environment in India and the world.
This young girl activist comes from Lingayat Shudra peasant family. She lives in Bengaluru with her mother as a single parent. Her grandparents are farmers in Tumkur district, Karnataka. For editing two sentences in an internet toolkit she was arrested, leaving her single mother behind and charged with sedition. This very same Government provides expensive security for Kangana Ranaut, a Ksatriya actor, who is abusing the food producers of India as terrorists. She is behaving like a queen on the Indian national scene.
There is a very good proverb in Telugu: chetilo daalu and ballem, vantipai kavacham, unte yuddam chyyadam kastama (when there is war robe on the body and knife and shield in the hands fighting in war field is not difficult) Kangana is fighting with all those weapons in the hands only on screen. In real life with the support of the central Government fighting poor food producers.
Disha is the real heroine of the nation fighting a massive battle with just a pen in hands–the battle for dignity of food producers. She is not acting but fighting on the street, in the courts. That gives a life to this nation.
Disha is an environmental activist as part of global young female environmental activists. The world environment is closely linked to agriculture. As Donald Trump disliked Greta Thunberg ,the European environmentalist Modi and Mohan Bhagwat seem to dislike Disha. But the entire farmers world does keep her in their hearts. She is a beloved daughter of this dharti.
What do her college mates from Benguluru say about her. She was organizing an environmental campaign through a network called Fridays For Future (FFF).
“Her sense of history is remarkable as she has drawn not only from her personal, familial history of farmer-grandparents and the difficulties they suffered due to the impact of climate change on agricultural practices. She has also drawn her inspiration to protest and lend her voice to farmers’ protests in the country from the greatest of people’s movements in India – the Independence struggle”.
What she said in the Delhi court has lit a lamp in the hearts of millions of young women and men of not only this country but of the whole world. She said “If highlighting farmers’ protest globally is sedition, I am better [off] in jail.” This only reminds us what 23 year old Bhagt Sing said in the jail and colonial court. This one statement of a young woman from a farmer’s family who were not supposed to read and write till Savitribai Phule and Mahatma Phule began a socio-spiritual and cultural revolution of ‘read and write and fight’ in the mid nineteenth century. She has proved what is the power of language that could communicate to the global mass.
She was arrested because there is a leader in her. If only the Delhi Police were not to arrest her the nation and the world would not have known this great girl, who is working for the welfare of not just India but the whole world.
Malala won the Nobel Prize, even though Pakistan did not like her. But see what Indian so called nationalist Government did? It shamed the whole nation by its conduct.
Disha I salute you. Your grandparents and your mother would be proud of you, as the nation is.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is simply an admirer of Disha Ravi
https://countercurrents.org/2021/02/disha-ravi-is-nations-heroine/
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Farmers Are Tillers, Not Killers
Farmers Are Tillers, Not KillersKancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Kangana Ranaut again and again is attacking the Indian farmers as terrorists. She has done that in response to the world famous pop singer Rihanna and famous environmentalist girl Greta’s support to farmers movement. Sachin Tendulkar and other pro-BJP forces also joined the chorus. Most of these forces are pro-monopoly houses and hardly have any engagement with the agrarian production.
One’s own social location in terms of caste plays a key role in taking stands when the farmers of India and the business and industrial houses are on the course of conflict. International expressions cannot be judged based on convenience. In a globalised world international opinions get expressed on many things. In fact the BJP/RSS mobilized international opinions in their favour on many occasions. Such international opinions were expressed during the anti-rape Nirbhaya agitation and the RSS/BJP combine was very happy and welcomed such global opinions coming in since those opinions were against the Congress Government at that time. The farmers issue is a massive survival issue of the whole nation itself. I have never in my life time experienced such massive agitation by farmers. What do Sachin Tendulkar and Kangana kind of people know about agriculture? Particularly Kangana Ranaut’s language against farmers has shocked the whole world, not just the nation.
It is a well known fact that Kangana is a Ksatriya arrow left on the Indian Shudra farmers by Yogi Adithyanath. I say this with conviction because the agitating farmers mostly are Shudras and the Ksatriyas as a community did not put its hand on the plough, in their historical existence, though they own estates of land. They treat tilling land below their community status. Quite interestingly the Jats of Uttar Pradesh are in the lead of the movement at present under the leadership of Rakesh Tikait, who is a son of the famous Mahendra Singh Tikait. Even then Kangana says the same thing that she was saying against Punjab farmers linking this agitation to Khalistan. The caste system makes many of the policy decisions biased. There is a clear divide between the agrarian production and the business networks that want to make business and make profits around agrarian produce. Farmers have never evolved into a business community in India. Even the high end agriculturist communities like Kamma, Reddy, Velama, Kapu, Lingayat, Jat, Gujjar, Yadav, Maratha and so on did not get into high end monopoly businesses. The high end business is mainly in the hands of national Banias, Brahmins, Kayathas, Khatris. Of late Ksatriyas are also entering into business. The farmers’ fears get compounded because of this caste divide also.
Kanagana, who characterises the food producers comes from a family that never tilled an acre of land and never sowed a seed and produced a ton of grain. She comes from a horse riding and knife wielding family heritage. Perhaps she has not seen how a farmer’s furrow germinates the plant that becomes the source of life blood of all others in the country while living in a mansion in Himachal Pradesh.
There is a fine Telugu folk song that has become a trend setter on youtube written by a Telugu writer Asta Gangadhar ‘Raithu (farmer) the Legend’ and sung by Relare Ganga, which broadly goes as follows:
O farmer you are our hero
O farmer you are our legend
O farmer you produce food from the mud
Unless you produce food computers cannot work
Unless you produce food the robots do walk
Unless you produce food the soldier cannot fire a gun
Kangana calls this farmer who is the real hero of the nation and real legend of the nation, a terrorist repeatedly. She does not seem to read or hear what is said and written about her daily attack on farmers.
Why did the international response come even after so many days of farmer agitation against the new farm laws? A tribal environmentalist young girl from North East India called Kangujam, who is just nine, gave a call to the world to respond to the suffering farmers in the cold, in corona pandemic in the open on Delhi borders. They are facing police lathis, barricades along with insufficient food and water.
Kangujam tweeted, “Dear friends, our millions of poor farmers sleeping in the streets in this cold weather don’t expect anything from you. Just your one tweet of love and support /solidarity to their cause means a lot to them. Our Indian celebrities are lost!”
This appeal of our own environmentalist young Adivasi girl invoked responses from many global celebrities including
Rihanna who said in her hashtag tweet “Why aren’t we talking about this farmers’ protest” with a picture of Indian farmers living in the cold on the Delhi border. This led to a series of tweets.
Greta Thunberg said “We stand in solidarity with the farmers protest in India”
Actress and Instagram influencer Amanda Cerny too showed her support:
She said:
“The world is watching. You don’t have to be Indian or Punjabi or South Asian to understand the issue. All you have to do is care about humanity. Always demand freedom of speech, freedom of press, basic human and civil rights-equity and dignity for workers. #FarmersProtest #internetshutdown”
Kanagana said in her tweet in response to these international tweets, they “are not farmers but terrorists who are trying to divide India”. She not only repeatedly slut shamed Rihanna in a aseries of tweets, Ranaut also called Thunberg a “dumb and spoilt brat”. Kangana’s response must be seen in the background of the BJP Government trying to project the farmers movement as Khalistani terrorist movement. For the first time in six years Modi rule a political blunder has been committed. He went after farmers who voted the BJP to power twice. His Government and party also do not stop such a miscalculated attack on the farmers. Why should the Government of India become very sensitive to individual criticism from abroad? As I said such a criticism came more than this when Nirbhaya rape agitation took place in Delhi.
The narrative of farmers getting attacked as terrorists is certainly making the organic intellectuals coming from the agrarian family background who write in every regional language their own songs, stories and novels. The farmers agitation has inspired a new genre of writing, singing and dancing in the villages. The farmer terrorist language is infuriating them. That will have its fall out sooner or later.
Social media cuts both ways. In one particular stage it worked in the RSS/BJP favour. But now the narrative is changing. Farmer is too much of a nationalist to be brandished as terrorist or anti-national.
The author is a political theorist, with an upcoming new book The Shudras — Vision for a New Path co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy (Penguin).
https://countercurrents.org/2021/02/farmers-are-tillers-not-killers/
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The Shudras: Vision for a New Path
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Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd 