in Annihilate Caste — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

India is a nation of second largest population in the world. China is the first largest populated nation with a land size bigger than India. India’s population according to 2011 census was 1210.2 million and China’s population was 1347.3 million. India’s land size is 3.287 million KMs, whereas China’s land size is 9.597 million KMs. China’s land size is three times bigger than that of India.

Within a small land size with a massive population India has been producing food, goods and commodities that could sustain a population of almost as large as that of China. This means that the food producers of India must have been working harder and for longer hours than that of Chinese food producers.

India feeds more non-food producers than China. In India there are about 7-8 per cent population in caste terms the Brahmins, Banias, Jains, Kayasthas Khatris and Kshatriyas openly who declared that they would not touch agricultural work, which is the main food production source.

There is a spiritual theory that controls their mind that production is pollution and soil is untouchable. The Indian Jains think that tilling the land kills insects therefore they would not do that job as they practice total non-violence. There is no such anti-production population in China. All do production or production related work without any spiritual or any other theory of non-violence that works as hindrance to the life line of human survival, food production. Crafting such theories is easy but sustaining human life is very difficult.

This situation has increased the burden and pain of food producers in India. The physical labour, pain and pleasure are evenly distributed in China. Sweating out to produce food is a universal human cultural and civilizational value and non-participation in production is exceptional human behaviour. Indian Brahminism has produced this exclusionary spiritual and cultural system which has become the main problem of India.

Though there is a difference in consumption levels of Indians and Chinese, the fact that India feeds it people by producing food resources for all of them shows its strength. Where exactly is the strength of its food, goods and commodity production lies? It lies with a social mass within the Indian population called Shudras, Atishudras (Dalits) and Adivasis. The minority religious people like Muslims and Christians also share their labour. But the main component of the labour power to sustain this country’s people’s lives comes from the Shudras and Dalits. On the other hand, the main ruling class of India consists of five castes-Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Kshatriyas. They are known as the ruling English educated Bhadralok. They treat the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis as not so competent people to rule India on their own. But the history of Indian civilization tells that the Shudras are the main civilization builders with massive struggle with nature. And over a period of time they built the science and technology of production. For any nation to survive through the thick and thin of natural calamities, human wars and human ignorance keeping the human mass survive the food producers went on playing a key role, after the food gathering stage was crossed.

The Shudras and Brahmins worked as two opposing schools in the process of keeping this nation survive. There were no such diametrically opposite schools in China at any point of time in history. The Shudras were agriculturalists and the Brahmins were anti-agricultural sanyasis, sadhus, gurus, peetadhipathis and so on. They have been working ways and means to survive without participating in food production. The Shudra knowledge of production, construction and building up science of preservation of food resources played main role in civilization building. By the time the Indo-Africans who later have come to be known as Dravidian and in caste/Varna terms Shudras built Harappan civilization without Brahminism being around.

Both the countries have oldest civilization on this earth. The Indian civilization began to be noticed by the world with building up of Harappan city civilization around 3000 BCE. Shimao is oldest civilizational city site in China dated back to 2000BCE. In the recent past the Harappan civilization is being discussed in a big way in the global history and archaeology platforms. Though Chinese so far discovered Shimao civilization as their most ancient civilization it was not as rich as that of Harappan civilization

What is actually a broad definition of civilization?

According to one definition: “A civilization is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, a form of government and symbolic systems of communication such as writing. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms (animals, birds and so on), specialization of labour, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming and expansionism…Civilization, as its etymology suggests, is a concept originally linked to towns and cities. The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally associated with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite.”

Who built this civilization in its earliest form and where it began? As I said earlier in the Indian subcontinent the Harappan civilization is the earliest and there is no dispute about it. For any civilization to be built developing an economy of domesticated animals, de-tribalization of human living, constructing villages and expanding them into urban centres are the key processes. Who built the Harappan civilization? Number of archaeological studies, the recent DNA studies and human migrational studies clearly suggest that the Harappan civilization was built by Ando-Africans, later known as the Dravidian race. Whereas the Chinese civilization was built by the Han race. It is clear that by the time of India building Harappan civilization China had no matching civilization even after thousand years of Harappan civilization. When they built the Shinao civilization it was no match to the Indian Harappan civilization. There was no urban civilization that was as advanced as that of Harappan civilization even 2000BCE.

According to Tony Joseph the third migration to the Indian sub-continent was that of Aryans by 1500 BCE. The Aryans wrote Rig Veda after they settled down on this land as their first book in their language-Sanskrit. The Indo-Africans or Dravidians had their own languages in different stages of development. The Indian society, as Rig Veda tells us, was divided into four Varnas–Shudra, Vaisya, Kshatriya and Brahmin by the time the Rig Veda was written. The Shudras were shown as slave working mass; the other three varna/castes were the Aryan non-working minority that would get food resources from the labour of the Shudras. The whole Sanskrit literature has shown Shudras as inferior human beings. Their existence in modern India is without much change. Whether it was the Congress rule or coalition rule or the RSS/BJP rule Varnadharma system remained the central anchor around which they operated in the post-Independent India.

Even assuming that the Aryan migration theory is wrong, as the Hindutva archaeologists and historians are arguing, the work ethics of the present-21st century Brahmins and other Dwijas–show that they have no participation in deforesting, agriculuralising the lands, taking care of animal and bird economic activity. If the division of labour that had driven them to such non-agrarian activity leaving every agrarian productive activity to Shudras the brahmin history, practice and life style even of 21st century does not show that they have changed. Even now their contribution in civilization building as it is a continuing process is a negative one. If they claim that they built religious organizational structures like temples, mutts, and pittas so on, Brahminism does not show inclusive character to allow collective civilization to emerge in building these structures and institutions. Even in that realm the physical and scientific structural construction of those institutions are done by Shudras. The role of the Dwijas in pre-Independent Indian civilization building seems negative but never was positive and post-Independence democratic India did not change the basic character of Brahminism of the old order.

The Dwija castes have occupied all education; ritual, soft knowledge related institutions and kept tightly under them in a manner that they do not unfold knowledge of production, positive and inclusive human relations. In educational institutions and soft knowledge and religious institutions Brahmins made the Shudras, including Marathas, Patels, Jats, Yadavs, Gujjars, Kammas, Reddys, Velamas, Nairs, Nayakars, Lingayats and so on that their historical civilization building abilities were/are inferior. Their classsical books portrayed the Shudras as unworthy people and they hold that books as the mirror of Indian civilization in the schools and colleges even now. After the RSS/BJP came to power they want teaching only those books but not field work based modern research books as unworthy to teach. In their day today practice they work in conformity with their books.

The Shudras are made to feel that they cannot become priests in the temples, cannot become intellectuals in the larger civil society. Though the Shudras worked for pulling down Babri Masjid and building Ram Temple at Ayodhya or worked to build Tirupathi temple earlier under the guidance of a Shudra king Sri Krishnadevaraya, yet they cannot become priests in those temples. If temples are part of Indian civilization and must be treated as Hindu civilization as the RSS/BJP, secular Congress or communist Dwija intellectuals are arguing, what is the place of the real builders of all these spiritual institution? They are visitors, as bhakts but not the conductors of the Hindu spiritual system. Is there a religion in the world that says that a particular caste, community or race cannot become priests in a temple?

This caste/varna division exists in a much structuralized manner by the time India established constitutional democracy in 1950. China established a communist people’s republic in 1949. But India became independent from the British colonial rule in 1947 and took almost three years to institutionalise proper constitutional democracy. This is a most revolutionary development in the whole of Indian history. The Shudras and Dalits got recognition as voters, as citizens, though several other inequalities do continue. The right to vote was given by the British colonial state for all adult Indians. If it were pure Hindu state or a Muslim state like Mughal state the adult franchise would have come to India even by now.

The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis of India got political freedom after a long slavish life after the Rig Vedic Varna system was established. At times there were Shudra rulers in small states. But they were under the spiritual and intellectual authority of the Brahmin forces. At no stage in history the Brahmin intellectual authority was overthrown in a long history of the Shudra civilization. Their spiritual and social slavery to Brahminic spiritual authority still continues. In a province like Maharashtra where a Shudra king like Shivaji defeated the Mughals and established his kingdom the Brahmin priests of his time refused to do pujas or prayers on his coronation. But such a valiant hero Shudra king was so afraid of the Brahmin power he went all the way to Varanasi (Kashi) to get Brahmin poojaris and took Kshatriyahood for his coronation. He could not create Shudra priests in his state. Within a short time that province went into the hands of Brahmin Peshwa rulers. By the time Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule came in the mid nineteenth century and rejected the Brahmin authority in all fields the Peshwas were ruling the roost over the Shudra farmers, masses and Dalit labour. Why the Shudra rulers and masses could not assert spiritual and intellectual autonomy is a puzzle that human history has to still uncover. This is not just an Indian issue. It is a problem that global psychologists, sociologists and theologians have to examine. There is a deep psychological trauma among the Shudras and Dalits with fear of Brahmin spiritual authority. Even swords, war elephants could not win over Brahminism. Only education–that English education for all–can win this battle.

The Africans who were enslaved by the white colonials fought against the spiritual and intellectual hegemony of whites. Women across the world revolted against the physical and mental control by men. But the Shudras never revolted against the Brahmins. This spiritual and intellectual hegemony of Brahmin continued from the days of writing of Rig-Veda to my generation in the 21 century. How and why the Shudras allowed this Brahmin hegemony to continue for such long time? This is a major unexplainable historical knot. Perhaps it lies in frozen consciousness of the Shudras of the post-colonial India much more than what their pre-colonial consciousness was. In the pre-colonial era they were not allowed to have access to education even though they were rulers of small states.

Most Shudra rulers were illiterate and depended on the Brahmins for every written word and spiritual speculative knowledge. Even reading of the calendar, epics or Vedas was not their job. The Shudras were not allowed to write books and read any book at all. They were made to live like children arrested in a dark room. The Brahminism destroyed all their creative energies that would have advanced the productive knowledge of India much more than the British colonialism did. If only they were allowed to write their own experience, experiments, strategies and tactics that they used on the production fields the spread of such knowledge far and wide would have made India much more stronger nation than what it is today.

The Shudra knowledge always was in an oral form. The Brahmin and other Dwijas because of their declared superior status with a right to read and write and also leisure in life and their image became divine image among the Shudra productive masses. They were deeply embedded in the karma theory fed by the Brahmins. But in the post-colonial era, even in a changed situation the Shudra inferiority continued, irrespective of their economic status.

Shivaji a very powerful king who defeated the Mughals was a Shudra. He too surrendered to the Brahmin spiritual and intellectual authority. His grandson Sahu Maharaj tried to unsettle the Brahmin authority by giving reservation to Shudra/Dalits. From that period to the last stage of abolition of princely states in the 1970s Shudra kings had political power in several pockets of India. Rulers like Mysore Maharaja and Baroda Maharaja were Shudras rulers of small states politically for quite long time. But spiritually and intellectually they were under Brahmin control. Whereas Brahmin rulers like Peshwa who ruled parts of the present Maharashtra were not controlled by anybody else in any field of life. They were rulers, priests and business conductors, policy makers. Except food production they were doing everything to control the food producers. It was from this total hegemony of Brahmin the first modern Shudra intellectual, Mahatma Jotirao Phule emerged. But the post-colonial intellectuals’ school that constituted only of Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris, totally ignored him in their count of the Indian renaissance thinkers. The post-colonial intellectual school played more negative role than the colonial intellectuals.

By the time Ambedkar returned to Baroda state in 1917 to serve as per his agreement with the king, the Shudra kings had no social power in their hands. Ambedkar got a job in Baroda state. But the king had no power to provide him accommodation to live as that would enrage the Brahmin officials and priests. The king must have thought that even the Shudra masses would support the Brahmin priests and officials and overthrow him or curse him. The notion of Brahmin curse having a power of killing people, overthrowing kings or causing wars was strong weapon in the belief system that the Brahmin spiritual system put in place. The Shudras and Dalits are believed to have no such cursing power. These belief systems were shaking the mightiest kings in the war fields and were begging for Brahmin blessing. Such was the power of casteism and Brahminism in the early twentieth century. A Shudra king who supported the education of a Dalit scholar till his highest level of education in America and England, the Baroda king could not give him a living place along with a secure job. Not that he was opposed to giving him a house in Baroda but the Brahmins were opposed to that and he was scared of their spiritual power.

If only the Shudra kings were to train the Shudra priests within their states to conduct the temple rituals, peoples family ritualistic activities like child birth, marriage, death, house warming and so on the Brahmins would have been jobless. They would have been forced to take up productive jobs. The cultural environment of the nation in such a situation would have been different. The problem was the fear of Brahmin became more serious to the Shudras than the fear of God. This in turn multiplied the problems of the Dalits. At the instance of the Brahmin the Shudras oppressed the Dalits further down. Todays atrocities against Dalits by Shudras should be traced to this weakness of Shudras. The social and spiritual disconnect between different productive layers of the society increased. If the Shudras who were spread out into many fields were to get into spiritual thought, the Shudra priests would have become a connecting link between all layers of the society. As the Shudras constituted the largest number of people all along the living history of the nation, they were situated in varied occupations. But Shudra rulers were always under the spiritual authority of the Brahmin. They lost out on philosophy front as the inferiority complex crushed them. They have now reached to a stage that studying philosophy is not their field. They want to become doctors, engineers but when it comes to the domain of spiritual philosophy they feel that they cannot handle it. They have a deep sense of fear of philosophy.

No Shudra ruler thought of declaring spiritual autonomy and train Shudra priests and intellectuals with a fear of Brahmin shapam (curse) and with the fear that Hindu gods that were said to have completely under the spell of Brahmin pooja, yagnam, yagam and so on would not be accessible to them without the Brahmin mediation. If the same pooja, yagnam or yagam were to be done by Shudra priests or spiritual gurus the communal disconnectivity between Shudras and Dalits would not have been so deep. Gradually Dalits would have become priests and gurus and whole communities would have had social intercourse in the temple system. That would have put an end to human untouchability.

Once you become a priest or teacher you read book and write books. When you read and write philosophy your acceptability becomes wider. If the Shudras were to do reading and writing throughout the history of Brahmin monopoly this much control of Brahmins over a very critical area of reading and writing would not have been continued. Any caste person would have become priest, teacher, reader and writer. The Indian philosophy, like the Chinese philosophy of agriculturalism, would have developed on different course. The agrarian production would have come fully into the domain of philosophy. That would have put the Indian development on altogether a different path.

Post-Colonial Shudraism

The post-colonial priesthood, teacher job, (whether in the school or college or university), guruhood, reading and writing confined to Dwijas and that caused enormous socio-spiritual stagnation. The Shudras who built the Indian civilization from Harappan days to present are made mere followers of Dwijas. At best like in the times of the princely rule in the states, they are allowed to hold positions of political power in the states but they lost sight of Delhi even in politics because they cannot reach there with a philosopical vision and all India connectivity. Spiritual power establishes deeper social connections across the country but not the political power. Political power keeps people around day today life struggles in the economic and political domains. Unless the Shudras get deeply involved in spiritual power and the philosophy which would give more serious ideas to organise humanity, they cannot control political power with authority. The Brahmin writers created a world of mysticism where the Shudras did not dare to think that they could challenge them with deep involvement of book reading and book writing.

The very same Brahmin writers wrote several texts which would tell such stories of brahmin rishi shapam and destruction of kings and their powers. Once the rulers themselves in modern times are afraid of brahmin power the ordinary Shudra masses were/are more afraid. They thought that a Shudra becoming a priest even after learning Sanskrit mantras, slokas and texts would not undo brahmin power and would not satisfy Hindu gods. During the freedom movement the Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were established by Brahman thinkers. The Shudras did not understand the Brahman strategy. Even if somebody understood their strategy they were spiritually dead sacred of life here on this earth and moksha hereafter. The communist Brahmins and other Dwijas though know that all this Brahmin spiritual power is a myth but did not want to attack it because such an attack would also delegitimize their control over the communist movement and organizations. Thus they helped the Hindutva Brahminism to sustain and grow. Similarly the Brahmins and Dwijas around the Congress and other liberal political forces knew that their hegemony on soft power, wherever they were/are, lies with the spiritual power they did not allow the Shudras around to understand that critical domain. They know that the religious philosophy and institutions are completely under their authority. The Shudra educated were also not conscious of what was controlling them.

What played more powerful role in controlling the Shudra forces is the domain of post-colonial intellectuality. Universities, colleges, schools, research institutions played a very important role to continue the pre-colonial Brahminic authority by not allowing the Shudras to get into mass English education and get into intellectual domains. The pre-colonial Muslim rule had its own Islamic spiritual domain which did not get out of its own fold. The Islamic spirituality had /has no liberation agenda. They were interested only changing the name and form if some Shudras converted to escape the Dwija hegemony. They replaced Sanskrit with Arabic which is also not a productive language in India. Field and spirituality got equally separated in Indian Islam as they were separated by Brahminism. The Shudras have not shown any interest in such Islam. The Hindyutva Dwijas uses their muscle power against Muslim quite cleverly.

The spiritual intellectuals and the so called secular Dwija intellectuals have a common cultural basis to divert the Shudra attention. The Shudraism remained a mind numbed agrarian operational force within small localities without even thinking about the nation and its future and their role in the nation. They did not think that the Gandhi-Nehru combination was Bania-Brahmin combination with a mixed ideological agenda. The only Shudra leader in that team was Vallabai Patel who never played an ideological role with a direction to liberate the Shudras from the historical hegemonic authority and control of Brahmanism. He simply remained a follower of Gandhi’s Bania vegetarian gyana marg (path of knowledge).

In post-colonial India what the Dwija intellectuals did was that they deployed what is known as the post-colonial discourse on India. One of the main characters of this discourse was making colonialism responsible for everything. They said caste hierarchies were also created by colonialism. The Shudra numbness was such that they did not understand why such theories were being cooked up. While blaming colonialism for everything whenever the Shudras asked for priesthood rights in the temples they said the Agama Shastras do not allow that to happen. Who wrote Agama Shastras and when?

The Agama shastras are more than two thousand years old. They were written by Brahmins in such a way that the Shudras would never get equal spiritual rights according them and other books like Manudharma Shastra and Vedas. The problem of Shudra history is that they never aspired for equality and never thought of giving equality to Dalits. What the Nrahmin priest said was/is divine word. Shudraism thus is an ideology of production and hard labour but it has deeply embedded in inferiority and ignorance and lack of spiritual and social consciousness. It never realised that the same British colonial masters allowed the African Black slaves to become pastors, bishops in Britain, America, and South Africa so on. The Shudras did not ask a simple question why they cannot become temple priests even after the British left India. Even when the British were there how were they stopping the Shudras admitting in to the Sanskrit gurukulas when they were being defined as Hindu? The same Gandhi whom Patel and other Shudras nationalist leaders and cadres were following as a God sent Vaishnava leader who was repeatedly saying Varna gradation is non-negotiable in Hinduism. Once Varna system is non-negotiable how do Shudras, whether they are land lords or landless labourers become equal in post-colonial spiritual and social citizenship rights? Political equality does not mean spiritual equality. The right to vote does not guarantee the right to equality in the temple and does not guarantee moksha in heaven. Most criminals become big politicians, become ministers but criminals cannot get moksha in the Kingdom of God. The judgement of God is not the same like our caste centred courts.

Even the rich Shudras never focussed on the leisure centred intellectual domain beyond agrarian landlordism and crude power base over the labour in the villages. They never thought of soft power issue that had much to do with reading and writing books. This weak point of Shudra civilization-that is non-focusing around soft power-made India weaker than China from time to time. A constant upgradation of the consciousness of the productive force is a necessary condition of national development and an egalitarian spiritual system that plays a critical role in this upgradation of philosophical knowledge.

Shudra intellectual and spiritual rebellion against anti-production Brahminism would have kept the world at a different plain. If only the Shudras who contited such huge numbers were to produce intellectuals who could command every field of science, technology and spiritual system the world would have gained a lot. The post-colonial Shudras had this task at hand. But they have not produced enough intellectual leaders to lead the philosophical and social discourse and defeat Brahminism without any fear of intellectual black magic. The Brahminic intellectuality has produced enough black magic.

By 2020 there is a vast difference between the development of India and China. China has the second largest economy of the world by 2020 and Indian economy is way behind which is not even 1/3^rd of Chinese economy. The only thing to boast about India is that it is world’s biggest democratic nation, with constant elections. Not that it doesn’t have the potential to change the Indian nation’s development path with the constitutional democracy being what it is, but what the Shudra mass should do is that they should gain grip over everything, including the spiritual system and higher education structures.

Post- Colonial Shudra Intellectuality

Post-colonial India has rigidified caste. The secular Dwija intellectuals have hidden every inequality under the carpet of secularism. The process of national independence was made an instrument of English educated Brahmin, Bania, kayastha, khatri and Kshatriya monopoly. The Shudras who had a history of building a massive civilization through their labour power lost out on spiritual and educational fronts and hence became mere followers of the Dwija leaders. During the colonial times under the Brahmin leadership the Dwijas gained access to the British administrative institutions like collectorates, courts and safeguarded their Brahminic spiritual control over the Shudra productive masses in the villages and towns. The Dwija hegemony was also intact during the Mughal regime because lot of Brahmins and other Dwijas learnt Persian language and they worked as administrators at lower level, though at higher level only Muslim officials were running the system. In many places like Kashmir and Gujarat Brahmins and Banias got converted to Islam and entered into higher administration. Such converted Dwijas safeguarded the interests of the Brahmin-Banias outside Islam. Allama Iqbal, a Kashmiri Brahmin convert and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a Gujarati Bania convert, who worked as top nationalist Muslim leaders are the best examples. Though they worked out divisive nationalist policy at the far end of the freedom struggle by proposing a two nation theory, because of serious disagreement between the same Dwija Congress leaders and also Muslim leaders–Gandhi on the one side and Jinnah on the other–their overall grip on the two nations more so on India remained very strong. They essentially managed the caste- class elite system even in Pakistan.

The Muslim society both in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh even now is based on the old caste-class feudal hegemonic hierarchy. Bangladesh actually is a nation of most Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi converts. But few Brahmin and Kayastha converts control power in Bangladesh even now. Caste is a coronavirus like social structure it would not leave once its enters the society. Once it takes roots in the social body no religion could undo it once for all. We need to discover an anti-caste vaccine. That requires rigorous research by Shudra/Dalit scientists. As of now there are no such social scientists in India.

The Shudra labourers and landed farmers or even the landlords followed the Dwija leadership and believed whatever they told at any time. The roots of caste structure and the Brahminic inequalities are so deep in this land that whether Islam or Christianity so far could not undo that structure. Since some of the native people converted from caste cultures the same inequalities got into Islam and Christianity. The only fundamental difference between Hinduism, Christianity and Islam is that the priesthood is allowed to all male persons in those religions.

With the anti-Muslim and anti-Christian campaign of the RSS/BJP during last several decades the Shudra consciousness was more blunted. They deploy the Shudra muscle power in anti-Muslim and anti-Christian campaigns. The Shudras are ready to do muscle work not mind work. Thus the RSS has become the main organization that safeguarding the Dwija interests in the era of advanced capitalism and political democracy.

While the post-colonial pure class theory of left liberal intellectuals kept Shudras out of the English language and higher educational structures the focussed anti-Muslim Hindutva nationalist campaign of RSS/BJP deformed the Shudra consciousness much more. They have reached to a stage of no ambition of acquiring global knowledge. They have no ambition of acquiring intellectual leadership in any field of life. That is the most tragic part of Shudra post-colonial existence. They were illiterate all through the medieval and the pre-medieval times and they became English illiterate in the modern post-colonial times. How do they rule the nation as English illiterates when the Dwijas became global intellectuals and political leaders, even ruling America (Kamala Harris, vice-president) and United Kingdom (Rishi Sunak present finance minister and so on) while telling the Shudras to remain in the regional language education. The Shudra leaders are too willing to obey them.

During the colonial period many Brahmins converted themselves to Christianity and became Christian educationalists in English language. But they again taught English to non-Christian Brahmins and other Dwijas. In Kerala, TamilNadu, in Bengal such converted Brahmins played a key role in educational development of non-Christian Dwijas, what they now call Hindus. During this entire educational expansion period the Shudras remained tied down to land, cattle economy and producing food and supplying to Dwijas. Some of them are landlords and regional rulers. Buth they have no philosophical ambition. Whatever their Brahmin guru advises they follow without question.

During the British colonial times a very small number of Indians entered into schools in the village setting because the British English medium schools were around towns. The Brahmins and other Dwijas were the most urbanized people by those times. The Brahmins, Kayasthas, Khatris were around book centred operations; the Banias were around business even in colonial times. Both these activities were mainly operating from urban areas. Agriculture on the other hand was spread out into the rural areas and most cases to semi-forest zones. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis were located in such disconnected village locations where education was completely shutout to them. Even during the whole of British colonial period the villages remained illiterate as they were during the Muslim rule and earlier because of non-availability of schools or even family education centres.

Prior to the Muslim rule in Hindu period the Shudras were not supposed to learn Sanskrit. The Shudra political rulers since were under the spiritual control of Brahmin priests or gurus they were given Kshatriyahood and were taken out of Shudra social connectivity. At every stage the educated Brahmin played a new trick with the Shudra agrarian mass so that they could not become educated. In Indian caste system there is no culture of neighbourhood child education practice by home teachers. The Brahmin family teaching centres called gurukulas were out of the reach of Shudras whether they were rich or poor. Hence the Shudras could not become teachers till the British opened schools and reservations were given to them by some small Shudra rulers like Sahu Maharaj or Mysore Maharaja during the colonial times. The fact that Savitribai Phule was the first Shudra teacher– female or male– shows the historical educational deprivation of Shudras.

In the post-colonial India when the new schools and colleges and universities came up hardly any Shudras were there to enter these institutions as teachers, Government officers, clerks and so on. High end universities were filled with Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas and Khatris. These castes historically were either around Hindu priesthood where book reading played an important role or working in the revenue departments as clerks, patwaris where reading and writing played a very critical role. Banias were exclusively around business where some basic reading and writing of accounts was needed. During the colonial times they went into English education. Mahatma Gandhi, Rammanohar Lohia and historians like K.P Jaiswal went abroad and studied.

The Shudras thought that their job was food production, cattle rearing, artisanal instrument making but not reading and writing. The Shudra landlords were happy with their power the village labour. The Brahmin priestly forces also told them that God does not allow the Shudras to read and write. This was most heinous divine principle that they evolved and repeatedly propagated.

How could intellectuals emerge from Shudras in that situation? Their notion of religion was not book centred but idol centred and when they began to be defined as Hindu during the freedom struggle they were depending on the Brahmin to read and recite books for them. They could not even read astrology or Panchangam (the book of horoscope and book of time and space). It did not matter whether they were landlords or landless labourers. The nationalist period very systematically brought all the Shudras under the grip of Brahmins, who maintained the Brahminic Dalit untouchability intact. Mukul Keshavan writes in NDTV blog, while writing about Kamala Harris hiding her Brahmin background, that his own grandfather used to have a purifying bath if he sees a Dalit from distance. That was a nationalist Brahmin. (https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/is-kamala-harris-suppressing-her-tambram-origins-2283536).

The nationalist Brahmins treated Dalit sight as untouchable and a Shudra touch as unacceptable, but the Shudra labour was acceptable even within the house. A Shudra for a nationalist Brahmin was like a black slave in American white house. In fact, lesser than that. Black slaves were allowed to work within whites’ houses and they were touchable as well. Whereas the Shudras–a Nair, Naykar, a Mudaliar, a Kamma, Reddy, Lingayat, Vakkaliga, or Maratha, Jat, Patel and so on were working in Brahmin houses to do household tasks but they were not touchable humanly.

No Brahmin at any point of time in the post Vedic history worked on fields along with Shudras. There was no area where the Brahmins and Shudras could touch each other except perhaps in sexual engagements of Brahmin men, as it happened in the Nair society of Kerala. The Nair women were working as sexual concubines of the Brahmin men. Even in other areas Brahmin and other Dwija men using Shudra women for their sexual gratification was not treated as major problem by the Shudra men also. Because a Brahmin is treated as equivalent to god and any crime by a Brahmin is treated as divinely accepted process. Once a criminal act of Brahmin and other Dwijas is treated as divinely accepted the legal dimension does not come into focus. The Shudra women were never accepted as a legal wife but a sexually usable commodity.

The female sexuality was touchable for Brahmin but not the working body as a human being. The Shudra women had lost out in education even in the post-colonial period much more than dwija women. Thousands of dwija women are educated in English medium schools after the post-colonial constitutional governance began. Even before India achieved independence many Dwija–particularly Brahmin women- got educated in English medium schools. Sarojini Naidu (born in a Bengali Barahmin–Chattopadhyaya family– but married to Shudra Naidu of Andhra), her daughter Padmaja Naidu, Vijaya Lakshimi Pandit and Indira Gandhi and so on had advanced level of English medium school education in India and England and played a critical role in high end political structures. Indira Gandhi would not have become the Prime Minister of India but for her English education and global exposure. We have hardly any Shudra women of that stature whether they came from landlord family or middle class family. The question of landless labour Shudra women getting English medium education is out of imagination. This legacy was extended to post-colonial higher educational institutions. Since the rural settings were not allowed to have English medium education the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi men and women were forced to confine to regional language education which did not give them scope to confidently get English medium higher education. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis living in urban areas were also forced to confine to Government regional language schools and or remained illiterate labouring mass.

C V Raman (a Tamil Brahmin) was the first Nobel Prize winner after independence. His father was a school teacher in pre-independent India, Har Gobind Khorana (a Khatri from united Punjab) the second Nobel winner, though he was Non-Resident Indian. His father was a Patwari in Western Punjab. Amartya Sen (a Kayastha from Bengal), his father was a professor undivided Bengal. These professions were not available for Shudras in pre-independent India.

In post-colonial India the Shudra regional language educated, even though were the children of village landlords, could not compete with English medium educated Dwija forces in higher educational institutions. Added to this the Shudra houses had no book reading culture. Unless a spiritual need forces people to read books human beings normally do not get to know the spiritual philosophical issues in normal course of life.  Unless God is said to have commanded one to read books the working houses do not take off time to read books. There was no notion of holiday mandatorily allocated for educational purposes or a rest day in the Shudra history. The nationalist Brahmin priest did not provide such a rest day which would have given them leisure time to think of reading a book once the regional language education reached them, if not English. The post-colonial Shudra was leading a primitive life, as usual around his farm, cattle either as a worker or as manager. This in itself does not provide a globally or nationally synthesised philosophy unless one is educated and takes time to read and write. That road was/is blocked to Shudras irrespective of their landed wealth or poverty.

Poverty in itself does not block acquiring spiritual philosophy or social philosophy. Poverty in itself does not stop a big mass of humanity acquiring the skills of reading and writing. Many poor across the world became great thinkers and writers. For example, the twelve disciples of Jesus who spread the spiritual philosophy of Jesus and Bible were not rich or big land owners. Similarly the Brahmin saints or rishis who were said to have written the Brahminic books or propagated them were not big moneyed or landlords but were people of interest to sustain Brahminism as a religion. They were determined to spread the ideas of anti-Shudra, anti-labour ideology and keep them bonded to land and labour, as the Brahmin keeps handling the soft knowledge power. This was lacking among the Shudras. They would have fought for it but as a race and community they were so intimidated for millennia that they lost the historical confidence in themselves except in performing labour and land related tasks. The general communist theory that economic equality or achievement solves all other problems of inequality, including that of spiritual, social and philosophical inequality, is absolutely wrong. India is a critical example to disprove the economic determinism of communist thinkers of the world and India.

How Shudra Consciousness is encircled by Brahmanism

At the national level the Dwijas encircled the high end institutions in all sectors in three package forms: the secular liberal, Hindutva and left. In every package the same Dwija forces were/are there to checkmate the Shudra/Dalit path into those institutions in various ways. They went on changing institutional definitions. When the Shudras/Dalits were reaching one stage of the institutional target they went on raising the bar with a definition that becomes advantageous to the Dwija youth. The top layers of Shudras who were defined as ‘dominant’ castes by the same Dwija intellectuals did not understand the game at all. The productive Shudra masses could not even go beyond the issue of reservation. Shudras who are outside the reservation category could not compete with Dwijas in many fields. The idea of Shudra and Dwija forces competing at the same level in higher education and high end jobs was/is very misguiding. The Dwijas have a common spiritual thread among them with long family history of education, whereas the Shudras have no such history. The main role at the national level in encircling the Shudra consciousness was/is played by Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha and Khatri communities. The Kshatriyas have little role in this post-colonial deceptive role because they too had no long history of English medium education.

Very few Kshatriyas, who in northern Indian today are known as Rajputs, Thakurs have entered these institutions because they thought that they were high end rulers with landed estate ownership and hence they need not spend time in schools, colleges, universities and offices. Even today there are not many high end Kshatriya bureaucrats and university professors and top business families, though some have come up in politics. They are hardly there within hardware or of software business or in the high end economic activities.

The post-colonial modernity was linked to English language education and it was kept in private domain in metropolitan cities and Kshatriyas have not focussed much on English education. Not that that they do not have money but do not have the aptitude to learn English. Colonial modernity has become a Dwija preserve. The Kshatriyas, of course, are catching up very lately.

The Shudra position was/is much worse. Jats, Gujjars, Yadavs, Patels, Marathas, Reddys, Kammas, Lingayats, Vakkaligas, Nairs, Nayakars, Mudaliyars and so on, though had landed property did not enter into educational and administrative institutions at national level with a grip on English language. Their presence in regional institutions is of course is visible because of regional language education. The gap between people who are educated in regional language in Government schools and those who are educated in English medium private schools is enormous. The post-colonial life is dependent more on education–that too on English education– than on land.

Globalization made the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi life more disadvantageous. The farmers’ life became more unequal and they have not yet realized where their spiritual and social location is. Their place in the globally interactive business is almost zero. Except that they buy some cell phones, TV sets, cars or other gadgets but their control on globalized economy is zero. Few farmers or landlords or political leaders could buy cars and good modern houses but that is no sign of modernized development. In spheres of soft knowledge production they are totally absent. They could neither become priests in the temples, professors in the universities, scientists in the high end labs of India or leaders of globally networking organizations or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), nor could they become national level mass leaders and industry owners. The so called rich Shudras can only handle the regional political institutions and small economic institutions.

The Shudra artisans, cattle herders, shepherds, Dalits and Adivasis all over India couldn’t have handled even the regional political institutions and financial institutions as they remained uneducated for generations. In post-colonial times they were not allowed to learn English which is the key language to handle power structures with efficiency. Many of them are still in the forest zones. They are not even capable of educating their children in regional language schools. Their children were/are farm hands, cattle grazers and cultivators for wage as they keep growing. The British were replaced by Dwijas in all post-colonial institutions. The Shudras remained post-colonial farmers, cattle herders, tillers of soil. Some Shudra upper layer castes hoped to gain neo-Kshatriya status without even understanding the Kshatriya status in post-colonial times itself has no meaning. They themselves are not in good position without having modern English medium education as much as the other Dwija communities have. They themselves have not produced high end intellectuals and philosophers and in such a situation what do Shudras achieve even if they are given the Kshatriya status. The only use of that in ancient and medieval India was to become kings. Now because of Ambedkar’s constitution they can become the Prime Minister, President of India by remaining Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi.

Post-Colonial Shudras and Nationalism

In the post-colonial world nationalism became a major theoretical discourse issue. The Shudras were outside that discourse. Once they were outside English education and university presence the Dwijas controlled the nation and nationalist discourse. The Shudras remained as field intellectuals. They were studying the nature, forests, mountains, rivers, animals, birds, seeds and instruments of production but were not entering into the book reading and writing domains, where the nationalist discourse plays its game. Book reading requires a motivation slightly different from agrarian operational motivation. For Dwijas the spiritual system itself was motivational factor for reading and writing. The only Shudras who write books in English by claiming themselves as staunch Hindu like Shashi Tharoor present themselves as more fundamentalist Hindu than Dwijas themselves. He tells about his father’s ritual practice in graphic way in his book Why I am a Hindu.

He says “I grew up in a Hindu household. Our home always had a prayer room, where paintings and portraits of assorted divinities jostled for shelf and wall space with fading photographs of departed ancestors, all stained by ash scattered from the incense burned daily by my devout parents. I have written before of how my earliest experiences of piety came from watching my father at prayer. Every morning, after his bath, my father would stand in front of the prayer room wrapped in his towel, his wet hair still uncombed, and chant his Sanskrit mantras”. (Why I am a Hindu. Aleph, 2018). How many generations of Nairs in his own family did this prayer and how many generations did till the land, grazed cattle, roamed in the forests studying nature? He does not tell us. He tells the story of his father and mother as if he had no grandmother and grandfather and great grandmother and great grandfather. What were they doing? Were they praying Hindu deities as he and his father did?

Tharoor, a Nair (rich Shudra from Kerala) became later a diplomat, a politician, but if he were to decide to become a Hindu priest to run a Hindu temple, he would have been thrown out. It was this lack of spiritual right to become a priest as an individual and denial of it even though one wants to take that most important job up in a religion based on his caste background made Shudras what they are today. This is the issue on which the Shudras lost out their civilizational contribution in a nation that they built with their sweat and blood. Millions of Shudras educated or uneducated worship like Tharoor did the Brahminic deities, but they never become an equal to a Brahmin with all spiritual rights in life. Yet they do not rebel but surrender to the Brahmin. A rebellion against Brahmin and Brahminism by the Shudras would havereformed Hinduism and made India equally capable like China is in many fields, including in science and technology. Because when entire population gtes education at the same level and treated equal in all fields including in spiritual system human knowledge level expands.

The Shudras built the sub continental civilization as Indo-Africans 1500 years before the Brahmins wrote their Vedas. They brought the Indian society out of tribalism. They domesticated cattle, stored meat and milk products and generated material surplus, which is an essentially pre-condition for building civilization. They built villages, expanded them into cities. Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira and so on are their contribution to the world much before China built such advanced civilization. But now under the leadership of the post-colonial Dwija intellectuals where is India and where is China?

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political Theorist, Social Activist and Author. His new book The Shudras–Vision For a New Path co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy being published by Penguin will come out soon

https://countercurrents.org/2021/02/disha-ravi-is-nations-heroine/

 

KANCHA ILLAIAH SHEPHERD

 Good that the farmers are fighting for their right to dignified living by facing the Delhi powers. The ruling establishment is trying to ensure that monopoly capitalists become global rich capitalists by robbing the farmers across the country.

The farm laws of the government can be justifiably characterised ‘ Farm Rob Laws’. The law of social smuggling has now got the stamp of the Indian Parliament.

When I characterised the Bania business as ‘Social Smuggling’ in my book Post-Hindu India there were protests and that book was dragged to the Supreme Court and also many local courts in Telangana. Fortunately the Supreme Court of Indian dismissed their petition and said that the free speech of the writer cannot be taken away.

The farm laws that the centre enacted essentially legalise big business smuggling with parliamentary approval. The present farm laws basically shift the controls from the town level sahukars to the big business barons who can then rob farm produce without accountability.

The Indian sahukar system does not have any morals or empathy for the poor farm hands. The Indian monopoly capitalists would not follow even capitalist morality towards tillers of the land.

As of now the grain markets are under the control of local sahukars who exploit, cheat, hoodwink the farm producers, who are mostly Shudras/Dalits and Adivasi toiling masses. Majority Sahukars have no social and cultural relationship with Shudra/Da lit/Adivasi farmers in any mode. Their food and bed cultures are different.Yet the local governments and state governments would try to negotiate between the farmers and the middlemen as the electoral democratic structures force them at the local and regional level to do that much.

Now Delhi directly deals with markets and the monopoly capitalists control Delhi through election finances. And rob the farmers all over the country with the help of the new farm laws.

The farmers are treated as a source of market wealth and nothing else. Their well being is never of concern. These business men are ruthless monopoly sahukars. They have entered into every business in a big way. Their glittering malls in the cities have finished the small survival economies of galli shop owners.

In the name of ‘farm to home’ business the monopoly sahukars are changing the crop patterns and giving small advances to farmers to invest in crops that suit their national and international business. The interest rate calculations they do have the same old multiple interest rates. By the time the crop comes to the farmer’s hand nothing remains. The entire crop moves from ‘farm to homes’ of the urban middle class.

The reservations have created a small middle class of Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis who now live in urban and semi urban centres and buy service commodities in the high end malls. But the vast masses cannot buy anything in these big malls. Once the grain markets also go into the hands of this high business chain the farmers will be robbed without any checks and balances from the local political forces.

Already the successive Governments have transferred agrarian lands that belong to small farmers to the big business houses in the farm of Special Economic Zones. This process started during the UPA regime. The Manmohan Singh Government also preferred transfer of agrarian production and control from small farmers to big business houses as part of their globalization and liberalization agenda.

During the UPA period the finished product market has spread to deeper rural areas and the traditional commodity use has been replaced by globalised market goods almost in every village. That process has destroyed the rural artisanal economy. It was through that process China goods entered every village.

The displaced artisan masses were slowly settling down in a repositioned agrarian economy. The Employment Guarantee Scheme that the UPA brought in saved many such displaced artisans turning them into daily wage earners in the village setting. Slightly improved agrarian produce, in spite of middlemen robbery continued to sustain the rural masses by allowing them food on their plates. The new farm laws will attack the small, middle and rich farmers because the big business buyers will change the crop system to suit their national and global markets.

The ruling party is interested in their massive election funds in the form of bonds from these companies but not the sustainability of masses in the village setting.Election management through big business capital entered into a new phase in Indian democracy with this model. Business houses are handling elections directly in this era. Only the Punjab and Haryana farmers seem to have realised the gravity of the situation. Most of the farmers of the Hindi belt constitute Shudra/OBCs while the agrarian labour is largely of Dalits.

There are more cow protection lobbyists in the current dispensation than farmer protection lobbyists. The business interests are dominant in those structures with top leaders having fingers deep in the business pie. The farmers movement has to gather nationwide momentum otherwise the powers in Delhi will not budge.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political Theorist. His new book The Shudras–Vision for New Path co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy, is soon to be published by Penguin.

Cover Photo Bloomberg

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/19691/Why-the-Farmers-Were-Left-With-No-Choice-But-to-Protest

 

Why I am Not a Hindu Woman’ review: The ‘othering’ of women, Dalits and savarna trauma

G. SampathNOVEMBER 28, 2020 16:54 ISTUPDATED: NOVEMBER 29, 2020 08:00 IST

Drawing on lived experience, Wandana Sonalkar explains the concerns about Hinduism as it is practised today, including misogyny, caste and violence

Repudiation of a religion by a person born into it is a sub-genre by itself. Wandana Sonalkar’s Why I am Not a Hindu Woman invokes titles such as Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian, Ibn Warraq’s Why I am Not a Muslim, and Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s Why I am Not a Hindu.null

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This book stands apart by virtue of being penned by a woman. This is significant not least because every major world religion discriminates against women. For Sonalkar, a retired professor of gender studies, the starting point of critique is her own life as a Hindu woman born in a family of Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus, a small community of ‘almost Brahmin’ upper castes. Reflecting on her formative years, she notes that her privileges — of caste, class, and location — may have helped her recover, but they did not protect her from the lacerations of growing up in a dysfunctional family whose dysfunction was rooted in brahminical patriarchy, also known as “Hinduism”.

Sonalkar was a little girl when her father starts an affair with a family friend. She writes, with devastating brevity, of the contrast in how the affair affected her mother, as opposed to the extended household. “My mother withdrew into even more lengthy puja rituals and more frequent fasts, eliciting outbursts of contemptuous anger from my father,” but “the extended Hindu family offered neither solace nor support… My father enjoyed the same respect and affection as always.”

Negation of equality

Comparing Hinduism to other religions, she finds it to be “inherently misogynist, where most religions are male-centred” and “as a religion, it does not believe in universal ethics or morality.” While some have argued that dharma is a universal Hindu ethic, she points out that it is “always determined by one’s social status and one’s gender… In Hinduism, dharma for the Brahmin is not the same as dharma for the Shudra.” It is partly thanks to this negation of equality at the core of Hinduism that a supremacist ideology such as Hindutva finds ready acceptance among so many Hindus, and “our liberal-democratic principles remain academic, they do not enter our hearts.”

If there is no universal belief system that defines a Hindu, then what makes one a Hindu? According to Sonalkar, “identification as a Hindu requires a performative act” such as visiting a temple or actions “that simultaneously announce one’s religion and one’s caste”. Hinduism does not have a singular belief system precisely because “Hindu identity is always a caste identity.”

Through the book, as Sonalkar switches between the personal and the political, she unravels the links between the violence of Hindutva and “the deep roots of violence in a caste-patriarchal Hindu social order”. Why does Hindu society tolerate violence against women, Dalits and Muslims, asks Sonalkar. She suggests that it is because of the different forms of ‘othering’ at work — the ‘othering’ of Hinduism’s internal inferiors (women and Dalits), and of the external enemy (Muslims). She contends that this dichotomy of interior/ exterior set against a common dynamic of ‘othering’ is the reason violence against Muslims is sought to be legitimised, while that against Dalits and women is sought to be invisibilised.

Insofar as anti-caste memoirs are over-populated by Dalit-Bahujans, this first-person account by a savarna intellectual is a welcome addition that has plenty to offer those seeking to understand the currents of divisiveness gaining ground in India.

Why I am Not a Hindu Woman; Wandana Sonalkar, Women Unlimited, ₹350.

https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/why-i-am-not-a-hindu-woman-review-the-othering-of-women-dalits-and-savarna-trauma/article33191568.ece?homepage=true

 

By: SAIKAT MAJUMDAR

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

In this column, Saikat Majumdar discusses books from India that haven’t received due attention.

Over the last few decades in India, a denuded secular public sphere has been besieged by a sharply militarized Hinduism. Books were among the first things to get caught in the battle. Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History, a philologist’s history of the religion, has sparked a stormy response. Much attention has also gone to the book Why I’m a Hindu, by leading politician and public intellectual Shashi Tharoor, which takes pride in the syncretic and tolerant dimensions of the religion and places it at a distance from the truculent Hindutva that has increasingly taken over the Indian state.

The controversies surrounding these volumes — both of which feature the word “Hindu” in their titles — takes me back to a slim book published in 1996, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s Why I Am Not a Hindu. Declined by mainstream publishers, the book was released by the Calcutta imprint of a small press. Under a Communist-led government, the city used to be a safe place for such books — as opposed to Bombay (which also housed an imprint of the same press), where, the writer says, the book would have certainly caused violence and anger among the ruling right-wing government.

Indeed, Shepherd’s book has not so much suffered neglect as it has fought a long battle of suppression. Given where India stands today, the battle is clearly a losing one.

As the critic Susie Tharu has pointed out, Why I Am Not a Hindu has a lot in common with Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. It is a vitriolic account not only of oppression and the infliction of suffering, but of something far trickier for the privileged to grasp: exclusion. Complete oblivion. The very opening lines strike this numbing note: “I was not born a Hindu for the simple reason that my parents did not know that they were Hindus … My illiterate parents, who lived in a remote South Indian village, did not know that they belonged to any religion at all.”

The volume manages to achieve a remarkable number of things. What is perhaps the most striking is the way it constructs a Dalitbahujan identity — Shepherd’s syncretic name for Hinduism’s caste-oppressed communities — for social groups at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, and even those excluded from it. This identity stands in stinging contrast to the Brahminical Hinduism that has been the dominant image of the religion, now weaponized by the current political regime.

Brahminical Hinduism establishes itself as a transcendental faith that enshrines elite forms of knowledge and practice, from priesthood to statesmanship. The Dalitbahujan religion comes to life as earthbound, thethered to the soil tilled by its practitioners, and to the health and livelihood of the community. Morality and immorality in this culture, Shepherd writes, “is not based on a divine order or a divine edict,” but rather understood “in terms of the harmony of the families.” Brahminical Hinduism believes in the karmic ladder of lives after death; for Dalitbahujans, “life is a one-time affair.”

This makes for a curiously worldly religion, rooted in skills valued in the community: “A Kurumaa man would have discovered new areas of sheep-breeding … A Kurumaa woman would have added to the skills of spinning wool.” Indeed, “for a Dalitbahujan body, labour is as habitual as eating is to the stomach,” and were it not for the joy their minds derive from the labour, “Dalitbahujan bodies would have died much earlier than they do.” Small wonder, therefore, that the most popular Dalitbahujan goddess in Andhra Pradesh (where Shepherd is from) is Pochamma, who cures diseases and occupies an intimate and quotidian place in the villages.

The figure of Pochamma offers a sharp contrast to the pantheon of gods and goddesses in Brahminical Hinduism — the subject of Shepherd’s most revolutionary critique. Brahminical gods, he argues, thrive on violence, often targeted at demonized Dalitbahujan bodies. The most celebrated narrative is that of The Ramayana, where the Lord Rama becomes the agent of destruction of Ravana, whmo Shepherd reads as a “Dravida Dalitbahujan ruler.” The violence is upheld by the dominance of Brahminical patriarchy, which makes a mockery of the powerless goddesses who symbolize virtue without any real agency. Thus Saraswati, the goddess of art and learning, does not create any art or thought herself, nor does she ever speak of women’s education. “How is that,” Shepherd asks, “the source of education is herself an illiterate woman?”

So much of what seems venerable or beautiful in this world remains underwritten by violence. Myths, Roland Barthes wrote, make such violence invisible. Shepherd’s reading of the divine iconography of Hinduism is a radical revelation of historically effaced violence. It remains the best answer to a question forced upon him by Indian power elites: why is he not a Hindu?

¤

Saikat Majumdar is the author of three novels: The Scent of God (2019), The Firebird (2015), published in the US as Play House (2017), and Silverfish (2007). He has also published a book of literary criticism, Prose of the World (2013), a general nonfiction book on higher education, College: Pathways of Possibility (2018), and a co-edited collection of essays, The Critic as Amateur (2019). He has taught at Stanford University, was named a Fellow at the Humanities Centre at Wellesley College, and is currently professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/another-look-indias-books-kancha-ilaiah-shepherds-not-hindu/

kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known for his sartorial adventures, but on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s 145th birth anniversary on 31 October, he gave his outfit an unusual touch. He wore a panama hat over his standard kurta-churidar while attending events of the day, from addressing IAS probationers and inaugurating a seaplane at the tallest statue of Patel (which he had commissioned as Gujarat chief minister) to standing at the feet of the statue and peering, mask-less, at a fully-integrated nation. (It is BJP’s claim that after the abrogation of Article 370 last year, Iron Man’s dream was fulfilled.)

Modi’s sartorial choice should be taken seriously. For, against Sardar Patel’s statue clad in a cultivator’s attire—loose dhoti-kurta and shawl over shoulders—and his own kurta-pyjama, it struck an odd contrast. The choice of attire is perhaps explained by the BJP and Modi’s politics and their connection to Sardar Patel’s background. Patel’s father was a farmer, and, according to the traditional varna hierarchy, he belonged to the Shudra category. As we know, Modi’s family also has a small-business heritage from the same state, Gujarat. The social groups categorised as Other Backward Classes by the Mandal Commission also fall in the Shudra category, such as the Patel, Jat, Maratha, Gujjar, Yadav, Kamma, Reddy, Nair, Lingayat, Nayakar and Mudaliar caste groups in different states. In other words, by today’s yardstick, Sardar Patel would probably be viewed as an OBC leader on the national stage.

Many would say the Prime Minister’s frequent costume changes represent his vanity, but aspirational Sudra/OBC voters, who are seeking a new identity for themselves in Indian politics, may also see in Modi’s dress codes a colourful version of nationalism. Therefore, it assumes significance that the Prime Minister has snatched Patel and his legacy from the Congress party and co-opted him into the NDA fold. In fact, the Congress seems to have relinquished control over Patel. For example, it is Modi’s followers who wrote in the national (English language) press and in regional newspapers about Patel’s greatness during the recent anniversary. They also appeared on TV channels to speak about him. Modi’s new iron lady follower, Kangana Ranaut, celebrated Patel’s anniversary by launching twitter attacks on Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and praising Patel to the skies. In the Telugu press, two key articles were written; by Himachal Pradesh Governor Bandaru Dattatreya and Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy. (Both belong to the Shudra/OBC category.)

It is another matter that BJP leaders have forgotten Patel’s real legacy, which was to organise farmers and fight for their rights. Ever since the Centre passed three over-centralising farm laws, farmers across the country have been agitating, but they have no Patel by their side, nor any of Patel’s modern-day followers.

We must also recall that even within the ranks of the RSS and BJP, nobody fully understood why Modi had built the tallest statue for Patel and not Syama Prasad Mookerjee or Deen Dayal Upadhyay, two icons that the Hindu right can claim as its own. Perhaps Modi’s choice of wearing a western-style hat can offer an explanation: they are part of his attempts to identify himself with Patel and build him into an icon, but the overall aim is to influence aspirational OBC voters, who, Modi’s party hopes, would be drawn to his flamboyance.

Like the BJP on the national stage, the regional parties that represent Shudra/OBC interests in states do have the capacity to independently mobilise votes within their regions and states. They are in sufficient numbers to combine and change the outcome of any popular election. No doubt, in North India, the political forces representing these sections have been weakened by the BJP’s growing hegemony. However, they are trying to regain their strength in time for the 2024 general election.

So, the actual mystery is why the Congress refuses to use portraits or cut-outs of Patel in its election campaigns. It would, after all, need Shudra/OBC voters too—of whom a large number have migrated to the BJP over the last two election cycles. Patel would have been a natural choice for the party to prop up; a national leader who can represent Congress party’s future plans and be remoulded for aspirational Shudra/ OBC youth; even as a counterpoint to the BJP-RSS’s aggressive nationalism.

Instead, the Congress’s campaign cut-outs consist of Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. Obviously, in this family pack there is no Shudra/OBC leader. Modi has been calling out this parivar pack at national and state-level elections, and the rhetoric against family rule does appear to be influencing a section of voters.

When it comes to regional parties, the problem is they, too, are family affairs—and therefore, like the Congress, caste affairs—and during elections they propagate campaign material and cut-outs primarily of their families. Meanwhile, it suits Modi that Sardar Patel’s family has been forgotten. After all, he has distanced himself from his own family, while Patel has nobody in politics or in the high-end intellectual circles, which Modi calls “Khan market gang” or “Lutyens club”.

In the Indian political pantheon, Gandhi is represented by his grandsons including well-known historian Rajmohan Gandhi, former Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi and so on. Nehru’s genealogy in politics is being continued by Sonia Gandhi and her children. Along comes Modi, slowly turning himself into Patel’s grandson, wearing many hats to charm OBC youth, a raj rishi-type figure who rages against the Congress’ Harvard-educated dhoti-clad leadership, who signify those who look crumpled but possess plenty of wealth. In ten years as Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh dressed in the same pyjama-kurta and blue turban, not to forget his serious demeanour. Is it not true that he wrote on economic theory, but hardly a few know about these writings? He was, in a sense, a walking cut-out himself, speaking so softly that his voice hardly travelled beyond the ears of the Congress leadership. But Modi’s Mann ki Baat is full of glib sermons on economics, political science, sociology, geography, mathematics and whatnot, even as the real economy tanks—his high-pitched “bhaiyon and behno” echoes everywhere.

At yet another level, Modi’s panama hat was incongruous against the long white beard he now sports. But this incongruity is not a reflection of the PM avoiding the barber due to the Covid-19 pandemic. No—his current bearded appearance is meant to fan a crisis in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership as well. He has started to appear more like a Hindu hermit, a contrast against the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

The panama hat Modi wore is not an item of clothing normally accepted by the RSS. According to them, “western” wear does not represent Indian cultural nationalism. But it can represent youthful aspiration. Even during the freedom struggle, neither Congress leaders nor Hindutwadis were seen wearing panama hats. Then and now, if the Congress brand was the Gandhi topi, while the Hindutva cap was—and is—a semi-military saffron (now black) affair. The only leader who regularly wore a hat during the freedom struggle was Dr BR Ambedkar. He accompanied it with full western attire and the fact remains, he was often targeted for wearing his suit and hat, especially by those who stuck to the dhoti-kurta attire.

The author is a political theorist. His new book co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy, The Shudras—Vision for a New Path, is soon to be published by Penguin.

https://www.newsclick.in/Does-Politics-Lurk-Behind-Hats-PM-Modi-Wears

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

America is a global power. Even though China is trying to challenge the US, it may not succeed in the near future. The world will be governed by American democratic moralism, highly-advanced capitalist wealth and technology for years to come. As the US continues its global dominance, a person of Indian origin — Kamala Harris — becoming the first woman vice-president with the Black badge on her sleeves is definitely a pride moment for all Indians, especially for Indian women.

Kamala Harris carries many first flags as she enters the White House vice-president office — first American woman, white or Black; first Asian; first person of Indian origin. She comes from a Black and Brahmin background, another rare and unusual combination.

The transformation of an Indian Brahmin to Blackhood in a country known for racial discrimination is a rarest of the rare occurrence. Indian Brahmin men, let alone women, for a long time in history, refused to travel across the seas because it was considered ritual pollution.

Indians and their fight for citizenship

It took a court order in 1910 for Bhicaji Balsara — a Parsi from India who had migrated to the US — to become a naturalised citizen. The court had noted that a Parsi being white could be granted the right to citizenship. Before Bhicaji, some Sikhs had migrated to America as labourers, and for decades worked as ‘unlawful migrant labourers’ without getting citizenship.

Around 1913, A.K. Mozumdar became the first Dwija with an Aryan racial heritage to attain US citizenship. That was also through a court order. In the court, Mozumdar argued that he was an Aryan by race, hence an equal to the Caucasian American White race. The judge agreed with that argument. Back then, American racism was as deep as Indian casteism. Kamala Harris’ grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, came from a conservative Tamil Brahmin family.

Brahmins and migration

The migration of middle-class English educated Brahmins began as a protest against Periyar Ramasamy Naicker’s anti-Brahmin movement in the 1940s and 50s.

In the 1950s and 60s, very few young Indians who migrated to America for higher studies settled there. And hardly any women students went for higher studies. Shyamala Gopalan, Kamala Harris’ mother, went there for higher studies in science in 1958 and got married to a Black economics teacher, Donald Jasper Harris at Stanford, who had migrated to the US from Jamaica. Generally, Tamil Brahmins are conservative Vaishnavites with a ‘pure’ vegetarian food culture. For Shyamala, overcoming that background and marrying a Black man whose cultural heritage was totally different was a revolutionary step.

Perhaps she was an exceptional young woman who had the support of her father in those days. Although the marriage did not last long, Shyamala Gopalan with her two girls — Kamala and Maya — continued her life as a Black civil rights activist, carrying on her husband’s legacy. This is another rarest of rare feat that could be expected of an Indian, that too a Tamil Brahmin. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was at its peak with Martin Luther King leading the agitation across the US. Shyamala became an activist for it.

Shyamala Gopalan became a protestant Christian, which was her husband’s religion, but occasionally used to visit Hindu temples. Young Kamala became a good choir singer and it was this Protestant Christian background that later helped her in her fight for the attorney, Senate and vice-presidential elections. Joe Biden is a Catholic Christian. He must have picked Kamala because of her Indian-Black-protestant background to win the election.

Kamala Harris and her American success

What contributed the most to her success? Was it the success of her grandfather or her mother or the English language education her family received for three generations? Imagine if they had been confined to Sanskrit, which was their mother tongue, historically. Where would they have been now? Having become the vice-president, Kamala Harris now has a clear shot at becoming the President of the US in the years to come.

For us Indians, there is a lesson in Kamala Harris’ emergence, not as coloured Indian or Asian, but as a Black with a Brahmin background, who is committed to human equality with a religious belief that ‘god created all human beings equal’ irrespective of gender, race, caste or class. After Barack Obama, she will definitely go down in history as someone with exceptional achievement in the democratic world.

Indian women will have to take a leaf out of Kamala Harris’ mother’s life — if a woman decides to work for abolition of caste and racial discrimination, they should be able to do it with more audacity.

What does Kamala Harris’ stay in the White House mean for India? What kind of relationship will develop between the Indian government and the Biden-Harris administration in the next four years? Harris and Biden have a different view on the Kashmir question from the Trump administration. Kamala Harris being of Indian origin is one thing, her administration’s stand on the Narendra Modi government’s policies would be another.

Modi as Prime Minister has made many undiplomatic statements on American soil — “Abki bar Trump sarkar” in Houston being one of them. In India, in the American election year, Modi had organised a public rally at Ahmedabad to drum up support for Donald Trump. However, despite all these pro-Trump gestures, the US president could not make a comeback.

After the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Modi government’s moves on internal and foreign policy issues have pushed India into crises. The economy is in its worst shape. It all depends on how the Modi government repositions itself on human rights issues. Kamala Harris may not be lenient just because she is of Indian origin.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social activist and author. Views are personal.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/kamala-harris-journey-from-brahmin-to-blackhood-is-rarest-of-the-rare/ar-BB1aR03d?li=AAgges1&srcref=rss

A Dalit woman’s body and sexuality are of no worth. A Dalit woman is treated as Dalit by the state, even after rape and murder.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

The rape and the subsequent death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras has created a political and ideological struggle in India. Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have made it a political issue. Both the Supreme Court and Allahabad High Court have also taken the matter seriously. However, the governments in Uttar Pradesh and at the Centre have shown their caste bias. How does the caste background of a women who gets raped and murdered by men from different caste backgrounds, decide the response of the state? The answer to this question reveals much about the nature of the Indian state.

The Hathras victim is not only a Dalit but also from a very poor background. The alleged rapists are Kshatriya (Rajput or Thakur) village youth. Since Yogi Adityanath also belongs to the same caste, and has much power concentrated in his hands, the state machinery was quickly galvanised to defend the accused. The entire effort of the state machinery from top to bottom was to appease Yogi and his community. The machinery played a proactive role to cover up the crime and wash away the evidence. The police, civil administration and medical system tried to show that the Dalit woman’s rape was no rape, her murder was no murder.ADVERTISEMENTnull

Burning the victim’s corpse at 2.30 am without informing her parents or community leaders is to wipe out the evidence of rape and murder. Burning the body would burn the evidence forever. The so-called Hindu tradition of burning the dead body was used to wipe out any future risk to the state and the accused in this case.

Look at the other case in Telangana. The woman, who was allegedly raped and murdered, was a Reddy (landed Shudra caste) and a veterinary doctor with a strong base in the local community. The community responded and moved the state apparatus to punish the alleged rapists with great alacrity. The Reddys of Telangana have significant power — the state is headed by a Velama leader, K Chandrasekhar Rao. The police (the system was not involved here as the alleged rapists burnt the dead body themselves) immediately after the gang rape and murder took an unbelievable step. What did they do? They just killed the accused in a so-called “encounter”, exactly at the same place where the accused killed her and burnt her body.

The third major gang rape was the Delhi December 2012 case. The Hathras case took place in a small UP village and the other rape happened in Hyderabad city, but the 2012 rape took place in Delhi, the country’s capital. She was from a Bhumihar (upper caste) family, with an educational background in physiotherapy. The entire middle-class youth shook up the UPA government after that incident. She was rushed to Singapore for treatment by the state, yet she died. The Nirbhaya Act was passed and the rapists were hanged, though after a long time. The state fought her case without much hassle.ADVERTISEMENThttps://9899d91e710519bd8d2db6f552a26618.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

These three cases illustrate that the Indian state still operates on the fundamental principle of varna dharma. A Dalit woman’s body and sexuality are of no worth. A Dalit woman is treated as Dalit by the state, even after rape and murder.

After 70 years of a modern, secular and democratic constitutional government, the character of the responses by the Yogi Adityanath government, the Chandrashekhar Rao government and the Delhi government paint a picture of brazen caste-cultural differences. The judiciary, police and the medical systems, too, seem to follow the state in this regard.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath are core leaders of the larger “family” of the RSS and BJP. The PM did not make any policy statement after the series of rapes in the country. CM Adityanath seems to have commanded the state to operate on varna dharmic lines. Where does the nation go from here?

For the last 95 years (it was founded in 1925), the RSS has been propagating that all castes are part of the larger Hindu fold (which means all castes and cultures are of the same family). But if we examine the literature and activities of the RSS for the last 95 years, their focus on the protection of women, even what they call Hindu women (all castes), finds much less priority than cow protection. They have not produced any literature to tell people how they would abolish caste and untouchability.

Mohan Bhagwat, the sarsanghchalak of the RSS, who makes important policy statements that the BJP’s central and state governments must follow, has not made a single statement on the Hathras incident and did not tell the country how the Sangh organisations will make Dalits equal partners and how their lives will be equally safe.

How does the RSS want to change this culture? Bhagwat said he wants an honest and open debate on the reservation system, which has improved the lives of thousands of Dalit families, with a view to negating the reservation policy. He has never made a statement that there should be an open and frank debate on the abolition of caste and untouchability and man-woman equality.

India is being watched by the world on the cultural front as well. If cultural nationalism is the RSS/BJP’s main agenda, how does the nation get out of the rape culture and how will the RSS bring about human equality is a critical cultural question.

This article first appeared in the print edition on November 5, 2020 under the title ‘Caste of crime’. The writer is a political theorist, social activist and author

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hathras-rape-case-dalit-police-reform-uttar-pradesh-6949265/

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

Questions of caste and race

 In the run up to the American 2020 presidential elections a debate is on about White supremacism. The media there have been grilling President Donald Trump about his position on White supremacism. In India there has been Brahmin supremacism for centuries. It is fully operational even after a democratic constitution was adopted in 1950.

This Brahmin-Bania supremacism is now on full public display. But the Indian media does not bother about it, nor is there any serious challenge to this supremacism from the Shudra forces who constitute more than 55% of Indians.

So long as the Shudras do not contest Brahmin supremacism India will not change.

Speaking at the ‘Mega Brahmin Business Summit’ in January last, the Speaker of the Gujarat Assembly Rajendra Trivedi claimed that “eight of nine Indian Nobel Prize winners are Brahmins”. He asked the Brahmin business audience in the hall, “Do you know a ninth Indian recently received Nobel? Yes, he is Abhijit Banerjee, a Brahmin,” (January 4, Hindustan Times).

Trivedi did not count Mother Teresa, as according to him she is not Indian.

After the BJP came to power in 2014 discussions about Brahmin, Bania greatness are staged more frequently than when the Congress and the other parties were in power. Amit Shah’s famous saying that Mahatma Gandhi was a ‘chatur (intelligent) Bania’ is already very popular.

Actually in all there are 10 Nobel prize winners, either Indians who lived all along in this country or those with Indian roots living in America.

In the present atmosphere Brahmin supremacism is an acceptable ideological syndrome. Rahul Gandhi who is the son of mixed parents declared before the last general election that he is a Brahmin, that too, a jenevudhari (threadbaring) Brahmin.

White supremacism is facing a big challenge, in a country like the USA where Whites are the majority and the other “races” are a minority. Although Brahmins are a small minority in “caste” terms, Brahmin supremacism is being paraded quite boldly under the present Brahmin-Bania rule as there is no challenge from Shudras.

There is hardly any Shudra/Dalit intellectual force that could oppose them and challenge them. The Indian media, unlike the US media, is not willing to debate Brahmin supremacism even in the 21st century. The Brahmin supremacism and Bania chatur business continues unchallenged, unlike the challenge posed by Blacks and other minorities to White supremacism.

The majority of Shudras, including Jats, Gujjars, Yadavs, Patels, Marathas, Reddys, Kammas, Lingayats, Vakkalingas, Nairs, Naikars and so on treat the Brahmins as gods, superior pandits, unmatched modern intellectuals, great politicians, musicians, artists, juridical personae – in other words all in one.

The more they flaunt their supremacy the happier are the Shudras. When the Shudras do not challenge it then no other challenge – like Dalit challenge – can shake that supramacism.

The Other Backward Classes, who are mostly agrarian artisans, also think that if the (twice-born) Dwijas have allowed some reservations, even with all possible humiliations in every place of work, and regional language education to their children in Government schools, that is good enough, while Brahmin-Bania children keep studying in world class English medium private schools.

Shudras seem to be very happy with this unequal existence. The satisfaction of the slave with limited thinking and good and hard working physic is the best condition for the survival of one section’s supremacism and the slavery of another.

Shudra slavery is spiritual, social, economic, and more so intellectual. The problem is not just with Rajendra Trivedi or Amit Shah, or with just the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology. Brahmin supremacist forces of this kind are in the Congress, in the Communist parties and elsewhere, though they may not speak out.

Brahmin supremacism is all pervasive and it has now reached the Euro-American countries. The Cisco caste discrimination case is a standing example.

Brahmins are not like Jews, who suffered persecution, concentration camps, hard productive labour outside their first nation. Ever since Brahmins migrated to the Indian subcontinent around 1500 BCE, Shudra slavery provided them honey, milk and sura (an ancient name for toddy) even though they denied Shudras the right to study the Vedas they wrote as divine books.

Till today the situation has not changed. The RSS/BJP want it to be like that forever.

The Shudras accept their theory of ancient glory, golden age because even now they treat them as bhoodevatas capable of winning the Nobel prize, becoming Bharat Ratnas, running political party affairs, controlling the gods in the temples, doing software business worldwide, running Government offices.

They run the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, all the IITs and IIMs like Adi Shankara runs all the peethas. Shudras working in the RSS/BJP celebrate their supremacy. There is hardly any change in Brahmin supremacism in the Hindu nationalist regime.

The Shudras seem to have no ability to perceive what is before their eyes. One praises Nehru, another praises Deendayal Upadhyaya, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, V.D Savarkar. Another praises P.C Joshi or Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Books are written by them, for them and about them.

No Shudra exists in a written word, not even as much as the Blacks of America exist. Human slaves can challenge slavery only when they realise that they are slaves and the Other are masters.

Brahmins have been masters of Shudras for 3500 years. Now also they want to be like that. The very same Brahmins are showing the Shudras as masters to the Dalits. They present history as if they are in no way responsible for Dalits’ untouchable status. They write books about Shudras’ agrarian castes being the real dominant ones.

Brahminism does not exist as an ideological anchor in Shudra life. All atrocities against Dalits are attributed to Shudras. Some Dalit intellectuals accept this Brahminic theory, not bothering to consider what Ambedkar said in his book, Who Were the Shudras?

No doubt physically the Shudras commit atrocities, but where does that atrocious mind come from?

There are no intellectuals among the Shudras to write books about them and for them. They still think they are not meant to write books, study in the same English medium schools, colleges and universities as Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha and Khatri students.

Shudra-cemented sentiment about regional language, landed property, control over village power, not over national power, has become an asset of Brahmin supremacism in India.

So far only four persons who got the Nobel Prize actually lived in India: Rabindhranath Tagore, C.V Raman, Mother Theresa and Kailash Satyarthi (Kailash Sharma). All others are migrant settlers in America working in their institutions and laboratories. Most of them studied in English medium schools, colleges and universities in India and abroad.

By accident if any intellectual can write in English from the Shudra background, like Shashi Tharoor, they behave as if they were more Brahmin supremacist than Brahmins themselves. They do not challenge Brahmin supremacism but feed it, by describing even an economy class in a flight as cattle class. They become self deniers, and serve the purpose of Brahmin supremacy by writing books as if caste does not exist.

If Shashi Tharoor were to live in America he would have joined the chorus of Donald Trump to say that there is nothing like White Supremacism. That is what Nikki Haley, a Punjabi Sikh did. Tharoor would have hated his own colour if he were in the Americas, while Blacks are doing the opposite. They are saying black is beautiful, and race is in the skin and caste is in the bone.

But the Tharoor kind of Shudra intellectuals do not see the caste that exists in Indian bones.

If we ask, is there no Brahmin supremacism in India? Any Brahmin intellectual, media person, judge, scientist, priest, Prime Minister, RSS Sarsanchalak, artist, singer, actor would say this is the most horrible question to ask. But in America Trump is being grilled in every meeting by White reporters and intellectuals about his position on White supremacism. That is the difference between Indian democracy and American democracy.

A democrat must say a slave is a slave and a master master, and bring about change to make them equal. But the Indian Brahmins denied slavery, casteism and even untouchablility for a long time. Since Brahmins are the main storytellers from India in the English language, the White world also believed them.

Now in that very same America Black writers like Isabel Wilkerson are telling the truth and the Oprah Winfrey kind of unbelievers are believing.

Of the ten Nobel Prize winners who lived or were born in India, seven are Brahmins, one is Khatri (Har Govind Khurana), one is Kayastha (Amartya Sen) and one is Christian (Mother Teresa). But the Gujarat Speaker claims all of them as Brahmin.

The question then is: why is there no Shudra or Dalit Nobel Prize winner when there are several Black Nobel Prize winners, who got liberated from the cluches of classical and colonial slavery only in the recent past?

Mahatma Gandhi was considered for the prize five times but somehow it was not given to him. The question of Ambedkar figuring in that list did not arise, as he was not put on the global map by the Indian or global media.

In Brahmin sociology books, Shudra agrarian castes are the dominant castes in India. But there is not a single intellectual among them who got a Nobel Prize. Why? What happened to their dominance? Where are they dominant?

They are dominant over Dalits in the villages. Marathas are very dominant in Maharashtra, Jats are very dominant in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujjars are dominant in Rajasthan, Kammas and Raddys are dominant in Andhra and Telangana, Nairs are very very dominant in Kerala, Lingayats and Vokkaligas are dominant in Karnataka, Naykars and Mudaliyars are very dominant in Tamil Nadu.

Why is there no Nobel Prize winner from among these dominant castes?

As of now this question sounds unimportant, not only to Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatri intellectuals, as it will disturb the still waters. However, the role of an intellectual is to disturb the stilled waters.


Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s new book, co-edited with a Shudra scholar Karthik Raja Kuruppusamy, called The Shudras–Vision for a New Path, will be published soon by Penguin

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/14/19544/Why-Havent-the-Shudras-Got-a-Nobel-Prize-So-Far

Caste
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
I kept watching the funerals of people killed by the brutal coronavirus in the global pandemic of Covid-19 on TV channels and read about them in newspapers. Those dead bodies who are described as Hindu are being quickly burnt without anybody around. The usual presence of the Brahmin priest to recite slokas are nowhere to be seen. Only the rich upper castes seem to have the wherewithal to have Brahmin priests, but that was also not seen in the times of pandemic.
The Christians and Muslims dead are being buried at the same time with prayers offered by the normal religious priests and by practising physical safe disease distance, at least. Christians are not being taken to church during the pandemic due to the fear of Corona infection.
Covid has drastically changed the way the religious rituals around death are carried out. When a husband dies while the wife is alive a huge process of the wife getting transformed into a widow is a torturous course. The process involves a public activity in Hindu system. Even such such activity is forced to confine to just family with a fear of spreading the coronavirus.
But what comes out very clear is that the Brahmin priest is more careful about his long life here than other religious priests who are willing to risk life for the sake of dead person’s moksha. The death from Covid is not because of an individual’s crime, and that disease itself is believed to be allowed by god by other religious priests.
A Brahmin priest lives only for himself and not even for his caste people when pandemics like Covid-19 threaten his own life. His divine role disappears into thin air when his own life is in risk.
A friend of mine called Usaa Barber who declared himself Buddhist died of coronavirus suddenly on July 15, 2020. About two dozen of his young activist friends followed his body to a crematorium and electrocuted in the oven, after a brief condolence meeting by all those present. I could not attend his funeral as I am a 67-year old declared to the most at-risk age category. Series of condolence online meetings made his memory better publicized than would be the case of his normal death and some public meetings. Of course, if not for corona, he would have lived a longer life.
Buddhism did not define whether the human body should be buried or burnt. Dr BR Ambedkar who embraced Buddhism in 1956 in a gathering along with half a million Dalits, was burnt after his death, while Buddhist monks offered prayers in Pali language in Mumbai. The Dalit Buddhists around his Mahaparinirvana (funeral) body yatra might not have understood what they said in those prayers. However, Gautham Buddha said that human body consists of four elements –soil, water, heat and air– and after the death only when buried each part of human body mixes with the larger natural part of the soil, water, heat and air by enriching the nature. Its essence is that the human body should be buried but not burnt. Unfortunately, Ambedkar’s funeral left a legacy that is very near to Brahminism and hence the claim of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Brahmin pantheon that Buddhism is part of Brahminism.
The communists and atheists, the world over, think that the human body is material as much as any other material of nature. In death, human-machine becomes dysfunctional. Hence so long as it is functioning it should be happy with all necessary material comforts and be free from exploitation from another human. However, even when a communist in the particular religious family dies, they dispose off the body according to the family’s religious roots. If one’s family has Hindu roots, burning of the body is done, if it is Christian or Muslim, then burial is preferred. For them, it makes no difference whether it is buried or burnt, as that is the end of it. In my view, their materialist view of the human body is less scientific than that of Buddha. Buddhism thought that human body that comes from the soil should go back to soil in natural form, but communists have not offered any explanation about what happens to the human body after death.
However, Buddha and Marx had a similar understanding when it comes to materiality. Both did not believe in the existence of God. There is no notion of moksha or heaven or hell in their belief system.
However, The notion of heaven and hell after death were found to be a part of universal belief systems. The communist or rationalist ideologies had little inroads in challenging those masses who still believe in these notions of hell and heaven across religions. Majority of Shudras and Dalits believe in heaven and hell concepts without even realizing that the Brahmin who created a caste system did it to deny them equality in this life and entry into heaven permanently.
Once he denied them the right to directly engage with god as a priest, it is clear proof that their entry into swarga (the Brahminical notion of heaven) is also blocked permanently. The direct engagement with god in a language that one understands is a door to the philosophical realization of god. Without such a philosophical realization of human’s achievement of satisfaction of life here and fulfilment of the idea of attainment of moksha hereafter is not possible.
The right to priesthood is a core philosophical principle of any religion. Everybody should have a right to directly engage with God and to become a priest if one chooses within a given religion. Hinduism, which is a ruse for Brahminism, does not allow that. Due to the hierarchical world view of Brahminism, Hinduism still remains as a primitive cult without evolving into a religion.
The Brahmin denied the right to swarga to all Shudras and Dalits irrespective of their wealth and political power here on this earth, which has serious implication to the life hereafter. This is the final philosophical stroke that a Brahmin used against all food producers, housebuilders, cattle grazers and other artisans or total ecosystem makers, which even ensured the very Brahmin’s survival, who prospered without ever involving in production. It is a cruel, merciless spiritual ideology that the Brahmin evolved. But think of Christian or Muslim and Buddhist or Sikh or Jew or Confucian. They are not bound by a Brahmin spiritual fascist rule and control both on earth and heaven or equivalent of it in those spiritual structures as they are made available to all of their co-religionists
The individuals in those religions live their respective life here on this material world based on their individual actions, and that would decide whether they are going to heaven or hell. One destined for heaven or hell is based on their individual actions and ‘God’ in these religions directly deals with them. It is this belief system that sustained religions in the world.
But only Shudras and Dalits of the world do not have that choice. The communist, secular and rationalist ideologies refuse to engage with this huge philosophical problem because the same Brahmins captured both the older spiritual and newer secular domains. All over India, we can see how Brahmins remained head of these ideological schools also. The Shudras and Dalits missed the bus to wellbeing in this material world and heaven in the afterlife for four thousand years. What a human tragedy!
For the first time, caste and rituals disappeared in Indian funeral process in the Covid times. But in any death in normal times caste plays a critical role in India. Under the grip of Brahminism, caste decides who should go to heaven and who should go to hell. According to their spiritual theory only Brahmins and in certain degrees the other Dwija castes, are always sin-free. But the Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis are sinners whatever they do. They produce food for all; they make cloth for all; they build houses for all, yet they cannot get out of the Brahmin’s idea of sin. The theory of caste-based sin has become a permanent trap for Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis. The worst part is that very few are even aware of this spiritual trap.
For human beings who live as part of a religion the idea of Ihaloka (this world) good life and Paraloka (Heaven), permanent seat and sukha (pleasures) in heaven play a critical role. That heavenly pleasures are believed to be permanent. For the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis neither there is sukha of equality and spiritual attainment with a right to become a priest in the temple in this life, nor there is a hope of permanent sukha in the heaven.
Caste and Swarga
What happens to those who died in the corona, and what happens to those who died for millennia within caste cultural discrimination in the afterlife? This question is critical as the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis who are non-Muslim, non-Christian, non-Buddhist and non-Sikh, as they are defined as Hindu?
Shudras and Dalits are considered to be Hindus in general parlance, but in real terms, they cannot become a priest in the temple or attain full spiritual citizenship within the Hindu religion. If they cannot attain priesthood, they have no legitimate avenue to negotiate with the god who controls both this worldly life and the life after death. In this context, the question arises whether the Shudras and Dalits, could attain swarga (heaven) at all?
After I spoke about this truth in one of the Telugu TV (ABN) channel interviews that Shudras leave alone Dalits will not be allowed by the same Brahmin priest into heaven after death, there was a flutter. Particularly among the Shudra upper layer who has some political clout. But not so from the rulers in Delhi as they control both political and religious systems. Why?
In the two Telugu states Reddys, Kammas Velamas, and as they were/are not only agrarian communities but also regional rulers and have some regional political control. They have their own regional parties. Even then their control on civil society is limited and their control Hindu spiritual system is very partial because the whole Hindu (actually Brahmin) spiritual system that actually rules in day to day basis is not in their control. Similarly, Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Jats in Utter Pradesh, in Haryana, Marathas in Maharashtra, Shudra/OBCs in Tamilnadu, Vokkaliga in Karnataka (Deve Gowda family) control regional parties. Though in Kerala the Communist Party of India Marxist is like a regional party with main Shudra leadership but its central leadership is Brahminic. But all of them have not realized that they cannot rule Indian state as a whole nor can they control the civil society that they politically rule within a state unless they have spiritual equality in a religion that they belong to. One of the strong factors for regionalization of the Shudra power is due to the slavish life that Shudra leaders lead in the Hindu spiritual system.
They are not a national force as they did not learn Sanskrit in the past and English now. Only the Dwija castes rule them at the national level.The Dwija castes that consist Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatri and Ksatriya castes have aquired full control over the national political system, Hindu religious system and international networks-state and non-state. The Shudras remain only village, local and regional political rulers and productive force with an ability speak, read and write in regional languages.
The Shudras Status
How to understand the Shudra question in the spiritual domain is never discussed or written about? Even the Shudras all over India will have to engage with their own moksha question because 75 years of democratic constitution did not dismantle caste subordination to Brahmins in all fields of life and the Shudra hierarchies did not resolve the sub-subordinations.
The root cause of these caste hegemonies and controls for millennia are located in the Brahmin spiritual system that needs to be dug up. If this question is left to Brahmin intellectuals, the roots will never be dug up, and the spiritual fascism can never be challenged. Unfortunately, after independence the Shudra intellectuals because of their regional power base and land centred economic ambitions did not seriously study why at all India and global level they could not match Brahmin English educated intellectuality? Even in North India Jats, Yadavs, Gujjars, Kurmis, Patels, Marathas and so on have not produced serious intellectual minds that could examine every sphere of life. They even treat Brahmin as god. On their own they never established authority over Sanskrit which was is being claimed to be the only spiritual language by Brahmins ever since Rig Veda was written around 1500 BCE. Three thousand five hundred years spiritual of slavery of vast human beings without even having the right to know the spiritual language is a major loss for human knowledge system.
Secularism and the Issue of Moksha
The left and Congress Brahmin intellectuals under the roof of secularism have hidden where actually their Sanskrit and English educational power, that controlled all other forms of power–money and muscle, came from. They have not allowed any serious discourse on religious philosophy in civil society. They have not allowed any serious discussion on what caste has done not only to Hindu Brahminism but even to Islam, Christianity, Parsi religions in India, in which Dr.B.R.Ambedkar faced casteism and untouchability as he told us in his autobiography Waiting for a Visa. A Parsi throws him out of the hotel, rather violently as he was a Dalit. A Christian friend also refuses to give shelter him in Baroda as his wife was a Brahmin convert. Muslims tried to attack Dalit tourist party, which he was part of at Daulatabad fort for washing themselves in a water tank. The caste system that Brahmin created destroyed all religions in India. Even now the communist Dwijas have not come out of the caste controls.
The discourse of secularism diverted the Shudra intellectual and mass consciousness in a manner that they cannot locate the disease in the social body and in the spiritual inequality that led to all other complex inequalities. Secularism has become a shield inadvertently to hide spiritual inequalities and oppression under the rug.
The Shudra and Dalit masses who suffer mental and physical agonies in this life could never engage with spiritual and philosophical questions of multiple issues of human life and death, in ihaloka and paroloka. They could never think about their place in heaven under the present form of Brahmin religion. Secularism buried serious philosophy in its debris, and the loss is that of Shudras and Dalits.
Even brilliant Shudra communist intellectuals like Tarimela Nagi Reddy (See Can Brahmins Bring Revolution: An Assessment Through the Prism of Tarimela Nagi Reddy, Countercurrents.org) and popular mass leader like Puchalapally Sundarayya having worked among poor masses of Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, did not see the control of Brahmins in all fields of life.
By the time they were working for the so called liberation of exploited masses their discourse never used the question of caste oppression as a tool of exploitation which continues to be a more brutal form of oppression than in other class societies in the world. But what the left-liberal intellectuals has inadvertently made possible is that the modern Brahmin spiritual system remain under the control of Bania, Kayastha, Kshatriya and Khatris at a larger level. This may be because of their false consciousness that they do not belong to any religion and caste, as they believe in atheism and materialism.
At this stage of human history, materialism cannot operate outside the control of spiritualism, as they both are very deeply interconnected. The Indian reality and social relations have shown this factor more concretely than that of other societies in the world.
Religion as the Soul of Society
The Shudra intellectuals never examined that human life by the end of the nineteenth century, despite the emergence of schools of Rationalism and Marxism, whether they were spiritually conditioned by religion. They did not examine the question of religion whether of idol worship or of book based prayer engagement controlled human mind much more strongly than legal system that the states made.
Religion has become the soul of Indian masses in the freedom struggle headed by M.K Gandhi, a Jain Bania without a janeu (sacred thread) on his body, but systematically projected himself as Vaishya Hindu with a theory of Rama Rajya. He wrote a book with the title Hind Swaraj. He strongly injected Brahminism in a Bania package (as he knows how to pack things and sell) as Hinduism into the Shudra psyche. By his 58th year he put together his autobiography (it was originally published in 1927) with a strategic title My Experiment with Truth, with Brahmin -Bania vegetarian religious values. Both these books with a backup of Birlas and Goenkas, the topmost business families of his time, exactly like Ambani and Adani’s support to Narendra Modi now, were taken into masses in all languages. They launched a publishing house itself to do that. It was a massive Bania capitalist project to widen Brahmin-Bania control with some accommodations under the new name–Hinduism. The Shudras believed that Gandhi is their leader and Gandhi has insisted ‘the Brahmin is the finest flower of Hinduism and humanity.’. Unfortunately, Shudras never realized that their inferiority and spiritual loss of the scope for moksha after death and eternal humiliation in this life could not be changed by Gandhian nationalism. The Gandhian nationalism was packed with Brahmin (Hindu) spiritualism and Banias were sure to reap enormous harvest by funding the sowing of Brahminical spiritualism amongst masses.
They systematically camouflaged the spiritual and social supremacy of Brahmins and other Dwijas and allowed a systemic cover-up of the Shudra slavery in this life and hereafter. Modern educational institutions in the English language that could have opened their eyes were kept out of their reach. The communist Shudras also did not realize that the Brahmins were learning English in private schools and were not allowing that language to reach rural Government schools, where the Shudra/Dalit children could learn that language.
Because of the anti-colonial wave in the Post-World War I and II, the Shudra masses including landlords who had serious antagonism with Brahminism went with Gandhi, as if they too were Hindus and supporters of Brahminism. All new spiritual controls on Shudras, with a layer under them-Dalits was passed off as Hinduism by Gandhi and RSS networks. They have a common spiritual ideology among them. Gandhi, as a clever strategist, avoided an open alliance with the RSS and worked with Motilal Nehru, who tactfully promoted his son within the Congress.
The Nehrus of Kashmiri Brahmin background, who had strong roots of Sanskrit, Persian and English education in each generation, saw the situation. They understood how Gandhi became the mass leader with Hindu brand and accepted Gandhi as the father of the nation once Motilal Nehru realized with a vision to promote his son as the first Prime Minister. This Brahmin-Bania combine which had its grip over Brahmin spiritual system and Bania emerging modern post-colonial capitalist economy started ruling India. The communist Brahmins not could also actualize the Marxist revolution due to their celebrated caste blindness, so they ended up giving further lease to Brahminical domination. In a complex caste and religious society, they covered everything under the class, which could not construct a grounded philosophical discourse that could uncover all forms of Brahmin domination and exploitation.
Jawaharlal Nehru at a young age wrote three books– The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History and Autobiography (he published it when he was 47, as published it in 1936) with a deliberate move that he should be next to Gandhi with a written word on the record. Writing of an autobiography was not a Brahmin- Bania tradition by that time, but they moved out of that tradition with a view to capture the power and make history.
Nehru’s writing camouflaged Brahminism in the language of civilization, drawing heavily from written texts by Brahmins. He did not write about the production, cattle grazing house building and artisanal science through the Indian civilization that was built by Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis.
The Indian Shudras have built the civilization from the days of constructing Harappan civilization. They built villages; they built cities; they made animal economies to advance to a parallel level by the time the Aryan migration happened. In Nehru’s civilization Shudras and Dalits have never figured. And it worked. Gandhi became Mahatma and the father of nation and Nehru became the first Prime Minister, leaving his family stamp on the nation as a pandit. His family continues to be in the limelight of the national polity, though it evolved as multi-cultural and English educated.
As the Gandhi – Nehru campaign was going on Subhas Chandra Bose, a Kayastha from Bengal, who also came from Vivekananda’s (who owned Hinduism with his new definition) community, started Azad Hind Fauz, an army with a religious name with militancy weaved around it. The Brahmin, Bania and Kayastha combination evolved as modern Bhadralok with Katris and Ksatriyas joining them in due course. These five castes with Ksatriyas and Khatris evolved as a national bhadralok and now are allied force as against divided Shudras. Rajendra Prasad, another Kayastha was part of Gandhi, Nehru team. Only Shudra who got educated in London was Sardar Vallabai Patel. He too without betraying any Shudra consciousness became part of Gandhi team to advance Brahmin-Bania Hindu campaign with some peasant orientation but never had an agenda of spiritual liberation or material equality of his community. He was content to work as subordinate to Gandhi and Nehru, with an iron man tag.
The communist Brahmins and Kayasthas (mainly from Bengal), who were part of the early Congress socialist team were comfortable with Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, (not many Ksatriya, Khatris in the communist movement) leaders using Brahminism in the name of generalized Hinduism. The only Shudra young leader who joined the communist ranks at that early age was Puchalapally Sundara Ramreddy (who later dropped his caste title Reddy adopted general Shudra name Sundarayya), who could not have grasped the spiritual trap in that whole period. Sundarayya was a school dropout from a Shudra landlord family from Nellore, near to the then Madras city. He was passionate enough to organize the poor for their rights and liberation. As against the Western-educated communist Brahmins, Sundarayya must have lived as an inferior activist, with his mass work, as the Brahmin leaders showing their text quotation based Marxism as real knowledge. Sundarayya always lived as inferior beings in the communist structures (there were many splits among the communists because of Brahminism and its divisive culture). Even though he was the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for some time, the highly English educated Brahmins with their spiritual, cultural hegemonic roots were driving the party structures. As a result at no point of time in the history of Indian communist movement a Shudra or Dalit leader could emerge who could challenge Brahminism of the communist variety.
Shudra Autonomy and Brahminism
The Shudras in the pre-Independence days mostly had their own Shudra deities. The interaction of the Brahmin priest with them was very minimal. The farmers, artisans and labour had no contact with Brahmin even in marriage and death ceremonies. Only landlords began to have a Brahmin priest at home on some occasions to acquire enhanced spiritual status to counter the British Christian identity. The Brahmins during the Gandhian mobilization of people into the freedom movement started reaching every Shudra house. They began to bring them under their spiritual control by performing rituals at their home. But they were maintaining their Brahmin untouchability even with the Shudra landlord families. They were never touching cooked food in the Shudra houses. Since the Shudras are meat eaters, the Brahmins were cooking their own vegetarian food wherever they go and show that vegetarian food was the mark of purity. Gandhi was also presenting pure vegetarianism as not only pure Hindu food but Indian nationalist food.
The Shudra landlords also started believing in this vegetarian superior narrative of Hindu-nationalism by treating their historical and more energetic multi-cuisine food culture as impure and even anti-national. Very few Shudras like Periyar Ramasamy in Tamilnadu and Tripuraneni Ramasamy Chowdary in Andhra grasped the danger of this renewed cultural hegemony of Brahminism. They started Shudra protest movements and anti-Brahmin struggles. Unfortunately, they did not connect the Shudra cultural superiority over Brahmin culture to the agrarian and artisanal production. They did not raise the question of moksha issue of Shudras in this unequal spiritual system.
Though within no time it was in Tamilnadu that the mass movement took Dravidian Shudra turn it moved in atheist direction. But the Tamil masses did not become atheist. The Shudra and brahminic spiritual systems continued to contest.In Nellore and other coastal regions, the anti-Brahmin movement, as an extension of Periyar’s Dravida Khazagam movement also started along with anti-Brahmin justice party. Only Kamma, Reddy and Kapu landed forces could start the anti-Brahmin movement in coastal Andhra. In north India there was no anti-Brahmin movement with any clear direction. The north Indian Shudra landlords embraced Brahminism without any semblance of protest even converted to vegetarianism not realizing that from the days of Harappan civilization their food culture was multi-cuisine. Pure vegetarianism was a Jain-Brahmin cultural issue that has no relationship to agrarian production. No Jain or Brahmin nation with pure vegetarianism can survive in the world. The pure vegetarian Jains and Brahmins survived with Shudra labour that could only survive with multi-cuisine food culture. When such clashing cultural difference how Hindu Brahmin-Bania vegetarians and Hindu Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis live one heaven, when they cannot sit one dining hall and eat? Does heaven have different dining halls? Impossible. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis have no place in Brahmin Hindu heaven.
Communist Shudra leaders like Sundarayya and Nagireddy got into communist party that has class ideology with caste blindness. They could not even understand a massive vegetarian nationalist campaign by Banias and Brahmins under Gandhi’s leadership. What has been proved with the example of Sundarayya and Nagi Reddy is that if the Shudra intellectuals do not understand the Brahmanical scheme in every field– spiritual, political, social and economic structures- they would be kept as inferior under the grip of Brahmin cunningness. When the Indian communist school remained indifferent to the Brahminic spiritual system the Shudra cultural heritage got weakened abd brahminism got strengthened. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi communist activists did not get English educational sophistication to understand this process and build a counter narrative.
As recently as 2018 Sitaram Yechury, (General Secratery of CPM) a completely English educated Telugu Brahmin, played an interesting game in Telangana. I was part of the Bahujan Left Front (BLF) and heading a mass organization called T-MASS (Telangana mass organizations collective), which came into existence with the support of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Both BLF and T-MASS had an agenda of combining Marxism-Ambedkarism with English medium school education in Government schools as one of the key programmatic agendas. Yechury pretended to work with us. He gave Neel-Laal (Blue and Red) Zindabad slogan and also Jai Bheem Lal Salam slogan along with many Telangana people.
At the same time as head of that CPM Politburo, he conspired from Delhi along with Bengali Brahmins and Kayasthas, who denied English medium school education in Government schools to Shudras and Namashudras of that state,when they ruled the state for 34 years, broke the BLF structure from above. After that, T-MASS was unceremoniously closed down. Sitaram Yechuri, like Ram Madhav and GVL Narsimha Rao (both Brahmins like Yechuri from the same Andhra Pradesh) in the RSS/BJP, planned to stop the development of Shudra/Dalits in all fields in Telugu states. Three of them manage Rajya Sabha seats without winning election anywhere in the country. But they control their own party and other people’s parties and organization structures with their Brahminic nexus all over the country. Caste links are far deeper than political links. Three of them are known as English speaking intellectuals in their parties. There is spiritual connectivity between all Brahmins, in whichever party they work. They know that their philosophy of swarga and naraka and they have a common understanding about the attainment of heaven. The Shudras never understood that interconnectedness in the philosophical domain. All Dwija leaders are brought up with a childhood education in their shastras, puranas and epics. The Shudra upbringing is around tilling the land, harvesting crops, grazing cattle and so on. There was no struggle for education in the history of Shudras.
Some Brahmin English speaking intellectuals control right-wing parties, some control communist parties and many have controlled the Congress for a long time. Only PV Narsimha Rao, again an English speaking Telugu Brahmin managed to become the Prime Minister of the country in 1991, ruled for five years, apart from the Nehru family members. Now he has become their property in two Telugu states. If the Shudras, including Reddys, Kammas, Velamas, Kapus, Yadavs and so on do not understand this strategy their spiritual and social slavery will continue at all India level in all structures and they will not even attain moksha after their death, leave alone liberation here.
Failed Shudra Efforts
However, amongst Kammas Tripuraneni Ramaswamy Chowdary started an autonomous anti-Brahmin movement by writing anti-Brahmin books and organizing Kammas against Brahminism. He also trained Shudra priest to perform rituals and poojas. For some reason, Kammas later forgot him after NT Rama Rao became the Chief Minister in 1983. They surrendered to Brahminism. They hardly understood that political power in smaller regions does not allow change at the national level in any field of life. The Shudras have never aimed reforms at the national level and particularly in the spiritual structures which are completely under the control of Brahmins. Control on the spiritual system and control on national power structure is interrelated. The Kammas have not achieved both. They are visible in the Telugu region, but at Delhi they are under the grip of the five Dwija communities who control not only national structures but also international relations both in the domains of politics, economy and culture.
During the freedom movement theo Gandhi-Nehru -Subhash Chandra Bose was to project political Hinduism with a secualar language. The Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headed by Brahmins themselves started organizing the whole Brahmins community to reposition from Sanathandharma classical understanding under the new name Hinduism. No Shudra ledership assrted its autnomy from the larger Hindu Brahmin-Bania project.
The Gandhi-Nehru strean constructed secular Hindu national India. The RSS/Hindu Mahasbha constructed an anti-Muslim and Chrisitan image and organized the Shudras under Dwija leadership. Menawhile the Shudra productive egalitarian Indian culture and civilization were completely undermined.
Actually the name Hinduism was not acceptable to many Brahmins in those days. These two stream made it acceptable to all Brahmins as that alone gives them spiritually organized power in all fields after independence across the country. Certain Brahmin sections were even averse to learning English along with Sanskrit. However, already there was a section of Brahmins who learnt Persian and got into Mughal bureaucracy. They have already tasted the power of bureaucracy from Mughal days. Hence they consciously moved into English education while retaining their grip on Sanskrit in Brahmin spiritual domain. The Shudras kept in the traditional agrarian sector by allowing regional language education so that they cannot produce intellectuals who aspire for national leadership with a grip on English language. Even the Shudra feudal forces did not understand the role of English language in future India and now they are far behind the Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatris not only in India in global markets.
However, those Brahmin sections that have already got exposed to British English education carefully guarding their sanathanness and vegetarianism entered into British administration. The Tamil and Kerala Brahmins led this anti-Shudra network from the south, apart from Bengali and Marathi Brahmins.
But many Brahmins in different regions have already adjusted with Muslim administration and Persian language education while retaining their divinity around Sanskrit. The Muslims rulers, Mullahs behaved like Brahmins with Shudras and Dalits because their prayer language was Arabic whereas people’s language was Urdu and administrative language was Persian. Both Brahmins and Muslim rulers and Mullahs were anti-Shudra and Dalit in the same manner. Ambedkar also testified about this aspect about the Muslim opposition to Dalits touching water tanks. The Brahmin convert Christians fully co-operated with Brahmins in every sphere. They gave high quality English education in private schools. It was an all-round conspiracy against Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis in India. Their equality and wellbeing here and their attainment of heaven after death was never discussed in any religion in India.
As all this was happening, the Shudras remained within regional languages without much exposure to Persian or English within their Shudra spiritual domain. Hardly any all India Shudra leadership with an ability to communicate with all castes/religions across the nation emerged. Gandhi and Nehru were only two leaders with such all India communication abilities with a following across the country in the political domain. Priests and peetadhipatis were in a position to communicate and connect to the all India Brahmin networks to continue their hegemony. The all-India Brahmin networks with Sanskrit as their communication language were established during Adi Shankara times. That continues even today.
As per the communist stream, CPI was constituted mainly by Brahmins with as the central committee and Politburo leadership only leaving provincial-level posts for Shudras and almost no power for Dalits within their organizational structure. Only in Andhra more visible Shudra leadership emerged, apart from some in Kerala (A.K.Gopalan for example) in the communist ranks. But they were never given equal position in the leadership because of lack of English speaking abilities among them. Tarimela Nagi Reddy, a brilliant economist and the author of India Mortgaged was always kept from central leadership, though he was a very good writer and speaker in English. The communist atheist ideology became a shield for protection of Brahminism in all fields, particularly in the spiritual field. Their theory of landlordism being more dangerous than Brahminism mainly attacked the Shudra landlords across the country.
Locked up Shudra Brains
The Brahmins and Gandhi locked up the Shudra brains and consciousness. They were made to accept Brahmins as their god or the representatives of god even now. A Brahmin in temple, in ritual activity at home, as head of a political party or head of Pittaa or Ashram is respected by Shudra leaders unquestioningly. Even after some Shudras came into English education, their inferiority remained. The relationship between Brahmin spiritualism, graded caste/class oppression, exploitation and inequalities, women’s oppression and control continue to have a huge bearing on economic control of small communities over larger communities while characterizing all of them as Hindu. The non-productive castes controlled all productive castes with the help of spiritual authority over them. The burden of food production, sustaining the cattle economy and performing industrial and urban labour work still completely rests on the shoulders of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis. Bania, Brahmin Kshatriyas, Kayasthas and Khatris are still earning and living outside the production fields and slowly became the richest and most English educated castes in India. They seem to think that god loves them and blesses them. This is a deluded and destructive spiritual belief. But the Brahmin as the head of the temple makes all Shudras and Dalits whatever they do, they cannot become a priest in the temple and cannot enter heaven under his guidance. They wrote this theory in their own books, on the before heads of Shudras, which the Shudras themselves cannot read.
Over seventy years of political democracy, the so-called Hindu spiritual system, including temple system even though under the Government control–Endowments–the Shudras did not get the right to priesthood. Even in the states, the Shudras rule they could not challenge that spiritual law. They never demanded that position as their spiritual knowledge is very stunted. The notion of Ihaloka (this world) and Paraloka (the other world, swarga or heaven) are equally important in Shudra life. But they were never engaged in philosophical discourse as they live in an inferior status that they were condemned to be lead by Brahmin-Bania forces. Within in the religious life, one needs to be under the control of Brahmin here, and can never attain moksha as the Brahmin priest blocs it there in the heaven.
Shudra Status at Top Temples
For example, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Tirupati temple is known as the prime spiritual center around which the idea of moksha in heaven and wellbeing on this earth is the key belief systems. The Reddys, Kammas, Velamas and Kapus are the main high-end Shudra castes who contribute to the wealth of the temple, apart from other Shudra communities, who are part of the reservation system. From Karanataka, Lingayats and Vokkaligas and other OBCs contribute more than Brahmins and Banias. They give crores of rupees, tons of gold to Venkateswara. They appeal to god in their own languages from a distance, which is known as mokku. But when they come to temple the Brahmin priests recite slokas only in Sanskrit which they do not understand. They cannot become priests in the temple, and the god is understood to be knowing only Sanskrit, which Reddys, Kammas, Velamas and Kapus were not supposed to learn and lead the temples. Even now there are no such Shudra scholars who could get into the profession of the priesthood. Shudras including Reddys, Kammas, Velamas and Kapus and so on who have reasonably good financial resources are made to fear that they cannot engage with god in the temple.
Why a Sanskrit scholar and a priest in a Reddy, Kamma, Velama, Kapu–in other words Shudra– family is not needed in the profession of the priest which is considered to be a very noble occupation? Why can’t a Dalit or Shudra take up that noble profession? Why could Brahmin youth not take up other productive tasks? When nowhere in the world god assigned priestly duties only to a particular community which hates food production but wants to do all other tasks which give them intellectual leadership roles? They jump into leadership roles in all structures. Why? They become leaders of communist parties, Congress party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parshad, Hindu Maha Sabha and so on. They control and lead all writers’ organizations in the country. They also control industries, communications and so on. There is not a structure that a Brahmin cannot enter. But there are many structures that a Shudras cannot enter, leave alone Dalit.
In Kerala, all temples are spiritually run by Brahmin priestly intellectuals and the managements are done by Nairs and other Shudra castes. Management is not a spiritually critical job. A Shudra has to work as guided by Brahmin intellectuals. Otherwise, they condemn and curse. The fear of brahmin curse shakes a Shudra to the core. For various historical reasons, Nairs and other Shudras surrendered to Brahmins in all fields in Kerala state, and the educated Nairs defend Brahminism quite militantly.
The roots of intellectual superiority lie with the priesthood position in all religions. The Shudras suffered intellectual inferiority for three thousand and five hundred years in that front. The Brahmins derived their superiority from the very same position. The Shudras have not yet shed their inferiority complex and began the battle for spiritual equality.
What the Shudras and Dalits suffer in Brahminism is not an individual disqualification. They do not have the right to the priesthood because a Shudra or a Dalit is, by default, meritless or immoral being in the Brahminical common sense. Because once all the productive communities were denied access to priesthood, they lost historical control, authority as communities. They suffered because they belong to Shudra/Dalit social communities who were/are treated as spiritual slaves. Does spiritual slavery allow any space in Paraloka or heaven under the spiritual guidance of Brahmins? This question is never debated in Hindu spirituality that operates on caste lines.
The priestly Brahmins never touch Dalits and Shudras neither in the temple nor in the civil society in any public life. They never eat food cooked in any Shudra and Dalit house, nor do they allow any Dalit and Shudras to come to their house. This is not an ideal relationship between human beings who are said to be belonging to the same religion.
In what is now known as the Hindu religion there is no one god to talk about god’s equal creation. The main Rigvedic God Brahma is said to have created Shudras to be the slaves of Brahmins. This is a fixed position, but there is no dynamism involved in it. A Brahmin by birth is a Brahmin, whether one claims secular or communist or Hindu ideological position or social location. A Shudra remains a Shudra and a Dalit remains a Dalit. A secular or communist Brahmin should not be allowed to fool the Shudras and Dalits of this sociospiritual fact that governs our caste-oppressed lives even in the 21st century.
God’s Caste
In Hinduism God and Goddess have their castes known to people. Parashurama and Vamana are known as Brahmin. Rama is known as Ksatriya only Srikrishna is known as Yadav but even in his temple also a Yadav cannot become a priest. But Yadavs never fought for such a spiritual position. Only Brahmin priests handle Srikrishna temple of Madhura, Uttar Pradesh, where Yadav leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav ruled that state politically for a long time. Yet the inferiority of Yadavs as Shudra is not diminished. Yadavs claim that Krishna himself is a Yadav and a cattle herder. Yet they cannot lead their own god’s temple. This is the irony of Hinduism.
Quite surprisingly, it is uncommon for the Shudra community demand for equal spiritual rights within the religion that they are said to belong to. Krishna’s portrait is shown with cattle around him yet a Brahmin condemns the community of cattle herders as spiritual untouchables. Even in contemporary times, most Yadavs are cattle herders, and they are treated as spiritual untouchable. This has implications for their life here and also life hereafter.
In the whole world, there is no human mass as massive as that of the Shudras who are denied of the basic human right of spiritual engagement with god directly. What surprises one is that how do they silently suffer such humiliation for millennia? Even in the post-Independence India the modern Shudras also remained scared of Brahmin treating him as god himself. The question is in such a spiritual system do the Shudras attain moksha or heaven in such a discriminated regime of Brahmin?
All religions centre around life here and more importantly, life hereafter. The question is without a direct relationship to Hindu God, how do Shudras get into Hindu heaven? How do all unequal Hindus live together in swarga? Brahmins made vegetarian, meatarian and beeferian “Hindus” as untouchables to each other? Do clashes regarding food cultures not occur in swarga? The Brahmin in the temple works as a gatekeeper in the swarga also. How does he allow any Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi into Swarga where he too lives? If Agamashastras come in the way of Shudras becoming priests, wouldn’t the same Agama Shastra come in shudra’s entry into swarga?
Brahmin decided that he should have initiation into Hindu religion through Upanayana or sacred thread ceremony. As per Brahmin dictum only Brahmins, Banias, Kshatriyas, Kayasthas and Khatris do have that right. No Shudra including Reddy, Kamma, Velama, Kapu, Nair, Jat, Gujjar, Patel, Maratha, Yadav and so on get spiritual equality and hence no right to Upanayana also. Any Shudra or Other Backward Caste, that thinks that caste system should not be abolished, as they cannot take caste certificate to get a reserved seat in a college/university or a job in Government office do not have any right to enter swargaloka after death. Even if they go round several number of temples offer huge amounts of money they cannot get moksha in such unequal spiritual system. These expenditures will only make their life less comfortable on this earth because they cannot spend that money for their family or personal advancement and comfort. Caste equality or abolition of caste is only the solution.
Spiritual Individualism
In this caste-centred religion which is being promoted as all caste-religion, how does divine power operate? An individual’s good deed or bad deed should be the qualification for priesthood and swarga seat in any normative religion. It is the birth of a person in a caste that decides one’s status here and also in heaven in Hinduism. As the Brahmin caste is constructed and accepted by all Shudra castes as only divine caste, it has caused massive harm to Shudra and Dalit life for millennia. Brahminism did not allow individualism to develop in India in any field.
Unless better off Shudra castes like Reddys, Kammas, Velamas, Kapus, Nairs, Nayaks, Lingayat, Vakkalinga, Maratha, Patel, Jat, Gujjar, Yadav and so on fight for spiritual equality and priesthood rights and change Brahminism into proper religion things will not change. God must judge the merits of a person based on one’s deeds and not based on the fixed scale of caste. So long as the upper Shudras worship Brahmin as god the other agrarian and artisanal castes will not gain the courage to challenge their subordinate status. They also keep worshipping Brahmin as god. Shudras should take inspiration from the spiritually, socially and politically dynamic Ambedkarite movement in order to shed off the slavish mentality to institutionalise individualism in a religion that they claim is theirs.
(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s new book co-edited with an young Shudra scholar Karthik Raja Kuruppusamy The Shudras–Vision for a New Path, being published by Penguin will be out soon)

https://countercurrents.org/2020/10/caste-in-heaven-can-shudras-and-dalits-find-moksha-in-brahminism/

While it’s debatable who deserves India’s highest civilian award, what seems to be working in favour of P.V. Narasimha Rao and S.P. Balasubrahmanyam is their caste.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award, was instituted to recognise contributions to politics, science, education, and other areas | Video grabText Size: A- A+null

There is now a loud chorus demanding Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, for former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and musician-singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam. While it’s a matter of debate who deserves the Bharat Ratna, what seems to work in favour of both Rao and SPB is something else: caste. Both were Brahmins.

It tells us something that the list of recipients of the State award, so far given to 46 Indians and two foreigners (Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela), largely includes Dwijas, or more specifically, Brahmins. No Bharat Ratna has yet emerged from the groups engaged in foundational tasks such as farming and labour, which made this productive nation what it is today.null

Earlier, the Telugu Desam Party had tried to raise the pitch for Bharat Ratna for TDP founder and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N.T. Rama Rao, a Kamma leader, but the demand never could gather pace because he didn’t get the kind of attention from the national media that his contemporaries did.

Caste, aside

Of the 46 Indian Bharat Ratnas, 29 are Brahmins,  five Muslims, four Kayasthas, three Shudras, and one from each of the following groups — Dalit, Bania, Khatri, Parsi, Christian. The caste of Bhupen Hazarika, the last recipient, could not be located from any source. Of the four women Bharat Ratna awardees,three are Brahmins and one Christian. It goes to suggest that without Brahmins, who comprise about 4 per cent of India’s population, perhaps this country would not have had enough people worthy to be awarded the Bharat Ratna.

Does the list of recipients tell us that the Indian State has practised an unbiased, honest, caste-free selection of Ratnas from the dust of India? The dust of the nation mainly consists of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis. With more than half of Indian population comprising Shudras, only three could be found worthy of Bharat Ratna in more than 66 years of the award’s history; of the 18 per cent Dalits, just one — Dr B.R. Ambedkar; and of the 7 per cent Adivasis, none.

Vallabhai Patel was recognised as a Ratna only in 1991, along with Rajiv Gandhi. Before Patel, only two Shudras were awarded Bharat Ratna — K. Kamaraj  and M.G. Ramachandran (both former chief ministers of Tamil Nadu).

Political choices 

The Bharat Ratna started being awarded in 1954. That year, three living Brahmins — C. Rajagopalachari, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and C.V. Raman — were recognised. All three of them, in their sixties, were still relatively young.  And hailed from Tamil Nadu.

The federal government never established any principles based on which a Bharat Ratna could be selected or recognised from across the country.  Some were given the award when they were in a position to influence the selection. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi got the Bharat Ratna when they were prime ministers. Some were awarded a long time after their death (Ambedkar in 1990 and Patel in 1991).

A semi-literate K. Kamaraj, from the Nadar community; C.V. Raman, a physicist; Amartya Sen with a PhD from a foreign university; and non-resident Indians — Bharat Ratna winners’ list looks like the power in Delhi adopting a pick and choose method. Literary talents are not so significant. Many Bharat Ratna awardees have not written anything in their life. Who is selected for Bharat Ratna depends on the power in Delhi and not in the states. One could be a chief minister of a state for 34 years (Jyoti Basu) and not be considered as a Ratna of Bharat. And so, what makes someone eligible for India’s highest civilian award remains unknown https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

At all times, though, it has been clear that the awardees are selected by the ruling political class depending on the person’s caste and on the political benefits the selection could reap for the government. Patel was recognised as a Bharat Ratna 41 years after his death; Ambedkar was recognised 34 four years after his death, when the government of V.P. Singh — one that believed in social justice — came to power in Delhi, in 1990. Chaudhary Charan Singh, an Uttar Pradesh Jat, despite all his peasant leadership and former prime minister status, could never get it.

In fact, both Ambedkar and Nelson Mandela, a leader of global stature who fought against apartheid and the liberation of Blacks in South Africa, were given the Bharat Ratna by the V.P. Singh government. But in all likelihood, V.P. Singh himself may never get the award, at least not until a pro-Mandal prime minister takes charge at the Centre. And this does not seem to be happening in the near future.

RSS-BJP exploiting flaws

Successive Congress governments played Brahminical politics in the name of secularism, pluralism and diversity. Now, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are brazenly playing casteist politics because they believe in the varna dharma (hierarchical system) and parampara (tradition). Just what happened to social diversity and plurality that is often talked about in the context of Hindutva communalism?

If we look at the list of Bharat Ratna awardees after the RSS-mentored BJP gained control of the federal government in 1999 and then again since 2014, except Bismillah Khan and Bhupen Hazarika (both musicians), Bharat discovered only Brahmin Ratnas — from Gopinath Bordoloi to Nanaji Deshmukh. The shift from the Congress party’s ‘secular’ Brahmin Ratna picks to the RSS/BJP’s Hindutva Brahmin Ratna picks has some ideological dimension. Caste and ideology both are convergent and contending factors when it comes to picking Bharat Ratna. What remains constant is the Brahmin Ratna.

So far, no Communist, whether Brahmin, Muslim or Christian, has been awarded the Bharat Ratna. During the entire Congress rule, Indian Communists held a strong secular umbrella over the party’s head but none from that camp was considered worthy of the prize. Even Ram Manohar Lohia, despite being a prominent national leader hailing from the powerful Bania community, was never considered for the award.

Of course, we cannot imagine this will change in the RSS-BJP era.

The long list of denials

Brahminisation of the Bharat Ratna started with the first selection in 1954. If modern Indians who contributed to the Indian Renaissance and socio-educational reform of the country were considered eligible, then Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Jyotirao Phule and Narayana Guru should have got the award. M.K. Gandhi’s name was avoided after it was held that he was above the award. To this day, no Adivasi has received the Bharat Ratna. Why? We do not know. Birsa Munda and Komaram Bheem were never seen as worthies, just as no OBC has so far been. BP Mandal, who wrote the Mandal Commission Report, is never seen as a Bharatiya worthy of the award.

The Congress alienated the most powerful Shudras, who subsequently launched regional parties and became anti-Congress in so many ways. The list of Bharat Ratna is one indicator of their alienation. The RSS-BJP today are doing the same thing and justifying it using the same logic.

This brings us to the argument of the Dwija intellectuals that caste should not be the basis for any selection in a democratic, secular republic. But the Dwijas never saw caste when 29 Brahmins, four Kayasthas, one Bania and one Khatri got the Bharat Ratna award. Most names are picked from the freedom movement, as if it was a Dwija movement.

No nation can progress with this kind of high-end casteism. The Bharat Ratna awardee list does not show any social inclusiveness or diversity at all. The Congress’ inclusiveness was confined to only accommodating Muslims. The party grossly neglected Shudras/OBCs/Dalits and Adivasis.

The tendency to promote high-class politicians but not regional and local forces created a huge caste and community gap. The second channel of promotion in the awarding of Bharat Ratna — cinema and music — are also Dwija-dominated areas. But today, caste consciousness has reached a different level in India. Everything is being watched. New interpretations of caste are underway not only in India but globally too. Will things change in the future? We can only hope.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. Views are personal.

https://theprint.in/opinion/bharat-ratna-used-to-be-for-congress-secular-brahmins-today-its-for-bjps-hindutva-brahmins/523227/