U Sambasiva Rao’s legacy as a revolutionary, a human rights defender, and an anti-caste ideologue will live on, Kancha Ilaiah writes.

NEWS OBITUARY SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 – 13:46Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

U Sambasiva Rao (1950-2020) — popularly known as Usaa, passed away in the early hours of July 25, 2020 in a private hospital in Hyderabad while undergoing treatment for the coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic has taken him away suddenly, without notice to his thousands of admirers and followers. This definitely is shocking news to Dalit-Bahujan communities and his admirers from general society.null

Having been born in a small village in a barber family near Tenali in Andhra Pradesh, his life as a young student in college in Tenali in the late 1960s started as a rationalist. He was from a lower middle class family which was supported by his elder brother. His writing started quite early in his college days. As a believer in rationalism, science and Buddhism, he was dead against superstition and ignorance.

He turned to Communist revolutionary ideology after the Naxalbari movement broke out and joined the well-known Tarimala Nagireddy faction.https://b6b1fdf18f24c978837fa477c03beaf2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

He evolved as a theoretician, writer and singer with multiple talents. As he believed in armed struggle, he took up the cause of tribals in East Godavari’s Kondamodalu area and lived among them till the early 1980s.

As there was a major drought in Telangana, particularly in erstwhile Nalgonda district from 1981, he was assigned the work of organising Motkuru farmers and ensuring they got irrigation and drinking water facilities. He lived in Motkuru for close to five years and contested the MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) election in 1984. Though he got a good number of votes, he still lost the election. By this time, he had mobilised thousands of people over agrarian problems in the entire district.AdvertisementAdvertisement

Meanwhile in 1985, the Karamchedu massacre took place and on that issue, he stood with Dalit Mahasabha and the Dalit movement all along. The Unity Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India (Marxist–Leninist) differed with him and he was later expelled from the party. But he was unshaken, and along with his activist wife, took to social reform and anti-caste struggles. When the Lakshmipet Dalit atrocity took place in Srikakulam district, he had camped there along with senior Communist leader KG Satyamurthy.

Afterwards, he worked with me to help the starving masses of Mahabubnagar district between 1987 and 1989, particularly along villages that dotted the banks of the Krishna river. We started food centres to feed starving people and Usaa lived in those villages along with two other activists — Nagarjuna and Motkuru Ilaiah, for almost two-and-a-half years. He was loved by several locals in Kollapur area.

By this time, the Mandal movement had begun in the country. Ussa was among the most active mobilisers of people in support of OBC (Other Backward Classes) reservation across united Andhra Pradesh. After KG Satyamurthy came out of the Maoist party, he joined hands with Usaa and started Edureetha, a revolutionary magazine which wrote a lot on Marxism and Ambedkarism. Usaa was a major theoretician in both Marxism and Ambedkarism and was a great orator. His writings and speeches influenced revolutionary activists like Maroju Veeranna to re-position the whole ideology of Marxism in the Indian context.

He was the first man in the communist revolutionary movement to understand that the caste-blind approach in the name of class struggles was not allowing the movement to spread in villages. Though the Naxalite movement in united Andhra Pradesh was headed by leaders from the Shudra community like Nagireddy and Kondapally Seetharamaiah, they were basically under a ‘Brahmin communist’ spell, and had no theoretical grip on Indian history.

Even leaders like Puchalapally Sundarayya (Reddy) and Chandra Rajeswar Rao (Kamma) were not accepted as theoreticians by Brahmin leaders at the national level as they were not good writers in English.

In UCCRI (ML), Devulapally Venkateswar Rao (DVR) who had no great theoretical grip used to treat Nagi Reddy as just a follower and not a theoretician. Despite this, Nagi Reddy alone wrote an outstanding theoretical book — India Mortgaged — not DVR.

Usaa understood this role of Brahminism in the revolutionary and communist movement. When Usaa and I were working on a booklet in 1987 — Kula Nirmulana – Oka Marxist Drukpadham (Annihilation of Caste – a Marxist view), he could tell how casteism and brahminism functioned in the communist movement from his experience. Usaa thus, became a thorn in the caste-blind political ranks of the communists.

He also contributed to the second phase of Telangana movement and was a huge supporter of the cause. He organised meetings even in Andhra region in support of Telangana movement. If only he were to die in normal times, thousands would have flocked his dead body.

By conviction, he was Buddhist and desired that his body should be buried.

Usaa became part of the T-MASS and Bahujan Left Front, which came into existence a few months before the last Assembly elections held in 2018, which were started with the support of the CPI(M).

Wherever there was an ideological struggle involving Marxism and Ambedkarism, Usaa was always at the forefront.

Usaa was a great supporter of inter-caste marriages as he himself married a Brahmin party worker and friend (Padma) and also performed several inter caste marriages. Padma worked as a Sales Tax officer after they came out of the revolutionary party. She too died a few years ago. Both of them lived in complete harmony and educated their only daughter very well. Padma and Usaa divided their roles after they came out of the revolutionary party.

Padma started working and supporting her husband and finally she retired as an officer in the state government, which gave him the financial resources to continue doing his political work. He started a Bahujan cultural organisation along with prominent activist and professor, Surepalli Sujatha, and also started Desi-Disa — a YouTube channel for ideological campaigns.

Wherever there was a caste atrocity, he was the first to reach. His commitment to women’s rights and gender equality as a man who suffered caste oppression and discrimination was remarkable. He wrote many articles detailing how women should be liberated from patriarchy.

In about 50 years of his activism, he fought many battles in life. Whether in tribal areas, or in villages like Motkuru and Kollapur, he was always among people who were suffering.

He wrote many books and articles on Phule and Ambedkar. He composed the Rela–Rela ballad during the Kondamodalu struggle, in which hundreds of tribal boys and girls learnt singing and dancing as part of that ballad. Several of them became leaders later to fight for tribal rights.

Usaa was a great human being. He lived in many houses as a leader and a worker in the process of his political and ideological activism and never allowed anybody to feel that his presence was a burden. That is the reason why farmers from Motkur wanted to take his body and bury it in their own fields, even amidst the pandemic, though the situation did not allow for this to happen.null

His legacy as revolutionary, as a human rights defender, as an anti-caste ideologue and as a follower of Marx, Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar is unmatching in a way.

A man who wanted to build an egalitarian and scientific society became a victim of underdeveloped medical science that is unable to stop this new virus from killing several lakh people in the world. At the end of the day, Usaa leaves strong footprints on the soil of the two Telugu states, as one who fought for human equality.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a well-known writer, academician and long-time associate of U Sambashiva Rao. A part of this article appeared in Sakshi on July 26, 2020. Views expressed are the author’s own.

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-anti-caste-activist-usaa-left-strong-footprints-soil-telugu-states-129446

in Life/Philosophy — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd — July 24, 2020FacebookTwitterWhatsAppEmailShare0

In China there was a philosophical school called Agriculturism between 770 BCE and 221 BCE. The main philosopher, who represented this school with a sophisticated exposition of that philosophy, was Xu Xing (372-289 BCE). His main philosophy was that people’s propensity is based on farming than to any other thing. By the third and the fourth century BCE the Chinese society had come out of pastoralism and firmly moved into agrarian production with a back up of strong philosophy of agriculturism. In Xu Xing’s philosophical domain agriculturist was known as ‘divine farmer’. The divine farmer was treated with higher esteem than the religious preacher.

In India farmer never got such a stature. A Brahmin saint who does not know what is agriculturism was given greater place in agrarian society also. The agriculturists were designated as Shudras by Brahmin saints and they were never allowed to acquire philosophical and respectful divine status. The Shudras had evolved their own agrarian spiritual deities but those deities were shown as unworthy in the brahmin literature. Thus production itself was rendered unworthy and it was not allowed to acquire philosophical significance.

Agriculturism as a philosophical school opposed division of labour and it proposed an idea, in China, called Shennong which in essence means that people should live by an ‘agrarian, communal and egalitarian’ system.

Confucianism opposed this school and proposed for division of labour and establishment of society of classes based on functional specialization. The agriculturist school was not a dogmatic school. It promoted ‘hundreds of schools of thought’ for spreading agrarian ideas. Free debate among farmers about seasons, seeds, crop patterns, methods of sowing, weeding and harvesting to improve the productivity was part of these hundred schools of thought. It also promoted debates around human society, God and their relationship. All agrarian societies built divine deities to represent God and relate to their abstract ideas of divinity. The Chinese society for a long time believed in worshipping nature as part of its deep agriculturist civilizational growth.

It was this Chinese agriculturist philosophy that engendered positive schools of thought like Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism later and accommodated Buddhism. But it never allowed Indian type of Brahminism (Hinduism) to take root in that country. We can now see how Indian Brahminism, that emerged after the third wave of migration of Aryans to the subcontinent (Tony Joseph, 20018) destroyed the very roots of agriculturist philosophy that had its existence in Harappan civilization. My assumption is that without agriculturism during Harappan times agriculture would not have developed to a level where surplus generation could take place and city civilization could have been built.

However, the Qin Dynasty that ruled China in the second century BCE opposed the agriculturalist philosophical school of thought as it believed in Legalism and burnt many of its books. Legalism itself was more progressive than Indian Brahminism which did not believe in any law that respects human being as a human being.

Unlike the Indian ancient Shudras who were agriculturalists but did not leave any written philosophical discourse, the Chinese agriculturists were great writers and philosophers. Since there was no varna-caste system in China every one had a right to read and write from ancient days and hence writings of all occupational forces were preserved in China by rulers after the Qin dynasty was overthrown. This is where the roots of Chinese agrarian development and Indian under- development lies.

Though Qin rulers burnt many books on agriculturist philosophy, yet the literature that survived influenced the Chinese civilization forever. Unfortunately, there is no such philosophical influence of Indian Shudra agriculturists as they were not allowed to emerge as thinkers and writers by Brahmins in ancient and medieval times. Once the Brahminism constructed Shudras as slaves and forced them to remain illiterate their philosophical growth was arrested. The Brahminic Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Manu’s Dharmashastra have no discourse on agriculturism and every writer in India treated these books as a source of Indian civilization and culture. All these books have nothing to do with agriculturism.

The Chinese agriculturism influenced many other schools of China, including Confucianism, though it opposed some aspects of agriculturism, Taoism, Legalism. It also influenced Buddhism of China once Buddhism reached there from India. Since the Qin Dynasty promoted Legalism that school also took strong roots in China from the second century BC onwards.

Wikipedia mentions:

“Due to its Legalist focus, the Qin Dynasty was thorough in its purging of rival philosophical schools, including Agriculturalism. However, Agriculturalism in its heyday heavily influenced the agrarian policies of Confucianism, Legalism, and other contemporary Chinese philosophical schools, and so subsequently many concepts originally associated with the Agriculturalists continued to exist in Chinese philosophy.

The transmission and translation of Chinese philosophical texts in Europe during the 18th century had a heavy influence on the development of Agrarianism in Europe. French agrarianist philosophy, a predecessor to modern Agrarianism, of François Quesnay and the Physiocrats, are said to have been modeled after the agrarian policies of Chinese philosophy”.

One of the main problems of India is that at no stage of Indian philosophical evolution agriculturism was allowed to take root as a philosophical school.

In 18^th and 19^th centuries when Europe was borrowing agriculturist philosophy the Indian thinking was still under the grip of brahminism.. The Shudra farmers were not allowed to develop their own alternative thought. The first Shudra thinker who asserted the importance of agriculture and farmer was Mahatma Jotirao Phule in the late 19^th century. Phule realised that the Shudras were denied of a philosophical status and were reduced to the status of gulam (slave). No slave could construct a philosophical school of his own, so long as s/he remains slave. Hence he wrote Gulamgiri putting the Shudra farmer in the central. However, his thought did not develop into full-fledged agriculturism like the Chinese school of thought because he had no historical heritage of building up a school of thought with a series of writings. Without a systematic writing no school of thought would develop.

A full-fledged philosophical school emerges only when multiple thinkers write on the same subject. The Chinese agriculturists rightly believed that ‘ hundred schools must contend’ to build a proper mature philosophical school. Based on the Chinese  agriculturist school Mao Zedong who came from an agriculturist farming family developed a slogan ‘Let hundred flowers bloom and thousand thoughts contend’. His idea of peasant revolution was also based on the Chinese history of agriculturism.

In India there was an anti-agrarian brahminism in power all through its written history. The Shudra varna was the only varna which was engaged in agrarian productivity and it was not allowed to read and was denied the basic human dignity and spiritually validated existence. Though agricultural development is based on the science of cultivation it naturally evolves its own philosophy. That philosophy transits from generation to generation and age to age only when it is codified into a text. This was not allowed by Brahmin writers and ruling Ksatriyas. The Vaisyas were in between the Shudra agriculturists and Brahmins in ancient India. Only Gupta rule from 3^rd to 5^th century AD the Vaisyas became Dwijas with full business rights and right to education. Subsequently they too opposed the Shudra agriculturism. Though Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote their nationalist philosophy but that philosophy has nothing about agriculturism. Because the Indian Banias, who became a totally business community, lost touch with agriculture, he never studied the Chinese history as he studied the European history. Later a famous Dalit (former untouchable) thinker and philosopher,Dr B.R. Ambedkar critiqued brahminism but not from agriculturism point of view but from religious morality and caste-cultural exploitation view point.

Ever since Vedic texts were written the pre-Vedic agriculturism was set aside because agriculturism esentially survives as Xi Xing emphasises on farm production, communitarianism and egalitarianism. Indian Brahminism inherantly opposed  communitarianism, as communitarianism plays a key role in the advancement of agriculturism. Communitarianism would not allow the caste culture to operate in any field of life. Since Vedism brought in four fold varna (caste-class) division which is not even based on division of labour but based on spiritual and social authority over the Shudras who were  the mainstay of agriculturism, that division negated progress of agriculturalism.

Brahminism from the beginning disarmed the Shudra agriculturalists by not allowing them to write their discourses into textuality. The Brahminic war centric vedisim and epic ideology and Ksatriya heroism did not allow agriculturism to develop as a philosophical school of thought because that school would have been lead by the Shudra thinkers. Not that there were no Shudra agriculturist thinkers at a time when agriculturism developed as a strong philosophical school in China. But they were crushed with an iron hand from the days of Kautilaya writing Arthashastra and more so from the days of Manu writing of Dharmashastra.

From 3^rd century BC to 1^st century AD when agriculturism would have developed with some kind of agrarian production Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Manu’s Dharmashastra were written by devaluing agrarian production. Farmers in India were never allowed to become divine farmer. Brahminism promoted anti-social saints and sanyasis as the ultimate model of Indian society, who have no role in production and agriculturism.

The parampara of Kautilya and Manu were continued by Savarkar and Golwalkar through their writings in modern times. The Hindutva school with an overt ideology of enmity to religions like Chritisianity, Islam and Buddhism covertly its structural ideology is anti-agricutlturism. Though constructed their ideology in terms of nationalism advancing agrarian production was never part of their discourse.

Agriculture scientifically was found based on two process– photosynthesis and decomposition. Because of this twin process renewability becomes possible. There is a spiritual view that God commanded humans to labour on the land, to which they belong to and produce from it and live a long life. This is a scientific spiritual dictum. Building agriculture science is long engaged by forming community with a philosophical discourse that land and labour re-generate similar species by multiplying themselves, which became a useful thing for human survival.

The Shudra producers of India were capable of advancing the philosophy of agriculturism with constant interaction with land, plant and animal. Still this philosophy is in oral form as the Shudra producers did not write that philosophy in detail into texts. Our agricultural universities are not structurally suitable for advancing agriculturism as a philosophy. Because they are full of brahminism.

Agriculturism is based on reason and scientific engagement with soil, seed and animal with an out of the box thinking. The Hindutva parampara is either anti-agriculturist or does not understand its fundamentals as it needs a productive mind but not destructive mind; a positive mind not a negative mind.

This is what Manu told the Shudras to do. Their work in agriculture was never seen as work.

123. 123. The service of the Brahmanas alone is declared to be an excellent occupation for a Shudra; for whatever else besides this he may perform will bear no fruit.
124. 129. No collection of wealth must be made by a Shudra, even though he be able to do it; for a Shudra who has acquired wealth gives pain to Brahman.

No Shudra wrote anything worthy against this barbaric statement of Manu till a Dalit law maker and philosopher, Ambedkar, came and wrote the present constitution and repudiated Manu. After the Bharatiya Janatha Party, which still follows Manu’s Dharmashastra as part of the parampara, came to power in 2014, agriculture remains most neglected area of administration, as it is not part of their philosophy.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a Political Theorist, Social Activist and Thinker

https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/agriculturalism-and-hindutva/

Only if they Learn English can OBCs Take Advantage of ReservationReservation is a crutch but English-medium education could have been their leg.Pragya Singh15 Jul 2020

On the 30th anniversary of reservations for backward classes, the well-known social scientist, writer and activist, Prof Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd says Mandal has not fulfilled what it set out to do. He says that without English education there is no way the backward classes, whom he identifies as the historically Shudra communities, can progress. According to Ilaiah, reservation is a crutch but English-medium education could have been their leg. The next 25 years can be dedicated to this. Excerpts from an interview.

THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE MANDAL COMMISSION REPORT WAS ACCEPTED, WHERE ARE THE OTHER BACKWARD CLASSES? ARE THEY EMPOWERED SOCIALLY AND EDUCATIONALLY?

Now first of all, ever since the BJP has come to power, regional parties are being destroyed in the North. Regional parties were basically Sudra-run parties. They had fought the Congress and Brahmanism from the days of Indira Gandhi. They had slowly emerged from [former prime minister] Chaudhary Charan Singh’s time to create regional leaders like Mulayam [Singh Yadav], Lalu [Prasad Yadav], Devi Lal and so on. But the BJP came and finished them. The RSS-BJP are still using the OBC, which includes the historical category of Sudra, as muscle power against Muslims, but did not allow a single one of them to become the head of the RSS.

FOR HOW LONG WILL THEY REMAIN MUSCLE POWER? IN OTHER WORDS, ARE THEY STILL A SALIENT FORCE POLITICALLY?

When, in 1989, the “other backward classes” or OBC category was created, which included the historical Sudra communities, for the purpose of reservation, some advanced agrarian communities—such as the Jats, Gujjars, Patels, Marathas, Kammas, Reddys and Nairs—were excluded. Although in Tamil Nadu all groups except the “untouchables”, the Brahmins and Chettiars, were included in the Sudra classification and therefore the OBC category, and Karnataka included the Lingayats, and so on. So yes, the Mandal phase is a demarcating period exactly 30 years before now. But the actual implementation of the commission’s recommendation started in 1995. Therefore, the OBC category has been operative in the central services for 25, not 30, years.

WHAT HAS IT DONE?

It has done, in my assessment, two things. One, it has given an idea of education to the historical agrarian Sudras and artisanal communities such as potters, carpenters, goldsmiths, land tillers and even to some rich farming communities like the Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh. The OBCs did not take their 27% share in education, but reservation sowed the seeds of education in their families.

Some were already educated, but Sudra youth were not educated in foreign universities during the eighties, not even those who were in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata. Meanwhile, the Brahmin, Baniya, Kayashta families were already hugely invested in foreign education for their children, apart from being in central universities, IITs and IIMs, etc. The upper castes were sympathetic to SC/ST reservation, because they accepted that there was untouchability and some concession [was needed] on that account, but they argued against reservation for OBCs. This is because of how OBCs—in other words, all Sudra castes—had been defined. They were seen as “dominant castes” by the foreign social science education. Native sociologists and historians also said that these dominant castes are “provincial rulers” who control the rural economy. Therefore, they conceptualised the idea of creamy layer to scuttle reservation for OBCs.

WHY DO YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH THE CREAMY LAYER?

The creamy layer excluded the educated OBCs whose parents were already in the middle class. They could have secured jobs in the reservation pool. Any job requires qualification—engineering, medicine, a Master’s degree in social science or natural sciences—and it requires a certain level of English language skills, which the Sudra communities were lacking then. They are even now absolutely indifferent to learning English.

Even feudal landlords did not send their children to private Christian English medium schools but preferred their children to get some village-level intermediate education in Hindi or Telugu or Marathi medium. They thought they have land, so their children did not need jobs. But this disabled their children from competing in the urban industrial or educational sectors. As a result, in thirty years, they have not taken the 27% reserved jobs in any sector. Nor could they force the private sector to implement a quantum of reservation.

WHY DO YOU THINK THIS HAPPENED?

Because these caste groups are not organised as much as America’s Blacks are.

OR EVEN THE DALITS IN INDIA?

Yes, Dalits are more organised than OBCs. You see, the urban Brahmins who rejected reservation used the Sudras against Dalits and Muslims in villages. That is, the RSS-BJP used them in villages. So, after 70 years of Independence, the Sudras remain the least educated and unrepresented in central government services. In state governments where they were in power the reservation rule was followed, so some state structures are still under their control. But the top Sudra community who were kept out of reservation are the ones who side with the Brahmin and the Baniya, and the result is that everybody remained backward.

See it another way: the [non-reserved] “upper castes” category we have made in India includes the Jats, Patels, Brahmins, Baniyas and so on. But culturally, these social groups are not similar, right? Do Brahmins and Jats get along with each other? Not at all. So, the lack of English education, the lack of effective bureaucratic forces and top-class academicians among the Sudras led to the situation where there was never even a debate on reservation and creamy layer. When there is no debate, you cannot get your share, can you?

BUT NOW INDIA HAS 10% RESERVATION FOR THE ECONOMICALLY WEAKER SECTIONS OR EWS, SO WILL THE DOMINANT AGRARIAN LANDLORD CLASSES WHICH WERE EXCLUDED FROM THE OBC CATEGORY GET TO COMPETE FOR RESERVED JOBS?

No. All historically agrarian people who were enslaved from the time the Rigveda was written must come together to establish a Sudra identity for themselves—and demand reservation.

BUT THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE GIVEN THAT THE SUDRA IDENTITY HAD BEEN FRACTURING POLITICALLY AND SOCIALLY.

The Dalits are divided into many castes, but they still have an identity called Dalit, which has worldwide recognition. Also, now, there has been a big change. In the past say, the Jats, they would think they can get a Kshatriya status. But now they know they cannot. Neither did the OBCs get the janeu nor did they became Kshatriya proper. The RSS refused to grant them either of these. Therefore, my point is that they must first establish with pride the ancient identity of Sudras. Two, they should send their children only to English-medium schools to be able to compete with elite castes. Wherever they are in power, they should immediately shift government school education to English medium. Andhra Pradesh has done this already, because that alone can produce intellectuals who can compete with the Brahmin, Baniya, Kayastha or Khatri students. This will enable more people from the OBC category to come up in the next 25 years. See, the Dalits are doing the intellectual work for themselves. For instance, they consider themselves Buddhist, religion wise, and they are also Christian, but the sudras are worshipping not god but the Brahmins.

WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?

Because the Sudra listens to whatever the Brahmin says. See—god does not require a go-between, interpreter or guide. For example, in North India, every marriage is solemnised by a Brahmin priest who recites mantras which nobody understands. Is he asking the gods for a long life for the bride and bridegroom or a divorce tomorrow? Is he telling the god please don’t develop their brain? Or is he saying that they should become intellectuals? How do you know? Still, whenever he says “samarpayami” [I am offering], you give everything, including lakhs of rupees. Why not have a non-Brahmin priest?

THERE WERE SEVERAL COMMUNITIES WITH NO TRADITION OF CALLING A BRAHMIN TO SOLEMNISE WEDDINGS, BUT THAT IS CHANGING NOW. NON-BRAHMINS ARE MORE INCLINED TO CALL A PRIEST…

Yes, that is because the RSS has driven this agenda into every family now. The OBCs don’t understand the RSS, which is a political spiritual network of Hinduism. They made Sudras vegetarian. Earlier, Dayanand Saraswati [did this] in one state, Gandhi in another state, but now it is the RSS which is the real force [driving such changes]. Because they realised if these people remain meat-arian, their physical strength will become overpowering. So they converted them into vegetarian, but without giving them any religious rights.

I asked a Yadav from Uttar Pradesh why the Krishna Temple has been handed over to a Brahmin priest and not led by a Yadav priest. The man said, ‘We don’t know Sanskrit.’ Arey, do you think Krishna is a god who knows only Sanskrit? The Brahmin has destroyed their brain, their power of reasoning, to become their god. My point is that they will have to produce their own priests. If you say you are Hindu, fine, remain Hindu, but become a priest, an English-educated priest. That is what Brahmin priests are doing everywhere, people like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, they are English-educated and control the entire middle class. The Sudras become their bhakts and send women to go and sit around them where they often get exploited and trapped by some baba.

BUT WE HAVE SADHVIS—RITAMBHARA, UMA BHARTI, PRACHI—WHO ARE OBCS.

But what is their power? Can they run Tirupati temple? Can they run even Vaishno Devi temple? These are like, you know, small goddesses in village temples. This is why Mohan Bhagwat [RSS chief] can remove them from anywhere. Now Uma Bharti was showing some independence, she was removed—that was it.

JUST LIKE SITA WAS REMOVED FROM JAI SIYA RAM?

Yeah, that’s what… Now, Sudra population according to my most conservative estimation in or my recent book, [Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism], is 55%. The second major issue is that out of the total capital production in India, hardware, software, export, 46% is in the hands of Banias, 42% is in the hands of Brahmins, 3.8% with Sudras, including Jat, Gujjar, Patel, Reddy, Kamma, 3.2% is in the hands of the Dalits and the remaining in the hands of Muslims and other minorities. So 55% of the population has control over only 3. 8% of the capital resources. There are Maratha and Kamma industrialists, but none has an Ambani, Adani, or a Vedanta-style company. So, Sudras are buyers, but they never ask for a share in production. To demand a share they need to be highly English-educated, right? They should be foreign educated, but as of now they are not.

WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT A SHARED IDENTITY, THEN IS IT GOING TO INCLUDE THE DALITS ALSO?

No, but we will have a close community-class alliance with them, stop atrocities against them and share resources based on percentages. But Dalits and OBCs are not one and the same. The day Sudras realise that they should not treat Dalits as untouchable, untouchability will disappear. Brahmins cannot continue the practice [alone] because we have a majority in the villages. Take Sardar Patel, who is identified with nationalism, Gandhi and Hinduism. He never turned the Sudras into a [united] force but Ambedkarites, Dalits did.

MANY SUDRAS WOULD GET ANGRY IF YOU CALL THEM SUDRAS, BECAUSE THEY CLAIM TO HAVE BECOME WHAT YOU HAVE CALLED NEO-KSHATRIYA.

I was the one who said they are neo-Kshatriyas, but once you have allowed the RSS-BJP, that is the Brahmin-Bania, to come to power, you are not allowed the neo-Kshatriya status. Since 1999, in other words with the beginning of the 21st century, you have been pushed back into the classical Sudra status because you have cut the branch of a tree on which you were sitting by allowing the RSS-BJP into power. Particularly now, with their very clever deployment of a Baniya as an OBC, nobody gets that neo-Kshatriya status. [Prime Minister Narendra Modi belongs to the Modh Ghanchi caste, which was added to the OBC list before he became chief minister in 2001. But this caste is not most backward as Modi had once claimed.]

ARE YOU SAYING THAT THE OBCS ARE BEING DIVIDED AND RULED?

The OBC has been divided and taken into the Brahminical fold by the RSS and BJP, and their votes, their muscle power, keeps the Muslims and Dalits oppressed while we get ruled by the Brahmins and Banias from Delhi. See how many Sudras are there in the embassies abroad, in the foreign services. See among the top IAS officials who are running the secretariats. Even the OBC Prime Minister’s Office today does not have a senior Sudra IAS officer. One or two are there in a few areas to help out in the foreign affairs, but only one or two. So the point is that without taking over universities, the IITs, JNU, HCU, DU, you cannot rule in Delhi. Because how else do you get into IAS, IFS? How do you manage diplomacy? My take is that reservation is a crutch because we were crippled, as we did not opt for English-medium education, which should have been our leg.

AFTER THIRTY YEARS CAN YOU SEE A TIME WHEN OBC RESERVATION IS NO LONGER NEEDED?

As Martin Luther King said, people tell us [Prof Ilaiah identifies as a Sudra] to wait for our time, that our time is coming, but unless we act now that time will never come. So unless their children are in English medium starting from nursery school, that time will never come. It has not come since 1,500 BC when they wrote the Rigveda. Even now when the RSS-BJP are saying that all of us are Hindu, the interpreter of the Rigveda is not a Sudra.

Once at a conference in Delhi where I was representing the Sudras, (because I said I would not represent OBCs) I said, name one Sudra intellectual. There were 12 judges, and all started looking at each other. I said what happened? Am I the only one? You can name ten Dalit intellectuals, 100 women intellectuals and thousands of others, but no Sudra intellectual. Why? There have been figures, like Periyar, but he wrote and spoke only Tamil. [Periyar also wrote in English, but as Prof Ilaiah points out, Sudras were not familiar with English, particularly in his time]. That reservation cannot save us has been proved over the last thirty years because in spite of reservation, there are no Sudra intellectuals among us.

BUT THE OBCS MIGRATE TO THE BJP ONCE THEY JOIN THE ELITES.

They should understand that when a Sudra cannot become the head of a temple, or head of the RSS or Vice Chancellor of JNU or DU or IIT director, then even if they go to the RSS-BJP, all that they will end up doing is to attack Muslims and, thereafter, sit in jail. But all the Brahmins go to universities, IITs, IIMs.

I went to a private university in Haryana, where there was no Jat representation among the teachers. I said, look, this university is constructed on Jat land. If all these communities are still in agrarian fields, tilling or smoking their hookahs, that means there is no change. Any movement, big or small, starts with intellectuals. Without them there can never be a movement. So, in the 30th year of reservation, they should realise that we must start from scratch, go back to the drawing board. This creamy layer is a false business, land ownership has no meaning today, clerical employment cannot produce IAS or IFS officers or IIT graduates. We should start English medium schools in those states where the OBCs are in power and evolve an agenda for them.

WHEN ELITE OBCS SHIFT TO RSS-BJP, DOES IT NOT APPEAR THAT RESERVATIONS FOR THEM WERE A MISTAKE? IT HAS FRACTURED THE COUNTRY ALONG CASTE AND RELIGION, AND CREATED NEW PROBLEMS? SHOULD INDIA FIND ANOTHER WAY?

The country is divided in many ways, on the linguistic front and on caste… One national language was not allowed to emerge. See the difference between China and India. China has a national language, and an overlay of another national language, which is English. China is running a global TV network and a global newspaper, but we are not in a position to do so.

Second, the RSS was doing the job of dividing us, whether they were in power or outside. They sent OBC teams to demolish the Babri Masjid. Village temples are in the hands of Brahmin priests who tell Sudra youth not to allow Dalits in. The Sudra youth go and beat up Dalits and then go to jail. The RSS is doing the job of dividing people far worse than the British. We should understand the historical networking of Brahminism and align ourselves with Dalit and agrarian labour.

WHY ARE MANDAL FORCES WEAKENING?

From where does unity come? If Sardar Patel as a Sudra leader had left us a lot of literary sources, like Ambedkar did, [things may have been different]. But he did not write anything, not even his autobiography. He is called “Iron man”. That means he has no soft power, he is not a pandit like Nehru or mahatma like Gandhi. If the entire Sudra is educated in English medium like Blacks in America, from LKG to college, then these forces cannot divide them. Because people must become aware of their rights individually as well, otherwise they will be like sheep, and any kumbh mela can take them into the river, right?

HOW ARE OBCS IN THE SOUTH DIFFERENT?

Satya Nadella is an OBC. Do you have an equally educated person like him from the North? Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy is an OBC. Telangana chief minister KCR [K Chandrashekar Rao] is an OBC. You know, KCR recently finished the BJP agenda in one stroke. The BJP was campaigning to boycott chicken, mutton, when the Covid-19 epidemic started. KCR held a press conference and said this is absolute nonsense, eat a lot of chicken and mutton and fish and only then you will survive. On the next day, the meat shops were full. BJP’s agenda was finished. No chief minister in the North can say openly what KCR said. That means their brainwashing is [complete]. The OBCs in the North have not had English education.

IN FACT, THEY ARE PROUD OF IT. THEY WANT ALL OTHERS TO SPEAK HINDI…

What is it that Mao [Zedong] had said—let a hundred schools of thought contend. Now in North India, to produce intellectuals, they should join hands with the South Indian Sudras. If there are Sudra intellectuals, use their power, meet them, see how they survive inside [the system] with Brahmin power around them. They need a backup from outside to bring the community forward and the intellectuals among them have to do that work…

https://www.newsclick.in/Only-Learn-English-OBC-Advantage-Reservation-Mandal-Commission

India and the Indian: My nationalism competes with China, not Pakistan, writes Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Our political life, lived around only village panchayats before 1950, is now connected to a larger constitutional democracy. In the future, this nationalist view will gain more prominence. The RSS nationalism will slowly but surely wither away.Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd June 18, 2019 10:51:08 IST

• Nationalism survives in an environment of livability. It survives around a common national education and the good life in a language that all citizens could speak to each other.
• The Brahminic nationalism, of which the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh is also a part, stands exactly opposite my nationalism.
• Both Pakistan and RSS do not bother much about augmenting production and egalitarianising distribution.

This essay is part of Firstpost’s ‘India and the Indian’ series, which examines the renewed idea of nationalism in vogue today, and what it means.

***

I was born in a small village called Papaiah Pet in Telangana state. No doubt it is in India. During my childhood, I did not know anything about Telangana even as a region; worse, I did not know anything about India as nation. Not just me, all the villagers’ nation and universe was our village itself (or at best, the surrounding villages).  My love for my mother, father, sisters and brothers moved out of the family only to reach out to the villagers.

If the village was not good to me, I might gradually think of migrating to some other village that could offer a better life and comfort. So also my state and country.

Nationalism survives in an environment of livability. It survives around a common national education and the good life in a language that all citizens could speak to each other.

The Brahminic nationalism, of which the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh is also a part, stands exactly opposite my nationalism.

My nationalism starts with love for my village if it is providing me enough to live, even with the hard work required in grazing cattle, tilling fields, building water bodies and so on. For the whole of the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi communities who built our villages and cities, nationalism and patriotism were unknown concepts till perhaps Mahatma Phule was born and was educated in a modern  school in the mid-19th century in a language that he could use to converse with the rulers (of course, colonial) and also outsiders – English.

The village builders, whom we now know as the real nation builders, never knew, till the colonial English language landed in India, any other national languages like Sanskrit, Persian which were both ruling and scholarly languages at the pan-India level.

Sanskrit was a Sanathan (Hindu) divine language which was not accessible to the whole of the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses. The village  economy builders’ languages were tribal, local and regional. The nation, as it came to be constructed during the early nationalist period by Sanskrit, Persian and Urdu writers, was outside of the realm of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis’ vocabulary. (Urdu also became a national language by the time the Two Nation Theory was constructed by Allama Iqbal, later on the Muslim nationalist leader Mulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote mostly in Urdu.)

Neither the Brahmin nor the Muslim pundits were engaged with them. There were no intellectuals among the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses to connect their socio-spiritual and cultural life with the Brahminic-Islamic nationalist discourse.

The most important question is: without knowing at least one national language, how do people become nationalist?

Therefore it can be safely said that till Mahatma Phule, and more importantly Dr BR Ambedkar, came onto the scene with a nationally communicable language and also knowledge (in English) there was no national connectivity to the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis of different regions.

Sardar Vallabai Patel came from the Shudra background with good reading and writing ability in English, but he never educated Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis with their identity and advancement in view. He lived as Gandhian or as an RSS-type  Hindu without infusing a sense of identity and advancement of Shudras as a whole. That was why he never became a national leader/thinker of all India Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. Hence, they do not own him as they own Phule and Ambedkar as their icons.

Narayana Guru and Periyar EV Ramsamy emerged from Malayalam and Tamil linguistic regions but they could not speak and write in any pan-national language (English, Sanskrit or Urdu); thus, their impact was confined to Tamil and Malayalam nationalist enlightenment. Though Kanshiram tried to introduce them to the rest of India, they could not become pan-Indian Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi nationalist icons as Phule and Ambedkar did.

The nationalism of the RSS is a pure Brahmin Sanskrit-centered communitarian ideology which never connected with the productive communities that built our village economy, culture and civilisation. The RSS nationalism draws heavily from Sanskrit texts like the Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayan and Mahabharata but not from our regional language discourses and their production ethos and their spiritual cultures. The Sanskrit texts focused on war and violence but never focused on cattle economy, crop system, irrigations systems and so on.

Only after the English language became Indian are these productive sub-national cultures getting connected. Hence, Mahatma Phule who wrote Gulamgiri with an English introduction and universally known  human equality and Ambedkar who wrote Annihilation of Caste and Who Were The Shudras? connected the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi to nationalist discourse.

The cultural nationalism of the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis and that of  RSS is not one and the same. When a Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi cannot even become a priest in a Hindu temple that the RSS believes in as source of its nationalism, how do they get fused into that Brahminic nationalist culture? Spiritually fused oneness is a critical component of cultural nationalism.

The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi cultural nationalism does not see the cow or any other animal as goddess as they graze them as economic animals as god-given to them for economic use but not for spiritual worship. The RSS, which does not train its shakha karyakathas to graze cattle in the fields, rather trains them to be around urban centers to work on religious issues and raising slogans of Gorakshan but not doing the Gopalan (which is seen as Shudra job). Their nationalism is essentially of Sanskritic Brahminism, which has nothing to do with production and distribution – key egalitarian nationalist concerns. Without having concern for all humans — men and women — equally, nationalism becomes a negative weapon for vote mobilisation.

My nationalism — that is Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi nationalism — competes with China but not so much with Pakistan. The Chinese nationalism debates more and more about augmenting production and egalitarianising distribution. Both Pakistan and RSS do not bother much about augmenting production and egalitarianising distribution.

Further, RSS wants the nation to be vegetarian, but the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi food cultural nationalism is multi-cuisine, like the Chinese one. In our historical heritage, from the Harappa civilisation (of production and construction of villages and cities) days to the present, neither pork nor beef are untouchable to our nationalism. For a Harappan man/woman, for Gautama Buddha, for king Ashoka ( the builder of first welfare state) cattle rearing, vegetable production are integrated food-related activities.

Production and consumption are interrelated, always leaving something for the future. In the process of production, greater production and lesser consumption in order to maintain the ecological balance and futurism, remains an essential condition. The RSS does not believe in production but believes in consumption. That is where ecological destruction is.

For food producers, Gaay (Cow) is an animal, like the buffalo, and the Ganga is a river, like the Krishna or Godavari. They never saw God in an animal or in water and they never saw their nation as an isolated entity from the universe. Their problem, till recently, was lack of language and education to communicate with people who live like them in all other regions and states.

The Brahminic nationalism, by controlling Sanskrit as its national and divine language, made them disconnected. Phule and Ambedkar have shown us a way — English, dignity of labour and multi-cuisine food consumption — as the real, productive Indian nationalism. It does not believe in war and violence vis-à-vis other religions or other nations.

Our political life, lived around only village panchayats before 1950, is now connected to a larger constitutional democracy. In the future, this nationalist view will gain more prominence. The RSS nationalism will slowly but surely wither away.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author

https://www.firstpost.com/india/india-and-the-indian-my-nationalism-competes-with-china-not-pakistan-6809271.html

in India — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd — July 13, 2020FacebookTwitterWhatsAppEmailShare48

War between India and China is on the cards. Though there is a retreat on both sides for the time being there is every possibility that war would break out any time in future.   Unlike a war between India and Pakistan or with any other neighbouring country war with China will have to be fought on two fronts. One, the straight army to army front–in three spheres – land, water and air and two, the trade war. The trade war on the economic front is a long drawn out one. The Hinduva ruling class unlike the earlier ruling class that fought a war with China in 1962 is in two minds whether to fight or not to fight. Given its Hindutva nationalist build up constructed mainly aiming Pakistan and the internal Muslim population is a bit shaky about the war with China. Why?

Its diplomatic engagement with China was not matched with rational assessment expected of modern Government that could see through the Chinese diplomatic game. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak and the Bharatiya Janatha Party never developed a  team of thinkers from their ranks. They have mostly inward-looking communal intellectuals. They cannot match the Chinese intellectuals in any field. Nor did the earlier Congress regimes produced outstanding non-casteist and non-communal great social science thinkers from Indian universities. Nor did the communist school. Caste communalism lived through all our university education without allowing thinkers from Shudra/OBC/Dalit background to come to the centre stage of the intellectual discourse. Scholars that emerged from productive families would have different creativity from that of scholars emerging from parasite anti-production families. This is where India and China’s educational systems differ. China produced thinkers from working-class families–in Indian context from Dalit/OBC/Shudra kind of families–as there is no caste system there. Here the intellectuals came from Brahmin/Bania/Kayastha/Khatri communities who have no productive class roots. They came from recitation book culture but not from the culture of struggle with nature and every day creative thinking.

According to available information, the Prime Minister Narenda Modi is the first Prime Minister who visited China more times than any other Prime Minister did in the past. The RSS/BJP intellectuals have also visited China on what is known as study tours more than any other political study teams earlier. They must have studied the Chinese food and physical exercise culture. They must have also studied their school, college and university education methods. The food that they eat and the physical exercise and the interaction of students right from early stage with their production fields and factories is totally opposed to Hindutva saint and yogi culture. Dignity of labour,multi- cuisine food habit, karate, high jump, running and high speed body motion games for youth are very normal in China. Their production energies and military power are based on their youth energy.

What did the PM and RSS/BJP ruling elite promote in India ever since they came to power?  They have not promoted dignity of labour as they have a strong belief that working the fields and production in general as pollution, as that work is not part of Hindutva literature and parampara. As a result our per capita production and per capita income are far less than average per capita production and income and protein consumption of a Chinese. To get rid of Chinese goods and commodities we need to improve our per capita production and consumption. For that teaching dignity of labour to every school child with fieldwork practice is a must.

To improve production in India the ruling class needs to have a theory of improving production forces and changing production relations. But the Hindutva ruling class has no such theory. They are pre-occupied with the history of Muslim rulers of India who hardly thought about improving production but well trained in building monuments like Tajmahal and forts like the Red Fort of Delhi. The Muslim rulers also never built strong agrarian economy and also strong technology backed army. The kisan and jawan were very primitive by the time the East India company landed in India. The Hindutva strategy is to build counter monuments to the Muslim kingly monuments without bothering to improving the forces of production and scientifically advanced modern army in 21 century.

Their promotion of pure vegetarianism and yoga among young population will not make our army match the Chinese army. Our young students are not meant to become sanayasis or only the white colour employees but meant to become educated kisans and and well built jawans. That is the first condition for building a Aatmanirbhar India.

To make India Aatmanirbhar we must compete with China on production front not with Pakistan. We must spend more money on building world class universities not monuments–spiritual or secular. No doubt the Hindutva leaders and scholars were studying Pakistan more seriously but were visiting China for pleasure trips.

Unfortunately the BJP/RSS Governments and leaders have been propagating and giving directions to schools,colleges  and universities only to give pure vegetarian food to our children and youth. Historically the Indian food culture has been caste based and now RSS is planning that it should be religion based . This we have seen during cow protection debate. Ideally food habits need to change based on age and energy levels of the individual.Both pure vegetarianism and yoga are meant for old people and may be for diabetic patients but not for young kisans and  jawans who need to fight with nature and enemy with swiftly moving bodies but not in a sitting position like in yoga.

The RSS with their sanyasi food culture adopted a generalised definition that vegetarianism is Indian food culture.  It actually was/is only Jain heritage. Their opposition to Islamic food culture and civilization pushed them to promote anti-energy food culture and yoga exercise for people of all ages based on the guidance of some yogis living in mountain regions who never involved in physical hard work of production and protection of borders. Some of them live in Himalayas only to do thapasya. That cannot protect the nation.

The kisan in the field and the jawan on the border must follow healthy food habit and body exercise but not yogis like Patanjali of ancient times or Ramdev of our times. If we follow them we cannot win a war with China in both the sectors—on the Himalayan borders and also in trade war inside. Without a strong productive labour force the production domain does not strengthen the nation. We could see how  dangerous a business model Ramdev played in the corona pandemic context.  We know that kisan and jawan would never do such dangerous business.

The Hindutva leaders focussed on promotion of yoga which involves sitting and still body exercise even in the schools and colleges which would have a negative impact. Patanjali in ancient times and Baba Ramdev or Jaggi Vasudev or Sri Sri Ravishankar who guide the Hindutva forces are not  masters of production of food and hard physical work in the fields. All of them are leisure based saint/sanyasis.  Our youth and army should do high jump, long jump, running and more body swift movement exercise than karate to defeat Chinese. Certainly not yoga and pure vegetarian food be their priority till they retire and become old. All our political schools and parties and intellectuals should work for globally competitive scientific methods in every aspect of life to challenge China in every field of life.

China is not like Pakistan or Bangladesh. War with China is not going to divide the population on religious lines within the country. The nation stands as one, including the Muslims and Christians. They will fully support the Government. They will do it with more enthusiasm than the Hindutva nationalists themselves. Because they have more disapproving ideological issues with China than the Hindutva forces have. No Muslim or Christian industrialist has investments in China. But there are a number of BJP/RSS supporting industrialists who have investments in China.

If war becomes a reality India  will get trapped in American and European weapon market. America and Europe may turn India into a war terrain to sell their outdated weapons and sweep the Indian treasures to fill their emptied coffers because of Covid-19 losses. Particularly America under  Trump administration will make India-China war an election winning agenda.

The Aatmanirbhar agenda will go for a toss as Modi’s Government will become a tail of American imperialism. For some of the Euro-American countries, weapon market has been very dull as there was no war in the post cold war world. India will open a new weapon market

Yes we should not leave an inch of land to China. At the same time, we should not become a weapon buying poorest Asian country leaving China a giant of Asia after the war.

The Indian land is made with sweat blood of our kisans. I have been saying this for quite some time now. But ever since the BJP came to power in 2014 they have taken many decisions that weakened the nation’s ability to fight China. With their obsession with cow protection and pure vegetarianism and yoga the health of the youth stands weakened. Their emphasis was on yoga, not on high jump, long jump, running and tilling the land.

They tried to link Chinese Corona deaths to their food culture and attacked China that because of its multi meat eating culture and went on to say that the Hindutva pure vegetarianism will save India  from Covid-19. But their  ‘ pure vegetarian culture has not proved to be better resistant than Chinese food culture.

They never thought about strengthening the Indian agriculture which still is the main source of Indian economy. The Chinese economy developed because of their strong philosophy of agriculturalism.

For 95 years the RSS built nationalist ideology only around anti-Islam sentimentalism. The Congress survived with secularism that no Dalit/OBC/Shudra tiller or labourer understood. The RSS/BJP’s  main enemy was Pakistan and the Islamic civilization. It never studied China from the forces of production and distributive relations of production. Suddenly the Prime Minister was talking about five trillion dollar economy when we are still just 2.5 trillion GDP.

Will they re-think about their ideology as they must lead the war with China now. If we lose the war we cannot blame Nehru, who according them, is in the hell now.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs

https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/india-needs-high-jump-not-yoga-to-win-war-with-china/

Why Telangana Must Start Trend for Decentralised Capitals

A post-Covid world needs a futuristic vision of decentralised institutions, administrative structures and industries.

kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

09 Jul 2020

Telangana old secretariat building being demolished. | Image Courtesy: The Hindu

The KCR government in Telangana has demolished the long-standing secretariat buildings and a new model for a secretariat has been put out in the public domain. Some sections are trying to find fault with the architectural design of the proposed secretariat, but in fact it looks good with its multi-cultural architecture style. In any case, a new secretariat is bound to come up, whatever its design.

The historic Assembly building cannot be demolished as its structures are heritage monuments. That whole area, being part of public gardens, is also bound to be kept up, as it can become a well-developed tourism spot. At this juncture, it is important to consider that a new Assembly building must be built in Warangal, which would make the small but classical city the legislative capital of the state.

A debate is going on in the country whether the state capitals and even the national capital should be set up at more than one place after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s government proposed three locations for a capital—a legislative capital at Amaravati, an administrative one at Visakhapatnam and the judicial capital at Kurnool.

I am convinced after seeing millions of people go through the torturous course of Covid-19 in big metropolitan cities including Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bengaluru, that our capitals should be instituted at more than one place. All our big cities have developed as places where a massive concentrated population lives. This density of population is a result of the “one capital” concept, due to which industrial and institutional developments also cluster in and around concentrated zones. Among advanced democracies, American states avoided this mistake and hence averted the pandemic trap that a very big city like New York could not avert. Since Washington DC is just a federal capital, not an industrial or institutional centre as well, it is also relatively safe from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Be that as it may, a post-Covid India and world will be forced to rethink city development models. That is a must if our children are to get a chance to live with clean air and without the unwanted concrete jungles and high population-density slums. To get there, thinking about decentralised capitals is one significant step. Already, because of the rapid spread of the Novel Coronavirus, people have started moving out of big cities to rebuild new lives in smaller towns and villages. To decentralise administrations and other operations of states would do a great service to epidemic containment in future. We now know what can happen in heavily-populated cities such as Hyderabad when a pandemic strikes. With one major epidemic, the metro rail systems and the mass bus infrastructure are proving to be a big waste. In smaller decentralised cities such as Warangal, even cycles and motorcycles could be used as personal transport.

Why Warangal as legislative capital at this point in time? That the new secretariat will be built in Hyderabad is a foregone conclusion. The judicial capital cannot be shifted from Hyderabad either, because the classic heritage High Court building of Telangana is a link between the Nizam’s past and the newly carved out state. The only choice is to shift the construction of legislative infrastructure to Warangal, which symbolises Telangana Sammakka and Kakatiya heritage.

What happens if Warangal is made Telangana’s legislative capital? When the legislative proceedings go on for at least three or four times a year, the Chief Minister, Cabinet ministers, MLAs and MLCs will have to camp at the legislative capital. Along with a good legislative building, a chief minister’s makeshift camp office and Cabinet’s makeshift offices will have to work from Warangal too. If the whole executive lives in a city even for a part of the year, it can become a source of massive investment and boost development. When the executive and politicians stay there, Indian and foreign investors and political and cultural dignitaries will visit them. That could become a booster shot for the regional economy.

Warangal is already connected by air, though the connections need to improve. Fast trains and bus connectivity can be improved. Ramappa, Lakdavaram, Pakal, Warangal Fort and the Sammakka forest area would likely become tourist places and tourism would also help develop these areas.

Keeping all these factors in mind, if the Telangana government decides to decentralise its capitals, the debate on this issue will intensify across the country. This is especially important in the context of the pandemic crisis, under which all large and metropolitan Indian cities are reeling.

De-metropolitanization of cities is definitely going to be a trend all over the world in the post-Covid order. The Novel Coronavirus could spread within no time from Wuhan, a metropolitan city with more than 10 million residents and globally-connected air travel. There have been other pandemics, but none globalised as rapidly as Covid-19 because of the intensely metropolitan nature of world cities today.

In Telangana there is a proverb, Chetulu kalinanka akulu pattukunte eimi labham—what is the use of holding protective leaves after the hands are burnt? The solution to the death traps that cities have become lies in depopulating them, but without compromising on their industrial growth and development.

To have all administrative, legislative, judicial, industrial and educational developments cluster in and around one big city draws massive numbers of migrant labourers, which is why Indian cities have gigantic slums. Once the harsh face of urban slums was mirrored in the Oscar-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. Now, during the lockdown announced to control Covid-19, India’s massive migration to cities, where people come for survival, showed the ugly face of metropolises. Millions of migrant labourers walked to their villages from these cities enduring countless hardships. This can be changed only with a futuristic vision of decentralised institutions, administrative structures and industries.

If the Telangana government decides to establish Warangal as the legislative capital of Telangana, there would certainly be no opposition, as the city is now in Andhra Pradesh. The Opposition Congress party, Communist parties and even the BJP of Telangana will have to support such a decision on a very rational ground. In fact, at the national level, over the last several decades, the Congress party did not give any serious thought to what kinds of cities have come up in our state capitals.

As the construction of a secretariat continues on, preparations can also develop the legislative infrastructure in Warangal. Once ready, the legislative proceedings can start there and until then the legislative works can continue at Hyderabad. The key here is for the KCR government to set a trend, which will not just be in the interest of the state but the whole nation.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of several books including From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs. The views are personal.

https://www.newsclick.in/Telangana-Secretariat-Building-Demolished-Decentralise-Capitals

in Book Review — by Kaki Madhava Rao — June 30, 2020FacebookTwitterWhatsAppEmailShare10

Kancha Ilaiaha Shepherd’s first book, Why I am not Hindu, published in 1996′ made waves both in India and abroad.

Having read that book and his subsequent books,  Post Hindu India and Turning the Pot and Tilling  the Land, I quickly started reading his just released Autobiography, From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual–My Memoirs.

Unlike other autobiographies, which normally tend to indulge in self praise, the autobiography of Ilaiah is refreshingly different.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s  memoirs takes us on a journey of Shudra/OBC life from his childhood to his emergence as an intellectual from a small village, Papaiah Pet, in Warangal.

It deals with village life in great detail. Brings out it’s simple rustic pleasures and harsh and irrational practices and self destructive superstitious customs and beliefs.

I never read such detailed description of village life  in any Indian autobiography.

These Himalayan externalities crushed Ilaiah. But he bounced back with great determination. That determination shaped him and motivated him to be what he is today.

Ilaiaha’s  life story reminds me of the autobiography –Roots — written by  the American author, Alex Haley in 1976. This book was adopted by ABC as a Television serial in 1977, which was watched by over 130 million viewers at that time. The book and TV serial have greatly stirred the public awareness about the problems of African Americans. Now the Black Lives Matter movement is shaking the West.

Haley writes about seven generations of his ancestry, starting from the famous slave boy, Kunta Kunte of Gambia, who was sold to a baron of Virginia in USA. Ilaiah writes about three his generations. But it is no small a canvas.

When was real Kancha Ilaiah born? Not on the day he came out of the womb of his mother, Kattamma. But on the day he defied the Brahmin Poojari who commanded him to prostrate and put his head on the latter’s feet. According to the Hindu rites that are to be observed at the time of the cremation of a parent, the son performing the rites, has to prostrate on the feet of the Poojari. Non compliance with that command would carry the inevitable risk of the dead parent not going to heaven. No son would like his parent to go to hell by refusing to prostrate. It is just not the Poojari but all the followers of Hinduism seriously believe in such irrational rite. The Poojari and all the relatives cursed Kancha Ilaiah for that sacrilege of refusing to prostrate at the feet of Poojari. But Kancha Ilaiah stood firm, believing that such an act is totally irrational and inhuman, which destroys human personality. That Kancha Ilaiah spontaneously defied the priest and all his relatives at the young age of 15 when he was studying only class 9, makes it hugely significant. It was on that day Kancha Ilaiah, that we now know of, was re-born. If that priest was re-born with upanayana (sacred thread) cermony Ilaiah was re-born by rejecting his control and authority.

His recollection of all the experiences his childhood from the age of five is admirable. He recounts how he used to walk on dusty along with animals and smell the dung of sheep and buffalos while taking them for grazing in the fields. How he breathed the dust they raised. How he rode on the back of buffalos. How he swam in the rivulets. How he watched his father helping a sheep which was going through a complicated delivery. Obviously, the Shepherd must have been the first veterinary doctor and mid-wife in the world.

Kancha Ilaiah wrote pages and pages about the spontaneous weeping of women among his relatives and of the village when his mother died. This weeping is a rhythmic intonation of the goodness of the departed soul. It goes on all the days on which the death ceremonies take place. This happens at the death of every SC, ST and OBC house in both the Telugu States.  Strangely, men don’t weep aloud, much less  in musical tones. It also doesn’t happen in Brahmin Bania, Reddy, Kamma, Velama families. Is it not a measure of spontaneity and warmth Vs prudish restraint? Which is culturally and civilizationally more humane?

Ilaiah  also describes the pleasures of men drinking toddy every evening and their impatience if they have to forego the drink to attend to a sick wife.He tells how his own father wanted to choose drink, when his mother was on the verge of death.

Ilaiah always accompanied his father to enjoy toddy and tells us children are taught to drink in Indian village cultures.

These simple rustic pleasures and habits were accompanied by deep rooted prejudice against Sudras going to school and the near compulsion for child marriage. It was understandable that Manu and his Brahmin lineage, not wanting all Shudras to be literate. But Shudra elders played worse role in keeping their children away from schools. They believed that Saraswathi, the so called Goddess of education, would punish a Sudra child if he goes to a school. This superstition was obviously instilled in their minds by Brahministic forces for generations for selfish reasons. But it continued upto the 1960s  in Telangana region. Fortunately, this resistance to education among Sudras has nearly disappeared now. Saraswathi has now become powerless to punish Sudra children for going to school, thanks to tough nuts like Ilaiah, spread of Phule Ambedkar Ideology, Mandal movement and literacy programmes of the Governments over time.

Child Marriage Restraint Act of  1929 abolished child marriage but Sudra community in Telangana did not wake up to it till 1980s. If a Shudra boy is not married by 13, he became a target of discussion and derision in the whole village. The villagers of Papiah Pet blamed Kancha Ilaiah for his not getting married early and going to school caused the death of his mother. They even ridiculed him saying that he must be impotent.  Ilaiah went through this trauma from age 13 till he entered into late 20s.

Glad those days of 1970s do not exist. Glad, Kancha Ilaiah wrote about those horrible days, which the world would not have known otherwise.

The third factor that caused considerable anguish to Kancha Ilaiah was his name. He was given that name by his parents as an adaptation of the local God, Iloni Mallanna

That name is easily identified with Sudra community, as Iloni Mallanna is a Shudra God. Hindu Gods are Siva, Vishnu, Rama,  Krishna and so on. Names like Sharma, Shastry, Reddy and Rao sound respectable. The villagers loathed and ridiculed him for going to school and not getting married early. His Sudra name caused severe embarrassment to Ilaiah in the college and University. Many Shudra students, carrying similar names changed their names into non Shudra names to avoid embarrassment. But Kancha Ilaiah is not the one to yield to insults.

Ever since he wrote his path breaking book – Why I am not a Hindu – he converted that very Shudra name into an iconic name. In literary and media circles, in India and in other countries, he is more easily identified and remembered with that name than if he were to carry a name like Sharma or Rao or Reddy.

Moving on from personal aspects of Kancha Ilaiah to philosophy and ideology, a few things stand out. One is his love for English language. Initially, it was meant to be a weapon for his personal empowerment. But after he moved to Osmania University for post-gradutation studies, he converts it into a weapon of a crusader for empowering Dalit and OBC combine and to fight the caste demon.

Starting from the police Patel of his village, who harassed his mother in power struggle, the entire district of Warangal was under the grip feudalism. By and large, the landlords were arrogant, exploitative and merciless. The landless, the bonded labour, the tenants and marginal farmers were at the mercy of landlords. Bonded labour, low wages, grabbing the lands and cruel punishments were their main instruments.

When Ilaiah was grappling with the handicaps of not getting married and going to school and college against the so called command of Goddess Saraswathi, he happens to hear about a Dalit officer becoming the district collector in Warangal. That Collector champions the cause of the poor and the oppressed and checks the atrocities of the landlords.

One day he sees the collector addressing a college function and gets impressed by his good English speech.

Instantly, he imagines that the secret of the power of that Dalit officer over the dreaded land lords, was his command over English.

Following this first break through, Kancha Ilaiah lays his hands on the English version of Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Initially, it seems that he was struck more by the English in the manifesto than its philosophy. After his revolt against priest in the village at the funeral rites of his mother, these two developments mark a major shift in his life. In his own words, “Madhavarao, a Dalit Collector gave me an ambition and Marx, a German author, gave me a direction”

The third major shift takes place when he finds Brahmanism even in the radical left wing organisations like CPI (ML) Tarimala Nagi Reddy  Group and also in the civil liberties organizations that he worked with.

His social background pulls him to the left student organizations  in Osmania University.

He actively participates in their debates and field work but was terribly disturbed about the left’s silence and indifference to the problems of caste system. He writes at length about this failure of the leftist groups, who are satisfied with just highlighting the class issues.

Ilaiah says that he was denied the opportunity of being called for interview for a professor post in the Central University of Hyderabad. He mentions some names who might have stood in the way. Only the persons involved in the decision know the facts. But one thing is certain. If Ilaiah joined that University, there would have been more than one Rohi Vemula. And, he would have motivated and emboldened more faculty members to encourage and mentor number of Dalit- Bahujan students and scholars.

A person who is harassed, victimised on multiple grounds has every reason, nay a right, to oppose and revolt against those forces. The degree of revolt reflects the nature of that persona. Those who do not oppose or fight will fall a victim to the oppressors. Those who fight back, serve themselves and the general cause of the oppressed.Ilaiah did the later.

Depending on the degree of anger and revolt, it will result in mild protest to taking a gun and kill oppressors as armed guerrillas and Marxist Leninst Groups did.

Then we have the third category in those who oppose silently and peacefully.

Buddha and Socratese are the earlier models. Later we had Martin Luther King Jr, M.K. Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

Fortunately, Ilaiah is a born fighter. He chose the leftist path but was not able to find peace and fulfilment in it. His Shudra and village background could not digest the silence of leftists (of all shades) about the victims of caste system. He shifts to Mahatma Phule, Ramasami Naicker, Narayana Guru and Dr.B.R. Ambedkar, who opposed the oppressive and inhuman caste system.

Ilaiah has the advantage of standing on their shoulders and he decided to carry their mantle further to suit his times.

He discovered that Buddhism worked as an anti- caste system. He dug deep into it and found Buddha to be the political philosopher to challenge the caste system of Hinduism and did his Ph.D on that subject.

To do this he must become a scholar, a speaker and a writer. He finds this to be a higher calling and gives up the idea of becoming an IAS officer and a collector, who (in the popular imagination) is so powerful that he can control feudal landlords and “print his own money”!

Kancha Ilaiah was obsessed by the images of Hindu Gods always carrying lethal weapons. You cannot fight such armed Gods with empty hands. So Ilaiah became the Pit Bull of Phule and Ambedkar. And he chose English as his weapon to fight the caste system enforced by the Thrisul and Sanskrit.

Earlier Dalit Panthers too radicalised Phuleism and Ambedkarism.

They burnt Bhagvad Gita while Babasaheb stopped at burning Manusmrithi.

Ilaiah is an angry man. Anger produced by castism, feudalism and disappointment with left party cadres.

He donned the role of an angry Phule, angry Ambedkar and angry Buddha, in carrying on their mantle.

Ambedkar condemned the theory of birth of Brahmins from the head and Sudras from the feet of Hindu God.

Ilaiah wants to rewrite this HIndu folklore. He wants that the Dalit-Bahujans writers to reverse the order – Bahujans are born from the head and Brahmins are born from the feet of their God!

How many ages will it take for Bahujans to believe in the new order that Ilaiah is talking about and when will they  start behaving like that?

Ilaiah rightly believes that learning English is the master key to fight casteism and to advance economic and political power. English is his passion and instrument.

Read English, speak English and write in English are his slogans and his mission.

If I may say so, Ilaiah breathes English and lives for English. He takes English along with him, when he goes to sleep. In sleep, he dreams about English.

There is a considerable discussion in the book about Brahminical forces capturing leftist leadership. Many other sources like Mr U.Sambasivarao, Dr Gopinath, late KG Sathyamurthy, G.Ramulu and others give similar feedback. This is unfortunate both for Marxism and Ambedkarism.

The concerted effort of Mr Prakash Ambedkar and Mr G.Ramulu and Ilaiah have helped in Neel (Ambedkarism) – Laal (Marxism) campaign in Telangana.

This effort resulted in the formation of TMASS,  an ideological platform and Bahujan Left Front (BLF), a political platform. BLF has fielded candidates in 107 (out of 119) constituencies in Telangana State Assembly elections in December 2018 and secured 2 per cent votes in its maiden effort.

Kancha Ilaiah’s life is an open book. He talks about his failed courtship that lasted for 2 ½ years. He gets more frank by saying that not marrying does not mean foregoing the pleasure of sex. He says that there are other ways to fulfill that natural physical desire. So  he chooses to Love for knowledge to serve common good over lust for selfish physical pleasure.

He talks about how the girl students used to be nice to him to get their academic writing was done by him and then keep away after their work was done.  Girls also made fun of his looking like an old man at the age of 23.

I have no doubt that this book will be received with great interest by readers in various areas of life, in India and abroad.

It is a  great life story of the most  known rebel  intellectual among the Shudras of India. And, Shudras constitute 60 plus per cent of the Indian population. Their liberation is the books agenda.

⁸Kaki Madhava Rao is the former Chief Secretary of United Andhra Pradesh. He was the first Dalit collector of Warangal district, who weakened the feudal hold on the district with determination and tact. During his term as the Chief Secretary the Dalits benefited a lot

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/differently-twice-born/

in Book Review — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd — June 26, 2020FacebookTwitterWhatsAppEmailShare19

I met Tony Joseph, the author of Early Indians – the History of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From[1], first in Jaipur Literature Festival in 2019 and next at Mathrubhoomi Literature Festival in January, 2020 at Thivanthapuram.  I had a lengthy discussion about his understanding of goats, buffalos, cows and so on,  caste and race relations in ancient India and where the brahminic understanding of India went wrong and they became anti-animal economy and agrarian production.  He gave me several clues which engendered a new curiosity in his understanding and his book.  Then I started reading his book very seriously line by line.  It threw up many new dimensions that were not done by the writings of any other historian, indologist and writer on ancient India earlier.

His book has opened a new perspective to Indian economic and cultural evolution in the context of many discoveries of the economic and cultural evolution of animal, plant and bird domestication and migration to different parts of the world and India. While reading early Indian agrarian system in the chapter ‘The First Farmers’  a new vision appeared for the first time.  He wrote “the first evidence for domestication of goats comes from the settlement of Ganj Dareh in the central Zagros mountain region and is dated to 7900 BCE”[2].  Even now the Indian shepherds have quite a bit of knowledge how goats live well around shrubby hills and mountains. Goat is known as the most adjustable animal to any new environment and selects its plant food from many available plants quite cleverly.  Its selection of plants for food later on has thrown up many medicines that humans used to treat diseases.  Its milk and meat is known as most human life sustaining and no wonder that this was the first domesticated animal and exported to many  foreign lands in pre-historic times.  This discovery of goat as earliest domesticated animal economy that brought humans out of hunting and food gathering and also short span of life.

As an animal, goat is highly useful for human stable life as its meat and milk are most suitable for human survival. During the corona pandemic the Kerala Government recommended goat milk as an immunity builder more than buffalo and cow milk. Mahatma Gandhi was said to have given up cow milk and took to drinking goat milk when he was attacked by the 1918 plague pandemic. In many pandemics goat meat and milk were said to have saved many people in South Asia. It is quite natural that this animal became the first source of stable food of humans. Even today both goat-sheep economy plays a critical role in global food, leather and wool economy[3].

Tony Joseph also tells how animals once domesticated at one place were carried along with migrant people all over the continents across the globe, where human habitat became possible.  He further says “so the broad picture we see is that between 9500 BCE and 6500 BCE—that is a 3000—year period immediately following the end of the Younger Dryas and the beginning of Holocene—both plant and animal domestication had spread across most of the Fertile Crescent, after progressing in fits and starts during the last glacial period, with littering regions contributing in different times and probably with multiple instances of domestication for the same species”. He further adds:

“As we saw, even as the transition was on, people were taking their plants and animals, perhaps still in the process of being domesticated and perhaps not even that, migrating to newer places. Many places in the Fertile Crescent itself saw plants or animals being imported—an example being goats in the Southern Levant”[4].  The Indian subcontinent certainly comes under this Southern Levant.

Tony Joseph established it with more evidence than any other historian—including Romila Thapar[5], R.S.Sharma[6] – did earlier that Aryan migration took place as part of the third and last ancient wave of human migration, perhaps with horse as a war animal and white cow as food animal. This book established that for Aryan Brahminism horse was more significant and that animal was central to Rigvedic forces. Horse was not known to Harappans, as they were not war lovers like the Vedic Brahmins. Goat, though such a crucial food animal was mentioned just in one Rigvedic hymen.

Tony Joseph says “The Indian ‘pizza’ got made, with the base or the foundation being laid about 65000 years ago, when the Out of Africa migrants reached India. The sauce began to be made when the Zagrosian herders (shepherds) reached Baluchistan after 7000 BCE, mixed with the first Indians and then together went on to build Harappan Civilization….Then came the Aryans after 2000 BCE…”[7].  It is very clear that the Aryans had no role in building the Harappan Civilization of India.  In my view the name Harappa itself is Pre-Aryan and nativist.  Such names do not appear in Vedic-Sanskrit literature but in South Indian literature and in real life ‘Appa’ and ‘Ayya’ names are very common in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana  and other places in South.

Joseph tells the migration to South first reached Karnataka crossing the Western plains. Similar names are also common in the Old Testament — like Messiah, Jeremiah, Isaiah –of the Bible.  It appears that Old Testament of the Bible is quite older than Rigveda, constructed around cattle economy and agriculture as it deals with goats and sheep extensively as positive and respectable animals. Horse was not such major animal in the life of Abraham and Moses, as it is in the life of Indra in Rigveda. Once Rigveda constructed animal herders as Shudras and Mlecchas putting Brahminism on the highest spiritual and social pedestal the Brahmins seems to have disassociated themselves with all agrarian productive and animal herding activity, a process that continues till today. Production is pollution is their main spiritual theory even now.

Brahmins as community and Brahminism as ideology got formulated after that Aryan migration from the Central Asia. Brahmins as people and Brahminism as socio-spiritual and cultural ideology never treated the first human settlers (Out of Africa settlers) in the Indian subcontinent as great civilization builders, in spite of the fact they were the first urban civilization builders or what Tony Joseph calls first urbanites–Harappans.

Tony Joseph also disagrees with Ambedkar’s theory of no racial segregation in India. He says “….. Perhaps he (Ambedkar) did not go far enough–he seems to have still considered the tribals to be different from everyone else.  We now know that this is not correct—because their genes run through every one, (According Tony they have more OoA genes about 65 per cent) no matter where in the caste hierarchy one is.  Ambedkar[8] was also wrong in denying ‘Aryan’ migration altogether, though he cannot be blamed for the mistake since he did not have the genome data that we have today[9]”

The mythology of Indian civilization started with writing of Rigvedic text in Sanskrit and that went to construct anti-civilizational assertions to establish Indian caste system and Brahminic negativism.  The Indian pattern of development deviated from the rest of the global pattern of civilizational developments once the Aryan casteism got constructed and indignity of animal economy became spiritually respectable.

By the time of writing of Rigveda the goat, sheep, buffalo and cow economy became fully expanded and that was the pivot of pastoral agrarianism.  In entire Brahmin literature the first domesticated goat was not referred to as very prominent animal and people who were involved in the advancement of animal economy were constructed as Shudras and unsuitable to have respectable status in the realm of Brahminic God/Gods.  The goat and sheep economy universally acquired high cultural value both spiritually and socially but in India the Brahmin writers projected that civilization builders as mlecchas (at that time untouchables) and all those communities now are known as backward, as they were not allowed to get education.  The anti-animal herding Brahmins gradually built a culture of opposing agrarian production by deploying enormous amount of violence by the time of writing Rigveda and thereafter, which must have hindered Indian economic progress by that standard. Shudra resistance to their anti-productionism was suppressed by using horse power, perhaps by consuming Shudra animal wealth itself.  That tendency continues till today.  After the Rastriaya Swayamsevak Sangh was formed in 1925 cow was adopted as their Gomata and other economic animals like goat, sheep and buffalo were seen as unworthy of any respect as animal Mlecchas. This Brahminism runs through the present Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janatha Party regime.  The Shudras still are only usable muscle power, which became evident in constituting the Ram Temple Trust in 2020, as no Shudra is found suitable to be on the Trust.

What is surprising is how and why the Shudra animal economists became so historically subservient to Brahmins? The answer could be found only in hierachised caste control of spiritual and state power.  Brahmins and Ksatriyas, who have strong Aryan blood ownership but not of out of Africa migrant blood, which they attribute to Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis now, though according to Tony Joseph, all races are mixed by now unitedly oppressed the animal economy builders.  However, all nationalist Brahmin-Bania (hardly any Ksatriya writers emerged in India) writers owned Aryan heritage whereas the first modern Shudra writer Mahatma Phule proudly asserted his Dravidian (OoA) lineage[10].

This book has come at a time when insecure Brahminism is doing all sorts of negative things as the new common language– English– education is spreading among all sections of India.  The Shudra/OBCs of India must realize that they can become equal spiritual, social and economic citizens only when they fight brahminism, wherever it exists–temples, political parties of all ideologies right, left and centre.  Tony Joseph’s book must be read by students, scholars in the universities and outside and policy makers in Indian system to gaze what went wrong in building our nation and economy and how to move forward.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs

Notes and References:

[1] Tony Joseph, Early Indians–The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, Juggernaut, 2018

[2] Ibid. p.78

[3] Goat and sheep economy plays a key role in India even today. The Indian shepherd communities though exist in different names in different states and their ancestral occupation is cattle grazing. Brahmins as people and Brahminism as ideology have no respect for this major community. They suffer various forms of discrimination. Though the author of Bhagvad Gita Sri Krishna is said to have come from the cattle grazing Yadav community Brahminism treats them very dis-respectable and historically denied Sanskrit education to them also. Now they are weakest in English education and globally available soft power knowledge. Tony Joseph’s book gives them a new hope with the discovery that goat was the earliest domesticated animal, which has no respectable place in Brahminic literature earlier and RSS/BJP ideology now like Buffalo. See Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd Buffalo Nationalism–A critique of Spiritual Fascism,Samya-Sage originally published in 2000.

[4] Tony Joseph, Early Indians–The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, Juggernaut, 2018, p.79

[5] Romila Thapar, The Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300, Penguin India, 2003

[6] Ram Sharan Sharma, Advent of the Aryans in India, Manohar Publications, New Delhi, 1999

[7] Tony Joseph, Early Indians — The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, Juggernaut, 2018, p. 203

[8] Ambedkar, B.R, Who were the Shudras? How they came to be Fourth Varna in Indo-Aryan Society?, Samyak Prakashan, New Delhi, 2011

[9] Tony Joseph, Early Indians–The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, Juggernaut, 2018, p. 213

[10] See Aparna Vaidk, My Son’s Inheritance –A Secret History of Lynching and Blood Justice in India, Aleph, 2020. Aparna is a historian and she tells about her grandfather’s Aryan Marwadi background and she looks that the tradition of Aryasamaj and that Mahatma Phule’s Dravidian, Mahabali culture which believed in equality of human beings as against Aryan vegetarian humanly discriminate culture.

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/early-india-goats-and-brahmins/

in Annihilate Caste — by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd —June 22, 2020FacebookTwitterWhatsAppEmailShare59

A teenaged Dalit boy was shot dead at his home in Uttar Pradesh’s Domkhera village in Amroha district at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was shaking the whole world. He was shot dead allegedly by youths from an upper caste community for visiting a temple in the village, according to media reports. Such killing of Dalits in India is very common, more particularly after the Bharatiya Janatha Party came to power at Delhi in 2014.

Vikas Kumar Jatav (17) had visited the local Shiva temple on June 1, 2020, with his father Om Prakash Jatav, a farmer. The Telegraph reported that according to the boy’s father, a scuffle ensued after Vikas ignored the warnings of some upper caste members, including a boy named Horam Chauhan, who tried to stop him from praying at the temple on the ground of his Jatav identity and continued to pray at the temple. A death for praying in Hindu temple. What is Horam Chauhan’s caste background? We do not know. Let us assume that he is a Shudra youth and not a Brahmin or Dwija youth. Mostly Shudra youth live in villages. The Dalit intellectuals have been pointing out this fact that most atrocities on Dalits are being committed by Shudras.

This brutal killing has not become a headline in Indian media, print or electronic. Normally Dalit deaths do not. In America, any killing of a black becomes a headline. In India, it does not. Against such ghastly killing for prayer in a temple, we do not find any protests in India.

No protests like the ‘Black Lives Matter’ take place in India because, in Hindu Rastra, Dalits should not go to a Hindu temple and pray. Because Shudras who have the right to enter the temple and pray, but cannot become a priest in Hindu temple, think that the Brahmin is God and what he says should be done. They indulging in attacking Dalits must be linked to their belief in brahmin god.

A brahmin priest, who recites slokas and mantras in Sanskrit which Shudra does not understand, yet he believes the Brahmin dictum that Dalit entry pollutes the temple. The priest does not want a Dalit inside the temple because he is less than a cow, which occasionally is taken inside the temple. Hence a Brahmin priest directs and a Shudra acts. If they attempt to pray inside the temple, Brahmin god’s body burns.

Generally, Brahmin youth do not participate in such killing because they are not part of the muscle power squads and they would be in colleges and universities, as their male family members keep earning easy money in the temples. Many Shudra youths are around the villages as many do not go to college or university education, as their parents keep tilling the land or grazing the cattle.

When the notion of Hinduism as a religion was not there just before hundreds of years back, the Shudra were worshipping in their Shudra deity temples, without a Brahmin priest around and at that time the Dalit presence was not seen as pollution. A Shudra temple was equally meant for all villagers. It was not a control room of a Brahmin priest who is treated as a god. Their God was their Shudra deity, and the notion of purity and pollution was hardly in operation in Shudra temple. Shudras and Dalits were working in the fields as co-workers. They shared many common cultures. But once Brahminism is designated as Hinduism and the brahmin priest controlled the temple, the idea of God and temple changed. Brahmin actually became God, the deity in the temple is only a symbol. This belief is deep among Shudras now.

Though Mahatma Gandhi, a Bania philosopher called Dalits Harijan (with a sense of children of God) without changing the status of Brahmin, neither the Brahmin priest nor the Shudra accepted that position. Ambedkar, a Dalit philosopher, opposed that children’s status while keeping the status of Brahmin in the same position as God. Neither Nehru, a Brahmin pandit, wrote anything about Dalit status nor Sardar Patel, a Shudra iron man, applied his brain and wrote anything about it. They left in the hands of fate.

The problem of the Dalit is the Shudra, as Shudra is an agent of Brahmin to crush Dalit physically. Unlike the race problem in America and Europe which is a binary problem of black and white, the caste problem is multi-layered problem where the Shudras constitute the mass muscle power that worships Brahmin as a god, and are above the Dalit. No Shudra asks for priesthood rights for himself because brahmins are revered as god themselves

The white in the West is neither God nor does he have control over God. The Black directly negotiates with God, reads and interprets the Bible and organizes the community in the church because God does not accept racism and injustice in a church.

There is no Hinduism without Brahmin, and the Shudra surrenders to Brahmin as there is no spiritual philosophy for Shudra. Hence killing of Dalits even for praying in the temple does not invite a mass response because the Shudras who constitute 55 per cent Indian population stand by the Brahmin and his Dwija social base that constitutes Kshatriyas, Banias, Kayasthas and Khatris, apart from Brahmins, in North India. If the Dalits try to protest, crushing them with the help of the brahminic state that has the support of the Shudras is not a problem.

If only the Shudras stand by Dalits and ask a rational question: why cannot we the Shudras become priests in Hindu temples and why not Dalits who work with us in the productive fields enter the temple, the Dalit Lives will Matter. Till then, Dalit Lives do not Matter.

The other way is that Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Banias, Kayasthas and Khatris in India must think like some of the whites who are actively participating in the protests of Black Lives Matter movement think. But that becomes possible in the West because the Bible that whites and blacks read tells them that God Created All Humans (blacks and whites) equal. In India, Brahmin who is seen as god by Shudras, does not think so and say so, whatever is his ideology–right, left or centre. A Brahmin is a Brahmin.

During the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd, the supreme court judges, who are still in service, wrote the following letter:

“Devaluation and degradation of black lives is not a recent event. It is a persistent and systemic injustice that predates this nation’s founding. But recent events have brought to the forefront of our collective conscience a painful fact that is, for too many of our citizens, common knowledge: the injustices faced by black Americans are not relics of the past…. It is the collective product of each of our individual actions – every action, every day. It is only by carefully reflecting on our actions, taking individual responsibility for them, and constantly striving for better than we can address the shameful legacy we inherit. We call on every member of our legal community to reflect on the moment and ask ourselves how we may work together to eradicate racism”.

These are white judges. Will Brahmin judges write such a letter to protect Dalit lives in India?

Some Brahmins who live in America and Europe might think that racism is bad and may participate in Black Lives Matter protest movements. But in India, they will not say Dalit Lives Matter. They also do not ask if Hinduism is a religion and Shudras and Dalits are part of it, why they do not have the right to the priesthood? Neither communist nor secular nor liberal nor Hindutva Brahmin asks this question.

If the Shudras gain access to priesthood, half of the Dalit problem will be solved. There is no such Brahmin intellectualism in India which allows this change. Because no Brahmin thinks that he is a normal human being created by God as an equal with the Dalit and Shudra, that is the inner self of any Brahmin. But no Shudra, a Jat, Patel or Maratha, Lingayath, Vakkalinga, Kamma, Reddy or a Nair understands that inner self of a Brahmin. No Brahmin condemns the brahminness in himself. No Shudra has the intellectual energy to understand that inner self of the Brahmin.

Shudras have another problem. They have not produced an intellectual or moral philosopher of the stature of Martin Luther King Jr or as blacks did or Ambedkar as Dalits did. They mainly remain a muscle power and local ruling force under the guidance of Brahmin priestcraft.

The Dalit became proud because they have a spiritual and social philosopher in Ambedkar, but no Shudra philosopher emerged to remove the Brahmin between a Shudra and God. Even then so long the Shudra remains on the side of the Brahmin the Dalits cannot succeed in their fight. Neither Sardar Vallabai Patel nor Periyar Ramasamy Naikar nor Narayan Guru could fulfil those that task. Mahatma Phule attempted, but he lived slightly earlier than the new spiritual and social enlightenment times. The Shudras now need a spiritual, social reformer to connect God to them by removing the middleman called Brahmin. The Shudras are like the blacks in the Pre-Frederick Douglass times.

Dalit Lives Matter question is also related to Shudra Spiritual Rights Matter, and they need to fight for those rights. The Brahmin god is fully in control of the Shudra mind and muscle power. When Shudras do not have that spiritual enlightenment which is a pre-condition for a change in social relations, Dalit lives continue to be in danger. As some Dalit intellectuals are arguing the problem is not just with Shudras it is with Brahmin god.

The ruling BJP and its mother organization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) define Dalits as Hindus, but they do not recognize their spiritual rights, leave alone social rights. They do not allow the Shudras to get out of the Brahmin control. They know that Dalit social liberation is linked to Shudra getting connected to God directly by removing the Brahmin in between. The Shudra has no temple of his own now because he surrendered to Brahmin god.

Blacks in America are Christians and in the early 20th century, and they had only segregated churches for them. But by the time Martin Luther King Jr started the civil rights movements, the whites have come to accept black pastors as preachers in the combined churches. White racism and white humanism with a sense of guilt and shame moved in a crisscrossed mode to take the race question forward. Many whites wrote books demanding for black liberation. At the same time, many whites were attacking blacks with the racist life process. Hardly any Brahmins wrote books asking for Dalit-Shudra liberation spiritually and socially. This affects the Dalits more.

Blacks have produced Barak Obama who ruled America (and the world) for eight years with greater dignity than two preceding white presidents like Bill Clinton and George. W. Bush and his successor Donald Trump. In talent, culture, character and vision, the first Black president proved to be far ahead of white presidents. Michelle Obama proved to be a more intelligent and respectable first lady than her immediate predecessors and immediate successor first lady. There are many black intellectuals, writers and cultural leaders, philosophers who match white intellectuals, thinkers and philosophers. Where are Shudra intellectuals, thinkers and philosophers who could stand by Dalits and write about them?

Particularly Martin Luther King Jr and Obama made them proud people. Their leaders and their intellectuals boosted the self-respect of blacks that lead to this kind of angry reaction, and the general whites realized that blacks deserve equal respect in every field.

Where is a Shudra thinker, leader and prophetic person to educate the Shudras that Brahmin is no god and Dalit is no slave?

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/why-dalit-lives-do-not-matter/

India is yet to see a movement against caste on the scale of Black Lives Matter, even though both racial and caste discrimination share the notion of inferior and superior.

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD21 June, 2020 10:42 am ISThttps://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=https://theprint.in/opinion/black-lives-matter-india-anti-caste-movement-fight-villain-manu/445727/&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=105&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=21

Members of Dalit community display a portrait of Bhim Rao Ambedkar during ‘Bharat Bandh’ in New Delhi | PTIText Size: A- A+

The Covid-19 affected world is undergoing what can be called a “colour revolution”. The Black Lives Matter movement, which reached a new level after the brutal murder of 46-year-old African-American George Floyd by a White police officer, Derek Chauvin, is shaping this revolution. Blacks across the world are joined by Asians and White democrats and, in the process of rewriting history, are bringing down statues of slave traders and racist people eulogised by the colonialists.

Today’s India is yet to see a full-fledged movement against caste on the scale of Black Lives Matter, even though both racial and caste discrimination have a common aspect linking their past, present and perhaps future too — the notion of inferior and superior.null

Similar to how the Whites subjugated Blacks based on notions of superiority for free or cheap labour, the so-called upper castes in India exploited the Shudras and Dalits by holding themselves as superior to achieve and sustain dominance in the hierarchical construct of the Hindu society.

Moreover, just like the current generation of White Americans and Europeans are not responsible for slave trade and colonialism but reaping their benefits, the ‘twice-born’ (dwijas), particularly the Brahmins in India, hugely benefitted from their ancestors’ oppression of the Shudras and Dalits. Now, as the ‘colour revolution’ begins attacking all symbols of exploitation, India needs a revolution against caste too.

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Also read: Bristol brought down slave trader’s statue. This is what India should do with Manu statue

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.391.0_en.html#goog_1867209420

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Down with racist, casteist statues

The lives of slave traders and historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco Da Gama — all those popularised for their geographical discoveries but in effect paved the way for White colonialism — are being re-examined. Not only are their statues and busts being taken down but suggestions are being made to create museums that depict human exploitation, oppression and violence, and put them there. Future generations must know that they have caused human pain, suffering and loss of life.

In India, too, there is some awakening now about the historically eulogised casteist figure, Manu, whose statue stands on the premises of the Rajasthan High Court in Jaipur. In December 2018, two Dalit women, Kantabai Ahire and Sheela Pawar, had blackened Manu’s statue, for which they were arrested. They are out on bail but the case against them is still on.

But it is through Manu’s statue that an anti-caste revolution can be initiated in India. A national-level peaceful movement is the need of the hour, and it must take inspiration from the ‘colour revolution’ to change caste relations and recognise Manu as the central villain.

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Also read: Why Jyotiba Phule would have cheered White Americans out on street over George Floyd murder

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Casteist Manu 

Manu is anyway the most prolific symbol of India’s caste system because he wrote what is known as Manusmriti.

A glimpse into some of his casteist views about Shudras, Dalits, and women reveals a character who is just inhuman.null

But a Shudra, whether bought or unbought, he may compel to do servile work; for he was created by the Self-existent (Svayambhu) to be the slave of a Brahmana. [v.8.413.]

A once-born man (a Shudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. [v.8.270.]

By approaching Chandalas, one becomes degraded [22.4.3.4.3]

A Brahmana who unintentionally approaches a woman of the Chandala or of (any other) very low caste, who eats (the food of such persons) and accepts (presents from them) becomes an outcast; but (if he does it) intentionally, he becomes their equal. [v.11.176.]

By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house. [v.5.147.]

B.R Ambedkar had burnt Manu’s book as a protest during the freedom struggle. But instead of publicly kneeling down before a statue of Ambedkar and repent for centuries of caste oppression and untouchability — practices that continue to this day — the dwijas installed a statue of the purveyor of segregation, in a court complex of all places.

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Also read: Annihilation of caste in Indian corporate possible. But firms must say Dalit lives matter

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The anti-caste movement 

Manu and his believers give Shudras, Dalits and women a slavish position and this understanding spreads caste hierarchies, women’s inequality and societal oppression. The Gujjars of Rajasthan, Jats of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, Patels of Gujarat, Marathas of Maharashtra, and Yadavs constitute Shudra agriculturists. All of them need to think about the presence of Manu’s statues in a constitutional democracy like ours.

In Manu’s worldview, agricultural production — in fact, the very philosophy of production — has a negative place, which transcends to common Indian lives, too. Agrarian development in India is stagnated because of this so-called ‘polluted’ status because of its association with the Shudras. The systemic indifference to labour — both in villages and through migrants in cities, as witnessed during the Covid-19 lockdown — is because of this anti-production mindset that Manu has given to Indians.

Dividing the society into dwija and non-dwija and touchable and untouchable played a destructive role. It is time to change these caste-based social divisions. Removal of Manu’s statue from the Rajasthan High Court complex and placing it in a museum of the caste system of India will elevate India’s stature as a republican democracy.

Let us come clean from our unequal past and move towards total equality.

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

https://theprint.in/opinion/black-lives-matter-india-anti-caste-movement-fight-villain-manu/445727/