Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Modi govt doesn’t want to collect caste data in next national census; hence it has started a campaign saying a caste census will divide Indian society

On November 11, while campaigning in Maharashtra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a strange slogan ‘Ek rahenge toh safe rahenge! (We will be safe if we are united).

First, let us look at the language in the slogan, which Modi made the entire attendees repeat several times at a public meeting. ‘Ek’ is a Hindi word for unity. Safe is an English word, whose meaning we know.

The language question

Why was he using ‘safe’ in Maharashtra?

Obviously because of the spread of English language in rural areas in that state. If it

were to be Uttar Pradesh, he would not have used an English word in a slogan, that too in public meetings.

Also read | Quota-within-quota is more dangerous form of ‘creamy layer’ concept

He and his party oppose English language getting introduced in government schools.

However, they remain silent when top corporate schools, run by Hindutva supporters, do their high-end business by selling English language to the rich.

But the very same Prime Minister uses an English word in a slogan in a deep rural public meeting because it has to be understood by the people.

The real objective

Let us look at the aim of the slogan.

Earlier, a similar slogan was given by Yogi Adityanath – Batenge toh katenge! This slogan was approved by the RSS. Now Modi uses it with mixed language.

The media has interpreted Modi’s slogan as communal as it is perceived to be against Muslims. But this slogan is aimed at opposing Rahul Gandhi’s campaign of caste census and removal of the 50 percent reservation cap validated by the Supreme Court.

The BJP right, from the 2014 elections, started mobilising the Other Backward Classes in a clever way to garner votes.

Since the RSS/ BJP accepted caste mobilisation from then, as they brought in Modi, an OBC from Gujarat, as the prime ministerial candidate, they started playing the caste game very cleverly like in a chess.

Caste connections

In states where the Shudra upper layer community like Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh were rulers for some time, they mobilised the lower OBCs dissatisfied with the ruling caste leadership. They managed to win a majority of MP seats and power in that state twice.

In Telangana, where the Reddys and Velamas who happen to be the Shudra are ruling castes, in the 2024 election the BUP focused on Kapus and Mudirajus, with a slogan Easari BC mukhya mantri (Now, a BC chief minister).

It is known that the Reddys are with the Congress and the Velamas are with the BRS in Telangana. Among the Dalits, since the Malas are with the Congress, they specifically focused on Madigas.

Just before the 2024 general elections, to garner Madiga votes, Modi himself addressed a special Madiga public meeting.

Sub-caste factors

It was at this meeting that he promised to help the Madigas to overcome the legal hurdle in the Supreme Court. Hence, the Union government proposed before a Supreme Court seven-judge bench that sub-caste demands for divisions in reservation was not unconstitutional.

Finally, the court upheld the sub-caste categorisation for reservation as constitutionally valid.

The RSS/BJP forces do not think that all such divisive politics are dangerous. They project their caste-based divisions as nationalist.

Also read | ‘Dalits among Dalits’: Why TN introduced internal reservation for an SC subcommunity

But to implement that judgment, per the Supreme Court ruling, objective and verifiable data about each sub-caste across India is a must. This sub-caste reservation judgement is applicable to all sub-castes that ask for justifiable share in the reservation pool – SC/ST/OBCs.

Hence, the implementation of the Supreme Court judgment is not possible without

having national caste census data collected by a constitutional body – the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India.

Caste census against unity?

The Modi government does not want to collect caste data in the forthcoming national census. Now, both the Supreme Court judgment and the Modi government have created a new headache for state governments as several sub-castes are asking for the implementation of the SC ruling and the Centre is not willing to collect credible caste data.

It is in this context they have started the campaign that a caste census will divide Indian society.

As the Congress, particularly Rahul Gandhi, is campaigning about the caste census as an X-ray of the society’s socio-economic profile, the upper castes, particularly Brahmins, Banias, Ksatriyas, Kayasthas and Khatris, are opposing caste details.

The RSS/BJP’s interests are enmeshed with these five castes, more so in North India.

New slogan, new tactic

In order to overcome this problem, the BJP has started a campaign ‘Ek rahenge toh safe rahenge. Of course, since the 2024

elections, Modi and Amit Shah have started a drive to retain the OBC vote share by saying that if the Congress takes power, OBC reservations will be reduced and Muslim reservation will be increased.

Now, they have started openly saying if the Congress comes to power, everything will be given to Muslims. They are openly saying that SC/ST/OBCs will lose every benefit if the Congress comes to power in Maharashtra.

Also read | The tedious lightness of quota reform

They want to draw a clear line between Indian Muslims and the rest of the population because the Muslims are aligned

to the Congress for quite a long time in terms of vote.

The Muslim viewpoint

The Indian Muslim community for a long time did not accept reservation ideology as they went on denying the existence of caste among them.

But over a period, they too realised that caste and poverty and educational backwardness among them are interrelated.

It was the Congress-headed UPA government that constituted the Sachar Committee. Once that report was out, the Muslims realised that their educational backwardness is a serious problem. Their

backwardness is also related to their communal cocoon.

The RSS and Muslim conservatives competed for religious conservative politics.

In the process, national development suffered. Now it has become a competitive contest for reservations. The Muslims are willing to accept caste census as well.

The Muslim divide

The Shudra upper castes which thought that using reservation was below their social status now want to get into the reservation system. The ideology of reservations has become the central issue in national politics.

Hence castes like Reddys and Marathas are not averse to caste census.

The socioeconomic census that includes caste census will bring out the real status of each caste including that of the castes that exist among Indian Muslims.

There are upper castes among Muslims who benefitted from Mughal and post-Mughal feudalism and conservative Islamism. For example, the poor lower caste Muslims were pushed into backward Madarsa Urdu medium education whereas the rich upper caste Muslims got English medium education from pre-Independence days. This cordon among Muslims also must be broken.

Caste census is needed

national demand for caste census and fare distribution of welfare schemes and also reservation benefits in education and employment.

Only a caste census and expanding the welfare net to the most deserving will expand the Indian middle class that would sustain the modern developmental process.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)

Kancha laiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures – Hindutva – Mullah Conflicting Ethics.

in India

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

I request the Indian media to publish this e-mail correspondence between me and Mr. N.S. Madhavan, as it involves the issue of Freedom of Expression, which is a lifeline of democracy. As a citizen of India and as a writer I strongly oppose any force that threatens, the freedom  of expression, which is the sole of democracy. Here is the Hindu news link for your understanding.  

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STATEMENT BY KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

THREAT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN KERALA

Correspondence between NS Madhavan director, Malayala Manorama Arts and Literature, 2024 at Kozikode me.

I was invited to the Malayala Manorama Arts and Lit Festival 2024 being held at Calicut, Kerala to speak in a session on 2 November afternoon. Suddenly on the 29th late night the curator of the Fest  Bandhu Prasad called to say that there an Intelligence Bureau input that if you come to the to the Fest there is likely to be a big protest by the Pro-Palestine forces against the article that you wrote in the Telugu daily Sakshi, with a title Rendu Deshaluga Bathukademe Dari ( Living as Two Nations is only Solution). If a minority community that is in stress of intolerance itself turns intolerant and attacks Free Speech it is not only harmful to Democracy but very harmful to themselves. I condemn this kind of intolerance. If this is allowed democracy itself will be in danger.  The organisers would have asked for police protection and allowed me to participate in the Litfest. 

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

30 November, 2024    .  

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Mr.NS Madahavan’s reply to my mail

Dear Dr. Shepherd 

Greetings from Hortus. We acknowledge the receipt of your email. 

The Malayala Manorama office has received information from the Intelligence Bureau wing of the Police indicating the possibility of a protest or disruption at your session scheduled for November 2nd. This information stems from an article you recently published on a Telugu online media platform, in which you expressed your views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As it involves both a matter of public safety and safety of one of our guests, you in this case, we thought that you should be informed urgently. 

Accordingly my colleague at the festival, Mr. Bandhu Prasad, has apprised you of the situation and the challenges we face in ensuring the peaceful conduct of the festival programs. While our viewpoints on the subject of your article may differ, (which we haven’t read, since it is in Telugu) we firmly believe that differing opinions should be expressed in a democratic and peaceful manner.

The festival has requested that you speak on a topic entirely separate from the aforementioned issue, and we leave it to your discretion whether to attend the festival and speak on the agreed-upon topic. Although there is a potential for protest or disruption during your session, which could impact the festival’s peaceful atmosphere, we want to assure you that you remain welcome. The festival values diverse opinions and fosters an environment where concerns are expressed and listened to with camaraderie.

Warm regards,

NS Madhavan 

1 November, 2024

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Dear Mr. Madhavan 

Thank you for your mail and for clarifying your stand on the protests. But you left my going to Kozhikode entirely to my decision. But you did not say anything about the necessary police protection in view of such great dangerous information given by the Intelligence Bureau working in Communist Government. I could have understood if it were the BJP Government, who are opposed to all my major books like Why I am Not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India, Buffalo Nationalism and so on. You should have informed the Home Ministry of Kerala and given enough protection to me and the conference. Malayala Manorama is a major newspaper in the state.  It was your responsibility to take a stand  against such Hamasism, perhaps, taking root in Kerala too.  In your mail you said “This information stems from an article you recently published on a Telugu online media platform, in which you expressed your views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As it involves both a matter of public safety and safety of one of our guests, you in this case, we thought that you should be informed urgently.    You, further, wrote ” While our viewpoints on the subject of your article may differ, (which we haven’t read, since it is in Telugu) we firmly believe that differing opinions should be expressed in a democratic and peaceful manner.. For your information my Telugu article was not published in an online portal. It was published in the largest circulated Telugu daily, Sakshi.   I do not know when a major paper like Malayala Manorama could not come to know its contents ,how the protesters in that state who cannot read Telugu understood what I wrote and planned for a protest of that magnitude. Bandhu Prasad mentioned that it could be a violent protest. It is Malayala Manorama’s responsibility as a major newspaper to investigate and name that organization which planned this kind of terrorising network. In such a far off war situation like the one in West Asia information about it could differ, stands about it could differ, but terrorising writers, with whom these forces disagree and threatening a major national Arts and Literature festival poses a great threat to the Freedom of Expression of India and the world. If this is being done by Muslims of Kerala then the threat to India is larger. Name: Email: 

I request you to publish the news as the Hindu newspaper has published along with my opinion  on 31 October ( see the link) and the organiser’s opinion. So that the Kerala Government and the Central Government and major political parties will come to know about such dangerous forces in India. 

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a writer

in Book Review

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

This is the final chapter of Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s, groundbreaking work ‘The Shudra Rebellion‘ that promises to reshape our understanding of Indian civilization and culture. In this compelling book, Ilaiah boldly unveils the often-overlooked role of shudra nationalism in both India’s past and its future. Ilaiah’s work pushes us to reexamine the very fabric of Indian identity through the lens of shudra heritage. This book is not just a historical account; it’s a call to awareness and action. Ilaiah’s insights resonate in today’s socio-political landscape, making it an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of caste, identity, and the future of India.

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The history of the Shudras is far older and deeper than brahminic written history. It goes far beyond the Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Upanishads, and remains outside all these books, without getting mentioned in any significant way. However, shudra history survives and exists in the furrows of agrarian lands and in artisanal fossils and living tools. The living shudras are also a huge repository of their past and present history. India’s science exists in these unwritten furrows and in the deep wells of the wealth of labour. This nation’s future has to be built, taking lessons from these sources.

RECLAIMING SHUDRA IDENTITY WITH PRIDE

The shudras must deploy the identity ‘shudra’ as superior to the identity of the brahmin. Though shudra civil society is fragmented into myriad layers—each layer with its own name as caste or jati, their classical unified identity as shudra must become a political entity. Any identity acquires respectability only when its owners are proud of being identified with it. In modern times a woman is proud of being a woman, a dalit is proud of being a dalit. Similarly, a shudra has to be proud of being a shudra. This pride demoralizes the Other who earlier used that identity as undignified.

Secondly, the shudras must look to their philosophical strength in their knowledge of production, not in the Vedas or Puranas. They cannot look for their strength where it does not exist. They cannot look for their strength in the history of some shudra rulers. No shudra ruler in Indian history operated outside the framework of brahminism, particularly after Kautilya wrote his book Arthashastra and Manu wrote the Dharma Shastra. All shudra rulers were converted to kshatriya status and forced to obey the orders of Brahmin priests.

The day-to-day discourses of shudra food producers are replete with philosophical, economic and scientific thought. Unfortunately, this thought has not been recorded and textualized. Since most of their socio-economic and spiritual history is in the villages, young intellectuals of good calibre must engage in textualizing it.

Shudra civilization is spread out in many regions and states and is recorded in some regional languages and oral histories. Several scholars must undertake the painstaking work to study and write about shudra philosophy, science, and economics, in all regions and states mainly in English. Though it is not an easy task, given the denial of their history for millennia, it is possible to retrieve it.

UNEARTHING SHUDRA HISTORY THROUGH TOOLS OF PRODUCTION

There is a major task at hand for shudra voters, activists, leaders and rulers, whether at the state or central levels, to establish good museums of artefacts of production, social use, cultural use and architectural value that survived the historical neglect of the brahminic negative knowledge system. Indian agriculturist and artisanal forces constructed highly sophisticated tools like spades, buckets, pots, plough, ropes, construction materials like bricks, cots, hunting and fishing instruments as time, production, and survival demanded. By the time the shudras built the Harappan civilization, they constructed houses with burnt bricks and built their homes with crafted wood. At the time, the migrant Aryans had no knowledge of such civilizational technologies. Tools and technology development happened much before the Aryans arrived and constructed the ideology of brahminism. They did not help in the scientific process of life. The dwijas do not exist in these realms of knowledge even today. They consider that making technological instruments is an act of ritual pollution.

Millions of instruments went into oblivion without getting written about or their shapes and uses sketched. Pre-Independence times stored brahminic music or written material in museums, libraries and temples. Kings, whether shudra or dwija, gave importance only to divine idols and sculpture. Even the erotic life of brahminic society was preserved in the Khajuraho and Konark temples, but no king built an agrarian artisanal museum. No ruler had a contemporary sculpted plough placed in a temple. This only shows that agriculture, which is the mother of all cultures, had no value in any mode of civilizational history under pre-colonial, colonial or postcolonial rulers. So far, shudra rulers have not shown any concern for agrarian artefacts or understood the need to museumise them.

As a result, this ancient civilization did not preserve the fundamental source of its culture, science, technology and history. Anti-science brahminism made us slaves of the Euro-American knowledge systems. Hence India borrows science and social science knowledge from them even in post-colonial times.

The shudras must now strive to build many museums of agrarian and artisanal instruments, and write about their modes of use. For example, there is repeated mention of soma (in modern times, this drink is known as toddy, called kallu in Telugu) even in brahminic books like the Vedas. But nobody wrote about what kind of technology was used to tap the drink from trees. Toddy tappers use moku, mutthadu and guji to climb a tall toddy tree, even in modern times to harness the drink. In ancient times too, the tappers of soma must have used several instruments and techniques, but there is no record of these technological instruments.

A toddy (sura) tapper has to climb a tall tree that has no branches to tap the drink at the top and bring it down. Using these instruments and risking their lives, tappers do this hard labour with great scientific skill. Every day, the tapper climbs several trees and brings down the drink from the top of the trees. They use the moku to support their back, placing this around the tree stem, while their hands are pressed to the tree. The guji keeps the feet pressed to the tree. The mutthadu holds all kinds of sharp knives that are used to cut the trunk to get the drink from the tree.

Likewise, several shudra occupational groups use different technological instruments to perform their skilful tasks. Many such technologies are going out of existence and their history erased if they are not written about. Museums of such tools will be great historical resources of knowledge to remain for millennia.

THE DECLINE OF SHUDRA SCIENCE UNDER BRAHMINISM

Parasitism always sustains itself by constructing myth as philosophy. Whether they are philosophical ideas like Dwaita or Adwaita, Vaishnav or Shaiva, they operate outside the realm of production. They are different names for brahminism. Shudra thought has to operate outside this realm without fear or sentiment. Courage emerges out of conviction. Even in modern times, the shudras have not shown courage in the realm of constructing knowledge and ideas. Not that they do not have ideas, but the fear of the brahmin destroys that energy that could give a concrete written shape to their ideas. Not that they do not have spiritual ideas that sustain their socio-spiritual life in villages where brahmin mythical philosophy and recitation of mantras are not around them. The agrarian people survived for millennia without any connection with a brahmin. But brahminism spread to every nook and corner of village society and made the whole shudra population believers in mysticism. The injection of mythical philosophy now controls their consciousness.

Ever since their ancestors asked questions about agriculture like how a seed placed in the ground germinates and grows, how a bird flies while a man walks, where the wind that touches the human body or sweeps over their crops originates and where it ends, they discovered new things. Our shudra ancestors who were the initiators of seeding and growing crops from the earth and who interacted with birds and animals daily, must have concluded that an unknown power was operating behind all these movements of nature. This spiritual resolution was a higher philosophical one than the question that the brahminic dwaita or adwaita thinkers asked. When the answer was found, it made sense to them only concerning seed, plant and crop. The historical shudra spirituality was a mix of Science and God. Brahminism negated this scientific spirituality and advanced mythical spirituality killing the capacity to reason out the process of life. Once brahminism gripped shudraism, Indian agrarian and artisanal science began to stagnate.

DEVELOPING A SHUDRA INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT

A well-trained intellectual force must emerge from among the shudras. Though compared to dalits, the shudras have more land and property, they have not yet produced an intellectual force that can focus on writing their history and philosophy. Since their wealth operates mostly around the agrarian economy, they still have the peasant understanding that reading and writing are not important.

Most agribusiness is in the hands of upper shudras. They have emerged as real estate financers around urban centres. They are also well-established in regional politics. The OBCs within shudra society have become conscious of the necessity of reservations and also education but they live only in non-philosophical realms. Low-end achievements in medical science and engineering are visible among them. But a broad historical and philosophical knowledge requires deeper involvement in philosophical, sociological, and spiritual discourses with the ability to read and write methodically in these schools of thought. Even rich shudras have no conscious intellectual force trained in Indian or foreign universities to handle these philosophical and social science issues. They have to get out of the grip of brahmins and their superstitions. Mere literacy and technical education do not reframe their mental abilities.

A strong will to have an identity for themselves, outside the boundaries of brahminism is a prerequisite. Brahminism now operates in the new construct, ‘We are all Hindus’. The shudras have no equal space in this Hinduism. Shudra thinkers and writers should operate in their production-centred philosophy and sociology as hegemonic, even in the domain called Hindu.

The ideas of hegemony are constructed consciously by thinkers to control the Other. Shudras were and are the historical Other for dwijas, though they do not realize this. Normally, the construction of philosophical knowledge not only comes from deeper study of the society that one lives in, but also comes from constant engagement with ideas. This requires leisure and resources. It is the rich shudras who need to spend part of their wealth in the philosophical sphere. Among the shudras, the marathas (Maharashtra), reddys and kammas of the Telugu states, patels (Gujarat), jats (Uttar Pradesh and Punjab) and others have to get into this identity discourse and invest their resources in training their youth in India and abroad.

Though the nairs of Kerala are shudras they want to be in the fold of the dwijas; they want to be called savarna and are not willing to oppose brahminism. They also work as anti-reservationists, just as the dwijas do. One of the strong historical reasons for this is that nairs had a deep blood relationship through the system of sambandam with the brahmins of Kerala. However, their agrarian and artisanal roots are still strong. In the 21st century when the RSS/BJP rule with the idea of turning India into a classical varna dharmic state called the Hindu Rashtra, it is for them to take a call towards serious study of their millennial roots and history as shudra agrarian people.

Shudra intellectuals must acquire sophisticated skills to build a written knowledge resource of the history of production. Global knowledge to create modern literary texts is equally important along with reading what is available in India.

SCRIPTING A LANGUAGE OF EQUALITY AND DIGNITY IN REWRITING SHUDRA HISTORY

Shudras must realize that they must fight for English medium education in government schools. Only when a large number of children who are still engaged with the agrarian environment, labour and nature are in school, is it possible for them to emerge as world-class intellectuals over some time. But all of them must get English medium school education in their village environment. The theory that English is a foreign language and very difficult to learn in Indian village schools is a lie. All children, irrespective of their caste, and class can learn English if a conducive school environment is provided to them anywhere. The village environment, which is surrounded by agrarian production, is better suited for dignity of labour centered English medium school education. Reading, writing, and formulating intellectual energy should begin at the school level. Shudra children were denied this learning for millennia. They must get it at least now.

The history of the shudras was ignored in writings in Sanskrit, Persian, and other national languages all these years. Now this history must be written in English to receive universal recognition and use value for global scholars. A history written in a rich global language will get global attention and the use of that knowledge will help the world, not just India. Shudra history, unlike brahminic history, has many global commonalities. Added to this, a new philosophy, if written in a rich language like English, displays depth and force. Shudra youth do not have to spend their energy to study Sanskrit, when dwijas themselves have shifted to English; they should not waste their time and energy to retrieve a dead language.

This history must be written in the collective combination of shudra/ dalit/adivasi intellectuals so that it unravels all forms of exploitation and oppression by dwijas who injected human untouchability among the dalits and kept adivasis outside modern civil society. Intra-productive community problems should be resolved outside the caste cultural framework. Man-woman equality in all communities should be a common concern. There is great need for dwija women to engage with this knowledge construction because this history has the potential to weaken patriarchal control over Indian society and the state.

A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR SHUDRA HISTORIOGRAPHY

Shudra history, if properly written by applying the Marxist method, could have given Indian Marxists a better direction to change this nation in a meaningful way. A creative Indian communist ideology rooted in the nation’s production relations could have prevented the growth of Hindutva nationalism. Shudra nationalism and brahmin nationalism are antagonistic in day-to-day operations. In a situation of all-round failure to write and preserve production knowledge in this country possessing the oldest civilization in the world, shudra thinkers must write this unwritten history in a new creative way.

My attempt to study Indian history through the shudra experience, starting with Why I am Not a Hindu (1996) and finally writing this book on shudra history tracing back to the Harappan civilization is a step forward. It is meant to help future historians, sociologists, and philosophers to do more concrete work on shudra civilization, culture and philosophy. The slogan `garv se kaho hum shudra hai` that reverberated in Uttar Pradesh in 2023 while opposing the anti-shudra and anti-women narrative of Ramacharitamanas of Tulsidas has to become an all-India narrative. I hope this book gives enough impetus to future generations to carry the shudra/dalit/adivasi legacy forward consciously.

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

https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/what-should-the-shudras-do/

On Indian English Day, we must look at strengthening English medium in govt schools

The previous Andhra government started an important experiment in bringing English medium education to government schools. The present regime – at the state and national level – wants to erode it for private gain.

Image for representation

Written by: Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

While the world is adopting English as a school level teaching language, the Indian ruling class is setting the clock back to pre-English education days with a design. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in India, the theory that English is a colonial language has become more pronounced. But linking the English language to colonialism is a major mistake. As we mark Indian English Day, we must acknowledge that the language plays a big role in the power that upper caste, globalised Indians hold – that they want to methodically deny to Shudra, Dalit, and Adivasi children who depend on government schooling. 

After the alliance of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Jana Sena, and BJP came to power in Andhra Pradesh in the 2024 elections, there has been a push back to the first ever major experiment to English medium education in government schools in India that the previous government under Jagan Mohan Reddy had brought in. Already, the new government has withdrawn the CBSE syllabus that was made compulsory in all government schools along with private schools. The financial assistance of Rs 15,000 per year given to mothers of school going children – called Amma Vodi – has been silently stopped. 

The private-political nexus

It’s important to understand that the three parties that came to power in alliance are against introducing English medium in government schools because they strongly support the private sector English medium education. 

Look at the Cabinet of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu – he has made the private sector educational tycoon Narayana, who owns the Narayana chain of private English medium schools and colleges, a minister once again. This is a clear signal that he will go all out to dismantle the government sector English medium education and revert back to Telugu medium in all schools.
The National Democratic Alliance regime at Delhi is also clear about not allowing English medium education in government schools. All the major leaders of NDA including Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Nitish Kumar, and Chandrababu Naidu are on the same page. Nitish Kumar does not even want any party leader or official to speak in English when he is present in meetings.

There is an attempt to force even the Supreme Court and High Courts to use regional languages even though Article 348(1)(a) of the Constitution of India states that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court, shall be in the English language only.   

The Congress in Andhra Pradesh and at the national level is silent about this kind of an education policy. This only shows that even in the future, government school educated youth have no scope to compete with the private English medium educated youth, reservation or no reservation. Since the most talked about Andhra model is being nullified, the hope that it created will get dashed. The Indian Communist parties and groups have also become a stumbling block to expansion of English medium education in government schools.

Who is afraid of Indian English?

English education started in 1817 in India. This is the 207th year of that language’s birth in India. October 5 is Indian English day. Every year, every language day celebration takes place in India. But those who learnt English as a global and Indian language of opportunities and benefited from it do not celebrate English as a language. Though they use it as a language of power, wealth, and global mobility, they keep condemning it as a colonial language from public platforms.

The notion of public and private remain opposite to each other in this sphere quite consciously. The people who have benefited most from the English language are the upper castes, particularly Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris. 

The historical Indian ruling caste Ksatriyas have only recently realised the power of this language and are educating their children in the English medium. Look at the Dwija empowerment with this language and their spread in the global economy.

Upper caste global players and English

Kamala Harris, a Black and Indian origin Brahmin woman is likely to become the first female president of America in its 245 years of constitutional democratic existence. No White woman has been able to become the President or Vice-President in that country so far. Kamala Harris has already become the first woman Vice-President of America. 

Could this have become possible without English as a global language – more so if it had not come to India during colonial times? Would her mother Shyamala Gopalan, a girl born and brought up in a Tamil Brahmin conservative family, have gone to America and made her life there, and educated her two daughters Kamala and Maya to become what they have? Can we imagine a woman from an ordinary, middle class, single-mother family like Kamala becoming a lawyer of her stature, becoming the Vice-President of the most powerful country in the world, and getting a chance to challenge the richest white American – Donald Trump –  in the presidential race, without English as a language with her?

Can we imagine Rishi Sunak, from a Khatri family from western India, becoming the Prime Minister of Britain – a country that ruled India for more than two hundred years – without the English language in India to educate his parents? 

English had changed the cultural environment in the homes of upper castes by the time India achieved Independence. But the very same people, who benefitted in multiple ways by using that language’s reach and power, do not want the children of farmers and labourers to learn that language. Is this not a paradox?

English and Europe now

The European Union this year declared that hereafter, English will be its official language instead of German. Most countries in the world are shifting to English medium school education along with their native language. France, Japan, China and the two Korean nations have started teaching English in their schools right from the beginning, even though these countries operate with one national language. India has several regional languages that disconnect people from region to region. 

Nationalism getting linked to language has started receding in the globalised world. All non-British nations were very language sentimental in the post World War II context. But they realised that English is essential for every European country’s economic development. Even the former French and Spanish colonies are slowly shifting to teaching English in their schools. It’s not as if the globalised English educated upper castes do not know this aspect of change.

The Indian nation is fragmented into several small language speaking nationalities with a sentimentalised mother tongue theory. And because of this, the Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis are stuck in a small language world of their own. This kind of linguistic confinement does not allow them to grow into a proper citizenship role.

The experiment like the one started in Andhra Pradesh should not be allowed to die with a design of diabolical political forces.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist, and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures—Productive Masses Vs Hindutva-Mullah Conflicting Ethics.

https://www.thenewsminute.com/voices/on-indian-english-day-we-must-look-at-strengthening-english-medium-in-govt-schools

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

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DOUBLE-EDGED FEMINISM    

In the cultural tradition of upper castes, particularly the Dwijas, the parampara represented by Amrapali of Magadha times would be condemned as un-Hindu. Their ideal women in mythology are women like Sita and Sati Savitri. A famous artist like Amrapali, who was respected in the Buddhist tradition was never respected by the Brahmanic tradition. What is significant now is that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have owned up Kangana Ranaut, a Kshatriya Bollywood actress, with all her complex personality. She has become a contemporary Amrapali in the RSS/BJP armour. The RSS/BJP are okay with her now because she serves a political purpose. On one hand, she occupies an Amrapali-like space of a feminist artist in Bollywood. While on the other hand, in her political capacity as a BJP member, she is anti-Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi women as they are farmers.

Any art cannot survive without food. Historically, food is not produced by Brahmin, Bania, Kshatriya, Kayastha, or Khatri women. It is produced by Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi women. Kangana fully supports the BJP/RSS agenda to hand over the agricultural lands of small and medium farming women to Adani and Ambani. She has been repeatedly calling farmers—women and men—who fought against the three farm laws, terrorists.   When women farmers were on the roads to fight for their rights, she accused them of selling their souls for money. It appears that for RSS/BJP, she is a modern Kshatriya queen fighting against the poor women of India. For them she represents their parampara and also Sanathana Dharma.   

Kangana’s fight against male authority in the cinema industry is certainly progressive, but her fight against poor women in the country is not. Making cinema against Indira Gandhi, the first woman Prime Minister of India, who fought all feudal men in the sixties and seventies is part of Kangana’s neo-Hindutva nationalist ideology. It seems that as a result of her Kshatriya upbringing, she is okay with wealth getting accumulated in the crony capitalist monopoly houses as they all come from Dwija background.

KANGANA’S EARLY FIGHT          

Kangana walked out of the parampara of Sati Savitri and Sita in her personal life. As a liberated Kshatriya woman, she does not hide her encounters with men. She walked out of the Rajput regimentation and cultural weight of Sati-sahagamana and the parampara of permanent widowhood. She not only became a liberator of herself from that male chauvinist culture but also wanted to fight to liberate other women. How did the RSS/BJP forces reconcile negotiating with her freedom-loving self while upholding the RSS ideology of preserving the ancient Vedic and Puranic control over women? Kangana has thrown away the Hindu Nari dress codes and challenged the oppressive authority of men over women in relationships. She has thrown away the RSS-type anti-dating, anti-valentine friendships.

She entered into Western fashion shows. And then moved into the gold mine of Bollywood. But that world was totally strange to her. Not only that this world was inimical and exploitative at every level and, as a collective, refused to engage with her, but her lack of sophisticated Bollywood-style English became her prison house. She became a victim of that brutal money-and-mafia exploitation. She fought that culture. Finally, she found her own production company, which is something admirable. She learnt English to compete with them. Here too she did not take the anti-English route of treating English as a foreign language, like the RSS/BJP do.

She fought exploitation, deceptivity, and captivation of young girls who came there with an ambition to make a glowing glamorous life as a cinema heroine. She ran from pillar to post, lived in cramped hostel rooms, and became a victim of lures of those influential manipulative men of the industry. She fought against such brutes to become what she was by the time she won the election in 2024 as a BJP candidate. Now she is a force to reckon with in that field—a negative force at that.

She withstood all that oppression and remained in Bollywood because back home her traditional Kshatriya family and caste culture would not allow a better window of freedom for women. She was practical and had an assessment of her own freedom and future. 

 When her own Government asked the censor board to stop the film Emergency from getting released on 6 September 2024, she said that she had become a favourite target for everyone and that it was the price one has to pay for awakening a sleeping nation.  The nation that got freedom in 2014 under Modi’s leadership has become a sleeping nation within 10 years, and she has become an awakening goddess like Durga.

In the recent past, the relationship between Bharatiya Janata Party (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh involved) and Kangana Ranaut has taken a very interesting twist. BJP had to distance itself from Kangana’s statement on the farmers’ protest. Secondly, her film ‘Emergency’—made with a tacit agreement with the BJP and RSS ideologues to put the Indian National Congress in the dock—had to be stopped from getting released as scheduled on 6 September, 2024. This happened just before the state elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.  

The life story of Kangana has a double-edged implication for the RSS/BJP ‘s notion of cultural nationalism itself. As of now, the nation does not know whether the RSS/BJP is leading her or she is leading them with her neo-Hindutva feminism.

An RSS supporter and promoter of the idea of Hindu Rashtra, she is a new nationalist and a new cultural phenomenon. She is an avowed opponent of Muslims, Sikhs, farmers, Congress, and male monopoly in Bollywood. She is a new phenomenon in Bollywood history.  

She is a feminist in a mostly male-chauvinist political and social network. More than all these pro- and anti-ideological dramatic displays, she is a strong supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, particularly since she made a shocking statement that “India got Independence only in 2014, not in 1947”. In turn, she gained the silent support of Modi.  The RSS, a hundred years old organization, is obviously supporting Kangana, and hence she is a member of the BJP and a member of parliament.  

FREEDOM IN 2014

The RSS/BJP upper-caste cadres celebrated her courage, nationalist spirit, and wisdom for making such a bold statement that India got freedom in 2014. Nobody from those ranks opposed such a statement. By the very statement, she proved her disloyalty to the present Indian constitution adopted in 1950. Perhaps, that could be one of the main reasons she has become a darling of the RSS/BJP.  

This statement of hers seems to have deeply impacted Modi. Since 2014, the entire Modi government has defended her in all her battles—both within and outside Bollywood—supporting her statements, whether right or wrong, and standing by her in every dispute, big or small. This emboldened her with a new sense of freedom to establish a Hindu Rashtra. It could be first seen when she started attacking Shiv Sena in Maharashtra as it fell out of the RSS/BJP line. But her Hindu Rashtra will not be dominated by the same male monopoly. It will be a Neo-Hindu Rashtra with feminist upper-caste women in the lead. She wants to be the queen of that Hindu Rashtra. She has never shown concern for Dalit/Adivasi/OBC women in her fight. Any talk of caste is equivalent to dividing the nation. Her slogan is ‘bantenge to tutenga’ (if you divide, we will break). This idea seems to be popular among RSS circles that the present Federal Union of India will lead to disintegration. Perhaps it should become a unitary monarchic theocratic state by dismantling the present constitution.

She does not have any sympathy for the poor, illiterate, toiling Indian masses, who hardly have anything to eat. Accumulation of wealth by upper castes is nationalism for her. Her feminism aids and abets the rich in a neo-capitalist way. She seems to be happy with the growing Dwija crony capitalism.

A DISRUPTER   

She has become an entertainer, engager, and disrupter of the Indian civil society and also the RSS/BJP structures in her own way. As of now the nation does not know whether she is reforming the RSS or the RSS is reforming her by making her an MP so that she would use her full-blown upper-caste feminism. She has taken the battle into the Congress and Sikh society by making an anti-Indira Gandhi and anti-Sikh film. She has also given a call to bring back the Three Anti-Agrarian Farm Laws.

LIFE STYLE   

In her lifestyle and man-woman relationships, she does not live in the RSS ideological framework, as that framework has many things in common with her Kshatriya family’s male chauvinism. She was in conflict with her own family’s patriarchal heritage right from her school days. She was a child who rebelled against her family. She walked out of her family right after school education and joined a fashion company in Delhi. She lived on her own with all the struggles that a lonely teenage girl could encounter in the Indian male chauvinist society. From there she reached Mumbai in search of cinematic life. This adventure of a Kshatriya girl who normally lives a very protected life is itself a cinematic story. Now she has reached the stage of being an adventurous actor with a lot of support from the BJP/RSS and emerged as a political entity, if not as a leader. 

Interestingly, she is also disrupting the most conservative Kshatriya caste community of India that Yogi Adityanath, the patriarchal Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh hails from. According to her own admission, he is her strong supporter. This is a paradox.

Hence, she makes an interesting female personality with a determination to fight many forces at the same time. As an RSS bhakt, she constantly shouts Jai Sri Ram in public, but does things that go against the ideology of RSS in her personal life. She does not adhere to the Ram Rajya ethic, as that ethic controls women under the authority of men. She wants to control everything, including the social narrative through social media. Let us assume that she was a Dalit or an OBC woman, acquired the same status in Bollywood, and had such a disruptive personality. Would the RSS/BJP have supported her fight in Bollywood and given her the same protection that Kangana got? Would they have admitted her into the BJP and made her an MP? This is where caste matters. Since she is a Kshatriya woman she becomes a darling of RSS/BJP upper echelons.       

FROM ANTI-RAHUL TO ANTI-INDIRA

The RSS/BJP leaders support her because she promotes their ideology through political messaging. And also, because she is anti-Congress, more particularly an anti-Rahul Gandhi’s family, as Modi and many other RSS/BJP leaders are. She shifted from acting in films like Gangster, Fashion, Queen, Raaz, and so on to playing the roles of political women leaders.   

She made the film Manikarnika (Jhansi Lakshmibai) to establish herself as an anti-British nationalist. Then she acted as Jayalalitha on Thalaivii.  Just before the 2024 elections, she made Emergency, a film in which an attack on Indira Gandhi’s history and personality seems to have been encoded. But at the same time, her anti-Sikh rhetoric was brought into the film, as the trailer of the film shows. The film seems to have stepped into the complex post-emergency history of the 1980s, depicting Indira Gandhi’s actions against Bhindranwale, and her tragic murder by her Sikh bodyguards at her official residence. According to Makhan Lal, who already viewed the full film, she did not show the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Perhaps the RSS/BJP are upset with that mistake. The Sikhs are very angry against her for projecting Bhindrenwale as a terrorist.

Now the RSS/BJP does not know whether the film is against Indira Gandhi or Sikhs. The Sikhs are saying it is against them and the Congress is saying that it is against India itself.   

Through all of this, perhaps, she wanted to make way for a “Congress Mukt Bharat”, a slogan that Modi has used repeatedly, right from the 2014 election campaign. But she did not stop there. She also wanted to attack Sikhism, as the Sikh farmers were the backbone of the 2021-22 Farmers’ movement. This was the movement that made the Modi-Shah eat a humble pie. Meanwhile, the BJP was using the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 against Congress to deflect attention from the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.

She hates agitations in Modi’s India but loves such agitations against Indira Gandhi. She views any anti-BJP agitation as terrorism. The student movements that rocked the country around Rohit Vemula’s systemic killing or the student protests at Jawaharlal Nehru University were labelled by the BJP forces as part of tukde-tukde gang, accusing them of breaking the nation. Any movement by people around their rights is attacked as anti-national. Kangana is carrying this meaningless ideology forward, in whatever way possible. But the pro-feudal JP movement becomes nationalist in the film.    

PRO-LANDLORD JP MOVEMENT

The Kashmir Files fame actor, Anupam Kher, plays the role of Jayaprakash Narayan in her film Emergency. After the BJP came to power in 2014, a strong anti-Congress team came together in Bollywood and started making a series of movies against the Congress regime and Muslims. Kangana and Anupam Kher are the leading forces in the pro-RSS network of Bollywood. Thus, it is obvious that in the film, the JP movement of the RSS version will be foregrounded.

Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, led an anti-Indira movement in the pre-emergency days, advocating for a ‘Total Revolution’.  Narayan called for Indira Gandhi and the CMs to resign and urged the military and the police to disregard all unconstitutional and immoral orders from them. In that anti-Indira agitation, Modi himself was an agitator. For the Hindutva school that hated the idea of socialism, JP, a Kayashta socialist, became a great national leader very much acceptable to them. In that movement, in order to overthrow Indira Gandhi, the RSS/Jan Sangh combine, very opportunistically accepted Gandhian socialism as their ideological agenda. Her election from Raebareli in 1971, after almost four years, was declared invalid by a court.

In fact, the 1971 election was a turning point in India where the Dalits/OBCs/Adivasis gained something through the policies of Garibi Hatao, the nationalization of banks, land reforms, and the abolition of privy purses. The RSS/Jana Sangh network was very upset with this pro-poor agenda of Indira Gandhi. All the landlords of India turned against her. The JP movement, unfortunately, was a pro-landlord one. JP’s earlier socialist image was used to fight pro-poor policies of Indira Gandhi, which led her to declare emergency. The movement was led by Hindutva forces. 

In that election, Indira Gandhi gave a pro-poor slogan “Garibi Hatao” and promised nationalization of banks and the abolition of Privy purses and because till then the freedom was seen almost as landlord freedom.  In the 1971 elections, Dalits and Adivasis were not allowed to vote by the Reddy Congress and the right-wing landlord forces all across the country. Indira Gandhi was attacked as a communist. The JP socialists were part of pro-landlord agitations in the post-1971 elections. The unemployment problem of that time was not greater than the unemployment problem in the Modi regime. Kangana wants to portray that agitation as nationalist but keeps on attacking any anti-Modi Government agitation as terrorist and anti-national. However, the BJP/RSS are now worried about the unintended effects of the Movie that Kangana made.

RSS and Jan Sangh were totally opposed to all these pro-poor welfare agendas of India Gandhi. To counter all these forces and to retain her power position she imposed emergency.  Of course, during the emergency all opposition leaders were put in jail and many Naxalites and active trade union leaders were killed. Naturally, the emergency was opposed by large masses of India and in 1977 Indira Gandhi had to lift it and go for election. She lost the election so badly that she never recovered from that negative history of emergency.   

At a time when the Modi Government is opposed to all forms of agitations, including those by farmers, Kangana is trying to justify anti-Indira agitations led by the RSS/Jan Sangh, while attacking Sikh socio-spiritual movements at the same time. The Sikh movement in the 1980s was started to get the Sikh religion a separate recognition, not for the creation of Khalistan.          

She attacked the farmers’ movement as a terrorist or Khalistani movement. The women participants were derogatorily called ‘women worth 100 rupees’. It was for this anti-Sikh, anti-farmer, anti-women statement that Kulwinder Kaur slapped her at the Chandigarh airport after she became MP and was going to Delhi from her constituency Mandi, Himachal Pradesh.

FARMERS AS BANGLADESHIS

No RSS/BJP leader asked her not to go after farmers. After she attended her first parliament session, she again said, “Bangladesh-like anarchy could have happened in India also, in the name of Farmers’ protest. Outside forces are planning to destroy us with the help of insiders. If it wouldn’t have been the foresight of our leadership (meaning Modi and Amit Shah) they would have succeeded”. Not only that, she also said, “bodies were seen hanging and rapes were taking place” during farmers’ protest against the now-repealed three farm laws. Only BJP distanced from the statement. The RSS was totally silent. What should the nation read from these major events in her life?           

There is an agreement with her persona among the top leaders of the RSS/BJP. Otherwise, she would not have got the BJP membership and a ticket to contest elections as an MP. By her own admission, she was offered a ticket in the 2019 parliament elections itself. But she refused to contest. Perhaps they did not discover her by the 2014 parliament elections, but they discovered that her ideology aligned with their ideology by the 2019 election.  

As a reward, she was honoured with Padma Shri and national film awards. And now made a member of parliament with all the support she needed—money and manpower.

PLAYED CONTRADICTORY ROLES

Kangana played roles in a variety of films that no RSS/BJP man would normally accept. Before she entered the shoes of Manikarnika (Jhansi Lakshmi), Thalaivii (Jayalalithaa), and Indira Gandhi she played the roles of women who were partners of those involved in the Mumbai underworld and had love affairs. She appeared on screen in slim-fitting outfits and also shared images of herself in swim-suits on social media. With films like Manikarnika, Thalaivii, and Emergency, she wants to become a don.  But something seems to be going wrong. The proposal to release the movie Emergencycoincides with the BJP giving a call for mass condemnation of Emergency as “Dark Days of Democracy”. The political communication between RSS/BJP and Kangana’s Emergency movie making was consciously cultivated. But the story inside the movie seems to misfire, even after release.

HINDUTVA AND WOMEN    

Hundreds of young Indian women have gone through unbridled attacks by Hindutva brigades in public parks for simply sitting with their boyfriends. How does Kangana feel comfortable in the company of such forces, both outside and inside parliament, who still believe that Indian women should be Hindu Naris, and never do such anti-Manu Dharmic things?          

Having come from a Rajput family of Himachal hill state, that never aspired for high-end English education, leaving their feudal love for local authority in the local language, she faced the sophisticated English-speaking Brahmin, Kayastha, Khatri Bollywood domain. All her auditions were humiliating, despite her suitable Aryan looks. She got rejected time and again. She had to fight to make an entry into the industry, with the film Gangster. She still retains her anger against the Bollywood male monopoly and control.          

Yet she won over the world’s biggest conservative, anti-Valentine’s Day organization’s brainchild party and made them accept her and offer her a seat in the parliament.    Name: Email: 

The Kangana Ranaut-RSS relationship is changing the history of that organization as well. An organization that promoted the Hindu Nari discipline has allowed the BJP to field her in the election. How that relationship came to be established when she was fighting Bollywood with her own strong and weak personality, more particularly how did the BJP give her a ticket if it did not approve her attack on farmers as terrorists? After becoming an MP, she is taking the same anti-farmer, anti-Sikh, and anti-Congress battle forward.

Where this relationship between the neo-Hindutva feminist Kangana and conservative RSS and its political wing BJP will lead remains to be seen.

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

https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/kangana-ranauts-neo-hindutva-disruption/