Dalits at the centre of India’s caste wars
The interpretation of caste and Varna — occupation — forms the core of the corrosive debate between the ultra-nationalists and the secularists that is rooted in Manusmriti, an ancient legal text of Hinduism
n the maximum city, Mumbai, most of the New Year revellers were still partying on that night of December 31, 2017, but in the quiet and conservative suburb of Dadar, P.S. Dhoble and Dadasaheb Bhosle and their group of 300 were cold sober. For they were setting out on a five-hour journey, a pilgrimage, to a village called Bhima Koregaon. Dadar is not just the hub of the Maharashtra community but home to ‘Chaitya Bhumi’, the memorial to the architect of India’s constitution Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. This annual ritual has been a long-standing tradition for it was on the banks of the river Bhima, on New Year’s Day of 1818, that a ragtag group of Mahar soldiers fighting under the Union Jack defeated a vastly superior force of the Peshwa, the de facto leader of the Maratha Empire that dominated much of the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. And the Mahars who defeated them are Dalits (the oppressed class of Hindu society) and, Ambedkar, a Mahar, is their patron saint.
Being the 200th anniversary it was a special commemoration, yet this remembrance was to be marred by violence that spread across the entire state. For just as the Dhoble and Bhosle were embarking on their pilgrimage, two others, Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote both Hindu right wingers, staunch Marathas, followers of the long deceased Peshwa and ardent admirers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi were also on a mission, allegedly to wreck these sombre proceedings. A jud-icial inquiry has been ordered to verify these charges; meanwhile the anniversary of that famous victory of the Mahars was ruined. Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of the great man and key to the memorial service, immediately announced a statewide protest against the state government’s failure to stop the violence. But with mounting public inconvenience he called off the shutdown though not before making very damaging accusations against Bhide and Ekbote. He unhesitatingly implicated the duo for the incidents at Bhima Koregaon.
Into this fray comes Jignesh Mewani, a Dalit leader and a newly elected legislator from Gujarat and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid who had earned notoriety earlier for making allegedly seditious speeches. For with the Dalits blaming the Hindu right, the ruling BJP immediately responded by accusing Mewani and Khalid for the mayhem. Mewani had earlier pulled off a stunning victory in the Gujarat elections much to the embarrassment of Modi while Khalid has been the bete noire for the uber nationalists ever since he was falsely accused of making anti-national speeches in the JNU campus.
Mewani is a Dalit social activist and was comparatively unknown until recently. His rise to fame comes on the back of videos showing Dalit youths being flogged for the skinning of a dead cow in Una in Gujarat, one of a few thankless tasks assigned to Dalits. He cleverly used these videos to organise mass protests and street agitations and Mewani has since become a political heavyweight; and the BJP by ham handedly branding him an anarchist and a subversive widened his appeal. Since then he has cleverly stepped up the ante and recently posed a loaded question to the prime minister: ‘Do you believe in the Constitution or Manusmriti?’ This puts Modi and the entire Hindu right on the spot.
What is Manusmriti?
Manusmriti is an ancient legal text of Hinduism and is the very heart of the Hindu way of life, its central tenets and philosophy; indeed the ongoing corrosive debate between the ultra-nationalists and the secularists is also rooted in Manusmriti. But this is no new dispute for none other than Mahatma Gandhi and the great constitutionalist Ambedkar weighed in on it as way back as 1927. Both disagreed on substantive points and their differences were never reconciled. The rift was permanent but it should be said that it was on the express wish of Gandhi that Ambedkar was made the country’s first law minister and earned the moniker, ‘architect of India’s constitution’.
Manusmriti consists of many manuscripts and some term these documents as a Hindu code of law and impute that it is a composite testament with a common thread that runs through them. Others dispute this because there are several inconsistencies in Manusmriti and the varying translations make it difficult to come to any definite conclusion on a composite whole. Next many of the manuscripts have been lost and the authenticity of the attached interpretations has been questioned. These treatises cover from the origin of the world, to sources of law, to morals, women’s rights, statecraft and rules of war and defines castes and varnas. And the two key words, caste and Varna, need attention for they formed the central core of the acrimony between Ambedkar and Gandhi.
The difference between caste and Varna is difficult to thread for they are intertwined and yet distinct: Caste is linked to birth and Varna to occupation. This however is a simplification for Varna is also connected to skin colour and racial purity and is inherently hierarchical in nature but it lacks the rigidity of caste. Next there can only be four Varnas — with the Brahmins or the priestly class at the top end of it — while in the case of caste there can be innumerable classifications; furthermore one can change one’s Varna but not caste; one is born into it and remains in it until death. This is a complex issue but what is important for our debate is that caste and Varna are heavily skewed in favour of the Brahmins, and the lower order suffer innumerable disadvantages. And the Dalits who are deemed out of caste, below the lowest of the low suffer ignominy and humiliation. From time immemorial they have forced into a human condition that at best can only be described as beastly: worse than slavery, a life akin to a beast, unworthy of human respect.
Ambedkar in 1927 therefore burned the Manusmriti publicly and refused to see any difference between Varna and caste and wanted every Hindu to denounce Manusmriti. However Gandhi, the ultimate social reformer and the champion of the lower classes and the Dalits, refused to denounce Manusmriti, instead defended the Varna classification though he vehemently condemned caste and worked lifelong to remove the attendant stigmatisation of Dalits. Unsurprisingly the Hindu right uphold Manusmriti and though they disagree with many of Gandhi’s ideas and philosophy, conveniently use Gandhi to defend themselves.
The BJP and RSS are opaque and not overly keen to state their position on Manusmriti and ideologically being nativist privately believe in these ancient texts, verse and chapter. Though over the years they may have finessed their stand, particularly when it comes to affirmative policies for the lower castes. This however, is an electoral tactic rather than an innate conviction in social reform.
Ironically Gandhi, the greatest of social reformers, by his ambivalent stance took the sting out of the revolution that he himself had unleashed. History will judge him as an incrementalist reformer, a cautious crusader who could have done more; a closet revolutionary unwilling to bring down the edifice. Arundhati Roy’s The doctor and the Saint is more scathing, threading fault lines and exposing uncomfortable truths about the Mahatma.
What then with Mewani and his challenge to Modi?
For indeed the cat has been set among the pigeons and to mimic India’s worst TV anchor, the nation wants to know, will Modi uphold the Constitution or Manusmriti? Ambedkar was unequivocal. He said the Constitution is supreme and not some obscure texts from a mythical past. Nativism, he avowed, has no place; modern India matters, not ancient India. He converted to Buddhism during his last days because he lost all hope from his fellow Hindus.
So then, will Modi obfuscate as his natural wont or will he come clean?
The odds are that he will duck. The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is also the driving force of the Sangh Parivar — Family of Organisations — a wider association, an extended family, whose principal aim is to protect and preserve Hindu sentiments, practices and religious beliefs. This extended family has within its fold, groups ranging from the Vishva Hindu Parishad to Hindu Mahasabha to the Bajrang Dal and not all of them share the same thinking on subjects like the Constitution of India, Muslim rights, Dalit empowerment, the national anthem etc. However despite these differences one common thread that runs through all of them is that ‘the manifest destiny of India resides in a Hindu nation’ and the boundaries of this imaginary nation is that of undivided India. The RSS is the centrepiece — the arch stone — of this Hindu edifice. There are over 6 million members but it has a wider membership, namely people who share their ideas, though they may not be active members. Close to 57,000 Shakhas or branches spread over the entire country engage with this broader citizenry though the RSS headquarters is in Nagpur and the early stalwarts were all Maharashtrians and Brahmins. Gandhi’s assassins came from this hinterland and Veer Savarkar, one of the leading lights of the Hindu movement was implicated in the Gandhi conspiracy case but later let off on a reprieve.
RSS has been lampooned as a Nagpur Brahmin-centric organisation, but over the years it has tried to evolve and widen its reach among the other castes, particularly within the OBCs — Other Backward Castes — and its political arm the BJP — earlier called the Jan Sangh — profited in the polls when caste politics surged in 1990s especially after the Mandal Commission was formed to look into the empowerment of the OBCs. The term OBC is in itself a conundrum, one would assume it covers exceptional cases wherein certain castes deprived of opportunities due to inherent social stigmatisation are extended special privileges. Not so, when over 54 per cent of India’s population and covering 3,743 castes in addition to Dalits and scheduled tribes [another 25 per cent of India’s population] are advanced distinctive rights then this entire policy of special dispensation is to make a mockery of the very spirit of empowerment. It is nothing but pork barrel politics, a lazy policy to buy votes and hence ‘In India you don’t cast your vote, you vote your caste.’
The BJP has over time cleverly inducted OBCs into its fold. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an OBC and to that extent the charge that the Sangh Parivar is anti-OBC or pro-Brahmin is ill-founded. In fact during the recent Bihar elections, the BJP brazenly declared ‘Mandal and Kamandal are with us’ denoting its core constituency, the Hindu electorate, and the OBCs are with the BJP. Kamandal — a water pitcher used by Hindu ascetics — rhymes with Mandal and this catchy slogan got voter attention. But because Modi is an OBC and therefore to assume that the BJP is a rainbow coalition is naive.
The BJP is nothing without the RSS and at the hustings it is the dedicated cadre of the RSS that works tirelessly for keeping the BJP campaign juggernaut well-oiled and running at all times. RSS provides the legs for the all- important ground game during the elections. To assume that the RSS and the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar work in unison despite their minor differences is to exhibit a facile understanding of the fissures within this extended Hindu family. Even within the RSS there are major fault lines. A case in point is the Kerala branch of the RSS. Here the unique diversity and the egalitarian spirit innate within its civil society brings out starkly the contradictions within the RSS itself, leave alone the complex relationship between the BJP and the RSS.