Life as a Dalit: Views from the Bottom on Caste in India [1 ed.] 8132111230, 9788132111238

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Life as a Dalit

Life as a Dalit Views from the Bo om on Caste in India

Edited by

Subhadra Mitra Channa Joan P. Mencher

Copyright © Subhadra Mitra Channa and Joan P. Mencher, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2013 by SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, Phototypeset in 10/13 Palatino by RECTO Graphics and printed at Saurabh Printers Pvt Ltd, New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-81-321-1123-8 (HB) The SAGE Team: Shambhu Sahu, Dhurjjati Sarma, and Nand Kumar Jha

To Dr B.R. Ambedkar and the Dalits of India

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction—Looking Up at Caste: Discrimination in  Everyday Life in India Subhadra Mitra Channa

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SECTION I Theorizing Marginality Chapter 1 The Caste System Upside Down Joan P. Mencher Chapter 2 Atrocities and Segregation in an Urban Social Structure Nandu Ram Chapter 3 Continuity and Change in “Ex-Untouchable” Community of South India Joan P. Mencher Chapter 4 A Reading of “Untouchable”: The Autobiography of an Indian Outcaste Subhadra Mitra Channa Chapter 5 On Being an Untouchable in India: A Materialist Perspective Joan P. Mencher Chapter 6 Conversion of Upper Castes into Lower Castes: A Process of Asprashyeekaran Shyamlal

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Chapter 7 Dalits to Benefit from Globalization Lessons from the Past for the Present A. Ramaiah

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Section II Doing Fieldwork among the Dalits Chapter 8 Viewing Hierarchy from the Bottom Up Joan P. Mencher

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Chapter 9 Becoming a Dhobi Subhadra Mitra Channa

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Section III Religion and Gender Chapter 10 Dancing the Goddess: Possession and Caste Karin Kapadia

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Chapter 11 The Bible and Dalits James Massey

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Chapter 12 Rediscovering God: Iyothee Thassar and Emancipatory Buddhism G. Aloysius Chapter 13 Religion, Social Space, and Identity: The Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha and the Making of Cultural Boundaries in Twentieth Century Kerala P. Sanal Mohan

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Chapter 14 Dalit Women Part 1 Dalit Women in Struggle: Transforming Pain into Power Ruth Manorama Part 2 Commentary on Ruth Manorama’s Presentation at the  Fourth World Conference on Women, 1995, Beijing Subhadra Mitra Channa Part 3 Excerpts Bama Chapter 15 Caste and Gender: Understanding Dynamics of Power and Violence Kalpana Kannabiran and Vasanth Kannabiran

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Section IV Fighting the System: Dalit Responses to Oppression Chapter 16 Climax! The Encounter of Dalits and Hindus Vasant Moon

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Chapter 17 Theyyam Myth: An Embodiment of Protest J.J. Pallath

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Chapter 18 Documenting Dissent Badri Narayan

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Chapter 19 The Satnamis of Chhattisgarh Saurabh Dube

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Chapter 20 Does Replication Mean Consensus? Dissenting the Hegemony by “Untouchable” Scheduled Castes in Karnataka, South India G.K. Karanth Chapter 21 Reservations and New Caste Alliances in India Walter Fernandes

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Conclusions Joan P. Mencher

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About the Editors and Contributors Index

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Acknowledgments

Subhadra Mitra Channa would like to acknowledge all her Dhobi fictive kin who made a difference in her outlook on life as also the numerous poor and deprived people she met on her many field trips who showed that life at the bottom is also worth living and enjoying. She would like to thank all those who offered a meal and a pot of tea, even when they were living on the edge of hunger and opened her eyes to the immense generosity and love of people living on the margins of society. She would like to acknowledge her daughters for making life a wonderful experience. Also a debt of gratitude to my student Dr Antu Saha for helping out in editing and various tasks related to the production of this volume. And last but not least my dogs Kaju, Caesar, and CoCo who prevented me from ever going into a depression. Dr Joan Mencher wishes to thank all those who helped her in her attempts to foreground the issues raised in this volume, especially the Dalits; who from 1963 on helped her to understand their lives and those who asked her to “tell people about us, tell our story for us. Let people everywhere know about our situation.” From the time she worked in the village near Chennai, she felt accepted by the Dalits in ways which made her feel deeply committed to offer whatever help she could in their struggles, not only materially but also in terms of attaining social equality at every level. All of her writings about Indian Dalits are dedicated to the memory of the Dalits (still living or having passed away, especially Damodaran and Govindan) from Maduramangalam as well as to the many other Dalits who she came to know in other villages.

Introduction Looking Up at Caste: Discrimination in Everyday Life in India Subhadra Mitra Channa

LOOKING UP The title of this volume has a purpose; it explicates the wisdom that things are understood in perspective rather than as “things in themselves.” The same object, event, or as here, an institution such as caste, may appear differently to different observers and actors depending upon their location and hierarchical position as Chatterjee (1993: 180) has clearly summarized. The strategic implication of location is now well-recognized and forms the key focus of this volume that makes an attempt to look at caste from the bottom, from the privileged location of the lowest rungs of hierarchy than from the top. It also wishes to make observations and inferences not from a positivist value-neutral stand but a specifically stated human rights perspective that recognizes some categories as victims and others as perpetrators of discrimination and even violence on others. This volume may thus form an effective critique of some of the existing views on caste. It takes the phenomenological stand that reality is better understood when constructed out of experience rather than uninvolved observation. Both the editors have contributed papers in this volume that explicitly state how their worldview changed when they participated in social interactive situations with those who belong to the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy. Mencher specifically mentions as to how as a non-Hindu she was made to stand outside Brahmin households while collecting data, sometimes in the rain and sometimes in the hot sun. Channa mentions her dismay at being exposed to blatant practices of untouchability in the heart of Delhi, the capital of India.

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Moving away from an Indological point of view these essays are directed toward a project of “recreating selves” to empathize with the marginal and the oppressed. Whether one does it through one’s own life experience or through one’s intellectual theorizing, it is all about presenting a view of society from the bottom-up. Only such a point of view is privileged to be accepted as a tool for making a dream of a just society possible. At successive levels of social development we have witnessed the failure of science, the failure of technology, and now the failure of economic globalization to improve the lives of the marginal. The development of a critical social science and a theory that incorporates the voices and visions of those at the bottom may be a more effective tool directed toward internal rather than external reforms; in other words to bring about a change in mindset. This is all the more significant as the failure of externally imposed policies is self-evident.

SOCIAL REALITY OF THE INDIAN NATION Ambedkar had expressed doubt while presenting the Indian Constitution, that while on paper the Constitution was framed keeping democratic values and social justice in mind and promised equality and dignity for all citizens of India, whether the social climate would enable such a nondiscriminatory situation to actually emerge. He was speaking from his own experience as the member of one of the lowest social groups in India, the untouchables. Unfortunately the post-Independence scenario of the last more than six decades that has seen the Indian democracy mature indicates that his apprehensions were correct. At the three levels of social justice, political equality, and intellectual domain we find that those marginal to mainstream societies are yet to find equality. One cannot negate the fact that in the course of time a great deal of transformation has occurred both from top in terms of changing political structures and from the bottom in terms of increasing levels of consciousness as corroborated by most of the papers in this volume. Yet the gains are more substantive in the successful development of effective critiques of the existing situation than they have in changing actual life situation of the people; in other words a discourse has been built up but actual practice is yet to be effectively implemented. In rural and even urban areas, poor and marginal communities are routinely subjected to torture and humility (Narula 1999). The daily newspapers are full of stories of rape, killing, and torture of untouchables in various parts of India. The Human Rights Report published by the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi routinely reports such atrocities. In modern Indian society, we have emerging Dalit middle classes who have money, education, and power but who are still fighting for social acceptability. At the political level, Dalit leadership is yet to

Introduction

be accepted by the non-Dalit masses and the leaders are not on sure footing in terms of self-realization and confidence. The meteoric ascent of Mayawati, who became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, but lost her position just as she was about to create an all-India impact, is to be pondered upon. There is certainly doubt as to what extent the general public is ready to accept a Dalit leader on merit rather than on mere caste considerations. In the academic sphere too, neither syllabus nor teaching material reflects in any way that Dalits are regarded as a significant part of Indian society. The most debilitating experience that almost all Dalits have to go through is the rejection by civil society in general. There are many instances when even after attaining the highest offices Dalits have to face humiliation in personal lives. A certain news item brought to light the case of a high court judge of upper caste who, before taking up office, had his official rooms purified with Ganga water because the previous incumbent on the same post was a Dalit. Even if people of “liberal” views accept their colleagues of low castes, almost everyone would protest if their children opted to marry a Dalit. In schools and colleges, the Dalit students are often socially boycotted and may have to form their own groups. Even in a liberal campus like that of the University of Delhi, hostels are clearly divided on caste lines. It is also a truism that the upper castes and classes are more prone to believing that the problem just does not exist! Rege (2006: 2) raises an important lacuna in public thinking when she writes, “As an upper caste, middle class student on campus, I recall being part of a group that thought discussions about caste to be retrograde.” What is lacking in Indian society is a sense of social justice. People are bogged down by rituals and blindly follow norms and fail to recognize the day-to-day injustice being perpetuated in the name of tradition. Yet spiritual leaders from Buddha to Swami Vivekananda have all spoken against the caste system and its justification in the name of religion. Swami Vivekananda (Complete Works, vol. V, p. 198) had denounced the caste system as incompatible with the notion of India’s progress and had predicted that it would crumble before the advent of progressive ideas. Kothari (1997: 53) raises doubts about the present leadership and India’s parliamentary democracy when he says that the demands for reform for social justice are coming more from “the poor and oppressed, the Dalits and the tribals and also from the youth all over the country, more than from urbanite middle classes and the upper rural strata, is asking from us who are committed to civil liberties and democratic rights, something far more fundamental than we are used to.” He is of the opinion that once ascending to power, people of all strata assume an elitist attitude that overlooks the bottom layers, projecting an elitist

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view of the Indian Nation. Thus Kothari (ibid.) urges us to, “. . . rethink our conceptions of national unity, regional and ethnic diversity, and the just and humane demands of people who have lost confidence in a New Delhi based conception of a nation-state in relation to which they have for long felt powerless and alienated.”

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM The untouchable leaders like Periyar and Jyotiba Phule, and spiritual leaders like Vivekananda had all placed great faith in modern education to provide the light to dispel the ignorance on which caste discriminations are based. Yet modern India does not show much in the way of progressive education that lacks any ethical or moral paradigms and has failed to inculcate the notions of human rights and justice. In India traditionally all intellectual activities were restricted to members of certain caste groups. They formed a small elite section on top of the Varna hierarchy and not even all Brahmans were included. The ritual performing Brahmans were placed lower than the Shastris who carried out the reading of texts, mostly in Sanskrit. The other community most involved with literacy was the Kayasthas of North and Eastern India who were clerks and record keepers of the feudal nobility including the Moguls. Thus when colonization brought in new forms of learning outside of the Sanskritic texts, it was a natural transition for these communities to be the first to make the transition into Western forms of learning and we find that even today the intellectual sections are dominated by Brahmans and Kayasthas, especially in the North and Eastern India, and also in the South. Thus the new generations of other caste groups who could notionally take advantage of the new caste-free system of education were hindered by their structural position and cultural inability to participate in educational programs. They simply lacked the resources, both material and symbolic, to take advantage of the new education. Only a few in the first generation were able to match the extraordinary achievement of B.R. Ambedkar. The lack of participation of Dalits in the formative years of the Indian educational institutions is quite clearly visible. The Brahman and upper-caste elite had imposed their own views of Indian society onto the masses including the now defunct Aryan theory of the Indian caste system (Trautmann 1997). For Dumont to emphasize that caste is a part of religion and religious beliefs is to overlook the actual nature of religion in India where it has been almost universally recognized that the beliefs and values of the upper castes are definitely different from those at the margins of society.

Introduction

Such upper-caste and elitist intellectualism, however, continued to be at the center of the pedagogical commitments and even today, in the curriculum of Indian universities, the study of caste has been synonymous with the uppercaste and elitist view of caste (Rodrigues 2003). Most works included in the syllabi represent mainstream upper-caste Hindu ideologies and points of view.1 Rege (2006: 2) writes, “The marginalization of the non-brahmanical perspective and experience in the institutionalised scholarship on caste has blurred our understanding of the relations between structural continuities and contemporary change in the social institution of caste.” Dalit studies are not an intrinsic part of any sociology course and if at all represented in the syllabus, are treated as additional reading material and not a core dimension of caste studies or study of Indian society. The Dalits are also not proportionately represented among the teaching faculties. The need to radically transform syllabus in Indian universities has rarely been felt and most of it still follows a colonial pattern from the time the subject was established in Indian universities. The earlier scholars in spite of their immense scholarship have not displayed much radical social critical judgment. The works of Ambedkar for example have never been part of mainstream sociology courses but a field set apart. Yet it is in the college and university setting that one looks toward academic leadership to support the emerging Dalit voices. It is pertinent to emphasize like Deshpande that the system is also blind to its shortcomings, “it does not seem to miss what it is missing” (2003: 177). Deshpande also observes quite correctly that the location of caste in religion and “other worldly” preoccupations such as dharma and karma has situated theoretical concerns away from ground realities and most importantly away from a human rights perspective. It is therefore significant that most papers in this volume specifically target these principles and provide effective critiques of not only values such as dharma, karma, and rebirth but also of sociological principles such as sanskritization (see Shyamlal and Sanal Mohan, this volume). In about fifty years after India’s Independence, some Dalit scholars who have made it to the top of the educational hierarchy like Sukhdev Thorat, who became the Chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC), have taken cognizance of this glaring discrepancy. Under the guidance of the UGC, funding was allotted to various departments to set up centers for the study of social exclusion and inclusion, to take care of the historical neglect of study of Dalit and other marginal groups in India. But again as I have mentioned such studies are additional and not core or central to the curriculum. For example one cannot study Indian sociology without reference to Louis Dumont and M.N. Srinivas, but Ambedkar may remain optional.

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DALIT SCHOLARSHIP A significant aspect of the discourse on caste studies in India, especially of such that occupy bottom rungs of the hierarchy of castes, has been about not only the status of the caste/castes studied, but of the caste/class of the person who has made the study. The substantive critique developed by the so-called “Dalit”2 scholars and such scholars who identify for one reason or the other with the marginal and the downtrodden has been that the analysis and understanding of caste has emphasized as well as prioritized the upper-caste and elite view. A major portion of this critique involves the so-called colonial buildup of knowledge and the administrative and intellectual machinery set in motion during the colonial regime. We must also agree with Haraway (1991: 43) that science is about “knowledge and power” in fact as Foucault has already made clear all knowledge is related to power. Thus all knowledge historically evolved has a “social context” Haraway (ibid.), and it is no more and no less visible in the buildup of knowledge about caste in India. More recent focus is by contemporary scholars based on ethnography and fieldwork among the Dalit communities3 in which anthropologists, both Indian and foreign, have played a considerable role, in foregrounding experiential reality as against textual renderings and explanations. A considerable contribution in this direction has been made by the experiential reality of the scholar himself/herself, such as the well-recognized works of Kancha Ilaiyah (1996), Vasant Moon (2001), Minakshi Moon and Urmila Pawar (2003), Mencher (1975), Omvedt (1994), and many others. The emergence of scholars from the Dalit communities has played a key role in transforming theoretical understanding and orientation. Issues of discrimination, mental and physical violence, and the forging of a common identity of the oppressed have replaced issues such as sacred hierarchy, purity and pollution, and jajmani. The Dalit psyche, their way of thinking and looking at the world and most importantly glimpses into their lives have formed a considerable portion of the literature coming out from Dalit pens. The people who were only passive objects of writing and scholarship have now become active agents for the production of knowledge about themselves and for developing a revolutionary scholarship directed toward changing society and not merely to satisfy curiosity about the “other.” Even scholars like Deliege (1997) who have worked within the materialist and reflexive framework that critiques impersonal structural theories are subject to criticism by insiders such as Karanth (this volume). At the level of reality one may read Hazari’s autobiography—excerpts of which one will find in this volume—about his secret love for a white woman and the natural end to the fantasy. From a poor untouchable boy from a dusty village in Uttar Pradesh, Hazari moves away into a different world, but leaves

Introduction

behind his impressions of a hard and marginalized existence where even his mere literacy provoked hostile reaction among the upper-caste villagers. But the emotions that he expresses, whether for his mother, his pet, or for a young woman he idealizes, makes one feel that the heart that beats in a Dalit body is the same as that in any other. A very important aspect of the critique as set in motion by the seminal paper published in Current Anthropology (1974), by Joan Mencher was the need to reformulate methodology and theoretical orientation. A trend at this time that moves away from elitist scholarship reflects the works of Marxist scholars in the seventies and subaltern historiographers like Ranajit Guha and is subsequently also realized in gendered historiography (Sangari and Vaid 1990; O’Hanlon 1997). The rising of the Dalit voices marks an exciting phase of social and intellectual transformation that reflects and encapsulates a very large universe of change and social reality, the transition of the world intellectual order from a “white and male” centric subject to a critical and shifting subject. Such is reflected in the philosophies of the twentieth century in the works of Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and others. Foucault’s (1976) basic argument that identities are situated within a field of discourse where the constellations of meaning attributed to that particular identity, even something as basic as “sex” is already specified and there is no social reality that is prior to such a discourse has been used by feminist to “deconstruct” the subject in sociological analysis (Moore 1994). The abstract theories of caste based on intellectual analysis can be then seen as produced by subjects who have been situated away from the real world of oppression and suffering from which the Dalit subject emerges. For persons like Louis Dumont (1970), M.N. Srinivas (1977) and Michael Moffat (1979) the caste system was not something that was experienced from a subject position at the bottom of Indian society. Thus textual norms like purity and pollution formed the key focal points of their analysis rather than the more subjective issues of suffering and marginalization. Scholars working on jajmani relationships, for example, failed to even mention the fact of agrestic slavery, a fact whose stark realism is brought out by Pallath (1995, also in this volume) and Sanal Mohan (this volume). Today there is substantive literature that explores the realities of Dalit life in India, and as is quite evident, such experiences need not be uniform. While Karanth’s paper focuses on several lower-caste groups and their interrelationship in Karnataka, that of Mencher (1980, also in this volume) describes untouchable castes in Kerala and Tamil Nadu where she has focused on the identity and meaning of being an untouchable and the vicious circle of a stigmatized identity tied to a subordinate economic position.

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A CRITICAL APPROACH TO HINDUISM AND IMPACT OF COLONIAL RULE The debate then centers on what is “Hindu religion?”—a debate that has raged around numerous publications on this topic, most of which has looked closely at the role of colonial rule in shaping present-day Hinduism and also the puritanical Brahmanism that has become its hallmark. The privileging of upper castes in the colonial buildup of knowledge and the construction of Hinduism as a Brahmanical religion has been a major topic of discussion among contemporary historians and anthropologists (Cohen 1990; O’Hanlon 1997; Dirks 2001; Trautmann 1997; Bayley 1988; Kaiwar 2003). The emergence of a mainstream Hinduism linked dangerously to a unified nationalist identity has endangered diversity of local traditions and indigenous worldviews in the subcontinent. This process has also marginalized those traditions that did not fall in with the elitist brand of Hinduism including many sects, like the Satnamis, discussed in this volume and elsewhere by Saurabh Dube. Even the Advaitic traditions professed by the Ramakrishna Mission profess a nonhierarchical and caste-free version of Hinduism (Mazumdar 2003: 227). The Tantric and Vaishnavite traditions popular in Bengal have also led many people to believe that Bengal is a caste-free society! It is certainly an area underrepresented in Dalit studies in spite of the very effective Nomo Shudra movement that took place there between 1923 and 1941 (Chatterjee 1993). Chatterjee (1993: 181) refers to Ramakant Chakraborty who had listed as many as fifty-six heterodox sects in Bengal alone, but although they began as heterodox, all of them gradually accepted caste norms. During colonial period, a section of people moved closer to a “refined” style of life, in imitation of Western values, the most notable example being of the rise of the bhadralok4 in Bengal. Much of it was done in the early nineteenth century to stake claims to high birth and legitimacy to rule at a time when the British in India were consolidating state power in collusion with local elite groups. Interestingly Susan Bayley (1999) has pointed out that to the feudal British such claims were actually more legitimate when backed by claims to “traditional” power than more modern basis of rational economic and political factors. Thus landowners and newly constituted gentry found out quite early that if they staked their claims based on traditional “caste” considerations they were more likely to be accepted than if they said that they had acquired these statuses by military or commercial acumen; hence the efforts to change lifestyles and invent genealogies that marked the nineteenth century when Indian society was undergoing a tumultuous period.5 The net result as recognized now by most authors was that high-caste status was often claimed and legitimized for those who managed to make it good in

Introduction

the political and economic hierarchy and those who were left at the margins were pushed into disreputable status like the so-called ex-criminal tribes. This of course was true the other way round too, that such communities that were so marginalized as to suffer extreme disabilities as the untouchables in the South and West of the country were in any way out of the race for power and continued to be marginalized. A very important result of the colonial impact was the creation of stereotypes of what was civilized and rightfully a prerogative of the upper castes/classes and what was not. Nicholas Dirks (2001: 164–66, passim) has discussed that how Brahmans who were close to the British in Madurai, in the late nineteenth century, supported the British decision to prohibit the annual hook swinging festival in Sholavandan by the then acting district magistrate of Madurai, L.C. Miller. Whereas a joint petition had been submitted in favor of the ritual by a combined representatives of many castes including Brahmans, those who were closer to Western values proclaimed such acts as “barbaric and non-Hindu.” In Bengal and other parts of India, practices such as “sati,” child marriage, and female infanticide were considered “barbaric” not as much as by the British but by the local intellectuals. The projection of a metaphysical, nonritualistic Hinduism, the Vedantic philosophy taken to the West by Swami Vivekananda is a far cry from the ritualistic Hinduism of the common people but much closer to a monotheistic and humane universal religion such as would be acceptable in the Western world. Thus slowly and spreading out from centers such as Bengal and the South, that were early to come under British influence an image of an upper-class Hinduism was built up. This elite Hinduism distanced itself from practices such as had marked many local and village communities relegating such to the “low castes” and being “uncivilized.”6 The attempted refinements were supported more and more by select Sanskritic texts and proclaimed an elitist Brahmanic or Reformist version of Hinduism that solely belonged to the literate elite of the emerging urban centers.7 For example animal sacrifice was an integral part of Kali and Durga Puja in Bengal. But in Delhi such was always looked upon with horror and never ever practiced by the Bengali population that had migrated to Delhi in the nineteenth century largely as literate employees of the British government or Western educated lawyers and doctors. Even in the city of Calcutta such practices were increasingly regarded as “rustic” and barbaric and are now practically nonexistent except in a few select shrines. Interestingly the Dalit leadership that began in the nineteenth century by stalwarts like Phule and Periyar looked down upon the “superstitions” of mainstream Hinduism and also included caste as part of the “barbaric” customs, something that no upper-caste Hindu reformer had done. It is true that followers of the Ramakrishna Mission do not overtly believe in caste but caste as

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such was never a matter of importance in the teachings of the order. Moreover the Tantric path followed by Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, the teacher of Swami Vivekananda, who founded the order, anyway does not subscribe to Brahmanical caste norms. Ramakrishna had faced opposition from orthodox Hindus when he had ordained Narendra Nath Dutt, a Kayastha and nonbrahman (Shudra as per Bengali caste norms) as a monk.

CASTE VIOLENCE: PHYSICAL AND SYMBOLIC The important fact that emerges is the creation of clear stereotypes of “high” and “low” that was largely caste based. It is such cultural stereotypes more than any economic and political factors that still perpetuate caste values in the postmodern cities of India (Channa 2005). The clear cultural divide that emerged between “us” and “them” is what led many scholars of caste to reinterpret the caste system as divisive, especially drawing boundaries between the upper and the lower. It is in this context that Sanal Mohan (this volume) finds it expedient to analyze caste referring to the cultural school of Stuart Hall and one may extend the analysis to include the concept of “cultural arbitrariness” introduced by Bordieu and Passeron (1977) to justify elitism. It is this cultural and symbolic violence that has replaced actual physical violence and discrimination in the metropolitan cities although traditional violence too remains very much a part of the Dalit experience, especially in the rural areas. However, the emergence of the symbolic violence (Channa 2005) where metaphors and stereotypes that deride lower castes has not replaced physical violence, incidences of which remain numerous and for which one just has to open the morning newspaper. In fact atrocities against Dalits are so commonplace that they often fail to find a mention on the first page or raise any significant media coverage like in the Jessica Lal murder case. Hundreds of Dalit girls are routinely raped and even murdered and people just glance over such news at their breakfast table and move onto other more “interesting news.” No candle light vigils have been conducted by the elite of Indian society to commemorate women like Bhanwari Devi and the numerous nameless victims. As Nandu Ram has described in the paper reprinted in this volume, the incidences of violence have magnified in proportion to the demands made by the Dalits for their rights. The more the consciousness of the lower castes is developing, the more intensive is the confrontation between the upper and lower sections, a phenomenon that had become crystallized during what is now referred to in retrospect as the “Mandal era”8 during which times the clash of interest of the upper castes with the Dalit demands for implementation of their Constitutional rights rocked the nation and has now the long-term implication

Introduction

of fracturing of identity between the lower and upper castes. But this also had the political implications of the emergence of a unified Dalit front. In the political arena the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party and its key symbol in the person of Mayawati has given a boost to Dalit morale in northern India where Dalit political participation had lagged behind that in western and southern India. Certainly no upper-caste reformer, including Gandhi, had explicitly criticized the caste system as such although the horrors of untouchability had found a mention and been deplored. The values of caste are so deeply entrenched that even conversion to Christianity did not obliterate caste as among the Syrian Christians of Kerala (Sanal Mohan 2003, also in this volume). The story of the Aryan invasion and the subsequent formation of layers of Indian society (Trautmann 1997; Cohen 1990) has been discredited and so also the theorem put forward by one of the foremost scholars of this school of thought, Herbert Risely, that said, “The social position of a caste varies inversely as its nasal index” (1891: 253). The race theory of caste stands demolished and other racist hypotheses like the link of civilization to the whitening of skin (Trautmann 1997: 170) may look outlandish, but one cannot forget the deep-rooted prejudices regarding physical appearances that still exist in civil society in India. In day-to-day conversations it is not at all uncommon to come across phrases such as “dark like a Bhangi” or “ugly like a Chamar” in northern India. People still carry stereotypical images of the short, dark, and broad-nosed “untouchable” and the tall, fair-skinned aristocrat of high birth. Such is often also depicted in the visual media as well as carried in folklore and popular literature all across the country. Thus in northern India, the popular saying goes “Never trust a fair Chamar or a dark Brahmin” meaning thereby that they are of dubious parentage. During my fieldwork among the Dhobis in Delhi, I was often accosted with complaints from Dhobi youth who often told me that in schools and colleges even the teacher would come out with “You do not look like a dhobi!” “What does it mean to ’look like a dhobi’?” They used to ask me. “Does it mean we must look dark and ugly?” In this volume I have included my field experiences of working with the dhobis, an experience that changed my life and worldview to a very large extent. Without going into the debate on caste and race that died in the beginning of the twentieth century but left behind its imprint on Indian society one must say that in India culture has taken the place of biology in inscribing the bodies of people with their caste ranking (Channa 2003). Cultural prescription as to dress code and body language takes the place of nature in setting the low castes away from the high castes (Channa 2011). This has become an ultimate method of imposing humility on the lower castes,

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in a subtle and insidious manner. This is the kind of violence that is most difficult to get rid of because it is so difficult to locate.

THE STATE AND DALITS The hiatus between the state and the Dalits is manifested in a historical process that began during the colonial period and was symbolized in the Poona Pact. As of now, most Dalits we have met and talked feel betrayed by the national leadership and very few recognize any virtue in the Indian Nationalists, especially Gandhi and Nehru. Dalit intellectuals may not subscribe at least openly to such radical views yet the strong critical stand taken by them does challenge the upper-caste view of both definitions of Indian society and its social structure, thereby preparing the groundwork for a critical sociology expressed in many works, especially since the seventies. A very relevant issue raised by almost all Dalit leaders and scholars is the actual improvement in the condition of Dalits in post-Independence India after years of positive discrimination and laws banishing untouchability and discrimination against Dalits. This is the theme of several papers in this volume that not only questions the relevance of mere legislations in the absence of a consensual civil society but also raises important theoretical points. In fact one of the critical points raised by Deshpande (2003: 178) is the theoretical “invisibility” of the questions of marginality in sociological discourses on caste. He is particularly critical of the stance taken by most prominent sociologists to ignore the ground-level realities of caste inequalities that are thrown up by most data surveys such as the National Sample Survey Organisation. One of the central issues of contemporary debate has been the existence of caste structures and practice of untouchability in modern India. When a large delegation of Dalits took their claims to be included in the agenda of racism to the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) held in Durban in 2001, the Government of India sent its official delegates to refute their claim. The plea taken was that caste was banned in India officially and that the Indian Constitution provides Constitutional safeguards to protect the interests of Dalits and as such it is not relevant to talk of caste in the same platform as race. Many intellectuals and sociologists supported the view that caste does not exist anymore as a religious and social disability and had taken on more of political overtones. I was present at the conference to see the vehement denial of the Dalits to such propositions to the extent that at some points there was threat of real physical violence and at least some of the more volatile Dalit workers were going to beat up the “government agents.” Posters and demonstrations put up at the venue of the WCAR depicted the plight of the Dalits and formed

Introduction

a strong counterstatement to what was being projected as the “official” version. The Dalits were in fact able to muster the support of a large section of the participants and a Dalit march that took place to the accompaniment of drums beaten by the untouchable drummers of South India found a huge section of people from across the world joining in. In the official Declaration, however, they were relegated to a brief mention (Channa 2005).

REINTERPRETING THEORY FROM A “BOTTOM UP” PERSPECTIVE While sociologists in India were preoccupied with the structural relevance of caste ignoring its lived realties, anthropological studies with greater orientation toward subjectivity moved toward a more “downtrodden” view of caste. In anthropology criticism of “transcendent objectivity” (Kleinmann 1995: 55) has been the rule rather than the exception since the turn of the eighties when scholars have turned toward an introspective intersubjective approach rather than one based on abstract generalizations. Mencher’s (1974) paper sets a trend that moves away from an abstract intellectualist view to what she prefers to call a materialist view of caste, a view she demonstrates is shared by her untouchable respondents as well. The bottom- up view of caste is methodologically more reflexive, which prioritizes experiential realities and the day-to-day lived realities of life as against abstract intellectualism. Thus while one may not disagree with Dumont’s opposition of purity and pollution and his statement that they are complementary to each other, his saying that the “impurity of the untouchable is conceptually inseparable from the purity of the Brahmin” in no way expresses the realities of what it means to be an untouchable, the pain, suffering, and humiliation involved as well as the protests and disagreements with the upper castes’ points of view. Kapadia (1995: 125, also in this volume) describes the feelings of the lower castes in Aruloor, a village in South India about purity and pollution as being very different from that of the Brahmans. The untouchables believe that real purity comes from devotion, bakti and is not related to the physical condition of one’s body. The Brahmins look with repugnance on possession rituals involving self-torture and “loss of control.” To them “this is not true Hindu religion.” Similar ideas are expressed in the performances of Dalits, like Theyyam (see Pallath and Mencher, this volume) or in their folklore and myths. Channa’s recreation of a Dalit autobiography gives a glimpse of the life of an untouchable as it was actually lived. Bama (reprinted in this volume) also makes the readers relive the lives of Dalit women through her powerful rendering of their everyday lives.

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Not all Dalits are able to express themselves in terms of conventional writing; yet, scholars have tried to give them “voice” by picking up their narratives and translating them for the benefit of a wider audience. Nandu Ram’s paper included in this volume follows directly the lead given by Mencher in her 1974 article (also in this volume) basing itself on ethnographic data collected from the Chamars of Agra. The important point raised by him in this article is to show how the Jatavs realized in terms of what may be called a “subaltern consciousness” that they could not achieve even partial social acceptance through economic and political means within the city’s social structure. The only ways out were through dissent and confrontation to the system itself, which in this case means the caste system or the folds of Hinduism expressed in conversions to Buddhism. This is an interesting antidote to what has been claimed by the historians such as O’Hanlon about the economic and political factors leading to actual crystallization of castes. Thus it must be noted that only groups not totally marginalized can achieve a degree of social acceptance through economic and social factors or it can also mean that the system had become more rigid in the postcolonial period. Sanal Mohan has pointed out in the essay published in this volume as to how the situation of caste in the body was perceived by the Dalit leader Yohannan, who prescribed bodily rituals to wash away the stigma of caste. Similarly Ambedkar too called upon the Dalits, especially the women to dress properly, to be neat, clean, and presentable (see Moon). The Dalit scholar’s answer to the “race science” hypothesis has often been on the lines of popular mythology and folklore of the Dalits where such a separation in terms of “race” is denied, to be substituted by stories of kinship and family ties with the upper castes that were broken by some unfortunate event (Deliege 1997: 127–36). For example, my work among the Dhobis indicated quite clearly that high caste’s explanations did not agree with their self-esteem that appeared to be quite high, a fact supported by other untouchable ethnographies (Pallath 1995: 106, also in this volume). For example, when I had asked some Dhobis as to why they did not use the services of the Brahman in their marriages and other lifecycle rituals the quick reply was, “We were created before the Brahman.” In an early and now less-cited work, Ambedkar too had refuted the racist claims of the upper castes by putting forward what he considered as his scientific theory about the status of the Shudras. In his book written in 1946, “Who were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society?” Ambedkar uses the language of anthropometry and other devices used by the “race scientists” to prove his point that the entire concept of an Aryan race was false and he had the insight to show the interest of the white colonial rulers to use this “theory” for their own advantage. Basing himself on

Introduction

the theory of two categories of Aryans, Ambedkar believed that the Shudras were the non-Vedic Aryans and he attributes their downgradation from powerful kings to untouchables to the wrath incurred by them of the Brahmans who refused to perform their sacred thread ceremony leading to their exclusion from the “twice-born” category. However, this work of Ambedkar went into obscurity once he converted to Buddhism and left the folds of Hinduism altogether. But it is an important indicator of the fact that like most untouchables he had made a valiant attempt to prove his point that he was no different in bodily substance from the upper castes and the degradation was only a historical incident and not a matter of inherent religious substance, thereby providing a strong refutation of what Dumont said much later. The rigidity of the caste system and its ideological base has been critiqued in various ways by the lower castes and although Ambedkar opted to convert and make a radical break, others like Shyamlal have resorted to academic reinterpretations to prove their point. In an interesting thesis that turns Srinivas’s theory of Sanskritization on its head, Shyamlal introduces the concept of Asprashyeekaran (1997) that describes that conversion of higher castes into lower castes. In a section (reproduced in this volume) he finds ethnographic examples from Jodhpur to illustrate his thesis. However, the major weakness of this thesis that seeks to critique Sanskritization is that the process of Asprashyeekaran is individual or family-based, and does not describe group mobility of the type subsumed under Srinivas’s term. In factual terms the process of “losing caste” so to say has been recorded and has been happening from antiquity. But it has remained an individual and often involuntary process forced onto individuals for acts of transgression of caste norms or failure to adhere to moral duties. This concept does not have the theoretical sophistication and scope of Srinivas’s work. But the inclusion of this piece in this volume is an example of the manner in which Dalit scholars have launched attack on what they perceive to be an “elitist view of caste,” Srinivas’s work included. Another short piece of writing included along with this is an excerpt from the writings of a Dalit Christian from Punjab, Massey (1997) who has examined the word dal, as downtrodden and crushed, and its presence in the Bible. Although both these pieces are not theoretically sophisticated, they contain some valuable insight into the mindset of the Dalit writer, a need to universalize the experience of being Dalit and to assert that the Dalits are recognized and treated as not different from anyone else. The creation of texts to represent the bottom-up view uses both theory and experience as resources to engender the material and includes a range of expressions and rhetoric. But most have tried to dispel myths created by the upper-caste views. One kind are those that have attempted revised descriptions of ground-level realities of the caste situation regarding the status of

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reservations and facilities that exist on paper and in policies but do not always get translated into action like what Fernandes (this volume) has to say about the “hiatus between availability and access.” Fernandes is also able to counter often repeated arguments regarding positive discrimination by upper castes such as “the benefits go only to the creamy layer” by upholding the symbolic value of the success of a few for the majority, for example, the tremendous boost received by the untouchables of Uttar Pradesh by the images of Mayawati, the Dalit leader, a “sense of human identity.”9 Another upper-caste view supported by Western scholars such as Dumont and Moffat is that the lower castes too practice untouchability or subscribe to caste values. Again this has been hotly debated by scholars such as Karanth (this volume) who shows that “replication” of upper-caste institutional structures by lower castes is “a way of establishing an independent cultural identity as well as expressing dissent towards the hegemony of the dominant social order.” As a supportive argument one can mention that taking of upper-caste clan names such as “Sharma” and “Verma” by lower castes in northern India is an act of defiance by the lower castes and not something by which they want to camouflage their identity. These lower castes are often amused at the discomfiture of the upper castes at the confusion created by the “borrowing” of caste names. In fact many upper-caste persons have indicated their fear of the real danger involved in such borrowing of names “what if by mistake we marry our children to one of them.” From the point of view of the lower castes it is not that they want to pass off as Brahmans or upper castes but that they have an ideological difficulty with being “branded” by a name or to concede the “rights” of the upper castes to the use of certain titles. Theoretical issues are again raised by Saurabh Dube (2003, also in this volume) who uses the ethnography of the Satnamis of Chhattisgarh to “entangle the construction of ethnographic histories and the representation of untouchable