Senganglu Thaimei

It is with a compelling urge to let out my angst that I sat down to write in Tulihal, the airport in Imphal. A stringent curfew had been announced, and news of burning vehicles and sounds of tear gas or perhaps gunshots were welling up in the Imphal valley. This was because of the Meitei led (upper caste Manipuri community) protest against the assault on the Meitei actress Momoko - she was allegedly slapped and dragged by the hair during a fundraiser event - by a Naga man belonging to the National Socialist Council of Nagalim NSCN (IM), which is an armed 'revolutionary' organization. This is the 23rd of December 2012, and Manipur is burning yet again.

Unlike many of my co-passengers I have the privilege of a cousin who arranged a room for me in the Airports Authority of India guest house. While I am thankful, it is very weirdly mixed with extreme sadness. And the moment I got to sit down, my fingers punched away on my laptop as though to beat away my fear.

After endless phone calls and advice against coming home for Christmas the previous night, I had whimsically decided to brave the crisis. "After all I am only going home to meet my aging parents" I reasoned. Moreover, it was just a 15 minutes' drive from the airport to my house. The protest against the assault on the Manipuri female actor had reached its peak and would end soon, or so it seemed. But that was to be proven wrong as things only got worse.

Read more...

Prachi Beula

The National Dalit and Adivasi Women's Congress 2013 was something that was long overdue. I am yet to absorb the 'explosion of knowledge and power' that I experienced and when Anoop bhai said we could share our experiences I was glad to sit down and reflect.

Many people asked questions like why the need to organize separately for Dalit/Adivasi women, how will it contribute to the betterment of women and what after the congress, where will it lead to? But as I see it, the Congress was not just a meeting of Dalit/Adivasi women, rather it was a socio-political act. While the Congress denied the agency of privileged (read upper-caste) feminists and men to speak for Dalit/Adivasi women it simultaneously asserted and reclaimed the legacy of Savitri Bai, Rama Bai, Babasaheb, Birsa Munda, Phule within the women's movement. It was also a platform to forge solidarity and strengthen the fight against caste and patriarchy.

Read more...

Dr. P. Kesava Kumar

Continued from here.

Assessing the Political Thought of Ambedkar

About Ambedkar there are diverse opinions. Upper caste nationalists has tried to brand him as a 'British agent'. For instance, Arun Shourie, the Hindu nationalist and the "intellectual hero" of the upper castes at the time of the anti-Mandal agitation and the Minister for Disinvestment in one of the BJP-led governments, puts all his efforts to depict him as an anti-national collaborator with British imperialism in his book 'Worshipping False Gods, Ambedkar and the Facts which have been Erased' (1997).¹³ He charged that in the 1940s, Ambedkar never took part in any freedom movement. Instead, he was collaborating with the British. The motive of the Brahminical Hindu nationalists is quite clear. They want to prove that Ambedkar does not have any political credentials to be worshipped as a god of 'social justice'. This attitude has to be understood in the wake of a strong Dalit movement and its confrontation with Hindu nationalism and caste hegemony. Ambedkar is the symbol and source of philosophy for Dalits in pursuit of their struggles. In response to this, the upper caste Hindu nationalist thinker Arun Shourie, through his writings, consciously tried to neutralize the influence of Ambedkar in post-independent Indian politics in general and among Dalit masses in particular.

The Naxalite party CPI (M-L) [People's War] tries to place him as liberal bourgeoisie/ democrat.¹⁴ Ranganayakamma, identified as a Marxian writer, argues in her book that neither Ambedkarism nor Buddhism has the real potential to liberate Dalits. Only Marxism has the capacity to liberate them totally.¹⁵ Some would like to see him as a conservative, because of his leanings towards religion, Buddhism. However, there is an immediate emotional response to all the above remarks from the conscious Dalit scholars and masses. On the other side, Dalit parties like Bahujan Samaj Party, or some Dalit scholars, argue that Ambedkar is the only radical thinker of the nation. For liberation of the Dalit masses, Ambedkar is the only solution. They took him to the level of a god. In this regard, Dalit scholar Anand Teltumbde comments, 'in making Ambedkar as a demigod, we are missing his essential message.' One may encounter similar kind of problems in theorizing Ambedkar's philosophy.

Read more...

Ajith Kumar A S

Suddenly caste seems to take center stage of Malayalam cinema and the public sphere in Kerala. Everyone seems to be against caste as if all the progressives suddenly understand caste now. The CPM's youth wing DYFI conducts a march to build up a "caste-less, secular" Kerala. The congress organizes "Gandhigram' marches to "adopt" Dalit colonies. CPM organizes "land struggles" (it is bhoomi samrakshana samaram which means protest to protect the land we already have!!) and forms SC, ST welfare forums. Movies have been made on caste. Awards have been given for films "against caste". If we closely observe these developments we can see it is a form of restructuring or crisis management of the modern-secular–liberal upper castes. All this points to the dilemmas and disturbances that the Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim political assertions have created in the political /cultural sphere in Kerala.

I am trying to talk about the other side of this recent "visibility" and "audibility" of caste. This I think is also an effort to render invisible/silence the voices of the Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims. When the marginalized communities started to organize and develop their political thoughts and practice outside the conventional left/right divide in the state it certainly marked a break that disturbed the political sphere.

The eighties witnessed the emergence of Dalit political assertions in Kerala and this gained strength and visibility/audibility in the nineties and became an unavoidable presence after 2000. The historic Adivasi sit-in strike before the secretariat (even before people started thinking about "occupy movements"), Chengara, Muthanga, and many other land struggles shook the political sphere. The mainstream media tried to show their patronizing sympathy towards the cause but tried to delegitimize these political movements. The left/right "progressives" sensed that their leadership was in danger. The independent assertions by the marginalized communities opened up new political discourses outside the so-called left/right divide. The caste locations of the left and right parties, their power on land and resources were all exposed.

Read more...

Jenny Rowena

I think this Rosy Memorial Lecture is a historically significant move for two important reasons. First of all it gives us a chance to remember and commemorate P K Rosy, the Dalit Chrisitan woman, who was the first heroine of the first film in Malayalam, Vigathakumaran, which was made and released by J C Daniel in 1928 in Trivandrum. This lecture series in her memorial will surely help us pay our tribute to this pioneering woman who came forward to act in cinema at a time when untouchable communities could not even walk on the road and enter other public spaces. This is even more important in the context of Dalit groups struggling to gain recognition for Rosy and in the context of the Chief Minister of Kerala promising to install an award in her name and going back on his word about it.

However, we must also remember that Rosy's pioneering step was met with instant violence from Nair caste lords. On the very first day on which her film was released, men from the uppercaste Nair community tore the screen and broke up the show, unable to bear the sight of a Dalit woman in the role of a Nair woman acting out love scenes with another man. After this they started attacking Rosy. J C Daniel who made the film, tried to get her protection from the King, but the Nair landlords came in large numbers and burned down her hut and chased her out of the village. She was forced to run away from Kerala, never to return to the field of cinema.

Read more...

Dr. P. Kesava Kumar

(This is the first part of the paper first published in International Research Journal of Social Sciences, Vol.1 No.2. Pp.193-210, 2008, Pondicherry University, Puducherry)

Abstract

The political philosophy of Ambedkar may help in renegotiating the crisis of western political theory in particular and leading the struggles of the masses in general. One can see Ambedkar's association with the grand political streams such as liberal, radical or conservative through his writings. At the same time he differentiates himself with these three dominant political traditions. Ambedkar's philosophy is essentially ethical and religious. For him, the social precedes the political. Social morality is central to his political philosophy. He is neither a fierce individualist nor a conservative communitarian. His conceptions of democracy internalises the principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity in their true spirit. Though there are many attempts but one may find difficulty in locating him in dominant political traditions. Often this may lead to misunderstanding of the essence of Ambedkar. Ambedkar's political thought demands a new language to understand the complexity of his thoughts.

Key words: Moral community, Caste system, Democracy, Liberalism, Marxism, Conservatism, Liberal Bourgeoisie, Social Democrat, Progressive Radical, State Socialism

Introduction

Ambedkar has emerged as a major political philosopher with the rise of the dalit movement in contemporary times. There are several attempts to understand Ambedkar and his philosophy. Confusion prevails among scholars due to the existence of diverse, and sometimes, contradictory theoretical assessments of Ambedkar. The social context of the scholars and their subjective positions play a major role in the assessment of the thinker and very often the opinions of scholars evoke extreme reactions which either elevate or demean Ambedkar. Though he had a great influence on Indian politics from the nationalist movement onwards, till the eighties, there has been not much academic debate on Ambedkar. The communities of knowledge and centres of power either ignored or deliberately marginalized him as a thinker and social scientist. Ambedkar is nowhere mentioned in the contemporary Indian philosophy and the philosophical discourses. This exclusion of Ambedkar has to be understood with the implicit politics of the writers on Indian philosophy. Very interestingly, the masses /communities of the underprivileged of Indian society bring him into the forefront. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is no major village in the country without a statue of Ambedkar. He is the most celebrated symbol of contemporary times in India. Due to the masses/Dalit communities's symbolic association with Ambedkar, political parties and academics ranging from conservatives to radicals, are forced to look at Ambedkar. The celebration of Ambedkar has the undercurrent of failure of the Indian democratic State to reach the majority of this nation, and the assertion of these ignored communities. In other words, Ambedkar's philosophy is a search towards the theories of social reconstruction of the Indian society.

Read more...