Vikram’s Talking Points

You have to love Mayavati, the Dalit school teacher tough enough to thrive in the circumambient thuggery of the Uttar Pradesh political scene. Her Bahujan Samaj party resoundingly thumped its competition in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election yesterday. In particular, her recruitment of Brahmins seems to have decimated the BJP vote base, and deservedly so, given that the saffronites were as incendiary in their tactics as ever, releasing an anti-Muslim CD-ROM that can only be described as hate speech. The erstwhile ruler, the Samajwadi party, was equally suspect and "communal" when it endorsed one of its minister’s bounty offers on the head of the Danish cartoonist who messed with Muhammed, besides which it really sucked at governance, giving thugs, low-lifes and assorted factions of organized crime carte blanche to menace the state any way they saw fit.

Many Brahmins will get portfolios in Mayavati’s government, but unlike Congress coalitions, which patronizingly co-opted  "lower" castes into an essentially "upper" caste power structure, this one will be run by a Dalit party.

In a way it’s a revolution; in a way it’s not, for caste remains the paramount organizing principle in Indian politics - indeed, Indian society -  and those who can temporarily cobble together disparate groups will win elections.

Click on the link below and sign in solidarity with those of us who wish to apologize for the historical injustices committed against our brothers and sisters.

An apology is only a start - but a good one.

Navya Shastra

Navya Shastra has issued an apology, on behalf of the global community of Hindus, to India’s former untouchables.

In a significant judgement, the Orissa High Court rules that Dalits have a right to enter any Hindu temple:

“Every Hindu, irrespective of his caste, has a right to enter any Hindu temple which is open to other persons professing the same religion,” a division bench of Chief Justice Sujit Burman Roy and Justice M M Das observed.

Emancipatory, enlightened, epochal even - if this was the 18th century, yes? Ruling addresses concerns raised in Navya Shastra press release.

You Wrote from Los Angeles

"In the stores here, in hotels, across the streets,

Indians and curs are measured with the same yard-stick;

‘Niggers’ ‘Blacks’! This is the abuse they fling me

And deep in my heart a thousand scorpions sting me".

Reading all this, I felt so damn good!

Now you’ve had a taste of what we’ve suffered

In this country from generation to generation . . .

-Daya Pawar, 1974 

(Translated from Kannada by Graham Smith.)

Practicing Hindus must change their mindset; there is no other way to reduce caste discrimination. I say practicing Hindus because so-called progressives who have renounced all religion as obscurantist are doomed to remain a small minority in India and elsewhere. Renouncing Hinduism in India is, in effect, renouncing society - one is left shouting in a lonely place. 

You may exhaust every remedy available within the constitutional framework, you may pass new laws, you may continue to bring legal challenges, and they may help somewhat, but unfortunately, the infrastructure from which you seek redress, especially at the village level, is controlled by people who have implicitly accepted caste hierarchy, who have organized their lives around a birth-based order. This is why, despite a very reformist constitution that made untouchability illegal, Dalits continue to be raped, murdered, and tortured. This is why the laws are not enforced.

While I support the Dalits’ right to convert, and recognize the psychological liberation it has given to some, conversion has done little to better their situation collectively. Dalit Christians continue to be discriminated against within Christian churches, so much so that they seek reservations for jobs and seats in educational institutions; in Maharastra, "baudh" has become another term for the Mahar Buddhist.

Religious conversion will make the problem inter-religious rather than intra-communal; caste discrimination will morph into religious discrimination, and no one would have been served.

The urban Hindu who makes a casteist remark about a Dalit is only a less brutal version of the villager who physically assaults Dalits for overstepping their "place." The "high" caste pandit who refuses to initiate a sudra is implicitly saying, "You are a lower level of human, be off!" Where do you think the so-called backwards learn their behavior from? And, let me add, the indifferent Hindu unaware of what happens beyond the perimeters of his metro, who is so proud to have "transcended caste," is complicit for compartmentalizing himself in a false world.

Religious leaders still have immense power within India. I am told that Swami Ramdev virtually halted the sale of Coke in Delhi when he alleged it wasn’t a good product. What if we pressured them to rethink their ways? Can we reinterpret our understanding of caste enough to eliminate birth-based hierarchy?  I think we can, though it will take many passionate people to finish what Gandhi, Phule, Narayana Guru, Suraj Bhan and other reformist Hindus started. If anti-casteism is sanctioned by dharma, if we end the apologies for what is rotten in the system, then things will change for the better, and this can only be an internal effort.

"We want to reiterate that it’s our constitutional right to enter the temple like others and pray. We want to do it in a peaceful way. If anyone tries to prevent us, it’s up to the administration to deal with them," said Rajkishore Muduli, Dalit Leader, Keredagarh.

With local groups politicising the issue, things have become complicated. A pro-Dalit body plans to hold a rally of around 20,000 people on Sunday.

But upper caste leaders from outside who have been camping in the village say they will not allow the Dalits to enter the temple.

"We are opposed to their entry. We want caste-based discrimination to go from our constitution, polity and education. Only then we will allow them entry. We have decided to block all routes and even sleep on the roads to ensure the rally doesn’t enter the village," said Seshdev Nanda, Leader, Uchcha Jaati Vikash Parishad.

Orissa Dalits hope to enter Jagannath temple

You know, I was going to write a tribute in honor of the Travancore temple entry proclamation, whose anniversary was November 12. But because of events like this, I cannot in good conscience do so.

Shame.

The mass conversion rally in Nagpur, where a million Dalits were to change their religion today, turned out to be a damp squib with only 600 of them in attendance.

The VIPs, too, decided to give the event a miss. The only people who had turned up in strength were reporters from across the world.

Titled World Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Religion Day, the rally was planned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism.

V.P. Singh and Mayavati were on the guest list, but there was no sign of the two, although Mayavati was in the city to address a BSP meeting.

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Nation

So much for a religious rebellion meant to shake the very foundations of Hindu society. The non-event appeared finely spun in the international press, which leads me to believe that at least some of the organizers were from western Christian bodies. The drive took place in many cities in India. The most impressive may have been in Karnataka.

Christian and Buddhist activists jointly organized the effort. That Christians have appropriated Ambedkar seems curious to me: it is well-known that the Dalit hero and Indian founding father rejected Christianity for the Dalits because he ardently felt that the religion would "denationalize" them, besides forestalling the emancipation of India.

But exigencies create coalitions. The Dalit Buddhists don’t have much money, but they have the prestige of being Ambedkar’s spiritual heirs; the Christians have plenty of money, but are associated with westernization and colonialism.

The Christian groups probably don’t consider the decentralized Buddhists a threat to their designs anyway, so what’s a little money for stage time?

And beyond the game sits the Dalit under the tree, aware that he is a pawn in a religious and political spectacle, bemused that no one really cares what he thinks. What if, God forbid, he’s happy just the way he is?

In an effort to woo neo-Buddhists, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief K.C. Sudarshan lauded Dalit messiah B.R Ambedkar and quoted Hindu priests as saying that the architect of the Indian constitution was forced to lead Dalits out of the Hindu fold because of the ‘grave mistakes of our forefathers’. …

RSS chief showers praise on Ambedkar - India News

If the RSS (a Hindu nationalist organization) wishes to make good with neo-Buddhist converts, it should pressure Hindu mutts (monasteries) to cease discriminating against Dalits and other "lower" castes in religious ceremonies. Also, they should cut out the hegemony-talk; they’ve no business trying to appropriate Ambekarite Buddhism, which - hello? - will breed an immense amount of mistrust in the Dalit Buddhist community. If there is to be any reunification at all, it must happen organically, with Dalits and Dalits alone deciding which community to identify with. And  increasingly, they will not identify with Hinduism if the current state of affairs in India persisists.

Jaishree says on Navya Shastra that 50 percent of Tamil Nadu Dalits have converted to Christianity, though official census figures do not reflect that. Personally, if I were marginalized by the entire mass of Indian society, I might consider doing the same. At Navya Shastra, we speak against the still prevalent casteism that mars, and occasionally destroys, the religious lives of Dalits. Personally, I also support  Ambedkarite Buddhism, which combines a faith of social protest with an enlightened rationalism. Ambedkarite Buddhists have also added meditative practices to their spiritual heritage, and are in the midst of creating not only a literary tradition but also a popular culture.