Hindu 12-01-1999 :: Pg: 12 :: Col: c
By Gopal Guru
In recent years, the political radicalism of the Dalits has come to be defined
in terms of two major modes. One is that they have shown a remarkable
consistency in opposing both in elections and in the streets the Hindutva
forces. Two, their politics is considered radical because of their constant
efforts at empowering themselves by sharing power with others. It is
particularly true in the case of the Dalits of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and
the southern States that they have been consistent in taking an un-compromising
positions against the Hindutva forces. The anti-Hindutva feeling among the
Dalits is so strong that they do not tolerate their own leaders who hobnob with
these forces either directly or indirectly. Such leaders who took an ambiguous
position vis-a-vis the Sena-BJP Government in Maharashtra and remained quite
callous about the killing of the Dalits in police firing in Mumbai in July last
year were assaulted. The political radicalism is also being defined in terms of
the Dalits' bargaining power that no political party can ignore in parliamentary
politics in the country. This is true in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh where the
Dalits seem politically organised outside the influence of the mainstream
parties. Thus political autonomy is treated as another dimension of this
radicalism by certain Dalit political leaders from these two States.
The scenario might be true in a sense, but this kind of reading of the Dalits'
activism offers a narrow and uni-dimensional notion of their political
radicalism. For it does not tackle the structures of oppression and
discrimination that exist within the Dalit situation. For example, Dalits
activism in Maharashtra is politically blind to the social practices such as
Dalit patriarchy, which seeks to oppress, torture, humiliate and marginalise its
womenfolk. This patriarchy in Maharashtra, and even in the entire country,
reproduces the upper caste tradition of dowry which commodifies women even from
landless Dalit families. The dowry system, which was almost non-existent among
the Dalits two decades ago, has now become a serious problem particularly in
Maharashtra. Poor parents who cannot afford to give dowry are reported to be
``selling'' their girls outside the State, and those who cannot be sold or
married off are ultimately left to be tortured by parents and by the Dalit
community, which arrogates to itself the right to ensure the chastity and
fidelity of its women. Interestingly, this issue did not find prominence in the
recently-held Dalit women's conferences in the State.
Apart from the gender insensitivity among common Dalits, their leaders and even
Dalit feminists in Maharashtra, the notion of purity and pollution has deeply
divided the community both vertically and horizontally. Vertically, for example,
this notion has made the Charmakar (leather worker) despise the Mahar- Buddhists
who, in turn, despise the Matangs who are treated as inferior in the social
hierarchy not only in Maharashtra but also elsewhere. At the horizontal level,
the Buddhists are socially divided among themselves. And the social division
prevails in protecting the kinship boundaries. The kinship network that
maintains the social distance among the Buddhists operates through marriage
practices and other rituals in Maharashtra. But the Buddhists, who are
socio-culturally divided, are politically united against the Hindutva forces.
The question one has to raise is why the Dalit leaders avoid addressing
themselves to the question of internal critique. How does one understand such
incoherent behaviour among the Dalits? In other words, why does this bizarre
consciousness which represents their intellectual crisis waver between the
conservative and radical modes? There are several reasons that help us
understand this. The first and foremost is the threat of the Shiv Sena-BJP
dominating their thought and action. This political immediacy dominates the
cognitive map of Dalit politics, thus leaving out the question of confronting
the oppressive patriarchy.
Moreover, the common Dalits do not undertake the painful exercise of internal
critique as it undermines their power of patriarchy. This logical incoherence
conforms to the political expectations of the Dalit leaders, who deliberately
insulate the private sphere of the common Dalit from public criticism so that
they can fill the common Dalit consciousness with emotion and manipulate the
community. Their effort to maintain the distinction between the private or
social and the political life of the Dalits, in effect, denies the common Dalit
consciousness the critical edge that seeks to interrogate both the internal
structures of manipulation and the external structures of domination. It is due
to this compulsion that the common Dalits refuse to find a new political
alternative and choose to pursue their recalcitrant leaders.
It is this curious relationship between the leaders and the led that explains
the limits of Dalit politics in Maharashtra. Thus it is ``faith'' rather than
reason that determines Dalit politics. It makes the common Dalits more dependent
on their leaders and prevents them from launching any decisive attack on erring
leaders. In such kind of politics where faith dominates reason, any kind of
argument against the leaders becomes futile.
In fact, the leaders and their cadre take extra care to create the ``community
of the faithful'' among the Dalits by reinvoking the importance of hero worship
and the myth of charismatic qualities of particular Dali leaders. The common
Dalits feel that they cannot provide a more competent and sophisticated argument
than what their leaders do. The leaders perpetuate this servile attitude by
deliberately using an abstract language. This construction of an elite image
works everywhere in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh and creates a
rather degrading dependence, which necessarily denies both dignity and critical
faculty to the thinking of the Dalits.
This lack of enlightenment among the Dalits leads to the legitimisation of Dalit
politics which has become self-limiting as it eludes the question of Dalit
emancipation. It also makes the Dalits willing partners in supporting their
political leaders who lack an ability to offer an alternative vision of
politics.
In this regard, it is important to offer a critical comment on the contemporary
Dalit feminism in Maharashtra. The Dalit leaders in the State fail to articulate
gender equality and are in no mood to confront the Dalit patriarchy.
The Dalit feminist confidence in such a leadership appears misplaced, if not
misleading. However, a few feminists have maintained their distance from such
leadership.
How can the Dalit leaders feel empowered when they feed on the political
passivity of their common people on the issue of internal critique? The lack of
internal critique also robs Dalit politics of its universal character of
reaching out independently to other oppressed sections which are also in need of
a fresh grass roots initiative entailing a new vision of the world based on the
concept of truth.
Contemporary Dalit politics, therefore, seeks a definite political departure
from Ambedkar, not realising or deliberately avoiding the need for an internal
critique. Ambedkar, on the one hand, criticised the communists and the Congress
leadership for their sociological blindness to an internal critique of the Hindu
social order and, on the other, condemned the Hindu nationalists, who ridiculed
and then opposed the need for any internal critique.
This kind of externally-looking Dailt politics, instead of providing a creative
context for activism, becomes supplementary to the politics of hegemonic faces
in one way or the other.
(The writer is Mahatma Gandhi Professor, Department of Politics and Public
Administration, University of Pune).