Annihilation of Castes: Past, Present and Future
Anand Teltumbde
The origins of the caste system are trapped in the interstices of myth and history. The
mythologized history of ancient India does not let us know precisely how this system came into
existence and how it evolved through centuries. Despite huge scholarly interests in its study,
there are no definitive conclusions on these aspects. What is evident is that it continues to be
a potent force that impacts people according to their placement in social hierarchy. While the
classical caste system has undergone change through history, its biggest victims continue to be
Dalits, who number one-sixth of India's total population.
While social stratification was not uncommon across the world in ancient times, what is unique
about the Indian system is that it is supposed to have religious sanction, and divine origination.
It is commonly believed that the varna system evolved into a system of numerous castes. The
more plausible view is that the nomadic tribes in the subcontinent while settling down for
agriculture settled without losing their tribal identities unlike elsewhere. The factor that explains
this exceptional feature is the natural endowment of the subcontinent. With plenty of flat and
fertile land; ample amount of sunshine, and regularity and adequacy of rainfall, it was possible
for the tribal families to survive on small plots of land unlike, for instance, in Europe, where a
small window of sunshine, irregularity of rains, extreme cold weather necessitated an army of
people to work on a large tract of land, giving rise to a system of slavery. Castes were nothing
but these settled tribes with their respective totems, which came into existence prior to the advent
of varnas. They came to be associated with vocations but sans any hierarchy. When the alien
people, wherever they came from (probably they came from Persia), brought in their varna
system initially with three varnas and then four, it was lain over the existing castes imparting
them hierarchy and religious sanction. I tend to take this as a possible hypothesis for the origin of
castes.
Although the varna framework is uncritically taken as the hierarchical structure for the castes,
the truth is that it rarely encountered in any part of the subcontinent in its entirety. What is
encountered is the existence of priestly castes and the preponderance of the laboring (shudra)
castes and the untouchables. The intermediate varnas of kshatriya and vaishyas may not be
found in all parts. For example in Maharashtra, there is no kshatriya as well as vaishya varna.
At the time of coronation, Shivaji had to claim ancestry of Rajputs of Rajputana and during his
reign had to import vaishyas (people who could manage money) from Gujarat. Castes multiplied
within a varna with new vocations emerging or assimilating new people. They imbibed the
notion of hierarchy of the varna system adjudicated by the priestly caste of Brahmans. Naturally,
this multiplication happened within the laboring varna. The existence of the Untouchables has
been enigmatic because they are classed some times as the fifth varna, sometimes as a-varna, i.e.,
non-varna or even non-castes. Babasaheb Ambedkar proposed 'broken men' theory for them,
which however lacks validation by the scholars. The hatred of others that characterize them
possibly is due to their resistance to be subjugated within the varna framework. Whatever their
origin, they constitute the most important part of the caste system.
The castes had become the life-world of the people, which survived through the hegemony
of the anti-Brahmanic ideologies of Buddhism and Jainism for almost a millennium. The first
significant dent the caste system faced was during the Islamic rule, mainly between the eleventh
and seventeenth centuries, when it stabilized in the subcontinent. Apart from religio-cultural
appeal of Islam to the lower castes, the Muslim rule brought its advanced feudal system that
systematized land revenue administration, promoted manufacturing guilds and established cities,
which provided further avenues to the lower castes to escape the bondage of village system. In
addition to the alien civilizational model that did not have any birth based privileges, the very
influx of the lower castes into Islam kept the upper castes away from it. But later, the upper
castes were also lured by the possibility of material gains and became Muslims. They introduced
the notion of hierarchy in Muslim society.
During the same period, one more wave of anti-caste movement emerged in the form of Bhakti
movement, which originated in South between the sixth and tenth centuries. Bhakti movement
was not a unified movement but in relation to caste, it reflected, at least in some of its radical
strands like Kabir panth, individualistic and anti-corporatist rebellion against caste. It had raised
many low caste individuals like Ravidas, Chokhamela to the stature of sainthood and did not
distinguish people by caste. Though these individuals broke caste restrictions imposed upon
the dalit communities to become Bhaktas, they could only preach human equality and criticize
caste practices. Their influence on the society was limited only to spiritualism and prescribed
moksha as the salvation. Later, in the fifteenth century, when Sikhism, assimilating the lofty
ideals of the Bhakti movement and Islam, was born—directly promising the banishment of
caste distinctions—Dalits in the Punjab region rushed in to embrace it. However, other than
being bestowed with such new appellations as Mazhabi Sikhs and Ravidasias, Sikhism made no
substantive difference to their lives.
The most severe jolt to the caste system came during the British colonial rule. It had its impact
mainly in the following three ways: One, in order to consolidate their colonial control, the British
had instituted ethnographic documentation and started caste based census, bringing in rigid
hierarchy in what was a fluid life-world of people. Two, they brought in western institutional
framework of governance with its army, police, rule of law, judiciary, and modern education.
And three, they facilitated capitalist development of infrastructure and industry. While the first
had induced acute caste consciousness in people and had an adverse impact on the lower castes,
the second and third have been directly beneficial to them in rising against their oppression.
Although largely unintended, the colonial rule brought about two changes: One, it catalysed the
anti-caste movements of the lower castes and two, with the advent of capitalism, It caused the
collapse of ritualistic castes among the dwija castes, simplifying the caste continuum into three
hierarchies: dwija, shudra and the Untouchables.
The first of the anti-caste revolts of the lower castes was articulated by Jotiba Phule in
Maharashtra. He exposed the exploitation of the working classes (shudra-ati-shudra) by the
shetjis and bhatjis (moneylenders and priestly class) and traced it to the denial of education to
the former by Brahmanism. He rebelled against the enslaving customs of the latter and inspired
people from the lower castes to rise against their caste exploitation. Gopal Baba Walangkar,
whom Babasaheb Ambedkar called the pioneer of the Dalit movement and Shivram Janba
Kamble of Pune were the disciples of Phule. Even when Ambedkar launched his movement, he
respectfully acknowledged the debt of Phule as one of his gurus.
*
Babasaheb Ambedkar did not practice caste politics in sense of pursuing betterment of a
particular caste. Right from the formation of his first organization, Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha, he
had involved progressive people from other castes and communities, to the extent that this Sabha
was completely constituted by the upper caste/class people, and had Dalits only in its managing
committee, with Ambedkar as chairman, S N Shivtarkar as secretary and NT Jadhav as treasurer.
While he took up the cause of the Untouchables, he always referred to them as 'depressed
classes'. Of course, his conception of class came closer to Weberian than Marxian. It was
reflective of the influence on him of the Fabian ideology and politics while in the Columbia
University and thereafter in London School of Economics, which was founded by the Fabians.
Untouchables, an assemblage of all the castes outside the pale of varna system, were not a caste
but a class of socially excluded people occupying a particular space in social and production
relations. His followers, who were naturally drawn predominantly from his own caste failed to
comprehend the subtlety in his thoughts and took him as their caste 'messiah' and reduced him to
a caste icon. Either way, it was not easy to discern it as the initial moves of Ambedkar could not
be distinguished from the incipient movements of the Untouchables, which were basically aimed
to uplift their respective castes. Whether it was his invoking the huge progress made by Mahars
and lamenting their decline or whether it was his exhortation to the Dalit women to conduct
themselves in a certain manner, whether it was eulogizing the valor of the Mahar Soldiers died
in the Koregaon Battle in 1818, it was indistinguishable from the activities of the predecessors
like Walangkar, Kamble or Bansode. Since his following predominantly came from his own
caste, his addresses to them naturally smacked of caste pride. Indeed, it was and is still difficult
to transcend the caste idiom in the caste ridden environment.
Babasaheb Ambedkar did not have the vision of annihilation of caste at the beginning. In his first
essay, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, presented in an
anthropological seminar in Columbia University, which surely reflects a veritable leap in the
understanding castes in scholastic realm, he defines castes as enclosed classes; the enclosure
around class being provided by the systems of endogamy and exogamy. While he did not dwelt
upon any solution to the problem, it followed that if one wanted to annihilate castes this
enclosure needed to be torn away by disbanding endogamy and exogamy. This understanding
informed his reformist expectations that if the caste Hindus were sensitized about the wrong in
the caste system, they might push forth reforms to remove the enclosure. The strategy comprised
awakening of the Untouchables as well as the caste Hindus to the evils of castes. It also included
addressing the social and economic backwardness of the Untouchables. While Mooknayak (his
first paper started in 1920) was devoted to this awakening aspects, the aims and objectives of the
Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha, that he founded related with the issues of providing education,
spreading culture, improving economic condition and representing the grievances of
the 'depressed classes'. It was a pure reformist agenda and did not have even the confrontationist
content, not to speak of any revolutionary dimension of annihilation of castes. It is only from
Mahad, that he came in direct confrontation with the caste Hindus. Reflection on the bitter
experiences in Mahad and subsequently with Gandhi, representing the larger Hindu society
propelled him to write Annihilation of Castes, where he came to the conclusion that castes could
not be reformed and had to go lock stock and barrel. It was based on his understanding that
castes were integral part of Hinduism, being ordained by its dharmashstras (scriptures). In
programmatic terms, it therefore meant destroying the foundation of Hinduism, the Hindu
dharmashastras that informed the ideology of castes. As he saw it well neigh impossible,
directionally it reduced to renouncing Hinduism as he had decided for himself. It amounted to
saying that annihilation of castes was not ordinarily possible because the caste Hindus, who had
their vested interests in castes would never be ready to destroy their dharmashastras. The only
option therefore for the victims of castes was to exit Hinduism.
It implied that since the goal of annihilation of castes did not seem feasible, the victims of
the caste system could leave Hinduism to the caste Hindus and get themselves out of its
oppressive yoke. But the question arises, whether by renouncing Hinduism they would escape
caste oppression. The answer to this question may ordinarily be no. If all of them renounced
Hinduism, structurally the Hindu society would be bottomed out threatening the caste system
itself. But it would mean being unavailable physically for the Hindus to be oppressed, which
would not happen merely by quitting Hinduism. While it might mean coming out of mental
slavery, physically they would be still condemned at their old sites to work for living. One did
not have to hypothesize this aftermath. If one looked through history, there have been such
religious exoduses of the lower castes from Hinduism (the population of the non-Hindus in
the subcontinent clearly testifying to it) but they have barely escaped their fate. Castes have
not only survived, they have infested these new religious communities with its venom. Even
physical migration of Dalits to distant lands could not rid them of the caste stigma if there were
caste Hindus around, as the Dalit Diaspora in Europe and Americas would vouch for. The caste
Hindus perhaps could not live without their 'Dalits'. Where they Dalits were not available for
them as in Africa, they created their notional Dalits out of the native Black population!
The inescapable conclusion that follows is that castes could not be understood in terms of any
discrete custom of endogamy/exogamy or any religious dictate. While castes encompassed all
these, they came to be rooted in a particular mode of living. They became the life-world of people
that could not be discretely identified or bounded. It is precisely for this reason that even
wealthy Dalits (and there are examples of rich individuals existing in many parts of the country
even before the Ambedkarite movement) could not rid them of the caste stigma. It is erroneously
argued to claim that economic advancement does not have anything to do with castes. It does
and does not; it does certainly more than any other factor, but not in the entirety. Where Dalits
are not tied up in dependence relationship with the caste Hindus, they are surely less vulnerable
to caste oppression than where they are. Also, whatever changes that occurred in this life-world
can be clearly traced to the changes in political economic factors in history. Therefore it can be
safely said that material (read economic) factors are more impactful in the matters of caste than
any other but still they are not all, contrary to the claims of vulgar materialists. It may be put this
way that if you worked on non-material factors ignoring the material factor, you are bound to
fail. But if you worked only on material factors and ignored the non-material factors, you might
not succeed.
Babasaheb Ambedkar could not programmatically indicate what would bring about the
annihilation of castes. It provides the feed to the vested interests to argue that he did not
prescribe annihilation of castes. The value of his profundity lies not in its programmatic
explication but in its sheer vision. Programmatically, he was misled by locating castes in the
Hindu scriptures and then seeing impossibility of its annihilation. But it would be foolish to
say that he did not envision annihilation of castes. When the partial opportunity came years
later while making the Constitution of India, he again could not exercise his will. Besides tacit
opposition, he faced a certain dilemma, whether to negate castes and give up the basis for special
safeguards for the Untouchables. As a matter of fact, these safeguards had flowed from the
colonial times and its beneficiaries were already frozen. Leaving them as the administrative
category, castes could still be legally abolished. But they would not be and would rather be
preserved as a proverbial goose for the ruling classes with an alibi that they wanted to do the
social justice to other backward castes to be identified by their state as and when it feels so. In
the history of India's political intrigues, it has proved to be a masterstroke by the ruling classes,
and a veritable whip, as far as Dalits were concerned, which remains unnoticed either by their
leaders or intellectuals.
Much is made out of outlawing the Untouchability. This was the voluntary response from every
notable from among the caste Hindus to the awakening among the Untouchables, particularly
after the Lucknow Pact. It was a ploy to assuage the feelings of the Untouchables without
materially disturbing anything. Since untouchability was sourced from castes, abolition of
untouchability would mean nothing if castes lived. This is precisely what happened. Even
after 70 years of its abolition, various surveys conducted in recent years reveal to us that more
than 60-70 percent villages observe untouchability in its various intensities. The constitutional
abolition of untouchability has proved useless.
*
The struggle of the historically discriminated castes tends to take the form of struggle for
recognition, which then essentially slips into identity politics. Identity politics is always favoured
by the mainstream as it does not challenge the real structures of exploitation. Moreover, it
preserves liberal virus to stave off revolutionary ideas from masses. In India, a veritable museum
of identities, it has to rule the roost. Neither Phule nor Ambedkar meant to promote caste
identities. But in the very process of conception of class contradiction they could not avoid the
overriding caste identities of people. Phule explicitly meant to pitch the working classes against
the parasitic classes but he could not avoid the prevalent idiom of castes, viz., the shudras-
ati-shudras although he used more class-like expression for the enemy duo in shetjis and
bhatjis. The same things could be said of Ambedkar. He bettered Phule in conceiving enemy
in terms of ideology and not the people, viz., capitalism and Brahmanism, but in conception of
the protagonist class could not avoid the prevailing caste identities such as the Untouchables,
although he tried to use the alternate class-indicative expression- depressed classes, as much as
possible. The subtle distinction that they made was lost to people who translated them in their
familiar terms: making depressed class to mean the Untouchable castes at best and their own
caste at worst, and the Brahmanism to mean people of Brahman caste, despite Ambedkar's
emphatic elaboration that Brahmanism could well reside even in Dalits. Besides the idiomatic
compulsion, the struggle for emancipation they launched for these people necessarily had to pass
through struggle for recognition of their misrecognized identities, which had to be the castes. For
instance, Ambedkar's struggle for separate electorates for the Untouchables in the Round Table
Conferences as well as his efforts in instituting reservations for them were both inevitable and
necessary parts of the larger struggle for their emancipation.
The innocuous use of the caste idiom also however did the damage. While Phule's shudra had
separated themselves from their ati-shudra brethren, no sooner Jotiba passed away, (it is said
that they did not allow the Untouchables to enter the hall where a condolence meeting for Phule
was organized in Pune), the other Untouchable castes than his own mostly kept away from
Ambedkar. (Ambedkar's following largely came from his own Mahar caste and the Mahar-like
majority caste among the Untouchables in every geographic region.) This natural identity
polarization could be easily exploited by the ruling classes in electoral process. While Ambedkar
had realized on the eve of 1937 elections the need to broad-base his politics on a class line and
adopted the ILP-model of England, transcending his overt focus on the issues of the
Untouchables, the Congress schemed to thwart other Untouchable castes from identifying with
Ambedkar. It is a symbolic lesson of history that Ambedkar's tryst with class politics brings him
significant win (ILP winning 14 out of 17 seats contested that included 11 reserved seats out of
13 contested and 3 general seats out of 4 contested in 1937 provincial elections for Bombay
Presidency) whereas his seemingly caste politics meets him with repeated defeats (Ambedkar
getting defeated by political non-entities in 1952 and 1954 elections). The political imperatives
revealed by the Cripps Mission Report impelled him to decide dissolution of the ILP and float a
seemingly communal party called the Scheduled Caste Federation (SCF). Alongside he was
inducted in the viceroy's executive council as labour member (minister) and significantly
contributed to the labour welfare. Although the SCF was ostensibly formed to further the
interests of the SCs, it did not do it at the cost of its erstwhile class orientation. The most
memorable document it produced was the States and Minorities, written by Ambedkar, as a
memorandum to the Constituent Assembly, suggesting a framework of state socialism to be
adopted for the Constitution of India. Ambedkar is seen thereafter in a statesman's role
shouldering the responsibility of drafting the Constitution and taking cudgels for women in the
Hindu Code Bill as the law minister. Later, he embraced Buddhism as the moral code that stood
for 'liberty, equality, fraternity' and as a strong historical antidote to Brahmanism. He also
envisioned the formation of Republican Party of India (RPI), bringing all non-Congress, non-
Communist elements under one umbrella, which would be the main opposition party in the
parliamentary democracy. His entire life reflects a strong abhorrence for castes and a quest for
the ideology of human emancipation. As a hard core liberal, he had strong reservations about the
revolutionary schema of Marxism although he accepted its goal of human emancipation.
The intricacies of Ambedkar's thoughts were lost to his followers after his death who soon
packaged him as a caste-identity icon shorn of his universal vision of emancipation. Some
would shroud him with Buddhist spirituality and project as a bodhisatva, some as a inveterate
anti-Marxist, some as the greatest protagonist of parliamentary democracy, and some as sans
ideology opportunist pursuing the interests of his community to make it 'a ruling community'.
While they formed the RPI in deference to his wishes on 3 October 1957 in an SCF conference
in Nagpur, there were no attempts to include non-Dalits in the party. It was merely a change
in label of the SCF, with its default content of collection of particular castes. Ambedkar had
revealed his plans for RPI as the non-ideological political party working for "the economic,
social, cultural and moral progress of the Indian people with rational and modernist outlook'.
A decision was accordingly taken on 30 September 1956, just a fortnight before the great
conversion to dissolve the SCF and form the RPI. In absence of any 'ideological' anchor,
Ambedkar-icon itself became the anchor of the RPI, which was inherently constricted as per the
understanding of the leaders. Under the shadow of his towering leadership, the rivalry among the
leaders could not surface, which however resurged soon after his demise.
RPI from the day one, became the house divided. Various leaders began pulling and pushing it
in different directions. The momentous changes in political economy that began befalling the
country passed it by. During the decade, the Nehruvian government had launched the Five Year
Plans giving impression of its socialist orientation, undertook calibrated land reforms, brought in
capitalist agriculture technology of Green Revolution, in order to institute state control over the
economy, and to entrench its political control in vast rural area by creating a class of rich farmers
out of the populous shudra caste band. In the ensuing flood of capitalist relations Dalits were
reduced to be the rural proletariat, devoid of the sense of security of traditional jajmani system.
The new production relations soon began manifesting into wage disputes, which precipitated
into a new genre of caste atrocities, the first being in Kilvenmani in Tamilnadu in December
1968. On the other side, with the rising aspirations of the rural rich, the political equations began
changing between the traditional upper (dwija) castes and the shudra castes; the latter beginning
to wield reins of power from the upper caste Hindus. As in the colonial times, the class of rich
farmers having turned capitalist, using their caste ties hooked up the shudra band wagon to dwija
further simplifying the caste into a class-like divide between the Dalits and non-Dalits.
At the time the Congress had relied on the constituency of Dalits, Adivasis, and religious
minorities. The separatist tendency of the most populous Dalits as Ambedkarites in this
formation was noted as threat and the Congress devised its cooptation strategy, first tried out
by Yashwantrao Chavan, the representative of the newly emerged class of rich farmers who
had become the chief minister of Maharashtra in the den of the Ambedkarite movement. He
succeeded in luring Dadasaheb Gaikwad, the president of the RPI into an electoral coalition
with the Congress. It paved ways for others to variously jump over to the bandwagon of ruling
classes, and splintering RPI into innumerable factions. The Dalit Panthers that came into
being in the general atmosphere of political turbulence world over due to the endemic crisis of
capitalism after experiencing its golden period for the previous two decades, and particularly
responding to the political debacle of the RPI, alarmed the ruling classes but soon fell prey to
their machinations ending up like RPI. Another significant response to the failure of the RPI
came in the form of Bamcef, taking advantage of a sizable class of reservation beneficiaries
from among the SCs and STs, to conceive a broad based organization of the educated employees
belonging to SCs, STs, BCs, and Minority communities against the 15 percent dwija castes.
Kanshiram, himself belonging to this class of government employees conceived and anchored
this initiative, transformed this into an agitprop organization called DS4 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj
Sangharsh Samiti) in 1981 and later again transformed it into a political party, Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) in 1984.
Kanshiram succeeded in his political strategy capturing the political power in UP, which with
its peculiar history of Dalit politics and Dalit demography lent fertile ground for his experiment.
With the concrete core of Dalits and the moss of political power, the BSP could easily expand
its tentacles and entrench itself in the contemporary political milieu. The BSP followed naked
identity politics and inevitably became one of the ruling class parties. It enthused middle classes
among Dalits to see one of their caste-woman as the shining star among the political bigwigs
but it did not help Dalit masses in any manner, except for a notional relish of being with power.
Objectively, they find themselves more vulnerable in their settings being pitched against the
entrenched classes which bind them further to BSP to preserve the notional protective political
cover. On the strength of this core constituency the BSP has single-mindedly pursued political
power, annihilating the Ambedkarite agenda of annihilation of Castes and fooling his gullible
followers with his grandiose memorials.
*
The class of rich farmers in villages created by the Congress proved Frankenstein. With its huge
enrichment it grew in its own political ambition and began occupying important positions in the
party structure or floating their own regional parties. These regional parties eroded the monopoly
of the Congress and inaugurated the era of coalition politics, where a small chunk of votes also
fetched good return in the prevailing first-past-the-post type of election system. The electoral
politics thus became increasingly competitive bringing in so much importance to castes and such
other identities. The shielded weapon of the reservations to the backward classes, which had
remained dormant after the Kalelkar Commission in 1953 and Mandal Commission in 1980, was
unleashed by VP Singh by implementing recommendations of the latter in 1989, opening the
real case of caste worms in the society. Reservations came in their true prowess as weapons in
the hands of the political parties who began using them with impunity in their political calculus.
Paradoxically, it was happening in the era of neoliberal globalization that would soon render
them meaningless by fast eroding its base in the public sector. Within a decade of 1997 to 2007,
the public sector employment base was actually eroded from its peak at 187 lakh jobs to 180
lakh jobs signifying the end of reservations in 1997 itself. But the political parties would wink
at this stark reality and keep fooling people by instigating demands for reservations for every
conceivable caste and community, including Mayawati's Brahmans.
With the collapse of Soviet regime and consequently disaffection of class politics, there has been
a resurgence of identity politics all over the world. The uncertainties and insecurities unleashed
by neoliberal globalization also impelled people to seek shelter in their identities. The academics
on their part, characteristically following the power that be, have boosted the idea with their
post-modernist discourse. Indeed, it has become a fashion among them to project identity
politics as great democratizer. It is said for instance that politics of recognition, based variously
on identities of caste, language, and religion, was a crucial feature of democratic struggle in
post-independent India. We had a plethora of them and their net result can be seen only in the
tightening grip of the ruling classes around the necks of people! Identity politics cannot be
emancipatory anywhere because it necessarily crosses the axis of emancipation and remains
essentially fragmentary. It is not to undermine the importance of existential struggles against
identities such as caste, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, etc., but they should in no case override the
class struggle which is universal and hence emnacipatory.
This is about identities in general. But caste, which gets loosely combined with such identities,
has special characteristics that would further invalidate caste-based politics. Castes are inherently
hierarchy seeking, like amoeba that splits ad infinitum and hence they can never be the basis of
any radical struggle. Castes create an illusion of togetherness under pressure but splits when the
pressure is removed. In the heat of Ambedkarite movement, all the Mahar sub-castes remained
together and wore an identity of 'dalit' but as soon as this heat waned, the sub-caste identities
resurged splintering the movement itself. It is said that one of these sub-castes had publicly
displayed a board with its name in Nagpur, the den of the Ambedkarite movement. The caste
identity may serve the vested interests, and indeed it surely does, but it can never be helpful for
any struggle for radical change. Ambedkar's slogan of annihilation of caste is the only apt vision
in relation to them.
*
Today the menace of identity politics has already marginalized the emancipation agenda. The
castes have resurged everywhere with their respective caste icons, publicly displaying their
identity formations in an unprecedented manner. The success of BSP and SP thriving on a
single caste core has given the boost to this phenomenon. Paradoxically, Dalits flaunting their
allegiance to Ambedkar are in forefront to project their identities, not as Dalit but as Moolniwasi,
and worst, as Malas, Madigas, Pasis, and others. Identities are also applied to such modernist
systems as capitalism (Dalit capitalism) to incite caste pride and curry favour from the state. The
caste pride effectively blinds people from objective realities. Mulayam Singhs or Mayawatis
then can attempt any acrobatics under cover of this blind caste support. Identity politics only
intoxicates masses and lends impunity to the leaders.
The single biggest instrument in boosting these identities has been reservations. They are
uncritically acclaimed as the instrument of social justice ignoring the fact that it necessarily
crosses the principle of equality and creates perennial discordance in society. It therefore
warrants judicious application. Reservations in favour of the ex-Untouchables as instituted
during the colonial times were such judicious use of the concept. The Untouchables were
indisputably a class of unique people in the world, who were identifiable on an unambiguous
criterion. There could not be much dispute over the fact that in an open system the deep
entrenched social prejudice against them would never let them get their dues. Therefore such
countervailing force of the state as reserving some share of the general benefit was warranted as
a just measure. But diluting the criteria to backwardness in a backward country was surely wrong
and mischievous.
While the reservations for Dalits were justifiable, the premise with which they were instituted
and the manner in which they were implemented also could be faulted. The reservations were not
primarily meant as a means to overcome the backwardness of Dalits but as an instrument against
inherent injustice in the Indian society. It was not for the disability of Dalits but for the disability
of the society that they were the antidote. The entire construction could have been turned upside
down to do away its ill aspects; such as stigmatizing beneficiaries, inducing interiority complex
in them, promoting ghettoizing tendencies among them, antagonizing the larger society against
them, its seeming perpetuity and oriented everyone to strive for annihilation of castes. If the
larger society had thus realized that it was a bitter pill to swallow, it would have striven to cure
itself at the earliest possible time and even Dalits would have preferred that state to reservations.
More importantly, it would have also eliminated the space for later mischief of extending the
policy to other communities and forced the state to adopt the pro-people development policies to
meet their aspirations.
There has not been any objective evaluation of this controversial policy ever. It is taken for
granted that they are beneficial to the communities they were meant for. Theoretically, as they
are limited to the proportion of the Dalit population, they were rather designed to perpetuate the
prevailing inequalities at their time of inception. The political reservations, which were mutated
in the Poona Pact have been grossly counterproductive as they not only eliminated the possibility
of independent Dalit representation but also promoted brokering of their interests. Ambedkar
himself had sensed it and wanted them to end after ten years. But they get extended before their
expiration without anybody demanding it. The reservations in higher educational institutes have
been surely useful so far as they had acute supply constraint. With its removal, they may turn
irrelevant. More than these reservations the concessions like exemption of fees and scholarships
have rather been beneficial for the students who lack financial resources to pursue their
education. The reservations in public employment have also benefited Dalits. The overall policy
has resulted in creating a tiny middle class among Dalits, which at the most admeasures less than
10 percent of the Dalit population. The policy favours it increasingly monopolizing the benefits
of whatever is left of reservations, creating an increasingly narrower class of beneficiaries.
The increasingly small supply of the SC/ST candidates from this narrowing class to the elite
institutions like IITs, IIMs and others, leaving many reserved seats unfilled stands testimony to
this phenomenon. On the negative side, reservations have created a class division among Dalits,
the upwardly mobilizing class hijacking the agenda of 90 percent of Dalits to further their own
class interests. They have also burdened Dalits with huge psychological costs and political costs,
just to recall a few.
The model of constitutional governance adopted by India is called bourgeois democracy,
which is inherently oriented to serve the interests of bourgeoisie as a device to manage the
masses. In the process, it does benefit them but purely in the mode of a capitalist strategically
paying off his workers better wages than others so as to sustain his long term profitability. He
would simultaneously intrigue to keep them divided so that their bargaining strength is kept
at bay. The bourgeois democracy essentially behaves the same way. The Indian model goes
beyond this 'management' strategy and is not averse to be vicious to the lower classes using
its feudal inheritance. The manner in which it deceptively pursued the policies in favour of the
incipient bourgeoisie (adopting first-past-the-post type of election system instead of proportional
representation system that could ensure better representation to Indian polity; adopting the
Bombay Plan for its Five Year Plans seemingly to further redistributive objective; implementing
calibrated land reforms in the name of reducing inequity in land distribution and adopting the
capitalist strategy of Green revolution so as mitigate hunger of people, just to name a few), the
manner in which it held out a dream before the people through the Constitution, and the manner
in which it crushed their resistance reveals its feudal character. It has surely intrigued to preserve
castes and fanned the identity politics. Of course, the neoliberal policies have greatly accentuated
all the extant evils of the bourgeois democracy.
*
Not only have we failed to fulfill the Ambedkar's dream of annihilation of castes over the last
six decades but also we have gone light years away from it. The so called disciples of Ambedkar
themselves have been in forefront to bury that dream and flaunt their identities. It may be in
the interests of the upper castes to preserve their caste privileges but how could it be in the
interests of the lower ones to willingly wear their stigmatized identities? Ambedkarite vision
of annihilation of castes is not to be construed for the betterment of the lower castes alone;
it is verily meant for the entire Indian people. Caste is not merely a matter of discrimination
or atrocities; it is a veritable virus that incapacitates the entire nation. This virus is the main
factor behind India's every evil and its persisting backwardness. It can only be removed by
cleansing its body, through a revolution. Indeed, no patch work may do away this virus than a
thoroughgoing democratic revolution that will dislodge the entrenched classes and pave way for
India's socialist future. Here, it needs to be squarely internalized by the pro-revolution forces that
unless the masses of Dalits join them, their dream of revolution may never materialize and the
same way anti-caste Dalits to note that unless the people of their class supplement their strength,
the dream of annihilation of castes may never be accomplished. It follows that these two camps
must see a common cause and strategize to remove their historical misgivings.
It is a strategic imperative for Dalits to realize that castes are not mere cultural or religious
matter; they are intermingled with all aspects of life. The majority of Dalits are mired in the
agrarian relations as the farm labour or in urban informal sectors, both living in subsistence
mode. Their dalithood is entangled with their economic status. It can be clearly understood
from the atrocities on them, which are meant to terrorize them into submission. In many an
instant, this submission entails economic and political benefits to the upper caste hegemon. The
hegemon's writ however is carried out by his caste people who belong to the same class as Dalit
victims. The atrocities are thus committed because Dalits are financially weak, economically
dependent, morally hollow and isolated from their class. The antidote therefore would comprise
making them economically self sufficient with their control over means of livelihood, making
them morally solid so as to resist any injustice and forging class unity with the people from the
upper castes. The diagnosis remains practically the same as presented by Babasaheb Ambedkar
in 1936 in his famous exposition Mukti kon pathe? (What path to Liberation) while explaining
the logic behind his declaration of religious conversion to the leaders of his movement. The first
could be achieved through getting them land, making quality education and health care available;
the second through ideological restoration of faith in struggle and the third, through building
the class unity with the other castes. Programmatically, the ideological preparation and the class
solidarity must precede so that the struggle for the means of empowerment is effectively carried
out.
This can be accomplished through reorientation of the anti-caste (dalit) and anti-class (left)
movements. While Dalit movement should orient itself along class line while fighting for
the caste issues the left movement should orient itself to see the reality of castes and need to
forge unity with the struggling Dalits. The initiative however must come from the left with due
ideological conviction, overcoming their self righteous attitude. As I proposed in my 'Anti-
Imperialism and Annihilation of Castes', this process, once set in could result in a virtuous cycle
ending into a much desired Indian revolution. I see no other option.
Search Results
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633 Anand Teltumbde, Identity politics and the annihilation of castes
www.india-seminar.com/2012/633/633_anand_teltumbde.htmMissing:presentfuture To the Self-Obsessed Marxists And The Pseudo Ambedkarites By ...
www.countercurrents.org/teltumbde030413.htmCrisis Of Ambedkarites And Future Challenges By Anand Teltumbde
www.countercurrents.org/teltumbde220411.htm- [PDF]
The Khairlanji Murders & India's Hidden Apartheid ANAND ...
theannihilationofcastereadinggroup.files.wordpress.com/.../thepersistence... Imperialism and Annihilation of Caste written by Anand Teltumbde
Full text of "Anand Teltumbde Articles" - Internet Archive
archive.org/.../AnandTeltumbdeArticles/AnandTeltumbdeArticles_djvu.t...Anand Teltumbde | kracktivist
kractivist.wordpress.com/tag/anand-teltumbde/Challenges before the anti caste movement in India | Goldy George ...
www.academia.edu/.../Challenges_before_the_anti_caste_movement_in_...Dr BR Ambedkar Books - WordPress.com
proXsa: 'Ambedkar' in and for the Post-Ambedkar Dalit Movement
- radicalnotes.com/.../sanhatis-special-issue-on-caste-and-left-politics-in-in...
Cast Away Caste – Breaking New Ground … | Kafila
kafila.org/2012/09/03/cast-away-caste-breaking-new-grounds/'It is privileged Hindus who suffer from the sickness of caste' | Firstpost
- [PDF]
Buddhist Voice October 2013 Issue
- [PDF]
Library Newsletter Mar – Apr 2012 - Anveshi – Research Centre for ...
Book Review By Yoginder Sikand : Hindutva and Dalits - Pakistan ...
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Directors Report 11-12.pdf - Full Catalogue
by PR deSouza - 2013Dec 19, 2012 - Anand Teltumbde: Revisiting 'Annihilation of Castes'. 6. ..... Angela Xavier: Past is Always Present, History and Identity in post-colonial. Goa. - [PDF]
1 June 2013 Buddhist Voice www.buddhistvoice ... - Free-eBooks.net
Jul 20, 2013 - birth from the present lower caste background to a higher ladder. ... Thepast two decades have witnessed an explosive growth in international ... Annihilation of Caste is the least spoken topic these days among all ... Teltumbde, Anand (2011) "Some Fundamental issues in Anti-. Caste ... for future reference. -
'Ambedkar' In and for the Post-Ambedkar Dalit ... - (FABO UK) is
- [PDF]
on this site - Columbia University
- [DOC]
Luisa Steur – Reporting for Caste Out of Development project - ESRC
Political Philosophy of B.R.Ambedkar : A Critical Understanding
April | 2012 | Revolutionary Democratic Front - Rise! Resist! Liberate!
Caste Violence « Samatha India
samathain.wordpress.com/category/caste-violence/- [PDF]
SOME SELECTED BOOK REVIEWS - INFLIBNET Centre
by PA SEBASTIAN - Related articlesKHAIRLANJI: A STRANGE AND BITTER CROP by Anand. Teltumbde (New Delhi: Navayana), 2008: 214. Reviewed by ... in terms of annihilation of caste and basic social change. .... of the growth process in the Indian economy over the past three ....entailing the loss of the present reader at least. ... products of the future. Hindutva as Perilous for Dalits as for Muslims, Books and ...
Sri Lanka Guardian: 05/01/11
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Celebrating Babasaheb Ambedkar In Lahore, Pakistan
Language, Violence, and the State: Writing Tamil Dalits [review essay]
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Plight of Dalit's in Madurai district of Tamilnadu | Dalit and Tribe's Blog
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CENTRE FOR AMBEDKAR & DALIT LITERATURE - Gautam Book ...
Ambedkar and the Indian Communists - Scribd
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AUGUST 2005 Contextualising Dalit Movement In South India
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