FORAY | Sunday, August 2, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Ideating liberalism
Chandrabhan Prasad
According to a newspaper report, on July 24, three Dalits in Bihar were beaten up by upper Caste youth for listening to music on their cell phones. If that’s a reality today, Dalits could have been beaten up for even laughing in public places three decades ago.
Damned, despised and stigmatised for centuries, Dalits have every reason to rebuff the Caste Order and Hinduism, which accords celestial sanction to it. Whenever and wherever Dalits get an opportunity to contest the Caste Order, they do that with all their valour. Dalits’ rejection of Caste Order and Hinduism is sheer common sense and unambiguous. Confronted with such a devious system of subjugation, the victim has no choice but to turn to radicalism.
Delhi has an exceptional evidence of Dalit radicalism. Three decades ago, a group of Dalits, mostly Government officers, decided to build a cooperative Group Housing Society. Hundreds of such housing apartments were coming up at that time. But, Dalits chose to have their own — “Only Dalit Housing Complex”.
Notwithstanding rationalisation of radical thoughts, radicalism has its own limitations. Almost often, radicalism of all variants fails. The “Only Dalit Housing Complex” thus had its providence written off. About one-fourth Dalit residents have sold off their flats to enter the mainstream housing complexes.
Most of the new entrants in the “Only Dalit Housing Complex” are non-Dalits. The non-Dalits are entering into Dalit housing complex for purely market driven reasons. Although this housing complex is well maintained, much cleaner and greener than any other housing complex in the locality, the price of each flat is cheaper by 10-15 per cent.
Consider the predicament of the Dalit radicalism. Founders of the “Only Dalit Housing Complex” were mostly first generation Dalit officers. Their gen-next came up with newer ideas. In most villages, Dalits are settled separately. Segregated demographically, they are identified from a distance, and socially snubbed. Dalits would never have wanted separate settlement for themselves. Might of the Manu Dharma must have done the trick.
The “Only Dalit Housing Complex” experiment suggests that Dalit radicalism caused segregation of Dalits. Historically, Dalits’ segregation was forced upon them by the Caste Order, entering into mainstream housing complexes ought to have been the logical device of defeating the Caste Order. If the Caste Order requires Dalits to stay away from the mainstream, the anti-Caste movement requires Dalits to enter the mainstream.
But, entering mainstream housing complexes can come at a price. What would the children, and other members of the family, do on occasions of Hindu festivals — Holi, Dipawali, Dussehra — in northern India?
What an intricate social mechanism for Dalits! If the empowered Dalits settled separately on their own will to make a social point, they land up serving the mandate of the Caste Order which requires Dalits to live separately.
If some Dalits sneak into mainstream housing complexes and try retaining their radicalism, they get noticed and are consequently seen in the ‘Other social basket’, again a subject of vacillation and derision.
Further, even if Dalits proved that theirs’ is a better religious order, better culturally, and richer ethically, that distinction too throws Dalits into the Other social basket. How are Dalits going to negotiate their place in the country’s public sphere controlled and dominated by the Hindu majority? How are Dalits going to dismantle the Caste Order?
Still in its embryonic state, the idea of Dalit Liberalism sounds promising and demands the followings:
- Dalits should tie up their destiny with all other Indians. Unless the Indian economy gets industrialised, and India urbanised, community can’t escape agrarianism — the motherland of the Caste Order.
- Dalits identify themselves with globally respected idioms, market economy for instance, and appear more modern than the claimants of modernity.
- Dalits should discard Hinduism, and adopt Buddhism/Christianity argumentatively rather than just speechifying them.
- Dalits must enter Caste Hindu housing complexes, their living rooms and kitchens, even bedrooms, through wedlocks to earn social acceptability.
- Dalits should reduce appearing as social warriors all the time and, instead, should try acquiring all those things the Caste Order had denied them — education, wealth and leadership rights, in particular.
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