Book Review/A Much Needed Compilation of Dalit Icons

MAKERS OF MODERN DALIT HISTORY by Sudarshan Ramabadran and Guru Prakash Paswan; Penguin, 2021. Pp 172; Rs. 399 

To anyone who is not a Dalit, any discussion on Dalit icons instantly brings to mind the names of B.R. Ambedkar and then social reformers like Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule as well as politicians like Babu Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati. Names like Sant Janabai and Soyarabai (key figures in the Bhakti movement), Dakshayani Velayudhan (the first Dalit woman graduate), Kerala folk musician Ayyankali and Telugu poet Gurram Jashuva would be mostly unheard of – except perhaps in the regions/states they hailed from, and even then, it is quite possible that their caste may not be known.  For example, everyone familiar with the freedom struggle would know that Udham Singh killed Sir Michael O’Dwyer; hardly anyone would know he was a Dalit.

Makers of Modern Dalit History attempts to address this lack, profiling eighteen personalities who are believed to have shaped Dalit history and consciousness. Regretting that many of these personalities “have been redacted from mainstream historical and intellectual discourse”, the authors say the book attempts to “enable them to be a source of inspiration to the Dalit community” (though they also say the book is not just for a Dalit readership). This is, no doubt, an important task – any community which has suffered oppression for centuries (and continues to face discrimination and humiliation) needs more than one or two iconic figures to look up to.

The profiles of the lesser known personalities are eye openers. Nandanar, one learns, was the only Dalit Nayanar (the sixty-three Saivite saints from Tamil Nadu). Janabai, a maidservant of Sant Namdev, earned the title of Sant. Dakshayani Velayudhan was not only the first Dalit woman graduate but was also a member of the Constituent Assembly.   

And yet one finishes the book with a sense of discontentment, as the chapters fail to flesh out the individual personalities or highlight pivotal incidents in their lives.

Take the example of Dakshayani, who was from the Pulaya community in Kerala which was forbidden to walk on public roads and whose women were not allowed to cover the upper part of their bodies – at the most, they could use beads. The fact that she was the first girl from the community to cover her upper body with cloth is buried in the chapter! What gave Dakshayani the courage to do what she did, what was the reaction to her very inspiring act of defiance? One doesn’t know. Apparently the name Dakshayani (which means Durga) was never used by the depressed classes told. Who chose the name? What role did her parents play in her evolution into a strong woman?

Of the six pages on Rani Jhalkaribai, two are about how Indian academia has been unfair to historical figures like her. This is a general problem, not specific to her. Kabir, we are told, was one of the few figures in history to have undertaken holistic intervention to end casteism. But one would have liked more details on how exactly. His being equally critical of Hindu and Muslim orthodoxies does not explain his approach to Dalit upliftment. This lack of elaboration on such crucial issues is a lacuna in other chapters as well and, unfortunately, stands in the way of a good book becoming a great one. For this, the publisher has to bear the larger blame. This is the kind of shaping of a book that editors should do.

Perhaps this could have been addressed if there was conceptual clarity: is the book about people who determinedly shaped Dalit consciousness or people who became icons because they overcame innumerable odds to achieve success?

One reason for this shortcoming could be, as the authors admit at one point, lack of information about these figures. Perhaps they could have spent some more time researching and writing about the lesser known figures if they had consciously decided to leave out the more well-known personalities? The life and work of Ambedkar, Savitribai Phule, Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram, K.R. Narayanan have been very well documented. Fitting them into this has resulted in their achievements being summarised in nine to ten pages, which does not capture the magnitude of their achievements.

Their inclusion was perhaps necessitated by the title of the book – any compilation of modern Dalit history without these figures will be preposterous. But what if the book was about Forgotten Dalit Icons or The Other Dalit Icons? Then perhaps space could have been devoted to the other thirteen personalities, which include Ved Vyasa and Valmiki, and how they `made’ modern Dalit identity. Also, other lesser known personalities could have been included; there could have been a chapter on, say, Dalits role in the 1857 war of independence.

The conclusion chapter, which lists what the authors call ‘today’s Dalit heroes’, is quite problematic. This is not to question the credentials of those included – Milind Kamble and Kalpana Saroj of the Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DICCI), economist and Rajya Sabha member Narendra Jadhav, educationists Bhalchandra Mungekar and Sukhdeo Thorat, to name just five. These are very worthy names.

The problem is really about exclusion. Two names come readily to my mind – that of Chandrabhan Prasad and Bezwada Wilson.

Prasad was, along with Kamble, one of the driving forces behind the setting up of DICCI; indeed Prasad has been advocating Dalit capitalism for long. He is at the forefront of shaping a Dalit narrative that is more empowering rather than the purely atrocities-led narrative that finds favour in popular discourse. Prasad and DICCI seem to have parted ways but mentioning Kamble and not Prasad makes the authors as guilty of airbrushing personalities as the academia they accuse of redacting the personalities that figure in this volume.

Wilson has been campaigning relentlessly against the practice of manual scavenging – an occupation that is still reserved for Dalits. Ideologically, he is the exact opposite of Prasad and Kamble; not for him ideas like Dalit capitalism. His criticism of right wing ideology and politics can be extremely harsh and strident. But that should not have led to his being excluded from any list of those shaping the modern Dalit narrative and situation.

These quibbles, however, do not detract from the importance of this book.  It is actually more than a compilation of profiles. The nearly forty-page introduction gives an insightful snapshot of the history of Dalit awakening, including the evolution and importance of the term Dalit. It talks about how subaltern literature has come to represent the quest for dignity. It takes readers through early Dalit literature in the nineteenth century – from Maharashtra, the erstwhile Central Provices, Bengal and Punjab, with special praise for the last. “No other language perhaps has so far had Dalit literature of such high literacy calibre.”

There are, no doubt, a number of academic works doing much the same. But those would not appeal to the lay readers – Dalit and non Dalit. This book does and that increases its value immensely. Sudarshan Rambhadran and Guru Prakash Paswan deserve to take a bow for this work; and they deserve applause.

Best tribute to Ambedkar: don’t treat Dalits with condescension

This was published in Firstpost on 14 April 2013, B. R. Ambedkar's birth anniversary.

Today is Ambedkar Jayanti and to observe it, the Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has arranged for a ‘mass meal’ where party workers of all communities will eat together. All top leaders of the party will attend the mass meal.
The president of the Delhi state unit, Vijay Goel, has promised that party will also do all of the following:
• organise medical camps for Dalits
• provide books to Dalit students from “Class 1 to IAS-level”
• tell every party worker to employ at least one Dalit
• ensure that Dalit auto rickshaw drivers who have not been issued badges get one so that they can have their own auto rickshaws
• Goel will go to Dalit colonies “on foot” to understand the problems they face.
It’s silly season in Delhi, with assembly elections due towards the end of the year, and the BJP has been out of power for 15 years, so that explains why it has suddenly realised, as Goel puts it, the low literacy and graduation rates of Dalits and the lack of medical facilities for the community in the Capital. Make no mistake, if the roles had been reversed and the Congress had been in the BJP’s place, it would have done much the same thing.
But it’s not just poll-bound Delhi. Across the country, there will be similar examples of tokenism. None of them will make any difference to the lives of the Dalits. Worse, all of them smack of a patronising attitude towards Dalits and reinforce the perception that their upliftment is dependent on the munificence of the upper castes.
What is both laughable and extremely unfortunate is that this betrays a complete misreading of how much the target group has moved away from such handout-driven progress. Does Goel really expect Dalits to feel honoured that every BJP worker in Delhi (there are a couple of lakhs of them) will employ one person from their community? Doesn’t this only reinforce the jajmani system of yore, where Dalits served the upper castes and were, in turn, taken care of by them? Doesn’t this send out a message that Dalits are only meant to serve others?
And this at a time when there’s a growing sentiment that Dalits should not just be job-seekers, but job-givers as well. The Dalit entrepreneurship movement has been gaining ground slowly but steadily, buoyed by first-generation entrepreneurs who may have studied with the help of reservations but want to shape their future without that prop. There is a significant Dalit middle class that is taking its place in the world with a self-confidence that does not come from job quotas. The bechara image of Dalits is also being challenged – aggressively in Punjab and quietly elsewhere.
In Punjab, rap and pop albums celebrating the Dalit identity are all the rage and people are proudly sporting the chamar tag. A research study, Rethinking Inequality: Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the Market Reform Era by Devesh Kapur, Chandrabhan Prasad, Lant Pritchett, D Shyam Babu shows how, in two districts of Uttar Pradesh, between 1990 and 2007 there has been a very significant change in the eating, grooming and consumption habits of Dalits. More importantly, the relationship between Dalits and non-Dalits is also changing. Dalit attendance at non-Dalit weddings had decreased as had instances of separate seating for Dalits. As the study notes: “Poverty and dependence might explain why more dalits attended nondalit weddings in 1990, even though separate seating was more a norm then. By 2007, though such humiliation had become rare, fewer dalits were keen on attending non-dalit weddings. It is a mark of dalits’ new-found independence – both from upper castes and the food in their feasts. (emphasis mine)”
Given this, are Dalits supposed to feel honoured that upper caste people will break bread with them at a mass meal on Ambedkar Jayanti? And is it not more a reflection of those who come up with such ideas that they do not normally interact with Dalits socially?
Dalit intellectual Chandrabhan Prasad often makes the point that the nature of violence against Dalits is changing. Earlier, he says, the violence was one-sided with Dalits being the passive victims. Now, it is more in the nature of clashes because Dalits are challenging social, economic and political equations in the village and the upper castes are not able to deal with that. Whether it is in Gohana in Haryana or Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, the target of attacks, Prasad points out, were two-wheelers, television sets and books of Dalits. It is the upper castes that are feeling insecure in the face of Dalit advancement.
This is not in any way meant to advance a mitigating argument for Khairlanji, Dharmapuri, Gohana and umpteen other incidents of caste-based violence. Nor am I suggesting that Dalits are now living in a discrimination-free paradise. Search for Dalit music or chamar music on Youtube and see the kind of filthy abuses that the videos invite. Caste prejudice lurks beneath the surface of the most suave and sophisticated veneers. The heartening findings in two districts of Uttar Pradesh are not indicative of even the entire state, let alone the country. Remember, below poverty line school-children refuse to eat the free mid-day meals cooked by Dalit women. In our villages, poverty and hunger take second place to caste.
In a 2010 study, Dalits in Business: Self-employed Scheduled Castes in North-West India by Jawaharlal Nehru University professor, SS Jodhka, had 42 percent respondents admitting that they faced discrimination in business and 63 percent saying they faced it in their personal lives. In blue-collar jobs, there is a perceptible discrimination against Dalits.
A few hundred Dalit entrepreneurs do not indicate that Dalits are now an economically strong community. In villages, they are perhaps the most wretched of families. The fact that Dalit entrepreneurs had to set up a separate chamber of commerce – the Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Dicci) – itself testifies to the fact that they are not part of the mainstream. Dicci, its founder-chairman had told this writer once, was formed because mainstream chambers could not understand the problems Dalits faced.
There are Dalit intellectuals, activists, politicians and others who insist that this mind-numbing oppression is the only Dalit narrative and dismiss the strides the community has made. But the Dalit story is a far more complex and multi-layered one. And, on Ambedkar Jayanti, it would be best for our tokenism-loving politicians across parties to keep that in mind. Or else, far from wooing the Dalits, they may well end up alienating them.