Blog RSSKancha Ilaiah
Untouchability and the hug of the century
Originally published in the Deccan Chronicle, April 19, 2009.
The visit of US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, to the British “democratic kingdom” turned out to be historic not just because of the Group of Twenty (G-20) summit, but also because of an impulsive hug.
In a disarming and charming manner, Ms Obama hugged Queen Elizabeth at a formal function, breaking the feudal protocol that the monarch can only be touched by her family members.
This was the first visit of the first African-American President and his wife to the mother of democracy, Britain, which still refuses to be a republic and continues with its pre-feudal monarchic system, while its colonial daughter — the United States — has evolved into a democracy with the capacity for unbelievable change.
Those of us who stood for abolition of slavery, apartheid and untouchability of all forms felt that Martin Luther King Jr’s dream had come true when we watched the First Lady’s left hand encircling the body of the Queen.
What a day indeed! Not only apartheid, which British racist colonialism initiated, but also “feudal untouchability” — which was converted into protocol — crumbled like a house of cards.
In fact, all forms of cultural untouchabilities are houses of cards constructed as ideological belief systems. Bringing down such systems without shedding much blood through democracy is a wonderful game of history.
Also, to see both the British public and the media accepting Ms Obama’s hug as something that should happen is the fun part of this millennia.
While Britain gave America slavery and democracy, America marched ahead to abolish slavery and has even enabled a black man to become its President and the granddaughter of a slave to become its First Lady.
But the mother country remains as much a conservative democracy as America moves forward to be radical democracy.
In fact, how can Britain even teach monarchical Islamic nations that democracy is the hallmark of modernity when a feudal, protocol-centred Queen is ruling that nation.
Even now, Britain does not allow a Catholic to become its Prime Minister — leave alone any migrant settler. When John F. Kennedy became America’s first Catholic President, Britain had hidden its face within a cloth of Anglican Protestantism. “You can change, but I remain what I am”, was its attitude.
By embracing the Queen, Ms Obama literally washed away the sin of untouchability. As an Indian who has seen the worst form of untouchability, the change in the touch-me-not attitude of the Queen itself is inspiring. Here is a Queen who is willing to change along with the times.
Of course, Britain had produced its own brand of reformers, such as William Wilberforce and others, who fought against racism and slavery but the nation has not dared to abolish monarchy as yet. That feudal institution needs to be abolished and Britain needs to step into republicanism.
If Mr Obama’s victory was itself an experience of democratic transformation of America, what his wife did in Buckingham Palace in full public and media gaze is yet another milestone in transforming iniquitous feudal institutions that persist even now.
India too cannot be considered to be a modern nation without abolishing untouchability in all its forms. If the Obamas come to India and if they want to visit the Puri Jagannath Temple or Guruvayoor Sri Krishna Temple, will they be allowed?
Untouchability destroys democracy. To be true, democracy has to become operative in every sphere of life — social, political and spiritual. India too should ponder over several forms of untouchabilities that persist in our socio-spiritual life.
The President’s wife raised all these questions in a disarming manner by touching the Queen. Michelle, I salute you.
Posted on: April 27, 2009
Death of a statesman: Indian Lincoln ignored
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, Dec. 3, 2008.
On November 27, I was back home at around 3 pm. Prof Bhagya Naik, who once was a student leader in the Mandal movement, called me and said, “There is bad news amidst worse news of terrorism. VP Singh has died and an occasional scroll (news ticker) on NDTV is informing us of that.”
All TVs were hooked on to the Taj, Oberoi and Nariman House. I tried to catch up with the news of the death of India’s former Prime Minister. I went on looking for at least flash news, on any one of the English channels, which are considered to be “national channels”. No ticker could be seen. After quite a long time one channel put out the news, “VP Singh dead”. No details. No channel was showing his dead body, no discussion was being organised around his role as Prime Minister.
The next day I looked up several news papers. In almost all the publications, a small news item in a corner of the front page with a regular photo (not of his dead body) was published.
The electronic media has treated his death as inconsequential, at a time when they were protecting the nation, while broadcasting about what was happening minute to minute around the Taj and Oberoi. In fact, the police and military officials were saying that the round the clock TV cameras around those hotels had obstructed the operation of flushing out the terrorists. On those three days TV channels were competing to get top spot to make more advertising revenue. No one would pay to view that ‘Mandal ghost’s’ dead body. The upper caste media had taken its revenge against a man who initiated a mini civil war in order to establish an egalitarian India.
VP Singh was the one who deployed a serious discourse of social justice and and worked out a method to make India caste free from the position of Prime Minister. In one sense he was comparable to Abraham Lincoln who initiated a major civil war to abolish slavery in America, in late nineteenth century. He was a white man who stood for the rights of the black people. VP Singh initiated a similar battle of social justice in a country of castes and brazen inequality in 20th century India while holding the position of Prime Minister.
He was a Kshatriya who stood by the lower castes who had been suffering inequality for centuries. Abraham Lincoln was killed by the whites. The upper caste anti-reservationists saw to it that VP Singh lost his power within just eleven months. His political life with any meaningful visibility had been murdered since then. Abraham Lincoln became a hero of the blacks and became a villain among racist whites.
Similarly VP Singh became a hero among Dalit-Bahujans (particularly OBCs) and a villain among the upper castes who claimed themselves to be anti-quota. These anti-reservation upper caste forces claimed that they wanted to save the nation from terrorists. But the forces that are working in the media must remember that a nation that promotes equality alone can checkmate terrorism that was working in full force on the day when VP Singh died.
The media and the UPA leaders, by treating him like dirt, even in his death, forgot a basic fact of human life. If someone, who stood by the oppressed, is ignored and humiliated, even in death, the oppressed will treat that as their own humiliation. If this is the attitude of the elite towards a man who sacrificed his Chief Ministership (Uttar Pradesh) on moral grounds, his Defence Ministerial position on the grounds of opposing corruption (Bofors case) and became Prime Minister of the nation on his own political movement’s strength (transforming Jan Morcha into Janatha Dal) people know how to read the signs. Therefore such media cannot protect the nation from even the terrorists, as the oppressed majority do not believe in it at all.
VP Singh was a philosopher in his own right, a poet and painter. The media behaved as if he was nobody to this nation. He implemented the Mandal Commission Report, to which suicide attempts by upper caste youth were made. This was subsequently followed with a Kamadal Yatra of Advani, who then became a hero of the upper castes.
If Advani had died amidst the trauma of the Bombay terror attacks, would they have ignored his death as they did in the case of VP Singh? Certainly not, because there is big business in talking about him. Most of the people in the press claim to be secular but when it comes to business and caste communalism, they give it major coverage as it means big money. The media plays a major role in every thing, including arresting terrorism. But it must remember that if people come to disbelieve what they churn out, then even the terrorists would have be placed in safe havens in our civil society.
More than any other prime minister, VP Singh made Indian democracy transformative. But for his intervention from the position of Prime Minister even the survival of politicians like Mulayam Singh, Lalu Prasad, Kanshiram, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mayawati would have been difficult. Ironically, these leaders from backward communities also did not bother about him. But he was an icon who had a dream for social equality. Ever since he implemented 27 percent reservation for Central government jobs he never compromised on the philosophy of social justice and equality.
The media must have ignored him today but a man of his calibre, will be resurrected soon.
Posted on: February 19, 2009
Tryst with English medium
Original article by Kancha Ilaiah via Deccan Herald.
The Government of Andhra Pradesh has introduced English medium from Class 6 in 6500 Government high schools starting this academic year. All these high schools have also been upgraded to be multi-purpose high schools where all students can complete their Class 12 at their village high school itself. These high schools offer several electives depending on the choice of the students so that they can choose the direction of their higher education after Class 10 in the same school.
On an experimental basis the schools will run the English medium section parallel to the Telugu medium section so that students can choose their medium of education at that school itself. The government has also adopted the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus in all the schools since this mode gives scope for continuous education up to Class 12.
Among the grants given for education, AP is likely to get about Rs 750 crore, under the SUCCESS school education programme. About one crore, the government says, will go towards establishing a new English medium section in each school. By introducing this novel mode of education system, the Rajasekhar Reddy Government has taken a bold initiative.
When the government order was issued, there was opposition by some teacher organisations and mother tongue lovers to this scheme. But after seeing the support coming for English medium from parents and even the poor living in rural areas, the teaching bodies came around.
Of course, the so-called proponents of the mother tongue who put their own children in private English medium schools realised that the government was firm about its decision. By the end of the first week of July some newspapers reported that 1,50,000 students joined the English medium in Class 6 across the state, which means, that on an average, about 23 students joined each school. Most of these students came from Telugu medium background and in terms of their social background, most of them were from SC/ST/OBC. Thus, the scheme has overcome the initial hiccup of students not opting for English medium and that too with CBSE syllabus.
If this experiment succeeds, the entire education system in the state will undergo a sea change. Already, there are forces that demand introducing English medium right from Class 1. Although after a lot of debate, the government introduced teaching of one subject in English from Class 1, the mother tongue theorists were of the opinion that at least primary education in government schools must continue in Telugu. As a result, the idea of introducing a parallel English medium section in primary schools took a backseat. But that demand will increase now.
There is a lot of demand for English medium education even in the rural areas. Even the lower middle class rural families send their children to urban residential schools at a huge cost of Rs 25,000 per annum. This kind of investment starts from the tenth year of the child itself. Many families are entering into huge debts because of this hunger for English medium school education. In fact village folks want their children to be put in English medium schools right from the level of kinder garden, similar to their urban counterparts. This is a welcome desire and that desire must be respected by the state too.
Within a short time the same convent kind of school education would be preferred by all parents across the country. Should the State say that they should not desire quality English medium education for every child, whether they are poor or rich?
Any modern democratic state must aim for uniform quality of school education for all children across the board. And gradually, we must move towards school education, where all private schools are nationalised. This will give the poor and the rich the right to get the same quality of English medium education. And this choice should be made the fundamental right of every child.
The debate in Andhra Pradesh has reached to a meaningful stage and the linguist jingoistic forces who educate their own children in English medium but were forcing Telugu on the poor and the oppressed castes as part of their linguistic nationalism has come to a dead end.
The problem with private English medium school education that caters to the needs of the rich is that it closes the option of allowing the child learn through the medium of its region. But that system has come into force because money is available only in English medium schools and the parental preference is also confined to just one language — English.
But when it comes to a public debate about the morality of school education, the very same parents take a moralist posture of mother tongue education being the best and most creative. When their private desire gets interrogated in public discourse every such linguistic nationalist gets upset and takes his or her dagger out to kill the agent of English education for the poor. I got killed several times and resurrected to see a day of change in my own state. And hopefully that will follow in other states too.
Posted on: July 15, 2008
My reservations about SC verdict
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in The Asian Age, June 19, 2007.
Recently, while rejecting the revision petition moved by the Centre seeking the revocation of the stay on OBC reservation in Central institutions, the Supreme Court used very harsh language.
The court’s line of argument was that if the Centre had not implemented OBC reservation for the last 50 years, what was the hurry now? Why couldn’t it wait for one more year?
By the same logic, we can also say that the caste system has been there for 3,000 years, so let it remain in place for another 100 years.
The Supreme Court’s position on the issue is uncannily similar to the position taken by the United States Supreme Court in the early stages of the abolition of slavery. It opposed the abolitionists for quite a long time.
From the days of Thomas Jefferson, the US judiciary was doing a racist reading of the equal rights promised by the American Constitution and was resisting reforms for a long time.
Similarly, the Indian apex court is also on a collision course with the Centre on the issue of reservation which implies the abolition of the evils of caste and untouchability.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence to show that the Supreme Court ever took a pro-active position on the issue of abolition of caste and untouchability.
Here it will help to delve into US history to see what we can learn from the conflicts between the executive and the judiciary during Jefferson’s period and Abraham Lincoln’s period. In a recent book, Winning the Future, penned by the former Republican Speaker of the American Congress, Newt Gingrich, this issue is referred to at length. Jeffersonians called the irresponsible judges who were using their class ideology, “the midnight judges.”
Jefferson said, “You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all Constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one that would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
He further warned that the “the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the Constitution of the federal judiciary, an irresponsible body.
“Working like gravity by night and day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the states and the government of all be consolidated into one.”
However, we are unable to find a bold Jefferson among our politicians. Needless to say, there is no Lincoln either in India. Gingrich says that Lincoln was forced to lead the nation to a civil war as the Supreme Court of his time was refusing to accept the liberation of slaves as an essential ingredient of democratic polity.
Sadly, our Supreme Court has also been taking a similar approach in recent years towards issues of social justice. The very same Supreme Court had upheld 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in government jobs in the Mandal judgment. Its decision was that reservation should not cross 50 per cent.
In this context, there is no logic in disputing the Centre’s decision to give 27 per cent reservation to OBCs in Central educational institutions. If the Supreme Court bench thought that the 1931 census data was too old to be relied upon, why didn’t it ask the Centre to go for a caste census? OBC organizations have been asking for such a census for quite a long time.
We should remember that the court also praised the students of AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) as Abhimanyus for organising a strike against the reservation policy and asked the government to pay the doctors who struck work their salaries.
This very judicial system insists that the working class that goes on strike should not be paid wages.
So far we have not seen the Supreme Court or any high court directing governments to provide equal educational opportunities for all children of the country. Should we assume that Indian judges are unaware that there is no equality possible between the children of the elite who study in private English medium schools and that of the poor who study in government-run schools where education is conducted in regional languages? How many of our judges are willing to put their children in a Hindi medium school or some other regional language school?
How come the courts have not asked for a uniform medium of instruction in the country, at least up to the level of school education? If the courts do not understand the basic principle of a democratic system, they would lead society towards civil strife.
A political system has to work towards a process of socioeconomic transformation. And the guiding principle of that transformation is equality. The judiciary cannot and should not come in the way of this transformation.
Posted on: June 19, 2007
Strange journey
by Kancha Ilaiah. Originally published in the Times of India, May 24, 2007
After Mayawati became chief minister of UP, the upper caste intelligentsia in the media assumed that Dalit-Bahujan unity had given way to a new era of Dalit-Brahmin unity.
Dalit intellectuals, who had pitched their hopes on the new alliance, are convinced that Delhi is not too far for Mayawati — and for Dalits as a whole.
There is an attempt to project this electoral victory as one against the Shudra-OBC communities.
This attempt is, in other words, one that undercuts a historical social churning process — uniting Shudra-Atishudra masses from the days of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule to building a Bahujan Samaj by uniting Dalit-Bahujan masses till the Kanshi Ram days.
The Dalit-Bahujan project was based on unity of the historically oppressed productive masses, who were working on land and in casteised artisanal household industries — from shoe-making to pot-making to weaving clothes.
This process was mediated by the interventions, social, spiritual and political, set in motion by B R Ambedkar.
The upper caste intelligentsia is trying to tell us that Mayawati, a Dalit woman leader, whom they hated till the other day, had proved all of them wrong, and therefore had become their heroine.
The Dalit-Bahujan unity proposal is based on production relations and the fact of the two groups being at the receiving end of Brahminical oppression.
The Brahmins wrote ritual texts which established a spiritual and social practice of oppression against Dalits and Bahujans. Will Mayawati’s victory alter these conditions?
Will Brahmins soil their hands with actual work of production, or would Dalits be allowed to head Hindu institutions?
The whole discourse around social engineering, as opposed to social churning, is basically an RSS theory.
Social engineering is opposed to social churning. This election might teach OBCs a lesson, that power is best attained by combining various caste combinations.
But will that power help in social churning and transformation that erodes caste barriers, slowly but surely? Even in movements organized around class lines, only unity of forces from below can turn these into instruments of social change.
The top and bottom cannot make a dissolvable mix.
Ambedkar formulated the theory that caste was not merely division of labour, but also of labourers.
To churn them into a social monolith, one should work among many labouring castes, no matter how difficult and time-consuming the process.
As for social engineering, if Left and RSS forces were to form an electoral alliance, they can come to power even in Delhi.
Even if a Left politician were to become prime minister, what socio-economic change is possible in this situation? A Dalit-Brahmin combine is akin to the unity of the communists and RSS.
The latter was tried out during the Janata Party days, but failed. Not that one wishes the BSP to fail in UP.
But if one sees this as the model for abolishing caste and building a prosperous, productive nation, that would be nothing but a mirage and the end of Ambedkarism.
Mayawati’s success lies in the failure of Mulayam Singh, who left out the Dalit leadership in his political formation.
Mulayam’s party is also another kind of OBC-upper caste combine. He ruled UP almost for a full term and did nothing subs-tantial for OBCs.
Upper castes and a small section of Yadavs had their way. How many OBCs emerged as industrialists or as major contractors during his tenure?
Or, how many poor OBCs were uplifted during his tenure? Did they enjoy improved access to egalitarian, English-medium education?
fight caste, even while being in power, one has to fight Brahminism. How would Mayawati fight Brahminism, with Brahmins sitting in her lap?
With a Dalit-Brahmin combination, she would have to function like any Congress Dalit chief minister.
The promotion of such CMs perhaps began with Damodaram Sanjeevaiah, a Dalit Congress chief minister in Andhra Pradesh in the early 60s.
Can Mayawati break new ground, when Dalit-Brahmin unity holds no potential for social churning?
The writer is a political scientist.
Posted on: June 4, 2007
Globalisation of caste
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, May 11, 2007.
On May 1 in the 110th American Congress session, Franks, a Congressman from Arizona, introduced a concurrent resolution on caste and untouchability in India. It is now referred to the Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs. The resolution is the first of its kind in parliamentary history of the US. The first part of the resolution discusses the gravity and magnitude of the problem involving about 250 million SC, STs. Though it does not talk about the situation of the OBCs, it puts the caste system in perspective.
It says “Caste is the socio-economic stratification of people in South Asia based on a combination of work and descent”. This definition of caste is significant since India refused to accept this definition at the UN Durban Conference. However, the resolution lays emphasis on untouchability, violence against SC, ST women, and the socio-economic conditions in which these masses live in the globalised word.
It says “Discrimination against Dalits and tribals has existed for 2,000 years. It includes educational discrimination, economic disenfranchisement, physical abuse, discrimination in medical care, religious discrimination, and violence targeting Dalit and tribal women”. We know that the US has close relations with India and the Indian economy mostly depends on loans, charity funds from the US. America is also outsourcing lots of its industrial services. In a situation of a globalised market and software economy, the Indian upper castes see the US as their destination, where they do not have to live a life of shame and guilt about the discriminatory structures that their ancestors constructed and they want to sustain them silently. It is also because of the dollar money that the young upper caste children earn through means of English education from software and other service sectors.
Though some of us have been repeatedly demanding uniform English medium education for Dalit-Bahujan children, the protagonists of the very same upper castes have been dubbing us as anti-nationals. It is a fact that without English medium education many children of the upper castes would have not even been eligible for clerical jobs even in India.
Quite interestingly, the American resolution says, “The public education offered to Dalits and tribals, when available at all, is usually inadequate and conducted in regional languages or Hindi, thereby disqualifying them from access to India’s public universities, which teach in English, and from most government positions and most advanced jobs in India, which require English”.
At least now the US, the World Bank, the IMF which keep giving funds for school and university education know that two modes of education systems are in place in India — English for the rich and upper castes and regional language for the Dalit-Bahujans.
The American funds have been flowing into the Indian education system from the days of the PL 480 programme, way back in the 60s when I was a school child. Now every state government takes money from projects of American Aid and World Bank for school education. But all of them spend that money on the regional language school education infrastructure. And most of such money is garnered by corrupt ministers, bureaucrats and ruthless contractors. In education, healthcare and other programmes of poverty alleviation, the targeted poor and lower castes have not been getting anything that can substantially change their life. The Western countries never realised that caste, untouchability and tribalism are the main source of socio-economic stagnation.
There is no large scale public demand for uniform English medium education for all children in the country because the Hindu caste system made them think “the lower castes and the poor are not getting uniform English medium education or good healthcare because of their Karma”. Some of the saints, who claim to work to integrate Dalits into Hinduism, though they themselves are Anglicised and look for American trips and NRI dollar money, keep saying why should America interfere with the Indian caste system. These are all hoodwinking strategies.
However, the recent international campaign could successfully nail their pseudo nationalist agendas. The West is getting convinced that in the money that goes from the West in the form of loans and charity the Dalit-Bahujans must have their own share.
The Congress resolution seeks for a review of the American International development projects and also seeks for an “active participation of Dalit organisations in the planning and implementation of development projects from the US”. It also talks about “prioritising funding for projects that positively impact Dalit and tribal communities, especially women”.
The resolution and the possible debate on caste and untouchability in the American Congress will have serious implications on the Indian socio-political system. If the American Congress passes the resolution, it will have a major impact on the UN bodies and the World Bank. What those who oppose globalisation of caste should understand is that the masses who suffered from caste and untouchability will have to get their share of benefits from every pie that operates in India and in the global market. This resolution certainly helps that process.
Posted on: May 12, 2007
English Empowers
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in Tehelka, May 5, 2007, vol. 4, issue 17, pg 13.
The school education system in India is squarely divided into two structures in terms of the medium of instruction—the regional language system and the English language system. In terms of population, regional language school education is meant for Dalit-Bahujan children, while English language school education is meant for the rich who constitute by and large the upper castes. This division also resembles that between government and private convent English medium school education. Although the Central government does run a few English medium schools like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and some state governments like Andhra Pradesh run a few residential English medium schools, the basic divide is clear. The Central schools basically cater to the upper castes and the employees of the government sector. Even though the children of a few reserved category employees benefit from these schools, the divide between the English medium schools and the regional language schools is a caste-class divide. India needs to change this divide almost immediately. The question is how?
The divide itself was created by the hypocritical nationalistic agenda of upper caste intellectuals for their own caste-class advantage. Right from the days of the freedom struggle, the upper caste intelligentsia argued that the British — particularly Lord Thomas Macaulay — introduced English education to transform Hindus into clerks and slaves and to transform Hindu culture (through language) into English culture. They quote Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education, which said:
“It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”
The Indian upper castes, instead of becoming vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of population as planned by the English, assumed ownership of the English language, just as they had owned Sanskrit in the ancient and medieval periods, and kept it in the private domain to preserve their interests. In the beginning, it were the Christian schools that catered to their aspiration of learning the English language, and later many Hindus started running their own private schools. But these very forces that got their English education through private schools, did not allow the Government school system to teach in the English medium.
Even after 60 years of our Independence, this dual mode of school education is sought to be sustained. At the same time, higher educational institutions of both the Centre and the States have been created to suit the English medium student community. As of now, all the Central Government-run higher educational institutions use English as their medium of instruction. All Central universities, iits, iims and medical schools teach only in the English language and admit students only through English language entrance examination papers. The rural students — particularly sc, st and obc students — find it difficult to cope with higher education imparted in the English language as they mostly come from regional language schools. When they fail, the upper caste intelligentsia turns around and says there is a problem of merit with rural and lower caste youth.
The Central government adopted Hindi as the national language and imposed compulsory learning of Hindi even on the southern states. Only Tamil Nadu resisted the teaching of Hindi and adopted a system of bilingual school education in Tamil and English. Students in other southern states had to suffer however. Learning three languages was for them an unnecessary burden as Hindi had no role in their day-to-day lives or in their educational career. Yet it was forced on them in all Government schools from Class 3 onwards. In comparison, the teaching of English in these states starts only from Class 7. The misplaced assumption that students who have had their school education in regional languages would catch up with English medium students at the higher education level has been proven wrong.
Over time, English has become the common language of the global science and technology market and the overall economy. As Government schools do not teach in English medium, those who study in them are denied the opportunities given to their richer counterparts in English medium schools. Students in regional language schools cannot therefore think of achieving anything in the globalised economy.
(Excerpted from What Kind Of Education Do Dalit-Bahujan Children Need?)
Posted on: May 2, 2007
Green snakes in green grass
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, March 14, 2007.
In the last week of February 2007, the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) held a meeting to discuss whether the question of caste discrimination should be treated on par with race and racial discrimination.
India sent a team that included Deepankar Gupta, a JNU based sociologist, to give his neutral expert opinion. This expert, it appears, argued that caste discrimination is not equivalent to racial discrimination and therefore the UN should not have anything to do with caste discrimination.
His stand was that caste is India’s internal matter and it would work out its ways and means to solve that problem. This has been the stand of some such well-known upper caste sociologists even in 2001 when the UN was proposing to include caste discrimination in the agenda of the Durban Conference. Thus, there is consistency in their approach. But that consistency itself is based on the conspiracy of the Brahminic ideological hegemony. There is also dualism in their existence and consciousness.
In a recent debate about racial discrimination against Shilpa Shetty, when she participated in the Celebrity Big Brother programme of UK, there was enough elite and intellectual protest against Goody’s language of racism. Our newspapers wrote several editorials and our TV channels conducted a series of discussions on the racist culture of the West. Our External Affairs Ministry took up the matter with the British government.
Why were our upper caste elite so angry and upset with mere racist comments of just one white woman against an elite Indian woman? Quite interestingly the British mass were as angry as the Indian elite were and voted Goody out of the contest. They not only did that, but voted Shilpa as the winner of the contest. They proved that Britain has a great positive will and anti-racist consciousness to wash its own sin. Do the Indian upper castes show the same grace and vote out the casteists, who practice untouchability and casteism?
No historical hegemonic force will enhance the strength and vision of the nation if it does not show the grace and sense of shame and guilt for the crimes it committed against its own people. Of all the nations in the world, India is the only country which does not have any sense of shame and guilt for continuing the practice of caste and untouchability. Look at the American white media’s treatment of Barrack Hussein Obama, the first ever black planning to contest for the Presidency. The Time magazine, before even he started dreaming about being the nominee of the Democratic Party, projected him with a cover story The Fresh Face with his full cover page photograph.
There is a feeling of guilt among the American whites that they could not make a Black president so far. It was with this sense of shame and guilt that America, Britain and other European nations allowed the racial discrimination question to be part of the UN agenda. After all, the whole white racism discourse is against the Euro-American whites and their racist life processes. And they were the ones who headed the UN bodies when the UN resolved to admit the resolution to make a frontal attack on racism.
No American sociologist went to the UN forum to oppose the racial discrimination being taken up by the UN. Even the worst of sociologists, who supported the agenda of Klu Klux Klan, also did not dare to go to the UN to oppose racial discrimination. But Indian sociologists never became part of the movement to combat casteism. On the other hand, they quite shamelessly argued that caste and race are different things and they should not be confused with one another.
Now, a senior professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University goes to the UN to oppose the inclusion of caste discrimination in the UN agenda. In fact, JNU should be ashamed of having a so-called leading sociologist of this kind on its rolls. Not that one would oppose any academic’s freedom to have one’s own views. But one who is known as progressive doing this kind of reactionary representation to oppose the rights issue of untouchables going global is being a green snake in green grass.
Why do some of these so called Left and democratic academics take this position and oppose the caste question getting addressed by the UN bodies? They simply want to follow the orientalist methodology and do not want to see what is the sociological reality around them.
The much bigger question is why the UPA Government that claims to stand for democratic and secular values is opposing caste discrimination being taken up by the UN bodies? What is the stand of both CPI and CPM, who are part of this Government? If they think that the UN is an unnecessary organisation, why do China and other Communist countries remain in that organisation? If they too think like the NDA Government that opposed the caste issue being taken up by the UN at the Durban Conference on Racism and Xenophobia in 2001 as it was seen as a national issue of India, the same is true of the race problem as that problem exists in other nation states as well. Let there be one more round of debate on this question.
Posted on: March 14, 2007
State of English
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally appeared in The Times of India, February 21, 2007.
The proposal of the Congress party to constitute the second state reorganisation commission (SRC) necessitates a larger debate. Linguistic states deserve a relook at a time when English is developing as a pan-Indian language. The rationale behind establishing a linguistic federation of Indian states is questionable.
If one assumes that regional languages develop like the European languages, then the federation is likely to break, as each advanced linguistic region would like to be a nation by itself.
Would India like to take the course of Europe, where many developed linguistic nations emerge and contradictions sharpen? But Indian regional languages are not as advanced as European languages like English, French, German, Spanish and so on.
In the ancient period, Sanskritic forces stilted their growth. In the late mediaeval period it was stilted by Persian. In the colonial period, English intervened. Now, there is no possibility of these languages developing to the levels of European languages.
In an under-developed language system, thought processes will also remain underdeveloped. In modern knowledge societies, underdeveloped languages cannot produce advanced thought. The present Indian languages, including Hindi, were more underdeveloped than any European language of the early 18th century.
The advanced linguistic nationalism of Europe sharpened contradictions, leading to nationalist wars among them, even though they all shared the same religion. The common historical roots of all the European languages, in Greek and Latin, did not prevent the emergence of such contradictions.
Once each language branches out, it develops nationalist aspirations, whipping up linguistic chauvinism. The recent chauvinist expressions that Telugu is greater than Tamil or vice versa, in order to get ancient status, is an indication of that trend.
The Dravidian or Pali linguistic roots of these languages are set aside and every linguistic state wants to prove that its language is great. With English developing as a language of administration and the market in India, the country can now afford to sidestep the European model of linguistic nations.
It is important to initiate a debate on this larger question before Andhra Pradesh, the first linguistic state to be formed, is split on developmental grounds. Once this happens, the principle of underdeveloped regions within every linguistic state being divided on the same grounds as AP comes into play. Each region can put forth its own case.
The only option left for us is to choose the American model of developing one national language across the federation and dividing provinces into viable administrative units. Given the historical roots of English in India over a period of a few centuries, it can become the spoken language of all Indians alongside regional languages.
Linguistic history has enough evidence to show that whether one is literate or not every human being can become bilingual. By 1510 (before the Bible was translated into English facing a great papal resistance), English was a language of the British illiterate productive masses.
Within just 500 years it has become the most popular language of the world. Within 200 years of its introduction in India it has become the language of easily about 100 million people. Its expansion in future will be several fold faster than earlier. It has become a language of day-to-day use for several million upper middle classes and rich.
The poor and the productive masses have a right to learn the language of administration and global communication. This ground reality forces us to accept that at least 50 per cent of the school syllabus in all govern-ment schools across the country should be taught in English.
The country would then overcome the yawning gap between convent and missionary English-medium school education and regional language-centred government school education. When educated social masses communicate in English across the country, the concept of linguistic state would become redundant.
The provincial states then should be compact administrative units. This 21st century reality should compel us to have a second SRC. This should examine the very concept of continuing with language-based provincial units within integrated Indian federal system.
Posted on: February 24, 2007
Reorganising states
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, January 20, 2007.
There is a need to accept English as the national language as the concept of linguistic states has failed.
The Congress party’s move to constitute the Second States Reorganisation Commission is welcome for two reasons. It is not just the question of Telangana or Vidarbha that needs to be examined but the very concept of formation of linguistic states.
In the early days of Indian Independence nobody had any idea about how a national language would shape up. A major section of the national leadership felt that Hindi would emerge as a link language and other regional languages would emerge as well-developed administrative and market languages. But both expectations got belied. Hindi has failed to emerge as a globally competitive national language. In an age of globalisation Hindi cannot serve the purpose of the nation nor does it empower the national social mass.
The Indian ruling classes realised this and they adopted English as the basic central administrative and ruling class language. Even state governments realised that the regional languages were inadequate in the historical context of the British colonial background. Even the children of the elite were pushed into English education (qualitative or otherwise) with an understanding that English would be the Pan Indian administrative and market language. At Pan Indian level, from the recently carved out tribal states to Bengal, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, a chain of English speaking class emerged with an inbuilt ruling class understanding that English but not Hindi would be the real language of power. Fortunately for them, with the emergence of English speaking American, European and Australian nations as dominant players in the world, the future of Hindi would be simply that of a regional language.
The ruling elite in the South, along with the elite in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Calcutta , Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderbad realised that the real national language was English. This linguistic reality changed the very basis of linguistic states. Assume a situation that in the footsteps of the ruling elite in all states, the mass also acquires the basic proficiency in English over a period of few decades, as that language is going to be the main player in the whole of India along with their regional languages. Then the very foundation of linguistic states gets shaken. And in the interest of the masses that is what should happen. Unless the whole national population acquires communication skills in English there is no way in which the whole nation could progress.
The formation of linguistic states itself was based on wrong premises. The assumption that regional languages would develop as globally competitive and the development of the linguistic states would depend on the development of the provincial languages without creating their own nationalist aspirations is wrong. The most advanced linguistic states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal developed major contradictions with the Centre. But their ruling elite also got Anglicised. There is a contradiction in the very basic idea of forming linguistic states and they remaining loyal to Pan Indian ruling elite, which developed as a very advanced Anglicised social force. All this has created a linguistic colonialism within India. This needs to be broken by reformulating the states more as small and compact administrative units in which English and the regional languages should develop with equal priority.
The best way, therefore, is to break all big linguistic states and form small administrative states wherein English gets equal status with its regional language. That will produce a Pan Indian English speaking intellectual force from every village that can claim its place in provincial and federal politics and administration and at the same time it will have commitment to the Indian nation undercutting the regional parochial tendencies.
The knowledge with their state language or Hindi would not play any human resource developmental role in people’s real life in India . With an administrative will, the hegemony of small, selfish, English speaking class will have to be broken. That can be done only by transforming English into a mass national language.
In this background the concept of linguistic states is even administratively meaningless. In every state there is a small historically backward and politically hypocritical group that keeps on working around the sentiment of the so-called mother tongue and national tongue (Hindi). As it happens in some states, there are some, who keep saying that the state administration should work in Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and so on. But the demands of these forces will be swept of by the logic of global market forces. Hence the role of English will expand more and more and a day will come when it will be officially recognised as the national language.
The states reorganisation would not be on the ground of language. For example, the present Telangana demand is not worked out based on this larger context. Whether Telangana becomes an independent state now or some time later is not the issue. Breaking Andhra Pradesh into two or three administratively small and compact states is necessary. The united Andhra Pradesh failed the people on many accounts. The Telangana question should be an entry point to break all big unviable linguistic states. When English becomes the ruling and state language, all the literate social mass in the country should become bilingual — English and one regional language.
Posted on: January 20, 2007
Knowledge Commission fails to deliver
The resignation of two members — Andre Beteille and Pratap Bhanu Mehta — from the Knowledge Commission protesting against the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Central educational institutions did not come as a surprise. We also learnt from the media that except for Jayati Ghosh and GS Bhargava, all other members of the Commission opposed the government’s reservation policy.
As soon as Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh mooted the idea, Knowledge Commission chairman Sam Pitroda, who hardly lives in India, said publicly that the minister should have consulted the Commission before making that announcement. The nation should be happy that the Commission did not demand that its approval be sought before the Constitutional Amendment Bill was sent to Parliament.
But the moot question is: Who are these Commission members to advise the government about the constitutional rights of vast masses of people? Why are they silent about the fact that all Central universities, IITs, IIMs, medical schools and Navodaya schools are run in English medium even though the Centre has declared Hindi as the national language?
The Knowledge Commission is not worried about this, since English ensures that the upper classes get easy access to the globalised markets. We have never heard the Knowledge Commission say all children should be given equal access to English medium education.
But whenever emerges an issue pertaining to the welfare of the Dalit-Bahujan masses, some intellectuals in Delhi and the Central institutes jump into the discourse with the theory that caste-based mechanism does not do any good for the nation. They warn that such government agendas will divide society on the basis of caste. Don’t they know that Indian society has been divided on the basis of caste for centuries? Do they have any ideological formula for the abolition of caste?
When there was a proposal to take caste to the United Nations conference held in Durban in 2001, these same intellectuals warned that caste was an internal problem and we should search for national solutions.
They indirectly supported the NDA government’s decision not to allow the issue to be discussed at the UN meet.
Posted on: July 5, 2006
Give Ambedkar His Due
By Kancha Ilaiah
Orginally published in the Deccan Herald, March 16, 2006.
President Bush in his recent trip to India mentioned Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru in that order as thinkers who shaped the destiny of India. These three names indicate a certain mode of representative ideology of the Indian establishment and also the politics of ideological representation. A few years ago the University Grants Commission of India recognized Gautama Buddha, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru as the epoch making thinkers of India.
It also directed the Indian universities to institute special chairs and research centres in their names. Evidently these names are a product of intensive deliberations. In these four names one can see the globally known positive system built by Buddha, who established an alternative Sangha system, that gradually emerged as the Buddhist religion in ancient India. As against the names of Kautilya and Manu, Buddha alone was seen as a thinker to be recognized as the epoch making thinker of that period.
In the modern period, Gandhi undoubtedly is credited as one of the epoch making thinkers. Even though one may not agree with many of his ideological positions one does not dispute his role as an epoch maker. Ambedkar occupies the second place in the modern period as an epoch maker because he played a political, ideological and philosophical role to abolish caste- slavery and untouchability in India, a role that is comparable to that of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are seen as epoch makers in American history.
Nehru is recognized as an epoch making thinker because he steered the Indian administrative set-up through a colonial phase into an independent one with administrative acumen. Thus, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru are identified as epoch making thinkers of modern India. How does Rabindranath Tagore figure in President Bush’s speech and how is Ambedkar ignored ?
In Delhi the Bengal lobby is quite strong. It influences the central Government’s culture in many ways and Tagore was the tallest figure of Bengal.
Bengali writers projectTagore as the tallest individual of India and deliberately avoid Ambedkar as a significant figure of modern India, leave alone as an epoch making thinker.
The most visible and recent example of such Bengali intellectual tradition is Amartya Sen’s international best seller—-The Argumentative Indian. In this book Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru figure as the thinkers who shaped modern India. In Sen’s scheme in ancient India it was Ashoka, but not Buddha who figures as an epoch making thinker. In early modern India, Akbar is projected as a thinker of unmatched intellect.
Theory for liberation
The fact that Ambedkar does not merit mention even though he constructed a theory for the liberation of the most exploited underdog of India and sought to liberate that untouchable underdog is a travesty of intellectual representation. Ambedkar’s name is mentioned by Sen on only four times and that too for his position as the chairman of the drafting committee of the constitution—but not as a visionary.
Tagore is a poet, but not a thinker with a liberative ideology. No one has any objection if he is recognized as a great poet of modern India. Let us not forget the fact that Bush had to mention Martin Luther King even in his speeches, who has played a similar role like that of Ambedkar in India.
Any nation would have a respectable representation of intellectual tradition if the national psyche recognizes those intellectuals who represented the most oppressed people of a given society.
Why do Americans think that Abraham Lincoln was their greatest president and Martin Luther King was their greatest civil libertarian? Both of them got that national and international stature because they stood for abolition of slavery and racial discrimination. Ambedkar should have got a similar stature if the national elite were to develop any sense of shame of the institution of caste and untouchability which have worse characteristics than the racism of America and Europe. But that was not to be so.
Tagore’s greatest poem is Gitanjali. What liberational message does it have for the oppressed Dalit-Bahujans? A philosophically aesthetic poem like the Gitanjali must have got India the first Nobel prize. But that in itself did not re-shape India.
The millions of suppressed and exploited masses of India do not revere him. If he does not figure in school text books his name would not have been known among the masses at all.
Ambedkar’s name has a different value. That value did not come to him because his name was pushed through the officially written school text books. He is seen as a thinker who keeps on liberating the oppressed masses on a continuous basis.
The projection of this kind of a liberative thinker among the intellectual internationally and socio-political circles would have given an impression that this country has an open mind and principled value for human freedom.
If India does not abolish caste and untouchability using all the ideological tools that Ambedkar had handed down to this country what does freedom that Bush is talking from Purana Qila mean to these oppressed masses?
Posted on: March 18, 2006
The National Resolve
By Kancha Ilaiah
Originally published in the Deccan Herald, Jan. 3, 2006
India as a nation has not yet declared its resolve on the question of abolition of caste. The half hearted efforts to improve the social life of Dalits, tribals and the Other Backward Castes is not going to make any significant change in national life. The abolition of caste is not just a political question. It cannot be abolished by constitutional means. The attempt of the chairman of the SC, ST commission, Suraj Bhan, to abolish this through constitutional means is putting the cart before the horse. It can be abolished only through spiritual means. It was constructed and nurtured and maintained only through Hindu spiritual means. If Hinduism does not abolish caste it cannot abolish untouchability. It will walk into the trap of its own death. As of now it does not seem to have any history of abolition of caste on its own. The Hindu spiritual punditry is too rigid and archaic.
Construction or destruction of a religious culture does not depend on the national constitution. Religious cultures are global in nature. Hinduism as a religion developed a similar caste system in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh regions, as they were part of the so called Akhand Bharat. It was caste that pushed the Chandala (modern Dalits) , tribal and Sudra masses of those regions into Islam creating new Islamic states. The Hindu priests and the so called Acharyas and the Hindutva political forces never realised that the expansion of Islam in present Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh took place because of caste and violence that the Hindu caste system inflicted on the Untouchables, Tribals and Sudras in their pre-Islamic life.
No human being tolerates spiritual humiliation. When human beings are treated much less than animals by those who are handling the religious institutions no Karma theory can contain them within the fold of that religion. The suppressed people, who walked into Islam, became riotous after they got out of the fold of that religion. The social base of violent Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be read into its transitional phase of the caste-tribal groups into an advanced homogenised Islamic social force. Some amount of violence is bound to be generated, when the groups that were living unequally begin to become equal. That is an inevitable evil. Societies may have to pass through that phase. Even the European Christian societies that were spiritually egalitarian had to go through that process of violent formations of nations in the late medieval periods. The historical caste societies might produce more violence, because caste itself survives through violent means.
Examples of divisive demands
Once the religious composition of the social mass changes the demand for separate nationhood becomes inevitable. We have had two such examples. Pakistan along with Bangladesh became independent in 1947 because by then the social mass in those regions had already become Islamic. Assuming that the lower caste masses of that region were happy Hindus as some Brahminical intellectuals are claiming, such vast social mass would not have become Islamic. No forceful conversion can change such a vast social mass into another religion. Having become Islamic the masses were also convinced that they cannot co-exist with the Hindu nation which did not have any respect for spiritual equality. It was because of this process that the two nation theory came into vogue.
One of the reasons for such a demand for separate nationhood was that all the lower castes, who became Muslims, did not want to do anything with the Hindu caste system and its practices. Islam changed their relation to caste both in the name and form. That is the reason why the Indian Muslims today are asking for reservations as a religious group but not as caste groups. There are no such markedly identifiable castes within Islam. This was the reason why Islam became more attractive to the suppressed castes and more of them moved into that religion.
The second example is that of Kashmir. By 1947 the estimate was that in Kashmir about 40 per cent population was non-Muslim, of which a small percentage was that of Brahmins—called Pundits. But by the end of the twentieth century almost all the Non-Muslims had embraced Islam. The exodus of Kashmiri lower castes into Islam was gradual. Only the Pundits were left within the fold of Hinduism by 1990. Today the whole of Kashmir has become Islamic. The Pundits have been forced out of that region because religious exclusivism and religious inclusivism cannot co-exist. Co-existence of two or more religions at one place becomes possible if the social mass living in those religions is totally content with their spiritual life. With the kind of spiritual discontentment among the SC, ST and OBCs and with the kind of spiritual control that Brahminism has over Hinduism, there is always a fear that the discontented social mass would go into some other religion.
As the religious identity is central to nationhood the change of the religious composition would bring in a demand for separate nationhood in every region. Three Northeastern states, who have become predominantly Christian, are already in that mood. Banning of cow slaughter nationwide would force such states for greater autonomy and gradually ask for the right to nationhood. The Kashmiri Islamic nationhood became a possible proposition within our life time. The state of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Kashmiri Pundit, has become Islamic under the nose of its own family administration within a very short span.
The Hindu pundits who have been preaching tolerance in Hinduism must realise that the very existence of caste in the religion is an indication of its intolerance. And that very caste system drives Hinduism into a death trap. The choice before Hinduism is between allowing people to become totally spiritually egalitarian or go into oblivion as happened in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Kashmir.
Posted on: January 5, 2006
