(This is a rejoinder to an article published on November 30 on TwoCircles.net titled caste on my back, written by Aishik Chanda.)
By Yogesh Maitreya,
Gopal Guru described that “Indian social science represents a pernicious divides between theoretical Brahmins and empirical Shudras”. Now this divide does not only limit to the social-sciences texts when it discusses the dalits lives through Brahmin-imagination. This divide has an inculcation factor which transmits into other upper castes writers than Brahmins.
What is wrong with the upper-caste imagination when it tries to observe or imagine dalit lives is that the empiricity which they lack into giving a conscious and humane touch to the dalit subjects or lives. Into most of the text written by upper-caste writers or journalists, dalits lives seem to appear and sound distorted when looking it through the dalit – empiricism. Aishik Chanda’s news article titled as ‘caste on my back’ published in TwoCircles.net is one such narrative writing-piece, written with the amateur-consciousness which, at its ontological grounding, distorts the politics of proclamation and assertion between dalit and other castes in Maharashtra.
The title of Mr. Chanda’s article itself, Caste on my back, poses problem in terms of interpreting the positioning and status of caste and to locate its trajectories with reference to caste-proud and anti-caste assertion. The caste proclamation by a non-dalit or for that matter upper caste is a symbol of propagation of his caste proud as it always talks itself with reference to dalits or for that matter lower caste. But in opposition and Dalit does not proclaim the caste, especially those who are converted to Buddhism into Maharashtra as their identity is proclaimed by ‘Jai Bhim’ as an assertion against the caste-hegemony of brahminical society, about which Mr. Chanda seems to have not epistemological practice to dwell into the roots.
‘Jai Bhim’ itself is an assertion against caste-system by Dalit those converted to Buddhism in which there is no notion of caste. ‘Jai Bhim’ is a nomenclature which is completely anti-caste. And Mr. Chanda, in his attempt to equate ‘Jai Bhim’ with ‘Jai Maratha’ image seems to reinforce appropriation of Dalits and their identical discourse through his upper-caste imagination. The article also spread the antagonistic stand against Dalit movement in Maharashtra where dalits are, by and large, assert and greet each other with ‘Jai Bhim’ as sign of anti-caste proclamation and also a sign of sharing secular ideology. Also Mr. Chanda forgets the fact that those who convert to Buddhism do not remain Dalits as caste-categorical, as he uses the term ‘Dalit Buddhist’.
Since caste, in India, forms the specificity not only of public affairs but of psychoanalytical imagination and perception, Mr. Chanda’s upper-caste, privileged background and its observation about dalit/bahujan’s caste spaces and public affairs is loudly incorrect in which he misunderstood the caste-proud of Maratha as mere caste-proclamation. As dalit’s proclamation of ‘Jai Bhim’ is anti-caste greeting and symbol of assertion that is antithesis with Maratha caste-proclamation in Maharashtra, Mr. Chanda is wrong in his attempt to forge the uniformity between Marathas and Dalit by compiling narratives in caste-prejudice manners, because the contradiction between upper-caste proclamation and dalit assertion is always there and divided on caste-lines when it comes to political representation into political discourse of Maharashtra in which Marathas seem to dominate the scene.
In his attempt to differentiate between religious symbols and casteist ones, Mr. Chanda seems to forget the trajectories and psychoanalytical nuances of notion of caste as he observes, “back to Mumbai, here the symbols on the bikes proclaim religion rather than caste’; this particular sentence is problematic and seems to emanate from lack of observation over the fusion of caste into other religions as well, with the people who converted into other religions.
The problem of the article lies at its author’s subjective observation to look into the matter of caste as proclamation and assertion. Dalits (especially those who have converted to Buddhism) and non-Dalits who are all upper castes with reference to Dalits are two different social spaces. Proclamation of ‘Jai Bhim’ by Dalits is an assertion against caste-system-structure and by non-Dalits its manifests as their proclamation of their caste as exercising their caste-proud in their own ways, this can be seen into post-1990s Maharashtra when with the propagation of Shivsena the Hindutva ideology and symbols and colours have come into existed which were not the case before. And this is one thing an which Mr. Chanda seems fail to illustrate by his article as he made dubious efforts to understand the politics of symbols in Maharashtra in dealing with Dalit-imagination and juxtaposing it with caste-symbols of upper caste proud.
(Yogesh Maitreya is post-graduate student in ‘Criminology and Justice’ at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2014-15) Mumbai)
Related: