By Yogesh Maitreya and Daisy Katta for TwoCircles.net,
Mumbai: A discussion on ‘Caste Politics behind Arundhati Roy-Navayana’s Appropriation of ‘Annihilation of Caste’ was held at the Kalina campus of the University of Mumbai on 21st December 2014.
The event was organised by SC, ST, OBC Students and Teachers Association, University of Mumbai and ‘Round Table India’, the web portal which has been extensively publishing anti-caste perspectives literature, written by people across all social division and known for its originality of the content across the globe.
The seminar hall at of the University was filled with students, activists, researchers, and scholars. The seminar hall, in which the event was held appeared insufficient to accommodate the strength of the people who have turned out to be there to attend it. Yet people have firmly presented, standing outside the door, and listening to the speakers who have incisively spoken over the issues over Roy-Navayana’s appropriation of AoC.
The speaker of the events were Dr. Suresh Mane, Advocate – Supreme Court & High Court,
Ex. HoD Law Dept., University of Mumbai, Dr. Sangeeta Pawar, Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, University of Mumbai & Co-ordinator, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Research & Training Institute (BARTI), Anoop Kumar, Writer, activist and teacher based in Wardha, Maharashtra, Karthik Navayan, Human rights activist, writer and researcher, Hyderabad, James Michael, Independent researcher, Mumbai and Kuffir, Contributing Editor, Round Table India.
All of them shed different insights and presented comprehensive studies over the issue, which ostensibly untouched by the Indian media which claims to be the mainstream media. The gravity of the issues was coherent from the context which these speakers have explained which contextualised this attempt of appropriation of AoC was the serious act which trying to erase the original potentials and logics of Ambedkarite texts.
Countering the allegations which have been made by Arundhati Roy and Navayana towards anti-caste writers who were ceaselessly trying to debate and discuss how this annotated version of AoC had problematised the context of the original AoC, one of the speakers at the event, Anoop Kumar explained, “We never brought Arundhati Roy’s caste in the debate, that savarnas will read Ambedkar now that a Savarna woman has written about him.”
Anoop Kumar, with his empiric and lucid scholarship over the issues of castes emphasised upon how the people who were trying to discuss caste into the campuses or even at the places where caste apparently works as embedded device, have been criminalised and how this same criminalisation has reinserted by Navayana and Roy when anti-castes writers, about thirty three, have contributed their reflection over the issue on ‘RoundTable India’.
Discussing the issues in different perspectives and making it much understandable, another speaker, Kuffir Nalgundwar, a contributing editor at Round Table India, said, “This appropriation is also grass roots reality. It is as much to do with the appropriation of land and resources as with thoughts and knowledge,” that suggests that this isn’t the simple issue of someone just introducing Ambedkar. The logical arguments of Kuffir Nalgundwar seemed to given the different dimensions to look at the annotation version of AoC by Navayana and how it could erase the originality of Ambedkar’s literature.
On the academician perspective, one of the women speakers at the event, Dr. Sangeeta Pawar, Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, University of Mumbai said, “If I read this as a reader and academician, Roy’s introduction has zero value in terms of its engagement with Annihilation of Caste,” that also posed a different academic stand on Roy’s introduction which seems desperate to enter into universities libraries, attempting to replace the original Ambedkar book which is easily available with very affordable price.
On very different note, Gaurav Somvanshi, an IIM graduate shared his views, adding, “My journey from celebrating Roy’s introduction to realizing it as a major appropriation is thanks to the many writers who wrote on Roundtable India.” Gaurav’s commentary is important to understand that how this annotated version of AoC by Navayana can create an image in reader’s mind about Ambedkar and his texts who have not yet read Ambedkar’s seminal texts as originals.
By the last session of the event as the audience and participants have already got hunch of the politics behind annotated version of AoC, Dr. Suresh Mane, with his legal knowledge and brilliant scholarly insights added, “Roy Navayana Doctor & Saint is a perfect case for moving for litigation”.