something led me here, to this very entertaining piece of information:

The meaning of the word ‘Saraswat’ has more than one origin. One refers to ‘offspring ofSaraswati‘^{[citation needed]} , the Goddess of learning applied usually to learned and scholarly people. It may also denote the residents of Saraswati river basin. The brahmins of this region who are referred to as ‘Saraswats’ in Mahabharata and Puranas were learned in Vedic lore^{[citation needed]} . They concentrated on studying subjects like astronomy, metaphysics,medicine and allied subjects and disseminating knowledge^{[citation needed]} .

the heading, you’d notice says ‘history’. history? do people really believe that’s history? gods and goddesses are history? do you notice anything like dates in that whole section?

that piece of history whetted my appetite for more such knowledge. this page tells you about the origins of the nambudiris:

The ancient Sangam literature mentions Brahmins ofChera Kingdom (which became Kerala) who may be Namboothiris as there is mention of Perinchellur(Taliparamba) village, which is one of the most important villages for Namboothiris, as a great Vedic village. There is no concrete evidence to suggest migration of Namboothiri Brahmins to Kerala but would most probably be the heavily civilised Aryans who took the Red sea route to Kerala even before the 100O BC. The recent evidence of Brahmin migration to Kerala is the Embranthiris who were originally Tulu Brahmins.

no concrete evidence, but they’re most probably heavily civilised Aryans who took the Red sea route to Kerala even before the 100O BC (100O BC?).

what’s funnier (than the content of those histories) is the fact that some people, at least two persons, actually wrote those pages. why? to tell people like me: this is not your history, you can’t bask in the glory of the saraswats or the nambudiris, you can only admire them. but would anyone have written those pages if non-nambudiris/non-saraswats like me didn’t exist? what’s the point of being a brahmin when there aren’t any non-brahmins around? so i am there in those narratives: as, say, most probably the heavily uncivilised native who didn’t take the red sea route to kerala even before the 100O BC, but was born here. no non-indian can read between the lines and spot me, the non-saraswat or non-nambudiri, who doesn’t deserve any history. the nambudiri is the light, i am the shadow that gives the light meaning.

if i ever tell a non-indian that my people studied astronomy, metaphysics and medicine ages ago, i’d be lying. because it was the saraswats who studied astronomy, metaphysics and medicine. so i have to make sure no brahmins, saraswats especially, are around when i tell non-indians that my people studied astronomy, metaphysics and medicine. but a lie is a lie and as long as that page, and less crude but similar pages exist in many forms, i can never really be proud of the fact that ‘indians’ were smart enough to explore astronomy etc a thousand or more years ago. not as long as some ‘indians’ claim that they’re brahmins.

they say the chinese first started making rockets, or something like rockets. it’s quite possible a chinese nobleman first made it. but now, any chinese soldier or hawker or sex worker or scientist or film star could proudly say: we invented rockets. because there is no single endogamous group of people in china who could say: my forefathers invented rockets. so everyone is free to claim that glory.

when someone explicitly tells the world he’s a brahmin, like the writers of those two pages, he’s claiming a lot of history for himself. a history filled with ‘glorious achievements’. you might have problems with the authenticity or incompleteness of that history, but there’s very little you can do about it. the problem is, a lot of history attaches itself even to those who don’t explicitly tell the world that they’re brahmin. a lot of history attaches itself to all brahmins, as long as they’re brahmins, in whatever fashion, for the simple reason that indian history doesn’t have much space for anyone else.

the reason why indian history sounds so much like a bad zombie movie in which the characters seemingly incapable of any voluntary, conscious action so smartly and purposefully keep cornering the conscious, hyperactive ones, is because it implicitly makes the claim that those mostly unconnected with any production produced all of indian science, astronomy, medicine etc. indian history reads so much like mythology because those claiming its ‘glorious achievements’ as their own have no idea whatsoever how those achievements were accomplished– it’s obvious that they know only a part of the story, so they add a lot of mumbo jumbo to complete it, to obfuscate the dalitbahujan contributions. indian history is such a colossal crime because by depriving the dalitbahujans of any past, it steals their future too.

as long as the brahmins, as brahmins, are around, and in very large numbers, in academia and other places that produce history– it’d be very difficult to find anything resembling objective history in that kind of an environment. no, i have no problems with people whose forefathers might have been brahmins filling all available seats in universities with their..behinds.

but as long as people who can trace their ancestry back to the nambudiris or saraswats are around, i might as well give up thinking that i can produce something of value, because indian history tells me i’m totally incapable of producing anything of any value. only the brahmin can.

but mr.dipankar gupta would object to that kind of a caste sneer:

Only recently, a newspaper article, while discussing Narayana Murthy’s inept attempts to wriggle out of his faux pas with the national anthem episode, calmly added without context that one cannot expect much from a Brahmin after all. Now where did that come from? As if to explain further, the journalist went on to remind the readers that Narayana Murthy, the Brahmin, as a Brahmin, also opposed reservation quotas. This is clearly a caste sneer!

yes, that clearly is a caste sneer, because it attributes a negative trait to all brahmins. gupta is trying to say that the journalist accused narayana muthy, the brahmin, of acting as a brahmin. can the word brahmin be sanitized of its history, and of its sociology? can a person just be a brahmin, just as someone can be tall, fat or dark? can someone be a brahmin and not be acting as a brahmin?

isn’t the very claim to be a brahmin, a claim on an exclusive right to a long line of ‘super-achievements’, also an act of consigning almost everyone else to an history of ‘non-achievement’? isn’t that a caste sneer, in a way?

——————————–

i started on this post nearly two years ago– don’t know if all the links work now. but its logic still seems ok to me, and i feel more confident of that theory today, after reading this article by rahul pandita. he says:

As a Brahmin, does it make me less sensitive to the plight of the poor or the marginalised? Why is it such a big deal that I can wear my Janeu, recite my Hanuman Chalisa, and yet go to Bant Singh’s house in Bhurj Jabbar, thirstily gulp down a few glasses of water, and tell his story? Where is the contradiction?

yes, why is it such a big deal that he wears a janeu etc? i don’t believe the practice of rituals etc make a brahmin. so giving them up won’t make one less of a brahmin, either, in my view.

the big deal is that bant singh can’t just get up and go meet rahul pandita in delhi or mumbai or wherever he lives, gulp down a few glasses of water, and tell his story. bant singh was attacked because he wanted to do exactly what rahul pandita does. get up and go do the things he wanted to do.

the big deal is that rahul pandita has the freedom to do so and bant singh doesn’t.

if you say bant singh lost his freedom of movement because of the line of work he chose to do– organizing farm labour– you’d be wrong because he didn’t have much freedom of choice to begin with. history had seen to that. now rahul pandita, despite being forced out of home ‘at the age of 14′, seems to have done quite well for himself. that’s the contradiction.

when rahul pandita says he’s a brahmin, he’s making a claim on a lot of indian history. when bant singh rebels against his present, he is also rejecting pandita’s history, his claim on privilege. if pandita doesn’t see that, he shouldn’t have undertaken the trip to bant singh’s home.

——

ages since i heard you sing a full song, don’t remember the last time you hummed one of these songs. for all the times i came home late, dreading to see you pacing near the gate, preparing and rejecting answers for the inevitable grilling…. miss your anxious voice, miss your singing voice, miss you. will be home soon.

I am now in love with this brahmin poet.

No, not really, but I was far from bored with what I found, as I usually am with brahmanized/mainstream literature. Though the poem contains no mention of caste, it still is fascinating stuff. Such rare articulation, beautifully illuminating the fear and anxiety of the colonizer, with just a few lyrical lines, Bana develops a blueprint for the demonization of the natives; a textual instrument for his descendants to perpetually fine tune. For, colonization rarely means the extinction of the colonized, it usually means the complex business of having the native remain in a constant state as the ‘other’. And caste is all about the other, isn’t it?

When race and geography of the oppressor and oppressed are not clearly distinct, where and how do we begin locating the processes of internal colonization? Perhaps in the narratives of both sides (?)

In Harshcharitra and Kadambari, Bana makes it abundantly clear that he writes from a brahmin centric worldview. In the introductions to both the non-fiction and fictional work, he traces his impeccable brahmin lineage back to some typically non-human, heavenly origin. Now, lets check out how Bana creates the ‘other’ in one particular tract of Kadambari. The verses below form a part of the scene depicting a face off between the Savara and Bana’s ‘civilized’ heroes as they trespassed deep into the jungles. There is sufficient verifiable proof that the Savara people are one of the earliest inhabitants of this land. Thus in this poem we are looking at a brahmin’s view of the Savaras. For a writer illustrating the ‘other’ is easiest done in a battle scene, in one neat move you ensure your readers know whom to fear, despise and hate. It is a literary device as old as story telling itself. Bana gives us a background of the ‘enemy’, the careful details he offers, as descriptors of the Savara’s way of life would make trained anthropologists sit up and take notice. Here is how Bana begins the description of the Savara:

Oh, they lived a life devoid of knowledge

Their life is condemned by wise men

They eat the flesh, honey, which is forbidden

in the civilized society

//

Perfect screen writing material!

Line 1: state the enemy is without the single most potent weapon of humankind -knowledge!

Line 2: substantiate it with condemnation by a third party, no proof or reason for condemnation required. Third party need not have a name or claim to neutrality, just tag a ‘wise’, and that should do.

Line 3: is crucial, list the dietary difference, and firmly establish the ‘other’ for all times to come, dietary hatred is fail-proof, works like gravity, it is elemental for the maintenance of the self from the other. Bana, the brahmin poet is spot on and on the roll.

Take home message for the readers from the above verse:  victory is clear and easy for Bana’s heroes; we are dealing with ‘knowledge-less beings!’ The poet has primed us for further elaboration of qualities that has only one way to proceed, a downward spiral with lesser and lesser human-like traits.

Their physical exercise is hunting

Their intelligence lies in understanding

The nature of the birds

Their inmates are dogs

Their kingdom is the lonely forest. (1)

//

Now is this going downwards or upwards? This verse tickled my funny bone a bit, there must be some ‘politically correct’ brahminized souls squirming at this, or may be not. Don’t worry, sweethearts, this is Bana during premodern times, lets cut him some slack, he is clueless about the green movement, specialized disciplines like ornithology or complex multidisciplinary subjects like environmental science were still unborn, and pet cultures were yet to kick start the multi-million dollar industry of our times. Instead, let us focus on his utterly lovely insight in line 9: “Their kingdom is the lonely forest!” And what follows.

They live with cruel animals like the tiger

(hence they are cruel)

They propitiate their Gods with the

animal blood

Theft is their life

Their ornaments are the jewels of the Cobra. (1)

These are self-explanatory verses to anyone who is slightly familiar with histories of the colonizer’s fear of the natives and their life styles, their capacities, their knowledge of the local environment, which is desperately sought by the colonizer. The forest is lonely, but, it is a Kingdom!

Then, Bana, the brahmin poet emerges as a global patriarch and presents his observation of the gender relations of the Savaras’ of his time.

Their wives are those women who have been captured.

They had been wives of others. (1)

Bana doesn’t seem to require too many words to convey his contempt here, in just two lines one gets the full force of the impurity he associates with women who have been wives of others and the men who are accepting of this. As to the capturing part, the Internet goddess will find for interested readers other possibilities: the Savara people permit elopement of men and women, both married and unmarried, second marriages are commonplace for men and women (2). A pregnant woman opting out of her first marriage and seeking a second husband causes no earth shattering upheavals; the child is welcomed into the new family.

The Savara men seemed to go against the universal model of patriarchy -which spins around the barely controlled male fear of all things female. Bana of course cannot be held responsible for his brahiminical heritage; his twice born status itself revolves around the very issue of womb control. The ceremony of upanayana is given this interesting reading by some historians:

On the basis of brahminical literature, that attempts were made to structure biological reproduction and locate it within a specific social context. On the one hand, legitimate reproduction was linked to marriage. What is more, the wife was constructed as an instrument of procreation with her procreative powers being appropriated through a variety of rituals. As such, she was expected to participate in procreation but her claims to the offsprings produced was subordinated to those of her husband. As an extension of this, children, especially sons, were ritually connected to the fathers and vice versa. Besides, rituals, mantras and learning were often depicted as being superior means of producing offsprings, as opposed to the physical process of copulation. This was reinforced by portraying related processes such as menstruation and childbirth as polluting. In a sense, this culminated in the privileging of the upanayana or initiation, which was regarded as a second, spiritual birth. This was viewed as better than the first, physical birth. (3)

Describing non-brahmin men and women calls for acknowledging and reinforcing too many kinds of pollutions for Bana.

Women from non-brahmin communities who constantly resist assimilation have to keep unearthing and examining such contrasting narratives to deconstruct internal colonization using multiple sources, textual and non-textual.

Ikon, the painted narratives

Though Bana seems quiet knowledgeable about the Savara I am not quite sure if Bana comments on their ikon-decorated homes elsewhere. What would those paintings mean to him? Lives lived without knowledge cannot be presumed to create encrypted knowledge bytes as pictographic art. Perhaps Bana believed the written word would persist long after the Savara art was erased from memory. Or more simply that the knowledge symbolized in the Savara art would not be interpreted as easily as written texts. In which case I would agree whole-heartedly.

Asking the question, do we posses any skills to interpret the narratives embedded in this art form would be moot  - we, being the products of the brahminized education system cannot come by learned skills to understand the non-brahminical heritages, right?

What about the default alternative, wear the Western lens and imagine Kant’s possible take on this art, or Marx’s possible comment on the images of humans engaged in production and the kind of social order it presents, or what Audre Lorde may have to say for images of men and women represented as equal statured? What about my own training and engagement with encrypting information about natural science for machine readability? Can I begin decoding the codes of wisdom about natural science visible as stylized symbols to the most casual observer of a Savara painting?

These are pictorial representation of reality, flora, fauna, humans and their activities. To be able to perceive the symbolism within them calls for a profound understanding of the history of mankind, possess a critical knowledge of changing environments and natural diversity; be able to fathom the temporality of breathing life as it exists between non-living and the living, the real and mythic worlds. And appreciate the origins and continuation of recording science and technology, pictographically.

We have to unpeel too many layers to begin an organic interpretation of an Ikon or the various other non-textual narratives of the non-brahminical world. Tough job, indeed!

Give me a brahmin poet’s representation of reality, anytime, it is a lark for me to decode.

Likewise, imagine Banabhatta in modern times, being given an Ikon painting and see what he makes of it. Hopefully he factors in the women’s movement and all other ‘modern’ realities that appear implicitly in the ancient practice of Ikon painting by the Savara.

This post is not to re-state the simple formulation of seeking the simultaneous examination of brahminized and non-brahmin narratives, but for us to enjoy doing it. Poetry and painting, text and orality, dirges and slokas -narratives that are different in formats can be used to aid us as we go about countering processes of internal colonization. One format might seem as easy as snapping a dry twig, like Bana’s poem here, the other maybe a hard nut to crack, like the Ikon. We have to find creative ways of extracting the embedded information in them for reuse, and to redeploy in novel ways. This is not to go seeking a primordial, ideal social order, but to bring back liberating aspects that have been buried under the brahmin’s notions of shame, ignorance or knowledge. Unpacking and contrasting these narratives will set us, the women resisting brahminization, free to imagine a world that does not fetish on female sexuality. A world with men not crippled with the desperate need to solely own and control the wombs of their wives. A world where young men are raised to partner with the woman’s mind and body with confidence, instead of fear. And young women are raised to partner with the man’s nurturing characteristics with confidence, instead of guilt. Where the inhuman and ugly caste hierarchies dissolve. Where men and women have equal resources, time and space to dream, and follow dreams.

Sources:

1) Tribal roots of Hinduism. Shiv Kumar Tewari

2) Savara, an ethnographic profile 

3) Women in early Indian societies. Ed. by Kumkum Roy.

4) The Sauras and their panoramic paintings. C. B Patel

5) Image: courtesy Internet.

Wrote this post for a new blog Writing Caste, over there, please read Malar’s How it beganpage. I stick to writing short notes for lack of time, on rare occasions that I make time for writing, it is only for spaces that have a clear anti-caste focus. Since I know firsthand the challenges involved in creating anti-caste spaces, I deeply appreciate what Malar is doing and really hope that she keeps this new platform from being appropriated.

This post was also written with a conscious attempt to get a breather from the emotionally intensive, ongoing mobilization around dalit student suicides. When Malar asked me to write for her blog, I picked this one from my drafts as I remember being taken aback by the poem’s boastful racist tone and then being amused by it for a long time.

This version has some edits that did not make it to the Writing Caste version, especially the italics and minor edits seem to have been lost in that.

Here is the list of the Dalit students who have committed suicide in last four years. This is by no means an exhaustive list but covers only those cases which we were able to document and where parents and relatives have raised their voices and had accused the institutions of caste discrimination against their children that led to their suicides.

We are sure that the actual numbers of Dalit students committing suicide in country’s premier institutions in last four years will be much higher.

• M. Shrikant, final year, B.Tech, IIT Bombay, 1st Jan 07

• Ajay S. Chandra, integrated PhD, Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore – 26 Aug, 07

• Jaspreet Singh, final year MBBS, Government Medical College, Chandigarh, 27 Jan 08.

• Senthil Kumar, PHD, School of Physics, University of Hyderabad – 23 Feb 08

• Prashant Kureel, first year, B.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 19 April, 08

• G. Suman, final year, M.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 2nd Jan, 09

• Ankita Veghda, first year, BSc Nursing, Singhi Institute of Nursing, Ahmedabad, 20 April, 09

• D Syam Kumar, first year B.Tech, Sarojini Institute of Engineering and Technology, Vijayawada, 13 Aug, 09

• S. Amravathi, national level young woman boxer, Centre of Excellence, Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, 4th Nov, 09

• Bandi Anusha, B.Com final year, Villa Mary College, Hyderabad, 5th Nov, 09

• Pushpanjali Poorty, first year, MBA, Visvesvaraiah Technological University, Bangalore, 30th Jan, 10

• Sushil Kumar Chaudhary, final year MBBS, Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University (formerly KGMC), Lucknow, 31 Jan, 10.

• Balmukund Bharti, final year MBBS, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, 3rd March, 10

• JK Ramesh, second year, BSc, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, 1st July, 10

• Madhuri Sale, final year B.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 17th November, 10

• G. Varalakshmi, B.Tech first year, Vignan Engineering College, Hyderabad, 30 Jan, 2011

• Manish Kumar, IIIrd Year B.Tech, IIT Roorkee, 13 Feb, 11

• Linesh Mohan Gawle, PhD, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, 16 April, 11

——-

more on the death of merit blog.

the ten member jan lokpal bill committee constituted post ‘revolution’ seen conferring at their first meeting. does anything seem strange here?

you know, my country does have women. they are just out of this picture. perhaps they are behind the camera, or behind the men, or simply left out. how can that be? i saw angry women ‘revolutionaries’ at the forefront of the anti-corruption ‘revolution’. think, i recognized a socialite turned gandhian, a famous retired police officer, prominent film personalities and anti-big dam activists. all these women are ones who reached the top echelons of their respective professions. surely, they did not fail to ask for inclusion in the committee -an all-powerful supra-parliamentary one! surely, these women know the long-lasting repercussions of excluding women in top committees (?)

feminist credentials, they all have. their decades long high volume presence in the media assures us that a feminist movement is thriving in india. so, what happened? someone, please explain the invisible patriarchal processes that facilitated this exclusion of the super bright, super ambitious indian women (naturally all upper caste).of the ten members, five are from the parliament, five from civil society. recalling the endless debates on women’s reservation bill, we are aware that the complicated electoral procedures contrived to exclude them and keep them under represented in the house. since we know ‘them’ is not ‘us’ we demanded quota within the bill. they consistently shouted down such demands by dalitbahujan women. we are supposed to wait our turn after they get in, and the fair goddesses would ensure the process of representation evens out for lower caste and minority women.

now, in the present scenario, the composition of members from civil society presented no complicated electoral procedures therefore it should have been straight forward to have women representatives, right? the only complicated exclusionary procedure that kept women out seemed to be that one old hindu male did not think them fit to be included. the very same hindu male that all these feminist leaders supported with such passion. why is there no anger  at this exclusion? are they happy to have this bunch of men decide who and what is corrupt and how to deal with it, with no female input at all?

my hyper imagination is seeing this all male bunch quickly evolve into a khap panchyat, dishing out more weird codes for indian women - consolidating manu’s work!

stringing jasmine gajras for aging hindu men to sit in this committee, and after rendering this noble service vaporizing into thin air like swirling agarbati smoke inside mandirs, is good old brahmin tradition, this does not make a revolution. this is brahmanism, dear feminist leaders!

and we dalitbahujan women are supposed to trust these ladies word on women’s reservation bill?

funny creatures!

———

ps: the minuscule online dalitbahujan groups did take time off to write pithy updates about this farce of a revolution, i think they ripped it apart from almost all imaginable angles  - i wish i had the time to compile several funny and some tremendously insightful updates.

kuffir: it is difficult to think of telangana as a social movement now, if it ever was one, in my view. as a movement for positive social change, a movement that’d take the anti-caste struggle forward. the number of adherents, cutting across society, might give us a different impression, but if numbers alone constitute proof, coca cola is also a social movement. so is baba ramdev.

people proceed from problems to solutions. the dalitbahujan activists of telangana produced a solution first and then tried to frame problems to fit it. i’m not being cynical when i say that: one can find tangible evidence for that fact in the notes of b.s.ramulu’s, written in 2007.

the solution that the dalitbahujan activists offered to address the discontent of the age was telangana. and the method to achieve that was a ‘social movement’, as different from a ‘political’ or mainstream-polticians led movement. i can’t see how the ‘social’ can be separated from the ‘political’, but that was their chosen method.
how do we understand the contradictions in both their goal and method? their goal was political, a redrawing of state power sharing arrangements, but their chosen methods needed the pretense of the ‘social’… another way of expressing the disdain they’d acquired from the braminized middle classes for ‘dirty politics’. if we consider their goal ‘social’, bahujan empowerment, then why circumscribe, restrict their resources (or pool of like-minded actors, people) by imposing geographic limits on it? doesn’t globalization make it imperative for the oppressed also to build alliances? and so on.add to all those contradictions, the original sin of jumping to a solution before exploring all problems and alternatives.

the dalitbahujan content of the bhongir meeting in the mid-nineties where gaddar and others mooted the idea of a separate state, the activism and art of hundreds and thousands of dalitbahujan activists, writers, poets and artists– all this was snuffed out in translation by the time it turned into a ‘mainstream’ poltical movement.

venkanna’s song which captured the angst of the dalitbahujan so well: they stole the angst and the distress and kicked aside the dalitbahujan. though it wasn’t written for the movement, venkanna’s song carried the essence of the age, of the late nineties when the green revolution had started rotting, cotton farmers were dying and distress was spreading across dalitbahujan homes.

now the distress has spread much further– farmers are still dying. so are weavers. so are goldsmiths. so are even toddy-tappers. so are the adivasis. literature is still being produced, songs are still being sung– but they’re of ‘entertainment’ value at telangana meetings and rallies, mere ‘dhoom dhaam’.

it’d not be entirely correct to say ‘they kicked aside the dalitbahujan’. the dalitbahujans were delivered to the dominant groups as bodies, literally.

dalitbahujan activism prepared the dalitbahujans, primed them to work for a goal, so to speak, leveraging upon all the discontent of the age, and built a ready-made political cadre while working on a ‘social’ project. so the dalitbahujan movement died before the political party was formed, because it had to die anyway.. in all their efforts to negotiate with the dominant shudra castes to negotiate with the state, to do the inevitable ‘politics’, they had already given up most of their claims..

all the issues, viewed as pertinent to the dalitbahujans were discarded for the issues important to the dominant castes (irrigation etc). all the inhibitions the dalitbahujan activists had imposed on themselves– not to racialise the discourse, not to use force and violence, not to create animosities– had been abandoned to build an atmosphere ever pregnant with the possibilities of friction and conflict.

and the young dalitbahujans were delivered as bodies to the movement. because the only way they could express themselves in this majoritarian movement was as bodies, as suicides. or bodies that braved bullet, sang songs, pelted stones, spurted blood or tears, mouthed threats and warnings. dalitbahujan activism had brought all the pettiness and prejudices and avarice of the brahminized middle classes into dalitbahujan homes.

lastly, this appeal to telangana activists that appears at the end of ramulu’s article :

‘Please do not provoke the youth

Enough damage has been done so far in the Telengana

It is not patriotism to preach violence and resort to guns, and become nostalgic about the fight of 1969, without themselves leaving their cozy homes or leading even a procession, or a strike.

Many more peaceful struggles have to be conducted in the coming days.

Only after getting equipped for those struggles and gaining necessary strategy and the tactics can one grow into an effective social activist. or a leader.

They can only lead the people of Telengana for a separate state’.

can’t even call that appeal ironic anymore. telangana is one of the most poignant tragedies of the dalitbahujan movement in telangana and andhra pradesh. (written on march/9/11)

chittibabu: Sorry for the delay in responding. I am even more sorry that your opposition to Telangana struggle is bordering on cynicism despite your disclaimers to the contrary. All the virtues of your earlier posts disappeared as soon as you started quoting straight from that pain B.S. Ramulu and stopped your earlier critical and fresh thinking.

All that you can show is that neither the leadership and ideology or the agenda is dalit bahujan. This is a serious shortcoming of Telangana, no doubt about it. But seeing widespread and honest participation of dalit bahujans in the movement as nothing other than slavishness and playing into other’s hands is problematic not only because it robs our people’s agency but also because such a conception fails to register the changes from below and their potential. Kuffir saheb I request you to go back to your first two posts and elaborate on them, they are really illuminating. On a non-serious note, please don’t serve that BS Ramulu’s stuff. I think you are a much serious and sensible thinker than he is.

kuffir: chittibabu garu, i was hoping you’d read the article (in telugu) on top of the b.s.ramulu post i’d linked to… it illustrates clearly the kind of painfully irrational logic b.s.ramulu and many others in the movement have been foisting on the people.. in quoting b.s.ramulu’s views, i was not endorsing them..far from it..i think his notes are useful only as a twisted record of sorts. as for my own argument, it was not finished– i’d said, i would like to add one more post in my last comment..but it’s an emotionally tiring exercise so i think i kind of wandered off..thanks for raising the issue again.. will come back to the points you raise again.

chittibabu: Oh thanks Kuffir Saheb. I am thinking of writing a line by line commentary on at least portions of your earlier posts and what I think the important/interesting or infuriating portions of your later ones. Not that I have something earth-shattering about each of them but in an attempt to co-think wherever I can and try to defend what I consider the actual achievements of dalitbahujan-admittedly subordinate role played by our people- participation and maoism’s shadowy but useful presence. You are right about alluding to BS Ramulu. It of course was not, thankfully, to endorse his views but to critique him. But I think he is not even a worthy opponent in a serious intellectual context. Let us pick some serious chap instead of him.

kuffir: chittibabu garu,

you say: ‘But seeing widespread and honest participation of dalit bahujans in the movement as nothing other than slavishness and playing into other’s hands is problematic not only because it robs our people’s agency but also because such a conception fails to register the changes from below and their potential.’

it’s very necessary to understand whose agency is being robbed here by a vocal group of agitators who refuse to recognize ‘the changes from below and their potential’ that you talk about . whose voice is not being respected by being persuaded, to use a euphemism, to echo the voice of a normative ‘people of telangana’, cleaning themselves of all differences, minority-nesses..

‘social boycott’, ‘traitors’, ‘tiraganivvam’, ‘addanga narikestam’ ..that’s the language of caste. of the upper caste guardians of the social order. dhobis ‘participate’ in the movement by boycotting panchayat leaders who don’t resign. barbers refuse to shave. those are the methods of the agitation. there is also liberal use or threat of use of the disciplining strategy of ‘veli’. my problems with the casteist idiom of the telangana movement are much more troubling than a dorasaani-like telangana thalli.

if you think that’s deepening of democracy, i can’t agree. that not just the goals but the methods of the dominant groups and dalitbahujan activists should converge so completely—that’s a fact that needs serious probing. i think it’s a result of the misreading of the ‘changes from below’.

the changes from below and their potential was quite evident even before the 2009 elections and much earlier. that chiranjeevi, a much bigger believer in muhurats and ritual than kcr should bag 18% of the votes just by mouthing the mantra of ‘social justice’ should give us a fair inkling of the churning happening below. chiranjeevi then and kcr now: one has to try very hard to understand why such a large mela of veteran activists is lining up outside these fake revolutionaries. but that’s definitely where the potential is being dissipated, in the search for magical solutions.

representation of obcs in houses of legislature in a.p., has remained one of the lowest in the country ever since the state was formed. that should have caused some radical re-reading of the social order among at least some sections of those classes—all it seems to have created is what could only be called as a ‘mimic leadership’. activism that hasn’t produced even an idiom of protest different from that of the dominant groups. all marginalized groups nurse deep-rooted contradictions that they’re not prepared to face. their eager participation, and apparent solidarity, in the telangana movement is bluster, to put it mildly, to disguise their discomfiture with profounder issues.

a sure sign of a movement’s radical potential is its ability to make the dominant caste groups at least a little anxious about their own position in the hierarchy. as you know, i’ve been a follower of blogs for long. unlike in the real world, upper caste and hinduized obc participants in the telangana movement form a majority on the net—some recent survey said 85% of all indian netizens are hindutvavaadis, of sort, so the numbers aren’t surprising. here, you notice more clearly how enthusiastic, how upbeat, some of the first class of bloggers are about the movement. and how different the tone, tenor and content of those blogs/sites is from the content of the few dalitbahujan blogs. how dramatically different the first telangana is from the second, and how repugnant the second is to the first.

the groups of upper caste lawyers i see now, ever ready to spring to the defense of the ‘rights’ of agitating dalitbahujan students in osmania were, some of them, once a part of the apnss movement (in the middle eighties), an anti-reservations movement, as you know. they owned the universities then, and they still seem to do so. history is looking back to smirk at us.

i don’t nurse cynical opposition of telangana, i’m beginning to seriously wonder if india shall ever be a non-hindu country. i am convinced there is very little chance of challenging hindutva, brahminism after helping it consolidate its hold on state power at the centre through splintering of the south indian states, especially those cultures which have pre-hindu roots. in b.s.ramulu’s view, the ‘telangana thalli’ was designed to signify, unlike the telugu thalli which resembled a tamil thalli (?), a ‘bharata mata muddu bidda’..

some other ‘scholar’ was trying to claim thyagayya for telangana. that’s their sense of history and of their roots: where’s the dalitbahujan challenge to that? before proceeding further, i think it’d be fair to yield you space here, now..especially you’ve been waiting long. i’d definitely like to hear you elaborate on the useful, in your view, role of the maoists in this scenario. (written on march/19/11)

chittibabu: Dear Kuffir saheb, I happily think you regained your usual flow and back with insights. Don’t stop now, go ahead. I tried to see if there is anything I could possibly problematise in this latest post. I found none. I agree with all you have said. Only difference is that I think they are usual(and some unique) problems in details as well as in context. None of them could be controlled by anybody as long as it remains as a movement with no phase of stability either through formal success or respite-giving set backs . All of them need to be addressed and mercilessly attacked as you rightly do. Only thing is that they are not enough to dismiss the agitation for Telangana statehood as undemocratic popular mobilsation. The very fact that scores of people for sustained period of time with relatively impressive discipline, though peaceful means ask for some autonomy in governing structure and achieve it makes it thoroughly democratic and eminently supportable.

kuffir: there is a huge pool of dalit bahujans activism, as you say, in the telangana movement, but i don’t know if there are any strong currents of dalitbahujan thought in the movement as it has shaped up until now.

gaddar said in a recent interview: ‘manadikaani kotlaata manam kotlaadatunnaam’ (‘we’re fighting a battle which is not ours’). but he says we’ve to fight. but why? to own it, like you said? how can we fight someone else’s battle and win/own it?

gorati venkanna’s song, ‘palle kanneeru pedutundi..’ and prof.jayashankar’s theory of internal colonization– both were used as strong arguments for telangana. while venkanna’s song about the dying village and dalitbahujan distress could be about any village, in any region in the country wilting under the effects of globalization, jayashankar talks specifically about telangana.

gorati vekanna rises as the kabir of our times, or phule and asks (in this song and others)– this gaundlodu, this upparodu, this chakalodu, this kummarodu, this kammarodu, this kurmodu, this madigodu, this malodu, this erukalodu, this merodu, this turkodu– how about their right to life? he speaks with, not for, the village, the dying stream, the dying tank, the dying wells, the dying palms, the dying birds and even the dying babul trees.. it’s a stirringly human plea. a very dalitbahujan perspective. or, what i think is a dalitbahujan perspective i should learn to absorb. jayashankar brings to us, to put it simply, the brahminized shudra’s rapacity, his need to own, command and, as we know from history, ravage. nature is resources for him, people are races. it isn’t surprising for me that his ‘facts’ and theories should find much resonance in the minds of the burgeoning techie-managerial crowd among young upper castes and hinduizing obcs (now spreading like a bad case of acne across the globe), and his complaint about ‘stolen’ govt jobs should excite the dalitbahujan youth. and it also doesn’t surprise me that the prominent votaries of the miserable samaikyandhra (‘united andhra’) and ‘jai andhra’ or rayala-telangana movements/ideas should also speak the same language, focus on the same parameters of well-being, development as prof.jayashankar.

it doesn’t surprise me that jayashankar should talk about sriram sagar or nagarjuna sagar or ali sagar or whatever. and nor does chalasani srinivas talking about the grotesque polavaram or pulichintala surprise me. but what does surprise me is katti padma rao talking about ‘development’ as a superspeciality hospital in vijayawada or guntur. what does surprise me is ghanta chakrapani talking of kcr, the conductor of chandi yagams where dalits are forbidden from participating, as the icon of telangana aatmagauravam, or talk about ‘mana neellu’. only a brahminized rapacious shudra like ysr can talk/think about bottling up the krishna as ‘our water’ and take it to pothireddypadu to irrigate his clan’s paddy fields. only a brahminized shudra like kcr can talk about blowing up nagarjuna sagar..

it’s quite evident whose language and vision dominates the thinking of the telangana movement and of its opponents. for instance, in a state that has been food-surplus for over half a century and more (even regions like telangana only had a rice-deficit, not major, at the time of the state formation- it was never food deficit, because its needs were met through the production of other cereals, as you know) the focus of the ruling classes has never shifted from the large producer of surpluses to costs of the small farmer and the needs of the worker. the economic, human, social and environmental costs of the large farmer growing surpluses solely for the market should be socialised, but the costs of the vast majority of small and marginal farmers growing food for their own sustenance and the local needs should remain private.

the upper shudra’s right to privileges — his right to large dams, his right to élite education, his right to fish and prawn tanks, his right to superspeciality hospitals, his right to private schools, his right to a global lifestyle, his right to plunder nature for surpluses and his right to rule and order society– that’s the underlying theme of the telangana movement and also the opposition to it.

i don’t see what’s dalitbahujan about that.

chittibabu: [...] I would have responded immediately to your very plainly-put explosive statement that the merits we find in Telangana struggle are, and should be, the demands all sections and locales of oppressed humanity. I loved it and will try to take issue with it, nevertheless.

[.......] I like the unmistakable universalism of your position and your ability to draw it from (and in spite of the) particular and illustrate them in equally concrete ways. [.....]

——

i hope they keep conversing….

I was killed on this very land thousands of years ago

punarapi jananam punarapi maranam

I don’t know the karma theory but

I am taking birth, again and again, in the same place where I had died

My body dissolved in this land

And became the Ganga Sindh plain

When my eyeballs melted as tears

Perennial rivers flowed across this country

When my veins spurted minerals

This land became green and showered wealth

I was Shambhuka in the Treta Yuga

Twenty two years ago, my name was Kanchikacherla Kotesu

My place of birth is Kilvenmani, Karamchedu, Neerukonda

Now Chunduru is the name that cold-blooded feudal brutality

Has tattooed on my heart with ploughshares

From now on, Chunduru is not a noun but a pronoun

Now every heart is a Chunduru, a burning tumour

I am the wound of multitudes, the multitude of wounds

For generations, an unfree individual in a free country

Having been the target

Of humiliations, atrocities, rapes and torture

I am someone raising his head for a fistful of self-respect

In this nation of casteist bigots blinded by wealth

I am someone who lives to register life itself as a protest

I am someone who dies repeatedly to live

Don’t call me a victim

I am an immortal, I am an immortal, I am an immortal

I am the poison throated one

Who swallowed the famine so that the world may have wealth

I am the sunrise standing on its head

It was I who kicked the Sun on the head

To make him stand erect

I am the one stoking slogans in my flaming heart’s furnace

I don’t need words of sympathy or tears of pity

I’m not a victim, I’m an immortal

I am the fluttering flag of defiance

Don’t shed tears for me

If you can

Bury me in the middle of the city

I’ll bloom as the bamboo grove that sings the melody of life

Print my corpse as this nation’s cover

I’ll spread as a beautiful future into the pages of history

Invite me into your hearts

I’ll become a tussle of conflagrations

And rise again and again in this land.

Kalekuri Prasad‘s Telugu poem ‘piDikeDu aatmagauravam kOsam‘ (from the collection of poetry ‘daLita kavitvam- 2‘ ; originally published in another collection ‘manDutunna chunDuuru‘). Translated by Naren Bedide.

From The Shared Mirror

sickos.