Identity politics and the annihilation of castes - Eledu.net

Identity politics and the annihilation of castesA N A N D T E L T U M B D EIDENTITY, one’s sense of self and its persistence, as shaped through ascriptive and subjectiveprocesses, is natural to humans as social beings. Identity politics, however, is not natural. It isarticulated through a persistent sense of discrimination and oppression, either innate or induced,along the axis of ‘defining’ one identity from among many. Identity politics thus necessarilyveers towards becoming essentialist. Consequently, rather than understanding oneself as havingheterogeneous and multiple identities, people are provoked to support the politics based on aparticular identity.Although ‘identity politics’ can draw on intellectual precursors from Mary Wollstonecraft(1759-1797) to Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) – writers who have actually used this specificphrase 1 – it became more pronounced in the second half of the twentieth century through largescalepolitical movements (second wave feminism, Black civil rights in the U.S., gay andlesbian liberation, and the American Indian movements) which were based on claims about theinjustices done to particular social groups. The specific discourse with its contemporary baggagehas gained prominence only in the last twenty years. These social groups highlighted theiridentity in response to the experience of cultural imperialism (including stereotyping, erasure, orappropriation of one’s group identity), violence, exploitation, marginalization, or humiliation byothers. 2There has been considerable scholarly interest in identity politics, highlighting its egalitarian andpreservationist dimensions. The protagonists tend to see it in positive light because of itsdemocratizing potential. It may, however, be noted that the specific dimensions of identitypolitics come forth, not as its generic attribute but in the specific context of a particular identity.The focus of this essay being annihilation of caste, it deals with politics based on caste identity,particularly by Dalits, who being the worst victims of the caste system and sans any stake in it,were expected to be the torch-bearers in the struggle for annihilation of caste.Caste is considered as constituting the basic identity of people in the Indian subcontinent.Classically, it draws upon a hierarchical notion and a corresponding association of rights andobligations. Caste thus formed a continuum ranging from the notional superior-most Brahminsub-caste to the inferior-most untouchable caste, the precise identity of which would beimpossible to determine. This haziness of castes is the result of their sheer numbers as well astheir dynamism. Caste, contrary to its commonplace notion, is not a static category, and hasbeen constantly evolving through splits and mergers, in turn giving birth to new castes which,according to their material strength, stake claim to a higher ritual position vis-à-vis other castesin their respective locale. Likewise, geography determines the varying modes of living ofpeople, which also made a difference to the social position of different castes. Caste thusconstitutes a lifeworld of the people in the subcontinent with fluid boundaries.

This lifeworld was defined and concretized by the British colonial regime through theestablishment of a modern state in India with its concomitant reliance on techniques ofmeasurement. The decennial censuses instituted from 1872 as a part of this process enumerated,codified and ranked the castes, shaping and solidifying identities of people in a manner thatcould be used by the colonial state. As Chakrabarty observes, the colonial scheme reconstitutedthe meaning of ‘community’ or ‘ethnicity’ and gave Indians an important political message thatwould involve them into negotiating with the state for their betterment. 3 Expectedly, it unleasheda new dynamic of caste mobilization, making representations to the colonial state necessary forgetting a higher rank than what was accorded to them in official records.Initially, these mobilizations took the form of caste associations. The innate aspirations of castesto be ranked higher in the caste hierarchy manifested in constructing a self-image of high originbased on myths. Every caste, including the untouchable castes, had such myths that showed itsorigins as emanating from Brahmins, but which had fallen as a result of the intrigues of highcaste people. It thus externalized the blame for its current state. Even as these castes accused theBrahmins of being the cause of their degradation, they did not discard the ritual framework butrather sought to emulate their customs, rituals, ideology and way of life, a process which cameto be known as sanskritization.When the British adopted policies of compensatory discrimination in terms of reservations ofseats in the bureaucracy and provincial assemblies while extending self-government to thenatives, the numbers game became important and new groups began to form on the basis ofresentment against their non-representation. This further fostered the interrelated processes ofthe formation of caste federations. It gave a fillip to caste mobilization to enhance their numbers(to claim higher representation) and in the process began assimilating castes with looseboundaries. The aim behind this amalgamation of castes, however, was purely political.With development in the means of communication, some castes seized the opportunity forhorizontal integration, bringing about a pan-Indian caste-unification. This process, eulogized bysome sociologists as ethnicization, 4 basically transcended the ‘classical’ caste boundaries andbrought the collective to bear a new ‘ethnic’ identity. It represented a fusion of castes, and thusexpanded endogamy. Scholars saw in this ethnicization of caste a potential to bring aboutpositive social change, since it imparted a new identity, which apparently ignored castedifferentiationand grouped them into larger units, albeit based on caste.This process of ethnicization reached its radical high point in the non-Brahmin movementlaunched by Jyotiba Phule in Maharashtra and later, in the Dravidian movement of Periyar inTamil Nadu. It was basically catalyzed by the new ideas coming from European missionaries,which were propagated in schools, and eventually culminated in the theory of an ‘Aryan race’.Based on a study of the Indo-European linguistic family, William Jones in 1792 had invoked anotion of common, original race whose branches had migrated towards Europe and India. Thisnotion was further developed during the mid-19th century by German Indologists such as AlbertWeber, R. Roth, A. Kuhn and J. Mohl, constructing theories of a ‘Sanskritic race’ and ‘Vedic

people’. When these ideas reached India they were immediately picked up by the likes of Tilakand Dayanand Saraswati for Hindu revivalism, arousing self-esteem among Hindus that theywere the superior people who once ruled the world. 5These very ideas were used by Phule for an entirely opposite purpose. He constructed the ethnicidentity of bahujan (shudra-atishudra), castigating Brahmins as invaders who enslaved thenatives, and thus provided the lower castes with the motive force to fight. For the first time, allnon-Brahmin castes were invited to unite on the basis of a common ethnic background – as theoriginal inhabitants of India – against Brahmin domination. Although,Phule’s satyashodhak idiom was imbued with the symbols ofkshatriyahood, the movementescaped the sanskritization trap since it rejected the upper castes as role models, calling theminvaders, and despised their culture. A similar pattern developed in the South with the Dravidianmovement, which engineered caste fusion by endowing the lower castes with an ethnic identity,not only as original inhabitants but also as Buddhists, as articulated by Pandit Ayothee Thass. Itcatalyzed the ‘adi’ (original) movement transforming erstwhile casteindicative sabhas(organizations) into Adi-Dravida Mahajan Sabha and Adi-Andhra MahajanSabha in the then Madras province.Caste mobilization for political purposes followed two inherent strategies: one, to assimilatemany castes under the same identity and stake a claim for a larger part of the pie, and two, tocordon themselves off from being usurped by others in this process in order to preserve theirown share for themselves. While the former strategy was adopted by the upper castes, the lattercame to be adopted by the maturing Dalit movement under Babasaheb Ambedkar.At the root of ‘identity politics’ lies the idea that only those experiencing a particular form ofoppression can either define or fight against it. The battle against gender discrimination cannotbe fought by men, just as the anti-racist struggles can only be waged by the victims of racism. Inthe context of caste, the issue of identity came into prominence when Dr. Ambedkar publiclydenounced the Depressed Classes Mission of V.R. Shinde in a Depressed Classes Conference inMay 1920 at Nagpur. This declaration effectively catalyzed self-articulation of the Dalitmovement and stressed the importance of an autonomous ‘Dalit’ identity. The ‘Dalit’ identityalso acted as a shield against Dalits drifting either to the capitalist Congress as ‘harijans’ or thecommunists as ‘proletariat’.The real impetus to promoting caste identities came from the increasing competition in politicsfrom the late 1960s. At the time of the transfer of power, the Congress had emerged as theunchallenged party which claimed to speak for all in contrast to the identitarian claims of thecommunal parties, both of the Hindus and the Muslims. The strategy actually worked toassimilate all the others, including the Dalits and tribes. While it pretended to make India an‘ideocracy’ by adopting an idealized constitution, in reality it continued with the colonial stateapparatus in its coercive essence (insofar as all the operative laws like the Indian Penal Codewere adopted in toto) and followed policies laid down by the bourgeoisie. 6 This phase waspublicized by the intellectuals, both of the Left and Right, as Nehruvian socialism merelybecause Nehru’s rhetoric and its facade resembled the Russian planning system. It actuallyoperationalized the Bombay Plan formulated by the Indian capitalists on the eve of the transfer

of power in 1944-45. It provided a 15 year blueprint of investments, which in effect wastranslated into whatever policies that newly independent India followed. 7As a part of, or sequel to, this plan (to create investment opportunity and a vast market forcapitalists in the countryside) and to address the aspirations of people (expressed throughnumerous peasant movements during the freedom struggle, reaching its high point inTelangana), as also to overcome acute food shortages faced by the people, the governmentundertook half-baked land reforms, followed by the capitalist strategy of promoting the GreenRevolution. It created a class of rich farmers from among the middle shudra castes and seededcapitalist relations in the vast countryside. While the middle castes were hugely enriched andempowered with the collapse of the traditional jajmani system, the Dalits were reduced to beingdependent on them for wage labour. The incipient capitalist contradiction in the countrysidebegan manifesting through the faultlines of caste at the hands of the culturally unsophisticatedshudra rich farmers wielding the baton of Brahminism into the new genre of caste atrocitiesstarting with Kilvenmeni in Tamil Nadu in December 1968.The class of rich farmers initially backed the Congress as the node of the vast countryside, butsoon realized the importance of their own position and developed political aspirations. Theycreated their own constituency, covering an entire band of middle castes, making use of theirritual non-differentiation and fanning the perception of a threat from the rising cultural assertionof Dalits in the villages. They soon made their mark in politics, graduating from grampanchayats to the state assemblies through the regional parties, precipitating a political crisisthat consequently resulted in ushering in an era of coalitions by the mid-1970s. Thereafter,politics became extremely competitive, making the caste blocs very important.The political parties began promoting caste identities to break as well as consolidate peopleaccording to their electoral strategies. The weakening of the Dalits with their repeatedfragmentation rendered itself amenable to such intrigues. The reservation policy and the way itwas operated only benefited increasingly smaller sections of the majority caste among Dalits,which created resentment in the next contending castes to demand their share in the name of allother non-beneficiary castes. The first such demand was voiced in Andhra Pradesh by theMadigas and has since caught the fancy of similar castes in many other states.Scholars have criticized identity politics on many counts. Liberal political theorists such asArthur Schlesinger, David Hollinger, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and others have argued that a strongsense of group identification endangers democratic processes and social cohesion, inhibits theability to form political coalitions, and substitutes the determination of group membership forcritical reflection, thus producing what Cornel West calls ‘racial reasoning’. Notwithstandingthe Left’s compromises in going along with/collaborating with the popular identity movements,many leftist scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, Michael Tomasky, Sean Wilentz, Robert W.McChesney, Bart Landry, Jim Sleeper, Todd Gitlin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Richard Rorty,Nancy Fraser, among others, have criticized what they see as the turn to identity politics.Identity politics fractures the body politic by emphasizing difference at the expense ofcommonalities; because the focus on identity offers at best a reductivist politics, one that

educes assessment of political position to the process of ascertaining identity and makes ‘afetish of the virtues of the minority.’ As Gitlin points out, all forms of identity politics arereductive: they are all ‘overly clear about who the insiders are... and overly dismissive ofoutsiders.’ 8 He thus finds an emphasis on identities ‘intellectually stultifying and politicallysuicidal.’ 9Faced with growing opposition and sustained attacks from the Right, the Left and the centre,identity based social struggles no longer enjoy what used to be a wide support to, and positiveview of, minority social movements. The accusation that identity politics is prone toessentialism has been among the most persistent criticisms. Identity politics, celebrated aspolitics of difference by postist movements (post-structuralism, post-modernism, etc.) isbasically meant to de-centre or subvert, rather than to conquer or assert by seeking to reclaim astigmatized identity, to revalue the devalued pole of dichotomized hierarchy. 10While this criticism could well apply to the identity based politics of Dalits, the specificity ofcaste as a vicious identity, unlike any other, needs to be additionally noted. Identity integratespeople sharing that identity. The racial identity of Blacks, for instance, brings coloured peopletogether to make a common cause. Yet, there is nothing to differentiate them from the shades ofdarkness within that identity. When the sexual identity of gays or lesbians is invoked, all whoidentify as such are expected to come together and it is unlikely that any further divisions willemerge within the identity to fragment them.The essence of caste, it may be seen, is not an identity but a hierarchy. Under exogenouspressure, caste feigns as identity but once the pressure is removed, it seeks hierarchy within andbegins splitting. This in part explains why the ethnic identities constructed on the basis of castein the emancipation project have not worked. The Dalit constructed by the Ambedkaritemovement as a pan-Indian identity of the ex-untouchables appeared viable at one time, but inreality failed to bring all the untouchables together. Now it is getting further splintered alongsub-caste lines. All the ethnic identities, both earlier and now, which used caste as their basishave met or will meet the same fate.This disintegrative tendency in caste could be effectively thwarted by the promise of materialpay-offs, which dwija castes in colonial times and some of the middle castes during the postindependenceperiod (Gounders, Nadars, Marathas, for instance) could create to build what iscalled their ‘social capital’. This aspect, eulogized as the utility of castes, 11 may bring prosperityto the castes, rather than annihilate them. The recent comical phenomenon of Dalit capitalismneed not be seen as emulating this aspect; it aims to grab state largesse for the prosperity of afew in the name of caste. Surely, it in no way will lead to a denial of caste. The manner in whichthe ruling classes have welcomed the idea, with the state enthusiastically rushing in to reservefour per cent in value of all government procurement, actually exposes its comprador characterwhich is necessarily inimical to the interests of a vast majority of Dalit masses.Identity politics has a therapeutic utility. In a fast changing world that pulverizes everything,people yearn for a fixity of identity in direct proportion to their powerlessness to counter thevertigo produced by postmodern disarray. The incomprehensibility of the modern world only

leaves behind crumbs of hope for people like the Dalits, often inducing a psychologicalvulnerability which pushes them to seek shelter under identities. Identity politics provides amuch needed intoxication to ignore the infirmities of the real world, thus creating a false senseof power. It obviates the complexity of their goal. These vulnerabilities, in turn, help vestedinterests to further prop up identities. The identity cobweb not only clouds the goal ofannihilation of caste, but may well negate it altogether. The claim of identity mongers that sincecaste can never be destroyed it should be strengthened, needs to be questioned. Whether broughtout in the open or not, it is implicit and inherent in the argument behind mushrooming identitiesamong Dalits.The identities such as Dalit, Dalit-bahujan, mulnivasi, and even Buddhist, are not the ‘real’ casteidentities. Their very intent defies caste logic insofar they strive to bracket together the mostoppressed castes. Moreover, this kind of reading smacks of a gross misconception of caste. Eachand every identity constructed with the idiom of caste, howsoever anti-caste it may profess tobe, has only ended up reinforcing it. The monster of caste can only be annihilated by an alternateidiom of politics based on class. Difficult as this may sound, history does not provide short cutsto cure its infirmities.Footnotes:1. N.D. Arora and S.S. Awasthy, Political Theory and Political Thought. Har-Anand, New Delhi, 2007, p. 246; JulietPerumal, Identity, Diversity and Teaching for Social Justice. Peter Lang, Bern, 2007, p. 32.2. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990.3. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Modernity and Ethnicity in India’, in David Bennett (ed.), Multicultural States: Rethinking Differenceand Identity. Routledge, New York, 1998, p. 98.4. Robert R. Hardgrave, The Nadars of Tamil Nadu. Berkley, 1969, pp. 65-69; C. Jaffrelot, op cit. and S. Bennet to name a few.Robert Hardgrave saw the Nadar Mahajana Sangham, a caste association of Nadars, founded in 1910, promoting what he called‘caste fusion’ as the unit of endogamy expanded. S. Barnett maintained that this kind of fusion tended to transform castes intoethnic groups... the transition from caste to ethnic-like regional caste blocks.5. See C. Jaffrelot, ibid, p. 12.6. Amal Sanyal, ‘The Curious Case of the Bombay Plan’, Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences, June 2010.journal.ciiss.net/index.php/ciiss/article/download/78/75. Last Accessed on 28 February 2012.7. P.A. Wadia and K.T. Merchant, The Bombay Plan: A Criticism. Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1946.8. Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars. Henry Holt, New York, 1995, p.127.9. Ibid.10. Juliet Perumal, Identity, Diversity and Teaching for Social Justice. Peter Lang, Bern, 2007, p. 30.11. R. Vaidyanathan, ‘Caste as Social Capital:Why Have the Gounders, Nadars, the Marwaris and Katchis Done So Well,http://www.newsinsight.net/columns/full_ column22.htm. Last accessed: 28 Feb 2012.