A Manifesto for the Just City

A Manifesto for the Just City
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SURAJ YENGDE
HARVARD’S KENNEDY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, US
SUMMARY BY ROBERTO ROCCO
Suraj Yengde starts
his talk by reminding
the audience India is
experiencing a similar
fate to Brazil in terms of
a right-wing populist government
that is still going strong in its
second term and may achieve a
third and even a fourth term in
power. It is in the context of the
most populous democracy of
the planet that Suraj develops
his project of putting Dalits at
the centre of the discussion.
“Unlike other parts of the
world that were colonised
by white settlers, who
erupted in local contexts and
granted a superior status
to people thanks to the
quantity of melanin in their
skin, we don’t have the same
problem in India, a problem
connected to the tonality of
one’s skin and the idea of white
supremacy. What we do have in
India is a Brahmin supremacy.
In an academic context we call
it Brahmanical supremacy. I will
break down this terminology for
those who are not familiar with
it so you can make sense of the
problems we are grappling with.
[We must look at] the context of
India’s civilization, which we can
frame as one of those antiquities
that had a pre-modern world
existing in this context, in which
[for example], Mohenjo-Daro
[HTTPS://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Mohenjo-Daro], was the ultimate
civilization that had re-described
how you frame and exercise
a kind of utopia in new urban
environments.”
But Mohenjo-Daro was challenged
by immigration from Aryan
regions, from the inland steppe
into the Indian heartland. Hence,
one of the earliest experiences
of colonisation happens in the
northern part of India [around
2000 BCE].
What happened about two
thousand years ago is that a law
is drawn, basically a law that
reproduced what several hundred
years later the Europeans did to
the rest
of the world
and that we see coming up again
in apartheid South Africa and in
Jim Crow America. That law is a
warning system, a system that
literally translates into a colour
system. This colour system was
later codified and made into a
strict hierarchical caste system. It
was called Varna-based order.
A person who was born to a
Brahmin family, was destined to
be a Brahmin, an Übermensch.
The top. In Nietzschean analogy it
is someone who is a superhuman.
And if you belong to the second,
third, fourth groups you were
distinctly lower to the one
above but always superior to
the one lowest. There were
four major categories that were
divided according to one’s caste
status, and thereby occupations
were given to each group. The
Brahmin remained at the top. At
the bottom [and outside of the
traditional caste system] were
people who were not counted
within the human ecology, the
untouchables. Untouchables were
the defeated tribes of the native
Indians who were then subjugated
and dehumanised.
The essence of untouchability
prescribes three forms. First is,
of course, the untouched, the
touch being the most poisonous
thing for a pure soul. The
Untouchables were declared
impure by the very virtue of
their birth. My grandmother
grew up as an untouchable.
Then there was a second aspect
which was spatially fundamental
to maintaining the caste system,
which invisibility.
You are not supposed to see
a person who belongs to the
untouchable caste. So, the sight
of an untouchable would make
you impure. And of course, the
third was unapproachability.
The cutting off of corporeal
relations of an entire swath of
the population. Now, this is
something that has been there for
well over two millennia. But this
primary doctrine remained the
law of the land until the colonial
times, when the British came.
They tried to intervene [against]
a document titled Manu-smriti,
which translates as the laws of
Manu. [The Manu-smriti prescribes
to Hindus their Dharma—i.e., the
set of obligations incumbent on
each as a member of one of the
four castes (Varnas) and engaged
in one of the four stages of life
(Ashramas). It is attributed to
the legendary first man and