Author Archives: notsomeritorios

It’s an established fashion by now to venerate Ambedkar as a feminist and racialise Dalit Men and Women alike in order to achieve an obscene objectification of the Dalit Self.

Indian Sociology is suffering from a pepsis, a pepsis of always looking at the bottom. Where would one look, if not the bottom most ranks, if placed herself on the pinnacle of social hierarchy? Imagine being so high on the caste ladder that all you can see is what happens in the quarters that exist below your immediate social location, which is always kept hidden and veiled from research objectives.

There are umpteen examples of this racialisation of the Dalit being, being done with the help of new age vocabularies instituted by feminist studies mushrooming in Indian Universities like JNU, DU, TISS, SPPU being the prime suspects.

Here I would like to dissect one such piece by a stolid iniquitous academic Karin Kapadia, an Anthropologist at the London School of Economics, who has published a piece in the leading social science Magazine called EPW titled, “Ambedkar’s Feminism”.

The article begins with a universal appeal against violence faced by women as a universal homogenous category, which in India is always euphemistically used to present the upper caste women as the ideal victim and scores of atrocities and violence faced by Dalit women, by virtue of their caste, manifested against their gender are relegated to margins.

The point being that the typical problems of women or the women’s question when raised are more often than not invoked to talk about the women as a universal homogenous category, and the ideal image of such a woman is, as you suspected it right, an upper caste woman.

So, her article begins with the usual sordid tales of oppression faced by women as a universal homogenous category and then suddenly she jumps to Ambedkar and from thereon fixes her gaze on the Dalit Women.

She keeps Ambedkar’s speech which he delivered in front of the Dalit (read Mahar) sex workers of Kamathipura in erstwhile Bombay, as an object of her opinion on Dalit being.

She writes, “ He ( read Ambedkar) concluded that male control of women’s sexuality was essential to the reproduction of the caste system. Without it, inter caste marriages would ensue and caste identities would slowly wither away.”

Here she is making a reference to Ambedkar’s paper “Castes in India: Genesis, Mechanism and Development”.
And without a proper reading of Ambedkar’s paper, she is resorting to making generalised arguments on gender and sexual control while ignoring the central premise of Ambedkar’s paper.

If one reads Ambedkar’s paper, it is not the male control over female sexuality but Dwij Male control over not just their own female’s sexuality but a transgressive violation of sexuality of women of castes lower to them in caste order.

A cursory extrapolation of Kapadia’s understanding of Ambedkar’s ideation would be somewhat like this:-

“Each Caste’s men control their Women’s sexuality and thus the Caste system perpetuates as it doesn’t allow intermarriage.”

Firstly, Ambedkar has clearly espoused that It was the Brahmins who closed their doors first to enclose themselves into a caste and others found the doors closed, so they had to make their own doors.

Secondly, Caste and Gender in Indian Society doesn’t function in this near categorisation wherein, Each Caste’s men are concerned only with the control of their own women’s sexuality.

It is widely evident that upper caste men leave no chance to exercise their immoral control over Dalit women by violating their chastity and committing atrocities on the Dalit Men by demeaning their women.

Kapadia has gone berserk when she says that,

“Once we recognise the collusion of
Dalit men in the sexual trafficking
of their female kin as the unspoken
backdrop to Ambedkar’s speech.”

Here she is playing neatly into the tactics of Brahmanical Feminism, which puts Dalit Women against Dalit Men.

What can be more disparaging and disgusting for an academician to belittle an entire community by saying that their men are complicit in making their women indulge in prostitution and that too when there is ample evidence that this prostitution was forced in Dalit Women by the Upper Caste men.

In her entire article she has nowhere blamed Upper Caste Men for the control they exercise on their own women and women lower to them in caste hierarchy but berates Dalit Men and inspires Dalit Women to rise above their own ‘Dalit’ men in order to achieve liberation.

Isn’t this a deliberate act of absolving upper caste men of all the evils and mis deeds they commit on Dalit Women and Men alike?

Furthermore, Kapadia never dared to question her own Caste’s men but exhorts Dalit women to revolt against their own men.

So, the paper which is titled “Ambedkar’s Feminism” becomes a ghettoised manifestation of the already existing trope that Ambedkar was a leader of the Dalits, and His feminism is for the liberation of Dalit women from their own men.

Or is it the other way round? Is it that in the name of “Ambedkar’s Feminism”, the stories of oppression of Dalit Women are being used as a fodder to make way for an upper caste women’s feminism which is about restricting Dalit women to question for their oppression, only their own men and at the same time Dwij Feminist’s keep on absolving their own men from their acts of oppression against Dalit Men and Women, so that they can bargain with them to seek equality at par with their own men.

जवाहर लाल नेहरू विश्विद्यालय Jawahar Lal Nehru University: The Deathbed of Dalit Intellegentsia

If one needs to single out one cause for the abysmal state of Dalit being in India, JNU will take the first and foremost place in every realm.

This University is foremost in producing Dalit Thulle Dalala who think they are beyond their own people and can dictate how Dalits should behave and live.

It will be my Life’s biggest achievement the day I piss on this University!

If you consider me serious enough, don’t take JNU Dalit Intellegentsia for granted, they are the biggest hurdle in your advancement.

JNU Dalits are nothing but sympathetic products of Congress Left Upper Caste’s collective guilt!

Just Destroy this University if you have to leap forward!

I am here rewriting Mahashweta Devi’s short story Draupadi as translated by Gayatri Chakroborty Spivak.

The ending here is different and it’s a Dalit Retelling of the same. I am taking the Literary privilege or you may say poetic licence of using the entire story as copied from the original English Translation of Gayatri Chakroborty Spivak and in the end adding a paragraph which completely changes the entire meaning of the story, thus making it not only a reproduction but a rewritten
original work, which is entirely new in meaning . Since Devi’s work is a literary artefact, I am replying in the same genre without going into the scholarly hermeneutics. Still, for someone
uninitiated into reading Devi’s short story, I would like to delineate that in Devi’s story Draupadi, the central character as the reading suggests is Draupadi, a tribal naxalite woman who is captured
by Senanayak, a police official. The story if read between the Iines is being told through the eyes of Senanayak and It’s Senanayak’s guilt which Devi masquerades as Draupadi ‘s resistance against Senanayak ( representative of the Indian state, and thus representing an upper caste character, and his guilt). The reason I have not tried to write a new story and then add my paragraph can be well understood, if the original story by Devi is ready in its detailed character sketch of its Villain Senanayak. In my rendition of Devi’s story, I have therefore renamed it as Senanayak’s Dream,
which makes it seem like, he is the protagonist, but if read astutely with the addition of a paragraph written by me towards the end, one should realise that, the real protagonist is actually Draupadi
whereas in Devi’s original story even though the title and protagonist is both Draupadi, the story flows and renders an expression that is an outpour of upper caste’s imagination of Dalits, as seen
through the eyes of Senanayak. It should also be noted here that, Devi’s work is a fiction, fiction is something that is imagined, even though it may be based on the real world, but it is still an
imagination. Why is it that even in imagination, in works of fiction, the portrayal of Dalits is wretched and someone always exploited. If it’s fiction, there can be a happy ending too, no? In
In case the reader doesn’t want to take the pain of going back to reading the original English translation of Draupadi as written by Spivak, I must mention here that the text which I am producing here is that story only, up until the last paragraph, which has been added by me.

So for an uninitiated reader, read the entire story just before the last paragraph as if they are reading Draupadi as written by Devi, translated by Spivak, because it is exactly the same text. Pause for a
moment, and then read the last paragraph which I have added. Now read the entire story again in a flow including the paragraph which I have added.

The Story Begins :-

Draupadi Name Dopdi Mejhen, age twenty-seven, husband Dulna Majhi (de- ceased), domicile Cherakhan, Bankrajharh, information whether dead or alive and/or assistance in arrest, one hundred rupees. . . An exchange between two liveried uniforms. FIRST LIVERY: What’s this, a tribal called Dopdi? The list of names I brought has nothing like it! How can anyone have an unlisted name? SECOND: Draupadi Mejhen. Born the year her mother threshed rice at Surja Sahu (killed)’~ at Bakuli. Surja Sahu’s wife gave her the name. FIRST: These officers like nothing better than to write as much as they can in English. What’s all this stuff about her? SECOND: Most notorious female. Long wanted in many. . . Dossier: Dulna and Dopdi worked at harvests, rotating between Bir- bhum, Burdwan, Murshidabad, and Bankura. In 1971, in the famous Operation Bakuli, when three villages were cordonned off and machine gunned, they too lay on the ground, faking dead. In fact, they were the main culprits. Murdering Surja Sahu and his son, occupying upper-caste wells and tubewells during the drought, not surrendering those three young men to the police. In all this they were the chief instigators. In the morning, at the time of the body count, the couple could not be found. The blood-sugar level of Captain Arjan Singh, the architect of Bakuli, rose at once and proved yet again that diabetes can be a result of anxiety and depression. Diabetes has twelve husbands-among them anxiety. Dulna and Dopdi went underground for a long time in a Neanderthal darkness. The Special Forces, attempting to pierce that dark by an armed search, compelled quite a few Santals in the various districts of West Bengal to meet their Maker against their will.

By the Indian Constitution, all human beings, regardless of caste or creed, are sacred. Still, accidents like this do happen. Two sorts of reasons: (I), the underground couple’s skill in self-concealment; (2),not merely the Santals but all tribals of the Austro-Asiatic Munda tribes appear the same to the Special Forces. In fact, all around the ill-famed forest of Jharkhani, which is under the jurisdiction of the police station at Bankrajharh (in this India of ours, even a worm is under a certain police station), even in the southeast and southwest corners, one comes across hair-raising details in the eyewitness records put together on the people who are suspected of attacking police stations, stealing guns (since the snatchers are not invariably well educated, they sometimes say “give up your chambers” rather than give up your gun), killing grain brokers, landlords, moneylenders, law officers, and bureaucrats. A black-skinned couple ululated like police sirens before the episode. They sang jubilantly in a savage tongue, incomprehensible even to the Santals.

Such as:

Samaray hijulenako mar goekope

and.

Hende rambra keche keche Pundi rambra keche keche

This proves conclusively that they are the cause of Captain Arjan Singh’s diabetes. Government procedure being as incomprehensible as the Male Principle in Sankhya philosophy or Antonioni’s early films, it was Arjan Singh who was sent once again on Operation Forest Jharkhani. Learning from Intelligence that the above-mentioned ululating and dancing couple was the escaped corpses, Arjan Singh fell for a bit into a zombielike state and finally acquired so irrational a dread of black-skinned people that whenever he saw a black person in a ballbag, he swooned, saying “they’re killing me,” and drank and passed a lot of water. Neither uniform nor Scriptures could relieve that depression. At long last, under the shadow of apremuture and forced retirement, it was possible to present him at the desk of Mr. Senanayak, the elderly Bengali specialist in com- bat and extreme-left politics. Senanayak knows the activities and capacities of the opposition bet- ter than they themselves do. First, therefore, he presents an encomium on the military genius of the Sikhs. Then he explains further: Is it only the opposition that should find power at the end of the barrel of a gun? Arjan Singh’s power also explodes out of the male organ of a gun. With- out a gun even the “five Ks” come to nothing in this day and age. These speeches he delivers to all and sundry. As a result, the fighting forces regain their confidence in the Army Handbook. It is not a book for every- one. It says that the most despicable and repulsive style of fighting is  guerrilla warfare with primitive weapons. Annihilation at sight of any and all practitioners of such warfare is the sacred duty of every soldier. Dopdi and Dulna belong to the category of such fighters, for they too kill by means of hatchet and scythe, bow and arrow, etc. In fact, their fighting power is greater than the gentlemen’s. Not all gentlemen be- come experts in the explosion of “chambers”; they think the power will come out on its own if the gun is held. But since Dulna and Dopdi are illiterate, their kind have practiced the use of weapons generation after generation. I should mention here that, although the other side make little of him, Senanayak is not to be trifled with. Whatever hispractice, in theory he respects the opposition. Respects them because they could be neither understood nor demolished if they were treated with the attitude, “It’s nothing but a bit of impertinent game-playing with guns.” In order to destroy the enemy, become one. Thus he understood them by (theoretically) becoming one of them. He hopes to write on all this in the future. He has also decided that in his written work he will demolish the gentlemen and highlight the message of the harvest workers. These mental processes might seem complicated, but actually he is a simple man and is as pleased as his third great-uncle after a meal of turtle meat. In fact, he knows that, as in the old popular song, turn by turn the world will change. And in every world he must have the credentials to survive with honor. If necessary he will show the future to what extent he alone understands the matter in its proper perspective. He knows very well that what he is doing today the future will forget, but he also knows that if he can change color from world to world, he can represent the particular world in question. Today he is getting rid of the young by means of “apprehen sion and elimination,” but he knows people will soon forget the memory and lesson of blood. And at the same time, he, like Shakespeare, believes in delivering the world’s legacy into youth’s hands. He is Prospero as well. At any rate, information is received that many young men and women, batch by batch and on jeeps, have attacked police station after police station, terrified and elated the region, and disappeared into the forest of Jharkhani. Since after escaping from Bakuli, Dopdi and Dulna have worked at the house of virtually every landowner, they can efficiently inform the killers about their targets and announce proudly that they too are soldiers, rank and$le.Finally the impenetrable forest of Jharkhani is surrounded by real soldiers, the army enters and splits the battlefield. Soldiers in hiding guard the falls and springs that are the only source of drinking water; they are still guarding, still looking.

On one such search, army informant Dukhiram Gharari saw a young Santal man lying on his stomach on a flat stone, dipping his face to drink water. The soldiers shot him as he lay. As the .303 threw him off spread-eagled and brought a bloody foam to his mouth, he roared “Ma-ho” and then went limp. They realized later that it was the redoubtable Dulna Majhi. What does “Ma-ho” mean? Is this a violent slogan in the tribal language? Even after much thought, the Department of Defense could not be sure. Two tribal-specialist types are flown in from Calcutta, and they sweat over the dictionaries put together by worthies such as Hoffmann-Jeffer and Golden-Palmer. Finally the omniscent Senanayak summons Chamru, the water carrier of the camp. He giggles when he sees the two specialists, scratches his ear with his “bidi,” and says, The Santals of Maldah did say that when they began fighting at the time of King Gandhi! It’s a battle cry. Who said “Ma-ho” here? Did someone come from Maldah? The problem is thus solved. Then, leaving Dulna’s body on the stone, the soldiers climb the trees in green camouflage. They embrace the leafy boughs like so many great god Pans and wait as the large red ants bite their private parts. To see if anyone comes to take away the body. This is the hunter’s way, not the soldier’s. But Senanayak knows that these brutes cannot be dispatched by the approved method. So he asks his men to draw the prey with a corpse as bait. All will come clear, he says. I have almost deciphered Dopdi’s song. The soldiers get going at his command. But no one comes to claim Dulna’s corpse. At night the soldiers shoot at a scuffle and, descending, discover that they have killed two hedgehogs copulating on dry leaves. Improvidently enough, the soldiers’ jungle scout Dukhiram gets a knife in the neck before he can claim the reward for Dulna’s capture. Bearing Dulna’s corpse, the soldiers suffer shooting pains as the ants, interrupted in their feast, begin to bite them. When Senanayak hears that no one has come to take the corpse, he slaps his anti-Fascist paperback copy of The Deputy and shouts, “What?” Immediately one of the tribal specialists runs in with a joy as naked and transparent as Archimedes’ and says, “Get up, sir! I have discovered the meaning of that ‘hende rambra’ stuff. It’s Mundari language.” Thus the search for Dopdi continues. In the forest belt of Jharkhani, the Operation continues-will continue. It is a carbuncle on the government’s backside. Not to be cured by the tested ointment, not to burst with the appropriate herb. In the first phase, the fugitives, ignorant of the forest’s topography, are caught easily, and by the law of confrontation they are shot at the taxpayer’s expense. By the law of confrontation, their eyeballs, intestines, stomachs, hearts, genitals, and so on become the food of fox, vulture, hyena, wildcat, ant, and worm, and the un- touchables go off happily to sell their bare skeletons. They do not allow themselves to be captured in open combat in the next phase. Now it seems that they have found a trustworthy courier. Ten to one it’s Dopdi. Dopdi loved Dulna more than her blood. No doubt it is she who is saving the fugitives now. “They” is also a hypothesis. Why?  How many went originally? “Draupadi” The answer is silence. About that there are many tales, many books in press. Best not to believe everything. How many killed in six years’ confrontation? The answer is silence.

Why after confrontations are the skeletons discovered with arms broken or severed? Could armless men have fought? Why do the collar- bones shake, why are legs and ribs crushed? Two kinds of answer. Silence. Hurt rebuke in the eyes. Shame on you! Why bring this up? What will be will be. . . . How many left in the forest? The answer is silence. A legion? Is justifiable to maintain a large battalion in that wild area at the taxpayer’s expense? Answer: Objection. “Wild area” is incorrect. The battalion is provided with supervised nutrition, arrangements to worship according to religion, opportunity to listen to “Bibidha Bharati” and to see Sanjeev Kumar and the Lord Krishna face-to-face in the movie This Is Life. No. The area is not wild. How many are left? The answer is silence. How many are left? Is there anyone at all? The answer is long. Item: Well, action still goes on. Moneylenders, landlords, grain bro- kers, anonymous brothel keepers, ex-informants are still terrified. The hungry and naked are still defiant and irrepressible. In some pockets the harvest workers are getting a better wage. Villages sympathetic to the fugitives are still silent and hostile. These events cause one to think. . . . Where in this picture does Dopdi Mejhen fit? She must have connections with the fugitives. The cause for fear is elsewhere. The ones who remain have lived a long time in the primitive world of the forest. They keep company with the poor harvest workers and the tribals. They must have forgotten book learning. Perhaps they are orienting their book learning to the soil they live on and learning new combat and survival techniques. One can shoot and get rid of the ones whose only recourse is extrinsic book learning and sincere intrinsic en- thusiasm. Those who are working practically will not be exterminated so easily. Therefore Operation Jharkhani Forest cannot stop. Reason: the words of warning in the Army Handbook. Catch Dopdi Mejhen. She will lead us to the others. Dopdi was proceeding slowly, with some rice knotted into her belt. Mushai Tudu’s wife had cooked her some. She does so occasionally. When the rice is cold, Dopdi knots it into her waistcloth and walks slowly. As she walked, she picked out and killed the lice in her hair. If she had some Kerosene, she’d rub it into her scalp and get rid of the lice. Then she could wash her hair with bakingsoda. But the bastards put traps at every bend of the falls. If they smell kerosene in the water, they will follow the scent. Dopdi! She doesn’t respond. She never responds when she hears her own name. She has seen in the Panchayat office just today the notice for the reward in her name. Mushai Tudu’s wife had said, “What are you looking at? Who is Dopdi Mejhen! Money if you give her up!” “How much?” “Two-hundred!” Oh God! Mushai’s wife said outside the office: “A lot of preparation this time. A-1 1 new policemen.” Hm. Don’t come again. Why? Mushai’s wife looked down. Tudu says that Sahib has come again. If they catch you, the village, our huts . . . They’ll burn again. Yes. And about Dukhiram . . . The Sahib knows? Shomai and Budhna betrayed us. Where are they? Ran away by train. Dopdi thought of something. Then said, Go home. I don’t know what will happen, if they catch me don’t know me. Can’t you run away? No. Tell me, how many times can I run away? What will they do if they catch me? They will counter me. Let them. Mushai’s wife said, We have nowhere else to go. Dopdi said softly, I won’t tell anyone’s name. Dopdi knows, has learned by hearing so often and so long, how one can come to terms with torture. If mind and body give way under tor- ture, Dopdi will bite off her tongue. That boy did it. They countered him. When they counter you, your hands are tied behind you.

All your bones are crushed, your sex is a terrible wound. Killed by police in an encounter. . .unknown male . . . age twenty-two . . . As she walked thinking these thoughts, Dopdi heard someone calling, Dopdi! She didn’t respond. She doesn’t respond if called by her own name. Here her name is Upi Mejhen. But who calls? “Draupadi” Spines of suspicion are always furled in her mind. Hearing “Dopdi” they stiffen like a hedgehog’s. Walking, she unrolls the film of known faces in her mind. Who? Not Shomra, Shomra is on the run. Shomai and Budhna are also on the run, for other reasons. Not Golok, he is in Bakuli. Is it someone from Bakuli? After Bakuli, her and Dulna’s names were Upi Mejhen, Matang Majhi. Here no one but Mushai and his wife knows their real names. Among the young gentlemen, not all of the previous batches knew. That was a troubled time. Dopdi is confused when she thinks about it. Operation Bakuli in Bakuli. Surja Sahu arranged with Biddibabu to dig two tubewells and three wells within the compound of his two houses. No water anywhere, drought in Birbhum. Unlimited water at Surja Sahu’s house, as clear as a crow’s eye. Get your water with canal tax, everything is burning. What’s my profit in increasing cultivation with tax money? Everything’s on fire. Get out of here. I don’t accept your Panchayat nonsense. Increase cultivation with water. You want half the paddy for sharecropping. Everyone is happy with free paddy. Then give me paddy at home, give me money, I’ve learned my lesson trying to do you good. What good did you do? Have I not given water to the village? You’ve given it to your kin Bhagunal. Don’t you get water? No. The untouchables don’t get water. The quarrel began there. In the drought, human patience catches easily. Satish and Jugal from the village and that young gentleman, was Rana his name?, said a landowning moneylender won’t give a thing, put him down. Surja Sahu’s house was surrounded at night. Surja Sahu had brought out his gun. Surja was tied up with cow rope. His whitish eyeballs turned and turned, he was incontinent again and again. Dulna had said, I’ll have the first blow, brothers.

My greatgrandfather took a bit of paddy from him, and I still give him free labor to repay that debt. Dopdi had said, His mouth watered when he looked at me. I’ll pull out his eyes. Surja Sahu. Then a telegraphic message from Shiuri. Special train. Army. The jeep didn’t come up to Bakuli. March-march-march. The crunch-crunch-crunch of gravel under hobnailed boots. Cordon up. Commands on the mike. Jugal Mandal; Satish Mandal, Rana alias Prabir alias Dipak, Dulna Majhi-Dopdi Mejhen surrender surrender surrender. No sur- render surrender. Mow-mowmow down the village. Putt-putt putt-putt- cordite in the air-putt-putt-round the clock-putt-putt. Flame thrower. Bakuli is burning. More men and women, children . . .fire- fire. Close canal  approach. Over-over-over by nightfall. Dopdi and Dulna had crawled on their stomachs to safety. They could not have reached Paltakuri after Bakuli. Bhupati and Tapa took them. Then it was decided that Dopdi and Dulna would work around the Jharkhani belt. Dulna had explained to Dopdi, Dear, this is best! We won’t get family and children this way. But who knows? Land- owner and moneylender and policemen might one day be wiped out! Who called her from the back today? Dopdi kept walking. Villages and fields, bush and rock-Public Works Department markers-sound of running steps in back. Only one person running. Jharkhani Forest still about two miles away. Now she thinks of nothing but entering the forest. She must let them know that the police have set up notices for her again. Must tell them that that bastard Sahib has appeared again. Must change hideouts. Also, the plan to do to Lakkhi Bera and Naran Bera what they did to Surja Sahu on account of the trouble over paying the field hands in Sandara must be cancelled. Shomai and Budhna knew everything. There was the urgency of great danger under Dopdi’s ribs. Now she thought there was no shame as a Santal in Shomai and Budhna’s treachery. Dopdi’s blood was the pure unadulterated black blood of Champabhumi. From Champa to Bakuli the rise and set of a million moons. Their blood could have been con- taminated; Dopdi felt proud of her forefathers. They stood guard over their women’s blood in black armor. Shomai and Budhna are half- breeds. The fruits of the war. Contributions to Radhabhumi by the American soldiers stationed at Shiandanga. Otherwise, crow would eat crow’s flesh before Santal would betray Santal. Footsteps at her back. The steps keep a distance. Rice in her belt, tobacco leaves tucked at her waist. Arijit, Malini, Shamu, Mantu-none of them smokes or even drinks tea. Tobacco leaves and limestone powder. Best medicine for scorpion bite. Nothing must be given away. Dopdi turned left. This way is the camp. Two miles. This is not the way to the forest. But Dopdi will not enter the forest with a cop at her back. I swear by my life. By my life Dulna, by my life. Nothing must be told. The footsteps turn left. Dopdi touches her waist. In her palm the comfort of a half-moon. A baby scythe. The smiths at Jharkhani are fine artisans. Such an edge we’ll put on it Upi, a hundred Dukhiram- Thank God Dopdi is not a gentleman. Actually, perhaps they have understood scythe, hatchet, and knife best. They do their work in si- lence. The lights of the camp at a distance. Why is Dopdi going this way? Stop a bit, it turns again. Huh! I can tell where I am if I wander all night with my eyes shut. I won’t go in the forest, I won’t lose him that way. I won’t outrun him. You fucking jackal of a cop, deadly afraid of death, you can’t run around in the forest. I’d run you out of breath, throw you in a ditch, and finish you off. Not a word must be said. Dopdi has seen the new camp, she has sat in the bus station, passed the time of day, smoked a “bidi” and found out how many police convoys had arrived, how many radio vans. Squash four, onions seven, peppers fifty, a straightforward account. This information cannot now be passed on. They will understand Dopdi Mejhen has been countered. Then they’ll run. Arijit’s voice. If anyone is caught, the others must catch the timing and change their hideout. If Comrade Dopdi arrives late, we will not remain. There will be a sign of where we’ve gone. No comrade will let the others be destroyed for her own sake. Arijit’s voice. The gurgle of water. The direction of the next hideout will be indicated by the tip of the wooden arrowhead under the stone. Dopdi likes and understands this. Dulna died, but, let me tell you, he didn’t lose anyone else’s life. Because this was not in our heads to begin with, one was countered for the other’s trouble. Now a much harsher rule, easy and clear. Dopdi returns-good; doesn’t return–bad. Change hideout. The clue will be such that the opposition won’t see it, won’t understand even if they do. Footsteps at her back. Dopdi turns again. These 3% miles of land and rocky ground are the best way to enter the forest. Dopdi has left that way behind. A little level ground ahead. Then rocks again. The anny could not have struck camp on such rocky terrain. This area is quiet enough. It’s like a maze, every hump looks like every other. That’s fine. Dopdi will lead the cop to the burning “ghat.” Patitpaban of Saranda had been sacrificed in the name of Kali of the Burning Ghats. APehend! A lump of rock stands up. Another. Yet another. The elderly Senanayak was at once triumphant and despondent. Ifyou want to destroy the enemy, become one. He had done so. As long as six years ago he could anticipate their every move. He still can. Therefore he is elated. Since he has kept up with the literature, he has read First Blood and seen approval of his thought and work. Dopdi couldn’t trick him, he is unhappy about that. Two sorts of reasons. Six years ago he published an article about information storage in brain cells. He demonstrated in that piece that he supported this struggle from the point of view of the field hands. Dopdi is a field hand. Veteran fighter. Search and destroy. Dopdi Mejhen is about to be apprehended. Will be destroyed. Regret. Halt! Dopdi stops short. The steps behind come around to the front. Under Dopdi’s ribs the canal dam breaks. No hope. Surja Sahu’s brother Rotoni Sahu. The two lumps of rock come forward. Shomai and Budhna. They had not escaped by train. Arijit’s voice. Just as you must know when you’ve won, you must also acknowledge defeat and start the activities of the next stage. Now Dopdi spreads her arms, raises her face to the sky, turns to- ward the forest, and ululates with the force of her entire being. Once, twice, three times. At the third burst the birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake and flap their wings. The echo of the call travels far. Draupadi Mejhen was apprehended at 6:53P.M. It took an hour to get her to camp. Questioning took another hour exactly. No one touched her, and she was allowed to sit on a canvas camp stool. At 8:57 Senanayak’s dinner hour approached, and saying, “Make her. Do the needful,” he disappeared. Then a billion moons pass. A billion lunar years. Opening her eyes after a million light years, Draupadi, strangely enough, sees sky and moon. Slowly the bloodied nailheads shift from her brain. Trying to move, she feels her arms and legs still tied to four posts. Something sticky under her ass and waist. Her own blood. Only the gag has been removed. Incredible thirst. In case she says “water” she catches her lower lip in her teeth. She senses that her vagina is bleeding. How many came to make her? Shaming her, a tear trickles out of the corner of her eye. In the muddy moonlight she lowers her lightless eye, sees her breasts, and understands that, indeed, she’s been made up right. Her breasts are bitten raw, the nipples torn. How many? Four-five-six-seven-then Draupadi had passed out. She turns her eyes and sees something white. Her own cloth. Noth- ing else. Suddenly she hopes against hope. Perhaps they have aban- doned her. For the foxes to devour. But she hears the scrape of feet. She turns her head, the guard leans on his bayonet and leers at her. Draupadi closes her eyes. She doesn’t have to wait long. Again the pro- cess of making her begins. Goes on. The moon vomits a bit of light and goes to sleep. Only the dark remains. A compelled spread-eagled still body. Active pistons of flesh rise and fall, rise and fall over it. Then morning comes. Then Draupadi Mejhen is brought to the tent and thrown on the straw. Her piece of cloth is thrown over her body. Then, after breakfast, after reading the newspaper and sending the radio message “Draupadi Mejhen apprehended,” etc., Draupadi Mejhen is ordered brought in. Suddenly there is trouble. Draupadi sits up as soon as she hears “Move!” and asks, Where do you want me to go? To the Burra Sahib’s tent.  Where is the tent? Over there. Draupadi fixes her red eyes on the tent. Says, Come, I’ll go. The guard pushes the water pot forward. Draupadi stands up. She pours the water down on the ground. Tears her piece of cloth with her teeth. Seeing such strange behavior, the guard says, She’s gone crazy, and runs for orders. He can lead the prisoner out but doesn’t know what to do if the prisoner behaves in- comprehensibly. So he goes to ask his superior. The commotion is as if the alarm had sounded in a prison. Senanayak walks out surprised and sees Draupadi, naked, walking to- ward him in the bright sunlight with her head high. The nervous guards trail behind. What is this? He is about to cry, but stops. Draupadi stands before him, naked. Thigh and pubic hair matted with dry blood. Two breasts, two wounds. What is this? He is about to bark. Draupadi comes closer. Stands with her hand on her hip, laughs and says, The object of your search, Dopdi Mejhen. You asked them to make me up, don’t you want to see how they made me? Where are her clothes? Won’t put them on, sir. Tearing them. Draupadi’s black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation, What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man? She looks around and chooses the front of Senanayak’s white bush shirt to spit a bloody gob at and says, There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my cloth on me. What more can you do? Come on, counter me-come on, counter me-? Draupadi pushes Senanayak with her two mangled breasts, and for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid.

Suddenly, there is a loud explosion and Senanayak wakes up exasperated, gasping for breath, he barely manages to wear his slippers, slips and falls on the ground with blood pouring out of his head, he loses consciousness. Everything is hither and tither and the prison complex is in flames with two of the guards burnt like charcoal lying on the ground. Dopadi and Arijit are walking deep within the forests. She is neatly dressed in a Saaree draped around her waist. Dopadi, calls Arijit and she doesn’t respond to being called Dopadi, as if Dopadi is not her name.

The Travesty of Dalit Autobiographies: Being Seen without Seeing

“Here are black men standing, looking at us, and I hope that you?like me?will feel the shock of being seen. For
three thousand years, the white man has enjoyed the privilege
of seeing without being seen”

• Jean Paul Sartre, Black Orpheus

“The first Dalit autobiography to be published, Baluta caused a sensation when it first appeared, in Marathi, in 1978. It quickly acquired the status of a classic of modern Indian literature and was also a bestseller in Hindi and other major languages. Set in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra of the 1940s and ’50s, it describes in shocking detail the practice of untouchability and caste violence. “

-https://guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=532151&p=3641370

Dalit autobiographies have a very strange status in Indian academia. They are both present and absent at the same time much like the Dalit Author’s Self, which is both present and absent at the same time in the Hindu Social Order.

Here, the absence of Dalits in academia is marked by the presence of these autobiographies. These autobiographies are tales of being seen without being able to see.

It’s only the Brahmin Self that have enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen and thus It was never required of him to write about his self.

When it comes to the Dalit Self, almost all autobiographies are acts of seeking to be seen in the eyes of the Brahmin, but they are already being seen in the eyes of the Brahmin, wretched, uncouth, helpless, illicit, incapable, maimed, the other. These autobiographies reproduce that gaze and offer nothing worth challenging the structure. If Dalits are of the view that if they make the Upper Castes read what dishonour they commit on them, the Upper Castes will have a change of heart, then I am sorry to say they don’t understand the battle in the first place. You don’t ask the man who beat you, why did he beat you, you should beat him back. Dalit Autobiographies on the other hand only ask the question “why did you beat me?”

Why do you need a hearing in their courts?

Why don’t you reign in Hell than to serve in their paradise?

Dalit autobiographies thus are only pandering to that Brahmin Gaze and seeking it’s attestation. Where is that assertion, where is that negation of being seen without being able to see?

An ugly culmination of these autobiographies is the entire industry created around this wretched identity of being a dalit, a helpless victim, who only has traumas in his life. This emotional appeal to subjugate ones own identity to that of an eternal victim seeking justice does disservice to the untouchable cause,for it will only create forebearers who “Write about Dalits”, “Voice of the Marginalised” etc.

As Dr Ambedkar apty put once

“I remember to have read a conversation between an American and an English soldier during the last World War. I find it most appropriate at this juncture. How long the war should be continued, was the subject of discussion. In reply to a question, the Englishman said with great pride, “We shall fight the war till the last Frenchman dies.” When the Hindu social reformers proclaim that they shall fight to the last for the cause of the Untouchables, it means that they propose to fight till the last Untouchable dies. This is the meaning, as I understand it, of their proclamation. One who fights for a cause at the cost of the lives of others cannot be expected to win the battle.”

The more the cries of humiliation and trauma the more this industry of people fighting for a cause at the cost of lives of others will rise.

Dalit Autobiographies might have served a purpose but the time has come to start seeing without being seen!

Do you have that guts?

On Surplus Men and Women; Enclosing Classes into Castes to Devalue Lower Caste Women

Ambedkar in his seminal paper Castes in India, has explained in great detail how brahmins were the first to create an enclosed class of themselves and turn into a caste which led to other classes to turn themselves into Castes as well and thus emerged the system of castes which was honoured because it was practised.

Ambedkar argued that the problem of surplus men and women was at the centre of imposition of endogamy.

While Ambedkar only delineated the origin of caste, I would like to take his argument further to make a point that clear demarcation and compartmentalisation of classes into castes created a relative scarcity of women belonging to upper castes and thus inflated their relative value in the Hindu social order as compared to the lower caste women, where endogamy was not as prevalent as among the upper castes. This relative value leads to a perceived desirability and value because of restrictions imposed on their sexuality.

The scarcity and exclusivity associated with closed social groups can make higher-class women seem more valuable simply because they are less accessible, increasing their perceived worth.

Post Rohith Vemula’s suicide, there has been a slurry of discussions in academic and social world on Caste but this discussion has often been limited to talk about victimhood of Dalits as opposed to the domination of the Indian ruling castes.

There was a huge uproar even in Indian Parliament over Vemula’s suicide and struggle of Dalit students in India’s higher education campuses.

In this chaos, something which could have been unimaginable in the past decade has emerged in academic world.

The academic world dominated by upper castes has now accomodated the dalit being as long he is a prisoner of his identity.

Too much is being written on Caste and Campus and the focus, the gaze as usual is always the dalit identity.

This Gaze is so all pervasive, that at times a dalit can’t even think of anything but being a dalit. He can’t think of being a sociologist, an engineer or a doctor or a journalist or an author or a poet. He is relegated to the prison of his identity as if there is no escape from that identity.

One of the most interesting case being that of Yashica Dutt, who wrote her autobiography titled, coming out as a dalit and Suraj Yengde’s Caste Matters.

The focus of both these works by “Dalit” authors was, you guessed it right, what it means to be a dalit, in Post Vemula era.

These two books are now very often cited in academic spaces as resource materials to study caste.

Dalit has now become a subject of Brahmin fantasy, which exists as an object only as long as it panders to the Brahmin Gaze, an objective subject of perpetual victimhood in the eyes of the Brahmin.

Isn’t it strange that What Ambedkar talked about was annihilation of caste, is now being subverted into a discourse, where Dalits are given space and columns as long as they speak only about “themselves”.

With increasing intereference of American Social Justice policies of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Indian reality, Dalits are becoming a Neoliberal Subject, and their identity is being commodified to pander to the needs of the market.

As long as you will write about your pain, your humiliation you will be given space, but the moment you write about something that can’t evoke a vicarious sense of being an ideal subject of victimhood, you will never find mention anywhere.

Another case can be made of another book called Traumas of Caste published in America by Equality Labs.

Such a pathologisation of Dalit Identity has led to springing up of so many counselling and psychological interventions as if we are a medical subject. Again, the focus of Caste Society’s ignominy is the Dalit Identity.

Tales of  Socio Analysis; The Empirical Brahmin waging an Epistemic War

You all must be aware of Gopal Guru’s articulation whereas he has split the academic world into Empirical Shudras and Theoretical Brahmans.

Guru has went to a great extent to berate Dalits of lacking the discipline and rigor of doing theory and on the other hand in a sense of academic superiority he places unto himself seems to be in awe of the theoretical rigor of Brahmins.

What shall I say? He goes on to say Poetry written by Dalits might not be Theoretical enough for Indian Social Sciences. He has relegated the Untouchables into a realm of phenomenological angst. A people who can’t produce high theory like Guhas and Chatterjee.

In doing so, he has gravely overlook his own people’s history.

This is what happens when you try to pander to the Brahmin Gaze in academia and try to project yourself as some sort of a high theorist as against their own people’s history of Epistemic Battles against the Brahmin.

This is a problem with a section of Mahars who have inculcated western imperial academic notions without apt scrutiny.

What is theory? The articulation Guru tries to situate reeks of Brahmin appeasement . Maybe for him, high theory is writing articles in EPW and not irking the ganglords of Brahmin Academia. He has this becomes a victim of his own identity shoved into him by the Brahmin.

I have read Ambedkar closely, he has nowehere expressed his concern for Dalits lacking expertise to do theory. On the other hand Ambedkar’s articulation are a condensation of his allegiance to how own people. It is not for nothing that he dedicates his writings to Raidas and Chokhamela.

Trained in a Marxist infested Brahmin Academia, Guru has limited Dalits into their material conditions. It is a very sorry understanding that those who labour and are materially bereft can’t produce theory.

The very demarcation of theory from labour is a Brahmin enterprise.

Kabir and Raidas were both into labour to earn their livelihood and produced theories which the Indian Academia can’t even think even in their orgasmic dreams.

कुछ तो मजबूरियां रहीं होंगी गुरु,
यूं ही कोई अपनों के प्रति बेवफा नहीं होता!

To keep quiet or Implode?

It was in class three that I found that my people, my identity is that of untouchables. I have not even read Shakespeare or Flaubert, nor have I read Premchand or Mahashweta Devi but I was made aware of my own existence in such a brutal manner.

I don’t know how others might react to this awareness, but for me it was always uncomfortable. I was a student in a Jesuit school where I never had to face my identity head on. I had enough resources as compared to the rest of my people and was equally motivated to study hard by my teachers but deep down the very fact that I carry such an identity even though I might not have to face the physical brunt in a very obscene manner as do so many of untouchables in India even today.

The question in front of me was whether to speak and make my surroundings uncomfortable or keep my discomfort within me and just study and perform well and keep the burden of my identity aside. All throughout my school life, I chose to keep my discomfort within me.

Something very interesting happened with me while I was in my class tenth, I came across Narendra Jadhav’s acclaimed autobiography and at that time it was translated into English as ‘Untouchable: My family’s triumphant escape out of the Caste system. Soon I found myself deep within the realms of Dalit Autobiographies. I still remember reading Bama Faustina’s Karukku, in which she described her struggle in a caste society in the state of Tamilnadu.

No sooner than that I have put my hands on Sheoraj Singh Bechain’s “Mera Bachpan Mere Kandhon par” and Om Prakash Valmiki’s jhoothan. It was as if I was obsessed with reading it all that I used to scourge internet for every little snippet I could find if I was not able to buy the hard copy.

Be it Nangeli, or Phoolan or be it I was reading about Everything I could get my hands off and I was still keeping my discomforts within me, waiting to Implode.

I had a very bright career infront of me as I was about to study engineering at Delhi Technological University but somehow I was made to feel I didn’t deserve despite my competencies. This was a moment of implosion and deep unrest and I chose to delve deep into what piqued me and I chose to study sociology at St Xavier’s College Mumbai.

There I found a voice, I used to speak a lot and fight a lot. When it comes to questioning caste you can’t speak without fighting. But a question always lingered infront of me what if I speak too much, will I be failed, my career jeopardized? But I was reckless back then, and only used to speak my mind as if I was trying to throw away my inner discomforts back towards the world that made me uncomfortable for my identity in the first place.

My personal callous attitude led me to flunk in Sociology: An Introduction Course paper thrice as I used to feel what is even the point of writing answers if nobody is even listening and I am just shouting.

At that time Rohith Vemula died by suicide and I wrote an article for round table India, which helped me in cathartically releasing my pain.

Academic writing has always made me feel pointless. I have always felt that if you can’t bleed within while writing, it’s of no use.

All my writings are angst and frustrations directed against a world of disgusting incingrueties of life. One of my teachers, a graduate from CHS JNU said my writings lack scholarship and reek of sensationalism.

Should I have spoken or kept quite? Should I have written scholarly or expressed my angst?

The point I am trying to make here is no wonder however hard our people try to be scholarly, their immanent lived realities will always collide which will give a pass to upper caste scholars to shun them as senstationalists.

Do you see how even in academic world, we are not allowed to be judged on our scholarship but are made prisoner’s of our own identities whereas Upper Caste Scholars never have to deal with this ignominy. Why would they? They are objective, carry scholarship, don’t reek sensationalism, are beyong their identities and true scholars.

The burden of identity is an artefact for the upper castes but iron shackles for us

Liberal Anxieties on Caste: Incorrigible corrosion of Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s limited Cognition

“A deputation of Harijans waited on Gandhiji at Sevagram with the request that members of the castes grouped under the head of ‘Scheduled Castes’ should be allowed representation
on the governing body of the Harijan Sevak Sangh. Gandhiji is reported to have replied that the Sangh is meant to
help Harijans and was not a Harijan organization and, therefore, their request was inadmissible. “


– Mr. K. Natarajan in Indian Social Reformer of 14th October 1944.
As quoted in What Congress and Gandhi have done for the Untouchables by Dr BR Ambedkar.


Recently, Rahul Gandhi’s evolving personna came to a very interesting turn in the parliament when he reiterated his demand for a caste census, on which he was taunted by Anurag Thakur, that those who don’t know the caste to which they themselves belong are asking to have a count of castes of people in India.


The above mentioned quote sourced from Ambedkar’s ‘What Congress and Gandhi have done to the untouchables makes us inquire deep into the demands of a caste census. Why not have a Caste Census in the Indian National Congress first?

What is the percentage of Untouchables in the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress?

How many Untouchables have been able to secure victory on a Congress ticket from a seat which is not reserved for the untouchables?

“A candidate whose majority is due
to votes of persons other than Untouchables has no right to say that he is a representative of the Untouchables and the Congress cannot claim to represent the Untouchables through him merely because he belongs to the Untouchables and stood on a Congress ticket. “

– Dr BR. Ambedkar

Indian National Congress should first clear its stand that where do the untouchables stand in their imagination?

As a separate element of Indian Society or a mere appendage to the Hindu Social Order. In another article which I have written I have clearly warned on the perils of tyranny of a caste Hindu majority, if the consolidation of backward castes Hindus takes place under the demand of a nation-wide caste census.


The debates in the Indian socio political arena are still manufactured by the liberal and the orthodox factions with the untouchable opinions relegated to the margins. They are manufactured to cater to the binary of a moderate version of Hinduism, the Congress and an extremist version, the BJP- Sangh .

What is overlooked in these manufactured debates is the already established idea that Untouchables form a distinct element of the Indian Society and they have every right to govern themselves and act sovereign in the strict political sense of democratic contract between the Indian State and the Untouchables, which is being followed in the aftermath of Poona Pact.

“There is certainly no ground for thinking that the Congress is planning to establish democracy in India. The mere fact that the Congress is engaged in a ‘Fight for Freedom’ does not warrant such a conclusion. Before any such conclusion
is drawn it is the duty of the foreigner to pursue the matter further and ask another question, namely, ‘For whose freedom is the Congress fighting ?’ The question whether the Congress is fighting for freedom has very little importance as
compared to the question, ‘for whose freedom is the Congress fighting ?’ This is a pertinent and necessary inquiry and it would be wrong for any lover of freedom to support the Congress without further pursuing the matter and finding out what the truth is.”

– Dr BR Ambedkar in What Congress and Gandhi have done for untouchables


“It is of course impossible for the Brahmins to maintain their supremacy as a governing class without an ally to
help them on account of their being numerically very small. Consequently, as history shows, the Brahmins have always had other classes as their allies to whom they were ready to accord the status of a governing class provided they were prepared to work with them in subordinate co-operation. “

Dr BR Ambedkar in What Congress and Gandhi have done for the Untouchables

It is this very danger of numerically stronger backward castes co-operating in subordination with the governing class for which the Congress is fighting which makes us question that the demand for a caste census is nothing sort of a populist measure. Untouchables should keep away from being swayed by this newfound politics of social justice being played in the name of Bahujan Politics.

Bahujan as a term has no social significance and is sociologically not just poor but a gross misrepresentation of the various classes that form part of the Indian Society.

As already mentioned, the manufactured debates rarely take into account the opinion of the untouchables and not only that, each side of the Brahmin Spectrum tries to Meta narrrativise the Separate existence of untouchables from a separate existence into a larger construction of Hindu Identity.


What is important in this debate on Caste Census in the parliament is the invocation by Rahul Gandhi, how many SC ST OBC are there in the Halwa Ceremony of the Ministry of Finance?

Although the social justice ideologues of all hues trie to portray this as a legitimate question by Rahul Gandhi but we should not forget that it’s merely an act of rhetoric because we all know even Congress have never given India a Finance Minister who was a Dalit or Have they?


In fact it Was Rahul Gandhi’s great grandfather Nehru who disrespected Ambedkar by not appointing him to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs.

“I was not even appointed to be a member of main Committees of the Cabinet such as Foreign Affairs Committee, or the Defence Committee.  When the Economics Affairs Committee was formed, I expected,  in view of the fact that I was primarily a student of Economics and Finance, to be appointed to this Committee.  But I was left out.  I was appointed to it by the Cabinet, when the  Prime Minister had gone to England.  But when he returned, in one of his many essays in the reconstruction of the cabinet, he left me out.  In a subsequent reconstruction my name was added to the Committee, but that was as a result of my protest.”

-resignation letter of Dr BR Ambedkar, when he resigned from the post of Law Minister


We are always bombarded with the binary of the Congress Vs the BJP in the Indian Political Arena and this became a major issue of public debate when BJP was limited to few seats short of clear majority and the entire Intellegentsia made Congress the Bandwagon of Hope from a BJP free India.

Largely the Liberal Intellegentsia has been quite supportive of the newly evolved role of Rahul Gandhi in revamping the Indian National Congress but this time Pratap Bhanu Mehta has somehow hit some discordant notes with Gandhi’s imagery of a caste rhetoric.

It is quite an established fact that the discourse on which Congress is battling to come back to power has never been a central reckoning of the Congress Party . It is largely borrowed from the politics of Bahujan Samaj Party which was championed by  Kanshiram and Mayawati in their heydays. The loosening grip of Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh has given Congress an option to co opt that discourse and at the behest of dalit votes, bounce back into power.

Mehta has been deeply irked by the remarks of Rahul Gandhi and resorts to questioning the entire discourse on caste as a reductionist form of cheap identity politics.

At a surface level, it seems to be a critique of Rahul Gandhi, but Rahul Gandhi is merely an eyewash, Mehta this time is irked by the albeit fractured but rising consciousness of caste politics among the scheduled castes.

The Untouchable Populace at this point of time lacks a luminary leadership but the ideals which were set in place by Ambedkar still stand tall.  It is the under utilised potential of these ideals which makes people Like Mehta up in arms against the discourse on Caste.


Little did Mehta care to understand that what Rahul Gandhi asked was mere rhetoric and a Rhetoric that he knows serves him and his party very well but why is it that a Rhetoric hurts Mehta so badly that he goes on to say that

“One of the greatest corrosions of intellectual life we have seen in this country is an increasing culture in Indian universities where the prefix “savarna” before a professor or a book is meant to somehow exhaust a full consideration of what is being said. The collapse of reason and identity that is authorised in the name of social justice does far more damage to the cause of social justice than its proponents realise.”

According to Mehta, the addition of Prefix Savarna to judge the Scholarship of an Upper Caste intellectual is “intellectual corrosion”

It should be noted here that Mehta here is trivialising an important aspect of the anti caste politics which tries to dismantle the upper caste intellectuals who tend to define and delineate the problems and lives of almost every other marginalised communities in India.

This adding of the Prefix is not merely rhetoric but an important step in the direction of pointing out that the gaze of the upper caste intellectuals is always downwards, that is towards those who are inferior to them in hierarchy and hence easy subjects of study.

The Politics of adding a prefix which indicates the caste location of an intellectual is something that intellectuals like Mehta might take generations to acknowledge that it’s not cheap identity politics but redefining the academic gaze.

It is not to discredit the intellectual works of Upper Caste intellectuals which the limited cognitive capacities of Mehta understand as, but it is in a Bourdieuan sense an act of self reflexivity which upper caste intellectuals should themselves indulge in, in order to practise a sociology in search of the truth.

But it’s not strange that Mehta is behaving like a snob, when the leading giant of Indian Sociology, MN Srinivas himself never cared to look at himself reflexively as a Brahmin sociologist, up and untill he was questioned by a British Anthropologist named Edmund Leach.

In defence of my Speech; Horrors of Spivakian Abuse

“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization”

This is a popular quote which is attributed to Sigmund Freud but as per the Freud Museum, London’s website which reads

“ Freud did in fact use something like it, but he is alluding to another writer. Freud writes: ‘as an English writer has wittily remarked, the man who first flung a word of abuse at his enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilisation.’

The witty English writer was the neurologist John Hughlings Jackson.”

But why am I writing about hurling abuse as the basis of civilization? Are we all not bombarded with Pyramids and Grand Tombs, giant architectures and Cities, Buildings and Canals and Agriculture as the markers of Civilization?

How does “hurling abuse” become the beacon of civilizational leap?

You must have read in Engels paper “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man ”, where he writes in detail about how it was labor that transformed and differentiated man from ape. Although in his understanding of the dialectics, Engels has focused heavily on labor. Labor no doubt is what differentiated man from ape in that transition but what was the origin of Labour? Did Labour come about out of nowhere? No! It was a history of millions of years condensed to make a point. There were so many things at play concurrently which altogether coincided for years and years to make us the modern humans.

An important aspect of this transition, which even engles writes about, is the slow evolution of our vocal chords which made us capable of speech. The speech which today marks us distinct from apes was initially an evolutionary necessity which sprung from a required cooperation necessary for survival in nature, especially when humans were biologically not that huge in size as compared to other predators and animals they used to hunt.

Thus gestures of communication first evolved in order to communicate with others and coordinate while on hunt.

This was a pure survival mechanism and speech thus developed was still very archaic and almost incomprehensible without any linguistic syntax or grammar.

Now to come back to the above mentioned quote misattributed to Freud, Hurling abuse instead of a stone as a marker of civilization. This might seem contradictory to us at first glance, because the ‘civilizations?’ that we find ourselves living in currently have clear demarcations on decent speech and abusive speech. There is a pedantic sense of a civilized life which is marked by restrictions and sanctions of foul speech.

This foul speech is seen miles away and even antithetical to the idea of a civilization.

To such an understanding I am bound to ask if we are really living in a civilization?

What is a civilization? Isn’t it supposed to bring us out of the uncertainty and harshness of nature?

But what we witness is that today life in modern “civilisations” is even worse than life in nature for billions of people while a million few enjoy all the benefits of Civilization.

I refuse to call these unequal societies as civilized.

History is besotted with prime examples of how the idea of civilization has been used to commit the worse of crimes against humanity by the ruling elites and it doesn’t stop at that the burden of proving one’s civility is always shoved upon the victims of the projects of Civilization.

“A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.
A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.”

Aime Cesaire, Discourse in Colonialism

What makes me write at length about Civilization and its Discourse is to make a point about Hurling abuse as an act of resistance against the ills committed in the name of Civilization.

If we restrict ourselves to India and its history, restrictions on speech have been a very important part of the caste society.

The ideas of pure speech or sacred speech have always been associated with the Sanskrit Language and the priestly class of Brahmins.

Why I am talking so much about speech and it’s purity is to make my case against people who have branded me as abusive for using the words “Bastard and Bitch” for Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak after an incident in which she behaved like an old haggard Brahmin Lady masquerading as an egalitarian socialist who runs schools for dalits.

Yes you read it right. This description of Spivak is not to praise her but to bring out messianic complex inherent in upper caste intellectuals in India, through which they try hard to portray themselves as casteless and beyond Caste.

What transpired between Me and Spivak has already been written in detail by me in another article which can be read here.

I am taking this opportunity to problematize this very incident and academically study what transpired between me and Spivak.

It makes me wonder that an academic institution like JNU which boasts too much about being against Capitalist ideas of a corporate work environment all of a sudden ganged up against me on my usage of abusive words instead of problematising and going into the nuances of that spat.

Are they not behaving in a manner espoused by a capitalist workforce, where there are demeanors, rules and ideas on behavioral conduct which govern the lives of its workers? Are we supposed to behave in the same manner in academia? To shun abuses as an uncouth or should we study and understand why people abuse?

Are we a Corporate Work Office where we are aiming to produce profit or are we engaged in producing knowledge to better understand our own selves and our own lives?

But then they have always been like this. They have not yet problematised the idea of University Itself or for that matter being reflexive enough to study academia itself.

The academic warlords from Menon to Gudavarthy will go on giving their commentaries on every demographic unit of Indian society and their lives and mores but they won’t ever look onwards and study their own folks. And that is what I call the Brahmin Gaze, which always defined the other and historically the Brahmin has always in a pursuit to define himself has taken great pain to define the other.

The Indian Caste Structure was a very unique attempt in which the Brahmin racialised himself in order to racialise the entire population of India. (Read Divya Dwivedi, Homologies of Race and Caste)

On the other hand these Upper Caste Intellectuals, from Ajay Gudavarthy to Brinda Bose to Some Simran Chaddha from Delhi University used all their might, all their networks and connections with publication outlets to put me down.

It takes one to be a joker to write terms like “implosion of subalternity” and “can the subaltern speak” in an academic arena to talk about the same thing.

Isn’t it amusing for you that the subaltern which couldn’t speak has now imploded?

The subaltern which till now cannot speak has now imploded? Why? Just because he showered the choicest of abuses on you?

With all that I have written about speech and its purity, when I chose to abuse Spivak, it was not speech per se but in written form.

It was not for nothing that Socrates despised the invention of Writing, because the art of writing changes the entire discourse of power and creates new ruling hierarchies which are based on who gets to learn to write and legitimize that writing.

What hurts the academic elites in India so much is that I rose above their bastion of written world and their mafias and shook it all with my mere abuses.

The Brahmin is so cunning that he wrote so much esoteric content that if we put all our energies into dismantling their written canons with our counter writing it will prove to be futile. Raidas and Kabir knew it beforehand and hence chose to not even give two cents of legitimacy to their written canons symbolically represented by the Vedas.

It was not for nothing that Raidas, didn’t produce a reply to the Vedas but simply said, I Raidas proclaim all Vedas to be worthless.

As I consider myself to be a part of academia, it is but a required thing on my part to write in detail about the shenanigans of mischievous Brahmins but what I personally believe is that their canons of writing should not be considered worth engaging and be outrightly condemned as acts of oppression.

My mere two words of abuse led to star intellectuals of Indian Academia to write in defense of Spivak. Imagine the power and might they hold to sway public opinion and Discourse. It is this power I am fighting against and I refuse to play by the rules of their games.

The very fact that I was able to rattle them enough gives me strength enough to continue attacking them at their very roots because I have opened a line of attack against these academic ganglords which if utilized well by the leading intellectuals from marginalized locations can prove to be of much help to them.

I am here using speech and written words interchangeably to make a point. A point about the politics of language. A politics of refined speech and the origins of linguistic warfare.

In defense of my speech, I take this opportunity to define what I term in dishonor of Gayatri Spivak as “Spivakian Abuse”.

Spivakian Abuse is a set of ruling ideas which are disseminated in the academia by upper caste academics who further their academic career by talking and writing about the people who are victims of oppression.

It is an abuse because often these ideas are used to further that oppression rather than fighting it from within.

Now let me come to my language, which is being termed as bad and disrespectful towards an Old Lady Spivak. What most of them tend to forget is that it is not simply bad language towards an Old Lady. It is bad language towards an Old Lady who is an authority and the symbol of the entire Cannon of the Indian Liberal Academia. She is not just the symbolic head of the star academics. She lives that stature.

And since she ain’t just an Old Woman, my choice of words are not just bad words but an upfront attack on that masculine image of a Lady who both symbolizes and enacts the masculine ruling ideals of academia and the authority that it entails.

My choice of bad words thus were directly subverting the almost religion like authority which the Brahmin Academics hold in the knowledge economy and Spivak is the God Mother of all these academics.

Of the two words I used for Spivak, one has garnered the most outrage as an act of Misogyny. The other word has not been talked much about.

What most of the academic intellectuals here missed to notice is that it is indeed misogyny of the word I used that they are raging against but wait, there’s a catch here.

The Misogyny with which they have a problem is not the plain act of abusing a woman, which they pretend is the case. Deeply hidden in their identification of my choice of word as misogyny is their angst that I used a term of abuse used against women for a woman who symbolizes the masculine warhead of their ruling discourse.

They got angry and rattled not because I abused an Old Woman. Their pain is the outright manifestation of me laying bare and emasculating the masculine “man hood” of their God Mother who rules in the image of a masculine patriarch.

Isn’t Spivak the symbol of the “Academic Patriarch” against whom none can show disrespect let alone abuse her?

David L. Paletz and William F. Harris in Four Letter Threat to Authority argued that

“the public use of obscenity undermines authority, whether that authority be political, moral-aesthetic, or linguistic.”

They further make a schema which goes like this:-

“Political and Social Authority is based on Public Rationality and Morality which embodies the processual flow of command and is based on The System of Language which incorporates the values and conventions of a social and political system, and provides a model or a logic of action.”

My choice of word of abuse for Spivak fits exactly in this schema, It belittled that Political and Social Authority of the Academia.

Spivak is a representative of that authority and my choice of Word of abuse has little to do with the personal female being of Spivak, but more to do with her authoritative being.

Mind you, I am not related to Spivak and neither was I conversing with her as an acquaintance or in any capacity as a personal correspondence. My interaction was purely academic and in an ontological sense, she is “the other” to me as much as I am “the other” to her.

I chose to abuse that ontological other schematic in her being of an academic who is the doyen of Subaltern Studies.

My usage of abuse for Spivak had nothing personal to do with her and hence couldn’t be categorically characterized in any academic sense as Misogyny. Those who are doing so either have little or no understanding of Misogyny and Patriarchy or have an impending motive to defend the outrightly Patriarchal and Masculine Image of that Old Haggard Spivak.

I don’t know whether you will agree to accept this fact or not, but being in JNU I have clearly observed that success in an academic career is built upon how softly you can teabag the testicles of the academics you are working under and Spivak is the Boss Lady to whom all the Indian Academics bow down to. It is not for no reason that Ajay Gudavarthy and Brinda Bose chose to play their tricks of academic jugglery to defend Spivak. And most of the students need references and overshadow of the likes of Gudavarthy and Bose to succeed in their career and hence their attitude of contempt against me because I symbolize that angst and rage against the dominance of these so called leading intellectuals and to praise me is to send their career down the academic drain. Hence an outright boycott and public castigation against me is seen in most of the lackeys and chelas of Spivakian Academic Warlords.

Civilisation is built not merely by bricks and mortars, it takes people and their rights to govern themselves inherent in it for a civilization to grow.

And by any standards, I don’t consider Indian Caste Society a Civilization. The last time we were a Civilization was when we saw the non hierarchical non caste societies of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro.

The codes and conducts of language are clearly defined in a political and social authority because such an authority is built upon paying obeisance to that authority. It is the collective will imposed by the ruling authority that determines these linguistic mores and customs and the big power of smallness of abusive language is not inherently because of it being abusive, but because it undermines that collective system of ruler vs ruled. It subverts and destabilizes that construction of superimposed social contract and violates it. It is in these interstitial acts of abuse that the power structure gets shaken and the existing incongruities are exposed for the world to be seen.

Little do I need to explain the restrictive nature of laws in pre industrial simple societies because they valued the collective consciousness as against anything worth individual expression of dissent. My choice of abuse characteristically challenged that collective consciousness upheld in Indian Academia that keeps Brahmin Academics as incharge of the collective will. A classic example of the struggle between the Sacred and the Profane. What I ended up doing was that with my Profanity I challenged the Sacred. The Profanity of seeing things from below, from the margins as opposed to the sacredness of always being on top of the academic hierarchy.

This collective consciousness was dented only when a capitalist economy made it possible to have atomised individuals to exist in a society.

A Society can only provide the grounds for dissent, it can never lead dissent.A dissent is always atomistic and always against the collective will, lead by individuals. It is only through the effort of individuals that the society collectively changes and this again produces new atomistic individuals who again challenge the incongruities of the society.

Although it’s altogether a different thing that such an atomisation of individuals is now bringing up new found challenges to human societies.