Author Archives: notsomeritorios

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.

It has come to my notice that after I called out Gayatri Spivak for her arrogant and casteist behaviour against me in her lecture, another Bengali Bhadralok Bamani has come to the rescue and defence of Spivak .

Bose wrote an opinion piece on the digital media website Scroll titled

“Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the democratic politics of pronunciation

A controversy broke out on social media when Spivak corrected a student’s pronunciation of WEB Du Bois’s name – after explaining why.”


Let’s begin with the title of her opinion piece itself, which is nothing but a pilloried attempt to act in solidarity with her caste brethren.

Despite being ample proof in the video which I have shared on micro blogging website X (formerly Twitter) that Spivak was being rude against me and humiliating me in from of the entire auditorium, Bose deliberately chose to keep the title of her opinion as “Gayatri Spivak and Democratic Politics of Pronunciation “

Is shutting down a young student for his pronunciation a “democratic politics of pronunciation”? I guess you all know better.

Bose writes “about her alleged “arrogance” directed at a “subaltern” student”.

She is clearly taking side with Spivak here by not accepting that she was arrogant. On the other hand she is absolving her by terming her arrogance as “alleged”.

I must make you all aware of the video which I have shared on my X (formerly Twitter)account and see to if it was not absolute arrogance and not “alleged” arrogance on part of  Spivak in rebuking, chiding and reprimanding me for my pronunciation.

Then how is it that Bose is going to the extent of calling her arrogance as alleged.
It shows she is trying very hard to defend her fellow Bhodrolok Bengali Brahmin.

And that too despite her claiming that she was sitting right next to where I stood in the auditorium.

If she was sitting right next to me, why didn’t she bother to tell the readers what actually happened in those five minutes of arrogance displayed by Spivak against me?

Why did she choose to focus only on the content of the lecture given by Spivak. In a sense Bose has transcribed the entire lecture in order to make a case for defending Spivak.


Bose writes “A lecture against arrogance
Interestingly, and ironically enough, in talking about the acknowledgement of complicity, Spivak’s lecture was against arrogance – the arrogance of taking an “I am Right, You are Wrong” position when the matter is contradictory and complicated – by citing Du Bois as an exemplary case.”


What is ironic here is that Bose has subtitled Spivak’s lecture as a Lecture against arrogance and we all know from the video I have shared already how arrogant Spivak was in her demeanor in correcting my pronunciation.

Bose also makes a point that Spivak’s lecture was against the practice of taking a “I am right and You are wrong” position.

Behold thyself for the unimaginable irony my friends. Do I need to reiterate that during her entire five minutes of shouting on me Spivak was hell bent on “I am right and You are wrong” kind of attitude. Then by what logic has Bose argued that Spivak’s lecture was against arrogance of “I am right and you are wrong”?


Bose argues that Spivak has explained the politics of pronunciation that involved Du Bois’s pronunciation in her lecture and that was Du Bois’s insistence on his name being pronounced as “Du Boys” as in English as against “Du Bwaah” as in French as a mark of protest against French Colonialism owing to Du Bois Haitian (a French colony ) origins.

But Both Bose is deliberately defending Spivak through this politics of pronunciation which stands nowhere close to me as I am nowhere in any context between French and English Colonialism. For me Both French and English are Foreign and in fact the politics of pronunciation was in a context which was Du Bois’s protest against French Colonialism. How that context becomes so important in a third world country that it can justify interrupting me thrice for my pronunciation is something that I can’t fathom.


Bose even went to the extent of accusing me of my lying about Bihari Lal Bhaduri being Great Grandfather of Spivak.

Bose wrote which has now been edited after my complaint to the executive editor of Scroll, that “  such a lineage of privilege. Apparently, however, Bihari Lal Bhaduri was no relative of Spivak’s at all, merely a friend of a relative.”

This paragraph has thus been deleted and edited by the publisher.

I am attaching the article here in which Spivak has herself claimed that She was great granddaughter of Bihari Lal Bhaduri.

So now the question is what made Bose defend Spivak with so much rigor if not the caste solidarity among Brahmins.




https://scroll.in/article/1068311/opinion-gayatri-chakravorty-spivak-and-the-democratic-politics-of-pronunciation


https://sfonline.barnard.edu/heilbrun/spivak_01.htm

As I am writing this, counting for JNUSU polls is underway. The most disturbing thing that happened this election was the cancellation of Swati Singh’s Candidature as General Secretary.

On the intervening night preceding the day of elections, Swati’s candidature was revoked with immediate notice at around 2 AM.

What then followed was a curious case of politics of everyday life being transmogrified into the politics of JNUSU Polls.

United Left Panel in a hurry fielded BAPSA’s Priyanshi Arya as  United Left Panel’s candidate for Gen Sec. Keep it in mind that the new posters released after this proves that Left Unity has broken.

How? The posters thus released have only AISA, SFI and AISF as undersigned for central panel Candidates. DSF is absent.

So, the United Left is no Longer United. Left unity has broken just before the elections.

DSF has taken a stand that they want re-election for the post of Gen Sec. And Swati Singh  has gone on an indefinite hunger strike against what she claims ‘ABVP-Admin’ nexus. Whereas AISA has not cleared their stance regarding the cancellation of Swati’s candidature.

What is even more interesting is that BAPSA has also not officially acquiesced to the fielding of Priyanshi as a Gen Sec Candidate for the now broken United Left Panel. BAPSA has neither supported DSF’s demand for re-election nor accepted the now broken United Left Panel’s fielding of Priyanshi as Gen Sec.

At first it seems ABVP is acting against Swati Singh but why has AISA not taken a stance in support of Swati?

Is AISA literally being true to its Hindi translation Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad?

As we are all aware, last night we saw the rhetorical fight between the candidates contesting for the post of president JNUSU as part of the presidential debate in the historic Jhelum Lawn.

I would like to focus specifically on the speech delivered by United Left Panel’s Dhananjay. In the beginning of his speech he mentions that he is the voice of the farmers against the company Raj of the Indian government and then goes on to say that he is the voice of the struggle of dalit landless labourers in the Bihar region.

It’s quite funny to see that the Left Panel’s Presidential candidate has no understanding about the Indian Agrarian Structure and thus is unfit to contest for the post of JNUSU President.

How can he be the voice of both the “farmers” against the State and the “Dalit Landless Labourers” against the “Farmers”?

If the fight of “farmers” is against the Indian Crony Capitalist State, then the fight of Dalit Landless Labourers is against the feudal category of farmers in India, the Kulakhs of India.

Then, how is he the voice of both of them who stand in antagonism with each other?

If we trace the history of this word “farmer” and how its meaning has been created we need to look at the Punjab Alienation of the Land Act, 1909 of the British Indian regime.

This Act mandated and defined two categories of castes,

1. Agriculturist Castes

2. Non Agriculturist Castes

The motive behind this categorisation was the ease of revenue collection and protection of ‘agriculturist’ castes from the market hegemony of non agriculturist Castes, primarily the sahookars, moneylenders who were exploiting the ‘zamindars’ and affecting the revenue collection from agricultural produce which was a major source of wealth of the British Empire in India.

This act thus provided protection to the land ‘owned’ by these ‘agriculturist’ castes from the moneylenders and further consolidated land holdings in the hands of these agriculturist Castes.

Non Agriculturist Castes also included the untouchable castes  (Chamars, Valmikis, Khatiks etc)  who were mere tillers of land and they were not officially designated as agriculturists.

There were nine Castes in this category of Agriculturalist Castes-:

1. Jats

2. Rajputs

3. Ahirs

4. Sainis

5. Rors

6. Bishnois

7. Gurjars

8. Kamboj

9. Meo (Mewati)

These castes have since then consolidated their identity of ‘farmer’ and even today they have become synonymous with this idea of who is a farmer.

And they have a clear hold over land holdings in the most fertile northern Indian plains even today, for which I don’t have to provide you with enough statistics, and it should be known to you already.

This was the background to the concern I am about to raise. So I questioned Dhananjay on his presidential speech which was uploaded  by ‘aisajnu’ on their Instagram account and posted a comment highlighting that how is a voice of two visibly disparate elements of Indian society, the feudal category of farmers which I have just shown above and the Dalit Landless Labourers?

aisajnu has now deleted my comment and blocked me from following them on their Instagram account.

Is this how the Left Panel Celebrates dissent on this campus?

Your insecurities are evident now. I am your nemesis, keep it in mind.

As I am writing this, JNUSU is about to go to polls on 22nd this month preceded by a presidential debate on the 20th.

JNU is an idea, as it is quite emphatically often repeated in Indian Progressive Circles. And it doesn’t stop at that. What comes next is the romanticisation of this idea of a university as an ideal for the entire India’s higher education as a model.

Even though nowhere it is talked about why should a university like JNU if it is to exist as a national idea be located only in the power centre of Indian nation state, New Delhi.

What then ails this idea? It is a matter of national concern these days that this idea of JNU is under attack through its student organisation ABVP in particular and BJP’s Narendra Modi Government in general. What is often cited as evidence of this attack is physical violence resorted to by ABVP students on Left Oriented Students. Although the left claims that the hindu right is tinkering with the epistemic structure of the Indian higher education in general and JNU in particular, their primary visual to be sent across India is that of physical violence perpetrated by the Hindu right on students who hail from progressive orientations as unlike the Hindu hardliners.

I would like to argue here that it is not the hindu right that ails JNU as staunchly as does and has been done by the Indian Left.

Systematic destruction of a university and it’s idea takes much more than physical violence. It’s in the realm of epistemic violence that ideas are destroyed. And what ails JNU as an idea is the very idea of JNU itself as fashioned by the Indian Left.


JNU founded in 1969 by the then Prime Minister of India was at the centre stage during prominent events India witnessed primarily the 1975 Emergency and the 1991 93 Babri Mandal era.


For much of its existence till the implementation of the Mandal Commission report JNU continued to be an elite club of upper caste students, most of them hailing directly from other elite undergraduate colleges like St Stephen’s, LSR Miranda etc.

Around the time of Mandal and Babri, India was going through a churning. The hold of congress was weakening, the BJP had begun its innings and Kanshiram had established a Bahujan imagination in the minds of the people.

The Congress was losing its ground in the political sphere at both central level and state level in many states.

At this juncture JNU proved to be of undue interest to the Indian Left as a bastion of intellectuals who held sway over whatever knowledge was being produced on and about the Indian populace. But this time it also has to take into account increasing assertion by Dalits in particular and the Bahujan struggle in general.

As a salvage and necessary collateral, JNU saw recruitment of many professors from bahujan background within the benevolent magnanimity of the Indian Left. Most of the professors recruited at that time were members of Left Student organisations at some point in their life in JNU.

This is reflected even today in the politics played by seemingly Bahujan organisations. Their form and substance is both inspired by and modelled on the Indian Left’s revolutionary ideals of Padhai and Ladai, which the Indian Left very subtly plants as a cry for praxis along with theory.

Such implants of revolutionary ideals in the minds of the young students are done without taking into consideration their material social reality. A large number of students from marginalised backgrounds who enter JNU even today are first generation learners whose parents are manual labourers or engaged in petty jobs with uncertainty and insecurity of income and no ancestral wealth.

In such a situation, these students fall victim to this love for revolutionary action being romanticised by the Indian Left. Even today you won’t find a single dalit student who has been actively associated with the Indian Left and has established themselves as an independent thinker, and by independent I mean being able to critique the ignominies of the Indian Left. One or Two exceptions cannot be denied but often they end up being appropriated and assimilated in the schema of Indian Left’s epistemic hegemony.

It is this epistemic hegemony of the Indian Left which is an eyesore for the Hindu Right and the Hindu Right is fighting tooth and nail about it.

The Indian Left has a serious challenge from the Writings of Ambedkar and Phule. I chose not to write Phule Ambedkarite tradition in academic sense as in academia it has already been co-opted by the Indian Left.

Writings of Ambedkar still remain Untouchable for academics trained in the Indian Left. In the name of adding Jai Bhim as a prefix to Laal Salam the Indian Left has already swayed over the rising assertion which could have come about from an intense reading of Ambedkar’s Literature. The academic sphere dominated by the Indian Left is so sanitised and an exclusive elite club that even the BJP gets a complex while attacking them, which can be seen in the diatribes of Modi, ‘Urban Naxals’, ‘Khan Market Gang’ etc

The danger to the Indian Left is from the literature of Ambedkar and Phule and in that tradition whatever is the lineage of untouchables and they are very much aware of it.

They now mask this danger by trying to organise the entire energies of Dalits in this imagined enemy the Fascist Hindu Right.

Much like the BJP  implants the fear and danger of a Muslim Other in the minds of the hindu populace, so does the Indian Left creates insecurity and fear among the progressive populace of an immediate danger of Fascist Hindu Right.

All the energies then are concentrated in countering that immediate danger and rest all issues concerning the nation are shown a door that will be opened post revolution, a revolution which never comes. Isn’t this the same tactic used by the Hindu Right to shift the matter of national concern to the backseat and focus on a fight for Hindu resurgence?

Both the Indian Left and the Hindu Right use the same tactics. The fear mongering done by the Indian Left is seemingly secular as opposed to a communal enemy and the fear mongering done by Hindu Right is seemingly communal as opposed to a secular enemy.

The BJP today hosts the most representative government in Indian History. And this year the Left Unity in JNUSU elections has fielded a Dalit candidate for the post of president.

The Indian Left often disparages those represented in the BJP from among untouchables and other backward classes as foot soldiers of Hindutva. It questions their representation without giving any semblance of agency to the individuals of these communities.

But when it comes to their own politics, the Indian Left claims that the representation they provide is substantive. The question remains to be answered by the untouchable and other backward classes population within the framework of Phule Ambedkarite tradition, with a very careful distance from Indian Academia.

“घीसू और माधव समाज के उस तबके से आते हैं जो सदियों से गरीबी और अभाव में जीने को मजबूर है। उनकी छाया भर से उच्चवर्णी समाज अपवित्र हो जाता है। आज इक्कीसवीं सदी में भी उनकाआर्थिक-सामाजिक-राजनीतिक भागीदारी व बुनियादी हक जैसे सरल सवाल पर वह बौखला उठता है। घीसू और माधव दमन व शोषण पर आधारित इसी घोर असंवेदनशील सामाजिक व्यवस्था की उपज हैं जिसने उनकी सारी मानवीय संवेदनाओं को पत्थर कर डाला है”

तो यह पंक्तियां कोई तो मित्र रंजन की है। जो इन्होंने आपने ब्लॉग जनपथ पर लिखे एक लेख में लिखी हैं! इनकी जाती क्या है मुझे ज्ञात नहीं है लेकिन भाषा से ये सवर्ण ही नजर आ रहे हैं.

तो मैं आपको बता दूं यहां मित्र रंजन सामंत के मुंशी प्रेमचन्द की कहानी ‘कफन’  का जिक्र कर रहे हैं. इस कहानी में संक्षिप्त में बताऊं तो घीसू और माधव बाप बेटे हैं और वह दोनों माधव की बीवी बुधिया को प्रसव पीड़ा में अकेले छोड़ देते हैं जिससे वो मर जाती है. 

यहां मित्र रंजन कह रहे हैं की दमनकारी सामाजिक संरचना में रहकर दलितों की मनोस्थिति का यह हाल हुआ है कि वह अपने बीवियों को प्रसव में मरने को छोड़ दे रहे हैं. 

ये कितनी घृणित सोच है यह आपको स्वयं मालूम पड़नी चाहिए. माना की दलित समाज एक दमनकारी व्यवस्था से जूझता रहा है लेकिन क्या इसका यह अर्थ है की हमारे अंदर मानवीय गरिमा ही नही बची है? क्या हम दलित इतने निर्मम हो गए हैं की अपनी औरतों को जानबूझ कर ऐसे मरने के लिए छोड़ दे रहे हैं?

अधिकांश बिकाऊ लोग और सवर्ण तुष्टिकरण के लोभी दलित लोगों को इसमें प्रेमचंद का मानवीय चेहरा नजर आ रहा है की वो दलितों का दर्द समझ रहे हैं और उसे बयान कर रहे हैं.

मेरा सवाल यह है की क्या जातीय सरंचना में सिर्फ दलित की ही मनोस्थिति प्रभावित होती है? दलित ही मानसिक रोगी बनता है? दलित ही अपंग बनता है? क्या वह सवर्ण जो रोज इतनी जुल्म करते है और मानव को मानव नहीं मानते उनके मनोस्थिती बदतर नहीं होती?

यहां तो सीधे तौर पर सामंत के मुंशी ने और मित्र रंजन ने दलितों को मानसिक रोगी ही घोषित कर दिया है!

जबकि दलित हमेशा संघर्षरत रहा है, इतनी यातनाएं झेलने के बाद भी उसका जीवन सहनशीलता की परम पराकाष्ठा है और सामंत का मुंशी ये साबित करने पे तुला है की दलित जातीय सरंचना में इतना बौरा गया है की वह अपनी औरतों को मरता हुआ छोड़ शराब के नशे में धुत रहता है!

कपोल कल्पना में सामंत के मुंशी ने दलित को इतना निर्मम व मानवीय संवेदना से मुक्त दिखा दिया लेकिन यथार्थ तो यही है की दलित अपनी बीवी को प्रसव पीड़ा में छोड़ उसकी हत्या नहीं करता, दलित दशरथ मांझी है जो अपनी बीवी के लिए पहाड़ तक में रास्ता बना देता है।

इन महानुभावों से कोई पूछे की द्विजों ने तो अपनी औरतें जिंदा जलाई हैं, उनकी मनोस्थिती कैसी है इस पर क्या कहने है उनके?

ठाकुर नामवर सिंह को यह पता होना चाहिए, क्योंकि वो खुद को अंबेडकर से प्रभावित भी मानते है की अंबेडकर ने ज्ञान समझी जाने वाली मनुस्मृति का न सिर्फ एक उम्दा ज्ञान से जवाब दिया था बल्कि मनुस्मृति को जला के राख भी किया था!

तो ठाकुर हमे बामन निराला की पंक्ति “आराधन का दृढ़ आराधन से दो उत्तर” हम दलितों को न सिखाएं!

वैसे भी द्विज साहित्य साहित्य हो सकता है एक बार को, उसको ज्ञान मानने की भूल हम दलित कभी न कियें है और न करेंगे!

“ज्ञान के क्षेत्र में ज्ञान से लड़ाई होती है। लाठी, डंडे, तलवार, बंदूक से नहीं होती है।”

ये बोल हैं ठाकुर नामवर सिंह के जहां वो दलित साहित्यकारों द्वारा प्रेमचन्द के criticism करने पर उनको संबोधित कर रहे हैं!

ठाकुर से पूछा जाना चाहिए की दलित साहित्यकारों ने कोंसे लाठी डंडे चला दिए? कौनसी तलवार बंदूक चला दी?

~दलित अच्छी कहानियाँ लिखकर के दिखायें। क्योंकि ‘आराधन का दृढ़ आराधन से दो उत्तर’।~

ये बोल हैं ठाकुर नामवर सिंह के!

पहली बात तो इन जैसे साहित्यकारों से यह पूछा जाए की सिर्फ इसलिए की प्रेमचंद ने दलितों पर कहानियां लिख दी हैं, तो दलित भी खुद पर कहानियां लिख कर सवर्णों को क्यों दिखाए?

हमने तो नहीं कहा सामंत के मुंशी से की तू हमारे ऊपर कहानी लिख!

क्या दुःखी चमार, सिलियान चमारी, मुन्नू मेहतर से प्रेमचंद ने कंसेंट लिया की मैं तुम्हारी कहानी बयां कर सकूं?

तो ठाकुर और बामनों को अब स्वांग रचना बंद कर देना चाहिए!

ऐसे ऐसे लोगों को साहित्यकार माना जा रहा जो प्रेमचंद को सामंत का मुंशी कहने पर यह कहते है, “प्रेमचंद तो कायदे से कहिये कि मुंशी तो थे लेकिन वे हंस के संपादक थे। जो तमाम लोग कलम चलाने वाले थे हल तो उन्होंने न चलाया न चलवाया “

मतलब ऐसे बेवकूफ आदमी को साहित्यकार माना जा रहा है जिसको शब्दों की समझ तक नहीं है!

इनकी माने तो किस व्यक्ति ने यदि कभी हल न चलाया और न चलवाया तो वह सामंत केसे हो गया?

 तुझ बैल की पूंछ पकडूं की सींग? किधर से पकडू तेरी मूर्खता!

सवाल यह है की जब सामंत का मुंशी प्रेमचंद गर्त में जा चुका है। इसकी सारी मटियामेट की जा चुकी है डॉ धरमवीर द्वारा तो फिर चुनिंदा दलित लेखक व लेखिकाएं प्रेमचंद के बचाव में क्यों उतार आए हैं?

सवर्ण तुष्टिकरण के लिए ये चुनिंदा दलित किसी भी हद तक गिर सकते हैं। आए दिन दलित समाज के नौजवान अंतर जातीय विवाह के चक्कर में आकर अपना जीवन बर्बाद और कई बार तो जीवन से हाथ भी धो बैठ रहे हैं लेकिन फिर भी ये चुनिंदा दलित इस बात पर आमादा हैं कि अंतर जातीय विवाह से जाती टूट जाती है। 

संदर्भ:

1.https://junputh.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/%E0%A4%A1%E0%A5%89-%E0%A4%A7%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B5%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%B0-%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0-%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%A8-%E0%A4%95/

2.https://www.shabdankan.com/2017/03/premchand-remembrance-lecture-by-prof-namwar-singh.html?m=1

Parameswaran Iyer has made a name for himself as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handpicked choice to lead the Swachh Bharat Mission which led to India becoming Open Defecation Free (ODF).

He was the exclusive choice of Our Prime Minister to lead the Swachh Bharat Mission under the Government of India’s newly launched Lateral Entry scheme to the higher echelons of Indian Administrative Services.

Iyer was working with the World Bank Group before joining as Secretary of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in 2016. His brief stint of four years has an accolade to his name, when India achieved the goal of becoming ODF free.

He resigned in 2020 and again rejoined the World Bank Group.

Recently he has published his autobiography titled “Method in Madness: Insights from My Career as an Insider Outsider Insider” which covers his life as an insider-outsider-insider in his career spanning over 40 years.

He writes in great detail about his career.

One of the chapters in his autobiography he has dedicated to BSP Supremo Behen Kumari Maywati titled “All it takes is one Woman”.

Iyer writes in detail about a World Bank funded water supply and sanitation project in the (Undivided) UP Hills and Bundelkhand region, which were the most water scarce regions of the State.

In the Chapter devoted to Behenji, he writes how as a formal process his team was supposed to take formal approval from the State Cabinet to approve the 60 million USD project loan from the World Bank. At that time (1996), Behenji was Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Iyer was supposed to present the Project in front of her in a meeting.


He writes, “At that time, in 1996, Ms Maywati was the CM of UP and, from what little I knew of her working, ran the State and her Cabinet in a firm manner. I was, therefore, a little apprehensive when my boss, Indrani Sen, suggested that I, the relatively junior Project Director, make the project proposal presentation to the cabinet chaired by the CM. There was good reason to be nervous, since we were proposing to accept a key condition of the world bank: sharing of the capital cost of the water supply schemes by the Swajal Village communities, as well as taking full responsibility for the operation and maintenance.”

Iyer mentions how in the Cabinet meeting there were only two women, one Ms Mayawati, the CM and the other his boss Indrani Sen. Almost everyone in the meeting was apprehensive of the project and even warned Ms Maywati that they might lose the next election if the project is approved.

Iyer writes ” The CM had said nothing until now but after the last Minister’s rejection of the cost recovery principle, she finally spoke. To my utter surprise, she said, ‘None of you understand the plight of women in our villages. They spend their whole life fetching water from long distances, while the men waste all the family’s money on liquor and gambling. A small contribution by the community to the cost of the scheme is fine since piped water to the village will significantly reduce the drudgery of the Women and girls. Project approved.’ I was very relieved and made a mental note of how the CM had stuck to her instincts and, disregarding the potential political fallout, taken a major policy decision to introduce and element of cost recovery in the rural water supply sector. This was the first instance in the country of cost sharing by the user community for a large-scale rural water supply and sanitation project, and it would have a major cascading effect in times to come. The Swajal project loan was signed with the World Bank in the middle of 1996.”

The Planning Commission, GOI (now NITI Aayog), has named the Swajal Project as one of the successful governance initiatives from Indian States.

“Allyship is a proactive, ongoing, and incredibly difficult practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person of privilege works in solidarity and partnership with a marginalized group of people to help take down the systems that challenge that group’s basic rights, equal access, and ability to thrive in our society.”¹

The idea of allyship is a very modern phenomenon and has its ideation from the Black struggle against the racial oppression by the whites. Lately, this concept in a hyper globalised world has been imported in the Indian discourse against Caste Oppression.

This has recently been witnessed in the debates and discussion around the movie, Jai Bhim, which was released on Amazon Prime. The movie is based on a real incident of police brutality in Tamilnadu in which tribal persons were murdered in judicial custody. Then, a Marxist Human rights Lawyer takes up the case of the murdered persons on behalf of the wife of one of the victims. The movie ends with the Lawyer being able to win the case fought for the lady and the accused policemen and others complicit in the crime are served a legal sentence by the Supreme Court.

Almost all the reviews of this movie that have been featured in the Indian mainstream media and even in alternative media have one thing glaringly common and that is the praise of the “good hearted savarna” who was indoctrinated and influenced by the ideas of Marx and Ambedkar and had in him the spirit of fighting for the cause of the marginalised, for whom no one stands.

This is indeed a commendable act of love and magnanimity that should be praised but there is something missing here which no one has bothered to dig deep into.

If we talk in the binary of the Oppressor and the Oppressed, in Indian society, the Untouchables and Tribals have been systematically oppressed by the Savarnas. The oppressed and the Oppressor stand in contradistinction to each other.

What happens when such exceptional stories of “good hearted savarna” start trending and the idea of allyship gains prominence? Of Course there is no doubt that there are good hearted Savarnas, but what is the need to emphasise on this fact and unnecessarily keep on harping about it?

If we dig deep into the interpersonal relations between the oppressed and the oppressor, there is hierarchy involved and the relation is highly unequal.

“Social, cultural, and economic structures impact the micro-level behavior of individuals, and mutually, individuals’ behavior affects social structures, for example through sustaining oppression (Ratner, 1994; Makki Alamdari & Bishop, 2020). Social oppression has effects on individuals in terms of perception, cognition, morals, emotions, aesthetics, and reasoning. These psychological effects are value-based. That is, the effects are not disorders such as schizophrenia or low educational performance (Ratner, 2011). Ratner (2011) points out to examples of the value-based psychological effects such as believing superficial and biased news, accepting punitive and fundamentalist religious thoughts, conforming to power and theological dogma, obeying the superordinate at work, endorsing the interests of the elite, becoming obsequious, irrationality, lacking critical thought, working with limited capacity, sensational and crude aesthetic taste, and enjoying vicious entertainments. Further, the oppression causes neglect of individuals’ aptitudes and limits people’s power and abilities (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1972; Adorno, 1978; Ratner, 2011). Social structures such as oppression affects individuals’ behavior and mind through a variety of processes including social learning, internalization, labeling, defense mechanisms, and fear of being judged (Akers, 2011; Driskell & Salas, 2013; Lakey & Lakey, 1998; Muenster & Lotto, 2013; Smith, Mackie & Claypool, 2014; Thoits, 2013).

As Akers (2011) argues, social learning theory can explain the interrelated connections among cognition, environment, and behavior. The theory developed by Bandura in 1963
demonstrates that individuals learn behaviors through cognitive processes and in social context. Observation of behaviors or behaviors’ consequences provides patterns for action. Rewards, punishments, and consequences reinforce the behavior (Akers, 2011). In this case, when people in the oppressive society observe that the oppressors get benefits from oppression, the people learn and are encouraged to join the oppressors and repeating their behaviors to get the benefits. Obeying and endorsing superordinate, loyalty to superior, and obsequious behaviors (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1972; Ratner, 2011) might be the results of the social learning. ” ²

From the above articulation by Sara Makki Alamdari it is clear the behaviour of the oppressed in general is regulated to an extent by the unequal power relations of which he is a part in the larger society. His cognition, perception, emotions makes him obey the superordinates, endorse the interest of the elites and become obsequious to the extent of being highly irrational.

In short the oppressed psychology is influenced to a great extent by the oppression he is facing and this is a direct result of the injustice meted out to him by the society. When one is accustomed to so much pain, disabilities and trauma historically it is natural for him to seek moments of love, laughter and happiness and forget the collective wrath meted out in him the oppressor. In so much as he is greatly influenced by even small gestures of kindness and acts of love shown by the Oppressor, even though that kindness and love is something he deserves being a human. The Oppressor is not doing any favour on him through such gestures and acts but the fallen man ends up forgiving the Oppressor community as a whole by observing the kind actions of a few individuals from among the Oppressors.

This makes him loyal to those few good Oppressors and as the interpersonal relations between him and the Oppressor are highly unequal and power laden, it is often the oppressed who ends up internalising the Oppression meted out on him. He forgets that his Oppression is systemic and a few individuals behaving otherwise against him is not akin to the collective psyche of the Oppressor changing in his favour.

1.https://nvcguides.libguides.com/c.php?g=1132585&p=8266498

2. Makki Alamdari, S. (2020). Psychology of the oppressed: Viewpoints. IUPUI ScholarWorks.

Continue reading “On Allyship: How it dilutes the loyalty of the Oppressed to the oppressed and shifts it towards the Oppressor”

There can be no change in the status quo under the leadership of universities. A Universitiy is a universal solvent of dissent, differences of opinions, resistance and struggle from the below.

It is a universal sink. Everything that becomes a part of the university discourse is bound to go down that sink and flushed into the drain, dissipating into free energy which is of no use.

Marek Kwiek, a professor at Poznan University of Poland writes that “The upper echelons of highly productive academics (the upper 10 percent of academics who are ranked highest in terms of their publishing performance in 11 European countries) provide, on average, almost half of all academic knowledge production.”

This points to the fact that there is a monopoly on knowledge production of certain academics from certain specific Universities. Universities act as middlemen of Knowledge Production and there are limitations to bypass the Universities, if one is to produce knowledge that is widely recognised and legitimised.

Historically it has been seen that, knowledge production when it was not institutionalised or centralised, there were lesser chances of human societies being socially stratified or unequal. Knowledge was being produced by everyone and it was an evolutionary necessity. It’s highly probable that fire was discovered individually by different groups of Homo Sapiens living in geographically different locations throughout the world. And as such civilization was not born yet.

As civilization was born, the number of humans living in proximity increased considerably, cities emerged and the human population soared considerably with the advances in innovation like use of fire, agriculture, metallurgy etc. With this the social cohesion increased and with this increased the urge in certain sections of humans to control the resources which are scarce and difficult to obtain and sustain. 

The animosity among different sections to have ownership over the resources must have been a direct result of living in such  proximity as was made possible with the rise of cities, towns and industrial centres.

This was probably the beginning of the idea of private ownership of resources in human societies.  

Now, it was known to them that in order to rule the material realm it was imperative to rule in the realm of ideas. Thus the shift in human involvement from material production to production of ideas, which were de-linked from any material manifestations. This marked the first distinction between material knowledge that was practical and knowledge of ideas which was theoretical and abstract. 

It was now easier to control the means of production and this control and ownership of means of production by the ruling class was justified and legitimised through control over the production of knowledge and ideas.

Although ideas are not anyone’s prerogative, which ideas gain legitimacy and which don’t is decided by the ruling class. So it was important for the ruling class to control the knowledge production to sustain its hegemony.

A Classic example of this is the system of castes which was developed by Brahmins of the Indian subcontinent. They justified their control over means of production through religious scriptures, a realm of ideas.

Nobody but the Brahmins were the sole proprietors of legitimised knowledge and there were severe restrictions on the masses to have access to this legitimised form of knowledge of ideas.

What perpetuates the hegemony of the ruling class is not concerned with whether the knowledge produced is faulty or not but the fact that it is legitimized and credentialed.

An example here could make it more interesting and clear. Brahmins have had control over knowledge production, and we can say it could have been largely faulty too but what made them become the ruling class is not the fact they produced faulty knowledge but they were the sole proprietors of legitimised knowledge.

The idea of universal education is a very recent phenomenon. Historically there has never been a universal education seen in any society. The ruling class has always controlled the centres of knowledge production and Centres of excellence where legitimised knowledge is imparted and the access to these centres was limited and exclusive.

Centres of excellence are in fact centres of power. Excellence is decentralised and needs no central authority to flourish. The existence of Centres of Excellence is a ruling class exigency to contain knowledge production within the niche of ruling ideas.

If knowledge production is not centralised, then it becomes very difficult for the ruling class to hold sway over public opinions and create public opinions that are in consonance with the Status Quo. 

A centralised institution of excellence filters the thoughts of individuals and makes their thoughts align with the thoughts and opinions which the ruling class wants in order to maintain the hegemony over the servile class.

Universities are such centralised institutions that produce and impart legitimised and credentialed knowledge. 

And thus act as middlemen of the legitimised knowledge production and dissemination.

No knowledge can be made legitimate and imparted by  bypassing the Universities. They act as brokers of legitimised knowledge production and even dissemination.

To break this monopoly, we either need to have complete decentralisation of both the production of legitimised knowledge and it’s dissemination or achieve universal education.  Only then we can hope that the ideas coming from the bottom rungs of society will gain legitimacy and the ruling ideas will disintegrate. The legitimacy of control of means of production by the ruling class will be questioned more and more and the men sitting on the pinnacle of the palace will be brought down. Until then universities will keep acting as vehicles which perpetuate ruling class hegemony and even justify that.