Happy Indian Independence day, everyone!
In the comments of some recent posts at Sepia Mutiny, some readers have questioned why India needs “secularism,” and even just what secularism means in India. Similar questions were also raised in response to Abhi’s “jingoism in the blogsophere” post from a few weeks ago. Since I have researched the issue of secularism as part of my academic work, I thought it might be interesting to look at the Indian and American approaches to secularism in comparison as a thought-exercise. Instead of focusing on recent issues such as the train bombings in Mumbai last month, or almost-current events like the Gujarat riots of 2002, I wanted to back up a little and take a brief look at the texts of the respective Constitutions themselves. I think this comparative exercise might shed some insight on the value and importance of secularism in both countries. Let’s start with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, implemented in 1791:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Mainly because it refers to so many different things, this has become one of the most hotly debated sentences in the English language. The first phrase guarantees the “free exercise” of religion, and it’s coupled with a statement that the U.S. government is forbidden to associate with an “Established” church.
The First Amendment was a brilliant solution to the kinds of sectarian wars that had been so damaging in Europe in the early modern era, and it also addressed the concerns of many religious sects that had fled to America from Europe to escape persecution by their governments. The clause helped to bring the country together at the moment of its founding, and it’s worked fairly well for more than two hundred years since. Admittedly, the rule wasn’t always applied as strongly as it should have been (many individual states had de facto established churches for many years), and it wasn’t really until the 1940s that smaller, more esoteric sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses were guaranteed the right to religious expression that the mainstream had earlier considered an annoyance. (The Jehovah’s Witnesses wanted the right to proselytize door-to-door as part of the free exercise of their faith; see Cantwell v. Connecticut.)
But it’s also important to note that the U.S. courts made a number of decisions against religious community rights, starting as early as the Civil War era, when the Supreme Court ruled against the Mormons on the matter of Polygamy (see Reynolds vs. United States). At the time the Mormons were extremely unhappy that what they saw as a fundamental aspect of their religious tradition was being declared illegal. But they learned to live with it, and today the community thrives in a modified form.
We can think about this history in light of India, and come to two loose conclusions. Admittedly, the histories of religion and the law in India and the U.S. are different, so there’s a limit to how far you can take this. Nevertheless:
1) Allowing the majority religious community to “establish” itself is a bad idea even if some people think that the majority religious tradition is historically a tolerant, inclusive one. Limits ought to be placed on the role of religion in government — pretty strict ones — for the benefit of the country as a whole. If the government didn’t make an effort to protect the rights of India’s many religious minorities at the time of its founding, the country would never have come together to begin with. If it doesn’t continue to do so now, it won’t stay together.
2) Following the example of the Mormons, minority religious practices that are disrespectful of human rights (especially women’s rights) can be banned by the state. That means that the state has the authority to ban polygamy in Islam (still technically legal in India), as well as “Triple Talaq.” In the short run, some Indian Muslims would be unhappy about these changes, but in a modern nation-state the government has the authority to decide on fundamental rights for all its citizens. (Of course, given current political circumstances, changing this law is an impossibility — even the NDA government didn’t try it during the years it was in power. Also, many people would argue that the problem in India is that the existing laws aren’t enforced adequately — witness female foeticide, which continues though sex-selecting ultrasounds are banned.)
The Indian Constitution is longer and more complex than America’s (there is a decent amount of information at Wikipedia, for those who are unfamiliar with it). The statements concerning secularism are much longer than in the U.S. version, and while they are more specific (the U.S. First Amendment is maddeningly general), their specificity has not made them any less controversial. Moreover, Indian Parliaments have been prone to make many minor and major Revisions and Amendments over the years. In 1976, the language of the Preamble itself was changed — and the words “socialist” and “secular” were inserted, so that the opening sentence now reads: “WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens…” Were these insertions really necessary? Some of the changes made over the years detract from the power of the Constitution as a whole.
At any rate, let’s look more closely at at least one of the provisions concerning secularism in the Constitution, Article 15:
15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.—(1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
(2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to—
(a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or
(b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.
(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children.
(4) Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
This is just the first of several clauses dealing with “religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth” etc. in the Indian Constitution, and it’s immediately apparent that the intent and structure of the Indian text is quite different from the American version. In India, the Constitution Assembly felt obliged not just to establish general laws, but to make specific statements regarding actual religious practices and communities. Untouchability was banned (Article 17); discrimination over access to water was banned (above); discrimination in public places such as hotels and restaurants was banned.
From the beginning, then, the Indian government took on the role of reforming religion in the pursuit of social justice and equality. Nehru, Ambedkar, and other progressives understood traditional religious practices and values (from all of India’s religious communities) to be the major impediment to the kinds of modernizing, integrating social reforms they wanted, and the Constitution reflects that focus.
They were not bothered by the American idea of the “separation of church and state.” In India’s case, religion is so constantly present in everyday life, and so powerful in the social order, that the concept doesn’t really make sense. The state has to intervene in religious matters, to guarantee, for instance, that all castes of Hindus have the right to enter temples. The Indian Constitution is an activist, reformist constitution. It is also incremental — some of the changes desired would not have been accepted by most Indians in 1948. (The Hindu Marriage Act, which made major reforms on issues such as dowry, child marriage, and polygamy affecting the Hindu community, was implemented in 1955.)
What couldn’t be included under “Fundamental Rights” for practical reasons was relegated to a special section of the Constitution indicating “Directive Principles of State Policy” (Part IV). These are essentially suggestions for future legislators — it would be great if you could go in this direction, that’s really what we’d like to do, but can’t. One of the most famous of these directive Articles is Article 44: “44. Uniform civil code for the citizens.—The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.” Sixty years have passed, and nothing much has happened regarding civil codes. Directive Princples like Article 44 solve the question of the Constitutional Assembly’s “intent” that dogs so many legal debates in the U.S., but otherwise they don’t seem to matter much.
The activist approach of the Indian Consitution has helped to modernize India in many ways quite quickly. But it also has some unresolved flaws. One is the Civil Code issue I already mentioned. The other issue is caste reservations, which are allowed by the Constitution in Article 15:
(4) Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
It’s worth noting that while the Constitution bans untouchability, it neither formally nor “directively” bans the idea of caste-based social relations. Defenders of reservations in employment and education argue that any society in which an institution like caste exists is going to be an institution where discrimination by caste exists. Opponents argue, first, that the reservations “Schedules” which determine proportional quotas aren’t based on current demographic realities (as I understand it, caste is not indicated in the Indian census). Second, the opponents of reservations say that some of the communities included, specifically on the OBC lists, are no more “Backward” than any other, non-Scheduled group. And third, they argue that the continued growth of this system actually reinforces social division by caste; those divisions might, with the modernization of social life in Indian cities, have withered away.
Though the hot debate we saw earlier in the year has died down somewhat this summer, I think that the reservations issue is going to be one of the most divisive ones India has to deal with going forward. I personally opposed the latest expansion of the OBC quotas that were introduced by the UPA government this spring, but separate from that issue is the general issue of what to do with the caste-based reservations system as a whole. And there I don’t have an obvious answer, though I do think this might actually be a bigger issue than Hindu-Muslim relations in the long term, as it encompasses nearly every Indian citizen.
Amba, the Greeks’ intellectual greatness lay in the exercise of reason (and arguably, in poetry), not in their polytheism. While their mythology is colourful, and continues to have literary value, nobody’s ever taken it seriously as religion (including a very large number of Greeks themselves – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle among them). So if anything, the Greeks prove that simple polytheism is an intellectual dead end.
If you have the time and inclination, Mr. Shiva, please look up Vaaman Shivram Apte’s SaMskrut-HiNdi Kosh published by Motilal Banarasidas Publishers. This will certainly prove to be an eye-opener provided one doesn’t wish to remain in creative insomnia perpetually.
I think this is one of the more important aspects that the fathers/mothers of the constitution missed. I wish they had banned caste alongwith untouchability. I understand it might have been difficult then but it could have been included in the Directive Principles at least. This is also a mystery because Ambedkar wanted the “Annihilation of the castes” all along but yet didn’t think of putting something like this in the constitution.
Very nice post though.
Dear Manju,
You are raising important questions in post #94.
There is no question of degree here. Either an account can be shown to depend on the theological assumptions of a particular religion, or it cannot. In the case of the current social sciences and secularism in particular, the first is the case. In the case of the natural sciences and the theories of Newton, Einstein, etc. the second is the case.
In the same way as English has been used to build theories in the natural sciences, it can be used to do so in the social sciences.
Sincerely,
Jakob
Dharma Queen It has become fashionable among certain people to degrade their own religion in the name of secularism. If you dont respect your religion, nobody else will. As for understanding ataman and bramhan it apparently is not completely understood by you and probably many of us. Below is a very informative video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwFTOj6C0Qw&search=sanskrit
Jakob,
The framework of theology is used by quite a few atheist/agnostic scientists or thinkers turned philosophers. I am reading a work by a very well known biologist who while claiming to be atheist is simply applying the same logical principle of an orderly universe accesible to rationalism and limited empirical investigation to reductionise the material universe.
It is a bit difficult to accept such umbrella categorisations as the rural Hindus and the poorer Indian and the belief that gets reflected in the way they handle themselves… I do not know which India – rural or urban – you are talking about. As someone who is a compulsive wanderer, I travel all the time and I am afraid the kind of rural Hindu utopia that you so enthusiastically wish to imagine does not exist on ground. The body of people vaguely constituted as Hindus is too varied and too inwardly split – even at the small village level – to be spoken about the way you so uncritically seem to do. Had that not been the case, the modern, democratic and avowedly secular Indian state wouldn’t need to write the kind of Constitution it did. We still live by the smrutis of Mr Manu
It is possible to cite 100s of such shlokas from ManuÂ’s and other smruti where the Shudras and women get repeatedly humiliated but there are far too many here who would be annoyed by a non-practising Hindu’s irrepressible desire to cut and paste. So till then we can take solace in how zealously competitive we are in our written code of conduct with the equally, especially with regard to women, repressive Islamic sharia. The Constitution has addressed many of these issues not merely in the light of how the West has developed its Christianity-driven(?) idea of secularism. The people propogating this myth range from the Sanghis to the likes of soft-secularists such as Rajiv Bhargava and here on the forum Divya. Little point is served by walking into this Sanghi trap. The debate concerning secularism goes back to the beginning of the 2nd millenium. Scholarship that does not look at this intense concern with the syncretic view that pre-dates the effective influence of Christianity in India is severely handicapped and loses relevance beyond a point. Kabir, Nanak, Shah Hussain, Bulle Shah, Ghulam Farid were creatively engaging with this issue much before the advent of the colonial rulers.
Looks like all your compulsive wandering is imaginary.
easy does it Panini; you got your Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V mixed up.
The neo-Shiva performs its taNDava like your old and obese NaNdi in a library. Such endearing disdain for scholarship! The neologism for such a one as it is
which, if you know your SaMskrit which seems highly unlikely, is a saNdhi of the deadly combination of ignorance laced with arrogance.
Panini,
So this was a sample of your
scholarship? Can’t wait to get started on your ignorance.LOL I knew it was a matter of time before parboiled poovathi brought out the Hindu-baiting Marxist fangs 🙂 So predictable. Parboiled needs to put away his garbled graduate seminar notes. Quoting Manu to show how evil Hindus are is characteristic of Orientalism. Manu represents a particlular brahmanic viewpoint, but to suggest it was enforced everywhere is nonsensical. You wlll have to start by explaining why so many of the royal dynasties in India are SUDRA, including the Mauryas.
And ahem, there was an interlude of 1000 years where the kings of India were Muslim, which I presume had an impact on the social order, but thats of no interest to a Marixst 🙂
Why just the Mauryas, even the great (?) Sikh Empire in the 19th century – the last one of the Indian royalties – cobbled together by the Jats was primarily a shudra/OBC arrangement. But if you have known your history right, which you seem not to do, you would probably refrain from embellishing your statement with “so many royal dynasties”. However, why should even such stray instances of the marginalised rising to power, Mr/Ms Risible, surprise you? They are rising again and this time decisively. So there is something for you to get extremely worried. Immigration desks to the west offer some solace to the suvarna Hindus, at least for now. And why should the dynasties professing the Islamic faith be interested in reforming the Hindu society defies logic. If you really wish to understand the complexity of how a large section of this so-called egalitarian society addressed their miserably fettered lives, you should look at the issue of conversion – not the Mehmood Ghazanvi kind, for God’s sake – in the 12th century India under the influence of the Sufis beginning with Gharib Nawaaz Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti as well as subsequent searing critiques by both Kabir and Nanak.
You have probably heard of the case pending in the Supreme Court of India about the non-brahmins’ – a euphemism for the Shudras – right to conduct prayers in Hindu temples. You have heard of the last week’s castist slur involving India’s finest soccer star Vijayan – a Shudra – in Kochi (Kerala). You have heard of how the shudras and the obcs, especially the former, are routinely humiliated and often slaughtered in Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP and how out of caste marriages turn fatal for those who dare. If not, you need to look around. Moreover, there are sub-caste hierarchies even amongst the Shudras. The Sikh religion which claims to be reformed view of the newly emergent humankind in the light of the Sufi-bhakti surge, did not allow the Shudras to enter the precints of the Golden Temple till as late as the last quarter of the 19th century.
As I had observed in one of my previous mails, the problem with at least a part of western paedagogy and theory is to keep on creating pockets of complexity within the binaries. It suits their purpose to straitjacket the ‘other’s this way.
As for Orientalism, I don’t know which one you are actually referring to – the 19th century Anglo-saxon Orientalism – or the eufearia (combo of euphoria+fear) of it as reflected amongst the Brahmos or the Anglo-Vaidics under the heady influence of Dayanand Saraswati or the Anglo-Arabics under the equally strong influence of Sir Sayyed Ahmad or the Singh Sabhaites under the inglorious aegis of Hony Magistrate Sir Arur Singh and Sir Sundar Singh Majithia both of whom had gone to the extent of honouring Gen Dyer – the butcher of Jallianwala – from the precints of the Golden Temple after the massacre.
Why just the Mauryas, even the great (?) Sikh Empire in the 19th century – the last one of the Indian royalties – cobbled together by the Jats was primarily a shudra/OBC arrangement. But if you have known your history right, which you seem not to do, you would probably refrain from embellishing your statement with “so many royal dynasties”.
Panini, are you absolutely out of your mind? Vijayanagar, the Marathas, the Cholas? Do you think they were opressive brahmanas? 🙂 You appear to have no knowlege of Indian history!
If you really wish to understand the complexity of how a large section of this so-called egalitarian society addressed their miserably fettered lives, you should look at the issue of conversion – not the Mehmood Ghazanvi kind, for God’s sake – in the 12th century India under the influence of the Sufis beginning with Gharib Nawaaz Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti as well as subsequent searing critiques by both Kabir and Nanak.
You are conveniently forgetting all of the Hindu contributions, which is par for the course for Marxists. (Though much respect to Nanak and Kabir.) The Alwars, including Tiruppan Alwar the untouchable Vaishnava, the Nayanmars who went about the Tamil countryside flailing the caste system and brahmanas. The entire Maharashtra Bhakti movement, which included potters and weavers, including Chokamela and the very great poet Tukaram, who decisively interrogated Brahmins. You mentioned the Granth Sahib as a signal of secularism in a previous post but did you know that 21 years before the Granth Sahib, scholars have found a very similar document tentaively known as the Fatehpur manuscript which is very similar and predominantly contains the poetry of Surdas but includes, for example the weaver Ravidas, widely revered throughout North India?
Upon this very dynamic foundation, you the Marxist quote the 1800 year old Manu as the rationale for all of the discrimination in India. Thats called Orientalism. Poverty, political conflict, natural resource wars, including water well wars which routinely take place between OBCs and Dalits, must all have a Hindu basis. And we shall see how Commies stay in power 🙂 The people rising decisively indeed.
You have heard of how the shudras and the obcs, especially the former, are routinely humiliated and often slaughtered in Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP and how out of caste marriages turn fatal for those who dare.
I didn’t catch this. You are very disingenous. I know you know that the OBCs are Sudras and that the scheduled castes are the ones heavily discriminated against (they call themselves Dalits). Manu is railing at OBCs, who are very inconveniently for the Marxist historian in power in the states throughout India at the moment; even a large section of the Hindutvan vote comes from the ‘oppressed’ OBCs. Manu is probably turning over in his grave. 🙂
I would not have been able to imagine how severely one could dent some people’s risibility if only by sounding a bit like an out of fashion leftie. Well, I cannot help being what I am although I regret very much cutting into their irrepressible recrudescence of mirth, the very organic reason of their very existence.
If you go down the parks of Amritsar and by inference the whole of North India, you would find a miniaturized view of the risibile clans of Sanghis virtually colonising these overcrowded spaces where hapless people go in search of early morning jogs and walks of oxygenated refreshment.
You have seen a bit of this in Munnabhai MBBS but let me repeat.
Every now and then they raise a falsely thunderous groan of laughter – much like their vaunted patriotism/ nationalism and their avowed prevarications on the badly imagined role of their grandfathers and granduncles in the struggle for India’s freedom – announcing to the world that gasbags of the saffronised variety are having a feast and hastening the ungainly rise of many a one who sit on their haunches outside these gardens of delight in their early morning open toiletteries. People are born with distinct destinies – both inside and outside these gardens of delight… Those who occupy and others who sing:
You tread the territory-masquerade of the Sanghis at your own risk. At worst you may die of asphyxia. Their spindly legs hanging out of their outsized khaki knickers, their tummies shining forth through their pre-exercise sweat – amazing how some people can sweat without doing anything – before they get into their wonted risible temper, their listless-canes held aloft in a mock-martial swagger (how Charlie Chaplin would have loved it!) looking for an unsuspecting puppy to be surprised in the middle of its innocent sleep, their hands in an unbelieveable clenched fist once in an accidental while knocking at their chests prouding at times the expected bout of a hollow cough.
Poovathi,
You prove that your knowledge of the great sudra lineages is indeed parboiled, while maintaining that an utterance from this or that sufi constitutes the building blocks of Indian secularism (maybe? ;), while willfully and disingenously ignoring lower caste bhakti movements, that to this day constitute the backbone of Bhakti revivalism throughout North India. And why just Punjab? In Mao Mao Naxal infested Chattisgarh, check out the number of new temples on the approach to the Raipur railway station. Communists will not search beyond their discredited grand narratives, which, in Europe, led to the gulags and sixty million dead.
Indian communists are a breed apart, unlike western communists, who paraded out new shibboleths like the New Left when their dreams were crushed. They will never look to political psychology, neurological substrates or even the post-colonial “response to modernity” jargon for clues to this revival. They will blame the manipulative sanghis.
Speaking of casteism, do you know what Ambedkar’s attitude to Indian communism was? He brushed it off as a Brahmin’s boys club. Yes the Dalit patriot who chose neo-Buddhism so as not to alter the demographic make-up of India accused the egalitarian communists of casteism. 🙂 Or perhaps you know all this and its just an act, a la the Tibeto-russo-Sufi magi Gurdijieff who believed that theatrics lead to uniquely liberative spiritual experiences. Gurdijieff’s work inspired Stanislavi’s method which contributed to the modern understanding of acting. Perhaps Indian communists should learn a lesson or two, because their charades are increasingly transparent, and tiresome becomes the obfuscations, periphrastic style and bigotry.
I’m going to listen to Emerson’s Borbor Bele and watch some Premiere League Football while throwing down some Brooklyn lager. And for the record the only Sangh I know of is Sangh Fransisco, where the denizens, much like the Indian Sanghis, are known to occasionally walk around in saffron robes.
Have a great weekend.
Not that I want to take this controversy any further – how does one fight against the congenital falsification of history – his-story or hystery (has to be either this or that or both with the ideo and logical heirs of Goebbels in India) – propagated by the sanghis. But just a few points, just in case:
a) Nowhere did I aver that the Shudras did not have their own politically empowered space in our history. All that I said was that compared to their continuous and unabashed exploitation by the other classes, such spaces are proportionately too few and historically ineffective. The Shudras have by and large been kept disenfranchised from the process of proactive mainsteam space. You have surely heard of the practice of begaar which continues to be practised in many parts of India. Likewise, in many parts of India the Shudras are still not allowed to mount a horse at the time of their wedding; they are not allowed to pass in front of the houses of caste Hindus with their shoes on…. the deails are horrifyingly large. We should not try to brush aside these unseemly facts by invoking the the poor Hindus in the rural India. If you do not conveniently forget or wilfully gloss over, I have referred to sub-caste hierarchies practised even amongst the Shudras themselves.
b) The distinction between the Shudras and declassified Vaishyas – the modern day OBCs – could be clearly seen as an operative distinctions in the smrutis. In fact this declassification, at times, extends also to the Kshtriyas as well although I am not aware of any of the Brahmin sub-castes historically subjected to such hierarchic ignominy. But I am not ruling out the possibility.
c) The point about the Bhakti poetry has to be understood in terms of caste mobilizations. Absolutely no point would be served by comparing the ecstatic poetry of surrender by the artisanal Bhakti-poets to the angry and passionately subversive poetry of say fdor example much of Kabir’s oeuvre. The intransigence of both Kabir and Nanak make them very different kind of poets. Once again, one should use the umbrella term, Bhakti poet somewhat judiciously as such classifications would be invalid without historical, sociological and, above all, literary insights. This is where even the class intellectuals such as Kapila Vatsyayan, Geeta Kapoor and their equally privileged class followers such as Rajeev Bhargava so blatantly err. (As an aside, both Geeta and Rajeev profess to be Marxists.) They are unable to rise above their class positions when the argument is about to become ideologically complex.
d) The discovery of a text-compilation poetry from across the Indian sub-continent 20 years before the Guru Granth may be a hypothetical possibility – although with the Sanghis you never quite know – the point about the Granth is not that it happened 20 years too late. The point is that is a first, politically articulated act of connectivity cutting across linguistic, ethnic and caste identities. The idea of Granth was conceived and executed by the 5th Sikh Guru, Arjun Dev, who was eventually made to undergo unbelievable tortures which lead to his death. His martyrdom has, in my view, a semiotic link to his politically intrepid and challenging move to forge a creative unity amongst the Indian people.
e) The gender insensitivity towards women has never been allowed to be even articulated. There are a few articulations to which Susie Tharu drew our attention a few years ago. The Gargis and Maitreyis are no more than mere euphemisms. It is in this context that artists like Amrita Shergill and authors like Mahashweta Devi, Annapurna Devi and even Amrita Pritam and, oh it is so difficult to bring oneself to say this, even Ajeet Caur acquire enormous significance.
A debate about about secularism as enshrined within the Constitution of India purely in reference to how the concept developed in the west is, as such, peurile and childish.
PS: A day after the sea-water around the Mazaar of Makhdoom Shah in Mahim, Bombay was rumoured to have turned sweet, the Sanghis went into an overdrive to spread rumours about how the Goddess Durga and Lord Ganesha in temples across India have started consuming milk offered by the devotees. When it comes to the rumour-industry, the Sanghis are unsurpassable and they wouldn’t let the Muslimeaguees have more than a day of Mahim mahima (glory)!
a) Nowhere did I aver that the Shudras did not have their own politically empowered space in our history. All that I said was that compared to their continuous and unabashed exploitation by the other classes, such spaces are proportionately too few and historically ineffective. The Shudras have by and large been kept disenfranchised from the process of proactive mainsteam space.
The problem is that you can only see “Hinduism” through the bigoted Marxist goggles.
You said that the instances were a marginal rising, and I pointed out to you that they were much more pervasive so as to invalidate your rather brazen introduction of Manu as dispositive throughout Indian history. Abraham Eraly notes in his book “The Gem and the Lotus” that the old Ksatriya lineages died out early, and that power accrued to the hands of the strongest. The entire history of South India demonstrates that the Brahmanic varna framework was a fiction. In his introduction to his translation of Manu, Patrick Olivelle, a Sri Lankan Christian of all things, asserts that the particular bitterness in Manu may have owed to the original author’s resentment against Maurya hegemony in North India. That goes a long way in demonstrating how historically contextualized an understanding we must have of Manu. The smritis in force in the Vijayanagara Empire, the parasara smriti and the yagnavalkya smriti are not nearly as harsh, check them out.
That there is discrimination in India is not in question, but so what? There has been slavery in the west, genital mutilation in Africa and to this day, browns are subjected to macaca-like slurs. I am questioning your particular retrofitting of an ancient document onto modern conditions, which are more complex, and involve factors entirely outside the purview of religious texts – like natural resource wars, land disputes, property heists, an inefficient state, and so on. Also please do not confuse Shudras with Dalits. Shudras empirically are the greatest victimizers of Dalits. While there are shudras who live in decrepit conditions (most backward castes) the dominant castes in much of India are indeed OBC Shudras -Jats, Reddys, Kamas, Nairs, Kapus, Mudaliars, Chettiars, Vokaligas, Marathas. I could go on and on. There is little correlation between ritual status and temporal status in India. Marxist critques of Hinduism conveniently ignore this very crucial distinction. They also ignore the fluidity of the caste system itself. Castes rise and fall in the hieracrhy all the time. What you consider a rising of the lower castes is in truth a rising of some castes displacing other castes. And if the caste system is so evil, why is everyone trying to move up? Why do so many Dalits claim to be fallen Ksatriyas? Why do the Tamil Vaniyars claim to be Aryans? Its much more complex than you make out.
And Brahmins have absolutely been subjected to hierarchic ignominy. The Namboodiri Brahmins practiced a form of untouchability against Tamil Brahmins. The Pir Ali Brahmins in Bengal are scorned by other Brahmins. The fact that very few Brahmin subcastes will marry to this day indicates they all have a sense of their hierarchy. And the Dalits have vicous caste distinctions among themselves.
c) The point about the Bhakti poetry has to be understood in terms of caste mobilizations. Absolutely no point would be served by comparing the ecstatic poetry of surrender by the artisanal Bhakti-poets to the angry and passionately subversive poetry of say fdor example much of Kabir’s oeuvre. The intransigence of both Kabir and Nanak make them very different kind of poets. Once again, one should use the umbrella term, Bhakti poet somewhat judiciously as such classifications would be invalid without historical, sociological and, above all, literary insights.
I diagree. The nayanmars (70% of whom were Shudra) definitely influenced the hieratic function within Shaiva Siddhanta, which was dominant throughout the Tamil country. The Tamil Agamic Hinduism is textually far more equable than the Sanskritic complex, as is the entire cluster of traditions known as Tantra. (Remember in Tantra anyone could be initiated.) The Agamas themselves, which constitute the backbone of South Indian Hinduism, are not caste-centric at all. Even among the evil Brahmins, there were notable reformers. Ramanuja took Dalits into his fold and made them Brahmins, The Lingayat movement, headed by another Brahmin, Basavva, was an out and out caste revolt. Among other Bhakti poets, Tukaram was openly critical not only of Brahmins but of powerful landlords. The Sikh gurus were not singular in this respect. For details of the Fathepur manuscript, please check out the Construction of Religious Boundaries by Harjot Oberoi. He is not a sanghi.
Also, the Dalit Sikhs are treated brutally. For long periods they were not even admitted into the Golden Temple. They are made to build separate gurudwaras and are looked down upon by Jats. The king you mentioned as fomenting a marginal rising, Ranjit Singh, paid homage to Brahmins and according to Khuswant Singh ran not a Khalsa state but a Brahmanic state. But Marxist myths die hard. On the other hand, there are Vaishnava Dalits who wear the poonal and chant the Vedas in Karnataka – check Vasudha Narayan’s work. The Dalit Satnamis boldly refused to recognize the authority of Brahmins in ritual matters. The Tamil Goundars do not use Brahmins for funeral services. The Ramananda order is entirely caste free. Virtually every modern Hindu movement, including the Arya Samaj, does not recognize caste distinctions. Name one modern guru who condones untouchability? Also, consider that Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Narayana Guru – three of the five or six most influential modern Hindus, were all shudras. Gandhi, who is probably most influential of all, was not a Brahmin. There is tremendous dynamism within Hinduism, it is not a static construct.
There is a commonality among Hindus throughout India, even a secular commentator like Nirad Chaudhuri concedes as much in his petulant introduction to Hinduim. Why, as Pankaj Mishra says in disgust, even the Congress Party evokes Hindu majoritarianism whenever there is a national crisis, as with Pakistan. Now why would they do that? And why would Marxists try to (unsuccessfully) erode that sense of commonality among not just Hindus but all Indians that has existed from time immemorial – when Ashoka placed his pillars throughout India, when Tamil kings made voyages to the foothill of the Himalayas to pay homage to what they conceived of as part of their own land? When Sankara built his mathas at the four corners of the subcontinent? And a secular form of nationalism has found its way into the Indian state too, which uses Ashoka’s Dharma Chakra as the symbol of the Republic.
Surely the counter-hegemonic will to survive must have been strong amongst the Dalits. Otherwise the risible clans of from the partisan lap of Bharat Mata would have gobbled them causing one of biggest unnoticed erasures of humankind.
Go back to Tukaram, Namdev and Raidas before comparing their transgressions (???) with those of Kabir and Nanak. Please note that I am not naming any other Sikh Guru as a poetic transgressive signpost. Otherwise with your unbridled Sanghi enthusiasm, you will read my writing the way you have been indocrinated to do so.
Amazing how utterly obsessed you are with the idea of dispoving anything that you imagine I have said. Did I ever say that the Mazhabi Sikhs are treated equally by the rest of the Sikh community? On the contrary, I had clearly mentioned that the Shudras were not allowed to enter the precints of the Golden Temple till the last quarter of the 19th century. The fact that the fifth Sikh Guru commissioned the Guru Granth does not make Sikh into an egalitarian society. They never were and I doubt if they ever are going to be one. Had they been nso kind to the Mazhabis, the Arya Samaj Movement in the Punjab would never have had the sort of success it initially enjoyed. The crucial word is initially and I am mentioning this because you have a habit of wilfully not reading the words properly like your Sanghi biraadaraan.
A word or two about Khushwant Singh. How is his history of the Sikhs authentic and why should one not prefer, let us say a Ganda Singh, JS Garewal, Sohan Singh Josh or even a Bhagwan Josh or a sociologist like SS Jodhka’s formidable scholarship to his brand of story telling? The problem with the disinvolved outsider is that they have much like the western ‘fantasists’ – India’s snake charmers, the rope tricksters etc – not seen beyond Khushwant Singh. Once and for all, KS scholarship is suspect and Marxism has nothing whatsoever to do with that. The fellow does not even know how to read and write Punjabi properly.
And yes, Ranjit Singh was a bumbling paradox of a (Sikh) ruler. As for his homage to Brahmins, well there are more stories about his organic comaraderie with the mirasis – there has recently appeared a book by JS Kairon giving delightfully copious details of his rather viscereal engagements with the mirasis. Such archival material, of course, would never ever reach the critical gaze of Harjot Oberois of the world. You do not seem to have any idea of the existence of Denzil IbbetsonÂ’s Punjab Gazetteer of 1881 otherwise you would not hold forth on the caste question with the sort of recklessness as you display in your posts so copiously and so touchingly.
It does not surprise me that you should choose to identify Narendranath Dutta rené Swami Vivekanand and Aurobindo Ghosh rené Aurobindo as shudras. It is quite in keeping with the Sanghi rhetoric of prevarications, half truths and lies. As for my insistence on not conflating of the Shudras with the OBCs, please refer to Messrs Manu. Says he:
arthaat
the king should keep the shudras and vaishyas always busy in their caste-proper activities, for they can cause extreme trouble for not being so engaged.
And Shriman/mati Risible where did I say that? Where? Shows how blatantly the Sanghis live by the Goebblesian bluff.
it is a good report and i just want to say congrats on it.