Monday, May 10, 2010
DMK's Rajadharma: Reviving caste inequality
Sidharth Mishra
Some Dalit intellectuals could take umbrage at your reporter having an
opinion on the issue pertaining to their community. Dalit Vimarsh
(dialogue), which has emerged as one of the most powerful trends in
contemporary Hindi literature, has two strands. The first and the
older strand, which includes even the redoubtable Premchand, consists
of authors writing profusely and powerfully on the Dalit issues
irrespective of the fact whether they were born into a Dalit community
or not.
The supporters of this school at a seminar few years back gave example
of the celebrated Kannada writer UR Ananthmurthy, whose novel Sanskara
deals with the issue of untouchablity with utmost sensitivity and it
has earned him fame worldwide. Ananthmurthy is a Brahmin born in
Karnataka and his birth disqualifies him, according to the other
school, to be acclaimed as a writer on Dalit issues.
There is a very strong lobby of writers of Dalit descent, which claims
that only those born as Dalit could be the right and true exponents of
Dalit literature. Their thesis is based on the belief that only those
born as Dalit undergo and understand the true sufferings of the
societal dysfunction. Therefore, the proponents of the second school
claim that true Dalit literature could emerge only from the true
sufferers.
The second school is definitely isolationist in approach and the very
idea of literature as the tool to sensitise the sensibilities would
get lost, if those from non-Dalit communities were discouraged from
writing on the Dalit issues. The second school runs counter, in my
perception, to the line taken on the issue by one of the most
celebrated Dalit columnist Chandrabhan Prasad.
In his famous essay Reinventing Macaulay, Prasad writes, "Our lies
about Macaulay: Was Macaulay attempting to create 'Intellectual
slaves' for the British Empire? Yes, if we just read the following: We
must at present do our best to form a class of persons, Indian in
blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in
intellect." We, in a most mischievous manner, present the above quote,
twisted, taken out of context, and thus, present Lord Macaulay as a
villain. No, if we read the full paragraph as originally available in
his February 1835 "Minutes" on Indian education. "It is impossible for
us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the
people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be
interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of
persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it
to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those
dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature,
and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to
the great mass of the population."
While Prasad has taken downward filtration as the scheme for
empowering Dalits, the intellectuals would do well to adopt the
process of reverse osmosis to sensitize the non-Dalits to leave behind
their age-old biases and see merit in Dalit individuals. Such process,
however, gets vitiated when DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi defends Union
Minister A Raja's corrupt dalliances using the Dalit shield.
Following reports appearing in The Pioneer and other sections of the
media and the uproar it caused in Parliament, pressure mounted on the
DMK to sack tainted Telecom Minister A Raja. His mentor Tamil Nadu CM
M Karunanidhi last week came to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and when found himself
cornered over allegations against Raja, the DMK patriarch played the
ultimate political card — Raja is being targeted because he is a
Dalit.
Worried over repeated disruptions in Parliament over 2G spectrum
scandal and allegations of Raja's direct involvement in the scam, the
Prime Minister broached the topic in his 30-minute meeting with
Karunanidhi. The DMK patriarch reported to have told the Prime
Minister that there was no evidence to prove Raja's complicity in the
scam and refused to agree to any proposal to drop him from the
Cabinet. Putting up a strong case for Raja, Karunanidhi also
reportedly told the Prime Minister that removal of Raja at this stage
will amount to admitting that he is guilty. This would cause serious
embarrassment to the DMK.
And to save his party and himself from the embarrassment of admitting
Raja's guilt, Karunanidhi decided to use the Dalit shield. Emerging
from the meeting, the DMK patriarch did not look very happy, but he
ruled out all possibilities of Raja's removal from the Cabinet and
said that the Minister was being targeted because he was a Dalit.
Now this once again brings us back to Chandrabhan Prasad and his essay
Reinventing Macaulay. Prasad writes that while submitting the draft of
the Indian Penal Code, Lord Macaulay maintains in his covering letter:
"It is an evil that any man should be above the law, it is still a
greater evil that the public mind should be taught to regard as a high
and venerable distinction the privilege of being above the law."
Prasad also refers to Macaulay's speech in the British Parliament
while debating Charter Act 1833. Macaulay is quoted as saying, "the
worst of all systems was surely that of having a mild code for the
Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, while there was a
severe code for the Shudras, who sprang from his feet. India has
suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from the
deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. God
forbid that we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we
should send her a new breed of Brahmins."
Karunanidhi's defence of Raja's indefensible acts of omission and
commission seeks to create a new breed of Brahmins, which the Dalit
movement all these years has opposed. Dr BR Ambedkar, the tallest of
the Dalit icons, fully endorsed equality before law. It was time that
the Dalit intellectuals came forward to counter contaminated arguments
forwarded by likes of Karunanidhi in defence of corruption.
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