The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India, Part VI: A Hindu Liberationist Perspective

Finally, I've finished the series! The last time I posted a blog in this series was Part V on Oct. 28, 2006. I've been swamped with school and working for the newspaper, but I'm on break now until Jan. 24, 2007. So I'll also be working on my Mespotamia Burning series as well (which I also haven't done in a long time due to college and newspaper work).

‘So knowing this, and becoming calm, self controlled, quiet, patient and concentrated, he sees the self in himself, sees the self as all. Evil does not overcome him: he overcomes all evil. Evil does not burn him: he burns all evil. Without evil, without dust, free from doubt, he becomes Brāhmana. This is the world of Brahmā.’
-Brhadāranyaka Upanisad IV.5.23

The actual word, “Dalit,” means “crushed underfoot” or “broken into pieces.” The word comes from the 19th century activist Jotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) who fought to remove the stigma of “untouchability” in India. The term also comes from the writings of the Dalit Panthers, a radical Dalit rights movement founded in 1972 in the state of Maharashtra.(1) And indeed, for Dalits, Sudras, and SC/ST peoples all over India this is the reality they still find themselves in today (by no fault of their own). For thousands of years Dalits and ST peoples had no right to property, were only allowed to eat food thrown away by higher caste Hindus, could not drink from town and village wells, weren’t allowed to enter Hindu temples, were denied access to education, performed menial jobs for upper caste Hindus, and were not allowed to live in the main towns and villages. They had to live on the outside, and since they couldn’t live in towns they had no right to ownership of property and thus “leading to [a] lack of access to all sources of economic mobility” which further caused “social exclusion and economic discrimination over the centuries.”(2)

Yet, still today, despite Indian independence in 1947 and a plethora of legislation outlawing caste discrimination against Dalits, SC/ST, and Other Backward Caste (OBC) peoples are just as thoroughly oppressed as they have been since before the founding of the modern state of India. Today, Dalits, SC/ST, and OBCs comprise about 52 percent of the Indian population,(3) and including lower caste Shudras, 77% of the population.(4) The reasons for the Dalits continued oppression are many, some of them religious, others economic, and still others political, with each category constantly melding into the next. Sagarika Ghose explains the situation of the Dalits quite well:

The dalit's pariah status derives its strength and justification from religious texts. In the Manusmriti, the dalit is described as "polluted," in the same way as a menstruating woman, a widow, or a person who has recently been bereaved is polluted. The dalit is "unclean" from birth. He violates, by his very existence, the brahminical obsession with hygiene...While the "untouchability" of the menstruating woman or the bereaved is temporary and he or she can escape the Untouchable condition after the period of "pollution" is past, the dalit can never escape his status: he is perpetually filthy.(5)

This “pariah status” thrust upon the Dalits by greater powers has caused much of the suffering we see today. In a census taken in 1991 it was found that 70% of all Dalit and SC households were landless, by the year 2000 it had increased to 75%,(6) this despite the fact that in 1990 the V. P. Singh government decided to implement the policies of the Mandal Commission Report of the Backward Classes Commission, a commission on how to deal with Dalits, SC/ST, and OBCs that came out with their report in 1980 (part of the report called for reserving 27% of all services and public sector undertakings and 27% of all higher education slots for students, to Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs).(7) This landlessness and lack of property causes many problems for Dalits; because they have no property (that they own) they are often bonded-laborers and their children are forced to work as well, this causes many Dalits to be dependent on waste-land for grazing. A study in 1992 showed that in the state of Rajasthan, that as many as 89% of Dalits were involved in scavenging to make ends meat.(8) On top of land issues in 2000 49.06% of the working Dalit and SC population were agricultural workers with 32.69% being STs and only 19.66% being labeled as “other” which shows a “preponderance of dalits in agricultural labour.” Not only that but from 1991-2001 the number of agricultural workers increased. As for child labor, around 60 million children (reported) work in India, 40% of the labor force comes from Dalits and ST peoples.(9) Across all levels the situation for Dalits has been getting worse, not better, for all those statistics you can look at parts II and III on my blog series “The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India.” Now that the situation of Dalits in India is established (again, for more, see parts II and III) we can go on to what Hindus and Dalits have done since the late 19th century in fighting against caste discrimination and untouchability and how the Hindu religion can play a liberating role in the emancipation of Dalits instead of an oppressive role, by looking at the actions of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Ambedkar, and other Indian movements.

One of the early reformers of the Hindu religion (especially in relation to Dalits and women’s rights) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was Narendranath Datta, also known as Vivekananda (1863-1902). Vivekananda was born into an upper caste Ksatriyas family in Bengal and was educated in a Western-style university where he learned about Western philosophy, Christianity, and Western sciences. Latter on he joined the Brahmo Samaj (Society of the Brahma) which was “dedicated to eliminating child marraige and illiteracy” and was “determined to spread education among women and the lower castes.” Latter on he became a disciple of Ramakrishna (who preached on the unity of all of the world religions). Instead of adhering to the Vedas in a dogmatic way Vivekananda stressed the humanistic side of the Vedas and thus became a prevailing force in preaching the Vedanta school of thought to the United States and England.(10) The Vedanta school is one of the six orthodox philosophies of Hinduism which based itself on the “speculative portion of late Vedic literature” and is chiefly concerned with the knowledge of Brahman and the unification of oneself with her or his atman to attain the truth.(11) In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission at the monastery of Belur Math which sat on the Ganges River near Calcutta which was dedicated to social work for many in India, including Dalits.(12) Yet despite his work he had done very little as a whole for the Dalits and for emancipating the Dalits from caste oppression. What Vivekananda showed us (as did the other Hindu reformers I mentioned in Part V of my blog) was that one did not have to dogmatically adhere to the Vedas to be Hindu. Vivekananda was just as Hindu as anyone from the BJP or the RSS today (even more so) and yet he was able to fuse diverse philosophical beliefs and to reject the uglier forms of Vedic Hinduism in order to help out those of the lower caste and of the female sex. Yet Vivekananda was of the upper castes and his view was very much influenced by Western white beliefs. Despite his reforms he still was afflicted with an upper caste and bourgeois mentality that hindered him from truly offering an alternative to Hindus and to truly uplifting the lower castes and Dalits from oppression.

After Vivekananda, one of the last reformers during a significant period of reform for the Hindu religion in the 19th century (for more see Part V), came Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) whom, states Ghose, emerged “from the context created by these nineteenth-century movements as well as deeper traditions of anticaste protests by Buddhism, Jainism, and the Bhakti culuts.”(13)

As a child Gandhi grew up in a Vaisya caste household where his mother was a strict adherent to Vaisnavism, a Hindu sect which worships the god Vishnu and his incarnations, especially those of Rama and Krishna. His religious life was also influenced by stands of Jainism and ahimsa (non-injury to all living beings), so the tenets of non-violence and that everything in the universe is eternal surrounding the young Gandhi all the time,(14) which helps us better understand his religious and moral philosophy latter in his life.

After growing up in India and being educated in England Gandhi’s first boat of fighting for those who were oppressed was during his time in South Africa, which won him acclaim in India and England. He studied the deplorable conditions Indians lived in and founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 which took up Indian grievances to South Africa and England (since South Africa was a colony of England). Yet despite all this Gandhi still had many bourgeois tendencies that he would carry with him throughout his life (all though they would be morphed into more high-caste Hindu tendencies), in 1899 Gandhi argued all Indians that it was their duty as citizens under the English crown to defend South Africa during the Boer War. Yet after the war Gandhi continued to fight for the rights of Indians and took up more confrontational non-violent mass actions.(15) These battle in South Africa further more shaped his thinking just as his mother’s religious devotions had shaped his thinking in his youth. With this we will look at Gandhi’s actions relating to the Dalits and what he did (and didn’t do) for them and how, despite the fact that he was a very conservative and strictly observant Hindu (with upper-caste tendencies), he fought against the stigma of untouchability and urged reform all across India to help out the Dalits.

By autumn of 1920 Gandhi had become a very important figure in Indian politics and he had even managed to help refashion the Indian National Congress (founded in 1885) into a very formidable political tool for the fight against British rule, having the Congress Party branch out all over India by entrenching itself in Indians small towns and villages. In 1932, during a bout in prison, Gandhi started a fast (which his mother had done many times in his youth) to protest the British government’s move to segregate the Dalits by assigning them separate elections in the new constitution of India. His fast caused upheaval in the country and worked, thus starting Gandhi’s actions to remove the stigma of untouchability from the Dalits within Hinduism and the state of India. In 1934 Gandhi had resigned from his position in the Congress Party and also resigned as a member. Instead he wanted to build up national unity “from the bottom up” by setting up programs in rural India (85% of the population back than was rural) and educating around the countryside through himself and others. A part of this building “from the bottom up” included fighting against untouchability.(16)

Gandhi’s fight for Dalits was very much steeped in Hinduism. Instead of Hinduism being a barrier for him (or an excuse) in helping Dalits and coming in contact with them it was instead used as a jumping off point, a platform, for trying to remove the stigma of untouchability and it was something he used to the fullest. After resigning from the Congress Party his new mission, and revolution, was not necessarily home-rule for Indians by Indians (but he did fight against British rule) but was an “exercise in the autonomy, the dignity, and the freedom of the ‘non-subject’ by being neither colonizer nor colonized, neither oppressor nor oppressed, neither hawk nor dove...”(17) In the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad IV.5.23, which I quote above, it states that if one lives a righteous Hindu life one can become Brahmā, unified with Brahman. This was essentially how Gandhi saw the Dalit question. Because Dalits (or harijan as he called them, that is “Children of God”) where Hindu and because they were fully human and could indeed become unified with Brahman just as the Brahman caste could become unified, than one should treat Dalits with respect, and old traditions, such as untouchability, were misguided and hurtful. Gandhi said that “[t]he taint of Untouchability is an intolerable burden on Hinduism. Let us not deny God by denying to a fifth of our race the right of association and on equal footing.” The culmination of centuries of anti-Brahmin thought in Hinduism and different Hindu sects (such as Jainism) essentially meet each other in the figure of Gandhi (for more on this see Part V). Unlike Vivekananda he had actively tackled the question of the Dalits and had done much to try and reform Hindu’s in their thinking. Yet, as we can see today, very little has changed for the Dalit and her or his situation. Yet Gandhi was very much effected by strands of upper-caste conservative Hinduism, even though he showed us that one can still practice such strands without oppressing Dalits and other ST/SCs and OBCs. This is where Ambedkar comes into play.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, born into a Dalit Mahar family in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, was a contemporary of Gandhi’s, and, like Gandhi, campaigned for the rights of Dalits all across India. Except his was a much more involved and militant campaign seeking the emancipation of all Dalits across India and one that scourged upper-caste Hindu practices and any semblance of elitist thinking and help from those who carried Brahminic tendencies. Unlike Gandhi who had been born into a well off family (Gandhi’s father served as a dewan, or chief minister, in Porbandar and Rajkot) Ambedkar was a Dalit and grew up being humiliated by his fellow school mates whom where high-caste. As a Mahar, Ambedkar’s duties traditionally were cutting wood for cremation, getting rid of dead cattle, washing wells, delivering messages over long distances, and other menial and degrading tasks. Also, all Mahar’s were to live in segregated areas outside of the villages and towns that they served.(18) Ambedkar was able to study abroad in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, where he meet such thinkers as John Dewey, one of the original founders of the school of pragmatism and a pioneer in functional psychology. His education abroad (which was due to a scholarship given to him by the gaekwar, or ruler, of Baroda)(19) greatly influenced his thinking, just as Gandhi’s education abroad. Yet his education abroad wasn’t the only thing that influenced his thinking, it was also his life as a Dalit, being treated as dirt by other Hindus, as well as a history of “powerful 19th century anti-caste movements in his own province” and “the histories of numerous heterodox, anti-Vedic, materialist sects/schools that have always existed on the fringes of Hinduism.”(20) (For more on this see Part V).

Originally Ambedkar was optimistic about the political and economic emancipation of his peoples, the Dalits, and that they would eventually be integrated into mainstream Indian society. Soon though he would come to realize that this was not the case, and while originally religion didn’t play an initial factor in his political struggles it soon would loom large. After intense struggles with getting rights to access drinking water from village wells, the right to enter temples, and the a struggle in voting rights in 1932 in where he held intense debates with Gandhi who opposed separate voting rights for Dalits, he quickly came to realize, in his mind, that the struggle for Dalit rights was essentially a struggle that was not only political and economic, but also had to do with the ingrained bigotry within the Hindu caste-system itself. He also became disillusioned with the Congress Party, which he saw as filled with upper-caste nationalism that cared more for home rule than for the emancipation of the Dalits. This led him to declare in 1935, “I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu.(21)

One large weakness that Gandhi had (all though it didn’t undermine his belief in Hinduism and it didn’t make his belief in Hinduism wrong) was that while he was indeed campaigning for the removal of untouchability from Dalits he was, as the same time, publically lauding the caste system as being divinely sanctioned and a source that brought harmony and community to Indian society, as supposed to the capitalistic and individualistic system of the West.(22) Yet what Ambedkar saw and what Gandhi saw, were to different things. Because Ambedkar lived the life of a Dalit he saw first hand how the opposite was actually the case. The caste system couldn’t be divinely sanctioned because it brought so much trauma and pain and suffering to so many people, this was something Ambedkar had experienced first hand while Gandhi, because of his caste privilege and economic privilege as a youth, never experienced. Essentially Gandhi was blind to the deep and inherent flaw in his statements lauding the caste system. If anything, the caste system only brought about social harmony through the oppression of Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, it was through their pain that society was able to “gain.” Because of this, Ambedkar was one of Gandhi’s harshest critiques. “Examine the Gandhian attitude to strikes,” stated Ambedkar, “the Gandhian reverence for caste and the Gandhian doctrine of Trusteeship of the rich...Gandhism is the philosophy of the well-to-do and leisured class.”(23) Ambedkar was able to see aspects of the Gandhian movement that others couldn’t (or refused to) see because of their caste background. What Ambedkar saw was a movement that was conservative, upper-caste, and bourgeois. Because Gandhi was upper-caste and because most of his leadership was upper-caste Ambedkar wanted nothing to do with Gandhi, his movement, or the upper-caste dominated Congress Party. Not that they would want anything to do with Ambedkar either since he argued that political democracy was meaningless without radical social transformation and a repudiation of the caste system.(24) Ambedkar stated that the “‘monster of caste’ crosses everyone’s path alike, every which way you may turn: ‘you cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill the monster [of caste].’”(25) Ghose states, “For Gandhi, Hinduism and the caste system were not negotiable. But Ambedkar rejected both Hinduism and the caste system as well as the claims of any upper caste to represent the dalits. For Gandhi, Untouchability was an evil within Hinduism, to be reformed by Hindus. For Ambedkar, upper-caste leadership of dalits was abhorrent.”(26) In his 1936 book, Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar stated that upper-caste Hindus and supporters of caste did not deny Dalits a way of life because they were “inhuman or wrong headed...but because they are deeply religious. The myriad hierarchies and taboos of caste have the sanctity of the shastras [scriptures]...people will not change their conduct unless they have ceased to believe in the sanctity of the shastras.”(27) So the real enemy is not the people observing caste but the shastras that teach people to observe the caste system.

With Gandhi, despite his flaws, we saw a devout and observant Hindu fighting to alleviate the Dalits of their plight. With Ambedkar we saw a Dalit militantly, and without remorse, completely take on the system of caste at full speed in order to emancipate his people by any means necessary. In fact, on October 14, 1956 Ambedkar, along with 200,000 or so of his followers, renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, India in a final repudiation of Hinduism and of the caste system.(28)

Because of Gandhi and Ambedkar the constitution of India outlawed discrimination based on caste and also created “reservations” (affirmative action policies).(29) Yet despite the legal emancipation of Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, Dalits are still harshly discriminated against. Gail Omvedt wrote in The Hindu that:

The reservation system was instituted not so much on the basis of the Constitution as on that of the decades-old elite resistance to restructuring public employment. It serves several purposes. It allows the elite to maintain the facade of a generous patron of Dalits while continuing to deprive them of mas-level education and access to resources. It provides a process to absorb some of their brightest members into a system still based more on extortion and corruption than true public service. Finally, it continues to block true representation of the majority of the nation’s population.”(30)

Yet, even with these factors Dalits are still fighting as they have been since the death of Ambedkar. In 1972 emerged the Dalit Panthers (borrowing their name from the American Black Panther Party for Self Defense) which was made up mostly of militant poets and writers seeking full emancipation of Dalits in India. Yet within a few years the movement splintered and became coopted by the government elite as its members joined several government committees and panels. In 1984 the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was formed after Dalit leaders Kanshi Ram and Mayawati Kumari broke away from BAMCEF (All-India Backward and Minority Employees Federation, set up as a “talent bank” for Dalits in 1976). The BSP was set up to represent Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs in the government of India. Yet despite their rise in power in key states such as Uttar Pradesh it has fromed governments with and has allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the utter embodiment of conservative caste worshiping Hindu nationalism, especially when it attacks Muslims, Dalits, and others whom are not high-caste Hindus. Ghose explains that their hasn’t been able to be a solid Dalit and “society of the backward” movement because of the nature of the caste system (because of the many diverse states Dalits from different parts of India can’t even speak to each other due to language barriers) and “because of the nature of agrarian relations, which pits backward castes against each other and thus divides the society of the backward.” Also, “[s]ince brahmins have become urbanized, it is the intermediate backward castes (those just above the ‘pollution line’) who have become owners of the land on which the dalit is a laborer. This has led several dalit intellectuals to argue that the greater enemy of the dalit is no longer the brahmin but the intermediate castes,”(31) which I’m sure delights many of the Brahmin caste.

Yet despite all of this we have seen in Parts V and VI how Hinduism, instead of being a tool for oppression, can instead be used as a tool for liberation. Instead of taking the Vedas and other religious texts at their word many Hindus have been able to reject certain aspects of sacred Hindu literature that have Brahminic supremacist tendencies, and have still be able to hold onto their core Hindu beliefs, but without harming themselves or others. Also, we have seen, especially in the example of Ambedkar, how Dalits have taken their destiny into their own hands in order to liberate themselves. We see that Dalits can see certain aspects of so called “reformed” Hinduism that others can’t, mainly that many of these “reformed” Hindus were actually still perpetuating high-caste tendencies and were in effect, talking down to Dalits (such as Gandhi’s term “harijan,” which Ambedkar and other Dalits found utterly repugnant). Because of this, Dalits are the ones who are to liberate themselves and no one else, anyone other than a Dalit actively trying to lead Dalits is essentially perpetuating their upper-caste privilege and in turn is doing more harm than good. No one can claim (without being ignorant to history, caste oppression, and utterly arrogant) to be a leader of Dalits except a Dalit. Hindu’s can, and should, fight for Dalit rights. By saying that Dalit’s are the only ones who can liberate themselves however doesn’t mean that upper-caste Hindu’s are off the hook. In fact, the opposite is true. Because many upper-caste Hindu’s enjoy benefits in a society that is based on caste oppression and the exploitation of Sudras, Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, they must critically look at themselves and at the caste system in place that keeps them propped up in a life of privilege. Upper-caste Hindus (who don’t need to loose their religious beliefs, all though for some that may be impossible, and others, at no fault of their own, may find losing their belief to be a benefit, and I don’t fault them for it) must actively help out Dalits by speaking to others within society about the plight of the Dalits and by speaking about caste privilege and its necessary destruction. I cannot know where the struggle for Dalit rights will head since I am an outsider but I do know that as Dalits take charge (as they have for many decades now) and as fellow Hindus continue to use their religion in a liberating manner (and to attack those aspects of Hinduism that are oppressive) there can be a strong liberating voice that will demand, and get, revolutionary change in the system. As an outsider I will wait and see how this continues to unfold.

Notes

1. Ghose, Sagarika. “The Dalit in India.” Social Research 70, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 85.
2. Communist Party of India (Marxist). “Resolution Adopted At The All India Convention On
Problems of Dalits” (New Delhi: February 22, 2006), 1. See also part II of this series in my blog post http://mustardkernal.blogspot.com/2006/09/opression-of-shudras-in-india-part-ii.html.
3. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 84.
4. See http://mustardkernal.blogspot.com/2006/08/oppression-of-shudras-in-india-marxist.html.
5.Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 84.
6. Communist Party India (Marxist), “Problems of Dalits,” 5.
7. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 97-98.
8. Grey, Mary. “Dalit Women and the Struggle for Justice in a World of Global Capitalism.”
Feminist Theology: The Journal of Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology 14, no. 1
(Sept. 2005): 135-136.
9. Communist Party India (Marxist), “Problems of Dalits,” 5.
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Vivekananda,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9075594.
11. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. “Vedanta,” available at FirstSearch
http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezproxy (accessed Nov. 25, 2006).
12. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Vivekananda.”
13. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 92.
14. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand,” available at Encyclopedia
Britannica Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9109421.
15. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-22634.
16. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-22636.
17. Prakash, Madhu Suri. “Remaking Our Soil: Gandhi’s Revolution for the 21st Century.”
Encounter 15, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 23-24.
18. Meera, Nanda. “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science: Reconstructing the Deweyan Buddha of
India’s Dalits.” Social Epistemology 15, no. 4 (Oct. 2001): 348.
19. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica
Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9006040.
20. Meera, “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science,” 336-337.
21. Ibid., 349.
22. Ibid., 350.
23. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 94.
24. Ibid., 95.
25. Meera, “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science,” 351.
26. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 96.
27. Ambedkar, B. R. Annihilation of Caste (Jalandhar: Bhim Patrika Publications, 1936), 111.
28. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji,”; and Meera, “A ‘Broken People’
Defend Science,” 348.
29. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 96.
30. Omvedt, Gail. “Caste, Race and Sociologists.” The Hindu, 14 March 2001.
31. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 100-101.

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B. R. Ambedkar: Reconstructing the World

By Owen M. Lynch

This was a book review of Reconstructing the World: B. R. Ambedkar and Buddhism in India that appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 2 (May 2005): 497-499. I’m posting it since it’s relevant to my blog series “The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India: A Marxist and Hindu Liberationist Perspective.” This should explain better to those readers out there who are curious but who don’t know who Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is.

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

Reconstructing the World: B. R. Ambedkar and Buddhism in India. Edited by Surendra Jondhale and Johannes Beltz. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.viii, 316 pp. Rs 995 (cloth).

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a Dalit (ex-Untouchable) and major architect of India's constitution, was arguably India's greatest modern intellectual. His social and political writings and ideas have become more influential today than when they were first written. Just before his 1956 death, Ambedkar completed his own interpretation of Buddhism, The Buddha and His Dhamma (Bombay: Siddharth Publication, 4th ed. 1991), "the" sacred book for many of his followers today. Reconstructing the World: B. R. Ambedkar and Buddhism in India's fifteen authors-too many for separate mention in eight hundred words-make a major contribution insofar as they synthesize, contextualize, and explain Ambedkar's interpretation of Buddhism and thereby demolish some of the many misunderstandings and misrepresentations of his thought.

A reader might read Yashwant Sumant's article first because it best summarizes Ambedkar's thoughts on religion and Buddhism. Sumant demonstrates how Ambedkar, a rationalist, concluded that so-called popular religions surrender reason to transcendental gods and dogmas. They thereby separate themselves from morality, as does Hinduism's rejection of liberty, equality, and freedom, and its unjust treatment of Dalits through its practice of graded inequality. Contrariwise, Ambedkar's rationalist Buddhism is a this-worldly social praxis, a morality rejecting all social barriers. For these reasons, as Johannes Beltz's article shows, many Dalits today reject Hinduism and convert to Buddhism.

Ambedkar's Buddhism is often pejoratively called "neo-Buddhism." That implies that Dalit Buddhists are still Hindus, a judgment that they reject in their own sense of identity (Beltz, p. 261). "Neo-Buddhism" also implies departure from traditional Buddhism because it rejects the four noble truths as pessimistic and denying hope to humans rather than providing motivation to change their everyday life's conditions through Buddhist social praxis. Pradeep Gokhale's article, however, responds that even if Ambedkar's Buddhism is a reconstruction of traditional Buddhism, "it may or may not be so for original Buddhism" (p. 124). Moreover, Christopher Queen's article convincingly argues that activist Buddhists in Southeast Asia and elsewhere have used mass media, public relations, and legislation to pursue this-worldly change, yet they are not labeled with the prefix "neo." Rather, Queen demonstrates that Ambedkar's transformations retain "the central elements of the Buddhist vision" (p. 146). More telling are Adèle Fiske and Christoph Emmerich, who, following Richard Gombrich, argue that "orthodoxy is by far the lesser issue in the history of ruptures within the Buddhist tradition compared to the role of orthopraxy. ... If Ambedkar departed from any Buddhist tradition, it was on the grounds of a challenge to orthopraxy through his own ideas of political and social practice" (p. 112).

Gary Tartakov's article notes that Ambedkar called his Buddhism Navayana (p. 152). Navayana is not "neo"; it is a fourth vehicle (yana) among Buddhism's traditional three. Ambedkar's Buddhism, as many of the book's authors argue, is based on a deep study of Buddhist texts and scholarly writings about them, just as The Buddha and His Dhamma is organized around a profound understanding of events in the Buddha's life, as Eleanor Zelliot's article notes. Many of the book's authors argue that Ambedkar did not intend Navayâna for Dalits only. He meant it as a universal message for all humanity. Its goal is individual and collective emancipation from nonrational thought, economic exploitation, and unjust social difference.

A keyword in Ambedkar's Buddhist discourse is "justice," meaning liberty, equality, and fraternity. Some, therefore, say that Navayâna is mostly repackaged Western liberal thought. Yet, Ambedkar said that he had learned everything about those words' meaning from the Buddha. Eugenia Yurolova's article, like Olivier Herrenschmidt's, adverts to Ambedkar's statement that equality has no value without liberty and fraternity, that the three must coexist and do so only by following the Budhha's way. Ambedkar, Yurolova says, felt that democracy was the best form of government but not in its Western form, in which liberty had swallowed equality, producing class difference and a market ideologically supported by social Darwinism (pp. 86-92). In this reviewer's opinion, Ambedkar's views here resonate loudly in contemporary India's struggle between meritocracy (liberty) and reservations (equality and freedom).

Reconstructing the World's second major contribution is its introducing readers to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Buddhist movements among Dalits other than Ambedkar's Buddhism. G. Aloysius's article succinctly illuminates Pandit Iyothee Thass's 1898 establishment in Tamilnadu of Sakya, later the South Indian Buddhist movement. While similar to Ambedkar's Buddhism in ideas and goals, it tantalizingly differed in one respect. Sakya had an earthbound transcendent God: "[A]Il those men and women who followed the path of righteousness and wisdom and lived a life of total selflessness, and thus through their own character, conduct and life-contribution had become indispensable to and immortal in the lives of successive generations" (p. 212).

Maren Bellwinkel's revealing article narrates historical Buddhist influences in Uttar Pradesh. In Kanpur, Archarya Ishvardatt Medharthi (1900-1971) tried to reconcile Buddhism with the sant tradition, while in Lucknow, Bodhanand Mahastavir (1874-1952) established a Buddhist temple and advocated for Dalits. His followers founded the press influential among Dalits, Bahujan Kalyan Prakashan, and actively participated in Ambedkar's Republican Party of India. Also around 1937, two Sri Lankan-trained but Western-born monks made a missionary visit to Kanpur. Finally, in 1981 Kanpur's newly formed Dalit Panthers organized its first mass conversion to Ambedkar's Buddhism.

Reconstructing the World offers stimulating and provocative analyses of Ambedkar's religious legacy: Buddhism's contemporary revival in India and its universal relevance for humanity.

Copyright Association for Asian Studies, Inc. May 2005

The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India, Part V: A Hindu Liberationist Perspective

It’s all one skin and bone,
one piss and shit,
one blood, one meat.
From one drop, a universe.
Who’s Brahmin? Who’s Shudra?
-Kabir (15th century Bhakti saint)

Today there are around 200-250 million Dalits in India with 75-80% of them below the poverty line(1) and backward castes as a whole (Dalits, tribes, etc.) forming close to 52% of the population of India.(2) Needless to say caste oppression in India is probably the greatest injustice still existing in, and haunting, that society today. I come to this subject as an outsider (in every sense of the word, I’m a white Christian American male!) looking in not knowing the full intricacies that effect lower caste and non-caste Indians, nor do I pretend to know or try and talk about subjects that are outside of my realm of knowledge. I’m writing this essay because of a Reuters article that came out in August and that appeared in Al Jazeera which perked my interest in the subject of caste. Although I may be critiquing caste in Indian society I do not mean to degrade the great and ancient religious tradition that is Hinduism nor do I mean to impose my religious beliefs (I follow the school of thought of Liberation Theology in the Christian tradition) onto those who follow the Hindu tradition because I recognize that many Christians have done this in the name of liberating people from the horrors of caste oppression. I’m not so narrow minded and simple to think that Christianity is the answer to caste oppression in India, in fact, I recognize that even in Christian communities and churches priests and worshipers still follow the caste system and still oppress people on the basis of caste, even though they claim to have liberated people from the rigid structures of caste.(3) In order to overcome the evils of caste all Indians have to do is to just look at their own traditions (not to Christianity) in order to see that there are liberating schools of thought within those traditions, and this is indeed what many have done over the centuries, whether it was Swaminarayan (1781-1830) who got rid of caste in his community of followers, Vivekananda (1863-1902) who preached that the downtrodden needed to be uplifted and that the caste distinction needed to be rid of, or the great B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), the militant Dalit who ferociously fought against all forms of caste discrimination and latter converted to Buddhism (with 200,000 of his followers) claiming that Hinduism was so corrupt and oppressive that he could no longer consider himself Hindu. All three Indians, and many many more, fought against the caste system and/or caste distinction (all though Swaminarayan and Vivekananda were from the Brahmin caste with only Ambedkar being outside of the caste system, a Dalit), while I won’t take up the line that Ambedkar did (that Hinduism was hopelessly corrupt and evil) I will be critiquing that aspect of Hinduism. Again, as I’ve said above, I am an outsider looking in, a non-Hindu, so because of this my criticisms will not be as harsh as are my criticisms of Christianity because I don’t want to be mistaken as criticizing the Hindu religion as a whole, which is not at all my intention.

The caste system is as old as the Hindu religion itself, in fact, it even predates Hinduism by some centuries. One important thing to know about the caste system is that it was brought into the Indus Valley from the outside by a tribe of semi-nomadic people called the Aryans (the “Noble Ones”), who originally inhabited the steppe country of southern Russia and Central Asia and entered India, through the Indus Valley, around the year 1500 BCE.(4) The Aryans had a linear sense of time and had a structured caste system with three sets of castes (warrior caste on top, followed by a priestly caste, and then everyone else) and a plethora of mostly male gods, the language that the Aryans spoke was Sanskrit which latter became the basis for Hindi. When the Aryans invaded the Indus Valley the people of the Indus Valley had a religion with no caste system, a circular sense of time (hence the Hindu concept of reincarnation, etc.), and a pantheon of female goddesses.(5) The fact that the outsider Aryans introduced India to the caste system and was a warrior-centered culture that had a reverence for male gods is one of the reasons why scholars, such as Kalpana Kannabiran argue that “patriarchy is in fact the basis of the caste system and that the patterns of hierarchy, power and authority which characterise the caste system are derived from earlier forms of gender-based oppression.”(6) When the Aryans first invaded the Indus Valley they called the Indus Valley people (Indians) Dasa (Sanskrit for dark-skinned) and the three-tier caste system was morphed into a four-tier caste system called the Four Varnas (which means color); Brahmins, the priestly class were now on the top, Ksatriyas, the warrior class were now below the priests, then their was the Vaishyas, skilled labor, and the Sudras, unskilled labor. Outside of the caste system were the non-Vedic peoples and the Dalits (the untouchables). Originally the lighter one’s skin color was the higher up in the caste system one was (with the Aryans obviously being at the top of the system) and the higher up in the caste system one was the more “pure” that person was (purity was of a huge concern of the Indus Valley people with many ritual and private baths having been excavated).(7) The majority of the people in the Indus Valley fell within the lower castes which can be seen today since 77% of Indians comprise these lower castes (as well as Dalits, scheduled castes/scheduled tribes [SC/ST], etc.).(8) What this mini-history lesson shows us was that the concept of caste is a concept that was brought into India by outside forces (the patriarchical and warrior culture of the Aryans) which then incorporated itself into the civilization of the Indus Valley people through the Vedas (specifically the Rg Veda). The Aryans and Brahmins needed a system to keep themselves on top and the majority of the dark-skinned Indus Valley people at the bottom, the caste system was the perfect way to do this, and in fact this had been the case until around 500 BCE when the traditions of the Vedas and the Brahmins began to be attacked by Hindu ascetics.(9)

From around 600 BCE to 200 BCE there was an incredible Vedic development in the Hindu tradition (a philosophic development) which can be described as the “democratization of Hinduism.” Out of this philosophic development came the Upanisads (upanisad implies “sitting at the feet of the teacher,” Upa=down, Ni=near, and Sad=sit).(10) The Upanisads were focused on attaining the mystical knowledge that would free a person from “re-death” or punarmrtyu. The Brhadāranyaka Upanisad placed emphasis on the knowledge of the cosmic connection underlying ritual. “When the doctrine of the identity of atman (the Self) and brahman was established in the Upanishads, the true knowledge of the Self and the realization of this identity...substituted the ritual method.”(11) Asceticism started becoming more widespread (which was one the factors leading to the creation of the latter Upanisads) in reaction to the rigid doctrines of the Brahmin and of the Vedas. What’s important to note as that even though these ascetics were critical of the Vedas and scathing in their critiques of the Brahmins they were still very much Hindu in nature (in fact, they probably didn’t consider themselves anything else, all though the term Hindu wasn’t around then) and their philosophical teachings and thought derived from the Vedas. These ascetics denied that only Brahmins could receive bliss and escape reincarnation and stated that through giving up the world and all desires anyone, whether Dalit or Vaishya, could attain psychic security, or rather, liberation through the attainment of unification with Brahman. Out of reaction to this the Brhamins devised a doctrine called the four asramas (abodes) which dived the life of the “twice born” into four stages” which would keep asceticism in check by confining it to middle-aged males.(12)

On top of these ascetics came leaders who led offshoots of Hinduism and breakaway sects such as Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and Vardhamana (Mahavira, the great teacher of Jainism). These two leaders rejected not only the pleasures of the world, but more importantly, they rejected the claims of the Brahmins and the ritualistic Brahminic schools who claimed authority and superiority over other Hindus and Indians by claiming to be pure and to have the right to perform traditional rituals and sacrifices, as well as having the rights to interpret their meanings. While the Buddha rejected Hinduism (as well as religion) all together, Mahavira kept to the central aspects of Hinduism while abandoning the rituals that allowed the Brahmins to dominate all aspects of life. Mahavira stated that through one’s own efforts one could attain liberation and freedom from rebirth,(13) short of the Buddha, this was one of the most complete rejections of the Brahmins (and in turn their belief in ritual purity and caste) that anyone could have ever articulated.

All of this now brings us to today and to the subject of the liberation of Dalits and to the subject of my final blog in this series, a Hindu Liberationist perspective on the plight of Dalits and of their liberation from caste oppression. What disturbed me about the student protests against the further admission of lower caste and SC/ST students was that these high caste students had the wrong premise that the oppression of lower caste and SC/ST peoples was the “correct” form of Hinduism and the only form that should be practiced (all though I do recognize that some of these students could have been playing the “caste card,” claiming caste privilege in order to protect their privilege in society). Yet we have seen in the ancient history of Hinduism that caste was an outside concept placed upon the Indus Valley people by an outside tribe of semi-nomadic pastoralists, this shows us that the concept of caste didn’t grow “organically” from Indian soil but was imposed from the outside, and hence, the shedding of caste ideology and caste oppression would in a sense mean the shedding of outside Aryan domination against the Indian peoples, of course many high caste Indians still adhere to their Aryan roots and view their Brahmin status as a source of pride, not something to overcome in order to help out their lower caste and Dalit sisters and brothers. Despite the seemingly set in stone concepts of caste in the Rg Veda many Hindus over the preceding centuries fought back against the Brahminic elite and questioned the writings of the Vedas, especially the writings on ritualistic purity (a major concept in caste ideology) and on the “privileges” of the Brahmin caste. Whether it was the radical Siddhartha Gautama, who renounced Hinduism, or Vardhamana, who used acetic concepts of Hindu thought to criticize the present day establishment, thoughtful Hindus and the ever evolving Hindu religion never laid down and accepted the perverse policies of the Brahmin and their constant quest for power. Because of this we can see that Hinduism was never a monolithic religion that accepted the Vedas sayings on caste and ritual as blindly as present day Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and RSS (Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh) supporters would like us to think. History has shown us that a thoughtful and pious Hindu can be one who rejects certain ideas of Vedic thought that are oppressive and evil and history has also shown us within the Hindu tradition there has always been an ever evolving struggle for freedom against the Brahminic caste in the realm of the physical and the realm of the spiritual, such as reclaiming concepts of freedom from rebirth and attaining liberation by being joined with Brahmin. With this in mind I will now actually tackle (in part VI, the final part, of this series) the problems of the caste system and the oppressions Dalits have faced over the centuries (especially the 20th century and now) and how Dalits will be the ones to actually bring about change in this present day situation and how Dalits are the only ones to bring about their own salvation (not from outside help from people such as Gandhi or someone like myself) and how the Hindu religion plays a role in this, and how it can play a liberating role instead of the role of oppressor.

Endnotes

1. Grey, Mary, “Dalit Women and the Struggle for Justice in a World of Global Capitalism,” The
Journal of Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology 14, no. 1 (Sept. 2005): 129.
2. Ghose, Sagarika, “The Dalit in India,” Social Research 70, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 84.
3. Mary, “Dalit Women,” 144.
4. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Hinduism,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-8972 (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).
5. Kyle Dupen, Philosophy 502 World Religions Lecture (San Francisco State University: San
Francisco, CA) 26 Aug. 2005; Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Hinduism,” available at
Encyclopedia Britannica Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-8981 (accessed Oct. 28,
2006).
6. Cited by Gabriele Dietrich, “The Relationship between Women’s Movement and Dalit
Movements: Case Study and Conceptual Analysis,” in A New Thing on Earth: Hopes and Fears
Facing Feminist Theology (Delhi: Indian Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge for
Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Madurai, 2001): 217.
7. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Hinduism,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-8972 (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).
8. The Mustard Seed, “The Oppression of Shudras in India: A Marxist and Hindu Perspective, Part I,” http://www.mustardkernal.blogspot.com (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).
9. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Hinduism,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-8984 (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).
10. Dupen, Lecture, 2 Sept. 2005.
11. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Hinduism,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-59824 (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).
12. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-8984 (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).
13. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-59009 (accessed Oct. 28, 2006).