Category: Caste

Remembering Alamelu Mangai Thayarammal and her Fight for Dravidian Identity

On this day, 108 years ago, a lone woman joined a group of 30 individuals to establish the South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF), later known as the Justice Party, which laid the foundation for the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu.

On this day, 108 years ago, a lone woman joined a group of 30 individuals to establish the South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF), later known as the Justice Party, which laid the foundation for the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu.

On November 20, 1916, a gathering of non-Brahmin leaders and dignitaries convened at the residence of advocate T. Ethirajulu Mudaliyar in Vepery, Chennai. Among the attendees were distinguished figures like Pitti Theagaraya Chettiar, Dr. T.M. Nair, P. Rajarathina Mudaliyar, Dr. C. Natesa Mudaliyar, P.M. Sivagnana Mudaliar and K. Venkata Reddy Naidu, among others. Alamelu Mangai Thayarmmal was the only woman present, marking a historic yet often overlooked moment.

Her influence paved the way for many women to join and shape the Dravidian movement in meaningful ways. From active involvement in the anti-Hindi agitations during both the first (1937-40) and the second phase (1965) to dismantling the Devadasi system and advocating for self-respect and widow remarriages, women became an indispensable part of the movement.

“Women consistently played a central role in the movement,” says A.S. Panneerselvan, senior journalist and author of Karunanidhi: A Life. “It was a Dalit woman leader, Annai Meenambal Sivaraj, who conferred the title of ‘Periyar’ on Periyar. Around 200 women were active contemporaries of Periyar.”

For a long time, Thayarammal’s origins, background or even a photograph was not available. A Google search of her name reveals only her attendance at the SILF’s inaugural meeting in 1916 and a montessori school bearing her name in Chintadripet, Chennai. “Well, she might have contributed land to the school,” says Era. Chiththaanai, project officer of the Tamil Virtual Academy, which also runs a digital library.

Chiththaanai also shared a digital version of Who’s Who in Madras, 1935 – an annual periodical that was published by Pearl Press in Cochin. This edition contains a fairly comprehensive note on Thayarammal.

“Alamelumangathayarammal, Mrs., Kalhasti, M.L.C., d. of Mr. P. Krishnaswamy Naidu. b. on 25th August 1892 at Udamalpet, Coimbatore Dt, Non-Brahmin, Hindu-Balija. Educated at U. F.C. M. Girls’ High School up to the old Matriculation. m. Mr. S.0 Narasimhalu Naidu in 1900. Was given the title of “Pandithai” by Saiva Sabha, Palamcottah, in June 1911. Honorary Presidency Magistrate; Vice-President, Honorary Magistrates’ Association; Non-Official Visitor to Senior Certified School: Member, Children’s Aid Society and Madras Society of Protection to Children, Thondiarpet; Member, Madras Dt. Educational Council; Member, Secondary Educational Council, Madras Dt. Propaganda Committee; Madras Presidency Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society Committee, Madras; Madras Vigilance Association; South Indian National Health Association; Hony. Magistrate, Madras Juvenile Court, Member, Madras Legislative Council, Senate and Academic Council, Annamalai University; Vice-President, Vidhava Vivaha Sahayak Sabha; Supt., Saraswathi Balika Patasala; Hony. Secy. Brahmo Samaj (Ladies Section), Madras; Hony. Health Propagandist, Chingleput Dt. Board; and Joint Hony. Secretary, Gosha Fund; and Supervisor, Carnatic Stipendiaries; Publications: “Dravidian Religion” and “Women of Ancient Dravidian Land”. Has been and is a regular Contributor to Newspapers on topical subjects and matters of social general importance. Editor of “Dravidan” for some time. Add: 12, Tulasingham St., Washermanpet, Madras,” the note reads.

Also read: The Dravidian Model and Its Long History of Upholding Women’s Rights

The fact that she edited Dravidan, a journal launched shortly after the formation of the Justice Party in 1917, speaks of her significant role as a leader within the Dravidian movement. The journal was established to unite non-Brahmins and serve as a platform for the dissemination of ideas that challenged the Brahminical dominance in Tamil society.

The nearly 200-word note in the Who’s Who in Madras, 1935, accompanied by a rare photograph, is one of the few available resources on Thayarammal, a pioneer of the Dravidian movement, and highlights her diverse interests. The note also mentions Thayarammal as MLC, a member of the Madras Legislative Council, a position she had held from 1931.

The note also mentions that Thayarammal was conferred with the title Pandithai (the female form of Pandit) by the Palayamkottai Saiva Sabha in June 1911. This honour likely followed her speech on Dravida matham (Dravidian religion) at the Sabha. The speech was later published as a book in 1914, where she is credited with the title Chennai Pandithai. In 2023, writer and researcher K. Ragupathi republished the book, along with a few other essays on Hindu religion, reigniting interest in this pioneering leader after more than a century.

“Those who attended the release event mentioned that they were unaware of such a leader,” recalls Ragupathi. “There is a fundamental difference in the ways Brahmins and non-Brahmins worship. Brahmins practiced Ambal worship, where obedience was central, while non-Brahmins engaged in Amman worship, which was characterised by vigour and fervour. This difference was evident across South India. Non-Brahmin worship was marked by equality; there was no distribution of prasadam. Instead, they cooked together in the temple and shared the meal. Thayarammal had a deep understanding of religion and caste within the Indian context, an understanding that remains relevant today.”

Ragupathi says that Thayarammal recognised the distinct differences between the Aryans and the Dravidians. “Throughout the text, she emphasised how the Dravidians had everything long before the Aryans arrived, citing Tholkāppiyam and Tirukkural as evidence. While many leaders who spoke about caste did open important doors for understanding caste, their approach was grounded in the framework of the four varnas. Thayarammal, however, approached it from a Dravidian perspective. She believed that understanding the Dravidians had to begin with them. It is difficult to comprehend Dravidians from any other vantage point,” he explains.

Ragupathi was eager to republish the book because the Aryan-versus-Dravidian debate remains highly relevant today. He also points out how, over time, non-Brahmins have come to identify as Hindus, often being pitted against each other. “The fact that she delivered the speech in a Saiva Sabha was significant. At that time, debates were ongoing within Saiva organisations about whether to accept caste. Some Tamil Saivaites, too, were arguing against caste. It was perhaps in this context that she was invited to speak.”

In the blurb for the book published by Thadagam Publications, Ragupathi writes: “In the lineage of male figures like Ayothee Dasar, who revived Tamil Buddhism, Abraham Pandithar, who revived Tamil music, and Anandham Pandithar, who revived Tamil Siddha medicine, Thayarammal should be seen in the same light. She revived the idea of the Dravidian religion. Though historically Aryans and Dravidians were opposed to each other, the fact that both were eventually transformed into Hindus is a political irony.”

In her speech, Thayarammal makes a compelling case for Dravidian religion, asserting that it existed long before the Aryan invasion. She argues that Dravidian religion was opposed to caste, promoted equality and did not involve temples or idol worship, but instead centred on the worship of hero stones. She emphasises that Dravidian religion does not adhere to the concepts of heaven or hell, but instead focuses on the notions of good and bad.

Chiththaanai states that Thayarammal hailed from a “hugely rich family” in Udumalaipettai. “They owned lands in Chintadripet, which she donated to many institutions,” he added.

He also mentions that the Palayamkottai Saiva Sabha was “progressive.” Unlike many Shaiva Sabhas of that time, which granted memberships primarily to those from dominant communities, the Palayamkottai Saiva Sabha’s by-laws declared that people from any caste could become members. “That is perhaps why she was invited to speak,” Chiththaanai adds.

Towards the end of her speech, Thayarammal exhorts non-Brahmins to “rid themselves of their Aryan shackles, sacrifice the treacherous religion” and unite beyond caste. “May the Almighty enable the Dravidians to abandon the Aryan religion that honours only one class, and return to the Dravidian religion, which treats everyone with equality beyond caste and communal differences,” she concludes.

Kavitha Muralidharan is an independent journalist.

Unshackling the Flesh and Blood Ambedkar From the Image

Anand Teltumbde’s compelling biography offers a multi-dimensional portrayal of Babasaheb Ambedkar. It is an invitation to reassess his complex and evolving strategies for social change.

We live in a time when the deification of Babasaheb Ambedkar has brought forth devotees who would rather worship him than engage with the sheer force of his ideas and his human aspect. In this scenario, Anand Teltumbde’s reflective biography of Babasaheb breaks new ground, opening up a much-needed space for introspection. 

Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Anand Teltumbde, India Viking, 2024.

The way Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar peels back the layers of hyperbole that vested interests have imposed on Ambedkar, offers readers a chance to discover Babasaheb Ambedkar’s true legacy.

The circumstances under which Teltumbde doggedly worked on the biography – incarceration under the draconian UAPA, compounded by the COVID-19 crisis and a general state of public despondency – speak of the urgency the author accorded to the work. 

The biography not only presents an insightful account of Babasaheb; it also serves as an example for biographers on how to depict their heroes with depth and honesty through case studies that future generations could objectively learn from. 

In the preface Teltumbde declares disarmingly that he has used the same methodology that Ambedkar followed in presenting his own ‘lord’, the Buddha, in his The Buddha and His Dhamma – namely, the obligation of a disciple to his preceptor. 

The book, spanning over 600 pages, is a comprehensive work. It includes a 45-page preface, 60 pages of notes and references, a 35-page long index, and select photographs that enhance the biography.  

The narrative, structured as per the historical chronology, divides Ambedkar’s life into seven phases. To this is added an eighth phase: his enduring, posthumous impact – how, as also stated by other scholars, Ambedkar became more powerful after his death than during his lifetime. Initially neglected by the mainstream, he came to be venerated as one of the central figures of the Indian political and social landscape. 

The author examines the land struggles sparked by some aspect of Ambedkar’s legacy where his followers were eventually undermined by the ruling class’s co-option strategies. He also looks at instances where Ambedkar’s followers have compromised his legacy for personal gains, leading to the fragmentation of the institutions he painstakingly established. There is a subtle suggestion that this outcome was, to some extent, foreshadowed in Ambedkar’s own life.

Assessing the tangible changes in the lives of Dalits is a significant part of the author’s analysis. He notes that despite Ambedkar’s immense contributions, their condition remains the same vis-à-vis the non-Dalits – a tiny Dalit middle class, like the tip of the iceberg, obscuring an entire structure of hopelessness beneath. Such a candid, introspective and in-depth account of the Dalit movement is rare.  

The author also scrutinises the posthumous deification of Ambedkar’s image. He emphasises that while Dalits should revere Ambedkar, they should recognise him as the embodiment of a collective history of their movement – a history that remains unstudied for its ramifications despite a plethora of literature – to which many have contributed and which remains a work in progress.

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The first phase explores Ambedkar’s initial life journey. While the harsh reality of ‘untouchability’ was a fact of daily life for impoverished Dalits, some Dalits gained access to free English education by joining the British army during the colonial period. 

Bhimrao benefited from his father’s position as Subedar Major in the army, the highest position an Indian could reach in those days. With it came a stable financial background, English education and a new cultural environment. His father’s decision to settle in Bombay enabled Ambedkar to graduate from Bombay University. Thanks to the urban environment, association with social reformers and a scholarship provided by the princely state of Baroda, a path was created for an ‘Untouchable’ youth to achieve the highest academic qualifications from prestigious universities in the United States of America and England. It transformed an ordinary Mahar lad “Bhiwa” into the formidable Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. 

While charting these fortuitous circumstances, the author also highlights the focused, hard work put in by Ambedkar, which made him a bibliophile for life, moulded his character, thought process and ideological personality, influenced by teachers like John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman, and James Harvey Robinson. The narrative hints that these formative experiences informed many of Ambedkar’s later pivotal decisions and policies. 

The second phase charts Ambedkar’s evolution from a highly educated young man to the revered “Babasaheb” (1919-1927). Through meticulous research and newly discovered evidence, Teltumbde provides fresh insights into the establishment of the Excommunicated Benevolent Society, Ambedkar’s testimony before the Southborough Committee, the founding of the Marathi fortnightly newspaper, Muknayak, and his efforts to launch various educational initiatives. This phase highlights the emergence of Ambedkar’s distinct personality, with the author challenging inaccuracies in previous biographies, and offering a nuanced portrayal of Ambedkar’s early public and intellectual life.

For instance, while analysing the Chavdar Tank Satyagraha at Mahad he highlights the ‘upper’ caste community’s fierce opposition and the British administration’s biased stance. However, the author acknowledges the courageous support of a few Brahmin and ‘upper’ caste allies even when the focus is on describing the unwavering determination of the ‘Untouchable’ people willing to make any sacrifice for the cause. By revisiting Ambedkar’s strategic decisions,

Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt, Anand Teltumbde, Aakar Books, 2016.

Teltumbde offers a fresh perspective on how the satyagraha shaped not only Ambedkar’s leadership but also the foundational ethos of the broader Dalit movement, an aspect outlined in the author’s earlier book, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt. 

Disillusioned by the entrenched attitudes of caste Hindus in Mahad, Ambedkar began to consider religious conversion as a means of liberation for the ‘Untouchables’ while simultaneously engaging more deeply in the political arena where new opportunities for representation for Dalits were emerging. The author contextualises his pivotal decisions, critically reflecting on Ambedkar’s strategies and actions. 

Whether one agrees with Teltumbde’s critique or not, this analysis is an astute examination of the significant dimensions of Dalit emancipation. It is a timely reminder to the activist community that well-defined strategic anchors are a must in the pursuit for social change.  

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Ambedkar’s plunge into politics comprises the third phase of his journey in the biography. His legislative struggles in Bombay apart, this phase is dominated by his fierce disagreement with Gandhi at the Round Table Conference, following which Ambedkar emerged as a pan-India leader of Dalits, eclipsing many a provincial leader. 

Interestingly, the author makes the point that Ambedkar’s entire battle over the question of representation would have been unnecessary had he not been so fixated on the prevailing first-past-the-post system of election and had instead considered the proportional representation system that guarantees, at least in theory, representation to each person. 

The biography also highlights how Ambedkar was taken in by the enhanced quantum of representation of Dalits offered in the Poona Pact, which he later regretted. Ironically, he had to defend the joint electorate system for Dalits during the drafting of the Indian Constitution.

The fourth phase dwells on Ambedkar’s two contradictory approaches: a tryst with class politics through the Independent Labour Party (ILP) that he founded in the wake of the Government of India Act, 1935, to participate in the provincial elections of 1936-37; and the trajectory of a religious conversion movement. Teltumbde comments on the ILP’s electoral success in the 1936 elections, and looks at the favourable public response to Ambedkar’s historic march against the feudal Khoti system in the Konkan region and during the workers’ strike against the Industrial Dispute Act in 1938.  

It seems to the author that Ambedkar’s experiment with the caste-class struggle was short-lived. Even though he had serendipitously arrived at the correct answer to the issue of the caste-class struggle in India and, unbeknownst to him, even practised it successfully through the anti-Khoti struggle and workers’ strike, the moment was wasted. Ambedkar soon turned his focus on caste, dissolving the ILP and forming the All India Scheduled Castes Federation (AISCF). He also took the first step towards statecraft, as a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. 

The rest of the phases dwell on the 1940s and 1950s. In the political eddies that accompanied the transfer of power, Ambedkar again suffered neglect, mainly due to the AISCF’s poor performance in the council elections of February 1946. He managed to get elected to the constituent assembly from Bengal, thanks to Jogendra Nath Mandal, in the face of stiff Congress opposition. But when his seat went to Pakistan under the Mountbatten plan of partition, he was elected to the constituent assembly from Bombay by the Congress and even made the chairman of the important Constitution Drafting Committee. The book dwells on the clandestine manoeuvres behind these crucial developments. 

As is well-known, Babasaheb resigned from the Nehru cabinet in 1951 and even burst out against the attribution of having written the Constitution itself. The discussion on the Constitution and Babasaheb is informative.

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This biography fills a significant gap in Ambedkar studies, building upon past efforts to contribute fresh insights and contextual depth. Earlier biographies by Dhananjay Keer, Changdev Khairmode, and B.C. Kamble, although extensive, had limitations that have been acknowledged by serious scholars. Khairmode and Kamble’s work extended to many volumes but often lacked the critical depth necessary for a comprehensive understanding. Recent scholarship by Ashok Gopal, Akash Singh Rathore, Scott Stroud, and Christophe Jaffrelot, which has delved deeply into Ambedkar’s socio-political and ideological dimensions, has been acknowledged in this biography.

Teltumbde’s work, with its multi-faceted portrayal of Babasaheb and bold reflections, is a seminal contribution to Ambedkar studies. Unlike many a previous authors who either glorified Ambedkar or rigidly analysed him within academic constraints, Teltumbde  transcends these boundaries. He repositions Ambedkar’s life and legacy within the framework of contemporary social struggles, particularly in the context of neoliberal capitalism and class struggles that necessitate the eradication of caste. 

Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar is more than a mere recounting of historical facts; it is an invitation to reassess Ambedkar’s complex and evolving strategies for social change. The author presents Ambedkar as a figure who, despite being a product of his time, offered solutions that transcended temporal and spatial limitations. 

Teltumbde achieves his purpose by presenting Ambedkar as a human being, complete with contradictions and ideological struggles — not only as a towering leader but as someone who adapted his roles to match the changing realities of his time, even when those adaptations seemed contradictory. 

The author argues that the Dalit movement, after Ambedkar’s death, lost its direction as various leaders pursued divergent interpretations of Ambedkar’s ideology for their own gain. He discusses how Ambedkar’s ideological conflicts, particularly with communists, were weaponised to divert Dalits from livelihood-centric struggles. Teltumbde also recounts the two major post-Ambedkar land struggles in the Khandesh and Marathwada regions as rare, bright moments demonstrating the revolutionary potential of Dalits before being co-opted by the ruling class – a strategy that marked the decline of the unified Dalit movement.

Teltumbde’s narrative suggests that Ambedkar’s deification by the establishment in the 1970s was a tactical move to neutralise his radical thoughts. Prising this constructed image apart, Teltumbde reveals a more authentic Ambedkar – relentless in his mission for caste eradication and deeply attuned to the socio-political complexities of his time. 

The author reframes the challenge of carrying Ambedkar’s legacy forward in a compelling manner, emphasising that Ambedkar’s vision can be a source of inspiration at all times, but the responsibility of addressing new challenges by adapting their insights to contemporary realities lies with each successive generation. 

 Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar should have been written at least 30 years ago, when Ambedkar’s writings started becoming publicly accessible. But, instead of making strategic sense of these writings, many an intellectual fell prey to the ruling class’s enticements to produce hagiographies in which every thought and action was lauded, divorced from its context as well as goal. It only deepened the confusion in the Dalit movements about how to face the harsh reality around them. 

What was needed was to present Babasaheb Ambedkar in flesh and blood, as a person struggling with his own strengths and weaknesses to create space for Dalits, as a dreamer who longed to see his ideal society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. Dalit youths would have learnt a lot from that. Although a bit ‘late’ in that sense, this biography restores a more real Ambedkar to us. 

In sum, this book is a must read not only for Dalits but for all those who are desirous of understanding the making of the Indian republic and its future.

Rahul Kosambi is a sociologist, an Ambedkar scholar and Yuva Sahitya Akademi Awardee, 2017 for his book Ubha Aadav.

Which Hindus do Hindu Supremacists Represent in the US?

The California Civil Rights Department argues, “At least some Hindu Americans residing in California… may have interests that conflict with HAF’s purpose in this lawsuit as they may stand to benefit from the Department’s efforts to prevent and redress… caste discrimination.”

In September 2022, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) filed a lawsuit against the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) in a US federal court. Ongoing for over two years, the case is scheduled for its next and possibly final hearing on December 3. Unlike the Cisco case, this lawsuit has received limited media coverage in India and the US. This case not only connects to the Cisco lawsuit but also challenges the CRD’s legal authority to pursue caste discrimination cases.

The Cisco case

In June 2020, the CRD filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems, alleging caste discrimination faced by a Dalit employee and later moved the superior court of California, Santa Clara.

Since this was a first-of-its-kind case in the US, where courts are unfamiliar with caste-based discrimination and lack precedents, the CRD clarified about caste in its filing, “As a strict Hindu social and religious hierarchy, India’s caste system defines a person’s status based on… the caste into which they are born – and will remain until death. At the bottom of the Indian hierarchy is the Dalit… who were traditionally subject to ‘untouchability’ practices which segregated them by social custom and legal mandate.”

This single reference to Hinduism in the complaint serves as a contextual explanation rather than an exhaustive analysis of caste and its origins.

In January 2021, the HAF filed a motion to intervene in the Cisco case on three main grounds.

First, the department’s linking of caste with Hinduism could lead employers to avoid hiring Hindus, fearing potential legal issues. Second, employees may object to reporting to or working alongside colleagues of different castes, burdening employers. Third, employers may feel compelled to inquire about South Asian employees’ religion, violating employees’ religious freedom, protected under the First Amendment, by pressuring them to disclose their beliefs.

The HAF sought to intervene in the case on behalf of all Hindus in the US, arguing on the basis of utopian tenets – truth, non-injury, compassion, equanimity, generosity and equal regard to honour the divine in all – rather than on evidence.

In March 2021, the court put the HAF’s intervention on hold since the Cisco case had undergone a stay in hearings, as the defendants appealed for direct arbitration with the victim, thereby removing the CRD from the case. It is important to note that in the Cisco case, the victim did not file the complaint; the CRD filed it on the victim’s behalf. In August 2022, the appellate court rejected arbitration in the Cisco case and ruled in favour of the CRD and hearings resumed.

Also read: The Hindu Supremacist Disinformation Campaign Against the Caste Discrimination Litigation in US

HAF’s legal battles with CRD

In September 2022, the HAF filed a new lawsuit against the CRD in a California district court on similar grounds as it filed in the superior court. After nearly a year of hearings, in August 2023, the federal court dismissed HAF’s lawsuit on two grounds.

First, the HAF cannot represent all Hindus in the US and thus lacks binding authority. Second, the CRD’s efforts to end caste-based discrimination would not prevent or burden Hindu Americans from practicing their religion. However, the court allowed the HAF the opportunity to amend its filing to address the binding authority issue.

After the HAF went down in flames in federal court in the first round, it continued to intervene in the Cisco case at the Santa Clara superior court, resulting in two parallel hearings: one in federal court, where the HAF sued the CRD over its caste discrimination case and another in superior court, where the HAF sought to intervene in the ongoing Cisco litigation.

In September 2023, the HAF filed a First Amended Complaint (FAC) along with HAF-affiliated and a few non-affiliated individuals, including three anonymous ones, rather than directly sue the department. Two former defendants in the Cisco caste discrimination case, who were dismissed in April 2023, had also joined.

In January 2024, the Santa Clara superior court dismissed the HAF’s intervention, concluding that “HAF’s complaint does not allege any facts showing that CRD coerced anyone into doing something inimical to their religious convictions or otherwise prevented them from being able to practice their religion.”

The court further clarified, “The point of the lawsuit is to prevent discrimination at Cisco based on caste. It is hard to see how such a case, even though it wrongfully ascribes the caste system to Hinduism, would result in the inability of Hindus to freely practice their religion.”

In May 2024, in the federal case, the CRD challenged the plaintiffs’ use of pseudonyms, arguing that they were not legally justified. In August 2024, the court ruled in favour of the CRD, denying the plaintiffs’ request to continue under pseudonyms. Following this, the HAF filed the Second Amended Complaint (SAC) in August 2024, including the names of two plaintiffs and removing the third from the list of previously anonymous plaintiffs.

The amended complaint reiterates arguments from the original filing, asserting that the CRD’s linkage of caste to Hinduism in the Cisco case violates Hindus’ religious rights. The complaint also cites personal injuries suffered by the plaintiffs, including reputational harm, anxiety and sleeplessness resulting from the Cisco case. While there were only minor differences between the FAC and the SAC, it would soon become clear how, under the guise of protecting religious freedom, the HAF employs sophistry to obstruct justice for the victim in the Cisco case.

The CRD’s response asserts three main points. First, it contends that addressing caste-based discrimination is within its constitutional duty to enforce civil rights protections. Second, the CRD argues that the HAF’s claims of denial of opportunity, reputational harm and psychological impacts are speculative, lacking the concrete injury required for standing. Furthermore, it asserts that the HAF’s allegations of diverted resources do not constitute significant injury to establish organisational standing. Lastly, the CRD holds that the HAF’s claims under the free exercise, establishment, due process and equal protection clauses are generalised grievances without legal foundation.

Also read: Details Revealed During Hindu American Foundation’s SLAPP Lawsuit Counter Org’s Previous Claims

HAF’s contradictory stance on caste in Hinduism

Fourteen years ago, in December 2010, the HAF released a policy document titled Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste, stating: “Hindus must acknowledge that caste arose in Hindu society, that some Hindu texts and traditions justify a birth-based hierarchy and caste bias, and that it has survived despite considerable Hindu attempts to curtail it.”

This document drew strong backlash from Hindus, who argued it infringed on their religious freedom and sentiments, questioning the HAF’s authority to speak on Hinduism and insisting that all Smritis are integral to the religion. Rather than defend its stance, the HAF removed the document from its website.

Now, as the CRD pursues justice for a victim of caste discrimination, the HAF claims that Hinduism has no connection to caste, shedding ‘crocodile tears’ in defence. Had the HAF upheld its original policy document, it would have supported the CRD’s efforts rather than obstruct them.

Linking the HAF’s stance on the Cisco case with legal protections against caste-based discrimination will help us understand how Hindu supremacists have sought to keep oppressed castes under the dominance of upper castes by opposing legal protections.

Hindu supremacists always argue that caste redress is “reverse discrimination”, as seen in their opposition to SB 403, which seeks to include caste as a protected category. In the Cisco case, the HAF contended that caste discrimination is not barred, yet they label SB 403 as portraying South Asians as “bigots, bullies, rapists, human traffickers, even murderers” to justify an alleged attack on their rights. The original page was later removed.

The message is clear: Hindu supremacists deny that caste discrimination is prohibited under current laws while fiercely opposing any new legislation protecting against it, deploying extensive resources. Their aim is to keep the caste-oppressed dependent on the mercy of dominant castes rather than ensuring civil rights and human rights protections.

The HAF asserts it represents all Hindus in California, yet the CRD challenges this, noting Hinduism’s diversity and that a victim of caste discrimination in the Cisco case is also Hindu. The CRD argues, “At least some Hindu Americans residing in California… may have interests that conflict with HAF’s purpose in this lawsuit as they may stand to benefit from the Department’s efforts to prevent and redress… caste discrimination.”

Mihir Meghani, a co-founder of the HAF, claims to experienced stigma and anxiety over caste-related remarks. It is notable, however, that as a physician, he overlooks the documented impact of caste on healthcare access, as highlighted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a federal arm of the US health department. In May 2021, the NLM published a paper, Caste Exclusion and Health Discrimination in South Asia: A Systematic Review, which examines caste-based inequalities in healthcare access across South Asia.

The paper explains, “The 3000-year-old caste system is one of the oldest social hierarchies and it forms the foundation of Hindu society. This system includes four divisions: ‘Brahmins’, priests; ‘Kshetriyas’, warriors; ‘Vaishyas’, merchants; and ‘Sudras’, servants. Underneath these castes lies ‘Ati-Sudra’, Dalits, also known as untouchables.” Such information, rather than causing stigma, should foster greater understanding and encourage efforts to address these inequalities.

In April 2023, the CRD dismissed both Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella from the Cisco case and, in December 2023, removed references that linked caste to Hinduism. Despite this, the lawsuit continues because the plaintiffs claim they “suffered deep mental, psychological and spiritual injury” due to the initial association of caste with Hinduism in the case.

There is a dedicated matrimonial site in the US specifically for brahmins, the upper-caste Hindus, where many brahmins “prefer” matches within their own caste. Hindu temples openly advertise ceremonies such as the upanayanam, described as the rite where young brahmin boys are invested with the sacred thread and initiated into the Gayatri mantra, for $251.

Don’t such practices cause the plaintiffs or organisations like the HAF “deep mental and psychological injury”? If so, why aren’t these sites and ceremonies challenged, let alone subject to similar lawsuits?

The HAF’s federal case is a veiled attempt to derail the Cisco case through speculative and implausible claims of religious violation. Its argument of religious freedom infringement serves as a smokescreen to obstruct legal remedies and protections for the caste-oppressed, both in the Cisco case and more broadly.

This is not the first time that protections against caste discrimination have been challenged in court; there are established legal precedents on this issue.

In October 2022, two California State University (CSU) professors filed a lawsuit against the CSU for including caste in its anti-discrimination policy, arguing it violated religious freedom and due process. In November 2023, a federal court dismissed the claim that the policy stigmatises Hindu practitioners, noting that the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries were conjectural or hypothetical.

In February 2023, the Seattle city council in Washington state passed a law adding caste as a protected category, which was then challenged in May 2023 as unconstitutional on similar grounds. However, in March 2024, a court upheld the law, emphasising that its purpose was to strengthen anti-discrimination protections without violating religious freedom.

In each case, the state has defended the rights of those oppressed by caste. Dominant caste individuals and organisations often have the resources to oppose protections for the caste-oppressed, even though caste is a reality in the US, affecting various spheres from work places to community organisations and from dating apps to housing.

Only a federal law can truly protect the caste-oppressed from discrimination manifesting as exclusion and denial of opportunity, beyond efforts at the university, city and corporate levels.

Against this backdrop, the December 3 hearing and its outcome will be pivotal. It could not only clarify the path forward in the Cisco caste discrimination case, but also influence public opinion in favour of broader federal legislation against caste discrimination.

Karthikeyan Shanmugam is an IT professional based in Silicon Valley, California, USA.

Note: An earlier version of this piece carried an image uploaded on the X account of the Hindu American Foundation [@HinduAmerican]. It has been removed after the Hindu American Foundation claimed copyright violation. 

At Nagpur, Guns Versus Charkha, Might Versus Accessibility

A senior BJP leader, considered close to Fadnavis and in charge of handling the election in several districts, told The Wire that he has intentionally kept star campaigners away from the region he is responsible for.

Nagpur: On October 25, as Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister and five-time member of the legislative assembly from the Nagpur South West constituency, filed his nomination, his supporters wearing “DF Army” t-shirts organised roadshows across the city.

A photo of Fadnavis, aiming a rifle at a point off the frame, became these roadshows’ main prop, across town. This symbolic image of an aggressive Fadnavis intended to set the tone for the former chief minister’s election campaign.

Not too far away, the campaign of his opposing candidate from the Congress, Prafulla Gudadhe Patil, was being planned. In response to the rifle photo, Gudadhe Patil chose a charkha, a spinning wheel. Over the past few weeks, his supporters claim, this spinning wheel has come to symbolise Gudadhe Patil’s “simplicity and determination” to fight a tough battle against Fadnavis in the constituency. Gudadhe Patil says he has always maintained: “Sattecha nahi tar satyecha ladha aahe (tt’s not a fight for power, but a battle for the truth).”

Fadnavis is a seasoned politician, undefeated since 1999, but so is Gudadhe Patil.

A two-time corporator in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Gudadhe Patil had contested against Fadnavis in 2014. Amid the “Modi wave,” Gudadhe Patil had managed to garner 54,976 votes, compared to Fadnavis’s 1,13,918 votes. In 2019, the Congress decided to field Ashish Deshmukh against Fadnavis, who secured 59,893 votes. Fadnavis’s votes had dropped by 4,681 votes since 2014. Deshmukh later joined the BJP and is contesting from the Saoner seat in Nagpur district.

Gudadhe Patil claims Fadnavis’s popularity has shrunk over the years. “In 2014, while I managed to get 55,000 votes, it is to be noted that other candidates from the BSP, old Shiv Sena, and old NCP had collectively managed 25,000 votes. So, that meant 80,000 voters didn’t want Fadnavis to come to power.” Over the past few years, the political equation has changed. The NCP (Sharad Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) are now part of the Mahavikas Aghadi alliance, which the Congress is also a part of, and the BSP’s popularity has shrunk considerably. So, the fight, in a constituency with only 12 candidates, is considered to be bipolar.

‘Office hours’

The Wire visited Gudadhe Patil’s office in Nagpur’s middle-class neighbourhood, Trimurti Nagar. Every afternoon, between 2 pm and 4 pm, the Congress candidate is in his office. “People walk in with their issues on most afternoons. They have not been heard to in many years, so all I am doing right now is hearing them out. I will work out a roadmap eventually,” he claims.

Prafulla Gudadhe Patil campaigns in Nagpur. Photo: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire.

One of his party members says, “This kind of accessibility was never possible from Fadnavis. One, because he is a national leader and has several responsibilities; and two, because he has never tried to build this kind of connection with the people of his constituency.” When Nagpur almost submerged during the 2023 floods, people claim that Fadnavis was nowhere to be seen.

Besides the workers of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), journalists, lawyers, and activists from across Maharashtra and a few others from other states have stationed themselves in Nagpur. “More than the parties (MVA), we are here for Prafulla dada,” said Anil Pawar, a land rights activist from Mulshi in Pune district. Researcher Jinda Sandbhor, who is credited for leading Congress to success in Rajasthan in 2018 has also been working closely with the MVA workers in the constituency for a few months.   

‘Kept star campaigners away’

The Mahayuti, of which the BJP is a part, has been riding on the ‘Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojna’ scheme launched in July. But the pitch, over the past two weeks, has slowly shifted back to the usual BJP style of communalisation and fear-mongering. BJP’s star campaigners, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been repeating claims about “jihad” and using the communal line of “katenge toh batenge (divided, we perish)“.

A senior BJP leader, considered close to Fadnavis and in charge of handling the election in several districts, told The Wire that he has intentionally kept star campaigners away from the region he is responsible for. “They speak of things that don’t always resonate with the locals, and that can cause unnecessary derailment. Let our work in the region speak,” he said.

There is another “silent campaign” underway across Nagpur. Pamphlets, without any political symbols but clearly with a right-wing agenda, are being distributed door-to-door. These pamphlets, using indirect messaging, appeal to voters to vote for those who can put an end to “Dharma Parivartan” and work in “the interest of the OBCs.” Similar posters have also been put up outside big and small temples across the city.

‘There is another “silent campaign” underway across Nagpur. Pamphlets, without any political symbols but clearly with a right-wing agenda, are being distributed door-to-door.’ Photo: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire.

‘Father and son’

It was believed that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological mentor of the BJP, had distanced itself from the latter during the parliamentary elections earlier this year. The growing gulf was further intensified after the BJP party president J.P. Nadda had claimed in an interview that the BJP was capable of running the party and did not need any support from the RSS. But the hatchet now seems to be buried, and the organisation seems to be actively working for the BJP candidates across the state.

A senior RSS functionary in Nagpur compared the differences and the subsequent coming together of the RSS and the BJP to a “father and son relationship.” “When a father advises his son not to do a certain thing but the son goes ahead and commits the mistake, all that the father can do is wait. And once the mistake is made, the father reminds him that he had told him so. He eventually helps the son set things right.” The functionary said the RSS has done exactly that and has returned to the forefront, working across the state and also in Fadnavis’s constituency.

Gudadhe Patil, however, says the story of differences and reconciliation is all planted.

“The RSS loves to take credit for both failure and success. Who would know them better than me?” he asks. His confidence in knowing the RSS comes from the fact that his father, Vinod Gudadhe Patil, was twice elected as MLA from the BJP before he moved to the Congress. “Since my youth, I would see the RSS men come to this very office (which previously belonged to my father) and try to sell baseless ideas to my father. I would silently observe them and could tell the extent to which these men would sell bogus ideas,” he says.

Caste reading

Gudadhe Patil belongs to the Kunbi community, an OBC caste that is both numerically and politically dominant in the region. Political analysts believe his OBC identity gives him an edge in a constituency where over 70,000 voters belong to his caste group. His appeal, they feel, has transcended beyond his immediate caste group and has, over time, helped him gain popularity even among other caste groups. The constituency has over 40,000 voters from the Teli community and around 20,000 from the Mali caste. 

The BJP too has worked closely with these caste groups for several decades. In addition, they have natural voters in the Brahmin community, who make up approximately 50,000 votes in the constituency.

With no alternate option available, there is a possibility of considerable swing in the votes of the Scheduled Caste (mostly Buddhist) community, which accounts to over a lakh votes, in favour of the Congress, political analysts have estimated. Since the last assembly election in 2014, 20,000 new voters have been added in the constituency and Gudadhe Patil claims that they were all enrolled on the Congress’s booth set up across the constituency. 

‘Criticism for Bahujans only’

The Congress’s critics have a very different reading of the situation.

The fact that the Congress party has fielded the maximum number of candidates from the Kunbi community in Vidarbha would work against Gudadhe Patil, they say. To this, Gudadhe Patil responds, “No one ever asks why and how a Brahmin (Nitin Gadkari) contests from Nagpur, a land of Bahujans, and gets elected to parliament. Or, for that matter, how a Brahmin (Fadnavis) contests from here (his constituency) and later goes on to become chief minister. Criticisms are always reserved only for Bahujan candidates.”

In the past five years, Fadnavis has initiated several projects in his constituency. Among the main attractions are the indoor sports stadium, the development of ‘London Street,’ green gyms, new sewer lines, and the construction of roads. But, to enjoy them, Gudadhe Patil says, “There are no young people left here. This place has slowly become a place of retired men and women. Their children have all moved away to Mumbai and Pune in search of jobs.”

Terms Like ‘Bhangi’ and ‘Neech’ Not Grounds for SC/ST Act Charges: Rajasthan HC

High court judge Justice Birendra Kumar made this observation in a case where the petitioners were accused of using these terms against government officials during a 2011 inspection of alleged encroachments in Jaisalmer.

New Delhi: While squashing charges against four persons, the Rajasthan high court has ruled that words such as bhangi (scavenger), neech (lowly person), bhikhari (beggar), and mangani (beggar) are not caste names and their usage does not warrant charges under the 1989 Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Act.

High court judge Justice Birendra Kumar made this observation in a case where the petitioners were accused of using these terms against government officials during a 2011 inspection of alleged encroachments in Jaisalmer.

“The words used were not caste name nor there is allegation that the petitioners were known to the caste of the public servants, who had gone to remove the encroachments. Moreover, it is crystal clear on bare perusal of allegation that the petitioners were not intending to humiliate the (public servants) for the reason that they were members of Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes rather act of the petitioners was in protest against the action of measurements being wrongly done by the public servants,” the court said in its November 12 order, as quoted by Bar and Bench.

In January 2011, public officials inspecting encroachments on public land in Jaisalmer alleged that they were obstructed and verbally abused with derogatory terms by the petitioners, led by Achal Singh. 

This led to a criminal case under the Indian Penal Code Sections 353 (assault to deter a public servant), 332 (causing hurt to deter public servant), and 34 (common intention), along with Section 3(1)(X) of the SC/ST Act.

The police initially concluded there was no evidence and submitted a negative report, but a protest petition prompted the trial court to frame charges under the SC/ST Act.

The accused challenged the case in the high court, arguing that there was no basis for the charges under the SC/ST Act. They claimed ignorance of the complainants’ caste and highlighted the absence of independent witnesses to confirm the incident occurred in public view.

The high court agreed with the petitioners, noting that the allegations lacked independent corroboration.

“In the case on hand, only the informant and its officials are witnesses of the incident, no independent witness has turned up to support that he was the witness of the incident,” the court observed.

Consequently, the court discharged the petitioners from SC/ST Act charges but upheld the IPC charges, finding prima facie evidence of obstruction of public servants performing their duties.

“While there is prima facie allegation that the petitioners obstructed in the official discharge of public duty by the respondent and therefore for that act of the petitioners, criminal prosecution would go on,” the court said.

Jawaharlal’s Nehru’s Contesting Narratives on Caste, Reservation and OBCs

Nehru oscillated between ideas of class, Gandhi, colonial theories and the idea of modern India, stressing more on class.

Today, November 14, is Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary.

A narrative has been built in recent days that the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, while projecting himself as a secular and democratic champion of anti-colonial struggle, was reactionary and was against the Other Backward Classes and castes, given that he was opposed to reservation to the OBCs, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The debate surrounding OBC issues has garnered significant attention during the nationalist movement in various states. The princely state of Kolhapur, the old princely state of Mysore, and the princely state of Travancore were facing two important problems in the midst of the anti-Brahmin movement which was severely challenging the upper caste hegemony in the administration.

The first problem that they confronted were how to define backward classes or castes.

The second problem was how much reservation to earmark.

By that time, however, centennial census reports and ethnographic studies had unlocked a wealth of caste identities, leading to the formation of hundreds of caste organisations. The identification of the OBC category included individuals whose mother tongue was not English. This did not signal the end of the debate on caste, as nationalist leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, and Rammanohar Lohia, among others, continued to develop their own theories on the subject. Meanwhile, colonialists presented their seven theories on the origin of caste, contending that scriptures sanction it as the primary social structure. However, they also identified caste among various religions like Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, etc. even though Semitic or other religions disown caste as it goes against the basic grain of the religion. Lohia, a bitter critique of Nehru, was the one who justified the need for positive discrimination both through land reforms and reservation. 

Where do we locate Nehru in this debate? Did he propose a novel theory regarding caste?

How did he look at the social structure of India? Did Nehru’s caste and class overlap?

Despite being a cosmopolitan, Nehru was able to connect with the local masses due to his political engagement at the grass root level, engagement with global leaders, and firm belief in expanding democracy. He refused to shake hands with Benito Mussolini or meet Adolf Hitler. His serious engagement with the peasantry, mobilising them on tenancy, unpaid labour, rent, landlordism, and other issues in Uttar Pradesh during the 1920s, demonstrated his understanding of the peasant class. In fact, his speeches in Rae Bareli in 1930 served as a catalyst for the peasantry to initiate a movement.

During the colonial period, Nehru not only encountered caste issues, but also deviated from typical stereotypes about the origin of caste. His deep intellectual understanding of Indian culture, tradition, and social structure is evident in his magnum opus, Discovery of India, which he wrote between 1944 and 1945 while incarcerated in Ahmadabad fort. 

Although some of the social structures of traditional India are fundamentally changing, these social structures revolve around three issues: autonomous rural economies, joint families, and caste systems. Dismissing the theory of Indo-Aryan enslavement or extermination as the origin of caste, Nehru promoted a new theory – often overlooked in mainstream discourses – that each group was formed due to their specialisation in trade, services rendered, or their functional specialisation.

Nehru believed that Indian tradition, following the Indo-Aryan path, allowed freedom to each group, allowing them to maintain their culture and traditions while also accommodating new and emerging groups. This flexibility has even aided in the vertical movement of the caste system, as individuals from lower castes can rise to ‘higher’ castes due to their intellectual and philosophical pursuits.

Meanwhile, Indo-Aryans maintained their higher social status and continued to be classified as upper groups.

Also read: Nehru’s Other Indias

This specialisation has not only become a theory on the origin of caste; it even led to the formation of hundreds of ‘sub-castes’, although he never uses this term in his book. It is a fact that, like Alberuni and Chanakya, he identified four traditional castes with untouchables as a specific caste – particularly menial workers and scavengers. But they were within the caste structure, they were not part of the Anavaranacategory. Here we find a paradigm shift in Nehru’s analysis: Nehru seems to be like a social anthropologist, agreeing to the cultural reproduction of pollution and purity, social distancing, and endogamy or exogamy by caste groups.

He had serious objections to the Manusmriti because it enumerated the practice of various Dharmas, functions, and duties, but did not address the topic of rights in detail. He concluded his argument by asserting that the caste system and its associated practices in today’s society are entirely incompatible, reactionary, restrictive, and serve as barriers to progress. Nevertheless, he delved into the analysis of Buddhism and Jainism in India. The latter made concessions to the caste system, enabling it to withstand any attack. Meanwhile, Buddhism emerged from its resistance to ritualism, Vedic philosophy, and social structure, ultimately forcing it out of its native land.

One more interesting observation he makes is that Christianity, which came thousands of years later, also adopted the caste system; however, the same is equally affected by Islam in India. While documenting various aspects of the opposition to the caste system throughout history, Nehru came to the conclusion that the resistance groups themselves became caste groups over time. One more issue which is less known about Nehru is that he weighed in on the origin of the word ‘Hindu’, even though many argued that it is an Arab construct. He refers to the ancient Zend Avesta, to deconstruct this stereotype, approximating Max Muller’s argument.

Reservation and OBC

Was Nehru opposed to a caste-based census report in 1951? Was he opposed to the classification of OBCs and reservations? These are two questions that need to be addressed. In fact, the constitutional assembly witnessed severe debates on the issue of defining OBCs, reservation to SCs and STs, and minorities.

Nehru had a clear-cut position. He did not participate in each and every issue but his imprint, including that of Gandhi and Ambedkar, was very much visible. He voted for the removal of untouchability, backed the reservations to SCs and STs, and showed no resistance to the removal of reservations for minorities.

He accommodated his ideological opponents in his government – Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Ambedkar, etc. His initial response to reservations was evident in his intervention during the select committee report on the first amendment Bill in 1951. This occurred against the backdrop of the Madras high court’s decision to strike down caste-based reservations. In general, he agreed with the court’s decision, but he felt that it contradicted either explicit or implicit constitutional provisions. He acknowledged that 80% of India’s total population, comprising various groups, classes, individuals, and communities, was economically, socially, and educationally backward. To realise egalitarianism, every one of them should be given the opportunity to end the infinite multitude of social division. The Amendment Act made special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens.

The most important commitment from Nehru came when he said that, the educational, social, and material development of the backward classes is a sacred obligation that none of us can deny.

His concern for OBCs and caste identity was evident when his government appointed the Kaka Kalekar Commission to identify various OBCs, a task it accomplished by identifying 2,399 castes. Paradoxically, the commission had to function without the misleading caste census, which colonialist government had initiated in 1871 and concluded in 1931.

During the Commission’s inauguration, two issues emerged, clearly defining Nehru’s position. First of all, Nehru opposed using the phrase ‘backward class’. As the majority of the population is poor and  backward, any new identity marker would belittle and stigmatise the castes. The second issue was the caste census. Patel opposed the caste census more than Nehru, as it portrayed India as a caste-ridden society at the time. Interestingly, when different states, including the Mysore state, Kerala, Bihar, or Tamil Nadu, formed backward class committees or reclassified the OBC list during the first and second decade of independence, Nehru did not oppose it, except in his 1961 letter to the then chief ministers, where he said he would prefer empowering the OBCs through education. When he introduced the Zamindari Abolition Act, his aim was to dismantle both the caste hegemony and class power relations.

Nehru exhibited a certain amount of ambiguity, which can be observed at  two levels. On the  one hand, Nehru asserted that the caste system established the foundation for democracy, however he refused to acknowledge the role of Cholas, our own Anubhava Mantapa, and cultural syncretism, with the exception of Buddhism. Secondly, for Nehru, caste was a given category rather than a defining one. For him, it originated in Arya-Dravidian conflictual relations and he believed that India’s trajectories of development would decrease the centrality of caste.

How could Nehru, an exceptional scholar who studied everything from Huein Tsang to Plato, and from the Vedas to the Upanishads, not be able to reconcile these contradictions?

One reason is that he oscillated between ideas of class, Gandhi, colonial theories and the idea of modern India, stressing more on class. Paradoxically, his idea of modern India remained as an incomplete project and his idea of caste took a backseat.

Muzaffar Assadi is former Dean, University of Mysore, Mysore.

Arjak Sangh: A Band of Anti-Caste Atheists Battling Brahmanism in the Hindi Heartland Since 1968

The outfit, which has seen its membership decline over the years, believes that the root of society’s ills are the “lack of education” and religious hypocrisy.

New Delhi: “They reacted as if a bomb had exploded,” said Shiv Kumar ‘Bharti’, recalling the public outrage he encountered on the day he got married in a village in Kanpur in 1977.

Shiv Kumar, then 27 years old, had already spent almost a decade aligning with the principles of the Arjak Sangh when he decided to get married without any Brahmanical rituals or the evocation of Hindu gods and goddesses.

Instead, his wedding was conducted in the Arjak tradition, where there is no chanting of mantras or the presence of pandits. There is also no kanyadaan, the patriarchal ceremony where the bride’s father gives her away to the groom. The couple does not take pheras around the agni (sacred fire) and there is no mandap.

The wedding is a simple social affair, where the man and the woman read out pledge documents affirming each other as wife and husband in front of an audience. They sign the documents and click a photo in the presence of an ‘oath commissioner’ assigned by the outfit.

“They accept each other as spouses and promise to treat each other with equality, and make their life pleasant and indestructible with the vow of forever contributing to the development and prosperity of a society based on the equality of human beings,” said Shiv Kumar, recalling his own vows.

The Arjak wedding is a simple social affair. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Seventy-four-year-old Shiv Kumar’s rejection of Brahmanical tradition and rituals stems from the philosophy he imbibed at the Arjak Sangh, the tiny organisation of anti-Brahmanical atheists and humanists that has survived 56 years in the Hindi-Hindu heartland of the country.

Last year, the outfit sprung into the limelight again when, during the centenary celebration event of its chief idealogue, the late Ram Swaroop Verma, senior opposition leader and Ambedkarite Swami Prasad Maurya launched a scathing attack on Brahmanism and the caste hierarchy.

Maurya utilised the stage to further his own ideological agenda of questioning the sanctity of the Ramcharitmanas, one of the most popular Hindu epics, just months ahead of the big launch of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

“The roots of Brahmanism are very deep and it is also the cause of all disparities. There is no religion called Hindu. Hindu dharma is just a deception. In true sense, it is a conspiracy to trap the Dalits, tribals and backwards of this country in the web of their religion by projecting the Brahman dharma as Hindu dharma,” Maurya said at the Arjak Sangh event in August 2023.

His utterances may sound too radical for a mainstream politician in the Hindi belt, especially under a government ruled by the Hindutva-based BJP, but they were in sync with what the Arjak Sangh has been propagating since June 1, 1968, when it was founded in Uttar Pradesh by a bunch of Left-oriented socialists led by Verma. In fact, in 1978, members of the Arjak Sangh had even publicly burned copies of the Ramcharitmanas in a historic protest.

The founders of the Arjak Sangh believed that while political change had empowered the working classes and castes post-independence, true change would only come with social transformation, as society was still plagued by unscientific and blind religious beliefs, superstition and caste-based discrimination.

Shiv Kumar was just 18 when he was inducted to the Arjak Sangh by Verma. A socialist politician and social reformer who had founded the outfit along with other anti-caste socialist thinkers, Verma also happened to be Shiv Kumar’s uncle.

Shiv Kumar Bharti in Bihar in February on the birth anniversary of Babu Jagdeo Prasad, considered a socialist icon by the Arjak Sangh. Photo: Special arrangement.

Last year, Shiv Kumar was elected national president of the outfit, which although much diminished in its resources and size, still commands a prime position in the anti-caste realm, primarily due to its radical emphasis on scientific values and the rejection of all things associated with orthodox Brahmanism.

The Arjak Sangh advocates humanism, rationalism, scientific temper and education for all through a society where caste hierarchies cease to exist. The outfit believes that the root of all ills in our society are “lack of education” and “pakhand”, which in simple words translates to religious hypocrisy.

At its core, it denounces the idea of a supreme being. Its followers are atheists who reject all forms of god, goddesses, idols and the traps of heaven, hell, afterlife and re-birth.

While the organisation used to be very popular, especially in the 1970s and ’80s, today it has around 15,000 members, spread across many states. Its branches operate in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, where they hold regular meetings, dharnas, marches and discussions.

This year, it launched a nation-wide campaign for reforms to the country’s education system. The ‘national education policy’ demanded by it envisages providing education that is uniform, free, humanist, comprehensive and based on scientific values.

It calls for a restriction on the entry of or intervention by social or religious organisations in the field of education. It proposes that the country’s education budget correspond to its expenditure on defence and advocates the compulsory teaching of nationhood, citizenship, maths, geography and the achievements of science at the primary education level.

Most strikingly, the Arjak Sangh’s education blueprint states that there should be complete rejection of superstition, re-birth, destiny and fatalism, caste, discrimination and miracles at all levels of the education system.

Their philosophy can be summed thus: “Rashtrapati, DM ka beta ya nirdhan ki ho santan, bhed bhav pakhand rahit, shikhsha muft va ek samaan.” It translates to, “Whether it is the son of the president or a district magistrate or the offspring of a poor person, education should be free, uniform and without any discrimination or dogma.”

The Arjak Sangh is also in favour of the equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. “Do baatein hai, moti moti, sabko izzat sabko roti” (There are two broad things, respect and food to all).

Ram Swaroop Verma and Maharaj Singh Bharti: the two main ideologues of the Arjak Sangh

Much of what the Arjak Sangh believes in is traced from the writings, ideas, books and orations of two socialist politicians and reformers – Verma and Maharaj Singh Bharti. Both hailed from a farming background and belonged to what are today described as OBCs.

Verma was a Kurmi from Kanpur Dehat and Bharti a Jat from Meerut. They were staunch opponents of Brahmanism and orthodox Hindu faith built on the caste system.

Ram Swaroop Verma (left) and Maharaj Singh Bharti (right). Photos by arrangement.

Verma, today remembered as the main ideologue and face of the outfit, was elected MLA six times from rural Kanpur. He also served as the finance minister of UP under the government of Chaudhary Charan Singh in 1967. ‘Mahamana’ to his followers, Verma had listed “Manav Dharm” as his religion, UP state assembly records show.

Bharti was a national council member of the Samyukta Socialist Party and was previously associated with the Congress. He was elected as a member of the UP legislative council in 1958. In 1967, he defeated three-time sitting MP and former decorated military officer Shah Nawaz Khan of the Congress to win the Lok Sabha election from Meerut.

A Sangwan Jat, Maharaj Singh was an agriculturalist from a zamindari family. He focused on educating farmers on agricultural issues and eradicating casteism, authoring almost two dozen books. He adopted the name ‘Bharti’, drawing from the freedom struggle. Today, several Arjak members, including its president Shiv Kumar, use the surname ‘Bharti’. This is partly also because this allows them to shed their caste identity. Shiv Kumar’s original surname was Katiyar.

Bharti’s main principles were centred around the creation of a society based on scientific values and outlook. “He viewed religious malpractice as a big source of exploitation,” said his grandson Manish Bharti. Following in the tracks of his grandfather, Manish is also a staunch atheist and agriculturalist.

Manish said his grandfather went beyond the usual criticism of the Brahmanical system, debunking it through rational reasoning and offering solutions to these questions through a scientific approach.

Despite only receiving basic education, Bharti thrived on compressing complex scientific concepts for the understanding of the layperson, in their vernacular language. As MP, he introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha on the freedom of religion, proposing that children be taught about all religions till the age of 18. Once they hit the age of maturity, only then should they be allowed to choose a religion of their choice.

Manish said his grandfather led by example. He did not conduct the kanyadaan of his daughter and clearly stated in his will that after his death, Parliament must not refer to him as “swargiya” (one who has gone to heaven) while mourning him, and nor should they maintain two minutes of silence for “atma ko shanti” or peace to his soul. These ideas went against his principles, Manish said.

Bharti was also influenced by Marxist and Leninist philosophies. To better understand Russian literature, he even learnt Russian – one of the six languages he knew – from the wife of a Russian diplomat in Delhi, said Manish.

An illustration printed on the cover of an Arjak Sangh book. Titled ‘Brahmanvad’, it depicts a tree meant to be cut whose parts symbolise Brahmanism. Photo by arrangement.

Humanist society in place of a Brahmanical society

The Arjak Sangh believes in building a humanist society where people are equal and treat each other equally. It endorses inter-dining and inter-caste marriage and stands against discrimination and untouchability. “The Arjak Sangh wants to establish a Manavvadi [humanist] society in place of a Brahmanical one,” Shiv Kumar said.

‘Arjak’ literally means one who earns his or her living through physical labour. In other words, it denotes farmers, manual workers, labourers, artisans and all kinds of creators.

It views physical labour as supreme, acknowledging its role in production and construction. Only Dalits, OBCs, tribals and Muslims – the Arjak communities – are allowed to become members.

Shiv Kumar felt that at the core of Hinduism is Brahmanism, created and sustained solely for the benefit of Brahmins.

“Shouldn’t all followers of one religion be equal? How can it be a religion if people of the same religion are not considered equal and don’t marry each other?” asked Shiv Kumar.

He states other examples to underline this aspect of discrimination and hierarchy within the Hindu religion towards the downtrodden castes and Dalits. Dalits are still beaten for riding horses during weddings processions, maintaining moustaches or wearing neat clothes, and are urinated upon by members of the so-called upper castes.

Verma considered Brahmanical sanskars (rites) as ‘tools of exploitation’ and believed they were designed to ensure that the priestly castes enjoyed the pleasures of life without any physical toil.

A diagram of two trees side by side, labelled as ‘Brahmanvad (Problem)’ and ‘Manavwad (Solution)’, acts as a visual representation of the Arjak objective.

The first picture shows a farmer in a dhoti chopping down a tree (Brahmanvad). The tree’s roots are labelled as rebirth, its trunk as fatalism, its branches as the Varna system, its leaves as castes, its flowers as discrimination and its fruits as oppression. On the other end, a person is seen watering a different tree named Manavvad. The roots of this tree are materialism, trunk equality, branches democracy, leaves socialism, flowers happiness and fruits prosperity.

A man stands in front of an ‘Arjak Gate’. The ‘two trees’ can be seen on either side of the gate. Photo: Special arrangement.

Calendar of secular festivals aimed at weakening sway of religious rituals

Since its inception, a major challenge for the Arjak Sangh was the grip of religious festivals and rituals over the lives of people, especially the backward castes and Dalits. Well-aware that it would be difficult to completely detach people from the idea of festivals, Verma provided an alternative set of festivals and rites cut off from Hindu tradition.

Today, the Arjak Sangh calendar comprises 14 “humanist festivals” which celebrate the birthdays and death anniversaries of icons of social change, constitutional milestones of the country and agricultural seasons.

Apart from celebrating Independence Day and Republic Day, the Arjak Sangh remembers March 1 as Ulhas Day to mark the harvest of the rabi crop and October 1 as Labh Day to celebrate harvest of kharif crops. Buddha Jayanti is Manavta Diwas, while Ambedkar Jayanti is Chetna Diwas. The birth anniversary of Dravidian thinker E.V. Ramasamy, immortalised as Periyar, is celebrated as Vivek Diwas.

The Arjak Sangh’s foundation day, June 1, is observed as Samta Diwas. It commemorates the death anniversaries of Jyotiba Phule (Shakti Diwas) and Babu Jagdeo Prasad (Shaheed Diwas) as well as the birth anniversaries of Birsa Munda (Jagriti Diwas) and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Ekta Diwas).

After Verma passed away in 1998, the outfit started celebrating his birthday (August 22) as Kranti Diwas. Bharti’s birthday (November 3) is honoured as Science Day, a testimony to his struggles toward the promotion of scientific temper.

The Arjak Sangh allows its followers to participate in only two sanskars – a marriage ceremony and mourning for the dead. Verma believed that these rituals were essential for humankind and its social existence.

How Arjak weddings are conducted has already been described above. The second sanskar pertains to death and mourning. Instead of elaborate Brahmanical rituals, Arjak members conduct a ‘shokh sabha’ on the seventh day after death. Mourners gather to remember the departed and the family is provided a ‘death certificate’ recording how and when the person died. The Arjak Sangh strongly opposes the expenses incurred by Hindus in post-death rituals, especially mrityu bhoj (feasts) held in the memory of their dear ones.

Shiv Kumar pictures this as a “big net of rituals” spread by the Brahmanical system to cash in on everything from birth to death.

“From the charpoy to the utensils, mattress, cows and buffaloes belonging to the deceased person; all had to be given to the Brahmins, who said they would give it to the dead in heaven,” said Shiv Kumar.

“Verma ji understood that these rituals were about the exploitation of the arjak by the non-arjaks and caused them a financial burden,” he added.

Jitendra Patel, 33-year-old Congress worker from Ambedkar Nagar, married in the Arjak tradition last year. He said that in the past, the organisation had used wedding ceremonies as platforms to criticise Brahmanism and spread their worldview.

“They knew that a large number of people attend such personal affairs. So they began putting up a stage with a microphone and went all out against Brahmanism, in the garb of the wedding ceremony. I didn’t agree with this because people of all kinds attend wedding ceremonies,” said Patel.

The Arjak Sangh celebrates its silver jubilee in Lucknow on June 1, 2018. Photo: Omar Rashid.

State support to religious dogmas remains a challenge

Shiv Kumar sees caste hierarchy as an impediment to the country’s progress. “Just like a field that is uneven does not produce a good harvest, a society that is not equal cannot produce a strong nation,” he said.

The Arjak Sangh today remains a fringe movement. The charm of Hindutva and Hindu cultural identity remains a social and political challenge. Starker expressions of communal identities over the years have been encouraged by the rise of political Hindutva, especially with the coming to power of the BJP.

Some scholars have termed the inclination of marginalised Hindu castes towards strident Hindutva as the ‘saffronisation’ or Hinduisation of the marginalised castes. This has coincided with the stagnation and decrease in the political power of Ambedkarite parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which could have provided the Arjak Sangh with the relevant ideological ecosystem to sustain itself and grow.

Shiv Kumar rues that the Indian state has actively supported religious ideas and outfits. The mass lighting of diyas on Diwali in Ayodhya and the annual state-sponsored kanwar yatras – where government officials shower flower petals on pilgrims and even massage their feet – are just two instances in recent times when the state has indulged Hindu believers for political goals.

The kanwar yatra, according to anecdotal evidence, is predominantly attended by OBCs and Dalits. This comes as a concern to the Arjak Sangh.

Over several conversations with Shiv Kumar, I sought to know from him why these communities find Hindutva so fascinating and have not been able to wriggle out of the clutches of Brahmanical Hindutva if it is so oppressive.

His responses were pessimistic. The spirits of heaven, hell, destiny, re-birth and afterlife have only gotten stronger in the hearts of the people, said Shiv Kumar.

“People are told that in their previous life they didn’t do enough ‘punya’ and ‘daan dakshina’ (religious charity) and that is why they are poor and were born into a low caste. That is why they face all the suffering. If in this life, they do some daan dakshina and dharam karam (religious acts) as per the path shown by the pandits, they will not only find heaven, but also be born into a richer and higher caste in the next life. Their minds are filled with this on a daily basis. They are entangled 365 days a year, making them believe that it is real.”

Shiv Kumar pins the blame on influential people and political icons in furthering these beliefs among the masses. He refers to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks in 2014, when he had explained Lord Ganesha’s having an elephant’s head as an instance of plastic surgery in ancient times.

In 2023, ISRO chairperson S. Somanath reportedly claimed that algebra, square roots, conceptions of time and aviation were among the knowledge already available in the Vedas much before they were claimed as discoveries by the Western world.

While the current government has played a big role in promoting Brahmanical ideas and a Hindutva view of life, the previous governments  have also done so.

Arjak Sangh members outside their office in Kanpur Dehat. Photo by arrangement.

At the root of this is that the Indian state has been inclined towards Brahminical ideas and has nourished them in a number of ways, argued Shiv Kumar.

Indira Gandhi, for instance, had called for state-sponsored celebrations of the 400th year of the writing of the Ramcharitmanas, something that Verma vehemently opposed at that time.

“If the state supports a scientific way of life, the society will also think that way,” said Shiv Kumar.

After Verma’s death in the 1990s, the Arjak movement started declining amid the absence of a charismatic leader. His shoes have been too big to fill.

Frequent police cases and arrests also started deterring people from participating in Arjak activities. On April 30, 1978, on Verma’s call, Arjak Sangh volunteers burned copies of the Ramcharitmanas and Manusmriti in Kanpur Dehat to build awareness among the masses, in one of its historic moments that is still talked about in the ‘social justice’ circles of North India.

Shiv Kumar was himself jailed as he had been brave enough to put his name on the pamphlets distributed against the Ramcharitmanas.

For his troubles, he was suspended for five years from the post of lecturer in a senior secondary college, but was reinstated later by the Allahabad high court.

“There was even an attempt on my life inside prison from those whose sentiments were hurt,” said Shiv Kumar.

On the other hand, he said, whenever Arjak Sangh people go to file cases against what they say are objectionable materials being disseminated about lower castes through religious sermons and text, they are not entertained.

“They don’t lodge our FIRs even if our complaints are based on upholding constitutional values. Our people started breaking away due to the criminal cases and threats of being jailed. Earlier, there was not much torture in the police stations. But today we find that every police station has a temple,” said Shiv Kumar.

The Arjak Sangh has no restrictions on food as long as it is not banned by the law. They do not consider the cow holy.

Shiv Kumar explains that the Arjak Sangh’s atheistic views are not based on the rejection of Hindu deities, but on a deeper conviction towards believing in material things and disowning beliefs that have no evidence.

“We believe in what exists. A stone exists, so we believe in it. God doesn’t exist, so we don’t believe in it. Heaven doesn’t exist, so we don’t believe in it. Those who believe in god are actually nastiks. They believe in what doesn’t exist. If astronauts and scientists can go all the way to the Moon, why have they never been to heaven?” asked Shiv Kumar.

Manish felt the Arjak movement did not grow as it became stuck in the rut of exposing Brahmanism, something that Ambedkarites were already doing efficiently. Lack of funds, poor membership and weak organisation also prevented the outfit from becoming more visible and organising bigger events. Manish said the rigid approach of the outfit’s old guard is partly to be blamed.

“New people are not connecting with us. The Arjak Sangh is unable to connect with the new generation due to its lacklustre rhetoric and ways of communication,” he said.

Jitendra Verma added that the movement has also been consumed by the very demon it stepped out to exorcise: caste sentiments.

Since Verma was born into a Kurmi backward caste peasant family, over time, the Arjak Sangh has also come to be associated mostly with the community, limiting its appeal among others.

But on the other hand, it is also true that the outfit remains popular among Yadavs, Kachis, Koeris and Lodhis.

Arjak Sangh members with Shiv Kumar Bharti (extreme right) in Auraiya, UP during a recent event as part of the outfit’s campaign for reforms in education. Photo: Special arrangement.

Shiv Kumar felt that the penetration of caste identity is a result of a growing jati bhavna (caste sentiment) that makes people latch onto a leader of their own caste. As a consequence, today, even within the Arjak Sangh, members pick their icons according to their caste. Kurmis mostly celebrate Verma’s birthday, while Koeris remember Shaheed Jagdeo Prasad on his shaheed diwas. Yadavs celebrate Lalai Yadav’s jayanti. Saini and Mali castes remember Jyotiba Phule and Pal, while Baghel and Gadaria shepherd castes remember Periyar.

Patel also argues that the BJP’s dominance over the political narrative has kept its opposition busy with the task of tackling Hindutva, thereby reducing the available workforce and ideological faculties to sustain a cultural movement against Brahmanism.

The Arjak Sangh prohibits members of political parties or caste-based outfits or mahasabhas from affiliating with it, in a bid to remain non-political. This “rigid” stance restricts membership, felt Patel, whose decision to join the Congress was not taken positively by the outfit.

“The RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] does not restrict its members from participating in any political party work. It does not impact their ideological work. It only helps them,” said Patel.

Shiv Kumar views caste identity as a form of Brahmanism.

“Those who want a Hindu rashtra and give preference to Hindu dharma are the ones providing support to this rise of castes. Till castes remain, Hindu dharma will stay. Hindu dharma is nothing other than castes. Keeping the caste system is the main business of Brahmins and Hindu dharma,” said Shiv Kumar.

Given the socio-political environment it works in, the Arjak Sangh is often accused of being anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. Its detractors say it does not talk enough about the social ills in other religions.

Shiv Kumar argues that before talking about others, it is best to reform one’s own society.

The Arjak Sangh also does not get enough credit for its efforts towards changing mindsets due to the slow nature of these processes. Its role in watering the field for the political growth of Kanshi Ram and his BSP is also understated.

Many Arjak thinkers, including Manish, believe that the rise of Kanshi Ram and his outfits, and eventually, the BSP, led to the downfall of the Arjak Sangh. Since their ideologies aligned to a large extent, the organisational and political heft that the BSP mustered allowed it to woo those opposed to caste, including Arjak-aligned people.

Shiv Kumar, however, felt that the Arjak movement’s impact is there to see, especially in the way different castes behave with each other. There was a time when people would refuse to sit or dine with people of other castes, he said.

“Vermaji gave people the mantra to implement a manavvadi sanskriti through interaction, and sitting and dining together. Due to the Arjak Sangh’s movement, even ‘chota se chota aadmi‘, who is called inferior and lowly in the Brahmanical system, ends wedding processions and feasts in our area. The charan sparsh (touching of feet) of Brahmins has also reduced.”

But this does not mean that people start following the Arjak Sangh blindly, added Shiv Kumar. Their conviction towards the Arjak way of life must be based on evidence and rationality not mere affiliation. “Jano, tab mano,” goes one of the Arjak Sangh’s principal ideals. First understand, then believe.

The ‘Steel Frame’ of the Nation Is Crumbling. Is Anyone Listening?

Sardar Patel called civil servants the ‘steel frame of India’ – but recent incivility by a few has cast doubts on its integrity.

As a postcolonial nation, we are fond of launching into diatribes against the colonial ideology – using snappy phrases like ‘civilising mission’ and ‘the white man’s burden’ – and asserting our commitment to decolonisation. But every now and then we end up exhibiting how superficial and hollow the whole project has been.

Wittingly or unwittingly, we disclose our full subscription to the principle that served as an axle for the genocidal juggernaut of colonialism – the principle of inequality. Recently, three civil servants were found brazenly doing what they are under oath never to do in public life – harbouring casteist, classist and sexist opinions about people they are duty-bound to serve and allowing those opinions to influence how they discharge their duties. Their egregious behaviour, reflective of a deep rusting of “the steel frame”, must have had Sardar Patel, who christened them so, turning in his grave.   

The first incident took place in the office of Neha Kumari Dubey, the Mahisagar district collector. She was approached by Vijay Parmar, a law student from the Dalit community, during the state government’s taluka-level, grievance redressal programme. The programme, held on October 23 at Lunawada, was ironically named SWAGAT (welcome). In an unwelcoming tone, the administrator was briefly seen and then heard in a viral clip, berating the student who questioned her inaction regarding his  brother’s complaint launched months ago and if his grievance would meet the same fate. In a do-what-you-want gesture, an angry and ‘insulted’ administrator asked him to go to the apex court and then got the security officer to strip the complainant of his mobile phone. What happened next is deeply disturbing and alarming. Dubey was heard making comments about harmful stereotypes around the Dalit community and women in the context of the alleged misuse of statutory safeguards available to them under law. Sitting in her office of power, she allegedly aired a contentious view that about ‘90%’ of registered cases of atrocities were fake, motivated to ‘blackmail’ ‘non-SC/ST’ people for different kinds of vested interests. She didn’t back her opinion with facts or data. Dubey applied the same logic to cases filed under section 498A of Indian Penal Code (IPC) which protects women against marital cruelty. In so many cases, she said, the complainants’ husbands committed suicide due to the ‘torture’ they had been put through. Her loose-tongued bravado that began with expletives ended with “these kinds of nonsense people have nothing…(else to do).” However, she wasn’t scared of such people or their complaints, she concluded. After protests by many groups and Dalit organisations for her suspension, the administrator issued an amusing statement which, apart from invoking the criminal cases against the two brothers, claimed that Parmar was hiding his misdemeanour by putting forward his community and that the administration “never supports casteism/separatism”. 

The second case pertains to a senior IAS officer in Rajasthan, Gayatri Rathore, who was heard ostensibly asking an unemployed youth what sounded like a rhetorical question: “Did you consult the government before being born [as to whether you’ll get a job in time?]” In a video that has since gone viral, the senior bureaucrat – recently appointed to the health department – can be seen outside the Swasthya Bhawan in Jaipur, surrounded by the press and job aspirants handing her their representations. Visibly outraged, perhaps by the media attention or the rallying crowd of unemployed youth, she shot back when a young man – worried about exceeding the age limits for the posts – pleaded with her to intervene.

The third incident might not seem as uncivilised because of the absence of any obscene verbal exchange that marked the other two episodes, but it wasn’t less so on that account. It framed an encounter between Tina Dabi, the 2015 UPSC topper and the district collector of Barmer, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Satish Poonia, the former obsequiously and repeatedly bowing her head with folded hands while greeting the latter upon his arrival. Not long ago, Dabi was at the centre of a media spectacle, peremptorily asking Barmer shopkeepers to ensure cleanliness around their shops, else she would get them sealed.

The simultaneous emergence of these acts of incivility by civil servants – duty-bound to work with empathy, efficiency and impartiality – raises questions about the scale of corrosion within the steel frame and the erosion of the constitutional values they are meant to embody. Are these instances exceptions to the norm, or is it the reverse? Has the system always been so corroded, or has it been influenced by shifting socio-political climates? These are not rhetorical questions.

The appalling conduct highlights two problems – the utter derision among the elite for the toiling masses and a corresponding scale of sycophancy towards those in power. The real question is what kind of reading these officials must have done to familiarise themself with the existential realities of this diverse and complex country in the run up to the UPSC exam. More importantly, what are their training academies doing to wean them away from harbouring such gross ideas? However, they cannot be faulted beyond a point, in view of the government’s policies like lateral entry to the services among others. The root of the malaise lies somewhere else and before probing it, let’s analyse the implications of the language these bureaucrats used, humiliating in the first two instances and cringe-worthily unctuous in the third. 

Callously calling a majority of cases related to caste-based violence as motivated is reflective of the upper-caste disgruntlement with the statutory safeguard accorded to a community which has suffered the worst kind of oppression for centuries. This reaction, not merely against the safeguard but against the accordance of human dignity and equality, has found most hideous expressions in the history of independent India – the most pronounced being the two gory anti-reservation riots that rocked Gujarat in 1981 and 1985 and in the anti-Mandal mania.

It is even more striking that the officer (Dubey) branded a majority of women, who courageously took their assaulters to court, as malicious and sadist. The language used by her stereotypes not just their immediate referents, but entire communities as intellectually lesser beings and immoral for being born ‘unlawfully’. Especially the term ‘harami’, the illegitimately begotten, maligns a great multiplicity of communities and cultures in which a woman’s sexuality is not policed and birth of human life is not legitimised by the demands of wedlock.

The vicious jibe of the second officer (Rathore) to the beleaguered youth derides a class of people with the Churchillian insult of breeding like rabbits. Linking the accident of birth to one’s unemployment and then using that skewed logic to categorise people can only be imagined by a colonial mindset. What is worrisome is that such characterisation of the ‘other’, has been in vogue and expressing it in a competing scale of incivility, starting from the public offices to drawing rooms, has become a national sport.

Also read: What’s Behind the Lure and Abuse of IAS?

Where does this incivility come from?  

Historian Aishwary Kumar attributes this to the ‘neodemocratic’ condition that inheres a neoliberal hatred of the poor and the underprivileged and collapses identity politics in the conventional sense.

The insidious workings of the neoliberal order makes it difficult for the privileged sections to forge their identity in solidarity with fellow human beings. As a result, identities are curated today in the regimes of indifference, a regime that drives its subjects to disregard ‘the undesirable’ while being interested in its destruction. Equipped with such a self-contradictory mindset, these people then proceed to forge their own majoritarian identity which becomes the norm. However, these privileged coalitions of identity, in the process, end up bereft of any language of humanity, morality, constitutionality.

The neoliberal era, thus, becomes not only a witness to the ‘eviction’ of the wretched of the earth from their ‘home’, both material and symbolic, but even constitutes what Matthew Desmond calls “…a traumatic rejection…a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.”

Indeed, in recent history, we saw this kind of eviction taking place at a macro level in the turmoil created by legislations surrounding citizenship and subsequently in the short-noticed national lockdown, proclaimed by invoking the provisions of colonial-era Epidemic Diseases Act (1897). What is pertinent to note here is the fact that the translation of the evicted into disposable beings was ‘written’, legally and legibly, by the same institutions of governance and state power that were responsible for their welfare and protection. In the atrocious aporia of democracy, as Etienne Balibar reminds us, the evicted and the excluded are ‘produced’, by disciplinary/institutional mechanisms and a perverted politics of representation, as ‘abnormal’ or monsters on the margins of humanity. 

However, neoliberal order in India, to my mind, is too young to distort the collective unconscious, if it wasn’t already so, in such fundamental ways. Digging deeper, one would realise that the despicable attitudes of the civil servants stand firmly on the discriminatory ground, laid over millennia by manipulations of ‘caste’ in the broader sense of the term in which Isabel Wilkerson uses it. Caste essentially sustains on the denial of equality. Dr. Ambedkar described it impeccably when he said, caste constituted “…an ascending order of reverence and descending order of contempt.” The contempt the two officers exude towards subaltern groups and the reverence the third oozes for her political master can be explained only by the insidious and invidious manoeuvres of caste.

These manoeuvres spawn and feed on a vicious politics of identity, whereby one contrives one’s superior identity by maligning and stereotyping the identity of the other. In this process of calculated denigration and dehumanisation, the other is invested with traits and essence in contrast to which one’s sublimity gets curated.

Historically, caste has carried out such otherisation by belittling the bodies, skills, knowledge and world-views of the underprivileged sections of Indian society. Today, it is achieved by something as innocuous as asking a citizen to keep her mobile phone out when she steps into a public office. With no statutory sanction for it in any rulebook, such an injunction strips a citizen of constitutionally guaranteed equality at the outset of her interface with the state. At times, this happens in settings as enlightened and egalitarian as an institution of higher education. Secondly, caste is also sustained, as Dr. Ambedkar brilliantly observed, by gatekeeping of female sexuality, by an unfailing observance of endogamy. Thus, a woman transgressing caste boundaries for a relationship is considered loose and her offspring, by a logical extension, inferior; a harami, born without consulting the (casteist, colonial) state. And a culture which endorses such a convention automatically becomes backward.

Finding fault with the uncivil officers as individuals is naïve for it’s not them but the hydra-headed demon of caste, sexism, neoliberalism and colonialism within them which is blabbering indecencies in public space. They are just dummies of a dangerous ventriloquist, which makes them forget that India had chosen a path to self-conception, fundamentally different from the ethno-nationalist trajectories of European nation-states.

To ensure equality and dignity to all citizens and to build a strong nation, the constitution had killed that ventriloquist juridically and entrusted the responsibility of calling the canker’s political and ideological endgame to various institutions, guarded by the proverbial steel frame. But the task of guarding the frame itself was devolved to educational institutions, which have failed in doing their job.

During the quarter of a century since freedom, Indian universities have worked overtime to produce generations of citizens in whom inequality as an overarching worldview has sustained in one form or the other. As a result, today we have independence, not swaraj; we are a sovereign nation, but with her fragments invisibilized, whom Partha Chatterjee calls “the outside” of the political society, the riffraff who cannot make effective claims on governance. Our failed education system has spawned a bunch of people, the dummies of caste and neoliberal orders, who cannot even frame the right question when confronting a complex situation, just like the senior IAS officer in Rajasthan.  

In the aftermath of national lockdown, when I asked a group of postgraduate students in my online poetry circle what they thought of the blood-curdling tragedy in which 16 migrant workers, on their way to Bhusawal, got run over by a goods train, everybody fell eerily silent. When probed further, having briefly expressed sympathy for the ‘unfortunate’ victims, they began to complain about why they were travelling and not following the norms of ‘social distancing’ – a phrase used throughout the pandemic by everyone, including the state, despite its connotation of caste apartheid. Wasn’t it in everybody’s interest that the lockdown was declared? How was it possible that they decided to sleep on the tracks and not anywhere else?

I wasn’t shocked because these were the questions being asked in all bourgeois spaces. Nobody could ‘see’ that they were not consulted beforehand or were seen through by the state, that they were the hands that literally ‘built’ the nation, that their frantic cries for help on social media and news portals went unheard. After the second wave of pandemic ended, I was speaking to a class of law students at an elite university. The discussion veered to the plight of migrant workers who walked thousands of miles during the lockdown to their homes in rural India. Most of the i-Pad wielding millennials in the class felt that it was a necessary step, and the suffering of over one-crore migrants was an unavoidable by-product of the ‘greater good’. These students were the steel frame in the making. Being purblind to one’s motivations is the hallmark of a puppet and nation-building is not a puppet show. Are the makers of steel frame listening?

Hemang Ashwinkumar is a bilingual poet, translator, editor and cultural critic based out of Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Would Narendra Modi Consider Dr B.R. Ambedkar an ‘Urban Naxal’?

In cautioning us at the threshold of the making of our constitution, when he stressed that were the goals of equality, and fraternity not achieved, the whole democratic experiment could be in jeopardy, was Ambedkar declaring himself a potential ‘urban Naxal’?

At the conclusion of the drafting of the Indian constitution, the chairman of the drafting committee, and its chief architect, Dr.B.R. Ambedkar noted: “On 26th January, 1950, we are going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.”

Seventy five years from then, these contradictions continue to plague the realm.

Socially, vast numbers of citizens remain ostracised on the ground. In large parts of rural India as well as remote urban corners, inter-marrying and even inter-dining among castes can draw heavy punishment.

The principle of “purity” – an esoteric concept which has little to do with hygiene – still afflicts highly educated and highly placed scions of the upper castes.

Not long ago, a judge of a higher court had the entire premises of the court “purified” with “Ganga jal” (holy waters of the Ganga river) because the preceding incumbent had been a Shudra.

Despite constitutional guarantees, Hindu places of worship often remain out of bounds for sections of Hindu society.

The list of exclusions is long and may not be belaboured.

Daily newspapers continue to give us stories of young men suffocating in poisonous drains while sent to clean them without the equipment they ought to have for the job, while the honourable prime minister once instructed the nation how these citizens know that they are performing a higher, spiritual function.

In economic life, some 80% of Indians have negligible representation at levels of control in structures of power, be it in educational institutions, bureaucracy, high-powered commissions, or any other state institution of clout, including law-enforcement and the judiciary.

Ambedkar’s prescient observation thus continues to be valid as Indian rockets hit the moon and as expatriate Indians achieve high proficiency and material status in foreign lands

In thus cautioning us at the threshold of the making of our constitution, when he stressed that were the goals of equality, and fraternity not achieved, not to speak of liberty, the whole democratic experiment could be in jeopardy, was Ambedkar declaring himself a potential ‘urban Naxal’?

If not, why is it then that when Rahul Gandhi and many millions of concerned and public-spirited citizens who hold fast to a constitutional regime underscore the very same posers that Ambedkar had left us with are dubbed “urban Naxals” and enemies of the nation by no less a person than Prime Minister Modi?

Is it the case of the state that the contradictions that Ambedkar had underscored have been resolved, leaving no residues of social and economic inequality?

If not, does the constitution forbid parties and individuals from raising these matters as the substance of their public duties and public ideals?

Dividing Hindus

Right-wing sophistry currently propagates that invoking these matters is motivated by the sinister conspiracy to divide Hindu society.

Question: was there a time when Hindu society was not divided?

Were that not so, why, pray, would no less than the chieftain of Sanatan society, Mohan Bhagwat express publicly the honest lament that for two thousand years “we” (meaning the upper castes) have treated them (meaning the Shudra samaj) like “animals”.

After that candid acknowledgement that it is not some others – and not the Muslims – who have caused divisions among Hindus but Hindus themselves, what doubt remains on this score?

It is not a likely caste-census advocated by most non-savarna segments of Hindu society which therefore threatens to divide Hindus; they have been already divided for millennia on end by the religious establishment and instructions of the twice – born.

If castes had not existed, why, pray, would Ambedkar have felt compelled to give us his treatise on The Annihilation of Caste, one which the custodians of Sanatan who are now up in arms against never really took up for implementation?

The fact is that these custodians do not ever mean to rid Sanatan society of caste divides, only to conceal them; this for the reason that so much of their hegemonic interest of the material kind rests on the internal divisions of he Hindu society.

Thus, should a caste-census truly happen, the unlovely skeletons of the Sanatan formation may tumble out, leading to the grievous distortion that, after all, it is not Muslims who are the enemies of Sanatan but the Sanatan arrangement itself.

What wonder then that a Rahul Gandhi or Akhilesh Yadav who seem to have such a census on their agenda have become the bêtes noires today of the Sanatan; and what better way to further malign them than to dub them “urban Naxals” who mean to dismantle the Sanatan state.

And, for the same reason, the Sanatan which at one time refused to accept the Ambedkar constitution finds it expedient to accuse the duo of using the constitution to their devious unravelling purposes.

Meanwhile, the minuscule leadership from among the non-Brahmanical castes who find themselves today in positions of authority have a difficult call to take: do they continue to collaborate with the Sanatan or do they go over to the side of those who seek to effect a scrutiny of facts on the Hindu ground.

That they seem at ease in keeping their counsel on the rabid sectarian blasts now unleashed by the right-wing without let or hindrance, or the least regard for the injunctions of the constitution is there for all to see. A secular Nitish Kumar seems to have no difficulty with the Hindu Swabhiman Yatra now being conducted across Muslim-inhabited areas of Bihar by a Union minister, Giriraj Singh, who has no doubt sworn an oath on the constitution never to discriminate between castes or creeds. And so forth.

Nor do institutions of state commissioned to uphold the foundational values of the constitution seem in any hurry to intervene as a gale of majoritarian invective greets the nation every day across the Hindi belt.

Even as a canny media relentlessly sees the virtues of current-day governance to the exclusion of any merit in critiques of its warts and moles.

Think: if Socrates was made to drink hemlock, what is a Rahul Gandhi or an Akhilesh Yadav? Ambedkar had said a constitution will be only as good or not as the people charged to implement it. A prophetic enumeration of our times indeed.

Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

‘Offensive to the Community’: Dalit Leaders, Scholars Slam Adityanath for Saying ‘Harijan’

Dalit activists and scholars said that the outdated term’s use reflects Adityanath’s upper caste mindset.

New Delhi: Dalit leaders and scholars have condemned Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath for referring to the Dalit community as “Harijan,” a Gandhian term that’s not only considered patronising by the community but has also been denounced by the parliament as well as the highest judiciary. In 2017, the Supreme Court had observed that the term ‘Harijan’ was often used by the ‘upper castes’ for members of the Dalit community as a term of “insult, abuse and derision.”

In his eagerness to reach out to the Dalit community on the occasion of Diwali, Adityanath on October 31 while addressing an event in Gorakhpur, appealed to people in the state to celebrate the festival with those who were unable to afford to light diyas in their homes. “This morning, I was in Ayodhya, where I went to a ‘Harijan basti’ (loosely translated as a Dalit slum) and distributed sweets, diyas (earthen oil lamps) and oil. I also shared the happiness of Deepawali with them and greeted everyone there,” said Adityanath.

That Adityanath chose to say ‘Harijan basti’ instead of ‘Dalit basti’, caught the attention of opposition leaders who criticised the UP chief minister for using a word that’s considered derogatory by the Dalit community across the country.

Nagina MP and Aazad Samaj Party–Kanshiram president Chandra Shekhar Aazad reminded Adityanath that the Union government had issued an advisory to all state governments asking them to not use the word “Harijan” for Scheduled Castes in 1982. Aazad, in a post on X, said that in 2010, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had banned the word by issuing new guidelines. “Is chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who occupies such an important constitutional post, not aware of these decisions? Or are the people of Scheduled Castes being insulted deliberately through the word ‘Harijan’,” asked Aazad.

The young Dalit MP used the occasion to take a dig at Adityanath’s ‘batoge toh katoge’ remark that was aimed at uniting Hindus. “Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who gave the slogan ‘batenge toh katenge’ (if divided, we will be cut) in election rallies, is himself dividing the society into ‘Harijans’ and ‘non-Harijans’ on social, cultural and religious platforms. Doesn’t the use of this word ‘Harijan’ endanger his so-called Hindus,” asked Aazad.

Former Uttar Pradesh leader of opposition and Ambedkarite politician Swami Prasad Maurya said the word ‘Harijan’ used by Adityanath had been banned by the Union government as well as by the courts. Despite this, by using a “divisive” word, Adityanath was not only ignoring established norms but also ruining the slogan ‘batenge toh katenge’, said Maurya, who is the president of the Rashtriya Shoshit Samaj Party.

The word ‘Harijan’, which means ‘children of god’, was popularised by Mahatma Gandhi to refer to those who were then referred to as the ‘untouchables’ under the Hindu caste system. It conferred on them a sacred identity.

Historian Ramachandra Guha, who has written several books on Indian socio-politics centred around Gandhi, in a 2017 article in The Telegraph wrote that the word ‘Harijan’ had first been used by the mediaeval poet-saint Narsinh Mehta, whom Gandhi admired. In 1933, Gandhi even renamed Young India, a weekly newspaper edited by him, as Harijan. He believed that the campaign to abolish untouchability was as vital as winning political freedom, wrote Guha.

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With Gandhi’s endorsement, the word ‘Harijan’ quickly gained currency and among the Hindu middle class as well as in the nationalist press, the untouchable community were regularly referred to as ‘Harijans’, wrote Guha. However, the reference was rejected by B.R Ambedkar, who felt it was derogatory and deceptive.

Dalit activists and scholars The Wire spoke to, view Adityanath’s reference to ‘Harijan’ with similar derision and say that it reflects his ‘upper caste’ mindset. Rampur-based Ambedkarite Dalit scholar and author Kanwal Bharti said the word ‘Harijan’ was derogatory as it imposed a communal ‘identity’ on Dalits. Not only did Ambedkar vehemently oppose it, Swami Achootanand, the 20th century anti-caste reformer, even dedicated a bhajan against the word ‘Harijan’ in 1928 or 1929, said Bharti. After Independence, ‘Harijan’ continued to be used by Congress party leaders and workers to refer to people from the Dalit community and even Dalit leaders such as Jagjivan Ram, former deputy prime minister, used the term, Bharti said.

Ajay Rawat, assistant professor in the department of sociology at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow, said the term ‘Harijan’ was laced with a religious identity whereas the anti-caste movement in the pre- and post-Ambedkar eras involved challenging the “ishwari satta” or divine power and the denial of God. ‘Harijan’ denoted a “sentiment of benevolence” towards the untouchables from mainstream society, said Rawat. “It was a name given by god so that the mainstream society would accept them,” he said.

Dalit activist from Uttar Pradesh, Bhawan Nath Paswan, criticised Adityanath for referring to Dalits as ‘Harijan’ and argued that the word had no relevance or meaning.

“Even the Parliament ended the practice of using it. No implication can be drawn out of ‘Harijan’. It means we are the people of Bhagwan. But in truth, we are all humans born to humans,” said Paswan. He feels that ‘Harijan’ is used to insult Dalits and reflects a “corrupt mentality.”

“When a word has been abolished by the parliament and the tradition of using it has come to an end in the society, nobody should use the word, be it a prime minister or a chief minister. Untouchability was created by man, god has nothing to do with it,” said Paswan, president of the Dr. Ambedkar Rashtriya Ekta Manch.

Mayawati, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and arguably the most politically successful Dalit leader the nation has ever produced, has over the years objected to the use of the word ‘Harijan’ and argued in favour of referring to the community as either Dalits or Scheduled Castes. The term Dalit, which means broken or oppressed, came into wider usage after being adopted by a group of radical anti-caste Dalit activists, the Dalit Panthers, in Maharashtra in the 1970s. Today, it is a political term used to refer to communities under the Scheduled Castes, and often, if not always, meant to include Scheduled Tribes.

At an election rally in Haryana in October, Mayawati reprimanded a senior leader of her ally Indian National Lok Dal for using the word ‘Harijan’ for Dalits. Mayawati pointed out that the term used for Dalits in the constitution was Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and not ‘Harijan’.

The former UP chief minister narrated an incident from 1977, when she was a first year law student in Delhi University, to illustrate the pervasive use of the term ‘Harijan’. Mayawati said that in 1977, Dalits from across the country held a three-day ‘Jati Todo Sammelan’ in Delhi to express their anger over the Janata Party, which came to power, not fulfilling its promise of electing Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram as prime minister. Even the Congress had not made him prime minister, said Mayawati. She was invited to speak at the 1977 event as a representative of the youth. Mayawati recalled that at the event, all Janata Party leaders were using the term ‘Harijan’ for Dalits. “I told them, on one hand you are talking of breaking caste, while on the other you are using the term Harijan. If we take it positively, ‘Hari’ means Ishwar (god). We are ishwar ki aulad (children of god). So does that mean the others are shaitan ki aulad (children of the devil),” asked Mayawati.

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According to MP Aazad, this question is relevant even today. “Adityanath ji should tell us if the people of Scheduled Castes are ‘Harijans’, then if the rest of the people are not the people of ‘Hari’, then whose people are they,” asked Aazad.

Dalit activists also say that while Dalit caste names such as ‘Chamar’ and ‘Pasi’, which are often also used as insults by casteist people, denote caste groups, the term ‘Harijan’ does not address any Dalit caste and therefore has no purpose except for insult.

In 2017, a division bench of the Supreme Court, while quashing an order granting anticipatory bail to a person in Bihar accused of insulting a Dalit woman, noted that that words ‘Harijan’ or ‘dhobi’ were often used “by people belonging to the so-called upper castes as a word of insult, abuse and derision.” The apex court said, “Calling a person by these names is nowadays an abusive language and is offensive. It is basically used nowadays not to denote a caste but to intentionally insult and humiliate someone.”

While ‘Harijan’ is deemed an insult, in the hinterlands, it is commonly used by all communities, including some Dalits, to refer to themselves, in particular the Jatav or Chamar sub-groups. Bharti said that over time, with the usage being promoted by the Hindu Right, ‘Harijan’ has started becoming synonymous with the Valmiki community.

Vikram Harijan, an assistant professor who teaches ancient and mediaeval history at the Allahabad University, said that many people like him, especially from the Chamar and Jatav communities, still continued to use ‘Harijan’ as their surnames. In particular, people from the ‘Chamar’ community in West Bengal’s Asansol freely use this surname, said Harijan, who spent his formative years in a coal mining colony in the eastern Indian city.

There was a fundamental difference between Adityanath referring to them as ‘Harijan’ and the common usage of referring to the community as Dalits, said the professor. “The difference is that ‘Harijan’ was a name given by the upper castes. That is why it is often on their tongue. On the other hand, Dalits used the term ‘Dalit’ for themselves. It was a word they picked for themselves,” said Harijan.

He said that he has faced problems and discrimination all his life due to the easily identifiable nature of his surname. “Usually, to fight discrimination, Dalits hide their names and identity. But I took ‘Harijan’ as a term of pride after both upper castes and other Dalit communities hated this word. It became about my ego and I stuck to the name,” said Harijan.

He also explained that while ‘Harijan’ was discouraged by both the governments and judiciary, its use was embedded in common practice, while the word ‘Chamar’, the largest Dalit community in the country, was often used as a derogatory, casteist slur. “Gandhi gave this word and the upper caste Congressmen used it widely. And today it has become a practice of ‘commonsensical knowledge’,” said Harijan, who added that in future he planned to adopt the surname Ambedkar.