DMK’s Rajadharma: Reviving caste inequality

October 31, 2010 9:47:28 PM

Sidharth Mishra

Some Dalit intellectuals could take umbrage at your reporter having an opinion on the issue pertaining to their community. Dalit Vimarsh (dialogue), which has emerged as one of the most powerful trends in contemporary Hindi literature, has two strands. The first and the older strand, which includes even the redoubtable Premchand, consists of authors writing profusely and powerfully on the Dalit issues irrespective of the fact whether they were born into a Dalit community or not.

The supporters of this school at a seminar few years back gave example of the celebrated Kannada writer UR Ananthmurthy, whose novel Sanskara deals with the issue of untouchablity with utmost sensitivity and it has earned him fame worldwide. Ananthmurthy is a Brahmin born in Karnataka and his birth disqualifies him, according to the other school, to be acclaimed as a writer on Dalit issues.

There is a very strong lobby of writers of Dalit descent, which claims that only those born as Dalit could be the right and true exponents of Dalit literature. Their thesis is based on the belief that only those born as Dalit undergo and understand the true sufferings of the societal dysfunction. Therefore, the proponents of the second school claim that true Dalit literature could emerge only from the true sufferers.

The second school is definitely isolationist in approach and the very idea of literature as the tool to sensitise the sensibilities would get lost, if those from non-Dalit communities were discouraged from writing on the Dalit issues. The second school runs counter, in my perception, to the line taken on the issue by one of the most celebrated Dalit columnist Chandrabhan Prasad.

In his famous essay Reinventing Macaulay, Prasad writes, “Our lies about Macaulay: Was Macaulay attempting to create ‘Intellectual slaves’ for the British Empire? Yes, if we just read the following: We must at present do our best to form a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” We, in a most mischievous manner, present the above quote, twisted, taken out of context, and thus, present Lord Macaulay as a villain. No, if we read the full paragraph as originally available in his February 1835 “Minutes” on Indian education. “It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”

While Prasad has taken downward filtration as the scheme for empowering Dalits, the intellectuals would do well to adopt the process of reverse osmosis to sensitize the non-Dalits to leave behind their age-old biases and see merit in Dalit individuals. Such process, however, gets vitiated when DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi defends Union Minister A Raja’s corrupt dalliances using the Dalit shield.

Following reports appearing in The Pioneer and other sections of the media and the uproar it caused in Parliament, pressure mounted on the DMK to sack tainted Telecom Minister A Raja. His mentor Tamil Nadu CM M Karunanidhi last week came to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and when found himself cornered over allegations against Raja, the DMK patriarch played the ultimate political card — Raja is being targeted because he is a Dalit.

Worried over repeated disruptions in Parliament over 2G spectrum scandal and allegations of Raja's direct involvement in the scam, the Prime Minister broached the topic in his 30-minute meeting with Karunanidhi. The DMK patriarch reported to have told the Prime Minister that there was no evidence to prove Raja's complicity in the scam and refused to agree to any proposal to drop him from the Cabinet. Putting up a strong case for Raja, Karunanidhi also reportedly told the Prime Minister that removal of Raja at this stage will amount to admitting that he is guilty. This would cause serious embarrassment to the DMK.

And to save his party and himself from the embarrassment of admitting Raja's guilt, Karunanidhi decided to use the Dalit shield. Emerging from the meeting, the DMK patriarch did not look very happy, but he ruled out all possibilities of Raja's removal from the Cabinet and said that the Minister was being targeted because he was a Dalit.

Now this once again brings us back to Chandrabhan Prasad and his essay Reinventing Macaulay. Prasad writes that while submitting the draft of the Indian Penal Code, Lord Macaulay maintains in his covering letter: “It is an evil that any man should be above the law, it is still a greater evil that the public mind should be taught to regard as a high and venerable distinction the privilege of being above the law.”

Prasad also refers to Macaulay's speech in the British Parliament while debating Charter Act 1833. Macaulay is quoted as saying, “the worst of all systems was surely that of having a mild code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, while there was a severe code for the Shudras, who sprang from his feet. India has suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from the deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. God forbid that we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we should send her a new breed of Brahmins.”

Karunanidhi's defence of Raja's indefensible acts of omission and commission seeks to create a new breed of Brahmins, which the Dalit movement all these years has opposed. Dr BR Ambedkar, the tallest of the Dalit icons, fully endorsed equality before law. It was time that the Dalit intellectuals came forward to counter contaminated arguments forwarded by likes of Karunanidhi in defence of corruption.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/254806/DMK%E2%80%99s-Rajadharma-Reviving-caste-inequality.html