I got a small booklet in the Bodlein Library (Oxford University) which gets Dalit Voice. The booklet is by a woman, Miss Louise Ouwerkerk, who was Biritisy by birth but of Dutch origin. The Oxford University Press published it in 1945, and it needs wider circulation. I went to the OU press, and they said that we could re-print it in India. I am quoting some portions from the booklet.
SLAVES OF INDIA
It insists that the Dalits should have a separate identity away from the alien Aryan Hindus and they also should have their own media, which the DV has been advocating for several years.
The Untouchables of India form the largest subordinate racial group in the world.
There are other groups whose subordinate position, involving as it does social disabilities, economic weakness and political inequality, resembles that of the Untouchables, for instance, the Blacks in the USA, the natives of South Africa, the Jews in Nazi Germany. The problems of such groups have attracted attention among thinking peoples of the world over. Yet numerically they did not compare with that of the Untouchables.
There are 12 million American Blacks. There are 6 million South African native. There were less than 3 million Jews in pre-nazi Germany – there are not more than 16 million Jews in the whole world.
There are, according to the census figures, nearly 41 million Untouchables in India, 40 million in British India, 9 million in the Indian States.
The Untouchables are the menials of India. They are the performers of unclean tasks, the landless labourers in the fields, and the – unskilled workers in towns. Whatever work is mean, or degrading or drudging is done by the Untouchables. They are the people who are considered so inferior that even their touch defiles, and they must be kept at a distance, segregated, excluded from the ordinary life of the community. And they are born to their task. For they are part of the caste system, unique to India, which fixed a man’s social and economic status by the group into which he is born.
STRUGGLE WITHIN STRUGGLE
But the Untouchables are an emergent group. India, like all Asiatic countries, is struggling towards a more modern outlook and organization. Under the impact of Western ideas of democracy, liberty and human equality, the old static social system is being called into question, and in particular the system that denies rights and opportunities to one-eighth of the nation is being challenged. Social reformers have long tried to do something for the Untouchables, but now the Untouchables are beginning to do things for themselves.
Here we have a struggle within a struggle. India is struggling for nationhood, for equality with other nations. The Untouchables are struggling for equality within the nation. While their struggle is in one way part of the great national upsurge in India, in other ways it cuts right across that struggle while they are ready to struggle for the freedom of the nation, they are equally ready to fight for their own freedom with those of their countrymen who oppress them.
DV CRY FOR “MEDIA CENTRE”
And indeed, some of their leaders frankly say national freedom is not worth winning if their own social and economic subordination is to continue. The emergence of the Untouchables as a separate group with clamorous demands for equality is an important social phenomenon in India. it is impossible to understand what is happening in India at the present- day without undertaking the problems of the Untouchables.
A social and political struggle affecting 41 million people (now 300 million in 2001) is of no mean order. It has, however, affected relatively little attention outside India. That is partly due to the cold fact that the Untouchables are desperately poor, have no money to publicist themselves and few educated leaders to give voice to their aspirations.
(Look at the importance of our own media for which our Editor has been crying for several years, and his cries remain in the wilderness unheard and unconcerned by the real beneficiaries, but the enemy has understood the danger of Dalits having their own media).
Those who know something of the problem are apt to think of it a purely domestic problem, which Indians must somehow settle between themselves. But the principles underlying the struggle are of worldwide significance, for it is part of that immense upsurge of the underprivileged, which is the key to the social upheavals of our time. We can no longer afford to be indifferent to the domestic problems of other nations, if the war has taught us nothing else it has taught us that the affairs of each are the affairs of all, and that we cannot pass by on the other side.
TRIBUTES TOIDR. AMBEDKAR
Commending Babasaheb Ambedkar, the author wrote: Dr. Ambedkar’s views carry great weight, both with his own community and with the outside world. He considers that the Scheduled Castes as quite apart from the Hindu community and will not call himself a Hindu. He is strongly critical of Gandhi for wishing to preserve the caste system with the Harijans as the fifth caste. He believes that the salvation of the community will come through self-help, and lays great emphasis on educated leadership… It was at the Round Table Conference that the demand for separate electorate for the Depressed Classes was first but forward. The question arose in the Minorities Committee, over which Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald presided, and of which Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar were prominent leaders. Dr. Ambedkar in making his demand challenged the claim of the Congress to represent all communities. And stated that he only desired the transfer of power if all classes, including the Depressed Classes, had a chance of sharing it.
Gandhi protested the separation of the Untouchables from the rest of Hindus. And declared that he would far rather Hinduism died than that Untouchability lived.
On the last few pages, the author raised certain valid questions and these are:
GANDHI’S MISCHIEE
“Is the problem of the Untouchables insoluble? Must it always create divisions and bitterness? Can the Untouchables ever win social and economic equality? And even if they do so, must they ever remain a distinct body, or will they ultimately be emerged into the general community so that their separate identity is forgotten?”
“The Untouchable problem presents a dilemma. If they insist on their separatedness, there is the danger that they will perpetuate the social division between them and the caste Hindus, and thus stabilize a position, which might otherwise disappear under the pressure of social and economic change. This is what Gandhi feared when he exclaimed at the Round Table Conference that Dr. Ambedkar’s proposals meant the perpetual bar- sinister. On the other hand, the social structure of Hinduism is very strong and is proving resistant to change if the Untouchables remain within Hinduism. There is the danger that their progress will be slow and limited in extent, and they may remain perpetually the fifth caste dependent on and patronized by their high-caste brethren.
DR.KLY’S CALL
It is the writer’s considered opinion that, whatever be the cost of the unity of the country, the progress of the Untouchables be surer and speedier if they insist on their being separate identity.
Dr. Y.N. Kly in his book International Law and the Dalits of India (Dalit Liberation Education Trust, Madras, 1989) had strongly argued that Dalits must insist that their identity is a distinct ethnic nationality and should constitutionally recognized as such within the territory of India so that the UNO could directly intervene whenever human rights violations take place against the Dalits. Now that the identity of Dalits is within the Hindu fold and their religion also is Hinduism, which was imposed upon them by the Presidential Order of 1950. Unless Dalits go for religious conversion their religion is still Hinduism.
RELIGIOUS CONVERSION
The Blacks in the USA and the Blacks here in the UK are different from the Whites and they claim that they mutually are separate. Will the Dalits understand and open their eyes? There are two ways before them, either go for religious conversion or demand for a constitutional amendment to re- establish their separate ethnic nationality within the territory of India. They must go to the UN; they must do a lot of spade work within India and outside the country. But above all they must first educate their brothers and sisters on the philosophical burning thoughts of Dr. Ambedkar and that will lead them to a total revolution, revolution within their minds and hearts, then revolution within their different communities, revolution inside the workplaces and finally revolution on the streets.
This was exactly what the General Secretary of the WCC, Dr. Konrad Raiser, told our Editor when they met at Bangalore a few years ago. Dr. Raiser told our Editor that the world did not hear the cry of the Dalits outside the boundaries of India just because we did not and still, we do not have a media of our own except the only Dalit Voice,
