Ruth Glass’s (London) ill-informed article in the July-August ‘Monthly Review’ on Indian Dalits is in danger of perpetrating one of the most insidious stereotypes of the Indian people – as being too enveloped in traditional religiosity, misery and apathy to offer any hope of revolutionary action.
She says the caste system has become all-pervasive and so class struggle is nowhere to be seen; Dalits are degraded, the toiling masses are divided, the reservation system is worse than useless, and the oppressed are victims rather than the makers of history. Let me suggest an alternative perspective:
(1) To see only the surface of the current wave of “atrocities on Harijans“, (as the Indian press calls them) neglects the other side of the story the increasing fight for their rights by this most oppressed section of Indian society, a fight that goes on through class organizations, caste-based groups, sometimes spontaneously and without any organizational backing. Behind every case of atrocity that I know of is some such struggle, and in this sense “atrocities” are not simply senseless, traditional victimization, but are the clashes and casualties in an ongoing class (or “class-caste” as some would prefer) war. Take Gujarat. A major sparking event was the December murder of Shakrabhai, a Dalit youth (according to some, an activist among agricultural labourers) in a village near Ahmedabad, and the subsequent march of 20,000 organized by the Dalit Panthers. This both forced the arrest of the Patels accused of being responsible and heightened tension between Dalits and Patels throughout the district, leading the entire Patel community to throw their weight behind the anti-reservation agitation. Nor have the Dalits really lost the Gujarat round of warfare, though they suffered heavy casualties. In Gujarat, where the Left and progressive forces are weak, they stood practically alone – yet it has been made clear that the reservation system cannot be broken. In Ahmedabad city itself, they could defend themselves against the united attacks of the Hindus, the police and the press. In the textile mills, they could organize the first strike since the 1930s. Ruth Glass sees in this strike only the awful schism between Dalit and savarna workers. But the split was not created by the strike it self, it was already there, a social reality, and in the face of this social reality – the organization of the strike by Dalits, for their own survival, was a step forward in breaking the hold of the reactionary Majdoor Mahajan which has prevented class struggle in the mills since its establishment. In the process, an important transformation of consciousness has occurred, symbolized by the adopting of the word Dalit, meaning downtrodden. This is not simply a negative term: The consciousness of being oppressed, the open recognition of social reality, is the first step in the fight against oppression. Gujarat marked the death of Gandhism, an essentially conservative, illusion creating and integrative ideology, among the low castes. During its agitations, Dalits could see every major Gandhian spokesman in the State, from the leaders of the Majdoor Mahajan to Vinoba Bhave’s Sarva Seva Sangh, turn against them. The only one to speak out against the atrocities was Ela Bhatt of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), and she was expelled from the Majdoor Mahajan for her intervention. With the Gujarat riots, the oppressed low castes ceased to be Harijans and became Dalits. Increasingly, this transformation of consciousness is going on throughout India. As ideologies like Gandhism die, new ideologies that are now open to Dalits everywhere are mainly some version of either Ambedkarism (following the militant Untouchable leader B.R. Ambedkar) or Marxism, both of which call for a total transformation of the system.
(2) Similarly, the division of the working class is only half the story. “Gandhian” Gujarat was the worst situation. In neighbouring Maharashtra, where the Left is still relatively weak but there have been strong democratic and anti-caste movements, the situation is one step ahead. Caste divisions have not prevented militant working class actions, for example the now 11 month old strike of 250,000 Bombay textile workers, which includes both Dalits and savarnas. Workers are still divided by caste, outside the factories in the slums, tenements and villages, but there is an increasing consciousness that such divisions have to be overcome, that caste oppression itself has to be fought if the working class is ever to become a real “vanguard” of the oppressed. When the Marathwada riots took place in August 1978, the first organized response included not only demonstrations by Dalit Panthers in various places, but also a march by Bombay workers on September 1, that included the demand to rename the university. Four months later, an organization of mainly tribal agricultural labourers in Dhule district mobilized an “equality march” that brought thousands of tribals, labourers walking 50-80 miles to join a rally against casteism. The following year various Left parties and Dalit organizations came together in a “Long March” involving over a 100 thousand people in demonstration and satyagrahas to push for the demand of renaming. When the Gujarat riots took place, there was again almost immediate reaction in Maharashtra, and marches of up to 10-15,000 took place in Bombay and district towns held by both Dalits organizations and Left parties; a Reservation Defence Committee was later formed that included all Left and Dalit organizations. Of course there are ambiguities and weaknesses in these unity efforts The ambiguities, for example, were evident in a conference of Marathwada sugar factory workers (mainly Hindus) held after the riots: try as they would, the Communist organizers could not convince them to agree to a resolution supporting the renaming of the university – but they did, and still do, stoutly uphold the reservations system. As for weaknesses, no one is as well aware of their limitations as the organizers of such efforts: united demonstrations against the caste system, supporting reservations, for renaming etc. go on, but Hindu participation is still very limited. The point though is that such efforts are going on, and broadening. As for the vast and increasingly turbulent countryside of India, while caste divisions are one side of the story, the other is a growing organization of poor peasants and agricultural labourers in which Dalits are often in the vanguard. In fact it is because of this that the atrocities frequently take place. Dalits, for example, were a major force in the 1979 march of 300,000 agricultural labourers organized by the CPI; and they are today the main force of the Naxalite-led “peasant leagues” spreading in several Bihar districts unstoppable after years of police repression, atrocities, and murders of leading activists. In all these cases, while caste continues to be an “obstacle”, it is hardly an absolute one, and other sections of the rural poor are joining and yes, some times also dying in the struggle.
(3) Glass tries to depict the struggle over reservations as simply a meaningless furor, arguing that in fact they perpetuate the system. The facts show otherwise. There has been a slow but steady increase in Scheduled Castes in higher posts, a slow but steady spread of education and access to jobs. In process, a Dalit middle class, with roots in the rural and urban poor, is coming into existence and stabilizing its position. To be sure this is an uneven process benefiting some Dalit castes more than others. To be sure, the majority are still impoverished labourers, perhaps worse off economically than ever. No system of reservations in limited jobs in a capitalist system can end poverty, nor can they destroy the caste system. Reservations were not intended to do this, not in the minds of those who fought for them. They were intended to break, or at least limit, the monopoly hold of higher castes in the economic field, i.e. to allow a Dalit middle class to form. And this has happened. Of course, such a middle class is as socially ambivalent as petty- bourgeoisies the world over: a large section of it simply wants a comfortable place in the existing system, would like to forget the degradation from which they came, and help the Ruling Class in spreading illusions about this system. On the other hand, circumstances rarely allow them to forget their caste identity and its social-economic basis totally – and some section of this Dalit petty bourgeoisie is providing militancy and leadership for the broader struggle. And this of course terrifies the Ruling Class in city and countryside. For these reasons, reactionaries in India have very real reasons for wanting to destroy the reservation system and Dalits and democratic forces have every reason to maintain it.
(4) Finally a word about why this is happing now. The current atrocities and mass rioting are not simply a perpetuation of the traditional system, but reflect the growing socio–economic crisis and the changing relations of production, particularly in the countryside, where capitalist transformation is producing an increasingly proletarianized section of agricultural labourers and poor, peasants who are fighting both the remnants of traditional landlords and the post-independent rising kulak class. Dalits are the most militant but not the only section of this divided class of rural poor, while the new kulaks, often from middle peasant castes, utilize their caste kin ties to the non-Dalit poor to isolate & attack the Dalits: this, though in very schematic form, is the main factor behind the current struggles. It is because Glass has no analysis of the changing nature of Indian society as a whole that she can so casually characterize as “hardly realistic” the well-known assertion that “beyond the caste war lies a class war.” In fact, this is absolutely true if we remember that caste continues to be a social reality affecting the nature of class struggles in India, and if we understand “class war” not in the simple economistic sense of a fight for higher wages or economic gains, but as struggle of all the oppressed to end the system of oppression and establish their own rule.
