The book is an anthology of prominent authors, who presented papers at the seminar held at lowa City in Oct. 2002 in “Beyond Durban”, following WCAR in Durban in Aug.- Sept.2001. Captains of Industry and finance always present rosy pictures that hunger, injustice, disease and unemployment would be wiped out.
SANSKRIT POISONED DALITS
But this must be done without violence and the efforts must be global. This was countered by the argument that globalization itself has the hidden agenda of spreading imperialism of new kind.
Globalization is another name for imperialism and that is spread by Jewish-controlled IMF and World Bank was one of the thoughts spread by the scholars. There was another kind of border among people and that was color. That was the problem of the Race. There was the problem of Caste, that was discussed and it was conceptualized in different theorizing arguments by different scholars.
The discriminated minorities and the global civil societies had different views and the American and Indian governments put forwards views, which the scholars felt was “anachronistic and out of step with globalization itself”.
At Durban, human rights issues were considered traditionally, but now new percepts had to be discussed. Natrajan had attended a conference at Columbia University, where Dr. Ambedkar had left his impressions. It was on caste and its discontents. Some subaltern scholars portrayed the profile of Macaulay in bright colors and others questioned the idea. This was seen as a complex relationship of caste versus colonialism. Macaulay was seen as the liberatory figure for Dalits as his policies opened the fields of modern education for the Dalits and at the same time put a lid on the greatness of Sanskrit shastras, which the Dalits always considered the main cause of their degradation.
The scholars contributing to this volume are from various fields of anthropology, history, literature, sociology, economics, political science and public administration. They are well placed in universities, colleges and research centers.
BSP & BRAHMINS
The volume has 15 essays by prominent scholars and are divided into four groups. Seven essays deal with comparative aspects of caste and race. [Berreman, Visweswaran, Reddy, Omvedt, Tartakov, Darity, and Natrajan]. Two essays by Mevorach and Dominguez deal with race and racism. The five essays by Thorat, Gopal Guru, V. Geetha, Balu and Kancha llaiah focus on caste and casteism, and they plead for inclusion of caste in global discourse of race. One essay of Sanders deals with race problem of American Africans and white population.
BATEILLE’S BRAHMINICAL VIEWS
It is not possible to analyze all papers, so some samples. Some salient points from essays of Ms. Deepa S. Reddy, who presented paper on “Ethnicity of Caste”. She believed that Dalit Panthers origin in Maharashtra was mostly against the bourgeois class rather than against Brahmins.
BSP, coming about a decade later focused on caste and Kanshi Ram argued the ruling ideologies were Brahminic and this hegemony needed to be dismantled. She argues that Kanshi Ram was not against the system of castes, which is perhaps a purposeful misleading statement. Further she describes how Mandal Commission report was published and picturesquely describes upper caste self-immolation against it. But she omits to mention that it was Kanshi Ram who forced V. P. Singh to implement Mandal commission report by organizing literally thousands of marches, meetings and seminars throughout the length and breadth of the country. She also omits to mention the self- immolations in most cases were fake.
She then describes the rath yatra by L. K. Advani, which went through not the Hindu temples but through the temples believed to have been destroyed by the Muslims. The purpose was to divert the attention of OBCs from the real issue of Mandal to the emotive and sentimental issue of temple. She omits to mention that Vajpayee had mentioned they started kamandal to stop Mandal.
She describes Durban and believes caste was commercialized there. She quotes Andre Beteille, who presents Brahminical view and who avers that, to equate caste and race is ‘scientifically nonsensical’, but however she laments that the both race and caste were used as weapons of discrimination.
She quotes DV Editor V.T. Rajshekar, who described apartheid and observed that Black-White difference can be noticed visibly but not caste discrimination.
Views of S. K. Throat also deserve mention. He describes the United Nations Human Rights declaration and how Dr. Ambedkar had brought issue under ‘slavery’ in 1948, how all efforts failed and how in Durban the Govt. of India opposed Dalit issues saying it is outside the purview of this conference and how it is internal matter of India. He describes in detail the discrimination in various other countries.
PERIYAR’S ACHIEVEMENTS
Kancha llaiah describes historical basis of caste in Rigveda. He avers the caste problem, for the first time, was addressed by Jotiba Phule and compares his great work with the revivalist work of Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj. He describes how Periyar E.V. Ramasami saw the trickery of Dayanand Saraswati and developed the Dravida nationalism as he equated Brahminism with Aryan. He saw the Aryans denigrating Dravidian heroes like Ravana, Bali and Shambuka and put forward his own Dravidian self- respect movement. He describes how the views of Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar deferred about Shudra’s, Chandals and Adivasis and how sensing the danger of idea of Ram Rajya of Gandhi, Dr. Ambedkar embraced Budhism in 1956.
He describes how in post- independent India the Brahminical forces are keeping the Dalit- Bahujans away from English education though their children are being educated in English schools. He also describes how they divided Hinduism into two as orthodox and secular and how the main contradiction depicted as colonialism against nationalism. Lastly, he advises Dalit Bahujans to come back to understand the main contradiction is Brahminism versus nationalism.
The book is a valuable archive to treasure.
