The Hindu/upper caste rulers of India have diagnosed the problem of the Untouchables as (1) poverty and (2) lack of education. After diagnosing the disease they are pouring so much of money to cure this disease. But the patient’s plight is going from bad to verse. Operation successful but patient dead. The same diagnosis is adopted by the foreign (Christian) funding agencies which pump billions of dollars into India, channelized through thousands of what are called NGOs. But this money has gone waste like the water poured into the Sahara Desert. Here is a senior Christian leader heading the Christian Institute for Study of Religion and Society (CISRS) and a social scientist, saying the problem of Untouchables is NOT poverty. The Untouchables are oppressed by the upper castes not because of their poverty. “Cross thread marxists” of India are confusing the people, he says. The following is extracted from his article, “Some aspects of Dalit ideology”, CISRS journal – Religion and Society, Sept. 1990 edition – EDITOR.
The bulk of the poor and oppressed in India are enduring groups or sections of the people comprising Dalits and Tribals, and women who by birth or circumstances have borne the burden of multiple forms of exploitation. The Dalits are an enduring section in the sense that the membership of the Dalit communities has never been, since the consolidation of the caste system, a matter of choice but determined by birth. The situation or realities of the Dalits in each genration or period of history have been primarily inherited by them. If inequality and a stigmatised existence have been characteristics of their life-situation, these have been inherited rather than the result of their gunas or attributes. The social and economic arrangements, undergirded by religious philosophy and culture, which enforced this hierarchic system of oppression perpetrated a lasting or enduring, in contrast with a fluid or flexible, group of the oppressed and the poor in this country. These extreme forms of poverty and oppression came to be identified with these enduring groups rather than with any concept of an economic ‘class’ of free individuals.
Concept of the poor: The enduring groups or sections of the oppressed are to be distinguished from the poor in other societies such as the affluent industrial or post- industrial ones of the West. Generally speaking (not considering the immigrant ethnic minorities or the Blacks) the relative poverty of some individuals in these societies is the result of circumstances other than those of birth or inherited inequality. The socio- economic and cultural remnants of the past notwithstanding, the distribution of power in these societies today is not predominantly dependent on socio-culturally conditioned hierarchy and divisions.
The association of free individuals conscious of their economic interests or of exploitation may be said theoretically to form a class in these societies, whereas the Dalits in this country are a class or classes of people who by birth are fixed castes. This distinction is important as it serves to underline the distinctive nature of poverty, oppression and exploitation of the Dalits.
Western theories not suited: The historical consciousness of the Dalits, therefore, cannot be confused with the usual conceptions of class consciousness or class ideology of the western theories. The concept of inequality or of the poor as a class in India is thus quite distinct from its usual connotation in the West. The Dalits (and the Tribals) as enduring groups or castes are the poorest classes of citizens. The economic indices proving this poorest status of these groups are so well-known that they need not be repeated here. Conceptually, Indian inequality is one between the enduring groups.
Social and cultural inequality based on discrimination likewise is related to groups or castes rather than to individuals. Individual pollution such as that which occurs during childbirth, death, or when one comes in contact with polluted matter or being, is temporary. The permanently polluted are the groups of sections which are the lowest in the caste hierarchy. Thus, however one looks at the problem of inequality, the enduring groups, rather than an economic ‘class’ of free individuals, become the relevant elements of ideological conceptualisation of the oppressed.
Marxist Mischief: Confusion is created, however, by both the traditional marxist and liberal theoretical stances on questions such as castes and tribes. Both are characterised by an economism that relegates the social, cultural, and ethnic questions to the realm of the determined rather than the determining.
A major source of confusion has been the traditional marxist concept of the base and the superstructure. This concept influences as we know both historiography and policies for action. By identifying the economic base as the determining factor in history, it · excludes the cultural and social realities from the centre of attention. Socialism thus becomes a matter of changing the base which, it is claimed, will transform the superstructure.
Marxists fail to explain why despite industrialisation, technological development, urbanisation, etc ., the traditional social, cultural, ethnic groupings not only exist but also acquire new strength and rigidities today.
Lohia’s diagnosis: Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia had said that “the roots of the caste problem must be uncovered, but that will cause great pain”. A non- Dalit political philosopher of great sensitiveness and a practitioner of politics of rare courage, he understood the horrors of systematic moral, cultural, social and spiritual decimation of numerous sections of people involved in untouchability and the caste system. Hence his constant reference to what he called the paralysis of the mind of India’s people”, the degradation of women, adivasis, sudras, Harijans and backward classes among Muslims and others, which must be traced to the caste system. Dr. R.M. Lohia, Caste System, Lohia Samata Vidyalaya, Hyderabad 1979, p. 122).
