|
Of identity
politics and caste
Gita Ramaswamy
Sunday New Indian Express 11 January 2004
Navayana (meaning ‘new vehicle’
in Ambedkarite terms), a new publishing house,
has come out with a set of books to engage the
English speaking readers
with the newer debates on identity politics and
caste. In a context where English-language reading
has not really kept pace with both the extraordinary
growth in the Dalit-led movement and issues of
identity politics, Navayana is more than welcome.
Of the four slim books or rather booklets, Ambedkar’s
Autobiographical Notes will easily be the most
popular.
Despite his immense reach to
millions of India’s scheduled castes, very
less is really known about Ambedkar the person
even to them, and of course, far less to ‘upper-caste’
peoples. The seven little pieces can be traced
by the more diligent reader in Volume 12 of Writings
and Speeches of Ambedkar, but it was nonetheless
a brilliant coup to put them all together in this
slim volume — an attempt to recover Ambedkar’s
individual self. His encounter with savage untouchability
as a nine year old boy, his discovery that whoever
is untouchable to a Hindu is also untouchable
to a Parsi and a Muslim, his painful physical
affliction due to untouchability practiced against
him as a member of Government’s official
committee — these are bound to evoke strong
response from people across caste. The understated
introduction fortunately does not intrude into
the precious text.
Readers of Outlook may have read
an abridged version of the provocative version
in Brahmans and Cricket. For those who have, this
is a larger feast with responses from Sudhanva
Deshpande, Lubna Mariam, and Raju Meena Sivasankaran.
For those who haven’t seen the Outlook piece,
both Lagaan and cricket, the caste composition
of the latter in particular, are demolished in
no uncertain terms and with a suavity that literally
takes your breath away. You would probably not
leave this book around for unsuspecting Brahmans
to fall upon.
Touchable Tales discusses the
vagaries of publishing Dalit literature with publishers,
theoreticians and authors. Among these are Arundhati
Roy, Gail Omvedt, Sivakami, K Satyanarayana and
Narendra Jadhav. The master narrative does however
tend to be critical of mainstream publishers for
encouraging only autobiographies, and in parenthesis,
of authors who write them. Whether this is tenable
is certainly arguable. A larger range of voices
would have enlarged the frame of debate.
Meera Nanda’s Postmodernism
and Religious Fundamentalism clearly disappoints
after her earlier Breaking the Spell of Dharma
and Other Essays. Meera Nanda’s has been,
a rather lone voice arguing for a secular, liberating,
and empowering science in an atmosphere of deafening
silence. Repetitions and a rather shrill tone
mark this text sadly, and one wonders if the text
would still be relevant a decade later.
View
original article
|
