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Democracy And Dalits

   In the following essay I try to profile the normative model of democracy and civil society envisaged by the western intelligentsia and its utmost failure in the Indian context as a liberating theology for Dalits. However, the reason for the limitation of this universal understanding is accorded to the failure of the peculiar form of Indian society to come under the purview of the received notions of democracy. Further, I explore how this dilemma benefitted different sections of the society since its inception in the country.   The emergence of civil society and democratic values in India can be traced back to the nineteenth century England when the essence of capitalism made headway into every aspect of human life. As a result of this, the hitherto feudal societies underwent massive changes. The capitalist economy broke down the very bones of traditionally hierarchied feudal societies and people were let loose from their traditionally conventional and customary bonds. Further, they were brought to the public markets for exchange of their goods and services with money. These market places, in fact, created a public sphere ever in the history of human evolution. The liberation of the people from the shackles of feudalism provided them with a new sense of freedom and individuality to think independently. Theoretically speaking, everyone in the society, irrespective of their position in the social ladder, became free citizens. This new autonomy imbued the people with a sense of modern society based on one’s sovereign rights. However, the newly created public space did not recognize citizens as belonging to a particular community or class but they were anonymous and atomized citizens belonging to the nation. Coming back to the Indian milieu, as capitalism expanded and the  ideas of citizenship and democracy started trickling down to different sections of the society, to a certain extent, its effect were in compliance with the social changes it spearheaded in England. Modern principles of democracy, rationality and universal humanism provided a new language of equality, self-respect and freedom for all the downtrodden masses in India who were marginalized and kept away from the mainstream society. They viewed it as a means to achieve freedom from the subjugation imposed upon them owing to their ascriptive caste identities. With the expansion of the capitalist economy in India, the country witnessed a change in the old form of caste practices. Prior to the colonial invasion, India was a collection of small and demarcated units of small countries, ruled by the indigenous ruling class, which had hardly any interaction with their subjects. However, the boundaries of these small countries changed due to the expansion and unification of little units. Since each country or village unit was a closed unit, it had placed Dalits and other lower caste people in fixed hierarchies and preserved untouchability with the notions of purity and impurity. But with the coming of modern discoveries and inventions, the whole village scenario was changed. The British constructed roads and introduced railways connecting all the single units all over the region facilitating large scale mobility from place to place. They also introduced the judicial courts where all citizens were equal before the law. As a result of this new development, the importance of caste Panchayats, which were the supreme powers to impose law and order in the village, gradually withered away, though it prevailed in some pockets.  The capitalist mode of production promised different kinds of jobs for the indigenous people. Thus, capitalism assured a new lease of life for the Dalits and other backward communities through which they could dream to get rid of their traditional inequalities that were closely associated with their traditional occupations which were considered to be polluting. At the ideological level, the elitist upper caste nationalists in India welcomed the brand-new theory of civil society. Stimulated by the novel spirit, they refashioned the national struggle for freedom as the fight for sovereign rights based on the normative notions of democracy. However, the struggles were fashioned in such a way that the traditionally untouchable communities could not benefit anything from it. In the nationalist movement and in the later part of the nation building process also, they were completely silenced and kept away from the mainstream politics. Moreover they were represented by the upper caste nationalists and politicians. India is a country of differences; different languages, cultures, religions, castes, regions etc. But in the nationalist discourse, the importance and autonomy of these marked differences were given less priority and brought under a single umbrella; Hindu-nationalism. For this homogenization they simply placed the Colonial British as the other of free India and proposed that the differences among the natives would dilute the real spirit of freedom struggle. Therefore the real meanings of freedom and equality based on democratic values were confined to its theoretical level. And it compelled the subordinate sections of the society to be subjugated themselves to both the foreign rulers and the native elites who shared some power positions with the British. With the departure of British Rulers from India, power was transferred to Indian National Congress which consisted mainly of upper caste Hindus and the unspeakability of caste still remained as an illegitimate category in the public domain. But these modern values proposed by the upper caste Hindus were not completely devoid of pre-modern elements of caste. In the public domain they remained to be modern in their life style but it did not alter their traditional practices in their private life. Under the pretext of national culture and traditions they propagated the fundamental values of upper caste Hinduism. As a result of this, caste remained as a property of lower caste sections of the society. Thus the illegitimacy of caste was reinforced more tactically than ever in the Indian politics. The post independent era was the most crucial phase for Dalits as it did not provide a legitimate space for them to articulate the unique problems of untouchability and caste practices. However, as the chief architect of the constitution, Ambedkar introduced reservations for Dalits in various sectors which were hitherto domains of the twice born. But, borrowing ideas from Gandhi, most of the national leaders strongly believed that caste is an internal problem of the Hindu religion and it does not need to be discussed in the public realm. And those sympathized with the untouchables argued that caste can be erased through elevation of the Dalits in the material domain. Hence, they proposed better living condition, education, wage hike etc. as solutions through which Dalits can occupy an equal potion in the civil society and merge with a caste less egalitarian world.The ideologies of Marxists and other left organizations, which flourished in the country during the first decades of the twentieth century, too, never identified caste as the fundamental problem of Indian society. The caste oppression in India was only a part of the universal class struggle, a struggle between the working class and the bourgeois. The oversimplification of caste as a class undoubtedly denied a platform for Dalits to voice their grievances of caste oppression. And once again caste became an unspeakable category. This denial was in fact violence to the Dalit subjectivity itself. The Dalits had to define their self in relation to the upper caste Brahmanical tyranny. But when class superseded caste as a universal category, Dalits were denied of an authentic past. They were forced to resort to the modern ideals of universal citizenship which in fact did not acknowledge them. The Marxist solutions for untouchability were not far from that of upper caste congress leaders. They organized the poor peasants and working class people (mainly Dalits and other lower caste people) against the upper caste landlords for wage increase and better working conditions. But this was not a panacea for the larger issue. Let me quote an extract from Ambedkar, “We must do something for the Untouchables. One seldom hears any of the persons interested in the problem saying ’ Let us do something to change the Touchable Hindu ‘. It is invariably assumed that the object to be reclaimed is the Untouchables. If there is to be a Mission, it must be to the Untouchables and if the Untouchables can be cured, untouchability will vanish. Nothing requires to be done to the Touchable.” Ambedkar was well aware of the fact that materialistic development alone would not yield to the desired effect of changing the life condition of Dalits. Untouchability and other forms of caste practices in the Indian society would continue in any developed stage but its form might change. The actual changes should take place in the minds of upper caste people. The castist practices should change to bring about a substantial change in the social practices. 1980s witnessed a massive change in the economic sector of the country. The expansion of capitalist mode of production, the introduction of modern agricultural machineries such as tractor, reaping machine and high-yield variety seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc. changed the traditional mode of agricultural production in the rural areas. Hitherto, agriculture was a subsistence way of life but due to the innovative changes, agriculture became a profitable business for the land owning communities. Favorable agricultural loans and interest rates encouraged the landed gentry to invest more on agrarian activities and agriculture became a marketable surplus.  As the modernists and Marxist intellectuals predicted, these modernization process were a blessing for untouchable to a certain extent. The novel changes in the agrarian sector undermined the traditional relationship between the land lords and the peasants. The launching of rural transportation facilities such as local trains and bus services enabled them to look for better jobs in faraway places. Having liberated from the traditional bindings and enforced occupations they   acquired some amount of human dignity and freedom from the newly found innovations. Dalits started arguing for a rightful opening in the human society. Their assertions found expressions in different ways. They forced themselves to the mainstream society through various mediums available. Some of them discarded the demeaning jobs and entered small scale companies earning better wages. Dalits entered academic institutions and pursued their studies using the reservation facility. In some pockets of the country, where Dalits are numerically superior, they participated in general elections defying the local elites. This was a threat to the Indian politics itself as it was a game of numbers and Dalits along with other lower caste people outnumbered them. Therefore small scuffles between Dalits and upper caste people always escalated in massive communal violence. The atrocities committed on Dalits by various upper caste groups in coastal Andhra since 1980s bears witness to the discomfort of the upper castes about the emergence of Dalits as an organized community challenging their hegemony. Political organizations were polarized on caste bases rather than ideology. Massive killings of Dalits by upper caste Reddys and Kammas in coastal Andhra substantiate the fact that they desperately wanted to do away with the new dalit identity and subjectivity. However, if we go by the predictions of the nationalists and the Marxist thinkers, caste would have lost its importance and potential in the ‘democratic civil society.’ They could have appropriated the possibility of becoming a part of a casteless utopian civil society. But the changes in the material domain did not provide a legitimate space for Dalits rather than making them a more vulnerable section of the society. Ambedkar’s apprehensions about the imminent danger in the Brahmin Raj were proved beyond doubt in the economically transformative era. As a result of the changes in the economic sector especially in the agriculture, Dalits achieved the potential to articulate and assert their identity and freedom in the public domain as opposed to the previous political scenario. Roughly speaking a considerable chunk of the Dalit population did not confine themselves to the traditional occupations which demanded a rapport of servitude to the upper caste people. This was a severe blow to the age old and well established hegemony of the upper caste Brahmanical forces. They were compelled to resort to the changes that took place beyond their control. The modernist and Marxist understanding of caste oppression as a class struggle between the ‘working class’ and the bourgeois heavily brings under the hammer of Dalit critic of modernity. Their predictions of an ‘egalitarian’ society based on class where each individual has the potential of moving upward and downward according to his or her economic condition is an enigmatic understanding. The caste struggles in India is not a manifestation of the universal class struggle. The question of caste should be addressed in its specificity.Reservations in educational and job sectors were the primary reasons for the entry of Dalits in to the modern urban centers. This change in the social sphere created a small community of middle class Dalits and they could move in the civil society of upper caste people and socialize with them on a marginal scale. But this newly ‘civilized’ community was not wholeheartedly accepted by the modern citizens. They had to face the same kind of marginalization and oppression from there upper caste fellow men. They were forced to share two identities, one as civil citizens in the public sphere and the other as Dalits in their private life.  They could hardly find housing in upper caste localities. If caste was practiced on the basis of purity and pollution theory in villages, in urban areas it operated through exclusion. They lived in separate areas demarcated for Dalits and socialized among themselves. If this is the plight of the government employees who came through reservation, the private sector was in a more advantageous position in excluding lower caste candidates. As reservation was not extended to private sector, they were free to select employs based on ‘merit’. This merit was closely associated with one’s ability in speaking good English or dealing with modern equipment, machineries and computers etc. These merit theories gave an upper hand to the urban educated upper caste candidates in getting covetous jobs in private sectors and exclude the unskilled Dalits from the socially acceptable jobs. For Dalits the existing educational system is not enough to fetch socially respectable and lucrative jobs. The primary education is only a tool to make them ‘good’ workers in the industrial sector. Due to the compulsion of globalization public sectors are being privatized. Since the latest technical courses are expensive, it will remain as a domain of the upper caste elitists. As Dalits will have no access to the modern education it will be quite easy for the implementation of merit theory.  Pro.Gopal Guru, in one of his influential essays, problematizes the concept of civil society and the identity of modernist Dalits. His critique turns against the modernist projects which compels the Dalits to forget their cultural past and coerces to get assimilated in to a relegated position in the ‘secularized democratic’ domain. Guru says that in the public domain Dalits will be forced to be silent about their caste identity as it might bring in disgrace for their family. They fail to assert their unique identity in such occasions as it is completely dominated by the upper caste culture. As a result of this, one might struggle to hide his/her ‘low’ subjectivity and try to imitate the dominant Brahmanical culture. In sociology such a tendency is designated as ‘Sanscritisation’. Sanscritisatized Dalits generally tend to change their names to appear to be elevated. They snap their ties with their community men and mimic the dominant idioms to be a part of the larger society. Sharankumar Limbale gives a vivid description of his rural life in his controversial autobiography ‘Akkarmashi’. Limbale was a Dalit panther activist in his village. He used to read Ambedkar literature and propagate his ideas among his friends. He married according to the Buddhist traditions defying the interests of his relatives. When he got a job in the city as a telephone operator, he migrated to the urban centre both physically and mentally. Limbale stopped writing to his Dalit friends as their names might proclaim their caste identity. He intentionally selected some of his upper caste friends and started writing continuously for them. Instead of wishing Jai Bhim, which is a Dalit-Buddhist way of wishing, he used the word Namaste as if he was an upper caste man. Whenever he came across his Dalit friends, he simply avoided them so as to keep his relation with upper caste friends intact. But when he comes back to his village, he participates in all kinds of political activities of Dalits. Limbale’s confession of his alienation from his community testifies to Gopal Guru’s critique of the position of Dalits in public sphere. If this was the plight of the educated Dalits, the laymen’s situation was more pathetic. There were many Dalit laborers in villages who lost their traditional occupations due to the modernization of labor. With the introduction of leather industries traditional leather workers failed to compete with the cheep and the better quality foot wears in the market. Not withstanding the fact that it has reduced the dependency of the Dalits on the dominant castes which was the justification for inequalities, it rather failed to provide an alternative for their livelihood. Therefore they were compelled to leave their traditional occupations and become agricultural laborers in the village setup. However, a considerable section of these communities migrated to cities looking for other alternatives. But the new hope and search for better living condition in cities were met with utter poverty and beastly life. Modern institutions were beyond their access. They were again forced to take up demeaning jobs in the urban centers and live in slums. In the modern domain of urban life they again become sweepers and scavengers distancing themselves from the ‘civilized masses’. Moreover, since they moved consistently from one place to another looking for seasonal jobs, they could never enjoy their fundamental rights as citizens of this country. They hardly caste their votes in elections or made themselves avail of any governmental benefits, since it demanded a proof of their identity. While revisiting the trajectory of Indian democracy, these are the greatest dilemmas a social scientist faces. How far can the normative notions of western democracy be applied in the Indian context? Can the secularist nationalist be reprimanded for their circumvention of caste in the mainstream nationalist discourse? When the well established notions of western conceptions of democracy and civil society do not recognize caste as a modern form of Indian social system, and furthermore the new theory proposes to flatten the society, why should caste be taken in to account rather than pushing it out from the realm of modernity.  Partha Chatterjee in his influential thesis on democracy in India, The politics of the Governed, disagrees with Benadict Anderson on his theory of Homogenous Empty Time. He convincingly argues that modernity is not distributed in homogenous empty time. In fact, the dominant strand in the modern historical thinking that Anderson adheres to fails to recognize the heterogeneity in the society. The homogenous empty time that Anderson proposes is not all encompassing. However, very interestingly, capitalist-modernity has an idiosyncratic attribute of labeling anything, which stands in its free and smooth crusade, as pre-modern. Hence the civil and democratic values, a byproduct of capitalism, ruthlessly set aside whichever objects didn’t conform to its norms. They were termed as pre-modern and barbaric and subjected them for civilizing. As I have mentioned earlier, when the germs of civil society and democracy were imported to the colonial India, the English educated elites were the first to act upon it. They demarcated caste as a pre-modern entity for the smooth installation of the western theory. However, this delineation was stunningly elusive in its application. The forefathers of the Indian democracy never conceded the fact that the annihilation of caste was the foremost prerequisite for establishing a civil society in India. Rather, it was portrayed as an internal problem of a particular religion and need to be treated within the four walls of it.  However, if the evolution of civil society in England was instrumental in redressing the bondages of feudal subjects, in India it functioned on an altogether different level. Ambedkar was the first one to construe the dichotomy of this political situation. He strongly subscribed to the universal values of democracy and civil society, but yet argued that the belief that when the whole becomes free every constituent part of it also would become free is a fool’s paradise. In a country like India where caste and economic differences are crucial, democracy cannot bring about any substantial change in the society. First and foremost concern of any social reformer or politician should be aimed at restructuring the society itself by solving the issue of caste. As long as castes exist, equality can’t be injected in to the indian minds.   

Caste and Modernity in India

Caste being an irreducible essence of Indian civilization, it is hard to keep it aside when we speak of the country. So far many scholars have meddled with the question of caste, to define it, to find out the origin and historical trajectory of caste, examined different ways to annihilate it. But until this moment it remains as a hard nut to brake. In every society, we can see some kind of social stratifications, which places the individuals in different layers of social status. But caste is a unique form of stratification since it divides the members vertically and horizontally. More over unlike class there is no upward mobility in caste hierarchy. In a class system a member has the potential to move upward or downward according to his economic position but in a caste based society as long as a caste identity is ascribed to a member since his or her birth they can never escape it. One major reason for this peculiar phenomenon is that caste is an endogamous group. Dr BR Ambedkar in his widely acclaimed thesis on caste, ‘Annihilation of caste’, argues that endogamy is the fundamental essence of caste.

 Generally speaking there are two sides to endogamy. The membership in a caste is decided by the birth of an individual. One does not have a free choice of his caste. He or she has to confine to the caste in which he or she has been born in to. The other aspect is that intercaste marriage is prohibited in every caste society. A member who dares to marry from outside the community will have to face the wrath of the community to which he or she belongs. But Ambedkar says that both are two sides of a single coin. Through endogamy, each caste group defines its own territory, which is not supposed to be trespassed by its members. If we try to examine how this endogamy is successfully practiced in each community, we will be successful in tracing the genesis and the mechanism of caste. Roughly speaking in a caste group the number of men and women should be equal to impose endogamy over exogamy. The disproportion of a sex might encourage the members to transgress the laws set up by the society and marry from outside the caste group. Therefore, the maintenance of equal proportion between two sexes becomes the fundamental duty of the caste. Otherwise, endogamy can never exist. Generally speaking, the number of women and men in a community is equal in number but the unexpected death of a member can cause disturbance to the proportion. For example if the husband dies the wife becomes a ‘surplus woman’ in the community and if it is the other way around the husband becomes a ‘surplus man.’ Both are dangerous to the maintenance of endogamy. Because they might marry from outside the caste and bring in an alien generation. 

The surplus women in a traditional society posed two dangers to her community: if she marries from within the community she is encroaching upon the chances of marriage that must be reserved for the potential brides in the caste. She is a menace in any case. In the traditional Indian Hindu society, this menace was solved through different ways.

 There were two ways to get rid of the surplus women. One is that they were compelled to burn alive in the pyre of their husbands which was known as ‘Sati’. It was considered as the most sacred duty of a perfect wife. It was believed that when a woman commits Sati she joins her husband eternally in heaven and serves him forever. The second remedy was enforcing compulsory widowhood. Since this is found to be more humane and practicable, compulsory widowhood became superior to Sati. Sati was pushed in to the archives of history as a result of the various social struggles spearheaded by different reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy.  The same kind of treatment could not be accorded to man since he was superior to women in the society. But his singleness in the community was also a threat to the existing laws of the community. Therefore he was also coerced to remain as a widower throughout his life. Another method was that he was allowed to marry a girl who is below the marriageable age, which was known as girl marriage. These were the basic strategies that the caste communities in India relied on to preserve the endogamic character of the caste and solve the problem of surplus women and surplus man.  The Hindu society in India consists mainly of four Varna groups (1) Brahmins, the priestly class (2) Kshatriyas or the military class (3) Vaishyas or the merchant class and (4) the Sudras or the artisan and the menial class. Down the history the caste system in India used to be a liberal class system in which each individual member in any caste had the freedom to move upward or downward according to his economic standard. But Ambedkar says that at one point of time in the history the priestly class, Brahmins, socially detached itself from the rest of the body of people and through a closed door policy became a caste by itself. The learning and all other kinds of intellectual works were entrusted with this particular community by themselves. Moreover they were looked upon by the rest of the section of the society. They were considered to be the mediators of God. The Kshatriyas remained as warriors and administrators but made to be subservient to the priestly class. The rest of the society had no other choice other than forming their own single groups. Because they found some of the doors closed against them and they themselves closed their doors against others whom they did not wish to include in their communities.  Thus the earlier freedom of the members to move in the class system ceased to be a caste system, which vehemently denied any kind of trespassing of members between different communities. But it cannot be argued that the caste system per se was imposed on all the communities in India by Brahmins. The subordinate communities imitated their spiritual ‘semi-gods’ and formed their own endogamous caste groups.   Many scholars of sociology and anthropology have defined caste as a division of labor but this definition does not incorporate some of the basic and unique features of the caste system. Ambedkar attempts to define caste with regards to labor; caste is not only a division of labor but also a division of laborers. Unlike in a class-based society, caste divides its members vertically and horizontally.     Caste is a harmful institution since it subordinates the natural powers of its members. A member of a particular caste group has to stick to the natural laws of the institution. He or she is not allowed to select a profession according to the ability or interest of the person. A person who was born in the scavenger community cannot escape his traditional work imposed on him by the society and search for another profession, which can bring him social acceptance and economic stability. The advocates of caste system profess that caste is a system through which we can secure the purity of the blood and race. But this argument will not appeal to those who believe in the fact that pure race exist nowhere in the world. Ethnographic studies have proved that any race in the world is an amalgamation of different races and tribes. India is not an exception in this matter; we had witnessed a lot of foreign invasions and settlements. Those who came to India as invaders never went back without leaving the imprints of their race, culture or language. Therefore this country was a melting pot of different cultures and communities. But the caste system could not prevent this amalgamation and moreover it came into being after this admixture of races happened. As is the case there is an admixture of alien blood in all the races in India [Ambedkar] Ambedkar mounts a scathing attack on castist argument that each caste has its own unique ingrained characteristics. He vehemently denies any affinity between a Punjabi Brahmin and a Tamil Brahmin. Where as we can find more affinity between a Tamil Brahmin and a Tamil Dalit. If they belong to different races there should be easily visible differences in their appearance and complexion. From these arguments one can draw a conclusion that people in a particular region are racially of the same stock. But caste system divides the people of the same race into various subdivisions, which are mutually exclusive. As I said in the beginning one of the fundamental characteristics of caste system is the prohibition of intercaste marriage. If all are human beings who share the same kind of human qualities, what is wrong in intercaste marriages? It is scientifically proved that every human community in the world is different from that of animals. Different races do not constitute different species of men. All are human beings. They are varieties of one and the same species. The racist arguments of the advocates of caste system fail to provide a reasonable answer to the prohibition of the inter-dining which is also a prominent practice of caste. It has no scientific support to prove that eating together will precipitate race mixing. In conclusion the very concept of caste appears beyond doubt an unscientific division of society. The absence of the term ‘Hindu’ in the Sanskrit works prior to the invasion of Mohammedans points to the fact that it was a construction of the later. They named the natives to distinguish themselves from the indigenous. But now this myth and its subsequent subdivisions, different castes groups, have turned against the unity of the nation itself. No caste in India is affiliated to another caste. The Indian society is only a bunch of caste communities, which always provoke tension and communal violence. The feeling of oneness cannot be injected in to this hierarchy. The physical proximity of different caste groups does not actually pave way for a single homogenous nation.Concerning caste there are various other things, which contribute to the plurality of the nation. Caste prevents different communities to come together and form a single spiritual plane on which they can merge. If we examine the way the communities celebrate festivals, one can see that each group varies the way they celebrate a single festival. As long as the literature of the Hindu religion is full of the past stories of atrocities committed by one caste on another, it always facilitates tension between different castes. It helps them to remember the historical feuds between their forefathers and thereby causes the derailment of the solidarity of the nation.  

Ambedkar proposes that an ideal society should be based on equality, liberty and fraternity. But in a country like India it is hard to achieve since none of these qualities can be achieved as long as caste exists. An individual’s quality will hardly be widely appreciated outside his caste group in a caste bound society like India. People will always be identified with their caste from which they can never escape.

 

Aryasamajam, which was largely viewed as a progressive movement, promised a novel stratification of the society in which individuals were evaluated not based on birth but based on their karma, worth. They classified the society in to four Varnas and placed each individual based on his or her worth. However, they never questioned the drawbacks of caste; they never acknowledge that the existence of castes as a barrier to evaluate people based on their merit or worth. People who are already occupying the highest positions in the society based on their birth would never leave that coveted position. No matter how good one is; his worth or karma is only secondary to his caste. Therefore, Ambedkar turns down theory of Chaturvarna.

He says that there is no law-enforcing agency to implement this sophisticated form of stratification. To make worth superior to birth we have to break up caste system first. As long as the caste system exists the ‘worth’ of a person will remain as an unfulfilled dream. The absence of any kind of social revolution in India can be traced back to the prohibition of education to the lower caste people. Education was confined to a particular community and as a result of this they were not even aware of their own liberation. This is another reason for the disintegration of the country. No Hindu can claim that his religion can provide a binding force to unite the members in that religion. This stigma claimed only by Hinduism in India has now spread to other religions also. They have contaminated even Islam and Christianity where caste is an alien concept. But there is a marked difference between Hinduism and other religions as far as caste is concerned. Hinduism is the only religion in the world, which openly proclaims that its members are not equal and this inequality is spiritually sanctioned by the religion. It is a sacred institution where as in other religions in India caste is only a social practice, which was incorporated in to them with the association of Hinduism.  The system of caste was supported by a staunch argument that it is proposed and preached by Sastras and that cannot be regarded as unscientific. But Ambedkar says that this argument is baseless. Because the millions of the downtrodden masses did not have access to letters. They were unaware of what was written in the religious texts. But the saints and religious teachers who belong to the upper strata of the hierarchy had to keep the people gullible so that they could enjoy the fruits of their labor. Therefore they interpreted the texts in such a way that their spiritual superiority was accepted by the illiterate masses. However these ‘learned’ scholars never realized that these texts are dangerous to the very existence of their community itself. Moreover they never criticized the system of caste rather they were staunch supporters of the system. They never speak about the struggle between men in the living world. They concentrated more on the affairs of god and interpreted the relation of man with the former. They professed that all men are equal before god but they never said that all men are equal in this world.  In the Hindu Puranas and stories, courageous people were portrayed in such a way that they could kill their enemies sometimes without any reason. More interestingly none of the Hindu heroes or heroines exists in the human context. They all exist in a spiritual realm, which only Brahmins share. According to Sastras the women attained the highest plane of their life fulfillment through the service of their husbands. As we discussed Sati was forced upon them to serve their husbands even in their death.              The real knowledge for the priestly class was the knowledge of Sastras to which only they had access. They recited and manipulated it in whatever ways possible for their benefit. They never acknowledged the importance of real labor rather the productive works were subordinated to the spiritual works, the priestly hood. The production related tasks were termed as Sudra tasks. The Brahmanical knowledge of Vedas and Sastras were never imparted to the Sudras. But the Brahmins came into contact with the masses on certain occasions such as marriage and death. But the common people had to share the fruits of their labor with the Brahmin priests for mediating between god and themselves. A Brahmin’s philosophy of life was that his or her life in this world is to be used properly to ensure an eternal life in the other world.Having internalized this existing discourse of spirituality, the lower caste people unconsciously develop subservience towards the upper caste Brahmins and struggle to keep up that hierarchy since it is proclaimed by the sacred Sastras. This fear includes losing their jobs also. However, gradually this self-subordination becomes part of their character and thus gives the other an upper hand to subjugate them forever.                                                               

        Indian Nationalism from a Dalit a Perspective  

Modernity in India was a byproduct of the country’s encounter with the colonial British rulers. Though colonialism had plundered the wealth and resources of India, the modern institutions and philosophical concepts they had introduced in the country were largely a blessing in disguise to enable the indigenous masses to think of their rights and fight for freedom from the colonial rulers. It promised a new language of liberation for the indigenous subjects. However, in a caste-ridden country like India the benefits offered by the British Raj were not accessible for all the sections of the society. It was appropriated by only a small section of the society, upper class upper caste elites. They benefited from English education and occupied coveted positions in the British administration. Later the same elite sections of the Indian society became the self appointed liberators of the country and fought for power from the colonial rulers. However, during the anticolonial struggle vast sections of the society such as dalits, peasants, and other subalterns were completely silenced and represented by these self appointed nationalists. In this chapter, I will look in to the problems faced by Dalits during the freedom struggle. Modern principles of democracy, rationality and universal humanism provided a new language of equality, self-respect and freedom for all the downtrodden masses in India who were marginalized and kept away from the mainstream society. They viewed it as a means to achieve freedom from the subjugation imposed upon them owing to their ascriptive caste identities. With the expansion of the capitalist economy in India, the country witnessed a change in the old form of caste practices. Prior to the colonial invasion India was a collection of small and demarcated units of small countries, ruled by the indigenous ruling class called Kshatriyas, which had hardly any interaction with each other. However, the boundaries of these small countries changed due to the expansion and unification of little units. Since each country or village unit was a closed unit, it placed Dalits and other lower caste people in fixed units and preserved untouchability with the notions of purity and impurity. But with the coming of modern discoveries and inventions, the whole village scenario was changed. The British constructed roads and introduced railways connecting all the single units all over the region. They also introduced the courts where all citizens were equal before the law. As a result of this new development the importance of caste Panchayats, which were the supreme powers to impose law and order in the village, gradually withered away though it prevailed in some pockets. They introduced capitalist mode of production in the country and promised different kinds of jobs for the indigenous people. Thus, modernity assured a new lease of life for the Dalits and other backward communities through which they could get rid of their traditional inequalities that were closely associated with their traditional occupations and considered to be polluting. But these boons did not make any considerable change in the living condition of Dalits as they were not accessible for them in its fuller sense. English education was the major factor which elevated the living condition of many but this confined to a small section of the society, the upper caste Brahmins. Because according to the old Varna theory only they were allowed to pursue to studies and interpret it for others. Therefore the first generation Brahmins who got English education and economic stability through the appropriation of the colonial rule became the torch bearers of the country. Later this section undertook the task of liberating the country from the clutches of the imperial force. But in reality these struggles were a tug of war between the British and the local elites for power.         The nationalist struggles were fashioned in such a way that the traditionally untouchable communities could not benefit anything from it. In the nationalist movement an in the later part of the nation building process also they were completely silenced and kept away from the mainstream politics. Moreover they were represented by the upper caste nationalists and politicians. India is a country of differences; different languages, cultures, religions, castes, regions etc. But in the nationalist movement the importance and autonomy of these marked differences were given less priority and brought under a single umbrella; Brahmanical nationalism. For this homogenization they simply placed the Colonial British as the other of free India and proposed that the differences among the natives would dilute the real spirit of freedom struggle. But the opportunities for the colonial subjects were not equally divided among them. All the administrative and judicial posts allotted to the colonial subjects were occupied by the English educated Brahmins and made it a point that the laws of Manu was tactically imposed on the lower caste people within the confines of modern judiciary. Therefore the real meanings of freedom and equality were confined to its theoretical level. And it compelled the subordinate sections of the society to be subjugated themselves to both the foreign rulers and the native elites who shared some power positions with the British. They faced complete disempowerment and exclusion from both the groups.  Despite the appropriation of the material benefits of the colonial rule the spirituality of the country, Hindu spirituality, was always highlighted by the elitist nationalists as an uncolonized site of the indigenous culture or the nation. They labored to make the Brahmanical spirituality and culture as the ideal values of the so called Hindustan. But this ‘spiritual plane’ was not shared by Dalits and other subaltern sections of the society. Rather they were again pushed in to the old system of Varna. Their cultures were seen as subordinate and hence they were compelled to resort to the ides put forwarded by the elites. Later this spirituality and culture became the ideal tokens of Indian culture and religion in which the Dalits had no stake at all. The question of caste differences and oppressions in the larger context of nationalism was severely undermined and rejected as an antinationalist agenda. Those who dared to articulate the question of caste oppressions were accused of conspiring with the colonial rulers to enable them to instill differences into the minds of the innocent people. All the sections of the society were coerced to believe that once the country is freed from the foreign subjugation, a democratic India would be set up based on the notions of equality and freedom of every constituent of the society irrespective of caste and religion. But this theory of equality was rejected by Dr. BR Ambedkar, the champion of the downtrodden masses in the country. He was of the opinion that, the belief that when the whole becomes free every constituent part of it also would become free is a fool’s paradise. In a country like India where caste and economic differences are crucial, democracy cannot bring about any substantial change in the society. First and foremost concern of any social reformer or politician should be aimed at restructuring the society itself by solving the issue of caste. As long as castes exist, equality cannot be injected in to Hindu mind.   But his articulations were not given a serious thought by the upper caste nationalists. For them caste was merely a side-issue and appeared only marginally in the nationalist discourse. In his influential essay, ‘Epistemology of Dalit Critic of Modernity, secularism and Nationalism’ Aditya Nigam gives an instance of Nehru’s response to Gandhi’s announcement of his fast from Yervada prison, in protest against Ramsay Macdonald’s grant of separate electorate to the ‘Depressed Classes’. Nehru vehemently contemned Gandhi’s involvement in an unimportant issue.  He said that if Gandhi sideline the major issue, freedom of the country, and unnecessarily mess up with a minor topic, caste, the larger concern of the country would we left in vain. He never realized untouchability as the major stumbling block in the unification of the country rather he strongly believed that a free India which is based on democracy and adult franchise would bring about a massive change in the society hence these divisions would be submerged once India attains freedom.As a result of this phenomenon various sections of the society was silenced and more over they were represented through the mainstream upper caste Hindu nationalists.They feared that the discourse of caste is a strategy of the colonial rulers to fragment the ‘united India’ into mutually warring groups.    Caste, being a reminder of the degenerated premodern past, was seen as the other of the modern values of secularism and the ‘universal man’. The modernity proposed abstract notions of citizenship and recognized only national identity as the only legitimate identity in the struggle for freedom. Therefore it found caste as an illegitimate player in the course of attaining a free and a secular nation.     But this illegitimacy of caste did not find resonance in the upper caste nationalism. Their strategies were elusive in nature. In order to inject a spirit of nationhood to homogenize the citizens of the country against the foreign invaders, the elitist nationalists highlighted the spirituality of Hindu philosophy as an uncolonized realm of the indigenous masses. They agreed to the material supremacy of the colonial rulers but at the same time they laid claim on spiritual supremacy of the country or in other words the spirituality of Hinduism over the colonial power. The upper caste nationalists canonized the Vedas and Puranas to substantiate their argument. The high caste nationalists identified Sanskritic culture as the ideal basis of Indian nationality.    But this celebration of spirituality did not provide a legitimate space for dalits rather it was a dual subjugation for them. M.S.S Pandian in his essay ‘One Step Outside Modernity’ says that “The nationalist invocation of Vedic civilization indeed challenges the claims to supremacy by the colonizers. However it also carries an unstated hierarchisation of different social groups that go to make the nation. The normativity of a Vedic civilization, reinvented by the dominant nationalism, would accommodate vast sections of Indians only as inferiors within the nation”. The two great Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana bear witness to Pandian’s argument. These ‘stories’ are narrated in such a way that the Brahman is superior to all the other sections which belong to the Hindu caste hierarchy. The dalits and other lower caste communities were represented as genetically inferior to Brahmins hence they were supposed to serve the Brahmins for the fulfillment of their life. In an influential speech, Periyar Ramaswamy Naicker observed that “in our present situation many fear that swaraj if granted will only usher in Brahman Swaraj. If in these days of British rule, it is possible for some to prevent us from walking down the streets and to prevent us from having access to water from village wells and ponds….. What would they… not do if they came to wield authority? What horrors would they not perpetrate?  He argued that the nationalism is a tool for Brahmin domination. There for the independent India will be more dangerous for subalterns unless the caste hierarchy is abolished. He reinvented the history of India as a struggle between Dravidians, the indigenous people of south India and Aryans (mainly upper caste Brahmins) who belongs to a Germanic tribe. This was to create a legitimate space for the millions of lower caste people in India.    Ambedkar’s indifference to the freedom movement should also be seen in this wider context. He did not subscribe to the notions and values set up by the nationalist leaders. He argued that the country should be reconstructed on the basis of social equality, justice and reason. He called for the destruction of the past and the formation of a new Nation based on three fundamental principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. But this did not appeal to the nationalist leaders. He was accused of conspiring with the British Raj. Where as Gandhi, the crusader of the Indian nationalism, was sympathetic to the problems faced by dalits. But most unfortunately he was not supportive of changing or abolishing the caste system which was the fundamental essence of differences among the people. He strongly believed that the authenticity of the scriptures couldn’t be questioned. But Ambedkar was sure that if India gets freedom from the British, the Dalits would be again subjected to severe marginalization and untouchability. Therefore he proposed that the freedom of the whole would not bring equality among all the constituent part of the society unless the social and economic stability is attained.     His turn towards Buddhism was a brilliant attempt to rescue dalits from this predicament. Ambedkar was cognizant of the fact that as long as dalits remain in the folds of Hinduism they would be forced to carry along their degraded caste identity. They would have no history of their own to be proud of. Therefore he converted to Buddhism and rewrote the ancient history of India as a struggle between the Brahmanical upper castes and Buddhists. This ingenious attempt by the great revolutionary created a legitimate history for dalits and all other lower caste sections of the society. His attempts were to create a legitimate space for the untouchable and make the situation conducive for them to live a dignified life. His indifference towards national movement cannot be read as a pro-British policy. It only points to the fact that he was well aware of the imminent trouble dalits are going to face in the independent India. As Periyar apprehended the then condition of caste oppression India was unparallel and was not taken up any upper caste nationalist as a major plight the country is going through. Therefore Ambedkar’s endeavors to bring this larger problem in the political discourse should be appreciated from a critical perspective of the Indian nationalism.       

                           Dalits in independent India 

   With the departure of British Rulers from India, power was transferred to Indian National Congress which consisted mainly of upper caste Brahmins. Hitherto the aversion of the nationalists towards modernity became a part of their daily life and the unspeakability of caste still as opposed to the secular modern remained as a illegitimate category in the public domain. But the secularism proposed by the upper caste Hindus was not completely devoid of caste elements. In the public domain they remained to be modern in their life style but it did not alter their traditional practices in their private life. Under the pretext of national culture and traditions they propagated the fundamental values of upper caste Brahmanism. As a result of this caste remained a property of lower caste sections of the society. Thus the illegitimacy of caste was reinforced more tactically than ever in the Indian politics.  The post independent era was the most crucial phase for dalits as it did not provide a legitimate space for them to articulate the unique problems of untouchability and caste practices. But Ambedkar’s entry into the first ministry of India as the minister for law was a celebrating moment for dalits and other lower caste sections of the society. This enabled him to become one of the chief architects of the constitution of India. He introduced reservations for dalits in various sectors which were hitherto domains of the Brahmins. He abolished untouchability as an illegal practice and introduced new rules recommending severe punishments for those who trespass this law. However his attempts to depollute the contaminated society were not received wholeheartedly by his fellow members in the ministry and the upper caste members in the party. Borrowing ideas from Gandhi, they strongly believed that caste is an internal problem of the Hindu religion and it does not need to be discussed in the public realm. And those sympathized with the untouchables argued that caste can be erased through elevation of the dalits in the material domain, though it didn’t happen till this point. Thus they proposed better living condition, education, wage hike etc. as solutions through which dalits can occupy an equal potion in the society and merge with a caste less egalitarian community. however they never dared to question the Hindu philosophy of spirituality which propagated the seeds of untouchability and the well structured caste hierarchisation in which each individual has to carry along his/her ascriptive identities until their death and some times even after the death.  The ideologies of Marxists and other left organizations, which flourished in the country during the first decades of the twentieth century, never identified caste as the fundamental problem of Indian society. The caste oppressions in India were only a part of the universal class struggle, a struggle between the working class and the bourgeois. The oversimplification of caste as a class undoubtedly denied a platform for dalits to voice their grievances of caste oppression. And once again caste became an unspeakable category. This denial was in fact violence to the dalit subjectivity itself. The dalits had to define their self in relation to the upper caste Brahmanical tyranny. But when class superceded caste as a universal category dalits were denied of an authentic past. They were forced to resort to the modern ideals of universal citizenship.The Marxist solutions for untouchability were not far from that of upper caste congress leaders. They organized the poor peasants and working class people (mainly dalits and other lower caste people) against the upper caste landlords for wage increase and better working conditions. But this was not a panacea for the larger issue, caste. Let me quote an extract from Ambedkar, “It is usual to hear all those who feel moved by the deplorable condition of the Untouchables unburden themselves by uttering the cry “We must do something for the Untouchables”. One seldom hears any of the persons interested in the problem saying ’ Let us do something to change the Touchable Hindu ‘. It is invariably assumed that the object to be reclaimed is the Untouchables. If there is to be a Mission, it must be to the Untouchables and if the Untouchables can be cured, untouchability will vanish. Nothing requires to be done to the Touchable. He is sound in mind, manners and morals. He is whole, there is nothing wrong with him. Is this assumption correct? Whether correct or not, the Hindus like to cling to it. The assumption has the supreme merit of satisfying themselves that they are not responsible for the problem of the Untouchables.”  Ambedkar was well aware of the fact that only the materialistic development would not yield to the desired effect of changing the life condition of Dalits. Untouchability and other forms of caste practices in the Indian society would continue in any developed stage but its form might change. The actual changes should take place in the minds of upper caste people. The Brahmanical practices should change to bring about a substantial change in the social practices. As the then existing political system failed to draw on the lived experiences of Dalits, Ambedkar resigned from the congress government as the union minister for law and took up a marvelous enterprise of mobilizing the in political lines. But his sudden death and the absence of a powerful second generation leadership created an irreparable damage and a huge vacuum in the Dalit movement. 1980s witnessed a massive change in the Indian economy. The expansion of capitalist mode of production, the introduction of modern agricultural machineries such as tractor, reaping machine etc., high-yield variety seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc. changed the traditional mode of agricultural production in the rural areas. Hitherto agriculture was a subsistence way of life. But due the above mentioned innovative changes agriculture became a profitable business for the land owning communities. Favorable agricultural loans and interest rates encouraged the landed gentry to invest more on agrarian activities and agriculture became a marketable surplus.  As the modernists and Marxist intellectuals predicted, these modernization process were a blessing for untouchable to a certain extent. The novel changes in the agrarian sector undermined the traditional relationship between the land lords and the peasants. The launching of rural transportation facilities such as local trains and bus services enabled them to look for better jobs and in faraway places hence brake away the traditional bondages of working relations with their village land lords.  If we go by the predictions of the nationalists and the Marxist thinkers, caste would have lost its importance and potential in the ‘modern’ era. They could have appropriated the possibility of becoming a part of a casteless utopian world. But the changes in the material domain did not provide a legitimate space for dalits rather in changed the whole scenario of village life making them a more vulnerable section of the society. Ambedkar’s apprehensions about the imminent danger in the Brahmin Raj were proved beyond doubt in the economically transformative era. As a result of the changes in the economic sector especially in the agriculture, dalits achieved the potential to articulate and assert their identity and freedom in the public domain as opposed to the previous political scenario. Roughly speaking a considerable chunk of the Dalit population no more confined themselves to the traditional occupations which demanded a rapport of servitude to the upper caste people. This was a severe blow to the age old and well established hegemony of the upper caste Brahmanical forces. They were compelled to resort to the changes that took place beyond their control.  In many regions of the country the traditional Brahmanical forces were pushed to the backyards of politics by the newly emerged middle castes. The western education and the intrapersonal skills ingrained in them were instrumental in enabling them to consolidate like minded people in politics. Where as the Brahmins retained their spiritual supremacy but superceded by the former exsudras in the number games. The emergence of Khammas and Reddys in Andhra Pradesh and Nairs and Nadars in Kerala and Tamilnadu respectively attests to the changes happened in the political scenario due to the modernization process. But it will be a misreading of the text if the Brahmanism is taken for granted to be thrown in to the archives of history. ‘Brahmanism’ as an ideology survived the tempest of modernity. Brahmanical culture and traditions remained as the ideal values of the country. Despite their assertion in politics Sudras and other middle caste people imitated the cultural practices of Brahmins.   Having acquired some amount of human dignity and freedom from the newly found innovations, Dalits started arguing for a rightful opening in the human society. Their assertions found expressions in different ways. They forced themselves to the mainstream society through various mediums available. Some of them discarded the demeaning jobs and entered small scale companies earning better wages. The coming up of power looms was in fact a blessing in disguise. As a result of this hand looms declined in their productivity as opposed to the modern machineries and came to an abrupt end. But the this modern industry provided a better working condition and wages for the laborers who were mainly from the hand loom industry as it required skilled laborers. Dalits entered academic institutions and pursued their studies using the reservation facility. In some pockets of the country, where dalits are numerically superior, they participated in general elections defying the fatvas of land lords and other upper caste members of the locality. This was a threat to the Indian politics itself as it was a game of numbers and dalits along with other lower caste people outnumbered them. Small scuffles between Dalits and upper caste people always escalated in massive communal violence. The atrocities committed on dalits by various upper caste groups in coastal Andhra since 1980s bears witness to the discomfort of the upper castes about the emergence of dalits as an organized community challenging the upper caste hegemony. Political organizations were polarized on caste bases rather than ideology. Massive killings of dalits by upper caste Reddys and Kammas in coastal Andhra substantiate the fact that they desperately wanted to do away with the new dalit identity and subjectivity. The killing of six Madigas and raping of three dalit women in Karamchedu in Andhra Pradesh in 1985 by Kammas and killing of eight dalits in Chundur by Reddys are a few examples of atrocities committed on dalits to ‘teach them a lesson.’  The modernist and Marxist understanding of caste oppression as a class struggle between the ‘working class’ and the bourgeois heavily brings under the hammer of Dalit critic of modernity. Their predictions of an ‘egalitarian’ society based on class where each individual has the potential of moving upward and downward according to his or her economic condition is an enigmatic understanding. The caste struggles in India is not a manifestation of the universal class struggle. As long as caste remains in our society no equality can be injected in to the minds of the upper caste minds. The question of caste should be addressed in its specificity.         

Our popular notion is that Indian cities are replicas of western culture and life styles which is devoid of premodern traditions such as religion, caste etc. It can absorb any modern citizens to its folds irrespective his or her ascribed identities. Cities are the place where one can escape her demeaning traditional occupations associated with castes and search for socially accepted jobs. This thinking has encouraged the dalits to migrate to cities thus make avail of the benefits offered by the modernization process. But their expectations were never met their real experiences in the modern world. Untouchability reached there even before the untouchables reached the cities.Reservations in educational and job sectors were the primary reasons for the entry of Dalits in to the modern urban centers. This change in the social sphere created a small community of middle class Dalits. This change was instrumental in creating a rupture in the village based traditional occupations. The new middle class Dalits could move in the society of upper caste people and socialize with them on a marginal scale. But this newly ‘civilized’ community was not wholeheartedly accepted by the modern citizens. They had to face the same kind of marginalization and oppression from there upper caste fellow men. They were forced to share two identities, one as bureaucrats in the offices and another as Dalits in their private life.  They could hardly find housing in upper caste localities. If caste was practiced on the basis of purity and pollution theory in villages, in urban areas it operated through exclusion. They lived in separate areas demarcated for Dalits and socialized among themselves. If this was the plight of the government employees who came under reservation, the private sector was in a more advantageous position in excluding lower caste candidates. As reservation was not extended to private sector they were free to select employs based on ‘merit’. This merit was closely associated with one’s ability in speaking good English or dealing with modern equipment, machineries and computers etc. These merit theories gave an upper hand to the urban educated upper caste candidates in getting covetous jobs in private sectors and exclude the unskilled Dalits from the socially acceptable jobs. For Dalits the existing educational system is not enough to fetch socially respectable and lucrative jobs. The primary education is only a tool to make them ‘good’ workers in the industrial sector. Due to the compulsion of globalization public sectors are being privatized. Since the latest technical courses are expensive it will remain a domain of the upper caste elitists. As Dalits will have no access to the modern education it will be quite easy for the implementation of merit theory.  Pro.Gopal Guru, in one of his influential essays, problematizes the identity of modernist Dalits. His critique turns against the modernist projects which compels the Dalits to forget their cultural past and coerced to get assimilated in the ‘secular’ domain. Guru says that in modern domains Dalits will be forced to be silent about his caste identity as it might bring in disgrace for his or her family. They fail to assert their unique identity in such occasions as it is completely dominated by the Brahmanical culture. As a result of this one might struggle to hide his ‘low’ subjectivity and try to imitate the dominant Brahmanical culture. In sociology such a tendency is designated as ‘Sanscritisation’. Sanscritisatized Dalits generally tend to change their names to appear to be Brahmanical. They snap their ties with their community men and mimic the dominant idioms to be a part of the larger society. Sharankumar Limbale gives a vivid description of his rural life in his controversial autobiography ‘Akkarmashi’. Limbale was a Dalit panther’s activist in his village. He used to read Ambedkar literature and propagate his ideas among his friends. He married according to the Buddhist traditions defying the interests of his relatives. When he got a job in the city as a telephone operator he migrated to the urban centre both physically and mentally. Limbale stopped writing to his Dalit friends as their names might proclaim their caste identity. He intentionally selected some of his upper caste friends and started writing continuously for them. Instead of wishing Jai Bhim, which is a Buddhist way wishing; he used the word Namaste as if he is an upper caste man. Whenever he came across his Dalit friends, he simply avoided them so as to keep his relation with upper caste friends intact. But when he comes back to his village, he participates in all kinds of Dalit political activities. Limbale confession of his alienation from his community testifies to Gopal Guru’s critique of modern Dalits. If this was the plight of the educated dalits, the laymen’s situation was more pathetic. There were many dalit laborers in villages who lost their traditional occupations due to the modernization of labour. With the introduction of leather industries traditional leather workers failed to compete with the cheep and the better quality foot wears in the market. Not withstanding the fact that it has reduced the dependency of the dalits on the dominant castes which was the justification for inequalities, it rather failed to provide an alternative for their livelihood. Therefore they were compelled to leave their traditional occupations and become agricultural laborers in the village setup. However a considerable section of these communities migrated to cities looking for other alternatives. But the new hope and search for better living condition in cities were met with utter poverty and beastly life. Modern institutions were beyond their access. They were again forced to take up demeaning jobs in the urban centers and live in slums. In the modern domain of urban life they again become sweepers and scavengers distancing themselves from the ‘civilized masses’. Most Marathi Dalit autobiographies are documentation of the stories of slum dwellers in Mumbai or any other metropolitan cities in the state. The superficial amenities of city life do not reach the downtrodden masses. It confines to a small section of the upper caste upper class of the society. Is it only a problem of class? If that is the case why caste plays a major role in demarcating a divide in the society? If caste is only a division of labour then why is it not found in any other part of the world and only in India?     

                             Dalits and Christianity

 Christianity was a modern religion in India as it preached the equality and love among all the human beings in the world. It could have been a tool to unite the world superceding the internal differences. Jesus, the savior of the universe from all the faulty elements, was welcomed in India by the marginalized sections of the society as elsewhere in the world. Kerala was the first state in India which witnessed the entry of the new religion in the boundaries of India. Ever since Christianity appeared here a large portion of the upper caste Hindus converted to the new religion. As it was encouraged by the British rulers the newly converted Christians were awarded coveted incentives. Thus they appropriated the benefits offered by the church and the colonial power. With the help of foreign aid the church started English schools throughout the state along with the expansion of the religion. Later in the beginning of the twentieth century this community consolidated themselves as a powerful religious as well as a political pressure group in the state.But the untouchables who embraced Christianity were not provided the same spiritual and political platform where they could shed their ascriptive caste identities and merge with the converted upper caste Hindus. The dalit Christians were not allowed in upper caste churches. English education and foreign jobs were accessible only for the mainstream sections of the religion. But to assimilate the lower caste converts in to the religion the church started special schools for untouchables and trained them in regional languages and trained in ‘skilled’ labors. Special churches were also constituted for these people and untouchable priests were appointed in these churches in order to keep them away from the ‘pure’ sections of the religious society. And these churches were named after their caste names such as Pulaya church, Paraya church etc. the most unfortunate thing about these people is that when the government of India recognized all the down trodden castes as scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, Dalit Christians were not given SC or ST status since Christianity preached equality among its followers in the church. After independence, they were denied government benefits created for untouchables because officially on paper they were Christians and therefore casteless. Untouchable Christians were in fact jumping from the frying pan to the fire.  In ‘Karukku’ Bama gives a vivid description of her soaring experience with the upper caste Christians in Tamilnadu. Being a conscious Dalit woman Christianity was seen as a strategy to overcome the disabilities of her community’s law caste identity. It promised her a novel normative spiritual plane on which she could merge with a modern casteless community. Despite her relative’s severe discouragement and the family’s economic disabilities Bama pursued her studies and emerged as an icon of new hope for her community. The nuns and priests who were looked upon as angels of the savior, Jesus Christ, was a great inspiration for little Bama. She decided to bestow her life for the emancipation of her community by becoming one among the ‘angels.’ Karukku is the story of a Dalit’s struggle for self-respect, dignity and humanity in Christianity. It took time for Bama to realize that Caste, which is an irreducible essence of Hindu philosophy of religion, remained as the key feature by which one is to be identified even after conversion from Hinduism to Christianity. The philosophies of equality and freedom surfaced sophisticatedly only superficially in the new found religion. Upper caste priests and nuns who were supposed to be the messengers of ‘God’ did not endorse the claim of Dalits to equality through spiritual emulation. Bama’s life in the nunnery gives witness to the hypocritical approach of the ‘angels’ to Dalits. She had to suffer alienation both from her fellow upper caste inmates and mother superior as well. But her decision to leave the spiritual life to protest against the caste practices of the church did not appeal to her community people. They accused her of tarnishing the reputation of the community by despising their religion and beliefs. Their reluctance to join her fight against the ill treatments meted out on Dalits by the church worsened her already sorry condition of life. Later she took up a teaching job to meet her expenses and help the poor Dalit children. But the school was no exception. To her great pain Bama found out that the upper caste children are trained at home to segregate their Dalit friends. Bama’s attempts to ‘educate’ the children invited severe criticism from both their parents and the school authorities. Her endeavor to depollute the contaminated society was left in vain. Bama’s Karukku is at once a critique of Christianity for its failure as well as an invitation to it to deliver its promises. A close reading of the novel testifies to the fact that caste survived conversion. Conversion as a vehicle to get rid of the caste oppression did not yield the desired effect. Converted dalits have to carry their caste identity even after conversion. If caste was practiced based on the notions of purity and impurity in Hinduism, Christianity offered a modern form of caste. Upper caste put into practice caste through exclusion. ‘All are equal philosophy of the religion did not find expression in their private life. The aspirations of dalits to become universal citizens through Christianity imply an alienation from the culture and community to which they belong. More over sometimes the extreme spirituality of the religion dampens the real political spirit of dalits. Theoretically speaking Christianity is a way to abandon the age-old systems of caste and Varna but practically speaking this is a superficial celebration of the new religion. In the present social situation Christianity cannot be seen as the sole liberator of Dalits. Rather than being spiritual dalits should train themselves to react to all social evils as an organized political force. Religion is only a way to bring together a community on a common spiritual platform. But as far as dalits are concerned this religious unity should be appropriated to reach the corridors of power.       

Ever since Nehru took over the prime minister’s office in 1947, caste had been a marginal issue in Indian politics. Nehru’s secular- nationalist imagination focused mainly on the economic issues such as poverty, unemployment, malnutrition etc. Nehru was appreciated for his ingenious attempts to demolish economic disparity in the country and spearheading the nation to a modern secular milieu through his ‘five year plans’. His attempts to ease off the gravity of the caste differences should also be remembered though most of the socially accepted positions in his government were cornered by the upper caste Brahmins by virtue of being educated in English. But since 1980 there was a monumental change in the Indian polity. Different caste groups, especially non-Brahmin and dalit movements gained ground in the politics. Various hitherto marginalized caste organizations came to the fore claiming for their due share in politics, education, jobs etc. This era can be marked as the active emergence of active caste politics in India and the end of three decades so called secular politics.  Mandal Commission, which was constituted during 1961 to 1978 to in to the backwardness of the country, located that the underdevelopment of the economy and social status of the people are largely associated with caste. The backward communities, excluding the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, constitute fifty three percentage of the total population. But their presence in the central government jobs is only three percentages. More than ninety percentages of the jobs were captured by a particular section of the upper caste society who makes up only three percentage of the population of the country. B.P. Mandal, the chairman of the commission, pointed to the fact that the poverty and social inequality among the masses are directly proportional to the lawlessness of their caste. Social backwardness is closely associated with untouchables. Therefore he suggested that reservations should be based on one’s caste not on economical background. He recommended that twenty seven percentages of total educational opportunities and central government jobs should be reserved for Other Backward Communities (OBC).  But these recommendations were not taken in to consideration by the then congress government headed by Indira Gandhi and later taken over by Rajive Gandhi after her death. When Janata Dal government was elected to power in 1989, V.P. Sing the prime minister of India took up this issue as it was one of the major agenda in their manifesto. In 1990 V.P. Sing government implemented the recommendation of Mandal Commission regarding reservation for OBCs. The government’s decision to implement the reservation bill was received with mass protests all over India. The situation in north Indian cities and educational institutions were dreadful. There were widespread agitations everywhere. Upper caste students and intellectuals came out to the streets and blocked the roads and destroyed the public properties. There were reported cases of self-immolation and suicides in many pockets of the Hindi belt. It was a celebrating moment for Medias. They even coined a new term to refer to the implementation of Mandal Commission report, ‘Mandalisation’.          All the mainstream Medias published articles in favour of the antimandal agitations taken up by the upper caste forces. The discussions that took place both in Medias and political circle were around the secular-modern categories of ‘efficiency’ and ‘merit’. It was taken for granted that efficiency and merit are something which is ingrained in a particular set of people, implicitly the upper caste ‘intellectuals’. Upper caste intellectuals working under different shades (even Marxists) got united to fight the implementation of Mandal recomendations. They termed it as the ‘communalization’ of the society. Their central argument was that the reservation would dilute the quality of education and hence mess up certain important sectors like medical and engineering where human intelligence is necessary.  Kancha Ilaiah’s critique should be placed against the back ground of these anti Mandal agitations. Ilaiah was one among the many who got jobs under OBC reservation.  “I am of those who became a lecturer in Political Science under the OBC reserved quota in Osmania University.  Given the unwritten laws of patronage and access that determine who gets jobs in our institutions, my first class MA, subsequent M Phil and several publications in all India journals would not have brought me a job but for the reservation.” This extract bears witness to the Dalitbahujan critique of existing social system. When the down trodden masses got access to university education and coveted jobs, it was not simply an opportunity to study something rather it was a social revolution. People were highly enthusiastic to send their children to colleges for higher studies.  But for upper caste people university education was something which added flavor to the usual amenities of their life. If this was a new hope for the Dalitbahujan, it was a warning to the hegemony of the upper caste Brahmins. Sprouting of these marginalized sections of the society was a threat to the established hegemony of the Brahmin self. They were quite afraid that their political and social monopolies will be taken over by the emerging new power. But the strategy they employed to resist this new challenge was elusive in nature. They never questioned ‘lower caste’ people coming to universities by evoking the old theory of Varna which denied letters to the Sudras; instead they formulated a new theory of ‘merit’ to pave a hurdle on their way to higher education and employment. This in fact was a double edged sword which they used to overturn the implementation of Mandal commission recommendation. As Ilaiah confesses Dalitbahujan students who came to universities were from regional medium schools and institutions hence they were in a disadvantaged position to compete with the urban educated elite students. The advocates of ‘merit’ theory vehemently questioned the merit of these rural students. Ilaiah brilliantly deconstructs this theory of merit. He questions the very basic of this concept. In our common conception merit is directly associated with ones knowledge of English or if one can score high marks in written exams he/ she will be considered as a meritorious student. Where does this argument come from? How can  Not withstanding the fact that merit of a person should be accounted for selecting for a job, the biggest question is what goes in to making that merit. Only then the modern language of merit and efficiency carry reasonable amount of importance.                       

Review of the book, In Search of Identity, Debates on Religious Conversions in India, By Sebastian C.H. Kim

Conflicts over religion, class, culture etc. can generate dispute in any age and in any culture. But when such clashes happen between a numerically minor community whose faith is transported from a foreign land and a powerful indigenous religion, the problems generated can be all the more ferocious. Sebastian C.H. Kim’s comprehensive book, In Search of Identity, Debates on Religious Conversions in India, examines the complex relation between Christianity and Hinduism with regard to the Christian Conversions in India. Kim elaborately documents the history of Hindu objections to conversion since early 19^th century, by drawing our attention to debates that took place between various Hindu leaders, such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Pandits in Bengal and Christian leaders to the recent controversies regarding the conversion of tribals. However, if the earlier debates were on the philosophical and doctrinal aspects of the two religious traditions, the debates that followed in the twentieth century gradually slipped away from the previous premises and, especially after the advent of Gandhi into the national leadership, became a purely political affair. Gandhi’s fervent zeal for a Hindu nation based on the irreducible essence of his religious faith failed to accommodate Christians as legitimate citizens within the boundaries of his envisioned nation. However, this Gandhian legacy continued throughout the post independence period although the nationalist leaders had declared equidistance from all the religions.       Broadly speaking The 19^th century Hindu leaders can be grouped into three categories based on their views in relation with Christianity viz. the equality of Christianity with Hinduism, based on the ethical core of each religion; the validity of both Christianity and Hinduism, and Christianity with each having different paths: and the supremacy of Hinduism over Christianity. Ram Mohan Roy, an English educated Brahmin from Calcutta, and the Pundits in west Bengal were the first to respond to the activities of Christian missionaries in India. Ram Mohan Roy was a staunch advocate of the equality of Christianity and Hinduism. Yet he severely decried the orthodox practices in the latter. Roy had been greatly influenced by the philosophy of Islam and which in turn made him to hold on to a monotheistic faith in the unity of god. He was immensely influenced by the western thought. He believed that morality is the essence of any religion and reason should merely serve to purify it. He entered the public sphere as a reformer of Hindu religion. Roy was greatly attached to the teachings of Jesus, but saw Christian doctrines built around him as a corruption of the religion of Jesus.  

In 1820 ram Mohan Roy published a book, titled, The Precepts of Jesus: The Guide to Peace and Happiness. In his introduction to the book, Roy argued that a true follower of Jesus Christ need not follow the dogmas built around the religion. It is only a matter of obediently following the teaching of the Master. Hence, he derived a new theory of religion by which Hinduism was seen as compatible with Christianity. Consequently this invited widespread criticism from Christian leaders. Serampore Baptist missionaries were the forerunners among them who took an oppositional view to Roy’s arguments. They criticized him for misinterpreting the gospel. Joshua Marshan described Roy as an intelligent heathen, in the editorial of Friend of India, a magazine published by the Serampore mission. He feared that Roy’s work might injure the cause of Christian truth by portraying Jesus as a mere teacher, not as the lord of all. However, Roy defended his stand by highlighting the sufficiency of the teaching of Jesus. For Roy, historical facts and dogmas were product of human institutions and thus the cause of division and confusion. He claimed that majority of the Christian converts in India were not spiritually converted. Their intentions behind conversion were something else. Roy further argued that the doctrine of trinity was a stumbling block in the path to conversion and revelation. He accused the missionaries for being insensitive to his endeavors to make the Hindus understand Christianity better. Marshan reaffirmed the importance of Christian dogmas in a reply to Roy. He argued that the Christian doctrines enlighten the mind, awaken the conscience and converts the soul. In his reply to Marshan, Roy argued that though Jesus represents himself as a savior or distributer of eternal life that does not mean that he himself was divine.   

The debate between ram Mohan Roy and Marshan should be seen as a failure of missionary response to an Indian attempt to interpret Christianity. At this juncture the interpretation provided by M.M Thomas seems to be important. Thomas argued that the heart of the debate was the relation between morality and salvation in Christianity. Roy believed that the moral lesson taught by the great teacher had in its own power to reconcile men to god and which empowered them to lead a moral life. However, marshal believed in the moral value of Christian doctrines, man’s need of grace, the act of god in Jesus Christ, to atone and reconcile man to god, and to enable him to live the moral law. Roy discovered his version of truth in the teachings of Jesus which he thought would help his fellow Hindus to attain eternal salvation. Roy believed that without converting himself to Christianity he would be able to attain truth by absorbing the truth propagated by Jesus Christ. On the other hand Marshan believed that the salvation of the human kind was made possible only through the atoning death of Jesus and that participation in it is possible only through a personal experience of conversion. Ram Mohan Roy’s understanding of Christianity did not demand a discontinuity from the past. However, Marshan advocated that conversion is completely a new spiritual experience for which one has to snap his or her ties with their previous experiences. Roy’s engagement with the problem of conversion was only a beginning in the series of discussions and debates which followed it.   

The initial decades of the 19^th century Bengal witnessed a lot many educated upper caste Hindus converting to Christianity. In 1839, john Muir, a Scottish civil servant and Orientalist, wrote a pamphlet in Sanskrit in support of the Christian mission in India. Muir argued that test of reason would expose the groundless claims of Hinduism and gradually all its members would convert to Hinduism. Muir’s test of reason was based on the western notion of rationality, as shaped by enlightenment. He further argued that only Christianity posses the three marks of a true religion: a miracle working founder, holiness of scripture, and universality of scripture. Concerned by the change of faith of youths and the arguments of Muir, a group of pundits came down heavily upon Muir. Somanatha, a leading Pandit, argued that nobody should change the religion in which they were born. Because it is the dharma which one acquired through the previous life. In his estimation, Hindus had more Karma than that of Christians hence he claimed that Hinduism is superior to Christianity. The core of the debates between Muir and pundits were focused on the universal claim of Christianity and the use of reason to establish it. Muir claimed that only Christianity can accommodate all the section of the society in the world, irrespective of any difference. However Pandits argued for the plurality of all religions, on the basis of dharma.    The initial debates on Christian conversion in vest Bengal gradually slipped away from the subject of doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Christianity. It started focusing more on the question on the conversion of Hindus to Christianity. The introduction of Christianity in India by the western missionaries was accompanied by science, technology, literature, philosophy etc. moreover they used these scientific tools to prove the irrationality of Hindu religion and encouraged the Hindus to do the same. However, the western missionaries did not put Christianity for the same test; rather science was incorporated in to the greater religious truth of Christianity and regarded Christianity and science complementary. The international Missionary Council Conference organized by the Madras Rethinking Christianity Group in 1938 took exception to the popular conception of western Christianity. They regarded mass conversion as political rather than theological. They condemned Christian community being confined to church as a product of the west and proposed a new form of Christianity which was based on Indian traditions. They argued for an Indian church, radically different from the traditional church structure of the west.   After Indian national congress was formed in 1885, the national movement gained momentum and confidence. They promoted certain ideologies like Self-reliance, Swadeshi etc. based on the Hindu religious heritage of the majority Indians and despite the diversity of the Indian society, the national leaders were able to mobilize the masses with these tools. However, these attempts to integrate national movement and Hindu religion for independence faced a serious challenge: the conversion of depressed communities to Christianity. It undermined the upper caste claim of equality in their religion and thus supremacy over Christianity with which they were opposing British Raj. The issues concerning conversion got aggravated in 1932 when the British government decided to provide a separate electorate for the depressed classes. Finally the religious conversions were seen as a handy work of outsiders, foreign missionaries, for ulterior motives.   

M.K. Gandhi, the ultimate leader of Indian national movement, was highly conscious of the need for a homogenous national identity for the fight against the English. Therefore he understood that the conversion of depressed classes would undermine his efforts. He severely criticized mass conversions, blaming that these are proselytizing activities which could have benefited a few but the country. Gandhi believed that conversion activities took place under the protection of British government. For Gandhi, religion and politics were inseparable and therefore he could not regard mass conversion as purely a religious movement. He was conscious of the threat it would pose to his political agenda.    Gandhi was greatly influenced by the Hindu religious interpretation of human existence: Satya, Ahimsa, and Swadeshi. His understanding of Satya was that all religions express a search for the truth and in that sense they are all equal. Therefore, he argued against proselytism on the basis of the equality of all religions and the need to respect them all. Gandhi’s idea of Swadeshi had implications for three spheres of Indian life: religious, political, and economic. In the religious sphere, he argued that Hinduism is the most tolerant religion because it is non-proselytizing and according to his spirit of Swadeshi, a Hindu refuses to change his/her religion since they can improve it through reforms within. For him, Christianity was unindian that was imposed upon the people against their will, and even more, it was the religion of the oppressors- the enemies of the Swadeshi movement.    Stanley Jones was a prominent American Methodist missionary. He was well respected in India for his inter-religious dialogues, interaction with educated Hindus, Ashram living etc. Jones published a book in 1925, titled, The Christ of the Indian Road, and in which he claimed that the Christians had presented a Christ to India who was not a western product but was there before them. He made his intensions clear that he did not want to westernize India but to produce Christ like characters. He insisted that change of religious affiliation should take place along with spiritual change wrought by Christ. Gandhi and Jones remained as good friends until Gandhi expressed his reservations about conversion in an interview given to The Hindu. To a question, Gandhi said that if India achieved Swaraj he would ask the foreign missionaries to abstain from missionary activities and go back to their countries, because Hinduism is adequate for the Indian people and we do not need any spiritual conversion. This hostile reaction of Gandhi towards missionary activities made both western missionaries as well as missionaries in India afraid that Gandhi’s remark would be an indication of India’s future policy on Christianity. Stanley Jones wrote a letter to Gandhi opposing his statements. Jones reaffirmed that he had every right to share his belief with his fellow beings and if that sharing leads to moral and spiritual conversion, that person should be allowed to declare it outwardly. He further argued that Gandhi was using political means to limit religious freedom. However, Gandhi argued against conversion by applying the principles of Swadeshi when Jones based his arguments on fundamental human rights. Gandhi believed that religion was embodied in the religious heritage of one’s forefathers and thus a person is born in to it, and since it is one’s very identity one needs to reform it rather than renouncing it. But Jones believed that religion could be separated from one’s socio-cultural heritage and it is something that an individual decide. During one of his visits to England in 1931, Gandhi spoke to a missionary conference and emphasized that just as a nation has no right to impose its ideology and power on another, so the missionaries had no right to impose their religious convictions, as drawing a parallel between the British Empire and the missionary enterprise.    In 1932, the National Council of Churches of India initiated a forum called forward movement for cooperative evangelism among protestant churches in India. They defined their main objective as evangelism by which they meant the presentation of Christ to all the people of India with a view to convert them. It was very much church centered mission, emphasizing that the church is the divine instrument and the convert should join the church to share in its privileges and responsibilities. Hindu leaders turned hostile in their responses to missionary activities due to these developments. In 1935, when Dr. B.R. Ambedkar made a statement that he and his followers would renounce Hinduism, the question of conversion became more political. Meanwhile Azariah, one of the leading figures of church mission in Asia, called upon the churches in India to make a concentrated and definite effort in evangelism. He interpreted the recent widespread dissatisfaction among the depressed classes as deep spiritual hunger rather than material dissatisfaction. However, the motivation of the converts from the depressed class background was still the focus of criticism. Azariah acknowledged different motives behind the conversion of lower caste converts as a struggle to escape from the caste hierarchal and superstitious religion to a new religion. Moreover, he interpreted Ambedkar’s efforts as reflections of god’s activity.    Azariah’s confidence in the ability of the Christian community to bring about a spiritual outlook in the converts was in sharp contrast to that of Gandhi, who believed that the non-spiritual motives of the converts compromised the very result and could never produce a spiritual community. However, the former was highly conscious that the Christians in independent India should not be considered as outsiders, they should be acknowledged for their search for truth in Jesus Christ. Gandhi on the other hand, increasingly criticized Christian efforts to convert the depressed classes by saying that “the poor Harijans have no mind, no intelligence, no sense of difference between god and no-god”, and in an interview with john Mott, he made a highly controversial remark in which he compared evangelizing Harijans to preaching the gospel to a cow. Gandhi’s suspicions about conversion meant that he tended to regard the Indian Christian community as an appendage of the missionaries and not demonstrably as a spiritual community. Therefore he found it difficult to accommodate the Christians as equal partners in his vision for India. Gandhi, who challenged the British government with his confidence and belief in the equality of his people with other nations, failed to recognize Harijans as dignified human beings. He wanted them to be a part of the Hindu heritage by maintaining the caste hierarchy. The debates on conversion went on as India approached independence.The primary challenge of the nationalist leaders in the independent India was the formation of a constitution which would safeguard the interest of different sections. However, the secular ideology of the leaders surfaced only at the superficial level, they were demonstrably biased towards Hinduism. Yet, the Christians regarded the right of conversion as a key issue in the matter of religious freedom. The all India council of Indian Christians agreed to cooperate with the congress provided the latter would take measures to safeguard their religious freedom in the constitution itself, under the fundamental rights. However, in December 1946, a united forum of Hindu leaders presented a memorandum to the constituent assembly stating that freedom of religion should be safeguarded as a fundamental need of all not just for one particular community. And furthermore, this safeguard should be expressed in accordance with the principle of dharma as embodied in the Hindu tradition and not on the basis of rights as Christians insisted.    

The constituent assembly was officially inaugurated on 9 December 1946. On 24 January 1947, as part of the process of formulating the Indian constitution, the assembly adopted a resolution to set up an advisory committee. At its first meeting, the advisory committee in turn set up five sub-committees including a fundamental rights subcommittee and a minorities subcommittee.   Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the chairman of the advisory committee. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Munshi, a former home minister of Bombay, were the two members in the fundamental rights subcommittee who explicitly dealt with the question of conversion. In his first draft, Munshi included a preventive clause on conversion. on the other hand Ambedkar argued that the state shall guarantee to every Indian citizen liberty of conscience and the free exercise of his/her religion including the right to profess, to preach and to convert within limits compatible with public order and morality and that there should be no compulsion to participate in any religious act.    Consequently the fundamental rights subcommittee submitted its recommendations to the advisory committee on 16 April 1947. This included clauses on religious freedom and prohibition on conversion, which were substantially the same as in Munshi’s original draft. Munshi argued that no person under the age of 18 shall be made to join or profess any religion other than the one in which he was born, or be initiated into any religious order involving a loss of civil status. He further stated that conversion brought about through coercion or undue influence shall not be recognized. The minorities subcommittee examined the clauses recommended by the fundamental rights subcommittee for the purpose of protecting the rights of minorities and recommended some amendments. They argued that the prevention of the conversion of minors would end up in breaking up families in case their parents change their religion, hence they should be allowed to change their religion according to their will. moreover, in these recommendations, the phrase ‘right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion’ was inserted in place of ‘freedom of religious worship and to freedom to profess religion’- and thus the ‘freedom to propagate’ was finally recognized by the advisory committee despite having strong protest from some members, and brought to the constituent assembly for final endorsement on    1 May 1947. After long debates, the constituent assembly took the decision in favor of Christian position retaining the word ‘propagate’. The clause allowing the right to conversion included in the draft constitution sent by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was as follows,Article 19. (1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to other provisions of this part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.   Most interestingly, contrary to the apprehensions of the Christians, Munshi endorsed this clause and he expressed his sympathies with Christians. In the ensuing votes on each amendment, the assembly opted to retain the word ‘propagate’ and the article was included in the constitution as article 25 in the section on ‘the Right to Freedom of Religion and was finally adopted by the assembly on 26 November 1949.        The secular ideology of the state did not surface in the full sense of the word where the relationship between the state and the religious minorities was concerned. This tendency was accelerated due to the rapid growth of various Hindu nationalist movements and their demand for an independent India i.e. a nation free from all kinds of foreign influences. Hence they interpreted Christianity and missionary activities, esp. conversion as an intrusion of foreign dominance into Indian soil, even after independence.  During the first years of independence, the presence of foreign missionaries involved in medical and social work was generally accepted by the  government of India. However, the fact that the number of missionaries was increasing and that conversion of Adivasis and backward classes was continuing made the government anxious about the entrance of missionaries and their activities. Consequently the government of India decided to control the entry of foreign missionaries. The government turned down an unprecedented number of visa applications from the foreign missionaries. In April 1953, Kailas Nath Katju, the then home minister of India, commented in the Lok Sabha that he had received a lot of complaints about forced conversions in different parts of Madhya Pradesh and eventually on 16^th April 1954, the Madhya Pradesh government ordered for an enquiry into missionary activities in the state. The committee was headed by Bhavani Shankar Niyogi, a retired chief justice.    The underlying reason behind the formation of the enquiry commission draws our attention to a historic fact. Even during the British Raj some of the princely states in the present Madhya Pradesh state had enjoyed political autonomy and thereby they maintained well furnished laws and regulations to control conversions. But, after the independence, when these states were amalgamated to Madhya Pradesh, their autonomy became no longer valid. Consequently the Christian missionaries entered these areas and started their missionary activities, especially among the tribal people, which inevitably raised strong suspicions among Hindus. Another important point to be remembered at this point is that Madhya Pradesh had been the strong hold of various Hindu Nationalist movements.    Despite widespread criticism and noncooperation from Christians and moderate Hindus, the committee continued its enquiry and submitted its first report to the government on 18 April 1956. Volume 1 of the report, which comprises the findings of the enquiry, tried to establish the case that the various missionary activities were aimed not only at the conversion of the people, but were also part of a western Christian agenda to further their influence in India. The report of the committee can be briefly summarized as follows. The fundamental rights are meant for the citizens of India and the foreigners ought to be different as are their duties. They argued that the missionaries would be accountable for provoking the Hindu sentiments as they abused the Hindu deities to convince the people and they were encouraged to do the same. On the issue of secular state, the committee insisted that it is the duty of the state to see to it that equality is accorded to every religion. The report convincingly stated that the large majority had not converted in the real sense of the term but for ulterior motives. This was underlined in their assessment of the motives of conversion. The committee also pointed out that the conversion activities were motivated by the fear of communism in the western world. The communists had curtailed the religious freedom of the Christians wherever they were powerful. This in turn made the Hindus believe that the missionary activities are geared to stop the spread of communism in India. Some of the pamphlets and letters written by the missionaries against the communist movement strengthened this fear.On the basis of these findings the committee recommended that,                                                  (1) missionaries, whose main objective was conversion should be asked to withdraw and their entry to the country should be monitored; (2) use of any professional service as means of making converts should be prohibited by law; (3) an amendment of article 25 of the constitution was needed, to limit the fundamental rights to Indian citizens only, and clarify that it does not include conversion brought about by undue means; (4) suitable controls should be implemented on conversions brought about through illegal means and, if necessary, legislative measures should be enacted; (5) distribution of literature for propaganda without the approval of the state government should be prohibited.     Oscar Servin, the Bishop of Raigarh-Abmbikapur, disputed the critic of motives behind conversion. He convincingly argued that various motives behind the conversion of lower castes, in fact, do not dilute the real spirit of spiritual conversion. It could be for freedom from caste oppression, education of children, and a lift in the social scale etc. However, the question is not what motive first turned this man’s mind towards Christianity, does this man, at the present moment, have faith in Christ? Contrary to their silence during the enquiry, the protestant too joined the larger Christian community, up in arms over the implementation of the recommendations of the committee. However, unlike the Catholics, the Protestants took a different view that the real problems were laid in the involvement of foreign missionaries in the conversion activities, and the alien identity of Indian converts in relation to Indian culture and tradition created by a radical understanding of conversion. Therefore, Protestants took the report as a challenge to develop new patterns of mission compatible with Indian traditions and culture.      The Niyogi Committee’s recommendations were first implemented by the Government of Orissa in 1967 through the Freedom of Religion Act, followed by Madhya Pradesh in 1968. This caused Christians to be deeply suspicious of the growing Hindu ideology which called for conformity to a Hindu state regardless of religious and socio-cultural diversity. These governments imposed serious restrictions on conversion through the legislation                          of ‘Hindu Personal Laws’ and the ‘Freedom of Religion Legislation’. The ‘Hindu Personal’ law was meant to exclude scheduled caste converts from the benefits offered to Hindu Dalits. Hindus argued that the rights and privileges of the Scheduled Castes were designed to address the problem of caste, and since converts had opted out of the caste system, there was no reason to offer them benefits.    On the grounds of the violation of fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution, the Catholic Union of India filed a case against the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act in the Orissa High Court. On 24^th October 1972, the court passed the verdict that ‘it is the religious duty of every Christian to propagate his religion and as a corollary of this proposition; conversion to one’s own religion should be included in the Fundamental rights. However, in the case of Madhya Pradesh act, Chief Justice P.K. Tare delivered a final verdict on 23 April 1974, which was in contradiction to the decision of the Orissa High Court. As a result of these differences in the verdicts, the case was brought to the Supreme Court, which gave its final verdict on 17 January 1977, upholding the decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Emboldened by the Supreme Court Verdict, the Government of Arunachal Pradesh passed the Freedom of Indigenous Faith Act on 19 May 1978. However, quite interestingly, Hinduism, Nature worship, and certain forms of Buddhism were included in the list of indigenous faiths in the state category. As the debate continued, Christian arguments increasingly shifted their basis from the fundamental right in the Indian constitution to the ‘Human Rights’ in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to practice their faith as a minority religious community. That is, the problem was now seen in terms of Hindus determining to enforce their influence over religious minorities using their state power and legal authority.    Owing to these incidents, Christian Theologians were forced to rethink over the meaning and practice of conversion and resulted in intra-Christian debates between Protestants and Catholics. During the Thambaran Conference in 1938, the Madras Rethinking Group, criticized the discontinuity of Christianity with other religions, a theory proposed by Hendrik Kraemer in his book , The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Pandipeddi Chenchaiah questioned the choice of the church as the central theme of the conference and he further argued that there is no need for Hindu converts to join the church since church occupies only a marginal space in the message of Jesus. Chenchaiah saw conversion as a change of life without involving affiliation to the church because he viewed mission as a movement in the Hindu social fold rather than the creation of a solid society outside. Chenchaiah’s radical approach to Church centered Christianity was taken up latter by two prominent Christian theologians, M.M. Thomas and Kaj Baago. In 1966 an article by Kaj Baago, Professor of Church History at United Theological College, Bangalore, triggered controversy among Christians. He argued that the institutionalized church is a colonial legacy and it should be separated from Christ. Christ must be free from Christianity and particularly from the church, which is neither compatible nor acceptable to modern Hindus because of its historical past in India. He proposed that instead of rejecting Hinduism, the gospel should be allowed to grow within Hinduism since Christ and his gospel are not bound by Christianity. However, Kaj Baago’s position was disputed by Lesslie Newbigin, the then bishop of the Church of South India. He defined conversion as a return to the covenant, arguing that conversion implies a real ‘discontinuity’ between Christian faith and faiths. Latter M.M. Thomas, the director of Christian institute for the study of Religion and Society, Bangalore, joined hands with Baago. Reflecting upon the point of contact between Christianity and Hinduism, M.M. Thomas published a book, Salvation and Humanization, which in turn brought about a direct confrontation with Leslie Newbegin. Thomas alleged that the main problem of Indian Christianity was ‘Pietistic individualism’, which emphasized dogmatic belief and the inner experience of conversion. Thomas was of the opinion that the communal tendency of the Christian community closed off and completely isolated them from others. As a panacea for these problems, Thomas introduced a new concept, Christ-centered secular fellowship outside the church: a koinonia. He further argued that the Christ centered secular fellowship does not demand the conversion of an individual Hindu to Christianity, rather it offers a common platform where both Hindu and Christian faiths can melt together. Nevertheless, Lesslie Newbegin still glued to his idea of the importance of church in a converts life. He convincingly argued that some common cultural forms and a common society will develop among those who are united by a strong faith in Jesus. Yet their attempts to infuse Christianity with Indianness were vehemently rejected by the increasingly powerful Hindu movements.    In the 1970s and ‘80s the development on catholic thinking on conversion was greatly influenced by two competing approaches to contextualizing the gospel, The Inculturation Model and The Liberation Model. The former tended to relate Christianity to upper caste and Brahmanical theology of religion whereas the Liberationists were concerned more about the interests of the outcastes, whom they believed were the victims of caste Hinduism. Liberationists thus accused Inculturationists of indifference to matters of social justice and even of complicity with high caste oppression. However, Inculturationists saw liberationists as insensitive to Hindu religion and as a threat to communal harmony.  Meanwhile the second Vatican conference   passed a resolution, opening up the possibility that those outside the church, who do not receive the gospel, are related to the People of God (the church) in various ways and may attain eternal salvation. It was in line with Karl Rahner’s theology which emphasized that universality of God’s grace such that every individual, regardless of religious background, would have an opportunity of partaking in genuine saving relationship to god.  At this juncture, Raymond Panikkar’s well known book   The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, deserves a close reading. Panikkar argued that there is a meeting place between Christianity and Hinduism and moreover, that common place would be Jesus Christ since he was the ontological meeting point of any religion and the only mediator between god and the rest.  He insisted that Christ is already present in Hinduism and the only mission of a genuine Christian is to unveil it. Yet Rahner and Panikkar differed on one point regarding the salvation of non-Christians, whom the former called anonymous Christians. For Rahner, salvation was through god’s grace offered to anonymous Christians whereas for Panikkar Hinduism itself was a vehicle for salvation because of the presence of unknown Christ within it. Nevertheless his work fore grounded a base for catholic theologians in India to move from Indian Christianity to Hindu-Christianity.     Hans Staffner, an Australian Jesuit, and Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine, were the forerunners among those who tried to implement the theory of inculturation in India. They argued that Christianity and Hinduism can be easily synthesized and therefore there is no need for conversion. The adherents of both the religion can embrace rather than renounce the essence of other’s religious tradition while remaining in their own religious community.  This new theology found supporters among the Indian Catholic theologians during 1970s. However, the Hindu leaders vehemently denied these claims. They feared that this was another attempt from the Christian theologians to convert Hindus to Christianity. They accused the advocates of          Hindu-Christian theology that they were trying to implant Christian philosophy of theology in to Hindu culture.     Coming to liberation theology, the liberationist evangelists in India drew their inspiration from a document presented in the Latin American bishops meeting in Colombia, in 1968. It stated that the church should follow the example of the Christ who demonstrated the preference to the poor and called for a sincere conversion in people’s outlook, from individualistic self-concern to a concern for the common welfare of others.  Hence the liberation understanding of mass conversion in India tended to see it as a social protest against the caste ridden Hindu society.   Nevertheless the Hindu nationalist leaders condemned liberation theology as completely motivated for material benefits and it severely diluted the religious spirit of the convert.   Due to the increasing political influence of the RSS and its associate organizations, the tension between the missionaries and the extremist Hindu communitarians increased. In 1994, when CBCI organized a National Consultation in Pune, Arun Shourie presented a paper on the Hindu understanding of evangelism in India and he called for an immediate end to all kinds of missionary activities. He observed that the missionaries had severely damaged the self-confidence as well as the self-respect of Hindus. He argued that the Christian missionaries had put Dalits and tribal in double disillusionment as they failed to provide an earthly paradise of equality.  He further stated that the Hindus in India can not forget the colonial legacy of Christianity.  He proposed a theory of conspiracy in which the Christian missionaries had played  a major role along with colonial administers and orientalists in undermining the Hindu beliefs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        During the second half of 1990s, BJP became politically powerful and consequently they captured power in the central elections held in 1998.  This resulted in Hindutva ideology again confronting the Christian campaign of world evangelization. As was the case earlier, controversies and debates surrounded again around the issue of the conversion of Tribals.  The Parivar actively campaigned for the reconversion of Tribals to Hinduism through a ceremony called Suddhy. Their demands to put an end to conversion activities came to its zenith with the killing of Graham Staines, an Australian Missionary, and his two sons in Orissa in January 1999. And further, when John Paul II visited India in November in the same year, the VHP launched a campaign against his visit and demanded apology from him for the forced conversion of Hindus during the Portuguese rule. Demonstrably, the Parivar had two aims in their propaganda against Christians, one was to awaken the Hindu sentiments against the former and the second was to humiliate the Christians about their past by directly relating their religious history to a tyrannical colonial administration. But, contrary to the hope of moderate Hindus and secularists, Pope reiterated the importance of conversion and stated that, though Christianity respects other religious faiths, Jesus is the only savior for all peoples. Hence conversion remains as the cardinal objective of the church. Pop’s overt insistence on conversion as a response to the overwhelmingly fundamentalist Hindu nationalists’ demand for an end to Christian mission in India turned out to be a weapon for them to mobilize the laymen against evangelism.      Kim convincingly informs us that the problem of conversion in India is seen by scholars as largely due to the historical background of colonial power, foreign missionary work and caste discrimination within Hinduism. However, in the post independence-period in India, the Hindu Nationalist movements took up the Pandits view of the supremacy of Hinduism over other religions and sought to impose Hindu identity on the people of India, regardless of their religious allegiance and traditions. The importance given to tolerance in Hindu religious traditions and the stress on human rights by Christians had contradictory implications.  During the post-world war II period, the Christian nations in the west raised concerns about human rights in international politics. The outcome of these collective Anglo-American Christian efforts was the inclusion of religious liberty in the formation of the United Nations universal declarations on human rights in 1948. It declared, in article 18, the universal right of the freedom to change and to manifest one’s religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.However, in the Indian context, the Christianity being propagated in lines with universal declaration of human rights was resisted by Hindus. They argued that the conversion of Hindus to Christianity is against the notion of dharma and therefore a threat to the Hindu tolerance, which was based on the belief that every community has inalienable rights which others should respect. The response to this from the Indian theologians took three distinctive approaches to the problem: the integration of the Hindu and Christian theologies, the liberation approach and the inculturation approach. However, their endeavors to find a common identity as Indians and yet keep a self-identity as Christians did not have the desired effect due to the inseparability of Indian identity and Hindu identity proposed by the nationalists.