The Meaning of Dalit Oppression: Past and Present.
The Oxford dictionary very vaguely defines dalit as a member
of the lower caste. Dalits are the poor and the downtrodden. Generally, Dalit
includes those termed in administrative parlance as Scheduled Castes (SCs),
Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). However, in
day-to-day usage in political discourse, the term is so far mainly confined to
SCs.[1] The dalits were a people
and members of the human community who have been treated a no-people and
no-humans because of the selfishness, pride, covetousness, greed and lust of
their conquerors and oppressors who subjugated and dominated them.
Dalits have been oppressed, crushed and broken down the centuries. Now
they have begun to assert their identity as a people accepting their
brokenness. They have been oppressed and broken historically due to the inhuman
and oppressed ideology of the Brahmins. They have decided to liberate
themselves from the caste-class nexus of oppression. They have decided to
establish a society of justice, equality and fraternity in order to establish a
new social order.
Dalit oppression has been a shameful and dehumanizing reality that have
been on for a long time down the history of the Indian civilization. There were
various elements which made such a dehumanizing activity legally valid,
socially acceptable, religiously right and divinely planned. Let us see some of
the causes that made the Dalit oppression a reality in the past and present.
Racial Difference was treated as the origin of untouchability. According
to Mr Stanley Rice’s theory, there was a strong probability that the outcastes
were survivors of the conquered peoples, who, as caste tended to coincide with
occupation, became the drum-beating, leather-working and farm labouring classes
to which as serfs they had been relegated from early times. These people,
though they were the original settlers, were subjected to lower levels of job,
and even if accepted to the Hinduism, were kept outside the caste system. The
origin of untouchability was to be found in the unclean and filthy occupations
of the untouchables.
According to Dr Ambedkar, the dalits were the aboriginal tribals
defeated and routed by the external forces. This is the beginning of the Broken
men who were at the mercy of the settled tribesmen and the outsiders. These
broken men lived on the border of the village so as to meet the raids of the
hostile tribes. The broken men were made to live outside the village. The
untouchables were originally broken men. It is because they were Broken Men
that they lived outside the village. The broken men were Buddhists. According
to Ambedkar, the clue to the origin of Untouchability lay hidden behind the
reasons for the Untouchables not receiving the Mantra from the Brahmins, the
Brahmins not serving the Untouchables as their priests and the preference of
the Untouchables to have their own priests. Such an antipathy between the
Brahmins and the Broken Men caused the untouchability. The principal
reason for the rise of Untouchability was the habit of beef-eating kept on by
the Broken Men. This gave additional ground for offence to the Brahmins to
carry their new-found love and reverence for the cow to its logical conclusion
which led to the Brahmins worshipping the cow.
There are various names that we attribute to the dalits such as
untouchables and outcastes. These two elements have their root in the existence
of the caste system of the Hindu society. The caste system was created and kept
alive in the interest of the rich to rule over the resources of production and
the surplus of the process of production. This slowly made the top hierarchy
more rich and the bottom ones poorer. Such stratification of the society was a
tool to assert the hegemony of the few rich people. The caste system denied any
place for the dalits in the hierarchy and they were kept away as outcastes,
doing menial and impure services to the others. Since the dalits did menial
jobs and handled impure things, they were treated as impure and untouchable.
The Brahminical religion denied these people access to knowledge and education.
The minds of most of the Dalits in India were gripped by the
Brahminical doctrine of Karma--a full retribution in the next life for all a
person's actions in this life. The soul was said to be reborn into a life and
if it was a human life into a particular caste on the basis of the merit it had
acquired for its actions in the previous life. The Dalits were told that
their misery was the result of their karma brought on them by their evil
actions in previous lives. Hence, Karma as a religious theory, justified and
helped in the oppression
Another theory to give religious color to the dalit oppression was that
of Dharma. According to this theory, every one has a duty to do in order to
attain the salvation. The Dalits were told that their duty and way of life with
a view to obtaining a higher level of existence and ultimately moksha i.e.
salvation from history, lay in the faithful performance of the duties of their
jati which were considered polluting and so they were segregated and treated as
untouchables in Hindu society.
Thus dalit psyche has been wounded down the centuries and it has
affected them even today. Hence, their desire to appease the Hindus and their
gods and goddesses still take place. However, time has come for us to understand
the truth and to assert our rights as human beings.
Dalit Liberation, Humanisation and Enpowerment
Though Dalits have been victims of oppression for centuries, but a
significant minor section of them has been struggling down the centuries till
today for liberation from oppression and for humanization and empowerment. Thus
dalit identity has also been formed in and through this process of struggle. At
various points in the history and in different parts of India, dalits have
been struggling and the central content of their struggle has been the
affirmation of human dignity and the establishment of equality, justice and
fraternity in the Society in the face of the brahminic ideology of karma-dharma
and the ideology of class domination, especially global capitalism.
Dalits and Buddhism:
The emergence and concerns of Buddhism played a vital role in the
initiation of dalit liberation, humanization and empowerment. The Buddha as a
renouncer and ascetic by option freed himself from the bonds of family and
society, the rights and duties of his varna and caste and
placed himself outside the Brahminic hierarchical society and the four ashramas.
He rejected the aim of Vedic society: artha (wealth), kama (duty
and pleasure) and dharma (cosmic & social order) in order
to pursue the goal of immortality i.e. complete liberation from what the Vedic
householder cherished and from dukha i.e. sorrow and suffering. The Buddha
discerned the roots of suffering in the craving for pleasure, life and power.
This craving had to be rooted out from the human heart for a person to attain
full freedom. Hence the Buddha shifted the essence of religion to ethical ideas
of detachment, universal compassion, equanimity towards all and fraternity. He
therefore radically rejected ritual sacrifice which was accepted as the
instrument of maintaining cosmic order, the bonds between man and the gods and
the social rank and status of the Vedic householder and the caste system. He
also made his teaching available to the masses by preaching to them in a
language and using categories that they could understand. It was followed by
many low castes rejecting Hinduism and entering the Buddhist fold. The Buddha
accepted disciples from the lowest castes irrespective of their birth,
occupation, social status or ritual purity. His monastic order was open to all.
We find among his disciples a barber, a fisherman, a cowherd, a tribal girl,
slave girls, a smith's daughter and a prostitute. The Buddha also had a
scavenger and a dog-eater as his disciples. He ate food from the hands of the
outcastes. Such humanizing acts of Buddha gathered more outcastes to his fold
rejecting the Brahminic culture. Ambedkar himself became a Buddhist
in Nagpur on the 14th October, 1956.
Dalits and the Bhakti Movements:
Bhakti movements first emerged in the history of Indian religions in the
Tamil South in the seventh century A.D. and reached their peak between the
fifteenth and the seventeenth century. The Bhakti movements also emerged as a
response of the Brahmins to renew and reform the Vedic religion which was
attacked by Buddhism and Jainism for its excessive preoccupation with
ritualistic practices. Later, Bhakti movements which had begun in the south
were taken to the north in a different form. One of the important
characteristics of the Bhakti movements wherein people belonging to different
caste groups took part, was that they were non-Brahmin in nature. In southern
and western India because of the strong social oppression, the Bhakti
movements were even anti-Brahmin in nature. While one can grant that a large
number of the Bhakti saints who played an important role in the movement were
non-Brahmins, there were also important Bhakti saints who belonged to the upper
castes. So, many dalits and outcastes took active participation in the Bhakti
movements to bring equality in the Society and their lives. However, the Bhakti
movements did not attempt to establish equality in the socio-economic spheres
of life but only in worship. Although castes with differing ritual and social
status became members of a particular sect of the Bhakti movements, eventually
the hierarchy of the caste system began to prevail even within the religious
sect, because in daily life the socio-cultural identity that came from the jati was
much stronger than the religio- ideological identity of the cross-caste sect.
Though Bhakti movements aimed at equality in the society, it did not really
remove the evil effects of the caste system completely.
Dalits and Islam:
Another major change that had occurred even before the 10th century
A.D., was the conversion of many low caste Hindus to Islam along the western
and eastern coasts of India, by the missionaries of the Arab traders and a
large number of Muslim immigrants who had settled down with them in Malabar,
Gujarat and on the Coromandel coast. Islam was spread mainly by the Sufis,
who went around singing devotional hymns, many of them taken from the Hindu
ethos and appealed to the personal devotional and emotional life of the
masses. Most of the conversions to Islam took place among the low castes.
In Tamil Nadu, there were many cases of mass conversions to Islam. In
Tirunelveli District, Palayamkottai itself has many Sufi families and ancient
Dargahs where even till today, religious programs are held annually. (One of
them, I attended with the Folklore department of St Xavier’s College,
Palayamkottai) As in the other cases, the conversion of Dalits and low castes
to Islam has essentially been a search for social equality, dignity, economic
well-being and protection from social oppression.
Dalits and Sikhism:
The Sikh movement which Guru Nanak began attempted to break away
from the caste system, caste ideology and the caste society which formed the
social framework of the caste system. Sikhism rejected the Brahmanical
scriptures which were the perennial source and sanction of caste ideology. The
Sikhs were trained militarily to capture political power which became the chief
means by which they sought to break the hold of the caste system among them.
There were large scale conversions of Dalits to Sikhism for a positive
affirmation of the values of social equality and fraternity which were central
to the teaching of Guru Nanak and his successors and remained a characteristic
strength of the Sikh movement especially in its revolutionary period.
Dalits and Christianity:
In a similar move, many Dalits and outcastes joined Christianity at
different places in India. Its effect was mainly seen in Tamil Nadu. With
the arrival of Catholic and Protestant missionaries, many joined Christianity.
Robert De Nobili, John de Britto and other missionaries did wonderful job to
get men to Christianity, however they failed to bring real equality among the
faithful.
The Protest and Reform Movements Initiated by the Dalits and Low Castes
At various times in Indian history a large number of heterodox sects
have emerged in Indian history to question and challenge the power interests
and the value system of the existing social, political and religious structures
of society. Some of the popular movements are The Kabir-Panth, The Satnami
Sect, The Lalgir Panth, The Panka Movement, The Ram Ramis, The Movement Among
The Ezhavas, The Ravidas Movement, The Yogi Pothuluri Virabramham Movemet, The
Movement of the Dalits led by Dr. Ambedkar, The Dalit Panther Movement
and Dalit Voice.
Ambedkar, himself a dalit, was the messiah of the dalits. He was well
educated and he could understand the oppressive structures his fellow brothers
in. So he called for total struggle against the Brahminical hierarchy to bring
equality among the people. “….Have faith in yourself. With justice on our side,
I do not see how we can lose the battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy.
The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or
social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is a battle
for freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of the human personality….”[2] This was sense of humanization Ambedkar
had cherished.
The Naxalite Movement in Bihar from the Dalit Perspective
The naxalite movement based on the Maoist ideology was one of the most
powerful vehicles of dalit protest in Bihar. The participation of the
dalits in the naxalite movements resulted in the Emergence of Dalit Leadership
in the Naxalite Movement and the Dalits became real direct participants in the
power struggle of society.
Hence we see that Dalit Liberation, Humanisation and Empowerment has
started long back but the struggle is continuing till today to attain the goal,
though the result is coming very slow, complete liberation is not impossible.
My reflections:
My own experience with the life of the dalits began in the Juniorate in
Sitagarha, where once a week we used to stay in Dalit families. I used to judge
them critically for their drunken behavior and tendency to fight. But later, as
I grew up in the Society, I began to realize the oppression these people had to
bear for centuries. Later, during my study in Palaymkottai, I could sense the
tension, that prevailed within the social structure. There were always inter
caste conflicts and especially between the dalits and the Naadaar castes. The
college had to be closed down indefinitely due to caste conflicts once a while.
Even in hostels such feeling of tension prevailed and the dalits were always
looked down by the other caste people of Tirunelveli. Even at times I felt that
the community also had at times the feeling of caste affiliation among the
members.
We have seen in the life situations of a dalit, how social structures
become elements of oppression and exploitation. Now as a Christian my
perspectives on the dalit issue is this. First of all, by means of oppression
and exploitation we are denying the humanness in them. Man is created in the
image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27). Now are we going to see this image and
likeness of God in our dalit brethren, if we subject them to dehumanizing
situations? So for me, Dalit liberation, humanization and empowerment would
mean recognizing the humanity in them. It would call for, creating a new
identity i.e., creating a new self-image for them to accept themselves as
people equal to all his fellow human beings. He should be taught that there is
no less human or more human but only human.
In the Old Testament, we see God as a Liberator, who sees the plight of
the oppressed and liberates them. Similarly, in the New Testament, we see that
Jesus becomes one with the poor, oppressed and socially neglected groups. Both
show a preferential option for the weak and oppressed. So we should also take
that stand to be with the poor, marginalized and oppressed and liberate them.
If we can have the fellowship that Jesus had, then we will be able to bring
equality and justice for them and thus to bring
the Kingdom of God here on the earth.
[1] Ghanshyam Shah (Ed),
Dalit Identity and Politics, Sage Publications, 2001, pp 17-18
[2] Ghanshyam Shah (Ed),
Dalit Identity and Politics, Sage Publications, 2001, p.138
