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One Step Outside Modernity - Caste, Identity Politics and Public Sphere
One Step Outside Modernity - Caste, Identity Politics and Public Sphere
Author(s): M. S. S. Pandian
Source: Economic and Political Weekly , May 4-10, 2002, Vol. 37, No. 18 (May 4-10,
2002), pp. 1735-1741
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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M S S PANDIAN
I incitement, caste perhaps would not have - is a regular feature one finds in most
Introduction made even those two appearances in the upper caste autobiographies. Caste always
rich and textured story of Narayan's life.l belongs to someone else; it is somewhere
For a man born in 1906 and who wit- else; it is of another time. The act of
'. .although I try to forget my caste, it is
nessed the most acute battles around caste
transcoding is an act of acknowledging
impossible to forget.'
- Kumud Pawde, - whether it be M K Gandhi's threat to and disavowing caste at once.
The Story of my Sanskrit.. commit suicide which robbed by means ofIn marked contrast to the upper caste
the Poona Pact the 'untouchable' commu- autobiographies, the self-definition of one's
he autobiography of R K Narayan, nities of separate electorate, or the nation-identity, as found in the autobiographies
the well known Indian writer in
wide movement for temple entry by the of the lower castes, is located explicitly in
English, is perhaps a useful placeuntouchables, or the rise of non-brahmin caste as a relational identity. The autobio-
to begin one's explorations into the com-politics in the Madras presidency during graphical renditions of Bhama or Viramma,
the early decades of the 20th century two
plex interrelationship between caste, iden- - dalit women from the Tamil-speaking
tity politics and the public sphere. WhenNarayan' s forgetfulness about caste comes region, the poignant autobiographical frag-
I read it recently, one of the things that ments of dalits from Maharashtra, put
through as a bit surprising. But this feeling
struck me the most was how Narayan, of surprise fades away when one does togethera by Arjun Dangle in his edited
whose fictional world dealt substantiallycloser reading of his autobiography. All volume Corpse in the Well, and Vasant
with the life of rural and small town souththrough the autobiography, caste masquer-Moon's Growing up Untouchable in
India, was almost completely silent aboutades as something else and makes its mutedIndia, are all suffused with the language
modem appearance. For instance, writing
his caste identity. In an autobiographical of caste - at times mutinous, at times
text running into 186 pages, he mentions about his difficulties in getting a propermoving.4 Most often the very act of writing
his caste only in two places. First, when an autobiography for a person belonging
house to rent in Mysore, he writes, "...our
he recollects his schooling in colonial requirements were rather complicatedto- a lower caste is to talk about and engage
Madras during the 1910s. He was the only separate room for three brothers, their with the issue of caste.5
families,
brahmin boy in his class in the missionary- and a mother; also for Sheba, ourIn other words, we have here two com-
huge Great Dane, who had to have a place
run school. The context was the scripture peting sets of languages dealing with the
classes in the school where Hinduism and
outside the house to have her meat cooked,issue of caste. One talks of caste by other
brahmins were deliberately chosen for without the fumes from the meat pot means; and the other talks of caste on its
systematic lampooning. The second in- polluting our strictly vegetarian atmos-
'own terms'. My attempt in the rest of the
paper is to understand the implication of
stance was from his adult life as ajournalist phere; a place for our old servant too, who
working from Mysore. Here, he wonders was the only one who could go out and these two sets of languages for the play
how he, a brahmin, was employed as a get the mutton and cook it."2 It does not of identities in the public sphere under the
stringer for the official newspaper of the need much of an effort to understand what long shadow of modernity.
South Indian Liberal Federation (or the 'strictly vegetarian atmosphere' or meat,
Justice Party), The Justice, which vigor- which is specified as mutton (that is, it is II
ously enunciated anti-brahminism in co- not beef) encodes. It is caste by other A Colonial Story
lonial south India. Interestingly, both are means.3
occasions when others bring his caste into The subtle act of transcoding caste and First, let us have a look at the historical
being - the rabid fundamentalist Chris- caste relations into something else - as conditions that facilitated and made pos-
tians in one instance, and the exclusivist though to talk about caste as caste would sible these two competing modes of talk-
non-brahmins in the other. But for their incarcerate one into a pre-modem realm ing about castes. This straightaway takes