Review: A Critique of Hindutva-Brahminism

Reviewed Work(s): Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy,

Culture and Political Economy by Kancha Ilaiah
Review by: Susie Tharu
Source: Economic and Political Weekly , Jul. 27, 1996, Vol. 31, No. 30 (Jul. 27, 1996), pp.
2019-2021
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4404443

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Economic and Political Weekly

This content downloaded from

182.72.153.110 on Thu, 02 May 2024 17:25:38 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEWS

A Critique of Hindutva-Brahminism Despite the 'loud' assertions to the contrary

("the newspapers that I read, the T V that
I see, keeps assaulting me, morning and
Susie Tharu evening, forcing me to declare that I am a
Hindu... [Indeed] the government and the
Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture state themselves have become big advertising
and Political Economy by Kancha Ilaiah; Samya (an imprint of Bhatkal and Sen) agencies") there is nothing in common
between the life-worlds, the interests and
Calcutta, 1996; Rs 120.
the aspirations of the dalitbahujans of
KANCHA ILAIAH's thesis in this tender, the subjectivities that it affirms and the India and those of upper-caste Hindu-
angry, witty and altogether original little secular-democratic claims it presses. Theory brahminism. In tact they are irreconcilably
volume is that the caste question assembles here is engaged, historical; a 'tool-kit', (to opposed. Yet,
in an open, secular mode the multiple and use a now-famous image), not a system. It
Suddenly since about 1990 the word
polymorphic claims to egality and justice is "an instrument, a logic of the specificity
'Hindutva' has begun to echo in our ears,
emerging in the country today. Two of power relations" and the not always visible
day in and day out, as if everyone in India
propositions further the argument: (a) the or recognised "struggles around them. " who is not a Muslim. a Christian or a Sikh
structural scope of present-day Hindutva Clearly the point is not to describe the caste is a Hindu. I am being told that I am a Hindu.
becomes apparent only when it is read as system (a 'Manuvaadi' effort) or to affirm I am also told that my parents, relatives and
designed to update an (increasingly a primordial caste identity and celebrate/ the caste in which we were born and brought
destabilised) upper caste-class dominance, preserve the 'rich plurality' of Indian cultures up are Hindu. This totally baffles me.
and (b) caste is integral to the culture of (as in still influential anthropological .1, indeed not only 1, but all of us, the
capital in India. discourses). The point is to set in motion dalitbahujans of India have never heard the
machineries that will undermine, if not
Going by nothing more than the surprising word - not as a word, nor as a name of a
culture nor as a name of a religion - in our
developments at the centre post-1996 annihilate, a brahminical order of things.
childhood days. We heard about Turukoolli
elections even, those who are most sceptical The parallel that comes immediately to
(Muslims), we heard about Kiristianiapoollut
about the question of caste may be forced mind is Frantz Fanon's Thze Wretched of the
(Christians), we heard about Bapanoolu
to admit that there is something in what he Earth, "[Tihis book is scandalous". Sartre
(Brahmins) and Konaioolli (Baniyas)
claims. Issues of caste, of secularism, of a wrote in his famous preface. 'The tone is
spoken of as people who were different tfro
new. Who dares to speak thus?... And if you
decentralisation of relations with neighbour- us. Among these four categories, the most
ing 'Muslim' countries, have coalesced and murmur, jokingly embarrassed, 'He has it different were the Bapanoollu and the
taken dramatic turns in the unexpected in for us' the true nature of the scandal Komatoollu. Therc are at least some aspects
alliances and polarisations that have emerged escapes you; tor Fanon has nothing in for of life common to us and the Turukoollu and
in electoral politics. Alongside, that is, the you at all... he speaks of you often, never the Kiristianapoollu. We all eat meat. we all
only too evident unease, the sense of affront, to you... he bends... language to new touch each other... The only people with
subliminal and pervasive (very often spilling requirements... and speaks to the colonised."' who we had no relations whatsoever were
over into overt derision) that the working- If the true nature of the scandal is not its the Bapanoollu and the Komatoollu. But

caste persons of the new UF government denunciation of the coloniser, what exactly today we are suddenly being told that we

evoke in the middle-class and its media. is it'? The real scandal of Fanon's text, its have a common religious and cultural
relationship with them. This is not merely
Why I Ain Not a Hindu is structured to
most offensive impropriety (and hence the
surprising, it is shocking... In fact the very
address both these spheres of power. It is danger as much as the fascination), is its
sight of this saffron-tilak culture is a
of little immediate import whether these are transgression of the multiple proprieties that
harassment to us (p xi).
described as state and civil society or political maintain and reproduce colonial power. It
economy and culture/ideology. Thus, the contravenes or ignores the structure of The passage just cited provides a feel of
relatively more familiar analytical mode of authority, and the decorums of address, the both the method and the argument in this
Ilaiah's discussion of market relations, state arrangements of accountability, the systems book, a large part of which is written in the
power, social organisation, education, and assumptions of knowledge, and a myriad first person, sometimes ia-the singular and
science and technology is positioned in a other regulative norms that constitute the at others in the plural. There are accounts
territory that is simultaneously being cultural economy - one might think of it as of growing up in a 'kurumaa' (shepherd)
reconfigured in terms of distance, address, a poetics of reality - of imperial France. household, of being taught the skills and
accountability, genre, ethic and affect. Worse (in the sense of more scandalous), it knowledges (the sciences and technologies)
Through a series of far-reaching conceptual readies arrangements of self and community of sheep-rearing, wool-processing and
and aesthetic initiatives Ilaiah elaborates a aimed at subverting and replacing that order. community living. Another chapter deals
critique of Hindutva-brahminism and-createsWhy lAm Not a Hitndu has much in common with the violence of the upper-caste
- summons up, nurtures, theorises, affirms with- Fanon's classic. classroom (and all classrooms are upper-
a new dalitbahujan' point of view: a voice, Ilaiah turns to his own experience and to caste insofar as the educational system itself
its location, its orientation, its vision, its the everyday lives of those around him in is brahminical) in which his very presence
taste, its structure of feeling. order to develop his analysis of dalitbahujan is resented, and with the debilitating effect
The fashioning of the argument in this history, culture and political economy. He of a Hindu curriculum.
book has required the political will and the mines this territory, of which he has intimate, Right from school upto college our Telugu
intellectual acumen to make those myriad organic; knowledge for the resources with textbooks were packed with these Hindu
subtle, strategic moves that together shape which to resist and challenge the hegemonic stories... What difference did it make to us
and set in motion the critique it proposes, imperative on his own life. whether we had an English textbook that

Economic and Political Weekly July 27, 1996 2019

This content downloaded from

182.72.153.110 on Thu, 02 May 2024 17:25:38 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 talked about Milton's Paradise Lost or
Paradise Regained, or Shakespeare's
Othello or Macbeth or Wordsworth's poetry
about nature in England, or a Telugu text-
book which talked about Kalidasa's
Meghasandeshain. Bommera Potanna's
Bhagavatarn or Nannaya and Tikkana's
Mahabharathanz. except the fact that one
textbook was written in twenty-six letters
and the other in fifty-six? We do not share
the contents of either; we do not find our
lives reflected in their narratives. We cannot
locate our family setting in them. In none
of these books do we find words that are
familiarto us. Without the help ofadictionaryfeminism as a result of its Hindu-brahminical
neither makes sense to us (p 15).
Another chapter describes the alienation of
the city with its brahminical public and
private spaces (have you ever tried to locate
a restaurant that serves dalit food and has
pictures of dalit goddesses and dalit heroes
on the walls?).
autobiographical genre focuses on the
A major strand that runs through the weave
distinctive individual and on lives that are
of the book is gender relations. Here again
the critique of brahminical modes is strikingly
counterposed with the practices in working-
castes. Thus,
If a Dalitabahujan woman has a relationship
with a man who is not her husband, the
relationship does not remain a secret. The
entire waada discusses it. Even the children
of that family come to know about it.
Particularly when the father and mother
quarrel, every aspect of life becomes public.
No quarrel hides inside the house... The
father abuses the mother right in front ofThe
children and the mother will pay back in the
same coin then and there. The children are
witness to all that.., The 'bad' and the 'good' brahminical values and knowledges are also
of life are learnt at quite an early stage.
Each one of these practices are discussed
in terms of morality and immorality. But
this morality and immorality is not based
on a divine order or a divine edict. It is
discussed in terms of the harmony of the
families... (p 5-9).
As against that,
Discussion of sexual behaviour is taboo in
Hindu families. Mothers are not supposed
to talk to daughters about their sexual
experiences. The father's atrocities against
the mother cannot be discussed in Brahmin
or Baniya families... A wife is supposed to
put up with all the atrocities that a husband
commits against her; the.more a wife puts
up with her husband's atrocities, the more
she is appreciated (p 9).
In contrast to the docile 'feminine' Sitas and
Saraswatis of the Hindus, who live in the
shadow of their husbands, the dalitbahujan
goddess Pochamma's role is not restricted
by her gender.
She is the person who protects people from
all kinds of diseases. She is the person who
cures the diseases. Nobody know.s about
Pochamma's husband. Nobody considers
her inferior or useless because she does not
2020 Economic
182.72.153.110 on Thu, 02 May 2024 17:25:38 +00:00
have a husband. Pochamma is independent. social forces - the Brahmins, the Banias and
She does not pretend to serve any man. Her the neo-Kshatriyas"? An India that aspires
relationship to human beings is gender- to be egalitarian, secular, scientific and
neutral, caste-neutral, class-neutral... she
rational calls for a dalitisation, as against a
understands all languages and all dialects.
Hinduisation, of its institutions, knowledge
The people can speak to her in their own
systems, ethics.
tongues. A Brahmin can speak to her in
In refreshing contrast to most existing
Sanskrit; an English person can go and talk
scholarship, llaiah avoids configuring
to her in English (p 92).
brahminism as religious precept or ritual
The real question here is not which is order, presenting it instead as contemporary
better, dalitbahujan or Hindu? The real practice, as cultural, economic and political
question is: what are the resources - personal, power in today's world. Contemporary
political, imaginative - that are lost to Indian Hinduism, he suggests, is re-working its
alliances to retain its hold, not only over the
norming. A heartwarming feature of the apparatuses of state and of civil society, but
book is the serious attention paid to questions
also over Indian capital and over radical
of gender (an extreme rarity in upper-caste movements such as marxism or feminism.
male scholarship) and the ready What all this puts paid to is the neo-
acknowledgement of the influence of brahminical notion that caste is an archaism
feminism. that is being resurrected today by casteists.
In its bourgeois-male mode the Clearly what we have here is a ditferent
take on Hindutva, which has hithcrto been
predominantly read as a communal, rather
exceptional and therefore woethy: of than casteist or capitalist. What may not be
admiration and perhaps emulitiori. In *so obvious is the transformation implicit
dalitbahujan or feminist hands the genre here of the notion of identity and of identity
opens out onto shared experience that is of politics. The carefully sculpted dalitbahujan
ritual significance to the contests on hand. identity that emerge.-, here in critical
It is the typical, not the exceptional, that is opposition to brahminis;m is not in any way
of interest. What the genre enables is an primordeal. It represents, to draw on Ainme
engagement with closures and exclusions - Cesaire's formulation, "a concrete. not an
here the corporeal and spiritual repression abstract coming to consciousness". It is an
of caste - in the conjunctural complexity as identity that is shaped in the very political
well as the detail of their historicity.4 conjunctures we are traversing; an identity
theemphasis in this study-cum-manifesto designed to tak- on the l'ull scope of the
also is on the invisibility, indeed the ethico-political tasks of it,, world: an identity
repression, in the 'Indian' imagination (since engaged in the making ol history.
It should come as no surprise, theretore,
specifically 'anti-dalitbahujan') of the lives, that the discussion is structured around some
the worlds, the knowledges. the skills, the of the most contentious of current issues,
values, the narratives, the philosophical many of which emerge'strikingly transformed
systems, the religious beliefs and practices by the supplement of dalitbahujan politics,
of the huge majority of the women and men Among the questions asked are: how might
of this country. The questions that emerge Hindutva be configured as a caste politics?
address all the key areas of our communal How would this affect, not only the present
life. What systematic destruction, what engrossment with its communal face, but
squandering of resources - material, ethical, our understanding of communalism itself?
scientific and imaginative - does it represent'?
How might the supplement ot caste rewrite
Where does the leverage against Hindutva class politics'? How might the thesis of the
come from - an abstract secularism or the dalitbahujan woman as its subject transt'orm
lives, the bodies, the aspirations of the Indian feminism? Indian marxism'? Indian
dalitbahujans. Could it be the hold of jurisprudence? How might we gauge the
traditional upper-caste intellectuals that has scale of this transformation'? What exactly
resulted in our schools and universities is Indian literature? What is its function'?
becoming mere "text-book recitation How might we characterise the design and
centres"? Is the brahmin base of Indian project of a subaltern study? What is the
science, for instance, responsible for its nature of its theoretical enterprise'? Who is
remaining 'mantric' and derivative? Would an organic intellectual? How are organic
a science that retained its connection with intellectuals and subaltern studies related?
production and with the working-castes have A key chapter raises the thorny question
been technology-based, experimental and of the emerging upper-sudra, what Ilaiah
responsive to social requirements? What is terms the 'neo-kshatriya', castes and their
the difference between upper-caste and involvement with Hindutva. Other sections
dalitbahujan markets? I-las "the most discuss markets, marriage, work, the
revolutionary of theories (Marxism) in India curriculum, jurisprudence, technology and
fallen into the hands of the most reactionary science, cuisine, linguistics, philozsophy.
and Political Weekly July 27, 1996
This content downloaded from
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
sexuality, the arts. Ilaiah succeeds in
demonstrating that caste, like gender,
structures every aspect of our society, and
that it would be difficult to locate a
contemporary institution or discipline that
is not already saturated by caste politics. It
is an awesome achievement, made all the
more powerful by the terse earthiness of his
style.
It is difficult to imagine a contemporary
Indian whom this analysis of the caste
question will not profoundly excite. I use
the word advisedly, to draw on its everyday
senses: to arouse, inspire, infuriate, as well
as on its etymology (ex-cite): to summon
into another/alien context, disturb, displace,
re-frame.
What about disagreements, reservations,
questions? No doubt there will be many of
these. There will be those who may feel that
the account of dalitbahujanlife is too rosy, There are however problems and questions
thc claims unmilodulated; others who find his that remain. If the dalitbahujans are the real
formulations wild: "How can he possibly
call 'ammalakkala muchchtulu', (the
deliberations of the. mothers and sisters) a
jurisprudence? That is nothing more than
field gossip", a (male) friend protested; yet
others find the description of the upper-
castes insulting; still others who considerthe constituency of the Shiv Sena? Are there not
analysis too Manichean, too binary, the
overlay of class analysis restrictive, the
humanism too utopian.
I must confess that, reared as I had been 'dalitbahujan'? Is there n4i a torsion, a
on a strict regimen of brahminical disjuncture, between the widtned scope of
assumptions and enthusiasms, when I first the caste struggle as it is descnrbed here and
read this book (in manuscript) I did sometimes
the singular divide - dalitbahujan vs
find its dalitbahujan advocacy overstated, Hindutva-brahminism that is repeatedly
the anger against brahminism chilling. Two invoked? Will a theory that posits caste as
tumultuous years later, the caste question the major contradiction not run into the same
seems to have surfaced literally all over my problems as one that treats class in that way'?
world: in the women's movement, in Can issues of gender and community be
feminist theory, in Marxist parties, in the collapsed into issues of caste'?
student movement, in poetry and literary
criticism, in the classroom, in film theory, Notes
on my telephone line, in the swimming pool,
I llaiah coins the term dalitbahujan, combining
in research, in the university administration,
the Ambedkarian 'dalit', which means
and, most recently, in the prime ministerial
suppressed and exploited people and Bahujan.
chair. I have been forced to eat strong meat. which means majority. Bahujan was first used
As I reread the book in 1996 it truly by the Buddha and then by Phule before the
astonished me how much more modulated BSP introduced it into current discourse to
the tone appeared, how much the book had refer to SCs and OBCs.
improved. 2 Michel Foucault in Colin Gordon (ed), Power!
Knowledge, Pantheon, New York, 1980. p 145.
The notion originates in a discussion between
Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, Donald Bouchard
socialist resource for this country, how do (eds), Language Counter-Menuory, Practice
we understand what confronts us today: the Comnell University Press, Ithaca, 1977, p 208.
caste question as posed by what might be 3 J P Sartre, preface to The Wretched of the
described as a strong and emerging backward- Earth, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967 (1961 )
caste, regional bourgeoisie? How does one pp 8-9.
4 Compare the damning exposure of the secrets
explain the primarily backward-caste
of the normative territory of American legal
life in the autobiographical essays of the black
problems, structurally similar to those feminist lawyer, Patricia Williams in The
produced by the feminist homogenisation Alchemv (of Race and Rights. Harvard
of 'women', in a catch-all category like University Press, Cambridge. 1991.

i~~L NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT

I jJLJtJ J\ (An Organisation of the Ministry of Rural Areas & Employment, Govt. of Indi
l Rajendranagar, Hyderabad - 500 030.

INVITATION FOR PAPERS FOR

THE NATIONAL SEMINAR ON
'STRATEGIES FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEXT FIVE YEAR PLAN'
(SEPTEMBER 6-7, 1996)

The NIRD is planning to organise the above captioned National Seminarduring September
to examine various options and strategies to be followed during the Ninth Plan mainly t
accelerated rural economic growth which ensures elimination of poverty and improve qua
of rural people.

We invite Social Scientists to contribute quality papers on any of the specific themes su

(i) Development of Agriculture and Allied Activities;

(ii) Rural Industries and Non-farm Sectors; and

(iii) Development of Rural Infrastructure and Resource Mobilisation and Credit Sup
The paper should not exceed 20 pages (typed in double space) including tables and grap
paper should reach Dr. R.P. Singh, Seminar Coordinator, on or before 9th August 1996.

Economic and Political Weekly July 27, 1996 2021

This content downloaded from

182.72.153.110 on Thu, 02 May 2024 17:25:38 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms