Waghmore - Civility Against Caste

The effect of caste on the ethics of the Hindus is simply deplorable. Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu's public is his caste. His responsibility is only to his caste.

(Ambedkar 1945)

I am preparing to organise masses who have been victimised by the caste systemCaste is not a problem for us but an opportunity and we must know how to use it at the appropriate time and occasion.

(Kanshiram, undated: quoted in Mahanayak 2007)

T he above epigraphs from two prominent Dalit public figures reveal the complexity of state and civil society formation in India and the centrality of caste in these processes. Ambedkar framed the Hindu cosmology, its ritual sovereignty and caste publics as an illiberal condition of intolerance and rudeness. Civilising India through formation of a modern state and a dynamic civil society was central to Ambedkar's project of India's liberation. Ambedkar aspired to annihilate caste so as to create a truly liberal civility and civil society where political equality displaces the normality of caste violence.

Kanshiram's quote above sets out the complex strategies that post-Ambedkar Dalit movements enlist to make the ideals of Ambedkarism work. Caste, for Kanshiram, has a cultural and political role that could radically transform the unequal character of Indian society and democracy. Ambedkar's liberal critique of caste incivilities and Kanshiram's Ambedkarite praxis unravel the dynamism of caste and provide insights into the vibrancy of India's civil society and its problems.

In this chapter, I make a case for understanding civil society as a realm of political freedom that emerged in India during the colonial period. Based on an analysis of caste and the rise of Dalit politics in public sphere of western India, I call for a critical revision of the idea of civil society to counter arguments that either limits civil society to elite politics or caste politics to a decay of civil society. The limited spaces of political freedom that emerged in the colonial period were largely dominated by the upper castes (mostly Brahmans). However, the lower caste masses too were able to participate and influence the colonial state by organising around ideologies of protest that countered dominant nationalist currents. The growth of localised ideologies of protest and hegemony in associational and extra-institutional forms continued under the postcolonial democratic state.

The nature of mobilisation in the civil realm; and the interface of caste, civil society and state suggest two specific outcomes: firstly, community, particularly caste, became central in constructing local forms of civil/uncivil society and modernity. Secondly, caste and state continued to intersect and co-evolve in the local civilising processes of India.