Anand Teltumbde - Hindutva and Dalits

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Perspectives for Understanding
Communal Praxis

Revised Edition

Edited by

Anand Teltumbde

Copyright Anand Teltumbde, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published by SAMYA, an imprint of Bhatkal and Sen, 16 Southern Avenue, Kolkata 700026, in 2005

This revised second edition published in 2020 by

Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd. Typeset in 10/12 pts Calisto MT by Fidus Design Pvt Ltd, Chandigarh.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954519

ISBN: 978-93-8134-551-1 (ePub)

SAGE Samya Team: Amrita Dutta, Vandana Gupta and Aritra Paul

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H indutva and Dalits , a collection of sixteen thoughtful chapters, was first published in 2005, under the shadow of the Gujarat massacres of 2002. Its purpose was a searing one: to probe why subaltern and marginalized Dalits and Adivasis joined in violent attacks against a vulnerable minority community, instead of making common cause against them as a rainbow coalition of threatened people. More than a decade later, in the wake of the second NDA government being sworn in, the collection has gained in relevance. The editorial introduction tracks the changes that have occurred in the intervening years and it also historicizes the DalitHindutva relationship.

Some of the chapters trace the history and the ideological apparatus of Hindutva forces. Others study, in close detail, the emergence of an unlikely alliance between Dalits and Hindutva power in places as different as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Karnataka and Kerala. In the process, we get a richly textured analysis of Hindutva mobilization tactics, strategic calculations and flexibility. We also see the varied forms of Dalit politics and movements: Ambedkarite and Periyarite radical social revolutionism, accommodation with Congress politics in its KHAM (KshatriyaHarijanAdivasiMuslim) phase, the upsurge and decline of Dalit Panther militancy, autonomous Dalit electoral parties and an embrace of the Hindutva agenda at different points of time. There is no linearity in the process. Instead, different stories have unfolded at different paces at different points of time. Some situations promise a relatively hopeful Dalit response to Hindutvaas in Tamil Nadu, for instanceand answers are sought in its historical and political specificities. Some seek to establish intersecting forms of subordination: as Dalit women face and resist upper caste and Hindutva backlash, for instance. Some focus on Hindutva and bring out startling evidence of blatant casteism in the writings of its leading ideologues. Others look closely at how Hindutva operatives have worked and grown among Dalits and Adivasis in a Left-dominated region like Kerala. Many seek to correlate the rise of Hindutva politics to the spread of neoliberal reforms in interesting ways. Most essays also reflect on how political parties opposed to the BJP have failed to provide an alternative organizational and ideological drive that could have countered it.

The essays, therefore, cover a vast and complex area of Indian politics and history. In varied ways, and from different sites, they collectively ask a critical question. Why and how do Dalits and Adivasis endorse a politics that is certain to pose threats to themselves? That question is key to understanding hegemony in general; and Hindutvas hegemonic agenda in particular: where subalterns develop a stake in their own subordination and accept the ruling ideology of the dominant forcesnot in resignation or despair but in eager self-identification with it.

In the Indian case, Sanskritization and upward mobility through communal violence, as well as the erosion of working class cross-community solidarities and shared workplaces under neoliberal assaults on large industries, are some of the important answers. There are incisive accounts of growing internal stratification among Dalits which leads the upper stratum to make common cause with Hindutva and to distance themselves from progressive social movements. The book provides a strong sense of how the Hindutva agenda actually offers little of substance to Dalits. It certainly never sought structural transformation in their social and material deprivation, nor led movements against their cultural stigmatization. Yet, through a policy of symbolic incorporation within the Hindu community, it has emerged as a strong political option among some Dalit leaders and ideologues.

In the 1990s, when Hindutva first became a mass movement on a national scale, the great secular hope was that the growing democratization of the Indian electoral systemwhere for the first time, subaltern castes came to prominence on their ownwould help stem the tide of communal politics. Forces released by the Mandal Commission recommendations, and the agitations around it, would stop the advance of Mandir-based mass mobilization. Two decades on, the hope seems a forlorn one.