AND THE REORGANIZATION OF POWER RELATIONS

CASTE AND POWER

The traditional Hindu understanding is that political power is to be held only by Kshatriyas and that Brahmins are to assist them in ministerial positions. But this is an inadequate understanding. Power relations cannot be discussed merely in terms of institutions that relate to the state. The Dalitbahujans live very much within a certain framework of power relations. First and foremost the caste system itself sets up a certain type of power relations. The Maalaas and the Maadigaas, right from childhood, are trained more to obey and to listen than to command and to speak.  Starting from this early age one learns to listen and to obey or to speak and to command depending on the status of one's caste. The lower the caste of the person, the higher will be the level of obedience, and the higher the caste of the person, the stronger will be the motivation to speak and to command. Take, for example, the Kurumaa caste, which is a middle-rung caste. Kurumaas can command Maalaas, Maadigaas, Chakaalies, Mangalies. Irrespective of their ages, people coming from the so-called higher castes can address the Dalitbahujan castes in a demeaning  manner (a male person is addressed as are  and a female person is addressed as yende, yevvative). This itself establishes certain power relations. The Kurumaas have to behave differently in the presence of  persons belonging to 'higher' castes. Castes higher than the Kurumaas, beginning with the Kapuus, think that they have a right to humiliate and insult Dalitbahujan men and women.

NEO-KSHATRIYA CONSCIOUSNESS

The neo-Kshatriyas believe that they are part of Hindu spirituality. They are becoming patrons of Hindutva. While the Brahmin-Baniyas manipulate our consciousness in spiritual and economic domain, the neo-Kshatriyas think that by stepping into the shoes of the 'classical' Kshatriyas they can manipulate power relations at various levels. Hinduism believes in the theory of co-optation and exclusion. The Brahmin-Baniyas are slowly co-opting the neo-Kshatriyas and excluding the castes below them. The surest way of structuring power relations and maintaining hegemony is by acquiring control of cultivable land and by systematically excluding the other from controlling the land and land-related means of production. The neo-Kshatriyas have an added advantage in this as they are not yet completely alienated from the agrarian production process and hence are culturally and knowledge-wise rooted in agrarian arts and agrarian science. There are some poor and semi-poor families who in caste terms belong to neo-Kshatriya groups such as the Reddies; yet by the very placement of their class they are in day-to-day touch with Dalitbahujans.

                These families function as connecting links between the Brahmin-Baniyas and the lower castes. This is how the political hegemony of the neo-Kshatriyas gets maintained on an hourly and daily basis. The neo-Kshatriyas meet persons belonging to the Dalitbahujan castes in their fields and at their houses every day. This process of constant interaction ensures that unequal relations are perpetuated. The Brahmin-Baniyas on the other hand interact with Dalitbahujans on far fewer occasions. Brahminism would have weakened substantially as a result of the spreading of modernity into the villages but for the emergence of the neo-Kshatriya cultural forms. Thus, the neo-Kshatriyas have become the saviours of Brahmanism. However, they are also operating as a rootless social force. They are reluctant to own up to the culture of Pochamma and Maisamma in which they are actually rooted; at the same time they are rebuffed by Brahminism which does not want to extend to them the status of the dwija castes. Despite this they continue aggressively to identify themselves with Brahmanism and with the Hindutva that it is producing in order to subvert democratic relations in the political and economic structures that are basically the by-products of Dalitbahujan socio-political subsystems.

                In fact, the neo-Kshatriya castes are attempting to acquire for themselves a new cultural status. Their male children are brought up in an artificial heritage of marital culture. We find this in their names to which suffixes like Reddy, Rao, Patel and Singh are increasingly added. The stress in these families is on acquiring economic and political power. In keeping with this ambiguity their women are being pushed into practicing neo-madi  (purity rituals in the form of wet clothing after bathing) cultural forms. A neo-Kshatriya wife addresses the husband using the respectful form of 'you', in the plural, while the husband addresses the wife not only in singular but in the demeaning forms (Yende, yeme). Distancing themselves from actual work in the fields and manipulating 'lower' caste labour into doing all the hard work are some of the new arts being taught to their men and women. Like the Brahmin-Baniyas, they are attempting to teach their female children to be docile and submissive sexual objects. These children are being trained to cook multi-itemed vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals. The notion of the sacred is beginning to enter into their cooking and eating habits. Particularly among women, a daily puja is becoming part of their consciousness.

                The neo-Kshatriya ambition is not to dalitize or democratize human relations, but to brahminize them. If they were to dalitize their culture, their work ethic would have been different.  They would not have put an end to their interaction with the productive fields. This section of society understands the link between land and political power. So, right from childhood, neo-Kshatriya children are taught to acquire both by adopting any means. In this respect brahminical Kautilyanism comes handy to them. Their domination is evident in every aspect of day-to-day life, even in civil society. In one sense they have made politics and power obvious aspects of life. Yet because of their roots in agriculture and their ambiguous, non-dwija spiritual status, they hang between democracy and dictatorship as their political form.

Among the Dalitbahujans political relations within the family or community setting are basically democratic. In terms of the parent-children relationship, politics operates in what might be termed a 'patriarchal democracy'. A Dalitbahujan household is not essentially 'private'. In fact the notion of private does not exist in Dalitbahujan consciousness. Among these castes the house is very much a social unit. This is an accepted norm. Wife beating is a patriarchal practice that exists among all castes. Dalitbahujans are not exempt from this vice. But the beaten-up wife has a right to make the attack public by shouting, abusing the husband and, if possible, by beating the husband in return. The women and the men in the community both have the right to interfere, arbitrate and take the quarrel to the caste panchayats.

                The caste panchayat pertaining to man-woman problems, inter-family or intra-family disputes takes place in the open. Everyone who is present has a right to be involved in evolving a judgement. Dalitbahujan law does not emerge from authority; it arises out of the community. The openness with which it functions itself works as a check against injustice. Since the notion of 'private' does not exist, every cause and consequence is debated. This does not mean that violence doesn't take place. But when brutality takes place, the positive aspects of Dalitbahujan law prevail and public outrage becomes an instrument.

                One of the important mechanisms of this public outrage is found in the congress of women's deliberations popularly known as Ammalakkala Muchchatlu  (the deliberations of the mothers and sisters). These deliberations are open. They are political and juridical in nature and evolve a feminine consensus for resolving problems. A careful observation of the Dalitbahujan panchayat juridical system and the Ammalakkala Muchachatlu indicates that the law of the Dalitbahujans does not distinguish between public and private. Its juridical philosophy itself does not believe in the notion of private. Perhaps this is rooted into the Dalitbahujan existence itself. The Ammalakkala congresses engage in constant debates. These debates take place in a variety of locations and at various times. They take place in the mornings and evenings, inside the village as well as in the fields. In addition, these discussions take on an inter-caste nature. The very mode of Dalitbahujan existence makes the notion of 'private' impossible, indeed unthinkable. This is true not only of the notion 'private', the notion 'personal' also does not exist. Every personal relationship among the Dalitbahujans is both social and political. Here human bonds are structured in terms of 'we' but not 'I'. Even if the concept 'I' exists, it does not have the same meaning among the 'lower' castes as it has among the 'upper' castes. The former refer to their mother as 'our mother', to the house as 'our house', to the fields as 'our fields'. The individual here is a part of a collective. And that collective is both social and political. The caste community does not provide space for the autonomy of the individual. The individual is always a part of the larger collective and the collective functions in an open way.

                For the Dalitbahujans individualism is an expression of negative 'will'. There is nothing like 'mine'. Everything is 'ours'. If a person expresses his negative will by individualizing anything as personal, the collective consciousness expresses itself and brings that individual back into the collective fold. Every home and caste operation is a commune in itself. This commune is under-developed no doubt. In terms of consciousness we might say that most of the Dalitbahujan castes keep struggling between the notions of private property and communal property. Higher up in the caste hierarchy the notion of private property becomes greater. For example, the notion of private property is minimal among Maadigaas and Maalaas.  Preserving for the next day, for the next month and for the next year has not yet become part of the consciousness of these Scheduled Castes. By and large the Scheduled Castes have retained the tribal notion of property as 'public' for thousands of years. Whatever the Dalitbahujans procure—a dead cow or bull—or when they cut a living sheep or goat, they divide equally among themselves. In thousands of caste wadaas, particularly, Scheduled Caste wadaas, equal distribution takes place in the form of poogulu  or kuppalu  or pallu  (if it is mutton or beef dividing it into as many equal shares as the number of families; or if it is grain, again equal shares). Those who work more, fetching cattle or sheep, do not get more than the others. Someone may have worked more on that occasion, but the share he/she gets is equal.

BRAHMINICAL PATRIARCHY

Beginning with the neo-Kshatriyas, as you move upwards in the caste hierarchy, the notions of power, property, private, public and personal changes greatly. The neo-Kshatriyas have slowly given up their caste Panchayats. Similarly, hierarchy is slowly entering their homes. As their homes move from the secular to the spiritual domain, their notion of power revolves around divinity, and human beings begin to look like nonentities. The homes of neo-Kshatriyas are split between a divine and a braminized feminity and an aggrandized masculine power structure which appears at times divine and at times secular. Neo-Kshatriya masculine power hobnobs with Brahminism as it is perfectly well-suited to the philosophy of casteism. At the same time, however, it wants to displace the Brahmins and the Baniyas physically from the hegemonic locations of political power and of the market.

                In the post-1947 period, in the all-India context, the Brahmins and the Baniyas have acquired hegemony both in politics and in business. Alongside this development there emerged an all-India neo-Kshatriya social base which is ideologically aligned with the Brahmin-Baniyas. In a situation that witnessed the total decline of classical Kshatriyas, the neo-Kshatriyas found enormous economic and political space for themselves. This is one of the reasons why in the context of the 1990 post-Mandal assertions of Dalitbahujan castes, the neo-Kshatriyas found an entrenched place in Hindutva. The Brahmin-Baniyas also felt that an ally who has an agrarian base and does not feel totally alienated from brahminical spirituality is essential to sustain its politco-economic and spiritual power.

BHRAHMINS UNDEMOCRATIC SYSTEM

            In terms of power relations, Brahmin families are anti-democratic. As mentioned earlier, Brahminism's undemocratic system is rooted in its notion of the spiritual and the divine. To begin with, its notion of Gods and Goddesses and the relations between these notional Gods and Goddesses are shaped in patriarchal authoritarinism. This is very clear from the notional relationship that exists between Brahma and Saraswathi, Vishnu and Lakshmi, and Shiva and Parvathi and also the rest of the Gods and the Goddesses. The Hindu Gods and Goddesses are made in the cultural image of Brahmins.

                A Brahmin family is a reflection of these notioins of patriarchal authoritarinism. The male patriarch establishes his authority over the entire family—particularly over the women, not because he possesses any special ability, but by creating and constantly reinforcing the consciousness of patriarchal authoritarianism in terms of spirituality. The manipulations of the consciousness of the family members takes place in terms of projecting the patriarchal Gods' all-powerfulness. This power is demonstrated not in terms of the Gods' ability to sacrifice, but in terms of their power to manipulate, defeat and kill. The hierarchy of the family is effected in accordance with the desire of these patriarchal Gods. Women and children have to function in accordance with the dictates of the father, who himself is not a producer, only a conduit of spiritual communication. This is the most negative relationship that Hindu Brahminism has propounded and established. It has negated production and highlighted spirituality. Its supreme task is communication with an abstract spirit. This spirit man not even be addressed by the Others in their respective languages. Brahminism not only excludes masses but delegitimizes their languages.

                In other words, brahminical patriarchy operates by conditioning two different kinds of mentalities. On the one hand, it creates a mind that can control, manipulate and finally structure: the male mind. On the other hand, it forms a mind that can be manipulated, controlled and structured: the female mind. It does not provide any scope for questioning, debate and discourse. Its history is a history of recitation of that divine word. The Brahmin mind—male and female—is prohibited from interacting with nature or with production tools, indeed with any of the forces of production. Human beings are not supposed to relate to nature and to other human beings, they must relate only to the 'other world'. This is a negation of the very humanity of the human being. Hindu human beings further negate that negation by taking possession of the resulting spirituality as their own property—spirituality becomes the property of the Brahmin. Thus, male Brahmins negate women in their own families and negate Dalitbahujans in the larger society.

                This is the reason why brahminical women have to survive as sexual objects or as subjects who only cook and serve. Their 'will' is completely subsumed into the 'Being' of man. They have no right even to become priests. In Hindusim God is private, prayer is private, family is private and wife and children are personal. The Baniyas operate on similar principles in business. Their families being absolutely brahminical and patriarchal, they apply the principle of 'manipulating the mind' to control business and the market perpetually. Here again personal and private are two conditioning factors. Business is private as much as priesthood is. If one is the private property of Brahmins, the other is the private property of Baniyas. Operating in the same ideological domain, classical Kshatriyas structured political power as their private property.

Dalitbahujan patriarchy is completely antihetical to brahmin cal patriarchy. Here too the notion of man being superior and woman being inferior does exist. But when compared to brahminical patriarchy there is a great difference. Within Dalitbahujan patriarchy woman is an agent of both production and reproduction. The domains of man and woman are not completely bifurcated at home and in the field. A man does the cooking while the woman goes to work in the field and the woman does the man's work when the man is away. While cooking or doing agrarian tasks or while performing caste occupational operations there are no gender restrictions in belief or practice. In these spheres specialization are not gender-specific. A Maalaa or Maadigaa woman is as much an expert in leather-based productive tasks as a Maalaa or Maadigaa man is. A Chakaali woman is as much an expert washerwoman as a Chakaali man. A Kurumaa or a gollaa woman can care for sheep just as a Kurumaa or a Gollaa man can. In these castes knowledge or skills do not function in closely-guarded separate compartments. The man observes the woman's work, the woman observes the man's work. Neither notional nor physical structures are erected between the domains of the sexes.

                It is true that women in the Dalitbahujan castes too have lost political control over their children who are being projected as the property of men. But at the same time, the fact is that the woman is a political being at home, in the Ammalakkala deliberations, and in the field congregations. Consequently the Dalitbahujan woman still enjoys an autonomous social status and retains considerable control over her children. One can find hundreds and thousands of cases where the divorced woman is given the authority to take her children along with her. In several Dalitbahujan castes the woman is the main social agent who oversees the interactions of the family in civil society. She trains the children, shapes them as she wants. This does not mean the Dalitbahujan women  and the female political society that they create are free from internalized patriarchal values. They are not. Women teach their female children the morality of being 'women' and the male children the way to be 'men' which in concrete reality goes in the interest of men. But what is important is that when compared to the Brahmins, the Baniyas and the Neo-Kshatriyas the man-woman  relations among the Dalitbahujans are far more democratic. Thus they can envisage rebellion and attempt to break the shackles of patriarchy far more easily than 'upper'  caste women ever do—as they did in the 1992 anti-liquor movement in Andhra. The patriarchy that operates among the Dalitbahujans operates between two political beings and hence it still retains an element of democracy in contrast to the authoritarian patriarchy of Brahminism. In other words, Dalitbahujan patriarchy is a loose structure which can be demolished with counter-cultural movements more easily than brahminical patriarchy, which is rooted in a spiritually underwritten authoritarianism and which can therefore easily be turned into fascism.

HINDU POLTIICAL INSTITUTIONS AND DALITBAHUJANS

Over and above these civil societal political structures, power begins to operate in the state institutions that have come into existence in the villages. In these institutions the Dalitbahujan castes are systematically excluded from the exercise of power. The three important institutions through which village politico-economic power connects itself with other state agencies are the institutions of police, patel or patwari (village police, administrative official and revenue official). Though these institutions are slowly being replaced with gram panchayats, the right to be patels or patwaris is reserved for the Brahmins and the neo-Kshatriyas. As a rule Dalitbahujans are excluded from gaining the expertise to handle these institutions. When these institutions were replaced with gram panchayats the brahminical castes monopolized the panchayats also. With the exclusion of Dalitbahujan castes, the exclusion of Dalitbahujan women becomes automatic. Given Hindu notions of power, 'upper' caste women are also not supposed to take on these functions. Thus these institutions become the preserve of 'upper' caste men. It has been decided recently to set aisde 30 percent reservation of posts in gram panchayats and other local bodies for women. Thus, woman may get some share in rural power structures, but it does not change their position substantially. Given the low level of rural women's education and poverty, they will gain only ornamental power.

                Hinduism runs as a thread in a garland in shaping all institutions as 'upper' caste preserves. Given the authoritarian patriarchal home life of the Hindus, whether it is the patel-patwari institution, or modern institutions like gram panchayats which combine liberal-democracy with authoritarianism, in essence they are embryos of 'upper' caste dictatorship. Elections become a form that can be used to retain real power in the hands of Brahmins and neo-Kshatriyas. By and large the Baniyas operate only within the domain of the market, but the extraction of surplus in the market is closely related to these power structures. In the modern and post-colonical periods, the Brahmins extended their tentacles over political institutions that are gradually modernizing while maintaining their hold on an expanding spiritual domain. Even in the national context, Brahmins have the monopoly over power structures in every sphere. The most powerful position in the village, that of the patwari, is even now a preserve of the Brahmins. The institutions that handle law and order are left to the neo-Kshatriyas. This gives the neo-Kshatriyas enormous control over caste-divided village society. They use the power to acquire control over the land. However, the emergence of neo-Kshatriya political power did not in any way undermine the hegemonic control of Brahmins and Baniyas.

                As I discussed earlier, in the context of the politco-economic and spiritual assimilation that was taking place among casteist social forces, a kind of all-India 'upper' caste supremacy had begun  to emerge By 1947 itself an all-India 'upper' caste elite-the new bhadralok (the 'upper' caste combine)—was ready to take over the whole range of post-colonial political  institutions. From the villageinstitutions of patel and patwari to tehesil offices, collectorates, state and central secretariates; from gram panchayats to municipalities, zilla parishads to state legislatures and the central Parliament, each institution was made the preserve of the 'upper' caste forces, with Brahmins being in the lead in many of these institutions. The neo-Kshatriyas, while coexisting with them, accepted their hegemonic role in law making and interpreting history.

THE DALITBAHUJAN REVOLTS

            At the same time, it is also true that British colonialism itself provided a ground for emerging Dalitbahujan, organic intellectuals in states like Maharastra, from where anti-Brahmin ideologies began to emerge. Mahatma Jyotirao Phuyle, the initiator of the modern anti-Brahmin movement, and Dr.B.R.Amebdkar, the initiator of the nationalist anti-caste revolution, were products of these revolutionary forces. This was a spillover effect of the education system that defined knowledge in altogether different terms from those of brahminical-Sanskrit ideologies. The Ambedkarite anti-caste philosophical school punctured Hinduism as well as brahminical hegemony in the post-colonial period. Amebdkar was the first thinker, in three thousand years of Indian history, who emerged from the house of a Mahar and caused a revolution to occur in the mind of the Dalitbahujans. He helped them revolt agains the casteized slavery of India. Ambedkar drew on the philosophy of Gautama Buddha, as against the pretensions of Gandhi, who picked up the brahminical notion of 'Ramarajya' to change the power relations slowly but surely. Ambedkar's political decision, not to join any party that was headed by a Brahmin, a Baniya or a neo-Kshatriya, and his attempt to create his own political and organic intellectual force to bring about an anti-caste revolution, shook the foundation of Hinduism.

                How do we judge the Ambedkarite revolution as against the much propagated Indian versions of Communist revolution? It is universally known that Marxism is the most revolutionary theory that capitalist Europe has produced. If only colonial rule in India had produced anti-Brahmin, organic, Dalitbahujan intellectuals who would have been the recipients of the revolutionary theory of Maxism, by now perhaps India would have undergone a Dalitbahujan socialist revolution. Hinduism would have been yesterday's religion and Brahminism would have been the ideology of yesterday. But much to the good fortune of Hinduism and Brahminism, even colonialism helped the structures and philosophical notions of Brahminism by constantly producing and promoting only traditional 'upper' caste intellectuals. In this atmosphere the most revolutionary theory—Marxism—fell into the hands of most reactionary social forces—the Brahmins, the Baniyas and the neo-Kshatriyas.  Because of the nexus between brahminical forces within the revolutionary movement, and the brahminical forces operating from outside, that is, bourgeois parties and Hindu institutions, the revolution has not been delayed, it has been suverted, time and again. The power relations between Communist and non-Communist brahminical forces appeared to be antagonistic but the social relations remained non-antagonistic. The inimical forces had friendly roots and it was the roots that determined the outcome of events.

            In post-colonial India, in the name of Congress democratic rule, the Hindus came to power both at Delhi and at the provincial head quarters. Parliamentary democracy in essence became brahminical democracy. Within no time the colonial bureaucracy was transformed  into a brahminical bureaucracy. The same brahminical forces transformed themselves to suit an emerging global capitalism. They recast their Sanskritized life-style to anglicized life-styles, reshaping themselves, to live a semi-capitalist (and at the same time brahminical) life. Their anglicization did not undermine their casteized authoritarianism. All apex power centres in the country were brahminized and the power of the bureaucracy greatly extended. Because of their anglicization quite a few of them were integrated into the global techno-economic market. Such top brahminical elites were basically unconcerned with the development of the rural economy because it would result in changing the conditions of the Dalitbahujan masses and thus new social forces might emerge. Thus the anglicized brahminical class also became an anti-development social force.

                The Hindu brahminical class, working from different centres of power-political parties, bureaucracy and professional structures like courts, hospitals and universities—established a close nexus with the neo-Kshatriyas who were emerging as a kulak class. As I have already said, the neo-Kshatriyas slowly emerged as a class that began to work as a buffer between the anglicized, urban, brahminical forces and productive castes who became thoroughly marginalized in all power structures. The role of the neo-Kshatriyas is not only historically reactionary but also dangerous in this period of democratic modernity. It will only help the Brahmins and the Baniyas to sustain philosophical, political and economic power while granting a small fraction of it to a section of neo-Kshatriyas. This will again destroy the revolutionary spirit of the Dalitbahujans who have now acquired specific and universal ideologies (Ambedkarism and Marxism, respectively) to overthrow the caste-class hegemony of bourgeois Brahminism. It is only a conscious Dalitbahujan movement which can, step by step, decasteize society, socialized the means of production, and finally create humanitarian socialism in India.

                In the past, brahminical forces averted such revolutions by co-opting the Kshatriyas who were also part of the Sudra (the term 'Dalitbahujan' was unknown then) revoltuions—the Jain and Buddhist revolutions are well known—and hence the change was delayed for centuries. In the modern period too the Dalitbahujan castes of South India who conducted anti-Brahmin struggles almost got co-opted into Brahminism. The tragedy is that at this juncture of history—marked by the 1990 Mandal struggle and 1993 Uttar Pradesh elections—we do not have a single 'upper' caste intellectual who is willing to critique Brahminism. The neo-Kshatriyas think that Brahminism is a necessary instrument for them to retain the power that they have acquired so far and also to climb up the ladder of power. They think that since political power has come to them up to the level of being appointed as Chief Ministers and occasionally even as the President (Sanjeeva Reddy became President of India), it should be possible to capture the Prime Minister's office in future. Even if they achieve that, it does not mean anything because they  will have to operate within the ideological and philosophical domains of caste and Brahminism. This means that they liberate no one because the philosophical and ideological power still remains in the hands of the Brahmin-Baniyas. The neo-Kshatriyas have never realized the meaning and role of philosophical and ideological power. For example, why is it that though the neo-Kshatriyas are willing to be co-opted, no neo-Kshatriya has been allowed to become a priest in brahminical temples?