Interviewed by Pratham Gupta & Arpit Singh with inputs from Rijul Bhagi
Disclaimer - The conversation was held on 9th April, 2024
Arpit: To begin with, we would like to ask you about your experience with your discipline. Why did you choose to pursue sociology over any of the other social sciences? And most of all, how and why did you choose to base your work (or at least a large part of it) around the intersectionality of Bahujan cultures and women?
Dr. Kalyani: I did my undergrad in English literature, from Hindu College. Having come from the sciences, the exposure to humanities was relatively new, but at Hindu College, I had a wonderful set of professors to begin with. To your question about my interest in sociology, and my switch from literature to sociology, I would say I've always been interested in questions of social life and the social worldview around me. The social processes, the evolution of our society, the changes in the society happening around me– these conversations have always interested me.
To the second part of your question, I would say this question goes back to my own experiences of belonging to the subaltern community and [this need] I felt [for] an academic endeavour [that] could help me connect the dots. Questions of caste and gender were part of my experience and academic engagement, as well as the everyday social. There, the learning around the questions of caste and gender helped me explore more what it means to live with our experiences and have an ontological reflection. A kind of collective learning comes from collective engagement with questions around dense topics like caste and gender, and this learning allows us to connect the dots from our own experiences.
Pratham: Thank you for that insightful answer. I think in your work you have talked extensively about music, music as a form of resistance, and what a type of music looks like. This genre of music looks like one that goes ahead and supports hierarchies rather than imposing and sustaining caste and gender hierarchies. You also talked about in your work the idea of counter-publics, which are essentially spaces where women and, you know, gender and sexual minorities and people on the margins can express themselves in this sort of space where preconditions for producing that kind of music are available. So at present, what do you think are the hindrances to the production of these counter-publics, and what are the hindrances in general? These counter-publics cannot come into existence, and even if they do, they aren't able to function as effectively as they can.
Dr. Kalyani: That's an important question, and there are several parts to this question, so let me try and unpack each of them briefly and lucidly because there are layers and too many meanings attached to each of the parts that you're asking. So, to begin with, why anti-caste music or why one needs to study the questions of anti-caste music? To address this question, I think it's important to know how caste unfolds itself in society, and I would like to refer here to this very important work of Satish Deshpande, Caste and Castelessness, which he wrote in 2013, in this article, he talks about what makes caste visible to certain communities and who becomes privileged enough to say to themselves or others as casteless. The reason I am discussing this is that when we look into these structures of caste, the practices of caste or how caste gets experienced unfolded in our everyday lives, it is through certain narratives, like violence against Dalit communities, the question of exclusion, the question of rape, the violence against women, and so on.
What I'm trying to say is that when we look into the way caste is or when the caste question is approached, the focus is on reducing it to numbers or understanding it in relation to violence. While they are important aspects to engage with, caste is also a complex process that interacts with socio-cultural-political phenomena. Thus, there is a need to understand who the Dalit-Bahujan communities are in terms of their history, and social positionality. How can we understand the category of Dalit-Bahujan in terms of ‘ontological woundedness’? So for me, it's important to talk about the questions of Dalit-Bahujan subjectivity, or who these Dalit-Bahujan folks are, what their culture is, what their genealogies are, or what they are trying to assert when they talk about caste. And essentially, it's not just about the violence; it's also about assertion. So, I think the question of anti-caste music becomes important because it is a transition from talking about caste just in terms of oppression and violence to something that is also about assertion. It is also about re-centring the identities that have been historically de-centred. I think it is in this way of understanding the subjectivity of Dalit Bahujan that the question of anti-caste music became important. Music became a point of understanding what the community's culture is like and how it has been part of its social history, what they are trying to convey, what forms of assertion they are taking, and so forth.
Now to address the other part of your question about what the forms of this anti-caste music are. And that's again a very vast question, like how the different forms of anti-caste music in India or South Asia unfold. To put it very broadly, one can look at anti-caste music as rooted both in folk traditions and anti-caste movements (that might not essentially be a derivative of folk forms). So, in North India, which is my area of research, the anti-caste songs from the northern parts of the country that have their roots in anti-caste resistance are called mission songs, and much of these mission songs have their roots again in these traditions, and from there on to the BSP politics, and now it's devolved into several other political groups as well, but it's also important that it's also beyond politics.
So, when I talk about mission songs, it's not just the songs that were produced for some political cause but the songs which were embedded within the movement, and they had a sense of talking about anti-castelessness. That's one of the forms that I discuss in my work which I broadly call the Mission Song. The other form that is important to explore is the contestations that prevail within the folk forms. So, when we look into the folk forms from Punjab, one of the popular genres is Ravidassiya. It becomes interesting to read Ravidassiya songs along the lines of social resistance and departure that they make from the conventional forms. In my work, I'm trying to explore and understand what the anti-caste musical practices are or how anti-caste movements have reworked these folk forms. Birha is another folk form in the regions of Uttar Pradesh. If one looks into the conventional singing of the Birha song, one finds that this song is typically sung by women within a very private sphere, and the song itself means that it's a song of pain. So, the song of pain through which women share their everydayness with society. So, this is very conventional within a very private kitchen-like space.
Now, when I tried to explore the Birha in the anti-caste movement, there was a very different kind of engagement one finds in the singing of Birha. Malti Rao, who is one of the anti-caste singers, talks and sings Birha with a sense of publicness. And there is a question of assertion embedded in it. It is thus interesting to observe that when the same folk form that was conventionally sung by women in a private sphere, and largely centring on the narrative of pain, gets reworked within an anti-caste framework. It becomes a song of assertion. It becomes a song to talk about their lives. It becomes a song that has a sense of public visibility.
I've talked about several of these that are upcoming in my work as well. What I want to say is that genres and subgenres are important parts of understanding the form of music. But more important than that, what one needs to understand about anti-caste music is the question of practice. Or how and what meaning does such anti-caste music have for the Dalit-Bahujan community? How does it get embedded in their everydayness and the meanings that it then imparts, right? Now, to answer the last part of your question, Pratham, on counter-publics: when we look into the word counter-publics, there is a certain looseness with which it is used.
Now, what I've tried to argue in my work is that when we try to look into counter-publics or when we try to understand counter-publics in particular, sonic counter-publics, there are more sides to it, and to explore this more or to explore this further, one has to look into the social history of the anti-caste movement itself. Let me begin by talking about Swami Achuthananda. So, Swami Achuthananda wrote poems and plays. And within those plays, there were songs. Similarly, if you read Manguram, Periyar, Lalai, or Yadav, all of these writings will have poetry and songs in them. When we look into the making of sonic counter-publics—the making of a space where the questions of assertion were happening—much of it was through sound. It was through sonic practices. And I think when we talk about counter-publics as such, one needs to substantiate it, or one needs to talk in-depth about what this is. What does this counter-public look like? What has been the social history of these counter-publics? Rather than just talking in terms of counter-publics as being antithetical to the existing public, which it no doubt was.
But different histories for each of these sonic counter-publics emerged. For Swami Achuthananda, the question of the resistance to Arya Samaj was one of the social histories that one needs to look into. For Periyar, Lalai Singh and others, it was the question of the resistance to the existing government, which was the then Congress. Or if one looks into Ambedkarite counter-publics, there was some kind of alternative worldview that was formed. In the Dalit Panthers movement, the emergence of counter-public spaces was also visible.
What I'm trying to explore through this idea of counter-publics are the multiple social histories through which the counter-publics have evolved. In North India, if I want to look into this question of counter-publics, or sonic counter-publics, to put it in musical terms, the question of the emergence of DS4 became very important. And there, it becomes important to explore: who were the people who were part of these counter-publics? What kind of social histories were they challenging? And what kind of songs did they have? What were the ethnographies of the people who were part of such a resistance movement?
The Dalit Panthers Picture Credits - Blackpast
Arpit: Thank you, ma'am, for that insightful answer. So taking the point that music is a part not only of representation of Bahujan culture but rather a form of anti-caste movements, that is, mission songs, originates from the experiences of prejudice that plenty of Bahujans are forced to go through, a sense of solidarity can be made to the experiences of the people you have extensively talked about in your work. However, culturally speaking, the position that has been occupied by black Americans is assumed to be nowhere near the same as that of Bahujans. I mean, most of the people in India don't even acknowledge that casteism is still prevalent, but many people in the USA would still agree that there is some level of racism prevalent in their society. Much like the Bahujans, Black people in the US have a set of musical practices that are associated with them, such as jazz, blues, and hip-hop. While these music genres have been able to infiltrate the mainstream, be it through a lot of appropriation of the culture, the same cannot be said for Bahujan music. Why do you think there has been a gap between the two communities?
Dr. Kalyani: Well, again, there are several parts to your question, Arpit. So, let me try answering each of them. So, firstly, let me talk about the first thing that you're asking, which is the question of whether Dalit music and Black music speak differently, or are there structures of similarity in them? So, let me begin by saying that caste is not race. When we look into this history, the songs of resistance that emerged within the racial resistance are very different from the songs of resistance that emerged within the caste resistance, right? So let me begin on that note.
Talking about the history of the Black movement and the presence of songs of resistance within the Black movement, there are songs like We Shall Overcome that have created reverberations across the globe. In the contemporary scenario, if we look into the anti-caste movement, rap has also emerged as one of these styles, but one has to acknowledge that is one of the forms and not the entirety of what anti-caste music is. When we look into the rap style, it is more prevalent in university space, where the students have learned the histories of the Black movement, and there is a certain kind of learning and inspiration they drawing from. I would say, that they're drawing from the Black movement in recreating such songs through an anti-caste lens. Despite this one also has to be careful that there is a difference as well. This difference is informed by anti-caste genealogies. An anti-caste song is thus much more layered. It is not just located in its contemporaneity or in some media revolution, but it has its roots even before colonial times and it has gradually evolved.
Pratham: You have extensively elucidated the de-contextualisation of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's image. Concurrently, contemporary trends, exemplified by Hindutva proponents like J. Sai Deepak, assert propositions such as "Ambedkar never chose to convert outside the dharmic fold," thereby constructing a distinctive narrative surrounding Babasaheb's persona. Considering these developments, what is your perspective on the future trajectory of Ambedkar's image, his enduring legacy, and the Bahujan movement in light of the ascendance of Hindutva?
Dr. Kalyani: See, whenever we think about any social thinker, be it Ambedkar, Periyar, Gandhi, Nehru, or anyone, we have to see or read a particular social thinker from the vantage point of their location and the context in which they said so. I think, minus all this, it will make their ideas and thoughts banal. And I think the political opportunist is precisely doing this—they just cut, pick, and choose certain thoughts and lines, and then will appropriate them accordingly to suit their narrative, which is a problem. With Ambedkar, the good part is much of his thoughts and philosophy are written. It has a public visibility as well. So, if a sweeping or general statement is made, it becomes very easy to counter it because it becomes inconsistent with many of the arguments that Ambedkar himself makes.
Let me begin by talking about what and why Ambedkar converted to Buddhism. The day of conversion was a public event in which more than 3 lakh people participated. There is nothing cryptic about what Ambedkar was doing. His criticism is all well-argued and written down. When we read more closely into his works, like Buddha and his Dhamma, he is clearly saying why he is converting to Buddhism. From the Annihilation of Caste, where he outrightly said that he was born a Hindu, but will never die a Hindu, to this whole journey in 1956, when he converted to Buddhism is part of his ontological reflections. This is not just one discrete, isolated moment; it is a trajectory of the evolution of a social thinker's life itself. And one has to explore that. Now, Ambedkar, in his work, Buddha and his Dhamma, talks about concepts like Karuna, Sheel, and Pradhanaya. He clearly says that when he is looking into Buddhism when he is trying to talk about it. His acceptance of Buddhism was his moment of reckoning to belong to a religion that is based on the ethics of humanism. So, if somebody is saying that Ambedkar was a puppet in the hands of Hindutva, it is a gross misreading of life and thoughts of Ambedkar.
And to the statement that you made, which Sai Deepak is also making, that Ambedkar never chose to convert outside the dharmic fold. I think that's a very narrow reading of why Ambedkar chose Buddhism over any other religion. Ambedkar clearly states in his writings why he did not choose Sikhism, Islam or any other religion. His choice to accept Buddhism is well written in his speeches, and the explicit work of Buddha and his Dhamma that he wrote. He mentions about the emancipatory potential of Buddhism. So, saying that he is taking Buddhism because he wants to be within a dharmic fold—that's a misreading and misappropriation, as Pratham was mentioning, to begin with. The best way to diffuse a misguided narrative is to read Ambedkar’s writing closely.
Arpit: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that erudite answer, ma'am. You have, actually, in this interview extensively talked about misappropriation. Another idea that has been extensively misappropriated is the idea of de-reservation, which you have written about in quite a few of the articles that I have read. Recently, UGC released a draft. For the de-reservation of some posts, while this was only a draft and has been withdrawn after a very heavy backlash, do you think that this could be taken as a sign of the fact that the current political climate is pushing to undermine the rights and affirmative actions that have been laid down by the UGC, especially given that there are still cases like the Rohit Vemula case that didn't happen a very long time ago?
Dr. Kalyani: Thank you, Arpit. That's again a very important question on de-reservation and, of course, the repercussions within the social and institutional spaces of such policies. So, let me begin by addressing your question by talking about what reservation means and its relevance to India. I think there is a narrow reading of a reservation as a poverty alleviation program. This narrow interpretation comes from a populist, media-generated kind of interaction that people have with the question of caste. One must see reservations in light of representation. If SC/ST/OBC/minorities are not adequately represented enough, they are not reserved enough. Let's begin with this note. So, let's look into the realities of representation. There is again an interesting data set that talks about the representation of SC, ST, and OBC communities in institutional spaces, and it reveals gross misrepresentation of such communities. Within the media spaces, bureaucracy, top academic spaces, the professorships—there is hardly any presence of the SC, ST, and OBC communities. So, before UGC starts talking about de-reservation, they should think critically. Have they represented the communities enough that they can start talking about de-reservation? If one begins with this critical question, the concerns about de-reservation will get a nuanced picture.
Now, one has to also talk about Rohit Vemula and the questions of the backlash, particularly the so-called “quota students”, the humiliating term that is used for students who have availed the benefits of reservation. One has to also look at these marginalized students to see the kind of structures of humiliation that they are being subjected to. It is important to mention here that humiliation is again an important theoretical category that must be engaged with. Even if students from SC, ST or OBC communities, through their tough journey, are able to secure their position within the top institutions like IITs and IIMs, their experiences have not been good. There's an important work by Ajantha Subramanian, where she talks about the caste of merit; here she is talking about how many of these top educational institutes, like IITs and IIMs, are susceptible to suicides by the SC, ST, and OBC communities. We even have a data set that was tabled in Parliament, talking about the rates of suicide in top educational institutes being highest among the SC, ST, and OBC communities.
Given this, there needs to be some kind of critical thinking or sociological brainstorming about why it is that even if the DBA communities somehow make it to these institutions, they are susceptible to suicide. Why are there high drop rates among them? Why, when it comes to the question of placement within these institutions, why is it that DBA students get left out? And the answer lies precisely in the fact that these institutions themselves are not free of Brahminical handholds. So, we see that even when students from DBA communities reach these institutions, they are subject to humiliation not just by their peer members but also by the casteist professors.
I remember very recently that there was a case of suicide by a young student Darshan Solanki at IIT Bombay. In response to the protests that this suicide triggered, there was a counter-narrative that was pushed that the campus spaces are becoming caste-driven. In fact, a seminar around that happened at IIT Kanpur where it was said that they [the protesters] were just ‘talking too much’ about caste and why there was a need for the politicisation of the academic space, and so on. This incident is reflective of how ignorant the Brahmanical set of people who are in positions of power within these institutes are. This also highlights the need for active student voices within these institutional spaces to counter such kinds of narratives. I hope I've been able to answer your question.
And when you were talking about cases like Rohit Vermula, we needed to remember that he was just one of the many similar cases and the story never ends even after things have been unfair for such a long time. There were protests and movements around what happened to Rohith. However, the story never ended. It [suicides] happened even after that in institutes like IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, and JNU. So, it's never a rosy picture but the university is a site of contestation of caste identity.
The humiliation and victimisation that the SC/ST/OBC students face because of the Brahmanical structures remains a lived reality. So, talking about ideas like de-reservation looks completely bizarre when you have casteist practices and caste biases within these institutions. When low-caste Dalit and Adivasi students are not represented enough within these institutional spaces, you don't have the right to talk about de-reservation. First and foremost, you have to represent them [students from DBA communities] well enough. Thus, I think one has to link the word reservation with representation and then read the two together so one can know what the caste reality of institutions is like.
Protests against the death of Rohith Vemula Picture Credits - News18
Pratham: Thank you so much for such an insightful answer. You rightly pointed out how Brahmanical oppression and hegemony pan out in real life, denying them representation in these institutions. However, a more subtle way in which it works is by sort of excluding the knowledge systems of the marginalised, be it DBA or women and gender sexual minorities. Recently we have had instances where we have seen state efforts to erase certain memories from the text we read, teaching us the works of only certain authors. For instance, at Delhi University, one would be taught a thinker like Savarkar while works of authors like Mahashweta Devi's text are removed from the curriculum. So what do you think are the pitfalls of this exercise of erasing the memory and knowledge systems of the marginalised?
Dr Kalyani: That's again a very important question. Before talking about the curriculum structures or who gets to read what and what kind of writings get legitimacy within the academic spaces, one has to also critically think about academic spaces and how they have been talking about the question of the subaltern.
Now, when we look into the history or historiography through which we understand India or South Asia, it largely gets torn between the nationalist kind or the Marxist kind of understanding. So, on one side there is an over-emphasis on what colonialism did and what a postcolonial world looks like, and on the other the Marxist kind of reading, which talks about land relationships and so on. However, when we look into subaltern historiography, there are so many missing links that are devoid of any substantive engagement. If one looks into the emergence of subaltern historiography, it emerges quite late. It was only in the late eighties and nineties that we had some forms of subaltern writing that came up.
But again, even in Guha's work on subaltern history, the question of caste particularly hasn’t received the substantive engagement that it deserves. If we don't have an understanding of, or in-depth engagement with, the questions of caste, how can we have a caste study or, for that matter, an anti-caste study?
So, I think even subaltern theories of South Asia need to be reworked and rethought in terms of critical caste theory, anti-caste studies and anti-caste narratives. To begin with, one has to ask questions like what is an anti-caste history? What does it look like? What have been the different anti-caste movements? This project is not necessarily within a post-colonial versus colonial kind of divide, rather it also goes much before that.
To answer your question, I think it's very important to first build a discourse around the questions of caste. And one of the ways to do it is through critical caste theory. To answer the second part of your question, you were talking about the absence of anti-caste writings, anti-caste narratives and the Dalit, and Adivasi women's narratives from the curriculum structures. In one of the papers, I discussed this, where I looked into different curriculum structures across Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and a few others. When we look into the question of the inclusion of Dalit studies, it has been very late, first. And even if it has been there, the question of Dalit women doesn't find itself in a very central place. It is just like if one has to formulate a gender studies curriculum, they will talk about Western feminists, South Asian feminists and then the history of feminist struggles in India. But they will very conveniently forget the histories of women from the DBA communities as well as Muslim women to be more precise.
Even if these portions are included within the curriculum structures, these are somewhere that just fit into it. The curriculum narrative never brings their experiences and vantage points to the centre. For instance, I would love to see a curriculum that begins with Savitribai Phule and through her thoughts and ideas traces the lives of other women who were also a part of the anti-caste movement. So there has to be some kind of shift in the way in which we think about pedagogy and curriculum structuring.
It doesn't have to be just fitting into a schema of things but it has to speak. We've to realise it’s also about the question of positionality, about who is at the centre and who is at the margin. At what point do you become suddenly interested in the questions of caste? And is it just tokenistic inclusion of the question of caste that you want to do in the curriculum? Or are you substantially interested in exploring the questions of caste and the anti-caste discourse? So, I think one has to have that creativity. Rethinking around curriculum is very much required and I think it's somewhere missing when I look into the major curriculum studies, particularly when it comes to gender studies.
Arpit: Thank you, Dr. Kalyani, for such an insightful answer. The Dalit student at IIT Bombay whom you talked about was Darshan Solanki. But the problem itself is a larger one. In December 2021, the education minister stated in the parliament that 122 students in the central government higher educational institutions had died by suicides between 2021 and 2024 and that 68 of these students were from SC, ST and OBC communities. schedule tribe and other backward-class community communities. Moreover, the Chief Justice of India, in the 19th Keynote address to NALSAR, gave concerning remarks regarding the increasing suicide rates among Dalit students. In light of this, how can scholars and students alike collaborate with academia to implement effective measures combating caste-based harassment and foster an inclusive learning environment for Dalit students?
Dr Kalyani: Thanks for that question and let me begin by saying I don't have an immediate answer to what can be the solution. Only if it was that easy, I think it'd have been solved by now. I hope we understand that when we talk about a structural problem like caste and the systematic exclusion of SC, ST, and OBC students from the institutional spaces by humiliating them, by excluding them from mainstream academia, we have done much more harm than good, right? So, when you talk about Rohit Vemula or Darshan Solanki, we've to realise they are not just immediate victims of some form of ragging, but it is a gradual process of exclusion and humiliation that the Dalit Bahujan students have been forced to fall into. Thus, I begin by saying that there is no immediate answer or immediate solution to this. But of course, as an anti-caste scholar, I feel that we can have a roadmap ahead. We can think in a certain way ahead, which can actually minimise and through our constant anti-caste practices, it can even annihilate the questions of caste.
So, on [the question] of how it can be done, it is firstly by looking into educational spaces and critically evaluating them. Now, when Ambedkar in his writings talks about ‘educate, agitate and organise’, this means he has paid emphasis on education. And among the Dalit Bahujan community, education has been one of the ways to escape caste structures. But unfortunately, even within the educational spaces, they are becoming victims of casteist practices. So firstly, I think there has to be a strong bureaucratic presence to check the problems of caste within university spaces. There have to be anti-caste cells like the SC-ST cells, which are in several central universities at the moment. But they also need to be expanded to other private universities. Now, private universities are the social reality of this country. So even private universities should have SC-ST cells and there should be a substantive budget allotted to them. There should be continuous checks by the government or certain agencies to make sure these cells are actually functioning and that they are not just there for the namesake.
The first and foremost step is creating inclusive educational spaces. Secondly, we need to rethink our curriculum; if we don't have anti-caste vocabulary and know-how about the existence of casteism, we can't annihilate it. Thus, the privileged need to know that caste exists not just outrightly but also practised very subtly. The other important thing I think that needs to be done in the public sphere is having better law and order which is much needed now because we see a rise of [instances of] violence against the oppressed caste and Muslim communities. Recent instances, like lynching in the name of a cow and peeing on a Dalit person or beating them are outrageous. There has to be an understanding within the academic spaces bout the different ways in which caste violence unfolds. Thus, having better laws and ensuring the Prevention of Atrocities Against Act is implemented effectively, is incredibly important. So, if there are cases of violence against women, against individuals from DBA communities, they should be at least reported at police stations which is not happening presently.
There is a very interesting work by Aloysius where he is looking into how violence even when committed gets completely erased or not even brought to the record. Even NCRB data mentions that the number of cases of violence reported is far less than the number of cases committed. There are legal ways to sort it out but more importantly, I think, we need to raise an anti-caste consciousness. One has to know that the question of caste and the problems around it exist, and we need to realise that there are everyday victims of the structures of caste. So, I think the mere acknowledgement of the privilege of the existence of structures of violence can be one step out.
Arpit: Thank you ma'am and I believe that these are very important solutions that our society should strive towards.
Pratham: Now that we have talked about caste in educational spaces and the way it operates and the brutal way it materialises itself in our everyday lives, I would now like to shift the focus to Dalit politics in UP. We've seen a transformation in recent times apropos of Dalit politics, at least in the northern belt, where there has been a predominant shift in the thematic essence of anthems associated with parties rooted in Bahujan ideologies which now emphasise more a personality cult over substantial ideological underpinnings. Given these developments, how do you interpret these strategic and pragmatic choices made by these parties? Also, is there an apparent compromise with their foundational principles, maybe a strategic concession aiming to emulate BJP’s successful amalgamation of Hindutva with the persona of their leaders in pursuit of political ascendancy?
Dr Kalyani: That's a big question and requires us to reflect on a lot many things from understanding what Uttar Pradesh politics was like, to the contemporary presence of Hindutva politics in UP. I would begin by the answer by talking about the beginning point of the anti-caste political vibrancy in Uttar Pradesh with Kanshi Ram in 1978. In 1978, BAMCEF had its manifesto ready and Kanshi Ram did try to bring, as Sudha Pai has noted, middle-class Bahujan communities together to talk about the problems of caste. He also re-centres the question of caste within Indian politics. If one reads about Kanshi Ram or looks into his politics, it seems he was very systematic: firstly, through BAMCEF there was some kind of resource gathering that he did, in terms of bringing a relatively affluent group together so that they could coherently think in the direction of anti-caste. The second thing that Kanshi Ram did was to bring an element of cultural assertiveness or cultural assertion. This he did through an organisation called DS4 Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti. Now, this organisation, and I've discussed this in my work, was actually at the centre of bringing people from the grassroots emotionally into the movement. And the word emotion here is very crucial because when you talk about music and culture, you also relate to emotions. If you look into some of the anti-caste songs from DS4, they will constantly use the word kaum which means community; so the sense of community and solidarity to convey the idea of anti-caste was very important.
Eventually, then Kanshi Ram went on to make BSP and by the 90s we had a figure of Mayawati and we had BSP as one of the major political players in 1996, when it won and had a [significant] political presence and visibility. By the 2000s, the movement was in full swing and one could see the presence of BSP politics winning elections. So, basically, what I'm trying to say when I'm talking about Bahujan politics in Uttar Pradesh, it does have an assertive history at least in contemporary times; in fact, as recently as the 1980s there was a visible presence of Bahujan politics.
Now, with Hindutva politics’ rise post the elections of 2014, the question of identity politics has witnessed a change, particularly when we see the rise of Modi. So, the politics that was previously centred more around the question of identity, representation and social justice, suddenly changed into a certain kind of nationalist narrative. And Modi and the BJP did it successfully. BJP was able to win the national elections twice, and could somehow create a narrative that it becomes about the question of nation first and then everything will fall together maybe later. Now, if we look into the failure of Bahujan politics in UP, one can say that Bahujan politics fell prey to a nationalist narrative that the BJP had carefully crafted. The BJP was able to fracture the so-called Bahujan and Kanshi Ram's idea of Bahujan into who are the OBCs, who are the Yadavs, who are the OBCs and who are the Dalits. Even within the Dalits, they [the BJP] talked differently about the sub-caste including valmiki, chamars, jatav. The right-wing has played very different kinds of politics when it came to these sub-castes.
So the success of the BJP in UP politics was about a fractured Bahujan identity. When Kanshi Ram was giving the idea of pichasi-pandhra (85-15), the 85 within this arrangement was the Bahujan. I think Hindutva politics, through a garb of nationalism, was able to fracture this idea of Bahujan and think and work through the gaps that prevailed within caste identities. For instance, they will woo very differently from the Kushwahas, from the way they appeal to Kumhars, Pasi, etc. So basically, it was through these fractures, which were carefully crafted by the BJP, that they were able to set a nationalist narrative.
Arpit: Thank you, Ma'am, for that answer. So, the recent Supreme Court verdict on the Maratha reservation quota stirred huge controversy, reigniting the debates on the efficacy and fairness of affirmative policies. In light of this development, how do you assess the state of affirmative action policies in India and their impact on the socio-economic status of marginalized communities? Additionally, what steps do you suggest to address the multiple complexities surrounding the reservation policies and ensure equitable outcomes?
Dr Kalyani: That's an important question. I won't go into the history of Maratha reservation politics, but I would like to talk more substantively about the second part of your question which is about the caste census.
We have followed the recent debates around caste census, and I think it's imperative to acknowledge that the starting point to understand caste in contemporary India will be through caste census. More than anything, only the caste census can give us insight into what the caste structure in India looks like. When it comes to the question of caste, we don't know much about the different access to resources, and educational mobility of sub-caste groups. The question of caste is just passed on. If we investigate the questions of caste as it exists today, much of it is like a media debate or some political party aligning with other political parties and things like that. There's a certain ad-hocism in the way the issue of caste is approached.
The first significance of the caste census will be to remove this ad-hocism and to know what caste is and how a caste society looks and operates. For instance, within OBC, there are categories like OBC and MBC, which have a very different kind of caste experience from the dominant OBC communities. So, a Yadav’s caste experience in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar will be very different from that of someone from the OBC community in similar regions. So, I think what a caste census will foremost do is to unfold and unpack the reality of caste.
Now, the other thing that the caste census will do is it will allow more systematic discursive learning around the caste reality. For instance, if one looks into the Bihar caste census that was out, it reflects some of the caste realities, such as who the OBCs are or what the percentage of Pasmanda Muslims is and so on. Bihar's caste census thus becomes a focal point to understand the need to talk about caste census. Whether it will be done, I think that's again subject to political discussions. And I think the dominant political parties, including the present BJP regime, are not interested in doing so. Because the coming out of the reality of caste might lead to several kinds of anti-caste demands, political alignments or reservation questions, which they are not interested in. Even Congress was not interested in the questions of caste census. Here, I think, it becomes important to talk about RJD, BSP and similar other social justice-based political parties that understand the link between social justice and a caste census.
On to your question about the Maratha reservation, I think such kinds of controversies, where the dominant parties have been clamouring for quotas, have also erupted elsewhere, like the Patels in Gujarat. But much of it is happening because they have political and public visibility. We have no data from the caste census to challenge their claim. So, such controversies are bound to come if there is no caste census and we don't have data and statistics about the relative affluence of different caste groups.
Arpit: Thank you, ma'am, for that answer. It is undeniable that social justice is a very important principle that our government should strive towards. It is even reflected in our constitution, in the Directive Principles of State Policies. Article 38 states that the state shall endeavour to secure a social order for the promotion of the welfare of the people. With that in mind, we can only hope that the present establishment partakes in activities that will only enhance social justice.
Thank you, Dr. Kalyani, for joining us in this endeavour of ours at The Probe. We hope that you'll join us in our future activities too.
Dr K Kalyani is a sociologist. She was awarded her doctorate degree in Sociology from the Centre for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her ethnographic research has explored different forms and practices of resistance in popular culture, particularly engaging with the question of caste, gender, and culture through a subaltern discourse.
Twitter - @FiercelyBahujan
LinkedIn - @K Kalyani
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