1/20/2021 To Be or Not to Be a 'Dalit'?

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To Be or Not to Be a 'Dalit'?
The I&B ministry's recent dictate not to use the term 'Dalit' has opened
a very full and much-agitated can of worms, forcing us to question the
words we use to consider the welfare and happiness of the individual
and the society.

In a country where religion is the prima facie factor in society, wasn’t Ambedkar’s step to replace that very religion to introduce a
more egalitarian, just and fraternal religion revolutionary? Credit: Reuters

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1/20/2021 To Be or Not to Be a 'Dalit'?

Vruttant and Krittika

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CASTE SOCIETY 19/SEP/2018

Sabad sabad sab koi kahe, sabad ka karo vichaar

Ek sabad seetal kare, ek sabad de jaar

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– Kabir

Words are what make our world. They help us convey our
thoughts. They help us connect to people. We establish our
society- literature, culture, politics, ideology, philosophy-
through the words we choose. Words help shape our thinking
as much as our thoughts shape our words. In short, words play
a vital role in human society.

Kabir therefore suggests that we choose our words with

utmost thought, because they can both cure and curse. In a
larger frame, when politics is seen as the science of
associating with people and governing society, words need to
be selected with care. Our identities, our polities, our worlds
are shaped by the words we choose to give them.

This issue of words has become very relevant recently. The

word of the moment is ‘Dalit’, and mystifying it is the cloud
of confusion regarding its usage, its users, its connotation, its
symbolism, and most importantly, its political implications.
The I&B ministry on August 7 issued an advisory to media
houses to avoid using the term Dalit and opt for the more
constitutional ‘scheduled castes’, giving six weeks to discuss
and reach a conclusion. This opened a very full and much-
agitated can of worms, forcing us to question the words we
use, in order to consider the welfare and happiness of the
individual and the society. It raises the issue of a progressive
perspective for the society, and the world at large, based on
the principles of liberty, equality, justice and fraternity.

The term Dalit has had a history of debate. It is found written

earliest in the Vedas wherein it connoted something that is
crushed or broken. From then till recent times, the meaning
has hardly changed much with many progressive poets,
authors and academics still using it to connote the peoples
who have been crushed and oppressed. Come 20th century,
and the word starts to gain a slightly different connotation, in
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a more assertive sense. In the mid 1900s, the term entered

literature as a field, allowing the subaltern to become vocal. It
created space for the views from the marginalised and spoke
either against or different from the mainstream. The 1960s
saw the evolution of the term politically, its highest evolution
seen in the formation of the Dalit Panther movement in the
1970s. The movement gave it a more comprehensive identity,
encompassing all marginalised sections of the society and not
only a caste – an identity which still resonates with many even
today, albeit in a highly romantic way.

However, at around the same time, the term Dalit also started
to gather dissent, giving rise to rejection and contradictions.
Noted Ambedkarite thinker Yashwant Manohar recalls, “After
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in 1956, the
erstwhile untouchables and Dalits became Buddhists. Hence,
the prevailing ideology since 1960-61 was that those who
became Buddhists because of Babasaheb Ambedkar would not
call their literature as Dalit Literature.” A very clear example
of this contradiction is seen through the Maharashtra Dalit
Sahitya Sangha. The organisation held its first conference,
titled Dalit Sahitya Sammelan, in Mumbai in 1958 under the
leadership of Annabhau Sathe. It held its second conference,
again in Mumbai, in 1959 and the third conference in Pune in
1961.

By the third conference, the tide had changed, with many

prominent members including T. P. Adsul, Vijay Sonawane
and Raja Dhale starting to reject the use of the term Dalit, in
light of Ambedkar’s decision to embrace Buddhism. The
general consensus was that Ambedkar did not want the
oppressed to remain ‘dalits’, and had asked them to embrace a
new identity, that of Buddhists. The Maharashtra Dalit Sahitya
Sangh was thus dissolved and took the new identity of
Maharashtra Baudhha Sahitya Sangh in 1961 itself, and
continued its journey onward. Interestingly, Raja Dhale, who
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The Dalit Panther movement in the 1970s gave ‘Dalit’ a more

comprehensive identity, encompassing all marginalised sections of the
society and not only a caste. A Dalit Panthers poster.

was very vocal in his advocacy of the Buddhist identity, was

one of the founding members of the Dalit Panthers. Since
1976, he publicly started advocating the term ‘Ambedkarite’
as a political and social identity.

This was not an off-hand occurrence, as many such activists,

academics, authors and thinkers had started taking this
argument forward in Maharashtra. The dialectic between Dalit
and Ambedkarite or Buddhist has been prevalent for a long
time, both in Maharashtra and outside. But, because
Ambedkar passed away before he could take Buddhism to the
other states, his religious contributions did not gain as much
momentum. Thus, Dalit Literature as a term moved out of
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Maharashtra, but his Buddhist perspective, unfortunately, did

not. This issue only became a hot-topic a couple of years back
when activist Pankaj Meshram approached the Nagpur bench
of the Bombay high court against the term Dalit, on the claim
that it was derogatory and not empowering at all. His petition
also challenged the legality of the using the term Dalit as
opposed to the constitutional terms scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes. The case finally saw Meshram win the
petition, in March this year, with the court declaring Dalit to
be a unconstitutional term.

In a similar verdict in January this year, the Gwalior bench of

the Madhya Pradesh high court advised against the use of the
term Dalit for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
These cases brought out the dialectic being played out in
Maharashtra all these years. Notably, in 2005, at a conference
at Ulhasnagar, several Ambedkarite, Dalit, and progressive
intellectuals like Baburao Bagul, Yashwant Manohar, Nagnath
Kotapalli, Ramnika Gupta, Geeta Manjrekar, Ratanlal Sonagra
and Pragya Pawar among others unanimously passed a
proposal suggesting that they consciously replace the word
Dalit with another word which indicated ‘self-respect’.

In fact, this has been the major bone of contention all along.
The question of self-respect, in being called a name that was
given by the oppressors to indicate something that was lowly,
was being raised vis-à-vis a term that could show
empowerment. On one hand, there was the connotation of
being filthy, demeaned, degraded and humiliating . On the
other hand, there was a move to accept terms which would not
only not be demeaning but also showcase power. In such a
context, the linguistic construct becomes of prime importance,
helping shape our imaginations into reality. Dr. Ambedkar
himself was a big proponent of an identity which would
enable self-respect amongst the people. He stressed on the
reclamation of the human personality, focusing the intellectual
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cultivation of the human mind rather than asserting its

victimhood for political gains. Moreover, Dr. Ambedkar, gave
a big reason to his opponents and doubters. In his historic
speech of Dadar in 1936 — ‘Emancipation What Way?’, he
proclaimed that emancipation is only possible through a
change in name, easily achievable through conversion. He
asked the masses to choose a name that will have no “filth”
attached to it, and pinned it as the responsibility of the
“untouchable class” to annihilate caste, even though it was
propagated by the caste-Hindus.

Ambedkar never propagated the use of the term Dalit even

though he may have used it in a few speeches. Unlike
contemporary ‘Dalits’ who assert the identity as a socio-
political category, he used it as the Hindi or Marathi
equivalent of ‘depressed’ to indicate only the socio-political
condition. He never meant to use it as a political category and
hence did not use it at all in his English speeches or writings,
very unlike the use of the term today. He, rather, stressed on
creating a more progressive name for this society, and he
worked tirelessly to achieve it. He wanted to be absolutely
sure of the new identity he was assuming, knowing full well
the repercussions such a massive change could bring about in
the society. He answered the opposition and doubters of
conversion by claiming that “nothing but spirituality is at the
base of my conversion,” stressing on the human mind as the
tool for emancipation. He asked his followers to convert “to
become human,” addressing the inhuman status that society
had given them. He struggled for decades, read endlessly, took
great pains to show the path that would emancipate the
‘depressed classes’. Such was his scholarly conviction which
emphasised the need of name (category) change, and he
finally did it in the conversion after a rigorous labour of 21
years.

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Today’s scholars seem to have completely missed Ambedkar’s

point. After the Dalit Panthers, academic engagement has
been the biggest disseminator of the use of the term Dalit as a
‘unifying force’. Unfortunately, the term has now been seen as
emancipatory and revolutionary. Those who imagine Dalit to
be revolutionary are, in fact, playing to the oppressor’s court,
because even though the ‘oppressed classes’ may have
subverted the term to their own interest, the oppressor’s views
about the term does not change. This is forced imagination
and also a forced romanticism of struggle by a glorification of
victimhood.

But doesn’t such a forced romanticism of struggle fail to

recognise Ambedkar’s struggle as revolutionary? In their
glorification of victimhood, do they discount Ambedkar’s
courage to take the bold step of conversion? In a country
where religion is the prima facie factor in society, wasn’t
Ambedkar’s step to replace that very religion to introduce a
more egalitarian, just and fraternal religion revolutionary? Do
they then belittle his conviction, hard-work, foresight,
determination and courage by equating Dalitism (victimhood)
with revolution? Do they fail to recognise Ambedkar’s spirit
of revolution in the act of conversion? Do they fail to see that
the very essence of Ambedkar is nothing but a revolution?

Such scholars and activists largely see Dalit as a ‘unifying

category’ – of struggle and revolution, of all marginalised
classes. But is it really so? Ambedkar is being appropriated by
the entire political spectrum from the Left to the Right. But is
his ideology being accepted by all? What makes the thinkers
think Dalit to be a unifying term, particularly at the juncture
when it is evident that Ambedkar is emerging as the sole
unifying factor of the marginalised sections of India? Why is
his revolution not taken as important as that of the Dalit
Panthers who apparently attempted to follow him? In this
context, is it the category – Dalit – or the name – Ambedkar –
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which is the prime unifying force of the depressed classes and

progressives?

The assertion of Dalit identity negates Ambedkar’s constructive struggle for

emancipation of the ‘depressed classes’. Credit: Reuters

The term Dalit is a linguistic construction based on the

spiritual and material reality of a long, oppressive history.
Nonetheless, such conditions do not validate the naming of a
certain class on such oppressed conditions only. Particularly,
when an identity claims assertion, the assertion of weakness
and filth negates the power of a constructive struggle. The
assertion of Dalit identity negates Ambedkar’s constructive
struggle for emancipation of the ‘depressed classes’.

This is the case not only in the followers of Ambedkar, but

also in the followers of Kanshiram. Kanshi Ram gave a new
identity to the people by bringing about a political revolution.
He rejected the old filthy political categories and gave the new
identity of Bahujan – a political identity which could unify an
even larger mass. Ambedkar wrote in Bahushkrit Baharat in
1935 that one needs to change the shetji-bhatji rajya (Baniya-
Brahmin rule) and give power to 80% marginalised people to
gain equality. Kanshi Ram helped realise this through a new
Bahujan identity. By rejecting the name Dalit, he worked

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extensively to show Bahujan as a powerful force. The positive

connotation of a positive nomenclature was very much in
tandem with the samyak wisdom of the Buddha: “Bahujan
hitay, bahujan sukhay.” Kanshi Ram converted Buddha’s
social, material and spiritual philosophy into a political
identity.

Another co-founder of the Dalit Panthers, J.V. Pawar, said in a

recent artice, “We established Dalit Panthers keeping in mind
that today we are dalits (neglected) but one day our status will
change. Dalitism is nothing but a status. We have changed that
status. Backwardness should not be our identification. We are
not dalits now.” It is commendable how Pawar has, in spite of
being a founding member, not shied away from accepting the
flaw of using the term Dalit.

We salute his vision of samata and conviction for justice

which, in all wise minds, is accepting of the change brought
about by the emerging emancipatory social conditions. The
struggle of the elimination of social-human-barriers and the
establishment of a just-egalitarian society must not
compromise with human self-respect. The progressives need
to really progress by recognising Ambedkar’s revolution of
1956. They must not regress to the days where the people of
the depressed classes were named connoting weakness and
filth like that of bhangi, dalit and the popularly known
‘Lagaan’s Kachra’.

Vruttant and Krittika are PhD researchers at JNU, New Delhi.

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