Ghettoised Indians of the gutter society, eternally condemned. Not anymore, writes Amit Sengupta. The uprising is not a
revolution, but it is no less

Buddha Smiles: Mass-conversion of dalits to Buddhism, November 4, 2001 Delhi
The sun of self-respect has burst into flame Let it burn up these castes!
Smash, Break, Destroy These walls of hatred
Crush to smithereens this aeons-old school of blindness Rise, O People!
Marathi song, anti-caste movement, 1970s

As urban purists, untouched by the untouchables, these sleepwalking stereotypes are often unreal, almost hallucinatory, dream-like, quasi-mythical. While motionless modernity speeds to and fro, you can see him in the heart of the capital, his heart stable as the daily ritual of death, his eyes as pitch-dark as forest darkness. The bare-bodied man lifts the iron lid and enters the abyss of the black hole. No mask, no protective gear, no gloves, no constitutional self-dignity, fated in a futuristic superpower where the Sensex soars like simulated sex. Then, often with his bare hands, he works upon the filthy narrative of the underground, urban civilisation’s unseen, desanitised, unread autobiography.

In the comparative literature of condemned social realism, Rani in Lucknow, is perhaps worse-off. Like all the manual scavengers across the country, who still pick up human excreta and carry it on their head, like a Vedic curse. Or those emaciated humans, who still skin dead cows and buffaloes, rub salt on them to kill the stink, and tentatively enter the primitive leather trade of one of the world’s fastest growing economies. In this fast forward rewind, when the ‘superior races’ of Manu’s varna system, lynched five of them in Haryana’s Jhajjar in 2002, vhp’s Acharya Giriraj Kishore proclaimed that cows are more valuable than dalits.
Last month they burnt alive five dalits, including women and children, along with a buffalo in a thatched hut in rural Bihar. The revenge of the upper castes centered on cattle. Nothing to be shocked and awed. In these killing fields of ancient slavery, it’s not only their hateful shadows, their women’s bodies and children’s limbs are often the chosen subject of how to teach them a subjective lesson in caste society’s objectivity. So they aren’t only geographically segregated, the water they drink is differently designed, their tea cups in the tea-shop are located in different time and space, and the shelter under the tree for a landless dalit is not really made of an equal summer. Try drinking a glass of water in a feudal village in Rajasthan, your social ostracism will be instant history.

Buddham Sharanam Gacchami: November 4, 2001
 
In the interiors of UP’s Bulandshahr, when Buddhist bhikshus walk down the street with dalits holding guns and hundreds reject the ‘mental shackles’ of Brahmanic Hinduism’s metaphysical slavery, you can feel, see and hear this unimaginable resurrection and rising

In other words, five thousand years and more after, almost 60 years after ‘Independence’, dalits in India are a priori condemned, even before they are born. Even after they die when they are buried in separate village graveyards. Even when they become educated or employed, within or outside the politics of half-fake affirmative action.

So have we lost our heads? Dalit Rising? Pray, where? In which rainbow uprising? In which constitutional amendment of the largest democracy where they constitute almost 170 million of the population? In the village interiors of UP’s Bulandshahr, near Shikarpur, when Buddhist bhikshus walk on the street with dalits holding guns and hundreds reject the ‘mental shackles’ of Brahmanic Hinduism’s metaphysical slavery, you can see the resurrection and the rising: Buddhist chants in the twilight under the shadow of the gun. This is their territory, post-Mandal, post-Kanshiram and Mayawati, post-Uditraj, who is leading the campaign on conversions. “We don’t want their temples, but if they humiliate any dalit in the neighbourhood, they will have to cross this street,” says local leader Sudhir Kumar. It’s a threat, and it’s not hollow.

Earlier, in 2001, ex-jnu student and dalit leader, Uditraj, led 50,000 dalits in a mass conversion to Buddhism at Ambedkar Bhavan in Delhi. He had promised a one million strong event, on the footsteps of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s neo-Buddhist mass conversion in Nagpur on October 14, 1956. But the bjp regime, backed by the rss-vhp, scattered it using the armed might of the State: dalits were blocked, arrested, picked up, forced to return. Why? Is freedom of religion not a constitutional right? Or is it that the Hindutva forces don’t want, at any cost, the liberation of dalits?

Uditraj’s Indian Justice Party is strong among sc/st employees in 20 states. But it’s not a big electoral force. Can Buddhism mark a historical rupture? “No,” he says. “We want social reforms first, a renaissance of mental freedom, followed by political, economic freedom. This is an ideological struggle to unite the divided dalits. It’s not for political power.”

Indeed, when Mayawati celebrates her opulent birthday parties or installs her own statue, she is sending a signal: Hinduism can go to hell, dalits have their own ‘living goddess’. Dalit scholars believe that this ‘vulgar’ symbolism can be politically potent, dalits can cock a snook at the caste society. But, finally, this will only lead to short-term goals in the power establishment — it can never truly liberate. That is why, Mayawati’s opportunism — she can align with Hindutva forces, anybody — can become self-defeating in the long run. Dalit politics can never be, hence, genuinely, radically, ideologically transformative.

Unlike in Punjab, with plus 30 percent dalit population, many of them economically well-off, not dependent on land, where Kanshiram begun his first mobilisation. The dalit-sufi secular traditions (they control dargahs) are as strong here, as is the old Ghadarite-Leftist-radical traditions — be it during the freedom struggle, or in the great sacrifices made against terrorism. The Mansa and Talhan movements are examples of organised dalit reassertion: political and ideological (see story).

In Bant Singh Inquilabi’s amputated limbs, lies the epic story of a nation defiled, like his raped daughter in Mansa. But the truth is that this ‘invisible nation’ is refusing to accept its fatedness anymore. As in Gohana in Haryana, in Bhojpur in Bihar, Ghatkopar in Mumbai, Talhan in Punjab, this rising is rising like a wave on a full moon night. It’s only that we only want to see the dark side of the moon.