Dear Friends:
This month there is a lot to share. The sad news hitting the airwaves from India must have been known to all by now.
The Guardian newspaper reported the hellish condition. The headline read as: ‘The system has collapsed’: India’s descent into Covid hell’. Wherever we try to look we are faced with the terrifying site of death. Somebody’s someone somewhere is dying in India. The public health infrastructure and the lax behavior of the government has added exponentially to the rise of this new mutant.
Added to this the gross undermining of caste affected individuals remains an unexplored worry. Dr. Ajay Kohil, a Dalit professor in Pune underwent the traumatic experience of trying to save his father and mother, both of whom were contracted by Covid. He couldn’t save his father. But he didn’t have the courage to share this information with his mother who was recovering. He put on a brave face and started looking after the mother in the house because he, like many ordinary people in India, couldn't find her Oxygen. He created a twitter appeal to no avail. The dreadful experience was covered by The New York Times. You can view the piece here.
With rising death tolls, the staggering workload on crematorium workers has gone unnoticed. Because these are Dalit workers who slog in the crematorium. Vice News covered a story of one such crematorium worker, Ashu Rai. Perhaps one of the more haunting statements of covid pandemic in India is as follows:
Asked if he is Brahmin, Rai laughed and said, “Of course not, but in these times, we are all Brahmins.”
Almost everyone asks about my caste because everyone wants a Brahmin to do the rituals and not the Dalits, but they aren’t available,” he said. “We are.
Ashu Rai is not just a crematorium worker. He is a healer and counsel to the relatives in their most vulnerable condition. His words and whispers into the ears of the bereaved family members come like an usher from the heavens. Ashu Rai like many of his peers is one of the central actors of the pandemic. You can read the piece here written by a Dalit journalist Suryaprakash Majumdar.
I curated a special issue with Outlook magazine profiling 50 Dalit who are remaking India. The list was elaborate and many deserving names had to drop due to the limitation of numbers. Nevertheless, this list is all you want to pay attention to this year. These are extraordinary Dalit people with diverse backgrounds and vocations who are carving a new nation with their craft and skills. Here is a promo video that we released. In case you want to read the article behind the paywall I have it here. Having said that, I urge you to support independent journalism.
Courtesy: Outlook magazine cover story (April 16 2021)
I wrote a cover story for the issue entitled ‘Dalit Time’, it is a glance over history and the grips on the losing idea of time that I center my attention at.
“Dalits have memories, passed down generations, about the richness of their traditions and their materiality that was prophesied into social conduct contingent upon compassion, Dalit love, Dalit art and Dalit humour. These are extended ideals of forgiveness, of livability: co-partnership was a module of shared life they inherited. Relations premised on temporal and immediate love were taught to be appreciated.” I conclude the piece with my concern “about the future and equally vested in optimism; thus, this is an attempt to think of our century. The 21st century will be sculpted by the minds and hearts of Dalits. They will be actors that the world will reckon with. Let’s celebrate their life and commit ourselves to their fight for an equal world.” You can read the complete article here.
Dalitality
This Ambedkar Jayanti I focus on Ambedkar’s most important treasure, his literature. Ambedkar’s writings and speeches were published after persistent advocacy to the Government of Maharashtra, which finally conceded to publish Ambedkar’s writings and select speeches in 1979. Ever since, perhaps no other author underwent such heightened scrutiny and protest in India as Ambedkar. Thus far the writings have ran into 23 Volumes with scholars arguing that 175 more such voluminous works remain unearthed.I argue in the piece:
Ambedkar’s scholarship is a cue to history. It bridges so many gaps and creates a straight path for one to walk on without feeling lost or insecure. He is the only clue we have to our collective past and histories of many Indias. Ambedkar challenged history, probed society, and anthropologically argued with legal conventions.
You can read the piece here.
Other features
People offer floral tributes to a portrait of Bhimrao Ambedkar on his birth anniversary in Hyderabad, India on April 14, 2021 [AP/Mahesh Kumar A]
Al Jazeera invited me to write in the April month issue. I build a case for a Dalit history project outside India. This could go in multiple directions but one of the essential aspects would be to institutionalize Dalit studies as a discipline. Institutes outside India have the capacity to do so. Research centers on 300 millions, or sixth largest nation, is imperative for the health of democracy. I end the piece with the following:
Dalit studies is an urgent project that examines and studies society, power, politics, culture, religion, art and linguistics. It has a possibility to create a snowball effect and inspire oppressed communities elsewhere whose identities were anthropologised for museum culture or heavily abstracted under the pretext of postcolonialism. They are original people and their study needs an original approach.
Ambedkar’s American Comeback // The Juggernaut, a South Asian American online journal invited me to contribute for their April month special on Dalit history. I profiled Ambedkar in the American context and what it means for American and Indian to visit Ambedkar as a scholar? The history of American concern for Dalits dates to the nineteenth century. I explore this in my next book project. However, for this article I argue about the various dimensions of Ambedkar’s thought.
Screengrab from the Diane Rehm Book Club discussion
The Diane Rehm Book Club invited me to be part of a panel discussing Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste (2020). Along with me were Kenneth Mack, professor of law at Harvard University and Dwight Garner, a book critic at The New York Times. We spend a good hour discussing the pros and cons and importance of this literature. You will enjoy this deliberation. My primary argument was that Caste (2020) would make more sense if it had centered India because that is the unifying factor for the US’ racism and Germany’s Nazism. Both orient from India’s vicious caste supremacist values. You can view it here.
After much hesitation I gave in and presented a Tedx Talk. It can be watched here. Let me know what you think.
Things to lookout for
This article was a reminder for all to think about life and work. Not the other way round.
Jonathan Frostick, a London based investment bank program manager had it close with a terrible heart attack. Whilst his body reacted to the constraint in his chest, his thoughts were:
1. F*** I needed to meet with my manager tomorrow, this isn’t convenient
2. How do I secure the funding for X (work stuff)
3. Shit I haven’t updated my will
4. I hope my wife doesn’t find me dead
Fortunately, his wife was around and she called the emergency services. This led to Jonathan surviving the heart attack. Now thinking back from the hospital, Jonathan might have just given what the zoom locked professionals so urgently need beyond meeting deadlines and attending meetings. He states bluntly:
I’ve since made the following decisions whilst I’ve laid here, on the basis I don’t die:
1. I’m not spending all day on zoom anymore
2. I’m restructuring my approach to work
3. I’m really not going to be putting up with any s#%t at work ever again - life literally is too short
4. I’m losing 15kg
5. I want every day to count for something at work else I’m changing my role
6. I want to spend more time with my family
And that, so far, is what near death has taught me.
Aishwary Kumar is one of the brilliant Ambedkar scholars in the humanities discipline. He has rendered justice to Ambedkar in his discipline like no one else. It’s always worth the time spent with his genius. Here’s an interview of him curated at The Wire.
My friend Chinniah Jangam, a respected historian and author of a monumental book, Dalits and the Making of Modern India profiled India’s admittedly first hotelier M. Nagloo who started his business in Nagpur. This Telugu speaking entrepreneur has an interesting life story that is no less a story of adventure. Nagoo’s son M. N. Venkatswami wrote the biography of his father in 1908 making it perhaps India’s first Dalit biography. Chinniah stumbled upon this archive while digging at the British Library. A book length project in that direction awaits. Meanwhile, you can read the piece here.
Ratik Asokan, a subeditor at the Baffler magazine just reviewed a documentary on Punjab’s landlessness by Randeep Maddoke, a child of landless dalit laborers.
An extensive report by The Caravan journalist Aathira Konikkara is one thing any lover of history and archives should read. This is a rather painful story of how Ambedkar’s writings are subject to the government’s disinterest in the scholarship of the man who drafted the manifesto of India. The cover story for this month’s Caravan magazine prompted me to take a stab for this entry in Dalitality. You can read the Caravan story here.
Harish Wankhede, a leading commentator and scholar of Indian film studies has some delightful reading on the series Asharam by director Prakash Jha. I am not a fan of Indian web series but Harish’s commentary brings it closer to viewing interest. You can read here.
“Caste discrimination must be addressed in the US” statement released by the influential Alphabet Workers Union. This is a good start and perhaps the first time in history that a western union has acknowledged and pushed for the eradication of caste and caste based inequities. Here’s wishing you all May Day.
In the project of environmentalism, caste is obscured. Sanjana Acharya writes about “Why the climate justice movement must be anti-caste”
I will be speaking at Northwestern on the ‘Intersection of Dalit and Black Lives’. It will be a speech followed by extended Q&As with Prof Laura Brueck and Ivy Wilson. To attend, register here.
S Anand from Navayana reached out in excitement as soon as he had an idea about a fellowship initiative. Do spread the word and apply if you qualify. The details can be found here and a video primer can be accessed here.
#JaiBhim #DalitLove
suraj