My Dalitality

Issue #19 :: June 2022

Dear Friends,

This month I flew in from Barcelona to Aberdeen via Amsterdam. The trip started in the early morning and culminated at midnight. Technically, the journey should last about six hours in total. But the flights were delayed due to a shortage of staff and cramped airports. On another occasion, I enquired the cause of this to a manager handling security at Berlin airport. She said management is not hiring and the pay is not well, so people are not interested in working at the airport.  

I delivered the Annual Ambedkar Lecture to a packed audience at the University of Edinburgh. I met a few Dalit students and was pleased to learn about their new research projects. Also, non-Dalit students working on caste were sharp. Overall, Edinburgh sounded like an excellent place for an anti-caste, Dalit scholarship. 

There are a few publications lined up for this month’s edition. My travels continue, but I’ve managed to write new stuff. Although I am on vacation, I couldn’t resist the invitation by Outlook weekly to write about Monsoon. More on that next month.

I love silhouettes. They bring calm to my mind. The horizon was captured over the North Sea at 10.30 pm.

The open tabs are the written works I produced over the past several months. They can now rest. Those works will be published in the forthcoming weeks.

Dalitality

One of the senior leaders of ruling Shiv Sena, a right-wing party in Maharashtra state, Eknath Shinde, rebelled against the party accusing the party leader and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray of his incompetence, nepotism and favouritism to rival turned alliance parties – the Congress and NCP. Analysts have looked at this political debacle as a thirst for power. However, I argue it is a tussle between the competing Hindutva ideologies. The Hindutva that Keshav Thackeray, the Thackeray patriarch, put forward in the 1920s had anti-Brahmin and self-rule as a selling point. Until the time Shiv Sena, led by Bal Thackeray, embraced this idea, it had become an anti-Muslim, jingoistic nationalism to counter the image of Congress’ secularism. The question remains, what is the current Shiv Sena? Whose Hindutva is it following? You can read the piece here.

Political scientist Mrudul Nile assessed the dwindling state of Dalit polity. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in labour camps in Mumbai, Nile makes a case for investment in cultural symbolism as a possible move towards gaining political autonomy. You can read the piece here.  

Other Features / Publications

The Minority Rights Group International invited me to contribute a chapter on Dalits around work. After deliberation, I decided to bring Roma and Burakumin groups to a comparative study with Dalits. It’s probably the first time that the Dalit, Burakumin, and Roma groups have been theorized together. The article thinks and links the experiences of oppression through historical junctures of work-based discrimination. Read the full article here.

Milinda Banerjee and Jelle J.P. Wouters are on a mission to revamp Subaltern Studies. They call it Subaltern Studies 2.0: Being against the Capitalocene. It is a challenging terrain to cross, especially when the heavyweights have handled the area of investigation. Milinda and Jelle took it upon themselves and gathered a few of us to comment on their treatise that relies on the plurality of Beings beyond humans. I write alongside Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Marisol de la Cadena, and Thom Van Dooren. You can purchase the book via the University of Chicago Press website. My chapter is entitled “Supreme Subalterns.” 

I assess Dalit Panthers as an ideology, organization, and political movement in this Marathi column for Loksatta. I compare the notes of Panthers and find the apparent differences between one section of Dalit Panthers and Black Panthers. The main difference was the open embrace of Marx and Lenin for the Black Panthers, while a team of Dalit Panthers staked a claim on Ambedkar and Buddha. Another section embraced Marx alongside the above pantheons, which led to the Panthers' possible fallout. You can read the piece here.

In History

17th July – First Dalit President, K. R. Narayanan, was elected.

Kocheril Raman Narayan or K. R Narayan was the 10th president of India (1997-2002). He was the first Dalit to hold this position. Narayan described himself as “not an executive President but a working President and working within the four walls of the constitution”. Proving this right, President Narayan remained a vocal and active critic of intolerance, caste prejudice, and unconstitutionality throughout his term.

17th July – Birth anniversary of famous Dalit poet – Baburao Ramaji Bagul

18 July – Death anniversary of Annabhau Sathe

20 July – Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha foundation day

22 July – Swami Achhutanand’s death anniversary

Through his decades of work with the anti-caste movement as a spiritual and political leader, poet, dramatist, journalist, critic, and founder of the Adi-Hindu movement, Swami Achhutanand ‘Harihar’ emerged as one of the most revolutionary leaders of the Dalit rights movement in the early 20th century.

25 July – Death anniversary of Phoolan Devi

31 July – Death anniversary of Shaheed Udham Singh (freedom fighter and Dalit from Punjab but ignored by Govts)

Things to look out for

via: Jacobin

Prachi Patankar, an Indian organizer in New York and daughter of a devoted couple, Gail Omvedt and Bharat Patankar, penned this powerful piece for Jacobin, The Struggle Against Caste Oppression Is a Vital Battleground for Indian Democracy. An incredible tour of India’s social map is examined through three generations of struggles—her grandparents Indutai, Babuji, her parents and herself. You can read the tribute to that struggle in light of present-day India here.

via: Dr. Tarun Khanna’s Newsletter

Harvard Business School Professor Tarun Khanna has been an advocate of inclusion and diversity. He has also published a book on meritocracy. In this article, Tarun reflects on the inter-generational privileges and how they channel one’s life choices. Tarun writes as he attended his daughter's graduation, who passed out of Princeton, and his alma mater. You can read the piece here.

Sumeet Turuk, who goes by Sumeet Samos is a well-known Dalit rapper, artist, and scholar. Currently, at Oxford University, Sumeet has published a that is part memoir and part social commentary on the issues of caste and justice from the Oriya perspective. To my knowledge, this is perhaps the first book to talk exclusively about caste issues from a Dalit perspective out of Odisha. You can purchase the book by placing an order with the publisher on WhatsApp @+919987133931 

Awanish Kumar, a British Academy Newton International Fellow, has written perhaps one of the few studies examining caste and public health. You can access the article here.

Minority Rights Group International, along with Amnesty International, Frontline Defenders, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, IDSN, and Minority Rights Group, recently released a joint statement to the UN Human Rights Council on the growing concern regarding the religious and ethnic minorities in India.

Two amazing films highlight the queerness and their entanglements with Caste in India. The first is by Vishal Jugdeo, vqueeram, and Dhiren Bhorisa. “Does Your House Have Lions” is an incredibly moving film that covers the personal and sexual nature of India’s polity observed through a queer graph.

The other is by Nishant Roy Bombarde who brings in the intimate lens of caste with the queer life in India. This Indian Express interview with Nishant is a good start.

The artwork of Dalit artist Prabhakar Kamble is among the “7 standout works at the 2022 Berlin Biennale”. Art critique and editor; Emily Watlington writes about it in her piece.

Events

I will deliver an opening keynote on “Caste and Blackness” at the Worldmaking Beyond SOAS conference, organized by SOAS University of London, followed by a discussion with Prof Adam Habib, the director of SOAS. You can register here.

I will also be in Lisbon at the Law & Society conference participating in two panels from 15th July.

Announcements

The interview with Mr J V Pawar, one of the co-founders of the Dalit Panthers, is out now. It was produced by Sudipto Mondal, the executive editor at The News Minute, and conducted by Rahul Bhise and Sushmit Pandhare. The interview can be watched here.

Another interview with the leaders of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers who visited Nanded for the Dalit-Black Panthers Conference can be seen here. 

Call to action

Two activists have been arrested by the Modi government. Teesta Setalvad and Zubair, a fact-checker. They remain incarcerated in an act of political vengeance.  

Greetings from Bosnia for now.

#Jai Bhim #DalitLove

suraj