India is a vast country, with a population of around one billion, and made up of thousands of communities. V S Naipaul,in his reflections on the tensions between these communities, calls India 'a million mutinies'.1 Even within a rural village setting a number of separate communities exist. These communities are called castes and structure Indian society according to the Hindu world view which is rigidly hierarchical and endogamous. This caste system often includes non-Hindu communities. Whether or not they consider themselves to be a part of the caste system, most Indians consent to the belief that those at the bottom of the caste system, the 'outcaste' communities are 'untouchable', or impure. In Hinduism, the soul is believed to be continually reborn into a social position according to the merit or Karma, of the previous life. An untouchable is therefore someone whose ungodly behaviour during previous lives has earned them demerits, or bad Karma.
The words 'outcaste' and 'untouchable' are both used as names for these communities. These terms are not synonymous, since the former refers to the communities in terms of the structure of society and the latter in terms of the social dynamics within that structure. However, they do both refer to the same communities hence, all outcastes are also untouchables and vice versa. These two terms are often interchangeable, but there are contexts in discussion when one is more appropriate than the other. A more generic term is that used by both Sathianathan Clarke 2 and Walter Fernandes, 3 'Subaltern'. Originally a military term, it was first used to refer to a level of social existence beneath all others, by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. 4 In the context of the caste strugggle the term 'subaltern' can be used as a term with a generic meaning that encompasses all outcaste/untouchable communities, including the communities who refer to themselves as Dalits. Geneally it is best to refer to untuchablility, subalterns, and outcaste communities.
Whatever the roots of caste oppression in India, the current means and justification of oppression are socio-religious in content. This oppression takes several forms. It stems from an inherited and prescribed caste status which is unavoidable for anyone born into Hindu society: it is consolidated through the widespread practice of untouchability, particularly in rural India; it is perpetuated thro
Scriptural justification for the caste system in India continues to be significant, in spite of the fact that most people in India, even most of those who worship and live as Hindus, are unfamiliar with the Hindu scriptures. 5 This ignorance is due in part to the high level of illiteracy, even among the Priestly (Brahmin) caste. Furthermore, few could be expected to follow the unfamiliar ancient Sanskrit language of the scriptures, any more than mediaeval lay Christians in Europe were able to read the Latin Vulgate. However, study of scripture is only one of many means of showing devotion in Hindu society. Others include religious or moral discipline, and meditation. Most religious information can be passed down through cultural mores, such as marital traditions, folk tales, and casteism, and through acts of devotion (Puja). Nonetheless, sincere Hindus, whose world-view incorporates caste and the practice of untouchability, maintain that casteism is orthodox and sanctioned by the scriptures and by religous authorities, namely the Priestly caste.
The Rig Veda, a collection of religious hymns written between 2000 and 1500 BCE, provides the most important source of religious justification of the caste system through its explanation of the origin of the four races (Varnas).
When they divided up the Purusha [Cosmic Man],The problem is that such an hierarchical order of society has been conceived as revealed and divinely instituted by God from the beginning of the world. The consciousness of the common people, more so of the privileged groups of the high castes, is almost saturated with the idea that the caste system is of divine origin. 7
This hierarchical ordering is even more of an immovable matter of faith than Manickam suggests since it is not, in fact, 'divinely ordained' but built into the creation of the world. It is as much a part of the created order as, for example, living and dying. THis system might easily be used to perpetuate inequality within society. since the Brahmins are of the substance of the mouth of the Absolute reality (Sukta Purusha), they are naturally ordained to dictate the religio-cultural norms of Hindu society. The 'lowly self' (Shudras) are created from the feet of the cosmic being, symbolic of their lowly nature. The untouchables are beneath even the Shudreas, they are outcaste.
The most telling written example of discrimination on the grounds of social hierarchy can be found in the Manusmrti, the ethical code, or dharma, of Hindu society. While much is made of the Manusmrti as a means of subjugating the subalterns, it is now an almost entirely dated codification of social life in rural India and some of its suggestions (such as pouring molten lead into the ears of an untouchable who hears scripture read) are illegal. However, the Manusmrti outlines a systematic and cogent description of the extent of outcaste suffering at what appears to have been the zenith of Brahminical abuse, and also remains a respected guide in terms of Hindu ethics. 8 While the Manusmrti is primarily concerned with prescribing a moral code for Hindu society, and was not written with oppressing the non-Brahmin castes as an objective, it fits its moral code into a strictly hierarchical socio-moral framework.
This means that though all members of the society are bound by some law there is hardly any law which binds all members of the varnasrama [caste-system?] in some way. 9
Manu, the pseudepigraphal author of the Manusmrti, is concerned with correct moral behaviour. However, he does not consider equality to be a sound basis for a moral framework, but actually stresses the importance of Brahmin rights above all others and, with it, the consequrent necessity of the exploitation of the lower castes and outcastes. The fact that social equality is not considered part of a moral social framework adds to the struggle of the outcastes against casteism. This means that there can be no moral argument for equality for the untouchables. They are divinely appointed to lead outcaste lives because of the isn of their previous incarnations. Highlighting the inequaltiy of casteism will not encourage a high caste elite to reform Hinduism until this prejudice is considered to be wrong.
The social system described by Manu, and found in the Sukta Purusha of the Rig Veda, is the Varna system on which the more complicated caste system is based. The Varna system and the cste system are not the same thing. The easiest way to explain the difference is to say that while the former is philosophical, the latter is practised. The Varnas are recorded in Hindu scripture and do not include outcastes or those outside Hinduism, whilst a caste is a specific and identifiable community in a disordered matrix of communities. According to Baghwan Das, there are currnetly between 3,000 and 5,000 sub-castes in India. 10 This complicated interweaving of communities and their relational positioning within society helps to explain how groups consent to being oppressed by a group or groups above them in the social order. These groups justify this oppression because they themselves oppress other groups. Even among the outcastes there are those who, when they find themselves socially mobile, oppress other outcastes. 11 V T Rajshaker, editor of Dalit Voice, suggests that outcastes only oppress other outcastes when they are deliberately corrupted by upper castes. 12 However, Rajshaker may be generously misrepresenting the moral character of the poor in India. It is not, after all, unrealistic to ecpect some of those who are considered untouchable and yet have found a degree of social mobility to attempt to make it secure, even at the expense of their own community.
Caste discrimination, experienced on a social and religious level, is also very much a part of the economic and political experience of India.
Almost all the major political parties have identified themselves with the rich, dominant classes and dominant castes. They are interested in maintaining the status quo and to keep the economically poor people always below. 13
If India is to be fully democratic, the opportunities for outcaste communities to be represented on a political level must be promoted. The issue of inequality must be firmly on the agenda of contemporary politics and lobby organisations, which must go further than legislating against untouchability but be active in removing the obstacles to social, political, and economic equality.
In 1927, The Simon Commission, appointed by the British government to assess the extent of discrimination, poverty, and oppression within Indian society, coined the term 'Depressed Class,' to describe the subalterns, within Hindu society, who were considered untouchable and consequently impure. In identifying the 'Depressed Class' the Simon Commission recognised the caste system as the root of poverty in India. Because the caste system is archaic (predating the arrival of Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Sikhism, and Buddhism in India), and because of the tendency among untouchables to convert from Hinduism to other religions, casteism is found to extend far beyond the bounds of religions confession. In India, caste is a social as well as a religions phenomenon. The stigma of caste belongs to wider Indian society, conformed to the Brahmin world-view. In other words, all society is defined according to concepts belonging to the Hindu majority even when not subscribing to the religion. Having been adopted into the social system, even those who do not profess to follow Hindu religon and beolong to other religions communities can find themselves victimised and oppressed by the caste system. Despite the extent of caste influence, the term 'Depressed Class' did not include marginalised Muslim, Christian and Anglo Indian (mixed race, mainly Christian) communities. Members of these communities were not Hindus, and therefore, though outside the caste system, techinically not outcaste. If a person is teither part of the caste, not an oucaste, then that person has nothing to do with the caste system and its theology. In other words, the cosmolgy of Hindu thought does not account for the ecperience of non-caste society. The legal term was changed from 'Depressed Class' to 'Scheduled Caste' under the Britains first Labour party prime minister Ramsay MacDonald. This new term classified Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs as Scheduled Caste but still failed to recohnise Chrsitans of outcaste origin as Scheduled Caste Christians. 14 Since outcaste communities which convert to Christianity are still oppressed by the same external forces, their social status is not altered by their new religious association. In India, Christians and outcaste are two separate minorities, therefore, when an outcaste becomes a Christian his minority status is doubled. However, becaste the British government did not want oucaste converts to Christianity to recieve the minority benefits on the grounds of membership of both minorities, MacDonald did not include them under the term Scheduled Caste.
Such attempts at identifying the legal status of the subaltern communities were genuinely aimed at improving their social standing. Their weakness arose from the way in which they were imposed by external forces attempting to forge some kind of tangible, unified group of subalterns in order to make legal improvements to their lot easier to achieve. However, the diversity within Indian society in general and with outcaste communiteis in particular would render impossible such an outcome. The movement towards tangible identity had to come from within the subaltern groups themselves. since the late-nineteenth century, many, though not all, subaltern communities have chosen to call themselves Dalits. The name gains its strength and appeal because it refers to those who consciously accept the name for themselves.
The lack of a strong, single, cultural identity of the people calling themselves Dalits, evident from the variety of languages spoken, traditional tasks fulfilled (such as municipal sweepers, tanners, night-soil carriers), and the stratification of religious duty, compounds the Dalit struggle. Such diversity confuses the issue of Dalit liberation because it makes it difficult to determine, in every instance, who are the Dalits.
The word Dalit has been deliberately chosen by many outcaste communities as a means of self-identification. It expresses, in emotive terms, the depth of poverty, pain and suffering which are the every-day experience of the Indian subalterns. It has been said to derive from the root dal which means to crack, open, split, etc. When used as a noun or adjective, it means burst, split, broken or torn asunder, downtrodden, scattered, crushed, destroyed, etc. 15 A comparable root verb dal is found in Biblical Hebrew and the similarity of the Hebrew and Sanskrit allows biblical exegesis to be used to relate the poor of the Bible to the poor of India. The root dal in Hebrew means to hang down, be languid, to be weakened, be low, be feeble. 16 The similarity in meaning may suggest that the two languages share a common etymological history or an ancient connection betwen the Indian sub-continent and Israel, where customs and symbols are exchanged quite naturally. For C U Wolf, the Hebrew adjective, usually translated 'poo', provides a comprehensive interpretation of the situation of poverty, and encompasses more than economic deprivation.
Those whose prosperity and social status have been reduced.[...] In physical strength, in psychological ability, they are also impaired and helpless. 17 The Hebrew word which is often translated as poor has far wider connotations than those carried by the English equivalent. In both the biblical and the vedantic (Hindu scriptural) sense, the poor are those who have been made entirely helpless.
In short, the basic meaning of the term Dalit [adj.] is not poor or outcast, it really denotes the state to which a certain section of the people have been reduced through systematic religious process and now they are forced to continue to live in that predicament. 18 K P Kuruvila is suggesting here that the oppression of the Dalits is an unnatural state actively brought about by others and then compounded by religious sanction. Religion in its Hindu form has removed the possibility of claiming the injustice of caste oppression because it is divinely conceived. Morality is therefore superseded by divine prescription.
Alongside this, Dalit identity is confused by the presence of some Dalits who have managed to benefit from education and have consequently altered their economic status. Ajay, a Dalit Christian from Hyderabad, genuinely would like to associate himself with the term Dalit, and was visibly moved in a discussion about the Dalit situation and the concept of Christ's suffering as a Dalit. 19 Yet as a graduate, accepted to study on a MSc programme in the United Kingdom, can he truly be said to be 'crushed'? Certainly he is not crushed to the same degree as one whose occupation is that of a cobbler, one of the most socially despised occupations in India. K R Narayanan, the President of India, is a Dalit, and a patron of the International Dalit Organisation, yet he is also the president of the worlds largest democracy. Whilst it is true that the majority of dalits are poor and lack education, and the majority of Brahmins are educated and have a degree of prosperity, there are Dalits who have been well educated and Brahmins who remain illiterate.
Alongside the social, religious, and etymological considerations, the extent of the Dalit Community may be further complicated by the existence of tribal animists, categorised by the Indian constitution as Scheduled Tribes. These are communities that live in isolation in the vast forested areas of India. These tribes are recognised as a separate minority by the constitution, on a par with 'Scheduled Caste' minorities. They have not referred to themselves as tribal communities simply because isolated communities, by virtue of their isolation, have no reason to distinguish themselves from other communities. Furthermore, they have not been labelled as outcaste and untouchable. Nonetheless, like the Scheduled Caste communities, these Scheduled Tribe communities are outside the caste system. Hinduism is a mission-oriented faith and, as Christian and Hindu missinoaries alike rush to 'convert' the animist communities, so consiousness of identity and caste oppression become Tribal issues, since conversion to Hinduism means in practice, becoming an outcaste. A Roman Catholic priest in Tamil Nadu, who led a retereat for a group of dalit and Tribal Chriatians, laid out a series of paintings, depicting biblical scenes, and asked the participants to decide which picture spoke most cleartly to him of his own situation. It transpired that the Tribals nearly all chose a particular painting of David Slaying Goliath, while the Dalits each chose a painting which depicted Job in his suffering. 20 In both texts the suffering character is vindicated by God. However, the Dalits identified with the passive character in his suffering, while the Tribals were drawn to the active agent of God's libertion, David, at the point of victory. While both oucastes and tribals are, generally, economically poor and socially ostracised and oppressed by Hindu society, it would be difficult to unite the two in one 'dalit' identity, because they have a different self-understanding and respond differently to their oppression and poverty.
In what follows, I will first outline various attempts to resolve the problem of caste discrimination and untouchability, before coming to Dalit identity itself. In so doing, I will suggest the former to be deficient for the cause while the latter has much to commend itself in the task of liberation.