When India’s Lie Ends: A review of Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva by Anand Teltumbde

For those used to appreciating India as the largest democracy in the world, Anand Teltumbde’s recent work, Republic of Caste:Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva, will come as a rude shock. Teltumbde, a management professional, civil rights activist, and political analyst, articulates timely arguments that put paid to the decades-long publicity exercise that the Indian Republic has benefitted from. The book demonstrates how caste, and the violent exclusions it effects, is not only an on-going practice in the Republic, but is in fact hardwired into its operation.  While some scholars have more recently suggested that the observance of caste, especially in urban India, is declining, Teltumbde clarifies that while the ritualist aspects of casteist exclusion are indeed waning, this does not mean that caste is a spent force in India. On the contrary, as the book elaborates, caste has taken on new and terrifying aspects in contemporary India, finding new force and allies in the time of neo-liberalism.

If neo-liberalism rests, as Teltumbde demonstrates in the evocatively-titled chapter ‘The Education Mantra and the Exclusion Sutra’, on the privatisation of public goods, then the caste system, which rests on the appropriation of surplus of those at the bottom of the system is primordially suited to neo-liberalism. However, what the context of neo-liberalism– i.e. the corporate requirement of the Indian market and cheap labour, etc. – ensures is that now there is no criticism of the horrific culture of savarnas, nor any State attempt to reform it. This is what fuels the rise of Hindutva, which is gung-ho casteism of the Indian middle-classes, overwhelming constituted by dominant castes, rather than earlier apologetic casteism of the Congress.

But the renewed operation of caste in the functioning of the Indian Republic cannot be put down merely to the effects of this neoliberal time. Rather, ‘Reservations: A Spark and the Blaze’, the first chapter in book, demonstrates how, through the provision for caste-based reservations, the space for the legal operation of caste was written into the Constitution itself. Teltumbde affirms the need for a constitutional scheme of positive affirmation but suggests that the strategy adopted in the Constitution, which extended reservations to Tribes and Backward Classes, the latter being defined along caste lines has effectively reinforced caste identities. This, Teltumbde argues, is due, in large part, to the fact that the formulating of the Constitution and the schedules that identified groups able to claim reservation was merely an exercise that “served the Congress by exhibiting its commitment to social justice” (p. 51). As such, reservation now works “simply [as] a mechanism to ensure dalit participation [in the Republic], not a measure of justice” (p.59).

Refreshingly, Teltumbde does not hesitate questioning the major symbols that have taken on added significance in these troubled times. While there is no doubt that Teltumbde is committed to what the Indian Supreme Court would call constitutional values, he points to the largely undemocractic nature of the Constituent Assembly whose “members were indirectly elected via a system of proportional representation from the Congress-dominated provincial assemblies, which in turn had been elected in March 1946 on a restricted franchise consisting of about 20 to 24 per cent of the adult population” (p. 125); and the fact that the Constitution was “very largely a rehash of the India Act 1935” (p. 126). This is a bold argument at a time when many opponents and critics of the BJP government, including Dalit activists, base their opposition on a fierce defence of the Constitution.

There is a method to Teltumbde’s madness however, for he indicates that if we peel away the rhetoric and look critically at the Constitution, we would realise that:

Instead of being an instrument of change, it has, in operative terms, fortified the rule of the entrenched classes. The first-past-the-post election system, adopted as a method to effectuate democracy, is the primary mechanism that guarantees the perpetuation of the status quo. The structural absence of the feature of checks and balances between the three wings of the government – the legislature, executive and judiciary – considered most vital for any constitutional democracy, also furthers the same object. In India, the first two, i.e., the legislature and executive, collapse into a single oppressive apparatus that manifests in the nexus of police, bureaucracy and politicians at ground level, playing a maleficent role in every atrocity case. The only hope for ordinary people has been the judiciary, which for all its infirmities, has evinced a certain independence of mind from time to time. However, if one takes a view from the perspective of the exploited and the oppressed, its record is also pathetic. Barring some honourable exceptions, the courts have always been biased against the poor, tribals, dalits, and Muslims (p. 173).

Addressing those who uphold the Constitution as the result of Dr. Ambedkar’s efforts, Teltumbde points out that Ambedkar himself had disowned the Constitution soon after its adoption.  Discussing Ambedkar’s politics, Teltumbde stresses Ambedkar’s pragmatism, changing “opinions, decisions and actions” (p.27) to grapple with evolving situations and whose theory emerged not from a desire to craft theory, but was “the by-product of practical struggles that he waged…” (pp. 140-1). This appreciation of Ambedkar, which suggests taking his concerns as a starting point for our politics, offers a route away from contemporary attempt to deify Ambedkar which Teltumbde argues only aids Hindu nationalist attempts at controlling the “terms on which people engage with him, replacing the uncompromising thinker with a deified object of rituals, a saffron Ambedkar, a handy Trojan horse for gharwapsi” (p. 268).

As one would expect from someone who engages with the work of Ambedkar, Teltumbde is critical of Gandhi. But this critique could be sharper. Right in the first chapter, Teltumbde has the opportunity to point out that it was Gandhi’s stubborn refusal to allow for a separate electorate for the depressed classes, and his desire to constitute a Hindu majority that caste is at the beating heart of the Indian Republic. It is only in the twelfth chapter that he comes close to pointing this out, that thanks to the Poona Pact “The entire scheme of political empowerment of dalits conceived by Ambedkar was thus reversed to become its opposite, political enslavement” (p. 373), and this too is not satisfactorily articulated.

While a critical contribution to the appreciation of Indian politics, one cannot help feeling that the book lacks a coherent and systematic development of an argument. For example, the term Ambedkarite consciousness in used in the fifth chapter, even though criticised in an earlier chapter.  In an early part of the book he argues that the Green Revolution resulted in the “the erosion of an ethos of economic interdependence in the countryside” (p. 157), postulating later that “Economic interdependence is an aspect of liberty and its absence, as a corollary, spells slavery” (p. 211), dangerously suggesting the autonomous village as an arcadian paradise. These, inconsistencies probably result from the fact that the book is a collection of essays previously published in the author’s monthly column in the Economic and Political Weekly. A little more attention to the text would have gone a long way in making a more forceful argument.

The book is also marked, at times, by a bitterness, which is unsurprising given that Teltumbde admits to being misunderstood by many. The misunderstanding arises from Teltumbde’s challenging the prevailing understanding of both the Dalit and the left movements, when he sees caste and class as intertwined. There will be no resolution, he argues, to the pervasiveness of caste in the operation of the Indian republic until Indian citizens are able to follow Ambedkar’s lead in recognising the violence of caste but challenging it through harnessing of the language of class. Teltumbde’s argument for creating a class identity among castes comes out clearly when he analyzes the reasons for the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) limited success. Harshly critical of the forging of caste identities by groups such as the BSP, Teltumbde warns that “Castes are inherently divisive, they can never integrate. Nor can they be equalized” (p.366) and that the BSP’s formula of “caste-based coalition ends up deepening casteism – in ways antithetical to any social revolution” (p.364). He argues that the BSP’s formula could only be short-lived and tied to the context of Uttar Pradesh. Further, as the history of the BSP evidences, in the absence of a class agenda, the manipulative tactics would work against social revolution to privilege an elite within the party.

While critical of the functioning of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati of the BSP, Teltumbde also points out that their pragmatic politics are products of the Indian electoral democracy, where there is a grotesque and cynical use of the system to further feudal power. Their crudeness only highlights the rot of the system, for “when corruption is traced to a dalit, it gets amplified; when non-dalits engage in it, corruption appears muted or is simply dismissed as being of little consequence”(p.251).

The Republic of Caste makes for depressing and disturbing reading. The varied examples of castiesm that Teltumbde assembles fall like one bludgeon after another, revealing the quotidian violence that is the foundation of the Indian state. Is there a route out of this rot? Perhaps; Teltumbde suggests the rejection of mobilization along caste-based identities, the embrace of ethical politics, and above all revolution. At the close of the fifth chapter, he rightly observes that “Middle class attempts at tweaking the system appear trivial and ill-judged” (p. 201) an analysis that continues in his very perceptive analysis of the Aam Aadmi Party in the final chapter, and that it is only the Maoists who with their agenda of revolution “appear to have comprehended the dimension of the problem”. But the revolution he proposes is not necessarily the violent overthrow of the state. Rather, it revolves around the revolutionary – or dramatic – change in economic relations. In chapter six, where he lauds the movement in Una, Gujarat, he is clear that changing patterns of land ownership, where Dalits gain access to productive land, instead of the usual waste land, is at the heart of the revolutionary change he proposes.

Placed at the current moment, where the possibility of ethical politics in the face of contemporary Indian politics is remote, if not a joke, it appears that there is no hope in electoral politics and the only possible road to revolution would be to return to the moment before Gandhi wrecked the possibility of double electorates, i.e. to rework the Indian electoral system.

Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva

By Anand Teltumbde

Navayana, 2018, New Delhi, 432 pp., Rs 600 (HB)

ISBN 978-81-89059-84-2 

(A version of this text was first published in Biblio: A Review of Books Jan -Mar 2019)

Exploring the Iconography of "Retelling"

The works that one encounters in Retelling, the exhibition of the recent productions of Karishma D’Souza, should be seen as more than works of art. They are in fact icons from a contemporary mystic, and could be put to good use not only by other mystics but by a wider population. Contrary to popular understanding, icons are more than objects of ritual adoration and worship. They are in fact bridges that span the gap between a textual tradition and practice. One can look at Christian practice, for example. The image of a saint is linked not only to the hagiography of the saint but to the Biblical narrative. The use of iconography encodes a complex story into a single image for the viewer. Subsequent to contemplation of the image, the viewer can hope to imitate the life of the saint, who attempted to imitate the life of Christ. The iconographer is often familiar with this wider textual tradition, and through the use of charged symbols, communicates meaning to a practicant of a tradition. They offer crunched lessons for contemplation with the idea that these will then be put into practice.

In many ways, Karishma D’Souza is an iconographer for our times. Unlike conventional iconographers, however, Karishma does not stick within a single tradition. She is rather like the mystic, who is never conventional but always transcends boundaries to plumb unexpected depths and return with powerful insights for contemplation. Thus, Karishma draws inspiration from the mystical poems of such figures as Sant Kabirdas, and the Kashmiri poet Lal Dedh. Her references range from the Jataka tales and the lives of the Bodhisatvas and the Buddha, the brahmanical Puranas, to more contemporary issues of violence of the Indian state against the populations of Kashmir, Dalits and tribals.

Karishma also works in the tradition of the iconographers through the symbolic charge that she presses onto the colours on the canvas. Take, for example, the use of gold for the ears of the sleeping Buddha in the work titled “Burma Buddha”. Karishma would have the golden ears bear three meanings. The first refers to the most common understanding of gold, as precious; thus, the gold ears designate that to hear or listen is what is most important. The second offers a more anti-materialist, and perhaps iconoclastic, suggestion, that gold is an inert metal, and the golden ears are dead objects incapable of hearing the pleas and prayers of supplicants. The third reading that she offers is where the similarity of gold with yellow is played on to suggest that the city in the background painted in yellow appears golden only in the distance; closer inspection reveals that the yellow emerges from sand, not gold, and hence is liable to disintegrate at any moment.

Blue is another colour that runs through the works in Retelling. Once again, we could commence with the signification of blue through reference to its location in “Burma Buddha”. Blue is used in this canvas to represent what the artist calls “peaceful, expanding space”. Karishma is also aware, however, that blue is the colour associated with the Ambedkarite movement and hence with Dalit pride. Given the manner in which the caste-critical poet Kabir is taken up by some Ambedkarite groups, it is no wonder that “Sand Castles” is marked by a plethora of blue circles. Each of these circles is a reference to a couplet of Kabir

from the Bijak of Kabir (compiled and translated by Linda Hess and Sukhdev Singh).

Take, for instance, the circle on the top left of the canvas that refers to the following:

A raft of tied together snakes

In the world-ocean.

Let go, and you’ll drown.

Grasp, and they’ll bite your arm.

Or the second circle in the bottom row that features a tear within a millstone that illustrates the following:

seeing the mill turn

brings tears to the eyes.

No one who falls between the stones

Comes out unbroken.

If blue is symbolically charged in Karishma’s works, then so is water, once again signified, as is common, by blue. Water bodies, and especially rivers, are present in almost every image on display. Unsurprisingly inspired by the verses of Kabir, who seems to be critical in this phase of her work, the river is linked with the idea of overcoming:

Use the strength of your own arm,

Stop putting hope in others.

When the river flows through your own yard,

How can you die of thirst?

The river is present not only in “Wastelands: dead pasts”, but also in “Chembur”. The foreground of “Chembur”, alive with indoor plants, references the home of her grandparents in the suburb of Bombay that Karishma remembers as one of the first “very nurturing” spaces she encountered. Outside the home lies an empty and terrifying landscape snaked through by a river that represents the limits that must be overcome on the journey towards adulthood. Given the title of this canvas one can’t help but imagine that despite the emptiness the view outside her grandparent’s house is actually suggestive of an urban landscape. Urban landscapes in Karishma’s earlier works are often either empty of people suggesting the anomie and isolation that marks contemporary cities.

The water bodies in “Guarded city: unseeing” reference a poem from the Kashmiri poet Lal Ded, from the compilations in the book I Lalla (selected and translated by Ranjit Hoskote):

Three times I saw a lake overflowing a lake.

Once I saw a lake mirrored in the sky.

Once I saw a lake that bridged

north and south. Mount Haramukh and Lake Kausar.

Seven times I saw a lake shaping itself into emptiness.

Emptiness is also the theme of “Guarded city: unseeing”. While gated communities represent security from the population outside the grounds of expensive residential colonies, Karishma inquires whether this shutting off does not create an anomic sense of isolation. With curtains drawn over windows, represented here by the thick black lines in the centre of the canvas, no one looks in, and no one looks out either. The choice of exclusive surroundings ensures that the very environs become frightening. This image also makes reference to the political situation in Kashmir with the island in the top background represented by an island with chinar. Reading deeper into the canvas, the gated community could also refer to the Kashmiri people forced into house arrest. The chinar of Kashmir stand mute in testimony to the violence forced on these people, who are encircled by orange red-hued hills on all sides.

Similar hues are also present in “Himalayan landscape: unseeing”, where the orange tents represent Hindutva and the red on the horizon, blood. 

As if in response to the violence represented by walls is the image “Lal Ded”. In this case, the wall, a symbol of violence, is also marked by the hues of orange and red, but it is split apart by the ever present river and calls to mind the verses from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Perhaps this splitting of the metaphoric wall through persistence, in this case of aquatic force, is the resilience that is referred to in the poem from Lal Ded that has influenced many of the works in this collection:

 

Resilience: to stand in the path of lightening.

Resilience: to walk when darkness falls at noon.

Resilience: to grind yourself fine in the turning mill.

Resilience will come to you.

While many of these canvases make visible reference to places that Karishma has visited, the image that relates most to the Goan context is “Wastelands: dead pasts”. In this image, the blue neck of the figure emerging from the water is a reference to the Puranic myth of Shiva Neelakanta. In this myth, Shiva’s neck turned blue when he consumed the poison that emerged from the fabled churning of the ocean of milk. In this image, the neck is part of a larger feminine figure that could be construed as a reference to the idol of Gauri, worshipped in some traditions a day before her son Ganesh. The present day Gauri is, of course, the brahmanical usurpation of the vernacular mother goddess Santeri, who is worshipped by the marginalized communities of Goa in her self-embodied form of the anthill. In this case, Santeri emerges from a wasteland that has been created thanks to the effects of the mining industry.

The state of affairs that Karishma depicts in this canvas need not necessarily be read as an impotent lament for our future. Rather, there is a peculiar Christian imagery that can also be read into this image through a reference to the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel. The Old Testament records the Prophet Ezekiel as having a vision of a valley filled with very dry bones. In this vision, Ezekiel is commanded by God to prophesy and put flesh on the bones and subsequently restore the bones to life. The vision, therefore, is one that promises hope – that even in the darkest of hours, a return to values can in fact bring redemption. This, I believe, is one of the messages that one can take away from this icon. 

In The Death of the Author (1967), French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes argued against the need to incorporate the biographical context of the author or the meanings intended into the reading of the text. Instead, he argued in favour of the independence of the artistic production of the author. The moment the work was produced and subject to the gaze of the audience, the author was dead, and the work had a life of its own, gaining multiple readings based on the gazes of infinite numbers of individual readers. A great liberation is made possible through such a position, allowing for the proverbial thousand flowers to bloom. Given that each person is now enabled to bring their own experiences to the reading of the text or image, this diversity allows for an expansion of formal political democracy into the realm of the social. 

To adopt Barthes’ method while viewing the works of Karishma D’Souza, however, would leave us that much poorer. For Karishma’s works have the potential to be more than just objects of art. Even though many of Karishma’s offerings in this exhibition focus on what could be seen as hopeless situations, I believe that these icons are in fact tools through which we can refocus our attention on issues of concern, issues that scream out for justice to be done, and work towards resolving them. They have the potential to shake off the illusion that we are captive and focus on what really matters.

To understand these icons, though, requires that we enter into the textual world that Karishma has created. The possible problem that we encounter, however, is that this textual world is rather dense, given that each canvas is often inspired by more than one text. While this makes for a particularly rich canvas, it also points to the flip side – to the liberation that Barthes inaugurated. That is, with the absolute liberty to bring one’s own reading to a text, there is often a cacophony of voices and little space for understanding. If everyone’s personal reading is valid, and there is no fundamental base, how does one make conversation and move forward towards building a space of consensus? Perhaps the answer lies in the manner in which we twine engagement with the images and the producer of the images. It is towards this end that I urge that the works be seen as icons to be appreciated alongside the many texts that inspired them.

(Essay for the exhibition of Karishma D'Souza's works in Retelling,  hosted by the Fundação Oriente, Goa from 13 Oct -9 Nov 2016)