Rajdeep Sardesai, Caste and Secularism

Rather than presenting the news, Rajdeep Sardesai has very recently actually been in the news on two rather different occasions. The first occasion was when Sardesai got into a scuffle with some of Modi’s supporters when the Prime Minister was in New York. In the video war that followed, Sardesai was first seen as being beaten by the Hindu nationalist, then as having started the scuffle, and finally as having been forced to respond violently to the nationalist’s heckling. Regardless of the reasons for the scuffle, or its context, however, Sardesai almost instantly became the poster boy for Indian secular liberals across the world. Vociferous opponents of the BJP, Hindu nationalism and Modi, they cheered Sardesai and used the episode to reflect on the rowdy ways of Hindu nationalists.

The second occasion, however, saw the same Rajdeep Sardesai being booed for being casteist. His sin this time round was a tweet where he confessed to “Saraswat pride” at seeing two members of his Saraswat caste being included in the prime minister’s cabinet. In response to the outrage that rained on him, Sardesai sought to explain himself in an oped in the Hindustan Times, and subsequently in the Navhind Times. This only complicated matters further, since what could have been excused as a momentary lapse was now justified rather elaborately.

How does one explain this swing from being the archetypical secular liberal to unrepentant casteist in the space of a few months? The sad truth is that all too often what Sardesai demonstrated more recently is not an uncommon feature of the Indian secular liberal. 

Indian secular liberalism is based on caste and largely the ideological position of anglicised upper caste Indians. One need go no further to unearth this relationship between caste and secularism than to look at Nehru, the revered figure of Indian secularism. Often referred to as Pandit Nehru, where did this title of Pandit come from? Nehru was a graduate, but the title of Pandit came not from his graduation in Western education, nor from any knowledge of the Sanskrit texts. The title is one inherited from his caste location as a Kashmiri Pandit. Nehru may have been an unrepentant dismisser of Hindu religiosity, but that did not stop him from claiming his brahmin privilege and assume a right to leadership that supposedly came with his heritage.

Nehruvian secularism was the product not merely of one man, but a social milieu that gathered around Nehru and formed the core of the anti-imperial nationalist struggle. Referred to as the ‘nationalist class’ by Partha Chatterjee, this was a group that in some ways was secular. They were secular in the sense that they did not necessarily find their spouses within their natal caste groups, nor did they follow other traditional caste rules. They did not do so, largely because they did not have to. Theirs was an anglicised milieu and they had in fact formed a sub-caste, or jati, of their own. This was the group that controlled power in the Centre through the initial decades of Indian independence.

The fact of the matter is that group was composed of people like Pandit Nehru, anglicised segments of already dominant caste groups. The nationalist class was not averse to recruiting people and accommodating them in various governmental institutions. However, the route to this recruitment depended critically on the privileges available to dominant groups in India. This meant the ability to be educated in one of the “good” schools in India, gain a degree in Oxford, Cambridge, where one gained access to scions of these families. These options are technically open to all, and yet as is the reality of this country, were, and are available largely to privileged segments of dominant caste groups. Rajdeep Sardesai, with his dominant caste background, and his privileged education is a natural member of the nationalist class jati.

One would not appreciate how this nationalist class can be seen as a jati if one has the standard static notion of India and its culture. One has to recognise that like culture, caste is not static, but dynamic and constantly changing. Take, for example, the fact that the Gaud Saraswat caste that we today assume to be an ancient caste was in fact produced through a caste unity movement that commenced in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This caste movement gathered together various jati like Bardezkars, Bhanavlikars, Pednekars, Kudaldeshkars and Sasthikars on the one hand, and Smartha and Vaishnava sampraday on the other, to form one Gaud Saraswat caste. This movement took a good amount of effort and often ran counter to the wishes of the Swamis of the various sampraday, as well as orthodox elements within these jati. 
 
When upper castes like Sardesai refer to themselves as progressive, they are not necessarily referring to a tradition of egalitarianism, but rather to their caste histories where some radicals reading the need of the times stop following caste laws and began to westernise themselves. As Sardesai’s tweet and subsequent article demonstrate, none of this meant that they gave up caste. What happened was that caste was now masked under a superficial veneer of westernised behaviour, like eating meat, not fulfilling brahmanical Hindu religious rituals, crossing the waters. In other words, they merely produced new rules for their caste groups.

New jati, therefore, are constantly being born, and if the Gaud Saraswat caste was born in the context of creating opportunities in colonial Bombay, the nationalist class is a jati that was formed through the process of fighting off the British. The idea of a single nation was the idea of this jati and they had to fight off rival claims from the princes and other caste groups. These latter groups were more interested in maintaining spheres of influence. While the princes were dismissed through democratic rhetoric, the dominant castes from various regions were accommodated through the process of the linguistic reorganisation of States. This process allowed for the regional hegemony of these caste groups by recognising their dialects as the official languages of the states where they dominated, while the Nehruvian elite dominated the centre with their secular talk of “unity in diversity”.

Unity in Diversity, with Hinduism on top

The Indian nation is not an ancient primordial entity. It is a production of the Indian nationalists held together by the force of the post-colonial state of India and the logic of Hindutva. Given that the maintenance of the Indian nation was always under threat from the dominant castes of various regions, the nationalist class always existed in some tension with the regional dominant castes. As yet unfamiliar with the options that anglicisization could bring, these regional castes stuck to the regional identities that brought them power. If they cooperated together, it was because they recognised that Hindutva is what allows for dominant brahmanised castes to assert their dominance in the various Indian states. As such, as long as their assertions of caste, regional and religious identity did not challenge the integrity of the Indian state, these were always treated with some amount of condescension by the nationalist class. It was only if these regional groups got too strident in their assertions that the Indian state got nasty.

If one looks at the longer videos of Sardesai interviewing those who had come to support Modi in New York, one will recognise instantly the condescending manner in which Sardesai did not so much talk to these supporters, as much as he talked down to them. This is the condescension that the members of the nationalist class reserve for those that do not buy their version of secularism. Rather than see the assertions of caste, and religion as a way in which segments of the Indian population are trying to assert power, the secular liberal sees this as the product of dull minds who are unable to grasp the sublime truths and value of secularism. Indeed, Hindutva in its current form is  the political response of the non-anglicised regional dominant castes to the secularism of the largely Hindu Nehruvian elite. Had the Nehruvian secularists been honest about the fact that their version of secularism was itself limited by their social location, that it was also a casteist project, then perhaps the project of Indian secularism would have met with greater success.

The two episodes that got Rajdeep Sardesai in the news are not antithetical to each other. In fact, they are but two sides of the same coin.

(A Version of this post was first published in the O Herald on 2 Dec 2014)

Pointing a finger at secularists: A response to Teotonio de Souza

It is always a tragedy when an argument is misunderstood. Something of the sort seems to have happened when Teotonio de Souza, in his op-ed column in this paper (2September, 2014), mounted a critique of my denunciation of the Goa Government’s Sant Sohirobanath project.  The immediate concern was the government’s decision to rename the Government College of Pernem after the Sant. 

According to de Souza, I drew up a comparison between Sant Sohirobanath and St Francis Xavier to argue that Sant Sohirobanath served the saffronisation of Goan culture by the State in violation of constitutionally guaranteed secularism, while suggesting that the state’s administrative assistance in the exposition of the relics of St. Francis Xavier was, “well within the bounds of secular ethics.” In reality, I said no such thing.

My effort was to distinguish between the manner the state has unilaterally taken it on itself to pluck the Sant out of relative obscurity, while in the case of the Exposition, there is a non-statal body that actively organises the event and receives the state’s support in organising it, post factum. As a student of the manner in which states across the world deal with the challenge of secularism, I am well aware of the delicate balance that is involved every time the state steps in to intervene in religious affairs. As such, my argument was much more cautious than de Souza makes it out to be.

de Souza suggests among other things that I was “misusing” the figure of St. Francis Xavier and crafting an imaginary scenario possibly with the intention of stoking communal tensions. The truth, however, is that I did not produce the comparison with St. Xavier out of thin air, but within the very real context of the position of secularism in India and Goa. Hindu nationalists have systematically raised the cry of “minority appeasement” in the context of state support of non-Hindu institutions or events. Their loud clamouring against this support is then used to justify further patronage to Hindu institutions and events. Perhaps de Souza would have preferred had I pointed out that the services that the state of Goa offers to the Exposition is similar to the kind of service that it offers to the zatras, especially the more important ones, across the state. Indeed, in retrospect, I realise that I ought to have included these examples as well.

Nevertheless, the very fact, that I may have needed to also talk about Hindu feasts to justify my argument and thus make it sound secular, is illustrative of the burden under which non-Hindu and non-upper castes persons in this country labour when trying to secure space in the public sphere. Indeed, whenever minoritised groups raise arguments critical to establishing an egalitarian system, they are accused of engaging in identitarian politics, or, as de Souza phrases it, “not more than politics of culture”. It needs to be pointed out that the so-called identity politics is not merely about identities alone but in fact fundamentally about distributive justice.

Even though de Souza would have readers believe that I think the state’s association with the Exposition is “well within the bounds of secular ethics” -- I am not entirely sure that it is. It was because of my doubts about the nature of this association that I was so restrained in presenting the Exposition as an example. In very many ways, the State not only offers assistance to the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy in the organisation of the event, but also uses the event in many ways. In addition to the symbology of being one of the more significant patrons, the state government also exploits the Exposition for its value to the tourist industry, just as it has now begun to milk the bigger Goan temples for their interest to tourists. To make this argument is not to necessarily or unilaterally condemn the practice, but to highlight something uncomfortable in this arrangement. As the work of scholars such as Talal Asad demonstrates, such discomfort is an integral part of the problem of secularism. Our job is to see how we can enable the possible resolutions of the dilemmas that inevitably present themselves in the operation of this imperfect system.

In addition to accusing me of attempting “to put a wedge that could promote conflict between the Hindu and the Catholic communities” de Souza also claims that I am trying to “divide the Hindu community by presenting Sant Sohirobanath as a symbol of high Marathi culture, and not representative of the Bahujan Samaj.” Once again, he misunderstands and misrepresents my argument. There are already historical and contemporary divisions among those who call themselves Hindu. Postcolonial Goan history is the history of the assertion of the Bahujan samaj in Goa against the dominance of the Saraswat Brahmins. Further, I was not presenting the Sant as a symbol of high Marathi culture, but rather pointing to the manner in which the Sant is being co-opted to aid Saraswat, and brahmanical, hegemony in Goa. I was trying to draw attention to the point that there is no single strand of Marathi culture in Goa, but multiple strands. To this extent my aim is to make explore the varied dimensions of Marathi culture in Goa. Too often this culture is presented as a monolithic monster that Goans, and especially Catholics in Goa, should be afraid of. To be sure, crafting monolithic identities of Catholic and Hindu (as he does) does more to fuel communal tensions. These monolithic identities occlude the similar interests that bahujan of both faith traditions and impoverish political imagination.

Having addressed most of de Souza’s specific comments, it is now time to reflect on the overall thrust of his article. It is significant that de Souza did not take any position vis-à-vis the project at the heart of my discussion, viz. the renaming of the college after Sant Sohirobanath. His silence seems to imply approval of the project. This position would not be surprising given that de Souza generally speaks in the voice of the upper-caste secular nationalist. This is a voice that would prefer that discussions of caste-based oppression not be spoken about, prefers identities to be national and sees the nation as composed of monolithic religious groups who are ideally represented by upper-caste members of that faith tradition. When voices do speak up against the upper-caste Hindu biases of state governance, Indian secular nationalism dismisses it as identity politics, just as de Souza does my arguments. This dismissal is effected not only by Hindu nationalists, but also the dominant elites within these minoritised groups; the latter fearful that their privileges as representatives of the faith tradition will be challenged.

With this understanding of the operation of Indian secularism, de Souza’s position is not surprising. Learning from the recent past indicates that contemporary Goa needs to negotiate different ways to secure a secular environment, one that is honest about the fractures and systemic injustices in our society. Simply sweeping them under the carpet and celebrating the largely upper-caste bonhomie across religions alone is not going to work.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated 19 Sept 2014

I would like to acknowledge the useful comments of my colleagues in the Al Zulaij Collective. )

Sant Sohirobanath and secular death

I read with some concern the news that the Government of Goa is officially celebrating the tercentenary of the birth of Sant Sohirobanath Ambiye. Towards this end, the government has chosen to rename the Government College in Pernem Sant Sohirobanath Ambiye College of Art and Commerce, publish a compilation of his works, as well as establish a chair in his name at Goa University for research in Marathi language and Goan Marathi literature.

All of these actions are a matter of grave concern not only because they violate the constitutionally guaranteed secular character of the Indian state, but because it also represents the creeping manner in which recent times have seen a systematic saffronisation of cultural space within Goa.

While there are many understandings of what secularism constitutes, the common sense understanding within India is that the State will desist from promoting one religious tradition over others. In the case of renaming the college of Pernem, this understanding of secularism is exactly what the government of Goa has violated. This act of the state government has privileged a Hindu faith tradition over all other traditions within the State (and the country). It would be unthinkable that a Muslim or Christian saint would be honoured by the Indian or Goan state in this manner. To do so would raise cries of “pandering to minorities” and “pseudo-secularism”.  Given that similarity of treatment is fundamental to the practice of secularism, it seems that state government must necessarily change its decision regarding the renaming of the Government College in Pernem.

But this is not the first time that the state government has demonstrated its bias in promoting a particular brand of Hindu faith traditions. The choice of Sant Sohirobanath does not seem to be innocent, but part of a larger trend where members of the Saraswat caste have been held up as embodiments of Hindu culture, which is then passed off as Goan culture. Take, for example, the manner in which under the earlier tenure of Chief Minister Parrikar, in 2002, his government sought to commemorate the 125 birth centenary of Varde Valaukikar, also known as Shenoi Goembab, as Konkani Asmitai year. While Valaulikar has garnered some fame as a proponent of the Konkani language in the Nagri script, what has largely been suppressed is the fact that he was an activist for the Saraswat caste who sought to create a space for this caste group in the city of Bombay. This action was part of a larger movement that sought the creation of a homeland for the Saraswats in Goa, with the specific intent of allowing them to dominate it as their fiefdom.

There is also the choice of D.D. Kossambi whose name has been employed to distinguish the ‘Festival of Ideas’ that the state government has organised in Goa since 2008. In itself this particular action is innocuous, and yet when viewed with the other choices of the state government one begins to see a larger pattern through which Saraswat  patriarchal figures alone are identified as worthy of honour. There have been other men who have been honoured, but as in the case of the naming of the auditorium of the Ravindra Bhavan in Margão, this has often been after a bitter struggle for such recognition by bahujan groups.

More disturbing is the choice of the relatively unknown figure of Krishnadas Shama to identify Goa’s premier intellectual centre, the Central Library. Set up under the Portuguese rule, this institution benefitted tremendously from the efforts of a number of native sons, not least of whom was Ismael Gracias, a significant curator of this public institution. Given that secularism has often accompanied a republican culture that privileges persons who distinguish themselves in the realm of public service, it is a shame that individuals like Gracias were passed over in favour of Shama. In fact, not much is known about Shama except that he is the possible author of brahmanical texts, like the Mahabharata, in proto-Konkani. While Konkani nationalists have chosen to promote Shama as the father of the Konkani language, this is merely a dubious assertion given that Shama could have been associated with propagating brahamanical myths among a local population that was profoundly influenced by Jainism, Buddhism and Islam. To this extent, Shama too emerges not as a secular figure, but one aligned with promoting brahmanical hegemony. With this history in mind, it appears that this choice of Shama is in keeping with the Sangh Parivar’s attempts to brahmanise Hinduism, destroying all other forms of non-brahmanical Hinduism, and leaving brahmanical groups in complete control of this complex faith tradition.

Add to this the choice of the state government to name one of the stadia set up for the Lusophone games after Syama Prasad Mookherji, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and an associate of the RSS. 

The choice to name the college after this brahmin saint should also be seen in the manner in which the Parrikar-led government sought to hand over government schools to RSS-backed ‘educational’ institutions. Clearly, through these various choices in naming public institutions, the Parrikar-led BJP government is seeking to create a legitimacy for the RSS and its program of Hindutva.

Seen in light of these various facts, it becomes obvious that the celebration of the centenary of this largely 

anonymous Sant Sohirobanath, is a part of a larger programme to saffronise the Goan public sphere. In his defence of the state government’s decision to officially celebrate the centenary of this saint, Nandkumar Kamat has suggested that “Saints of all religions belong to the whole mankind [sic because their sainthood helps us all to be good human beings.” While this may be true in principle, under a secular regime the choice of integrating them into daily life is an option of individuals, not an obligation of the state. The government in this case is integrating this saint into the official culture of the territory.

Persons who would object to the protest we mount in this letter would no doubt point to continued state support for the exposition of the relics of St. Francis Xavier every decade. There is a difference, however, in that as far as my understanding goes, the exposition of Saint Xavier is organised by the church, and the state steps in largely to coordinate public order. The initiative rests largely with the Catholic Church which is the primary celebrant. In the case of Sant Sohirobanath on the other hand, it appears that it is not a civil society organisation that is seeking the support of the state, but the state that has taken it upon itself to celebrate the event officially. This is a crucial distinction and must be underscored.

The action of the state government is not merely a violation of the secular nature of the state, but tantamount to laying the grounds for communal conflict in Goa. With its choice of setting up a chair in the Goa University under the name of this saint for the study of Marathi literature in Goa, the state government is effectively further saffronising Marathi culture and literature in Goa. Most people will recollect the manner in which ever since the 1960s the Marathi language had been twined with Hindu nationalism in Goa. However, it should not be forgotten that while Marathi in Goa has a brahmanical heritage, it also was, and continues to be, the language of dalit-bahujan assertion against brahmanical hegemony in our state. To this extent, the Marathi language can also be the source of a profound commitment to a secular polity. To name a chair after a religious figure pollutes the secular aspects of the tradition of the Marathi language in Goa, and complicates the resolution of historical differences that since at least 1961 have deliberately sough to keep Hindu and Catholic bahujan suspicious of each other’s traditions.

The renaming and other celebrations of Sant Sohirobanath by the government of Goa must be protested vociferously, not merely because it violates the secular fabric of constitutional governance in the state, but also because it is part of a blatantly casteist agenda in Goa.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 22 Aug 2014)

Secularism and its political culture

Writing in this newspaper a couple of days ago in the context of Pramod Muthalik’s threats to set up base in Goa, and Sudhin Dhavalikar’s opinions on pubs, drinking, and short skirts not being compatible with Indian culture, Dale Meneses sought to define to amplify what secularism ought to mean. In his op-ed, Menezes suggested that “If we are really serious about maintaining peace [ i.e. being secular] in Goan society, power needs to be shared with minority groups, and greater representation needs to be granted to marginalized groups across religion, caste, and class in Goan society and politics (and not just confined to electoral representation).”

While the argument that couldn’t have been made better, I would like to elaborate on an argument that both Menezes, and Rochelle Pinto who wrote elsewhere have mentioned but not elaborated sufficiently on. This argument pertains to the ‘minorities’ in Goa, in this context, the Catholic Church and other minority groups, to which one could add Catholics as individuals. This distinction is important to make because the Catholic Church as an institution very often has interests and agendas different from those who confess Catholicism, either as devout, or as a cultural identity.

In his discussion Menezes rightly points out that “For many secular Hindus (as well as Christians) the ideal of ‘secularism’ is only threatened when right-wing groups create a ruckus.” Leaving the secular Hindus out, let us focus on the manner in which other groups in Goa seem to have rather limited notions of what secularism is, or what it should contain. Take, for example, the manner the Catholic Church in Goa found itself on the same side of the fence as Hindu rightist groups when it opposed the knowledge session on the tourist industry catering to gay tourists. In an op-ed at the time I forwarded the argument that even while the Catholic Church may be opposed to ‘gay culture’ there were still a range of very Catholic positions that they could choose from which to deal with the fact of the proposed knowledge session. In this particular case, given by the way the official statement from the Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP) was phrased, what they were forwarding was not so much an opposition to the exploitation of the exploitation of the sexuality of individuals for mercenary profit, but pushing a patriarchal agenda that dovetails neatly with that of the Hindu right.

There are two points that I seek to make here with regard to the establishment of a secular atmosphere in Goa; the first is that this atmosphere depends critically on the development of nuanced political discourse, and even more importantly developing an environment where respect of difference, whether that of opinion or life choices is an absolute value. A more nuanced political discourse would have allowed the CSJP to make its stand clear, and yet not necessarily fall into de-facto alliance with the very groups that would otherwise have sought to throttle the church.

However, it is neither respect for difference, nor nuanced political discourse that animates the example that demonstrates the manner in which Goan civil society is actively encouraging blind and cussed intolerance in its midst. A report in the Gulf Times drew attention to the fact that the Fatima High School in Rivona was temporarily shut down as a result of a deadlock between the institution’s management and the Parent Teacher’s Association (PTA). The PTA was apparently irked by the fact that 13 HIV positive children had been enrolled in that school and enforced their threatened boycott of the school.

The simple fact is that HIV is transmitted only through the exchange of sexual fluids, or blood, or via a mother to child during pregnancy, labour, delivery or breastfeeding. The actions of the PTA, therefore, can either be the result of appalling ignorance, or cussed desire to discriminate. Regardless of the reason the fact is that the future of a secular Goa lies not merely in whether we “throw out Muthalik and his ilk” but rests critically on whether we are able to develop a greater acceptance for difference of any sort. On whether our responses can be tempered by information, by compassion, regardless of the circumstance. At the end of the day it is this largely public culture that will forge the basis of secularism, not merely crying foul when right-wingers engage in hate-speech, or incite or engage in violence. And though clichéd, it seems a worthy time to remember the words of pastor Martin Niemöller in the context of the rise of the Nazi’s in antebellum Germany.

“   First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

    Because I was not a Socialist.

    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

    Because I was not a Jew.

   Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 11 July 2014