{"id":38459,"date":"2012-04-14T12:58:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-14T12:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=38459"},"modified":"2012-04-14T12:58:59","modified_gmt":"2012-04-14T12:58:59","slug":"the-lefts-untouchable-why-was-ambedkars-critique-of-caste-anathema-for-indian-marxists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-lefts-untouchable-why-was-ambedkars-critique-of-caste-anathema-for-indian-marxists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Left\u2019s Untouchable: Why Was Ambedkar\u2019s Critique Of Caste Anathema For Indian Marxists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Manash Bhattacharjee – OUTLOOK INDIA –<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Manash Bhattacharjee<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s an abiding mystery of Indian politics: why the Left has consistently shown an uneasy reluctance to seriously engage with B.R. Ambedkar\u2019s thoughts. When Ambedkar pushed for the Poona Pact in 1932, demanding separate electorates for Dalits, the Indian Left kept its distance from the issue. Symptomatically, E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote: \u201cThis was a great blow to the freedom movement. For this led to the diversion of people\u2019s attention from the objective of full independence to the mundane cause of the upliftment of the Harijans.\u201d<\/p>\n

EMS\u2019s reaction to the Poona Pact was in consonance with his reading of Indian history in Marxist terms. Borrowing crudely from Marx\u2019s understanding of the history of slavery, EMS found the caste system, despite its exploitative structure, to be \u201ca superior economic organisation\u201d, which facilitated organised production through a systematic allocation of labour. He didn\u2019t note Ambedkar\u2019s sophisticated distinction between \u201cdivision of labour\u201d and \u201cdivision of the labourer\u201d (including the hierarchy within that division) in the casteist relations of production. The eternal fixedness of the labourer with regard to his birth (as the \u201csubject\u201d who \u201cwill bear its Father\u2019s name\u201d), and the religious sanction behind such an identity, were deemed unimportant. Being mostly from the upper castes, Left scholars avoided examining the assumptions of caste.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

ILLUSTRATION BY SORIT<\/p><\/div>\n

Since before Independence, the mainstream Left framed the class question safely within the nationalist question; for EMS and his comrades, this issue was not a diversion.<\/p>\n

Ambedkar had the courage to push for a radical division within the framework of nationalist politics, by asking for separate electorates. By calling Ambedkar\u2019s cause \u201cmundane\u201d, EMS drew a specious distinction between the working class and Dalits, holding the former to be \u201csuperior\u201d. Through this, EMS betrayed his predominantly upper-caste mindset. He is an exemplar of\u00a0progressive casteism<\/em>\u00a0in the history of Left politics and thinking in India. This led to lower castes and Dalits not finding a place in the party hierarchy.<\/p>\n

The most insidious form of caste solidarity ignores and hides the stark fact that caste is part of what Althusser calls the \u201capparatus\u201d of ideology and is based in material existence. Every form of social practice (and exploitation) in India is contextually casteist. It creates conditions of multiple prejudice between the bourgeois and the working class (where the scavenging class\/caste goes unnamed). And this prejudice becomes part of the relations of production as caste introduces elements of segregation and humiliation within those relations. In the case of untouchables, one might in fact call it relations of waste, where the disposing of sewage, etc, is not accorded even the minimum standard of dignified working conditions.<\/p>\n

Ambedkar pointed out how the class system had an \u201copen-door character\u201d, whereas castes were \u201cself-enclosed units\u201d. He gave a brilliant explanation of caste\u2019s forced endogamy: \u201cSome closed the door: others found it closed against them.\u201d The image throws up a phenomenon opposite to the Kafkan idea of law: the (Hindu) gatekeeper of law, in Ambedkar\u2019s explanation, is also the lawgiver, and he allows entry by birth, but no exit. Once entry has been secured in Hindu society, as Ambedkar argued, everyone who is not a Brahmin is an other. Hinduism is a uniquely self-othering social system, whose (touchable) norms are secured by declaring a brutal exception: untouchability.<\/p>\n

In his comparison of Buddha and Marx, Ambedkar bypasses Marx\u2019s idea of private property and keeps out the question of capital ownership. He also does not complicate the relation between \u2018law\u2019 and \u2018government\u2019. These appear to be limitations of the historical conjuncture of Dalit politics. But Ambedkar finds the materialist and non-violent character of Buddhism to be evoking another thinkable historical version of a Marxist society.<\/p>\n

Some critics in the Indian Left see the Dalit movement as being merely a \u2018politics of recognition\u2019 and having no revolutionary potential. It is a shallow view of the movement against segregated exploitation that seeks to penetrate entrenched hegemony. The politics against untouchability demands more than good wages and working conditions: it asks for a reconfiguration of the socio-cultural space and the elimination of a violated and untouchable \u2018bare life\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ambedkar had warned that the Indian socialist would have to \u201ctake account of caste after the revolution, if he does not take account of it before the revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a discussion after the screening of his film,\u00a0Jai Bhim Comrade<\/em>, Anand Patwardhan said that even though Gandhi erred on the caste system, he did more against untouchability than the Left. Under the stark light of this observation, the Left must rethink its ideological history. Or else, the crisis of its political legitimacy may not outlive the warnings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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