dalit-intermediate-caste alliance

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lit-Intermediate Caste Alliancel to GreatnessNaur iya

Ram an d M ulayam Singh Yadav have before them at least three

he most populous Indian state, theention to evolving a political and eco nom ic

at least threebefore they can conceive of retainingicantly to replicate such comb inations

. These three issues relate essentially to

IFirst, it is necessary for them to address

wadi Party combination

ng land reform that could help pro videficient land to the landless to en able themal labour m arket? Can w e expect the level

nd poverty to be reduced adequ ately soom the Mulayam Singh Yadav governm ent

Let us assume, to start with, that this isgely because of the standard argum entthere is not much goo d quality land

orm could result in econom ically un viable

expressly indicate this to be the case, somesuch notion is part of its understanding. IfKanshi Ram 's party really has the supportof the bulk of the dalits and is not in factriding piggy-back on intermediate castesupport, land reform would ordinarily havebeen high on its agenda. The CPM regimein West Bengal after 1977 was able, -in theearly years, to push ahead with legislativebusiness and to put the central governmentin a position where that government was seenas holding up some of the bills reserved forthe consideration of the president. Can theUttar Pradesh government be expected totake similar initiatives?

Even if ibis believed that the sco pe for landreform is limited for the time being, theproblem of dealing with the economiccontradictions between the dalits and theintermediate castes will remain. If not dealtwith soon enough the 'UP model' will beunder strain. There are ways of tackling thesecontradictions, if not directly, at least byside-stepping them. This can be done bydeveloping o ther economic opportunities forthe landless. They can be organised tog etherin group poultry and dairy farms, fisheriesand in many other agro-based activities withappropriate training, credit and marketingsupport from the government.Ambedkar had conceived of resettlementof dalits in new areas so as to free them fromthe social hierarchies of the typical villageenvironment and "the thraldom of theHindus". This particular method of dealingwith the problem may or may not be d esirableor feasible; but there is much to be said for

establishing small agro-industrial comm unesfor the landless wherever possible. This isa concrete step that the present governmentin Uttar Pradesh can take and a way ofaddressing, in a secular way, some of the realproblems of such groups. Besides, agro-industrial activity has the advantage, incontrast to agriculture that at least some ofit can take place on land that may otherwisebe unsuited to large-scale agriculture. Suchland shoula be available in plenty and therecan therefore be no excuse for not makingit available. This would help a substantialproportion of the dalits by strengtheningtheir relative economic position. In taking

a large proportion of them out of the rurallabour market, or at least in reducing theirdependen ce on that m arket, the Uttar Pradeshgovernment would have taken a major stepin overcoming the economic contradictionsthat underlie the dalit-intermediate castecombination.II

The next important question concerns theimpact of the SP-BSP combination onMuslims in their relation to Hindus. Toconsidertheimpactof BSPpoliticson Hindu-Muslim relations, it is necessary first toconsider the backdrop . The relations betweenMuslims and H indus at large are delicate inpost-1947 India. Both comm unities havecollective memories of mutual grievances.Muslims are naturally wary of the rise inHindu communalism in recent times. In theyears after independence the bulk of theMuslims supported the Congress, lookingupon it as the force that might keep Hindufundamentalism in check. Many of them didso in spite of a host of real and imaginedgrievances which they had c om e to entertainin respect of the National Movement as ledby the Indian National Congress. Over theyears, the character of the Congress alsochanged markedly and one can legitimatelyask whether and to what extent the partywhich bears its name today in fact representsthe pre-1947 organisation. After 1947 theCongress suffered at least three significantsplits. First, most of the socialists went outof the Congress in 1948. Second, the C ongressold guard went out in 1969. Indira Gandhiwas able to take her faction to a nationalelectoral victory in 1971; but for that victory,her party was in every other way a break-away group from the main Congressor ga n i sa t ion w hic h the n be c a m e theCongress(O). Some more democratically-minded people left Indira Gandhi's party,first during and after the 1975-77 emergencyphase, and ultimately when h er party sufferedyet another split in 1978. Some of those whosplit away from her returned later. But theyreturned to a party which was in some waysas different from the earlier Corlgress as theMu slim Leag ue after late 1930s was differentfrom the Muslim League of, say, the mid-1920s.

It was this new-fangled Congress, theCongress (Requisitionist) as it was called in1969, or the New Congress as it was calledfor some time, or, after being identified forsome years with the names of its variousparty presidents, which came to be finallyknown as Congress(I). It was the Con-gress(I) which gradually and ultimatelylost the electoral support of the bulk ofMuslims of north India.Yet in all this, one development passedalmost unnoticed. This was that as thecharacter of the Congress, that is theCongress(I), clearly changed from what it

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it, there was alsolel and simultaneous movemen t amonga greater appreciative un derstandingional m ovem ent, for all its variousuals showed g reater appreciation than

f C ongressuslims like M A Ansari and Mau lana Aza d.1987-1993 phase even in Musl imfundamentalist journals. Thus while theMuslims at large were moving away fromthe Congress(I), many of them seemedsimultaneously to move to a mor e sympa theticappraisal of the concerns of the nationalmovement than had been the case some yearsearlier despite their support to the post-independence Congress. The demolition ofthe Babri masjid by the Sangh clan and thenonchalance wi th which the cent ra lgovernment treated the demolition, againenhanced, within the Muslim community,respect for the ideals of the nat ionalmovement, if nothing else, by way of contrastwith the present. At last the effect of theassiduous post-1937 political activity of theMuslim League, which had sunk deep intoMuslim consciousness in some areas, seemedto be weakening. This was a good portentfor Hindu-Muslim relations because it hadthe potential of enlarging the political spaceavailable between the rival communalismsof the two communities. The irony was,however, that this phenomenon was occurringat a time when Hindu Com muna lism w as onthe rise.

It is in this scenario and at this time thatKanshi Ram and his party emerged with alarger presence on the political scene. Hiscombination had achieved major isolatedsuccesses over the last few years but now,taking advantage of increased Muslimdisillusionment w ith the Congress(I), it wasable, with the help of the intermediate castes,to put through a winning combination.For Kanshi Ram's political organisationand methods it was necessary to wean awaydalits from the Con gress( I) and other partiesto itself and a large part of the strategychosen for ach ieving this involved ignoring

the differences that existed in quality,o u t l o o k an d ch a rac t e r b e t ween t h eCongress(I) and the pre-1947 Congress. Itfollowed that attacking the Congress(I)was not enough ; the whole nationalist anti-imperial ethos had to be questioned anddebunked rather than being seen as part ofthe process of an evolving nationalism.Thus precisely at a moment when a largepart of the Muslim in telligentsia had begunto show greater apprecia t ion of thedifferences in character between the pre-1947 Con gress orga nisat io n and theCongress(I), Kanshi Ram's party sought to

involve them in an alliance in whichprecisely the opposite would be stressed.This strategy, if pursued in this form, canbe expected once again to increase thedistance between Muslims and the Hindusat large. A typical illustration of this processis the following. W hen after the recent BS Prem arks on Gan dhi, a Muslim leade r refusedtojo inin the mud-slinging, he was attackedby an Islamic fundamental is t journal .Pulling up the Muslim leader, the journaleditorialised that defending Gandhi wasequivalent to defending the kar sevaks whodemolished the Babri masjid.The particular caste politics pursued by theBSP thus has certain com munal im plications.Unless it is assumed that a deterioration inthe inter-commu nal atmosphere is conduciveto the growth and development of the BSP,it must fine-tune its strategies to avoid sucha result.

I l lThis leads directly to the third problem thatthe SP-BSP combination has to grapplewiththat is its relations with those Indians,

including Hindus, who, though not seen aspolitical allies by the SP-BSP , do not nurtureany hostility to it and would in fact we lcom ethe forces that the combination representsfind expressio n. It is in this terrain that onem ay l o ca t e t h e Gan d h i -Am b ed k arcontroversies and the recent re-run of thesearguments.Am bedkar often used the English analogyin his arguments with the 'caste' Hindus.So if the Con gress told the British that onlyan India with the assurance of indepen denc ecould give effective support to Britain inthe Second World War, Ambedkar in histurn told the Congress that only the'untouchable' who knew what place hewould occupy in the post-independencescheme of things could really join thestruggle for national freedom.In every hard-fought struggle, the naturaleffort is to search for allies wherever theycan be found. It was natural therefore forIndians to cultivate as many friends as theycould among British politicians of the timeand especially in the British Labour Party.Indian s often felt that the Labour Party andleading Labour leaders did not gq far enough

to help them and remained essentiallyimperialist at heart. (In fact, this was alsothe impression of many Englishmen includingWavell.) In spite of this, Indians sought tobefriend such politicians. Carrying theEnglish analogy further, one might haveexpected dalit representatives to cultivateas many allies as they possibly could am ongthe non-dalit Hindus and among Hindusoutside their definition of 'Bah ujan Sam aj'.Gandhi ans have traditionally been sen sitiveto the dalit question, even if, as some dalitleaders maintain, they did not go far eno ugh.Besides Gandhians, there were a large number

of groups in the Gandhi-led m ovement, whichdid not see themselves as 'Gandhians' butheld Gandhi in high regard as the leader ofthe anti-imperialist struggle. There w ere, forexample, Marxists like Acharya NarendraDeva, who believed that it was reactionaryto oppose the nat ional s t ruggle andprogressive to support it. These traditionslive on today and the CPI/CPI(M) Left hasalso com e closer, in its analysis of the nationalmovement, to positions that Marxists likeNarendra Deva had already taken at the time.Going by the Ambedkar reference to thenationalist attitude towards the British as apointer to what the proper dalit expectationfrom the national movem ent ought to be, theBSP should, fol lowing the analogy incontemporary terms, seek to befriendsympathet ic elements in the country 'snational life. The nature of the BSP outburstson Gandhi would appear to push it into acorner, in which the task of seeking out andretaining such allies might become morecomplicated and could at some point createstrains even in its existing ties with OBC-based organisations like that of Mulayam

Singh Yadav.In his 'What Congress and Gandhi HaveDone to the Untou chable', Am bedkar takesthe Congress to task for various things, butone of the episodes mentioned by himillustrates exceedingly well the dilemma ofthe times. He refers to the Temple Entry Billwhich had been introduced in the centralassembly by Rang a Iyer in the early 30s. TheCongress had promised to support i t .How ever, as soon as it became clear that theassembly would be dissolved and freshelections held, the Congress backed out.Ambedkar then asks: "When the Hindusthreaten to defeat the Congress in the election,if it pursues the matter to a conclusion, MrGan dhi, in order to preserve political powerin the hands of the Cong ress, give up Tem pleEntry! Is this sincerity?"

Temple entry was later taken up byprovincial governments. For our presentpurposes, the relevant point is that inrecognising the strength of the opposition tothe temple-entry programme-, Ambedkarobviously understood the cruel dilemma withwhich the Congress was faced. It could eitherturn entirely to social reform and becomepolitically marginalised. Or it could holdback on the reform for sometime- and carryon the poli t ical s truggle. Ambedkar 'scriticism would have had greater relevanceif it could have been shown that both aspectsof the struggle could be taken to their fullestextent in the given situation. But Am bedkarhimself recognised the strength of theorthodox Hindu opposition of the time.

It would be wrong, however, to assumethat Ambedkar was m otivated by any specialanimus against Gandhi. Ambedkar showsconsistency here, and makes the samecriticism of Lincoln. Lincoln had said of the

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in the American civilIf there be those who would not save the

at the same timeI do not agree with them.If there be those who would not save theat the same time

I do not agree with them.My paramount object is tosave-the Union,not either to save or to destroy slavery.Ambedkar concludes, throws: . .avery different light on one who isreputedofthe Negroes Asamatterdid not believe in theemancipation

the Negroes as a categorical imperative.on in the same work Ambedkarain distinctions b etween Gandhiand Lincoln to the disadvantage of theormer.)his method of analysis does not takethe complexities ofcrisis situations,of movements and of individuals andletely their relative placemen t

a given social configuration. It demandsasympathetic ally orparty pursuingbe required to prove its credentials

if the method or extent of proofbe such that theprimary objectiveby that party is itselfis not a basis on which

and movements can be fairlyThe essential point, how ever, is notwhetherwasright orGandhi was. Thereal

the BSP should perhaps beis that all the reasons that could bein favour of granting primacy to

atthe time ofthe Gandhi-ar controversies ceased to berelevant1947. Therefore, the present conditionthe dalit is an unqualified critique of thethe BSPn at least make itself op en to, ifnot actually

an immensely larger support base.who consider themselves Gandhianswho though not Gandhiansfor Gandhi's work andinthat part ofthe Marxian traditionhad identified itself entirely with the

can be expected to beon the dalit side of the struggle.

It is a mistake to identify the Gandhianin Indian political and social lifethe state. The BSP, along with somean error in thinking ofaspolitical shorthand for the presentand the ruling Congress(I) and into make angry attackshan balanced appraisals of)Gandhito make contemporary political

isobviously an attempt by theSP torefer notmerely toGandhi as a persont to use him as a kind of emblem toall such non-dalit non-'Bahujan'

who claim to share or at leastthe dalit agony. The attack on

Gandhi is tVius a symbolic assertion of thepolicy of political exclusivism on the partof the dalits or onbehalf ofthe larger categoryof 'Bahujan Samaj'. Although the state didattempt after 1947 to claim the Gandhianlegacy, thedistance between that legacy andthe state aswell as themajor cen trist politicalparties is very wide. It was pointed out inthe constituent assembly itself that theConstitution had few Gandhian elements init. Later on, the life-style of the politiciansand bureaucrats similarly m oved further awa\from the people. Some of Gandhi's ideasmay be seen as impracticablebut even hismore common sense suggestions in practicalmatters were ignored. Gandhi's suggestionson H industani asagainst Hindi were rejected.His emphasis on 'basic education' wasbrushed aside. The rise of Hindutva (and thefailure of the state to bring communaloffenders to book, and of the Congress(I) totackle them poli t ical ly) has only thisrelationship with Gandhi that he had kept itadroitly under check, not sparing in his dayeven Swami Shraddhanand from piercingbut respectful criticism. It is ironically in thecurrent year of Gandhi 's 125th birthanniversary that the chasm between histhought and theCongress(l) hasbeen sharplyunderscored making it clear that while suchpart ies might in their relatively lucidmovements* reach out for aspects of theGandhian legacy, they cannot claim it byright. This is evidenced by the spectacle ofthe ruling party at thecentre, which presentsitself as upholding Gandhi's legacy, having

LatestBookfrom MD

to be brought to account for its involvementin the November 1984 riots by a BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) go vernment in theNationalCapital Territory. The BJP, for its part, hasfalse pretensions as its cadres, to give onlyaco up leof instanc es, still profferjustification(its official positions notwithstanding) forthe assassination ofGandhi and thedestructionof the Babri masjid. The connection betweenGandhi or 'Gandhism' and the state or themajor centrist parties does not carry conviction.What affinity can there be between astate whichenacts and m aintains the Terrorist and D isruptiveActivities Act (TADA) and one who firstemerged upon the national scene with a vigorouschallenge to the Rowlatt legislation?

Gandhi saw it possible to go so far as tocondemn untouchability, campaign againstit and todeclare thegeneral proposition thatany Hindu scripture that was contrary toreason had to be rejected, thus puttingtraditional Hindu society on the defensive.In the context of those times when eventemple entry questions aroused widespreadopposition this was no small achievement.Bu t the choicest political invective issometimes reserved for those relatively closerto one 's own position. For instance, toconsider a slightly different context, the'Platform of Action of the CP of India'published in Pravda in 1930 had this to sayof Nehru's more sharply Leftist phase:The most harmful and dangerous obstacleto the victory of the Indian revolution is theagitation carried on by the "Left" elementsof the National Congress led by Jawaharlal

Publishers of theHumanities, Natural& Social Scienc esDALIT MOVEMENT IN INDIA AND ITS LEADERS,

1857-1956ByR K KshirsagarThe prese nt book offers abrief account of theDalit movemen t in Indiaand portray s with duerespect, to thesocio-political profiles ofall those

leaders who had worked for th2emancipation of their brethren fromthe thraldom of untouchability and caste system especially during1857 to 1956. It describes thechronology of events and achievementsof the movement in various states of India. Thevarious steps for theabolition of untouchability under the Indian Constitution have alsobeen analysed. Thestudy is,obviously based on personal interviewswith Dalit leaders who arealive and theinterviews with thenext of kinof such leaders who are no more.1994,459p, m aps, bib, inde x; 22 x15 cmISBN 81-85880-43-3 Rs. 500.00Please send your orders & writeforcomplete catalogue to:M D PUBLICATIONS PVT LTD1 1 , Darya Ganj, NewDelhi-110 002Te l : 3 2 73347 , 3 271378 , 3 2 85830 , 3 268645F ax : 91-11 -32 75 54 2 Cable: INDOLOGY

PUBLISHERSDISTRIBUTORSEXPORTERS


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Nehru, Bose, Ginwala and others...The greater understanding is sometimesreserved for the one who is safely outsideand perhaps even ranged against one's ownstruggles. Thus leading Jews could o verlooksome of Voltaire's anti-semitic 'fervour' bytaking a broad view.However, that may be, the Jew s forgive himall the ill he has don e them , in considerationof the good he has done them, althoughinvoluntarily perhaps even unknowingly;because if they are enjoying a little peacefor a few years, they owe it to the advanceof the Enlightenmen t, to which V oltaire hascertainly contributed more than any otherwriter, by his numerous works againstfanaticism.The memory of Gandhi is, if anything, aresource available to the BSP and all groupsthat seek to speak for the depressed for itis the groundwork initiated largely by himthat has helped prepare no n-dalits for socialchange. It can reject this resource only if itbelieves that social reform comes in one fellstroke and that since Gandhi did not see hisway to go far enough he was, therefore,

ranged against the dalits. By not appreciatingthis matter or the difference between thepresent and the pre-1947 situation the BSPwould be denying to itself the widespreadsupport for dalits that may be available o utsidethe ambit of its own self-definition. In thenew context, the BSP m ay have to m ove tosome extent beyond Ambedk ar and overcomethe isolationist tendencies of the past bymaking allowance for the notion that it ispossible for a non-dalit to be genuinelyconcerned over the oppression faced by dalits.If the possibility or genuineness is accepted,it is not necessary to waste time on thequestion whether such concern can equalthat felt by the dalits themselves. Th e AfricanNational Congress has little difficulty infunctioning on this basis and there is noreason why the BSP cannot see its way todo likewise.

It is paradoxically in moving beyond itsisolationist legacy that the dalits can arriveat a larger fulfilment of Amb edkar, to w homLohia, the ideological master of MulayamSingh Yadav, had written in Decemb er 1955that "Sympathy should be joined to anger"and that he should aim to become "a leadernot alone of the scheduled castes but alsoof the Indian people". I f the SP-BSPcombination can so function as to make thisits object it will give cause to rejoice in theemergence of a comb ination that has it withinitself to replace the decay ing p arties of India 'spolitical centre. Few persons have understoodthis better than Gandhi himself. In January1940 he wrote in Harijan, welcoming themove by Jinnah to bring about a com binationof parties opposed to the Con gress by creati ngan alliance between, am ong oth ers, the JusticeParty, Ambedkar's party and the MuslimLeague. This was partly a precursor to thealliance structure sought to be built up by

Kanshi Ram and Mulayam Singh Yadav.Gandhi saw such a combination as liftingthese groups out of the narrow channelswithin, which each had till then functioned(and consequently, he hoped, implying denialof the two-nation theory). Gandhi, therefore,wrote:Such an alignment of parties is a consum-mation devoutly to be wished: If the Quaid-i-Azam can bring about the combi-nation,not only 1 but the whole of India will shoutwith one acclamation: 'Long Live Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah'. For he will have broughtabout permanent and living Unity for which1 am sure the whole nation is thirsting.Jinnah, seeing the chink in the tw o-nationtheory, wrote back on January 21, 1940

declining the compliment and saying thatwhile the combination was indeed beingattempted, "India is not a nation, nor acoun try" and that the alignment was "partlya case of 'adversity bringing strange bed-fellows together' ".As the two-nation theory is also now nolonger in the w ay, it is open to Kanshi Ramand his party to accomplish what Jinnahdeclined to do and to bring about, with thehelp of enlightened supp ort from groups like

Ya dav 's and other Indians, that wider social'consummation', not only in Uttar Pradeshbut throughout the country. Can he and Yadavrise to the occasion?

A Blanket Spread T oo T hinCompensation for Bhopal's VictimsPaul Stanton KibelArmin RosencranzThe individual-based compensation distribution scheme currentlyexisting in Bhopal fails to respond to the severe disaster-related medicaland social distress.IN 1986, the Bhopal Gas Leak lawsuit wasfiled with the district court, Bhopal. Thedistrict court's interim ruling was appealedto the Madhya Pradesh High Court, andeventually to the Supreme Court of India.While the case was still pending before theSupreme Court, and with the Supreme C ourt'sintercession, the Indian government andUnion Carbide reached a settlement. Thesettlement requ ired Carbid e to pay the Indiangovernment $ 470 million. This settlementfund would be supervised by the IndianSupreme C ourt, and distributed to those whohad been injured, and the surviving familiesof those who had been killed, in the Bhopaldisaster.

Theexisting Bhopal settlementdistributionscheme is based exclusively on compensatingspecific claimants for death or injury. Thisindividual-based distribution scheme, byitself, fails to respond to the severemed icaland social consequences of theBhopal disasterunless it is integrated with 'commu nity-based' distributions which would fundinstitutions, programmes, and services thatserve the larger, collective group of personsinjured and adversely affected by the Bhopalaccident providing effective long-term reliefand assistance to survivors, and would serveas a landmark case of disaster relief.Under the Bhopal settlement distributionscheme envisioned by the Supreme Court,30,000 individuals w ere expected to receivecompensation payments. These individualcompensatory payments were intended tocover a host of costs and concern s, such as

pain and suffering, lost wages, and incurred

and future medical bills. The amount ofcompensation that each individual wasto receive wou ld be determined by theseverity and permanence of the indi-vidual's injury.The c la imant c lass i f ica t ion sys tempromulgated by the Supreme Court adoptsthe following categories: fatality; temporaryinjury; permanent injury; temporarydisablement causedb y temporary injury; tem-porary disablement caused by permanentinjury; permanent partial disablement; andpermanent total disablement. The compen-sation for an individual fatality was estim atedat approximately $ 14,500. Althoughoriginally 30,000 claimants were expected,the class of claimants may expand to 300,000.Because the total settlement is fixed, thisenlargement could drastically reduce theamount of money each claimant wouldrece ive . This enlargement could a lsodrastically increase the adm inistrative burdenplaced on government officials.

Although the individual-based compen-sation scheme may appear as an appropriate,effective and fair response, the schemepossesses many flaws. These flaws renderthe scheme dysfunctional, and prevent theIndian government from achieving basicmedical, social and justice-related goals. Thethree primary flaws concern (1) administrativeburden and time delays; (2) the susceptibilityof claimants to exploitation and manipulation;and (3) most importantly, the failure toprovide for the future of the Bhopalcommun ity and affected unborn generations.These disadvantages are considered below.

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dalit-intermediate-caste alliance

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