Protest for a fair India

Yogesh Maitreya

A couple of days back, I jotted down a poem...  

How thoughtful is it

to come out against 

coercive laws, and rebel 

thence, how easy it is 

to go back to our 

caste ghettos, and rot there.

Let me gradually explain the motive behind this poem. The nation called India has, for the past few weeks, been witnessing protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens, two coercive laws enacted by the BJP government. Even if these protests are necessary, significant in intensity, refreshing in form, immaculate in energy and infatuating in tone, in social domain, they are least significant. Such a mass mobilisation last had taken place during what we know as the freedom struggle under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. It was directed at putting an end to the British rule. In today’s struggle, I witness the same energy, the same urgency to achieve its objectives and the same vibrancy in its mobilisation. For me, the struggle for independence was necessary but not a priority. What was the priority then? The answer, I would say, was to build a nation. Perhaps the only intellectual to foresee this was Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.

A speech of his — written in 1935 but never delivered, and later self-published as Annihilation of Caste — became the blueprint of his vision for India. Intercepting the many fallacies in the Gandhian, socialist and communist methodology of struggle, he had enumerated their problems and dug deep into their intentions. Hailing from the lowest rung of society, he went on to detect the root of problems in a caste society. That is because the social location that he came from was a space shaped by all sorts of oppressions stemming from caste. People from that space could remarkably see the entire mechanism of caste oppression.

Ambedkar’s movement to emancipate the people of India manifested in Annihilation of Caste. He stated that ‘caste’ had made Hindu society sick. And without social reform, political reform was impossible.

This ‘sick’ness caused by caste system we have inherited has turned into an epidemic. Priyanka, daughter of a Bhotmange (Buddhist-Dalit family)  was raped and killed along with her mother and brothers in 2006. It angered none but the Dalit community. However, the Nirbhaya case is immortalised in our memory. Rape is vicious, whoever the victim. Yet, in India, it is the caste of the victim that decides the measurement of justice. Higher the caste, quicker the justice. Lower the caste, lower the level of justice. The above example is relatable and applicable to all walks of life in our caste society. Unless there are protests against the caste society, unless there are marches that transcend linguistic, cultural and religious boundaries, we can hardly imagine the freedom that we seek. Unless this is done, the azadi that the masses are demanding in protests against CAA and NRC will not come.

This is precisely why despite so many agitations against state brutalities, we have hardly achieved any maturity in our social and personal life. Unless ‘annihilation of caste’ is made a movement, there will be no fair change in our life.

In the last decade, people from lower castes have begun entering public/central universities. This has changed the social fabric and politics of these spaces. People (read students) from the Northeast and South India have started asserting their existence too. They differ from the popular imagination of Indian-ness which has never made them part of a national project of importance. Thus, their assertion too was never given attention by North India-dominated media and civil society. Needless to say, there were several mutinies, hidden from our eyes, across these spaces. The recent protests against CAA and NRC are a viable translation of these mutinies. The nation must start treating people across castes with the same respect and sense of dignity and justice. In a nutshell, this means following the path of ‘constitutional morality’, something Ambedkar had suggested when the Indian nation was at its infancy. Unless all the limbs of governance as well as people seriously follow this, there would be no changes.

  — The writer is a Dalit author and translator

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