Subalternity and Religion: The Prehistory of Dalit Empowerment in South Asia (Intersections: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories)

109 Pages·2010·5.33 MB·English

by  Milind Wakankar

Subalternity and Religion
•
This book explores the relationship between mainstream and marginal or
subaltern religious practice in the Indian subcontinent, and its entanglement
with ideas of nationhood, democracy and equality. With detailed readings
of texts from Marathi and Hindi literature and criticism, the book brings
together studies of Hindu devotionalism with issues of religious violence.
Drawing on the arguments of Partha Chatterjee, Martin Heidegger and
Jacques Derrida, the author demonstrates that Jndian democracy, and indeed
postcolonial democracies in general, do not always adhere to Enlightenment
ideals of freedom and equality, and that reiigion and secular life are inextric
ably enmeshed in the history of the modern, whether understood from the
perspective of Europe or of countries formerly colonized by Europe, There~
fore subaltern protest, in its own attempt to lay claim to history, must rely
on an idea of religion that is inextricably intertwined with the deeply invidi~
ous legacy of nation, state, and civilization. The author suggests that the
co~exjstcnce of acts of social altruism and the experience of doubt born from
social strife-"miracle" and "violence"-ought to be a central issue for
ethical debate. Keeping in view the power and reach of genocidal Hinduism,
this book is the first to look at how the religion of marginal communities at
once affirms and turns away from secularized religion.
This important contribution to the study of vernacular cosmopolitanism
in South Asia will be of great interest to historians and political theorists, as
well as to scholars of religious studies, South Asian studies and philosophy,
Milind Wakankar teaches in the Department of English, SUNY Stony Brook,
USA. He received his PhD in English and Comparative Literature and
Postcolonial Theory from Columbia University. His current work involves a
monograph on Ramchandra Shukla and a critical commentary on the
Dnvaneswari.
r
Subalternity and Religion
Intersections: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
Edited by Gyanendra Pandey
The prehistory of Dalit empowerment
Emory Vf/iversi!]; VS"
in South Asia
.... :ditorilll Advisory Board: Partllo Chatterjee. Columbia University/Calcutta;
Stev('ll Hahn. University of Pennsylvania; David Hardiman, University of
Warwick; Bruce Kf/au/t. Emory University; Rajeswal'i Sunder Rajan, New
York UnivcrsilylB<lngalore: and Ann Stoler. New School of Social Research
This series is conceflled with three kinds of intersections (or conversations): Milind Wakankar
first, across cultures and regions, an interaction that postcolonial studies have
emphasized in their foregrounding of the multiple sites and multi-directional
tralfic involved in the making of the modern; second, across time, the conver~
sation between a mutually constitutive past and present that (){;Curs in ditfer~
ent times and places; and thirdly, between coloniat and postcolonial histories..
which as theoretical positions have very different perspectives on the first
two "intersections" and the questions of intellectual enquiry and expres~
sion implied in them. These three kinds of conversations are critical to the
making of any present a.nd any history. Thus the new series provides a forum
for extending our understanding of core issues of human society and its
self~rcpresentation over the centuries.
While focusing on Asia, the series is Opel) to studies of other parts of the
world that are sensitive to cross~cultural. cross~chronological and cross~
colonial perspectives. The series invites submissions for single~authored and
edited books by young as welJ as established scholars that challenge the limit~
ations or inherited disciplinary, chronological and geographical boundaries..
even when they focus on a single. well~bounded territory or period.
1. Subaltern Citizens and their Histories
Investigations from India and the USA
tailed by Gyanendra Pandey
2. Subalterllity and Religion
The prehistory of Dalit empowerment in South Asia
Mi/ind Wakallk(ll'
,~ ~~o~:~~~fi~
LONDON AND NEW YORl<
Contents
•
vii
preface
First published 2010
by Routledge
2.,Park Square, Mihon Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXl44RN
Slmultaneously published in rhe USA and C· . d· PART I
by Routledge ,11M a Introduction: the question of a prehistory
170 Madison Avenue, New York, NY ]0016
Rou:~dge is an imprint of the Taylar & Francis Grout> Subaltemity at the cusp: limits and openings 3
an tnJorma business r'
of the dalit critique
ij 2010 Milind Wakankar
2 Moral rite berore myth and law: death in
Tyr;esel in Times by 11
RehneC~tch Limited, Bungay,Suffolk comparative religion
Pnnted In the UK by the MPG BooksGroup
3 The time of having-found (God): languages
All rights reserved. No part of this b<lok :';eblee c:~~. ted 25
reprodu:e<l Of utilized in any form or by or of datit hearsay
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m~en e ,inC tidIng photOCopying and r d' -
In/ormation storage or retrieval ecor mg, or In any
writing from the publishers, system, WIthout perrmsslO11 in
PART II 37
British Library Cataloguing ill PubliCa/ion D I The vici~'Situdes of hl... . torical religion
A catalogue. record for this book is available a a
from the Bntish Library 4 The anomaly of Kabir: historical religion in
39
Library ofG'onf!!ess Catafoging-in-Publicmion Dala
Dwivedi's Kabir (1942)
Wakankar_ M!imd_
Subalternity and religion' the et '
South Asia f Milind Wilk1;nkilt Hstory 01 > Dalit empowerment in 5 The pitfalls of a dalit theology:
75
r~~I~d~/ ~~~~i~;~~~~i~\~~~~;::i~~J~ Dr. Dharmvir's critique of Dwivedi (1997)
POds.tood lonial histories; 2)
IRI"' . "Unmex_
" e 19J.on and SOCial status--Indiil-Histori ' . 6 System and history in Rajwade's "Grammar'"
Historiography. J. Dalils-S ial d" ography. 2, Dahts- 93
life, L Title. oc con lflOns_ 4. Dalits-,--ReligiOlls for the Dnyaneswari (1909)
BUOI S.s6W35 201 0
2.00,86'940954--Je22
2009031781
PART III 125
294.5'48693--de22
The prehistory of historical religion
2009031560
ISBN 10:0-415--77878--6 (hbk) 7 The suspension of iconoclasm: myth and
ISBN 10: 0-2W-85965-0 (ebk) 127
allegory in the time of deities
ISBN U: 978-0-415-77878-7 (hbk)
ISBN 1J : 97&· 0--203 -85965--0 (ebk)
r
'" Contents
8 Miracle and violence: the allegorical turn in
Kabir. Dnyaneswara, and Tukaram Preface
• 147
9 Deity and daivat: the antiquity oflight in
Tukaram
17l
Noles
188
Bibliography
195
Index ,
201
j
i'
The analyses in this book arc grounded in my conviction that the origins of
religious experience are worth renewed critical scrutiny. Those origins may
well lie at some remove from the current unraveling of historical religion the
world over, and especially in South Asia. I am intrigued by the possibility that
older ways of understanding divinity are couched in the everyday idioms of
the subcontinent's many languages. I have tried here to write a history of the
traditions of daHt (untouchable) sapience, which is to say the mystic tradi
tions that are associated with the poetry of low-caste peoples. In instances
such as the "Kabir" corpus, which has grown over five centuries, it is often thc
case that the line between the work of the original poet and the scribes who
sign their poems in his name is blurred. The scribe and the poet are not the
same individual. It is just that the scribe is often a votary of mainstream
forms of religion such as Vaishnavism, or of low-caste movements that havc
acceded to brahmanism. such as the Kabirpanthi sects. He writes a poem
modeled after the original poet and signed in the lauer's name, but inflccted
with the religious or political needs of the moment. I imagine this scribe as
reaching toward political empowerment. That is to say. that I detect a con
tinuity between these scribes and contemporary empowered dalits who claim
Kabir as a daHt god. (The task of tracing the itinerary of the scribe is outside
the scope of this book. Scholars of Kahir such as Charlotte Vaudeville, Linda
Hess and David Lorcnzen have made major contributions in this regard.
Sheldon Pollock and others have brilliantly traced such networks across the
subcontinent over vast epochs of time.) The focus here is on the murky histor
ical moment at either end of that movement: which is to say, the poet and the
empowered dalit who claims him as his own, he who countersigns the seal of
the poet. I see in the laUer's practice a "reference" to the enabling wisdom
of the original poct. In a sense what I have attempted here is a history of
signature and countcr-signature. I want to describe what happens when thc
same precious seal is vouched for once again, but with a difference. The relay
involved can bc one of stereotype (prejudice); but it could also be one of an
ancient form of generosity and care.
So what I have attempted herc is only minimally difierent from a history of
mainstrcam Inrms of Hindu devotionalism such as bhakti. My point is that
P
1
viii Preface
Preface IX
the low~caste forms of mystic speech I describe in these pages are als t f
I referred above to the wholly compromised field of religious practice, And
that larger story ~f deitjes, temples, pi~grilTIages, religious natiollal~s~~r B~t
yet something like the positivity of moral rite and moral conduct is indeed
my concern here IS to see how there IS an ever so sli ht t
mainstream religion in the work of these low-caste oe~ Th~rn. aw~y ~rom discernible therein, This is because the form of belief I have in mind refers to
departure from the mainstream is crucial Th h P .'1 IS ~~fiflltesllnal an experience of divinity in the past, not in the future, The future has already
book rests on it. This is what saves the c . e r ctanca ambition of this been written into the trajectory of nation and historical religion, This book
"miraclt;" and "violence") from appc ~ncepts used here (such as "hearsay," casts a backward glance to that fleeting past, and in this way tries to describe
-anng as mere verbal c ", I Id
b e s h eef effrontery to pretend that .' oncel s. t WOll an allegorical or narratival mindset that "looks back," (I use the term
For it can only ever be supplement (~le;,tn clrc~mVellt the history of bhakti. "narratival" after the later Schelling and Rosenzweig, two thinkers whose
this agenda is complicated by the rae t ·th.r~~ a hterary-critical point of view. influence on this book is incalculable.) The term "mindset" is not used here
pocts is borrowed from the larger o~ na t" e ~?nceptu,al,vocabulary of these condescendingly: I have in mind ancient systems of memory and recall as
described as the reliance 0 h' e Ie tlddltlon, ThiS IS a tendency I have they have been described in the seminal work of Frances Yates (1966), To
, 11 earsay on the fact of "h ' I
cro mmg of God'" The Ian guages t h'a t embrace th' aVltl lg Icard of the make this point, I often use the phrase "mind imprint'· interchangeably with
( IVerse; they may even be discolltinu ' h IS even are many and "mindset." It is worth noting that "looking back" is the inverse of nostalgia:
wlt
the veillacular and the cosmoporl,ow'h each other, Between registers of it is about a finding (of God). not a mode of loss--even ir that finding has
'f ' I an t ey refer us to the 'd "
atlOn 0 the holy It IS crucial' b ' ' , gran trallsfigur- itself receded into the past. For this reason, the imperative is to grasp what is
t h e book: that th' ere is nothin 0 caI l 'dII I nIu nd one fund amenta I assumption in a form of transcendental self-exposure at the heginninK, I speak or a back
g ou Sl e tIe already com 'd d
pr~lematicdomain of historical religion, promIse an deepb' ward gklnce: it seems to me too that. like the poets I write about. one can only
, ne cannot but proceed in these investigati ' I ' ever east a glance from one's standpoint in the present. That is to say. from a
With regard to emancipatory projects that inv~ns w~~ 10~t an lIl,n~te pessimism religious scene that is nothing if not historical.
I am also skeptical of the ex I " ' ' Ive hlstoncal religion or nation. It is for this reason that the two terms I usc to describe Kabir's funda
pan,. 01 y promIse of phi] I I
analyses here address the limits or th I' osop lY or t leory; the menwl insight. viz .. "miracle" and "violence," are flol taken from the onto
the "ethical" problem that is implic't~ory, can see no ?ther purpose behind logical lexicon of Kabir himself. The first term is theological. although it
decide if the poets here have had to ~:k:t::.or~ here. It I~ ~E to the reader to is linked lor me with the critique of theology in Spinoza and Lessing, It
has once again trounced works 'th d'ffi. Y lor theory, 11 Western thought is a reference to the event of the coming or God to man; it does not refer to
td"
let that all critical work on a I~ elentprovenance."Thisisthegaunt_ miracles that guarantee the historical transformation to be wrought by
R ' 0 lao Iterature has had t '
aJwade and Shukla through to F 'dl I H' 0 negotiate, fmm a particular religion, The second term is taken from the wide array or work
Inspired though it is by those towe~~g Ie ~~ ardy and ,Dipesh Chakrabarty, on violence and counter-insurgency. exemplified by the writings of Gyan
likely to have many shortcomings It' t~C ~~vements. tillS book is nonetheless Pandey. Both terms enable us to place Kabir in the ruins of the modern, Thi:.
claim that it has not "let nar 'II os here orealt the more susceptible to the is where we see him practice his peculiar lorm of "living death." I argue that
Ive lOUg t speak for its If" Th I
essential and productive dilemma of II ' I" e . e atter is the this form of "living death" is of millennial significance. It harks back to
'brecu
of COlonialism. And so this work, a atlOn marked by the experience what ( will describe as the death-rite of the Kapalika, is prefigured in
Th ooem races the taint oft h' d
e stigma of betrayal recurs like th "I ra Ison es clercs, Dnyaneswara. finds echoes in Tukaram. and helps provide today the ground
at the very least productive of e ete,rna return of the same," and is thus before politics ror the dalit subject on the cusp of political society, Kabir's
, new va l uatlOns of ideas be" 'h
mto the gloaming The way 'h . lore ey too recede '-'living death" takes place at the luminous center of an age-old tradition, It i:,
, e poets appear h "t If '
stake, I do not quote liberally from wh t ,ere IS t se a sign of what is at here, at the hollowed out core of the social world that Kabir's God.. his
of pOems that can be used to a h~ re III any case contested collections abstract "Ram" dares to rejoin violence with tenderness (kautuka), ardor
Y
thought of one poem treating :,a anyt lllg a,nd everything; I stay with the (cada), affection (avad) and lightness (sadh)·-··to use Marathi terms irradiated
h ' sa a potent mcantator 't Th h
t, roughout this book is on the "singular" ex" ~, n:, ,,~e.mp asis with the spirit of Dnyaneswara, Namdeva, Kabir. Eknath and Tukaram, The
VIolence) of the "saint-poet" d pellence (the selhsh lllstght into critical labor of this book works between terms used by the poets themselves
as
the gathering of devotees Ther , o~pos~ to th~ collective devotionalism of and concepts taken rrom historical religion (such as "miracle" and "vio
e
presume to speak of the d'alit sC: IS a so t lh question of whether this book can lence"), The challenge is to conceive or a "logic" that can account at once for
ne f rom t e outside I offi th I
to ke n of my belief in and debt t th ' . '. er ese ana yses as a the philological specificity of the fonner and the historical provenance of the
ent in the daHt critique, I am Ofo'h e g~e~t epIstemologIcal possibilities inher- latter. It seems to me that this is one way or rejuvenating our vernacular
, , e OpmlOn that the surest , 'b
to It IS through persistently criti I way 0 contn ute "science," modes of thinking that perdure in marginalized tongues,
ca engagement.
All around us there are signs or that one great monument of our modernity.
f
x Preface
Preface xi
which is rcally the idol, the eidolon of Out . d·ffi .
on ha vm. g set up an "inner world" of, reli io In I ercnce·-w'e p.nde o u rse 1y es Suvir Kaul, Soumyabrata Choudhury, Shiva Kumar Srinivasan. But also
g
protect, preserving DUll desires and wills fr:::'ha~ w~ can raise barners to and with gratitude Aamir Mufti, Colleen Lye, Tim Watson, Benedict Robinson
our very own worlds, with our deities at th wlthm so as to ~ut into effect and Janaki Bakhle; Joy Hayton; Dorothea von Miicke, Rob Nixon. Gyan
ments. From such an indifferent int . . e chenter of these Willed environ~ Prakash, E. Valentine Daniel, Homi Bhabha and John Archer. Ram Bapat
·11 d enonty t at merely puts' I
WI e worlds and proceeds to mak d" . III P ace our and Gobind Purushottam Deshpande, Maharashtra's most eminent thinkers,
outer, let us try to turn aw e IstmctlOns between the inner and the graciously agreed to look at early versions of Chapter 6 and a fragment of
body, not just the empowe%~~;~I~e~~It~res of mirac.le that .tell the whole what is now Chapter 9. Meera Kosambi provided early encouragement and
directedness (a "non-indifference") It • ow to prachce an Inward other· help. Anne Feldhaus, Lee Schlesinger and Eleanor Ze\liot were always
away from precisely the "turning i~war~'~~ seem strange that I seek a turn enthusiastic and forthcoming in the early stages of this project. Dattatreya
having achieved in the Indo-Isla· .11 h~t we congratulate ourselves on Deshpande helped bring the three·volume set of the Mangalurkar·Kelkar
. mle mt enmum before ad' I'
Ism. We think of this as the great tide of 0 ' '" n since co oOlal· Dnyandel'i from Mumbai. I am grateful to Gauri Viswanathan for her great
the south in the seventh centur and bro: pul~~ religIOSity that came from generosity and encouragement. The American Institute for Indian Studies,
bhakti was only a placing of cast~ at th e ~an lers of caste and creed. But Chicago. provided a generous fellowship for a year in Pune in 2004 .. 5. Peter
that understood itself in the reg d e~e~ttl,atthevery~eartofaHinduism Manning made it possible for me to take that year off; he and my other
religion. Bhakti turned the barrie:: ol?ln;i~~ a~d Judaism as a historical colleagues at the English department, Stony Brook, and Martha Smith in the
a cordon around the inner region of heart aw mwa.rd ~nd set them up as Chair's office, have been untiringly supportive; Nancy Lannack at the ISSO
as the bhakti religion of the so I that .' We unthlllkmgly celebrate this ensured that my documentation passed muster; the uncomplaining and
Hindu~sm, rendering it modern ~lld enlire£~;enated an effete an~ legalistic always courteous staff at Melville Library's Inter-Library Loan Oll\ce made
severe III this myth of a Reformation in J-li~du~ed, or at least we like to per available the US's vast holdings of Indian literature. The circle of my uncles
away from this religion in order to turn towar~mh T~day we ma~ ~ave to !.urn and aunts, Ashok and Jaya Chandorkar, Sumati and Srikant Tambt; Madhu
to ~ut a .new comportment in place. It is to th "t e "orm ~f poht.lcs reqUired sudan and Jyoti Wakankar, Neelima Wakankar, Jagdish and Suman
as It reSides in our historical me d e f~ct (gothl) of this furn away Srikhande, my grandparents Rajaram and Shantabai Wakankar, and my
wills that. I dedicate the following :;:s.an Continues to operate within our sister Radhika suspended over this work the veil of their sympathetic magic;
A verSion of Chapter 2's discussion of the K . the much lamented Srihari Khanwelkar would have read this with interest
explicit reference to issues of "ra" d' ~pah~a where I make more and openness; Sunanda and Satish lIulyalkar, Madhusudan and Virna]
Question of a Prehistory" in C ce d an mdlgenelty, appeared as "The Hulyalkar, Vibha and Vaman "Chandu" Kale, Srinivas Wakankar. Nishith
, . ' Jyanen ra Pandey ed "$ b It C' .
Special Issue of Interventions 10'3 (N b ., u a ern Itlzens," "Gundya" Dadhich, and Srikant "Kantya" Botre extended friendship and
presented at the second conferen~ on ~~~:~a~r .200,~): 285-·302. It was first conversation. Sitaram Wakankar. man of many pseudonyms, remained a
ies," at Emory University during December 7_.t;tn Citizens and their I-listor~ perennial source of inspiration. Sanjay Krishnan's example as a thinker,
Lal, Gyan Pandey and Laurie Patton for th' .2007. I am grateful to Ruby writer and friend informs this book in many subtle ways. I want to acknow
Chapter 6's analysis of Rajwade's "G elr co~ments on that occasion. ledge here the critical input of Qadri Ismail, Teena Purohit, Sunil Agnani,
appeared in essentially the same fo . r~mmar for th: Dnyaneswari has Nauman Naqvi. Anupama Rao, Chenxi Tang, Ravindran Sri ramachandran,
Aquil eds, History in Ihe Vernaclila/~~~hi' a~tha Chatterjee and Raziuddin Rajan Krishnan, Jyotsna Uppal, Nermeen Shaikh. Saurabh Dube, Ishita
read at a con terence at the Centre for Studieer~a~en.t Bla~k, 2008). It was Bannerjee·Dube, Sudipto Sen, Rama and Karuna Mantena. Sanjay Reddy,
S
during December 28-30 '004 1 t t h k III Social SCiences, Kolkata. Aditya Behl, Christian Novetzke, Ruby Lal and Ajay Skaria. A reader who
, - . wan 0 t an S'b .. B dh
engagement with the paper. I aJI an opadhyay for his preferred to remain unnamed provided me with the first incisive appraisal of
A fragment of Chapter 4 appeared as "Th A . this work. Dipesh Chakrabarty took the time to read and comment on an
and Canonicity in Indian Modernit "in M se nomal~ of Ka?lr: Culture early version of the last chapter: I am in debt to him for his encouragement
and A'a Sk' . ~" y,. . S. PandJan Shall Mayaram
J y ana ~s, Subaltern Studies: Volume XII (Delh·' p' and interest at the time. Gil Anidjar read the manuscript with the magnanim·
2005). I. ennanent Black, ity and concern that friends know is characteristic of him. The rigor and
I would like to thank Rajkamal Prakash' . . seriousness of Rajeswari Sunder Rajan's work has served as a constant
granted to translate large scctions of Hazari ra:~d t~ ~er";1,lsslon. gracefully source of illumination while this book was being written: she has wished this
This is the place to make note of some Old~r d . Wlvedl s Kablf~book. project well from its inception. Gyan Pandey's wisdom and kindness, and the
r
Ganesh Joshi, Mccnakshi MUkhcrJ'e R' Be bts. R. D. Thakur, Chandra rare privilege of his friendship are for me unexampled in academic life. The
c, 1m I hattacharya, Ania Loomba,
philosophical and literary-critical adumbration of "hearsay" as it is
xii Pr~race
attempted here received its first impetus from the work and personal example
of Partha Chatterjee and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: the prescn(."C of these Part I
two eminent thinkers in Atherican and South Asian intellectual life continues
to have worldwide reverberations. This book would not have been possible
Introduction
without the generosity. love and Support of my parents. Gajanan and Neela
Wakankar. The book is dedicated to them. Asmita. and Nayantara who
arrived lately. continue to remind me of all that connects this work of ten
The question of a prehistory
years to the quiet passage of the hour as much as the many scusons gathered
in its arc.
• 1 Subalternity at the cusp
Limits and openings of the
dalit critique
This book tries to imagine what it means to intercept a mode of thinking
at the CUSp,1 Its subject is the poetry of three medieval saint-pocts from
northern and western India. The work of at least two of these poets,
Tukaram (1608-50) and Dnyaneswara (d. 1296) is little known outside India.
and is certainly altogether unfamiliar to South Asians who know very little
about western India. The key figure in this book, the fifteenth century weaver
poet Kabir (d. 1518) who was a convert to Islam, is known both in the
English-speaking and Perso-Arabic world as a mystic poet whose poems arc
often placed alongside those of great Sufi poets such as Rumi. In India, Kabir
was for long seen as a poet who defied caste and religious distinctions in his
,, impassioned verses; he was taken to be the very embodiment of Indian secu
larism before and after the time of Nehru. Yet the recent history of Kabir, and
by the same token Dnyaneswara and Tukaram, requires me to do more in this
book than introduce the reader to the writings of these extraordinary poets.
For, in the last decade or so a resurgent datit (untouchable) movement has
sought to claim for Kabir the status of a dalit god, or a dalit thinker. "Datif"
or downtrodden, is how empowered untouchables prefer 10 address them
selves. Kabir's dalitness stems from his "loss of caste" as a weaver, a julaha,
but also from his explicit references to caste distinction in his poems.
This resurgence of dalits needs to be understood not just as a major South
Asian phenomenon but as an event which bears great affinity with political
movements among migrants and indigenes all over the world. A unique
feature of these movements is what I will call their "insistent immediacy."
Such movements are "insistent" because of their rapid and quite remarkable
entry into the political field. More crucially, they deploy their self-recognition
as social groups whose specific sense of being rests on a notion of divinity
that is "immediately" prior to their historical experience. This experience may
be one of having found (God) but it need not take the form of theology
per sc. In this book, I will adopt the practice of placing the word "God" in
brackets so as to make the point that divinity has receded in the history of
religion. (This point about the pervasive "atheism" of mainstream religion
could have been made by crossing out the word in every instance. placing it
under erasure.) The memory of having-found is for such groups a lesson in a
4 Introduction Subalternity at the cusp 5 ,,
kind of primordial generosity, an ancient form of other-directed behavior. pages are for the most part in sympathy with t~e work of such contemporary .1
.J
Its effect is to instill in tbem an extra-human notion of tenderness that is dalit intellectuals as Gopal Guru, Kancha IIhah, Chandrabhan Prasad and
ever solicitous of their fellow human being. This ethical stance precedes their Anand Tellumbde who, in a very crucial sense, inhabit the cusp, It is no doubt
entry into politics as self-empowered groups, but it nonetheless imbues their a truism to say that at a time when the insertion of Indian society into global
actions with a sense of mutual accountability that cannot easily be ex.plained capital through the workings of the free market !s rapidly u~~erw.ay, ~ore
by the schemas of myth, religion and archaic belief to which it is usually and more hitherto subaltern communities are makmg the tranSitIOn 1Il~0 hnes
ascribed. What is crucial is the anteriority of such an ethical comportment to of mobility, as is evident from the growing mobilizations among dailts and
their political practice. An important concern in this book is the problem of tribals in the electoral scene. "Hitherto subaltern" implies that they formerly
how to write a prehistory of political empowcnnent understood in this sense; had no access to lines of upward mobility; the lack of access to mobility is a
it entails an attempt to turn to a lorm of historical experience that, because minimal description of what it means to be "subaltern." What these formerly
it involves a conception of the infinite, necessarily resists historiographical subaltern groups now lay claim to is the individuality needed to affinn t.he
recovery. ceaseless negotiation between community and state that Partha Challel)ee
What could be the motivation to envisage such a form of counter-memory (2006) has described as the basis of "political society." Using the break-up
from out of the available historiographical and philological evidence? It of populations along lines of caste and religion (among other markers of
arises from the need to understand the often dubious ways in which political identity) since the colonial census in the late nineteenth century. these group~
empo~erment transpir~s in the electoral arena. One need not necessarily play the electoral number game with unpredictable, often alarming.resul~s. II
~oncelv~ of such a prehistory as a corrective to the sometimes alarming polit- we look at the murkiness of electoral strategy from thc perspective 01 the
1cal chOices these groups make. often in defiance of traditional conceptions ideals of democratic emancipation since the French and German Enlighten
?f ideology. The ambition behind the prehistory attempted in these pages is ment it would seem as though dalit politics exemplifies a "decline" in civic
IOstead to "supplement" the political agenda of such groups with an account virtu; common to non-Western democracies. But from the point of view of
of what underlies the idea of the social that is at stake for them. It is my these groups themselves democracy is an occasion lor what Chatterjee
c?nte~tion th~t this primordial ground refers us to a "past" that often escapes describes as the chance to "give to the empirical form of a population group
hlstonographlCal or theological gestures among these groups themselves. the moral attributes of a community" (2006: 57). "Insistence" perhaps best
What is needed here, it seems to me. is an awareness that their own sense of describes this affirmation of a protean political will which wavers. depending
c.ommunity and social accountability stems from ancient forms of moral prac upon the representational or political stake in question, between claiming a
tice that predate the dawn of religion per se. I want to insist that despite the universal or a particular pertinence for dalit identity.
religious Jeanings of stich groups (whether they turn, as in the case of Indian It should be borne in mind that the current insertion of low-caste and
indigenes, known in India as ·'tribals" [see Devy 2006]. and dalits to resurgent tribal communities into empowerment has not etTaced their experience of
Hinduism or Buddhism), their sense of human being in the world is indebted centuries of caste oppression. By analogy with the prt.--dicament of the tragic
not to religion but to its prehistory. Rather than rcject the findings of the hero we might say that these communities work between silence (the horror
History of Religions. this book works through some of its representative of c~ste discrimination) and speech (empowerment as caste communities in
works in order to uncover a prehistory of religious sentiment. The fact that a electoral stakes).2 In other words, we can point to the persistence in con
prehistory of religion can also be a prehistory of contemporary politics is a temporary low-caste politics, of older forms of community that can now be
"co-incidence" this book will examine at length. It will be an integral aspect invoked cannily in the new political scene. To think at the cusp or of the cusp
of my attempt to undo the distinction between the religious and the secular. is to seek to capture the tumult of this individuation: to catch a lonn of
This book's thcsis is intentionally hyperbolic. For it does not shrink from political will on the make. A unique aspect of this movement Of. com
claiming that the secularization of religion did not happen merely in the ml.mities across the threshold of disempowerment into empowerment IS that
modern age. It happened at the moment religions themselves were instituted it inverts our presuppositions with regard to the Indian modern. The cri
at some point in the distant past. Moreover. the problem of secularization tique of the Nehruvian account of modernity, a sllspicion with regard to
applies not just to the history of Western but also to the history of non technological progress or central planning and of the relation between the
Western religions, greatly attenuating the distinction between thc two. This state and the free market, in addition to the recent turn toward vernacular
explains the persistent attentiveness in this book to the question of antiquity, histories in an effort to reverse the homogenizing of linguistic usage in
which has yielded the peculiar feature of Indian mystic speech that I will globalization-these. in the most basic terms, have been the guiding p.r~n­
describe in the next chapter as the instinct for "hearsay." ciples of scholarly Indian debate in thc social scienccs and the humanities
Let us return to the dalit scene once again. The analyses presented in these in the last few dccades. The new dalit and tribal intellectuals are not
6 Introduction
Subalternit), at the cusp 7
unfamiliar with these criticis L .
intransigence and critique hav~ m~~ a~~~gs~anJmg tra~i~ions of subaltern a philosophical and literary argument lor this tall into compromise in the
y.
modernity What is p~uliar t t~ t, em for a ent.cal encounter with form of the emergence in this period of a popular allegorical mindset.)
:;:~~ep~~~o~~::w ~~, :~~~~~',~ ~~~i~~~~::~,;~~~~:e;~~si~~a~i:':;~ ~~o~e~ Dalit energies are therefore "insistent" because they represent a remarkable
instance of the process by which communities will themselves into being as
to the,emancipatory goals of the Euro c'an En I, go ,they remain commiUed communities. Dalit identity is not an inel1, historically neutral and passive
sometimes endorse the idea of . P hghtenment Not only do they form of "existence." Let us stop for a moment and look at that last word
r.
an Incessant modernization ( d th
re fuse to take seriously clitiques of the d. an ere ore more closely. Dalits are thrown out of their way of life as existent beings
claim that colonialism itself was a b ~o er~), they can go so far as to through the sheer violence of caste: their "existence" is best represented as
it gave them the economic and POI~~:I ~h~:ht\~n1 nonb*brahrnins, since "ek-sistence," where the prefix "ek-" has the same character of violent expul
brahmanical dominance. eWI a to reak away from sion as it has in the word "ek-static." But in order to avoid the awkwardness
. Rather than express bemusemcilt at what can of the phrase, let us stay with the word "insistent," which bears a similar
sive strain in daHt rhetoric we should I b r appear to be. an oddly regrcs connotation while also carrying the added sense of force and intervention.
protest, one that kee s in' '. e.leve, evolve a new Idea of subaltern We can attend to this semantic undertow with the help of the following
idea of the future b~th orin;:. t~le daht Idea of the past as well as the dalit formulation: dalits are thus thrown OUI of their way of life ("ek-sistence") and
Here the notion of "immedia~ :~. turn. ~roTuhlld th~ problem of the present. thrown into politics ("in-sistence"). Now dalit energies are "immediate"
"im-mediacy" be . y I~ cruCIa . e daht present is a condition of because their mode of being is grounded in the immediacy of an absolute, an
cause Its ground IS the idea of a d I"t .
looking at the world, at history th t' . . a 1 essence. a daht way of absolute ground for subjecthood. Both ground and subject have to be under
that political moment when d : a .IS I? a ve~y .Important sense "prior" to stood in terms of their specific features, in separation and in relation. Even as
Wh~~tSt~:~ec~fY th~l.r
to the historic juncture at Immediate needs. It is prior dalit energies are insistently on its way, ever in process or pull toward a
enter into the ~bjective game ofnumbe~ ;; t. IS or t~at mode. ~f solidarity, specific and determinable emancipatory end, dalit subjecthood returns
pation. (The latter, as we have noted m s at IS es~nt1a1 t.o poittlcal emanci continually to the immediacy of a pure origin. In this sense dalit subjecthood
some of the failed '. . ,~y even entail a dehberate espousal of shares in the historical comportment of subaltern communities the world
projects ot modernity) The form 1 t' h'
previous sentences will be easier t d· d u a Ion couc ed m the over, in that it dares to inhabit the tumult and tempest at the center, the
h 0 un erstan once we break it . t I maelstrom generated by the movement between the primordial "ground" of
:h~~s ~;:s~~~la:~:tC~~:~~~~~~ ~f a m~d~rnity. ~:t~~ ;~s~~
d daHt The first prehistory and the necessarily objectifying embrace of a historical "subject
subjectivity, The second axis is that n essence; It l~ the basis of a "pure" dalit hood," It is unfortunate that this prehistory is often read as permanently
ized this as th " . of the present. I have already character- immured in mysticism, arcana, and occult. What we tend to neglect is this
e expelIence 01 the cusp or threshold th h·,
movement from out of subalternity b, , . h ' e ex I arating rapid and heady movement from the ground, which exemplifies the insight
prevI'Ous .SOCia l constraints remain ,i n u lancoe 'W it oui a rec'ogn.ition 0 f h ow such groups have into the infinite and the eternal, toward the inevitably
third and potentially most troubli .P. h III th~ n~w dispensatIOn. The limited condition of specific historical subjects. In Chapter 7, I relate this idea
ambition into the future. More ~;i:~IS I~ prOjection of daHt desire an? of the center to the Platonic account of the khora, which is something like an
preoo::up~tion with memory, its claim\n th~se aV:: assume that t~e d~ht unlocatable origin prior to the origin of the universe.
~~:~~~~:: ~~0~~i~::unn~;;c1;~c~~ t~l~n~~rst!~~'h~;ro~~~n~~ ~~~:~~~T My reference to the idea of a "pure" daHt subjecthood may give cause for
alarm. We easily assent to the idea that the subject is a locus of action; but
occurs in the third version of Schell' , "ure, e term counterclallll' one must always proceed to point out that the acting subject works under
(2000 [1815]" 59) s mg s Ages of the World" fragments specific historical and social constraints. To argue for a "pure" subject would
reversion fr~m th: gegen~rf! "c~unter-throw." It refers us to a deliberate
seem to fly in the face of our current consensus with regard to the limits and
~:~e~e\:;;~;n~~~£~~;:~~i~~S,hh!I~~~~,o ~:f;t~r~~~c:~::~:I~I~~o~U~~I~a~~O~ possibilities of human action. The very idea of purity can seem insupport
able, given that subjects act always within certain limits. My point is that the
e rea m 0 co-optation pe h f
moral compromise and ineluctabl . . ',r aps even 0 history of subaltern communities offers a remarkable instance of an
lect the ethical instances of the ~acs~n;.~~clty, bwhere sub~ltern gr~)llps neg- "immediate" grasp of their own historical essence. This recognition is always
~~~/~~I:~~ fs°~~~~:~:e~~i~a;:~~;ev~:;~~ft~~ b~: t~~~~:~l~ ~:~~:e!~ii~ prior to the objectifying languages of transcendence in which they will
quickly proceed to couch it; it persists until such time as it withstands the
the popular since the medieval pedod. (C~:p~e:i~ees,entat,',on at the heart.of lure of religion, nation, or ethnic belonging. The recognition is pure because
ow a empts to proVide it is fundamentally transient. It is pure because it is an act of abstraction, a