The Flaming Feet and Other Essays: The Dalit Movement in India

282 Pages·2011·5.18 MB·English

by  D. R. Nagaraj

edited by
Prithvi Datta
Chandra Shobhi
preface by
Ashis Nandy
Published by
PERMANENT BLACK

'Himalayana', Mall Road, Ranikhet Canrt,
This book is dedicated to
Ranikher 263645

DEVANOOR MAHADEVA

[email protected]

and

Distributed by
SlDDAUNGAIAH

ORIENT BI /\CKSWAN ['RIVATE LTD

Bangalore Bhopal Bhubaneshwar Chandigarh
two founders of

Chennai Ernakulam Guwahati Hyderabad Jaipur
the Dalit movement in Karnataka

Kolkata Lucknow Mumbai New Delhi Parna

www.orientblackswan.com

Copyright © 2010 GIRIjA NACAI{Aj AND AMULYA NACARAj

for all the material herein by D.R. Nagaraj

Copytight © 20 I0 PRITHVI DATTA CHANDRA SIIOBHI

for rhe introduction and editorial material

Copyright © 20 I 0 A.SJ-m NANDY for the Forewotd
The Flaming Feet: A Study o/the Dalit Movement

in India by D.R. Nagaraj was first published in

Bangalore in 1993 by the South Forum Press, in collaboration

with the Institute of Cultural Research and

Action (ICRA), Bangalorc

The ptesent revised and

enlarged version is the second edition

Published in India 2010 by

PERMAI'[I\T BLACK

by exclll.'ive arrangement with the copyrightholdets

ISBN 81-7824-276-1

Typeset in Agaramond

by Guru Typograph Technology, Dwarka, New Delhi J10075

Printed and bound by Sapra Brothers, Ddhi-lIO092
~
Contents
Foreword to the Second Edition (2010)
ASHIS NANDY IX
Preface to the First Edition (1993)
XXI
Editorial Note and Acknowledgements
PRlTHVI DATTA CHANDRA. SHOBHI XXU1
Introduction: KhadgavagtZli Kavya
(Let Poetry Become [a] Sword)
PRITHVI DATTA CHANDRA SI-lOBHI
THE FLAMING FEET AND
OTHER ESSAYS: THE DALIT MOVEMENT
IN INDIA
PART I: GANDHI AND AMBEDKAR 19
Self-Purification vs Self-Respect: On the Roots of
the Dalit Movement 21
2 The Lie of a Youth and the Truth of an
Anthropologist: Two Tales on the Widening of
Emotional Concern 61
3 Gandhi and the Dalit Question: A Comparison with
Marx and Ambedkar 75
4 Two Imaginary Soliloquies: Ambedkar and Gandhi 81
""""T
Vlll Contents
PART II: POLITICS AND CULTURAL MEMORY 91
5 The Cultural Politics of the Dalit Movement-
Notes and Reflections 93 Foreword to the

6 Threefold Tensions: Pre-Colonial History, Colonial Second Edition (2010)

Reality, and Post-Colonial Politics-Notes on the
Making of Dalit Identity 110
Beyond the Politics of Rage
7 Violence on Dalits and the Disappearance of
the Village 125
ASHIS NANDY
8 The Problem of Cultural Memory 146
9 Misplaced Anger, Shrunken Expectations 164
With the death ofDoddaballapur Ramaiah Nagaraj in 1998 at the
10 The Pathology of Sickle Swallowing 174
age of 44, India lost a literary theorist and social critic who had
barged into its familiar world ofknowledge and scholarship to pose
PART III: DALIT LITERATURE 183 a challenge which political and social theorists in the countty had
sttuggled hard to evade. That challenge promised to supply if not
11 Against the Poetics of Segregation and
Self-Banishment 185 the frame, at least the outlines ofa culturally rooted and democra­
tically sustainable radicalism for our times. This was a voice that
12 From Political Rage to Cultural Affirmatiori: Notes
did not condescend by seeking to speak on behalfofthe 'poor and
on the Kannada Dalit Poet-Activist Siddalingaiah 196
oppressed' from behind academic desks in metropolitan universi­
13 The Power of Poor People's Laughter 210
ties; it was the autonomous voice and mode ofself-expression ofthe
14 Between :";ocial Rage and Spiritual Quest: Notes on excluded. It spoke from within their world and ventured a theory
Dalit Writing in Kannada 218 of us and our world. The dispossessed and the disempowered, in
15 Cosmologies of Castes, Realism, Dalit Sensibility, Nagaraj's world, give you no scope for pity and have little patience
and the Kannada Novel 223 with your sympathy. There is in them a robust, almost fierce, self­
confidence that emerges neither from modern individualism nor
16 Social Change in Kannada Fiction: A Comparative
Study of a Dalit and Non-Dalit Classic 232 the demystification of traditions which are supposed to be the
engines of social change in our part of the world. This is a confi­
Bibliography 244
dence which comes from rediscovered meanings of cultural tradi­
Index 251 tions and reworked ideas ofcollectivity. India belongs to the people
Nagaraj represents not by the courtesy or generosity of progressive,
............

''I'
x Foreword to the Second Edition (2010) Foreword to the Second Edition (2010) Xl
culturally emancipated Indians; India belongs to them because official culture of the Indian state. Yet, in the formative years over
they have disinherited those who claim the exclusive right to define the 1950s till the mid 1960s, Nehruvian high culture did keep the
India. Nagaraj challenged academic correctness; he knew it could options open for future generations ofIndians. Nagaraj was a pro­
be more obscene than political correctness. duct of that ambivalent culture of politics and, naturally, had to
I do not read a word of Kannada, and it is a pity that I have to rebel against its certitudes. But he also had to start a dialogue with
depend on the English writings of Nagaraj and my long conversa­ it. Ananthamurthy's role in Nagaraj's intellectual life was to con­
tions with him over the years to write this note. The appropriate verse with Nagaraj not merely as a friend and empathetic critic,
person to write this Foreword ~ould have been U.R. Anantha­ butalso asonewhocouldoccasionallyspeak on behalfofNagaraj's
murthy. But then, that would also have been something ofa pity, disowned selves.
because Ananthamurthy would not have been able to write on his It is easy to think ofNagaraj as a counterpart of the Dalit poets
own crucial presence in Nagaraj's life and work. Ananthamurthy is in some Indian languages who, in the 1970s, gatecrashed into the
the person with whom Nagaraj often silently debated even while he festivities of urbane, cosmopolitan Indians busy celebrating their
was conversing with me and, of course, when he was writing. To social conscience as well as their ability to shed even more tears
understand the nature of that other conversation, one will have to for the plight of the Dalits than the Dalits themselves. This new
first place Nagaraj in the contemporary culture of Indian politics. generation ofwriters-Dalits and Shudras-wanted neither sym­
pathy nor solidarity; they wanted agency. Nagaraj, coming after
them, claimed something more-the right to deny that they, the
~
Dalits and the Shudras, had a cultural burden to carry. In his essay
Nagaraj represented post-Emergency India, to which Nehruvian on the Dalit poet-activist Siddalingaiah (chapter 12 in the present
India was already becoming a slightly embarrassing inheritance volume), Nagaraj makes clear that he celebrates difference and the
rather than an immediate presence. Yet, paradoxically, he was a pro­ cultural inheritance of the Dalits and Shudras, that he wants to
duct ofthe democratic, Brahminic, patronizing socialism, with its take the first step towards recognizing the suffocating cultural and
distinctive version of noblesse oblige, over which Nehru presided in psychological baggage that the upper castes have to carry. This is
style. Whatever its flaws, that dispensation-with its unique mix of perhaps his way ofshowing up academic radicalism in India as the
an unjust social order and an open polity leavened by institution­ stance ofa political and intellectual spectator who is unable to dis­
alized affirmative action-had released much creative energy at the engage from fashionable, global rhetoric, a spectator divorced from
bottom and peripheries ofIndia. It was that energy which Nagaraj vernacular experiences-ofothers and his own-as much as from
exuded; the political edge ofhis writings came from the inner con­ Indian society's surviving traditions of radical dissent.
tradictionsofthesystem.Today, manyofusmaystrikeaposture of The Dalits in Nagaraj's work are not rwo-dimensional per­
amused boredom with the pre-war theories of progress and bor­ sons and communities; they are never solely 'poor' and 'oppress­
rowed cosmopolitanism that marked many of the first-generation ed'-passive victims waiting to be emancipated by iconic individu­
leaders of Independent India-an attitude which still taints the als and benevolent regimes, unequipped with anything other than
-r

Foreword to the Second Edition (2010) Foreword to the Second Edition (2010) Xlii
Xli
some rudimentary proto-materialist, quasi-historical, ptimltlve philosophy oflife, a unique experiment in self-defInition. Nagaraj
forms of scientific and technological sensitivity. On the contrary wanted to tell and hear stories in which both the storyteller and the
they have a rich repertoire ofdiverse cultures and memories-their listener are embedded in the story, bonded by an enabling form of
stories and music, their systems of knowledge and technological intersubjectivity.
skills, their gods and goddesses, their ghosts and shamans. The con­ Political or social exclusion in such a context becomes a cultural
traband worldviews that Nagaraj commemorates are themselves pathology, not merely demeaning to the victims but also self-limit­
statements of dissent, legitimate in themselves. They comprise ing and, in the long'run, self-destructive for the powerful and the
another set ofanalytic categories, forms ofingenuity and creativity, dominant. It narrows the functioning ofthe selfand limits its creat­
a robust imaginary that includes the record of their suff-ering and ive potentialities. This recognition is another clue to the confI­
humiliation, their constructions of the past, even what might be dence with which Nagaraj sought to start a conversation between
called the 'algorithms' of their resistance. For Nagaraj this imagin­ the classical and the popular, the vernacular and the global, the
ary is in particular both a technology ofselfand a means ofpolitical traditional and the modern. What may once have been a search for
intervention. From this flows his continuous and unapologetic an appropriate political-ideological platform for our times gradu­
refusal to strictly separate literature and politics. The weaver's son ally turned into a philosophical quest for a larger set of reconcilia­
weaves a pattern in which the borders between literature and life tions. This also btought Nagaraj closer to Gandhi, whose lifelong
have dissolved. project was to liberate the upper castes from the curse of untouch­
This awareness, Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi's Introduction to abilitywhile making the empowerment ofDalits central to his anti­
this book suggests, was a gift to Nagaraj from the Dalit and Shudra imperialist struggle.
writers of Karnataka. However, there were other less visible influ­ Nagaraj called himself a Left Gandhian and included in that
ences ofwhich he was not probably fully conscious. Thus, he knew category writer-thinkers such as U.R. Anantlnmurthy, and activ­
the work ofRaimon Panikkar on intercultural dialogue. I doubt if ists like Medha Patkar and activist-scholars like Vandana Shiva. He
he realized that some of Panikkar's concerns had run parallel to described me the same way and wondered ifI would accept it as a
his, or that he was unknowingly exploring the possibility of a dia­ self-definition. I might have, but for my growing suspicion and
logue of cultures within India. The centrality given to the mythic fear of ideologies-from the nationalism and radicalism of vari­
as constitutiveofpersonhood,community, andculturein Panikkar ous hues, to developmentalism and scientism-that have taken an
re-emerges in Nagaraj in another form, as a bridge between litera­ enormous toll ofhuman life over the past hundred years. However
ture and life, perhaps also as a form ofnegotiation between the two. impressive its performance in the bloodbaths of earlier centuries,
He imputes to the relationship an intimacy that can now probably during the last century no religious fanaticism has been able
only be found in epic cultures in the South that have maintained to compete with [lscism, nationalism, and communism in their
some continuity with their past. This perhaps means that each disdain for human suffering and sadistic pleasure in the use of
vernacular oral or literary tradition can be read as an alternative human violence for large-scale social engineering. And I am not
Foreword to the SerondEdition (2010) xv
XIV Foreword to the Second Edition (2010)
and the oppressed. Nor did they need to build their community
even including in this taxonomy a whole range of South American
cultures on a denial of their gods and goddesses, ghosts and de­
and East and Southeast Asian regimes which made developmental­
mons, parents and grandparents, ancestral lands and customs,
ism a dirty word for many in the post-World War II period. The
knowledge systems and myths which had sustained them through
other name for such developmentalism, we came to recognize in the
all the violence, expropriation, and humiliation: they did nor need
1970s and 1980s, was developmental authoritarianism. It was, I
to propitiate their putative well wishers and self-proclaimed eman­
used to tell Nagaraj, time for Southern intellectuals to develop a
cipators. Their cultures already incorporated the resources to serve
critique ofideology itsel( particularly in those regions ofthe South
contemporary political purposes. This worldview is the backdrop
where faiths were not dead and where ideologies could not but
to Nagaraj's brilliant, pioneering effort to reconcile c;andhi and
be skin-deep. In any case, I said to him, no one in South Asia had
Ambedkar in his only book, The Flaming Feet.
arrived at an ideology that was even tacidy sensitive to the disparate
As Shobhi's Introduction to this volume makes clear, Nagaraj
concerns and formulations which guided the political actions of
was never only a spectator or recorder of the changing self-defini­
those who were barging into the big league ofIndian politics from
tion of the Dalits, he also participated in the changes. He was con­
the bonom as well as the margins of Indian society. He was sym­
vinced that rhe Dalit movement had to move beyond the politics
pathetic but not fully convinced.
of rage. Dalit politics had led to literary and artistic creativity. but
What really brought us close, however, was neither Gandhi nor
also to self-pity and self-negation, to a denigration of one's own
Ambedkar, nor the 'nativism' that was often imputed to us both,
cultural heritage. Indeed, as the political lot of the Dali[s improv­
but Nagaraj's passionate commitment to the rediscovery-not
ed, their past and cultures seemed in his analysis to have become
discovery-oftheself-esteem anddignityofthe Dalits.Thiswas his
something of a liability for them. They wanted to wipe the slate
politics of acknowledgement. He did not try to build their self­
clean. But, he argued. such anonymity too is not easy in a commu­
esteem or grant them dignity; he believed rhat in the diverse, rich
nity-based society that has not, except in small urban pockets. frag­
cultures of Dalit communities all over South Asia there existed
mented into atomized individuals. This was the other reason,
not merely the ingredients but also cultural forms that comprised
I suspect, which led Nagaraj to Gandhi and to his marvellous
the wherewithal ofboth self-esteem and dignity. Centuries ofstruc­
attempt to posthumously reconcile Gandhi and Ambedkar (most
tural violence and humiliation had neither emptied these of a
specifically in chapter 4 of the present volume).
robust, often-well-integrated sense of self, nor of their human po­
Would rhis have been approved by Babasaheb Ambedkar, the
tential. His view was that Dalits must not disown their cultures
pioneering Dalit politician, one of the makers of modern India,
and seek such ingredielHs in various versions of modernity and
and now also an icon of India's modern literati looking for a safe,
the fashionable ideologies that, by their very nature, were loaded
manageable icon of Dalit pride in the shape of a constitutional
against them. They did not have to become a collection of two­
lawyer, liberal democrat, and product of Columbia University?
dimensional, hollowed-out persons and communities of the poor
~
Foreword to the Second Edition (2010) Foreword to the Second Edition (2010) XVll
XVI
No one can say, but a former cabinet minister of Haryana, Shyam sense on account ofthe beliefthat it allowed him not to suffer fools
Chand, himself a Dalit, writes in the Mainstream of 15 August gladly. Ofcourse, mostly no one challenged his right to be what he
was, for even those who spoke out against brahminism and manu­
2009:
vad were usually ignorant about both.
Dr Ambedkar married a Brahmin girl, Dr 5avita Kabir. That was after
I was always in awe of Nagaraj's learning, particularly the way
the assassination of the Mahatma. When Dr Ambedkar saw Pyarelal
he could use Kannada literature, Sanskrit classics, and medieval
[noted freedom fighter and Gandhi's biographer and secretary] standing
Jaina texts to sketch macroscopic, ambitious, political and social
before the present Khadi Bhandar, Connaught Place, he got down
from the car, went up to him and said: 'Had Bapu been alive, he theories-even ifonly to disobey his doctor and flout discipline in
would have blessed our marriage. We did not understand him.' Had matters offood and drink. Alas, the human body is often not that
Gandhiji been alive, Dr Ambedkar would not have floated the Repub­ sensitive to glittering, virtuoso arguments. In his case, unluckily for
lican Parry in 1952. After Gandhiji's assassination there was no person his many admirers, it decided to follow its own logic.
to campaign for social reforms and fight for the rights of Dalits. His A few weeks before he died, Nagaraj told me he had completed
[Ambcdkar'sJ defeat at the hustings gave a rude shock to the Dali[s.
the manuscript on which, we all knew, he had been working for
In another version of the story, in Narayan Desai's Gandhikat!J{I, about two years. This was an exploration into the politics of cul­
this was also the momelU when Ambedkar gave Pyarelal the wed­ ture. We never found that manuscript: neither in his notebooks,
ding invitation card and, as he did so, there were tears in his eyes. nor in the computers he used. I was heartbroken; he had told me
in so many words that a book-length manuscript was ready and he
{~
was going to hand it over to me in a few weeks. I could not believe
Nagaraj proudly called himself an atishudra; he flaunted his caste that we had lost it. Finally, D.L. Sheth, a colleague who had always
status when it came to his lifestyle and many of his tastes in food been close to Nagaraj and whom Nagaraj considered one of the
and drink; he claimed that his social background entitled him to finest minds he had ever encountered, consoled me by pointing out
ScotchwhIsky and avoid its Indian editions-he had drunkenough that what Nagaraj had told me may have been literally faithful to
bad alcohol to take care of several lives. In intellectual exchanges, his idea ofthe reality ofthe mythic. When he said he had complet­
too, though his work heavily depended on his familiarity with an ed a book, perhaps he meant it was complete in his mind; all he
extremely wide range of vernacular texts, he could sometimes be had to do was write it out. I still sometimes dream of that script
abrasively brahminic. This was not only because it allowed him to magically emerging from some old computer in our office, know­
be arrogant and dismissive of ignorant, pompous ideologues, but ing well that it will not.
also because it occasionally allowed him not to be himself Many
~
years ago, Johan Galtung, as part ofa comparative study, identified
the distinctive style of intellectual discourse that brahminism had Indians ofall ideological and philosophical hues will be grateful to
cultivated, and Nagaraj could be playfully brahminic in Galtung's Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi for the tremendous effort he has
XVI11 Foreword to the Second Edition (2010)
made over a period of more than four years to make this work
accessible to the public. Nagaraj's English bore the imprint of his
Kannada, and the English translation in the present book has tried
to retain the atypical cadence of the original, thanks to the efforts The Flaming Feet
of Shobhi and Rukun Advani of Permanent Black. Shobhi was
supported, during a part of the time he spent on this book, by the
Committee for Cultural Choices and the Centre for the Study of When King Shravana placed an order
Developing Societies, both at Delhi. Intellectual support for this for a palanquin of flowers,

work has come from many sources, the most important of which the Gods, his slaves, made a flower palanquin.

'Be seated, Lord of Bankapuri', they said.

has been u.R. Ananthamurthy. Also crucial to this enterprise has
When the King sat in the palanquin,

been the help given by Girija Nagaraj.
they heaved it to their shoulders.

'Madari,'" where, where are the slippers?' he asked.
'You shall see them', our Father replied

and asked the Gods to move. With him our Lord

took Mari, Masni, Durgi and Chowdi.

Signalling to them with his eyes to stand away,

and removing the striped sheet,

he showed the King the slippers he had kept on a rock.
King Shravana got down from the palanquin
to flick the cover. When Madeva made the sign,
Vasudeva vanished with the cover that hid the slippers.
'Excellent!' said the King of Bankapuri
after taking a look, 'You have done
a fine job, giving them the form of a triad of gods.'
'Step into them, Your Highness', Madeva said,
'Take three steps forward and three steps back.
Try them, King, if they are tight, I'll loosen them
and if they are loose, I'll tighten them, for you.'
As the Gods stood around, the King said,
'Madari, you have made an excellent pair,
a fine pair indeed! We are mighty pleased.
"'The King calls him 'Madari' (untouchable) to show his contempt for the
lower castes.
~. I

xx The Flaming Feet
Ask for what you desire and you shall have it.'
'That can wait, Your Highness', Madeva said.
'Do put them on.' Lifting one foot
and then the other, the King eased them
Preface to the First Edition
into the slippers and complained. 'It's the big toe
on the left foot. Feels a little pinched.' (1993)
'It'll be alright, my Lord. Take
three steps forward and three steps back',
our Father said.
As the King stepped forward and then back,

This book is essentially a work based on my understanding of the
Our Lord Madeva took out a charmed pulse

Dalit movement in Karnataka: to be more precise, it constitutes the
from out of his bag and cast it on the ground.

As the King firmly placed his weight, a flame shot up,
reflections of a fellow traveller. But I believe this effort has some
a' flame shot up from the sale of his foot.
relevance to the national context as well, since Dalit movements all
You should have heard the King scream,
over the country have engaged themselves with a great many
you should have seen our Lord!

common themes and issues.
'Eh, Madari, you planned to kill me, didn't you? The ideas that have gone into this book have stemmed from my
Watch how I finish you off]' As the King ranted
interactiom with many activist" and writers ofthe Dalit movement
as if to rent the sky, the myriad Gods and men
in Karnataka over the last fifteen years. I will be failing in my duty
ran helter and skelter and Rangaswamy bolted
as a friend if! don't acknowledge the inspiration I received from Mr
to hide in a bush. Fearsome our Lord looked in anger,
fearsome indeed. Growing and growing S. Japhet and Mr S. Mariswamy-their ideas on Dalit emancipa­
as if someone had unwound both Earth and Heaven, tion, though sometimes different from mine, have set me to think
He pulled out a giant tree by its roots deeply on them.
and held it as a walking stick. He walked,
I don't consider this book a serious exercise in the mode ofsocial
Our Father, to where the King stood

science reasoning: the metaphorical reading of things has always
and placed his tiny foot on the nape

of King Shravana's neck
fascinated me. The fact that I am basically a student ofliterature has
trampling him under his foot.
contributed to this tendency a great deal. Literature too can serve
as a useful mirror or a lamp to study the complex socio-political
You should have seen our Lord.

you should have seen Him indeed!
processes of a society.
I have always held that it is better to study the Dalit movement
-An episode from the medieval Kannada folk epic
and its different expressions by situating them in the context of
'Madeshwara a/the Hills'. edited by P.K Rajashekar
and translated by Ramachandra Sharma other forms of protest: exclusivism can be deadly in these matters.
This explains my method of placing Dalit works of art along with