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Interrogating ‘Dalitness’ the Making of a “Subaltern” Community in Postcolonial Odisha

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Interrogating ‘Dalitness’ the Making of a “Subaltern” Community in Postcolonial Odisha Interrogating ‘Dalitness’ The Making of a “Subaltern” Community in Postcolonial Odisha Byasa Moharana CAS WORKING PAPER SERIES Centre for the Study of Social Systems Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi May 2014 CAS/WP/14-4 Byasa Moharana is Assistant Professor at School of Rural Development, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tuljapur Campus, Maharashtra. E-mail: [email protected] Working Paper Interrogating ‘Dalitness’ The Making of a “Subaltern” Community in Postcolonial Odisha Byasa Moharana Abstract Working with the framework of “structure and agency”, this paper seeks to interrogate what it means to be a “Dalit” in modern India. While agreeing that there exists a dialectical relationship between social structure and subaltern agency, the interrogation traverses through the terrain of modernist scholarship, and challenges the “mainstream” Dalit political conceptualization regarding who is a “Dalit” and who is not, or what constitutes a “genuine” Dalit assertion and what does not. The paper is based on an ethnographic study of a Dalit community (the Nirvediā- Bāuris) in coastal Orissa, and points out the importance of understanding the process of the making of a subaltern community in a historical context. The at- tempt is to understand the lived world of the Nirvediās that reflects the complex interplay of agency and power, religion and politics, the state and the commu- nity, resistance and domination, and the use of history and myth in the construc- tion of a subaltern identity. While attempting to argue for a non-essentialized understanding of Dalit ideology, I point out that there exists enormous diversity in the way subaltern communities as agents of history engage with power. Our task is to recognize that diversity rather than out-rightly reject the subjective experience of people as “traditional”, “non-modern” or “inauthentic”. The paper also points out the inadequacy of understanding Dalit agency through Ambed- karite discourse that so zealously clings to a modernist framework. 2 Byasa Moharana This paper is based on an ethnographic study of the Nirvediā-Bāuris, a small fraction of the larger Dalit community called the Bāuris. The larger aim here is to observe the dialectical relationship between the dominant social structure and subaltern agency. More specifically, I am looking at the agency of the Nirvediās that is involved in the making of the Nirvediā as a subaltern community in a historical context. Through this work, I am trying to dismiss the notion of a romanticized, essentialised or dehistoricised subaltern agent. Instead, I try to understand the lived world of the Nirvediās that reflects the complex interplay of agency and power, religion and politics, the state and community, resistance and domination, and the use of history and myth in the construction of subaltern identity. The Bāuris are mostly poor and landless, living in coastal Odisha, India. A few years after India’s independence, Radhamohan Das, the guru of this community, floated the idea of a new Dharma called “Jagannātha Dharma”. According to the principles of this new Dharma, Jagannātha, the most popu- lar Hindu deity of Odisha, was to be accepted as the supreme deity. Other high-caste Hindu deities were rejected, so also the authority of the Brahmans and the Vedas. Since they did not respect Vedic rituals, they were pejora- tively called the Nirvediās (literally, people with no Veda) by the high caste people. However, gradually the term gained currency among the followers, and they started referring to themselves as the Nirvediā-Bāuris, or simply the Nirvediās, and their Dharma began to be called the Nirvediā Dharma. They claimed that they were ‘pure’ Hindus unlike the Brahmans. They also re- worked the history of the community to claim that they were the non-Aryan ruling caste in ancient times, but the Brahmans (the Aryans), by means of treachery, usurped power and the Bāuris were rendered ‘untouchables’. The nationalist movement led by Gandhi had left a deep impact on this community and they were hopeful of a significant change after Independ- ence. However, they could not see their dream taking shape anywhere. This led to disillusionment towards the new state, and Radhamohan rejected the authority of the state and formed a parallel ‘caste-government’ as a monarchi- cal form of polity. At the same time, he also petitioned numerous memoranda to various state authorities seeking remedies for the helpless Bāuris. He died in 1972, and the Nirvediās preferred to keep silent and tried to keep away from the state. However, since 1990s, with the introduction of panchayati raj forms of local governance, and other developments in government policies, the Nirvediās’ engagement with the state has changed significantly. The fieldwork was conducted in two phases for about a year during 2006– 2008. The main site of fieldwork was Sundargan village, located in the dis- trict of Cuttack. However, I had to visit many other villages spread over three other coastal districts for collection of data. Ethnographic data was collected INTERROGATING ‘DALITNESS’ 3 through participant observation, interviews and observation. The case study method was also used to collect in-depth stories of a few individuals. In addi- tion to this, data was collected from various other sources such as newspapers, gazetteers, census reports and secondary sources. There are three broad themes through which I have tried to unravel the relationship of subaltern agency with the structures of power. Through our understanding of the Nirvediās as a subaltern community, we need to under- stand the relationship between social structure and the subaltern agent, and various theoretical positions on thereon. The second thematic discussion is the nature of the relationship between communities and the modern state. The third theme is Dalit politics in contemporary India where we try to lo- cate the Nirvediās as a “Dalit” community. Social Structure and Subaltern Agency Through the study of the ideas and practices of the Nirvediās as a subaltern community, I shall engage with some significant concerns in modern social theory. While it is significant to ask how historical specificities inform the ana- lytics and politics of a subaltern endeavour, at a broader level it is important to take into account questions of the dialectical interrelationship between social structure and human agency. When we are talking about a Dalit community in the hierarchically ordered Hindu society, the nature of the engagement between the agent and the socio-cultural forces has to be taken into account as the latter tend to dominate and dictate the conditions of engagement. The Nirvediās’ choice of a new Dharma and the struggle to create and hold on to a new religious identity directs our attention to the complex, dynamic and dialectical interrelationship between structure and agent. As subaltern agents, the Nirvediās have not accepted the caste order passively. They have questioned the legitimacy of such an exploitative order and also struggled to imagine and fashion a new social order, an order that would be informed by their own understanding of history and social morality. For them the divide between the sacred and the secular is artificial, as religion and politics help visualize each other and together shape the way the agent engages with other social agents. In this regard the works of Bourdieu (1977) and Comaroff (1985) is of immense importance for our understanding of agency. While Bourdieu focuses on the transformative capacity of the actor through engagement with the structure, Comaroff draws our attention towards a dialectical relationship between the two. Thus, our understanding of agency counters the classical Marxist under- standing of agency that remains subsumed within the dominant material struc- ture. Though the Gramscian approach addresses the questions of ‘hegemony’ 4 Byasa Moharana and ‘false consciousness’ in a far more nuanced manner to include the possibili- ties of production of counter hegemonic ideologies, it continues to give primacy to structural conditions over subaltern consciousness. However, the works of E. P. Thompson (1963) attempted to ‘rescue’ the (subaltern) peasant agency. The endeavour of the Subaltern Studies led by Ranajit Guha (1983) was precisely to bring back such subaltern agencies that have been neglected by nationalist and Marxist historiography. Of course, the authors in the Subaltern Studies have been criticized for focusing only on peasant agency, and neglecting the voices of Dalits, minorities and women as subalterns. Nevertheless, from the sixth volume onwards, the authors did take ‘corrective’ measures to take into account other voices of protest and subversion. Moreover, Veena Das (1989) has criticized the preoccupation of the Subaltern school to study peasant agency with a ‘rationalist’ approach. The project of understanding the subaltern as the subject of their own histories is grossly undermined when the so-called non- rational and affective actions such as religious rituals, supernatural experience or affective actions are not considered ‘genuine’ expressions of subaltern agency. State and Community The Nirvediās’ relationship with the state was complex and multi-dimensional. As a poor and untouchable community it was concerned with a radical change in their material and social conditions of living. This included removal of untouchability, availability of land for cultivation, freedom from moneylend- ers, and a share in political power. Gandhi’s charismatic influence and the promise of a Rāmarājya (the kingdom of Rāma) to ensure the politics of equality and justice had shaped the way they imagined the post-colonial state and adopted non-violent means to demand their share of power. However, as promises remained unfulfilled, the community developed distrust towards the bureaucracy, and consequently formed a monarchical system of parallel ‘caste government’. Similarly, Shah (2007) points out that the Mundas, a tribal community of Jharkhand, prefer to keep away from the state as it has been exploitative and distant. It is significant to study these dialectical proces- sual relationships between the state and the subaltern community.
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