Seeking Begumpura
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
i Introduction Visions This is a study of the socioeconomic perspectives of the leading anticaste intellectuals over a period of five centuries, from the ‘early modern’ period of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries to the end of colonial rule. It focuses on the framework of their perspectives, their visions, their ‘utopias’. In fact, the first formulation of an Indian version of utopia comes not from elite literature, but from one of the anticaste intellectuals with a mass following. The bhakti radical, Sant Ravidas (c. 1450–1520), was the first to formulate an Indian version of utopia in his song “Begumpura”. Begumpura, the ‘city without sorrow’, is a casteless, classless society; a modern society, one without a mention of temples; an urban society as contrasted with Gandhi’s village utopia of Ram Rajya. “Begumpura” describes a land with no taxes, toil or harassment, where there is no hierarchy but all are equal. Finally, calling himself a ‘tanner now set free’ he proclaims that he wanders freely with his friends: the right to walk anywhere in a settlement, city or village, is a unique matter for dalits. Seeking Begumpura During this long period of five centuries covered by this study, India entered the modern era, first on more or less equal terms and in exchange with Europe, then as a colonized and subject country. It was a period of turmoil, of growth, of the formation of new ideas. Elite intellectuals sought to absorb challenges from the class-caste subalterns, developing their vision of India, which took multiple forms: the ‘hard hindutva’ of Savarkar which saw India as basically a Hindu nation, the ‘soft hindutva’ of Gandhi which looked to an idealized Ram Rajya as a goal, the mild socialism of Nehru, and the harder leftism of the communists. During the same period, the subalterns put forward their vision and their goals, within the framework of a unique utopia first conceived by Ravidas and other radical sants. We shall look at the development of this utopian vision and the socioeconomic characteristics of the society envisioned through this long period. The first four chapters will cover the leading sants of the radical bhakti movement—Namdev and his contemporary bhakti sants, Chokhamela, Janabai, Nirmala, Soyra, Banka and Gora Kumbhar; Kabir, Ravidas, and finally Tukaram. Then we look at the main theorists of the early colonial period—Jotirao Phule and Pandit Iyothee Thass and other leaders of his ‘Sakya Buddhist’ movement. Pandita Ramabai is an important transitional figure, one who actually sought to establish a utopian community of women. Finally, we look at Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who brought these visions to a climax in debates with marxism, gandhism and other forms of nationalism. The Contradictions of Modernity: Class, Caste and Utopias ‘India is shining’ proclaim its fans. It was a slogan that failed to move the broader sections of the electorate. The fact is that while superhighways begin to link the country’s great urban complexes, thousands of farmers are committing suicide in 8 Introduction places like Vidarbha, a backward region of the industrialized state of Maharashtra. The ‘me generation’ celebrates high rises in salaries for well-trained professionals, while the poor of the oppressed castes scrabble for jobs. Airports become too small to hold the burgeoning airlines and flights, cities too crowded to hold the growing number of cars, while bullock carts continue to ply country roads. Huge high-rises hide the slums below. And privileged-caste killers of bargirls, who wait on men of high society, walk away free from the courts, while their rural counterparts get away with cruel atrocities on dalits. Modernity is riven with contradictions. Class, race and patriarchy underline the brutalities and achievements of capitalist industrialization, and amid the luxuries of advanced production and the mystic of information technology come clashes of ethnic groups, the sound of missiles, and the fear and reality of war. Every country experiences such contradictions, yet India, as it takes its place in the third millennia modern era, seems to have more than its share. In marxist terms, contradictions are explained by the nature of capitalist modernity as the stage just before socialism. The rapid growth of the forces of production induced by capitalism has done its work; prosperity is seen as achievable, and can hardly be hidden from the producers of society. Here the main contradiction is between the socialized character of productive forces, the tremendous promise of technology, and the reality of private control and unbridled competition. Socialism, the attainment of a collective human control over all of this, will resolve these contradictions. But as Ambedkar remarked in his “Buddha and Karl Marx” (1987, vol. 3, 444), and as is increasingly clear in the twenty-first century, history has been hard on Marx’s predictions: the proletariat instead of becoming immiserated and uniting to destroy the old society and usher in the new, is itself drastically divided. Ambedkar’s solution was to attack and 9 Seeking Begumpura level, or annihilate, what marxists called the ‘superstructure’ – the complex edifice of caste oppression in India – as a necessary prelude to achieving a democratic socialist society. Indian modernity is marked, naxalites would say, with ‘semi- feudal and semi-colonial remnants’. In more modern terms, the presence and power of the West, especially the United States, remain a reality, and even more, the presence and power of caste continue. This defines the contradictions—a rapid rate of growth and ‘India shining’ for some; drought, hunger, farmer suicides and atrocities on dalits and women for others. Men, women and children are attacked and murdered for going ahead of caste Hindus in processions, for claiming humanity, and because of an assumption that they might have killed a cow. The Other Backward Classes (OBC s) continue to remain next to the bottom economically, lacking pride, and beset with their own caste prejudices. With all of this, India remains one of the poorest societies in the world, even with its supposedly luminescent growth rate. Such contradictions of modernity have not led the exploited and oppressed into acquiescence; rather there has been struggle, marked by a vision of a better society, marked by utopias. Utopias are given birth to by the contradictions of modernity, and they involve both what we may call ‘reason’ and ‘ecstasy’. Ecstasy arises because of the hope and fervent emotion aroused by the possibility of a utopian society, a society of equality and love. Reason defines the road to utopia; it analyzes the current situation of society and shows the strategy needed to realize a better one. Utopias have existed throughout the long centuries of entering into modernity, but with some changes. In the initial period, with the promise of a better society very distant, ecstasy is dominant. But gradually, as the outlines of the situation become clear, reason takes an equal place, and the actors seeking utopia begin to grapple with the actualities of realizing it. 10 Introduction They are utopias, not simply fantasies, because they have a foothold in reality and yet contradict the uglier aspects of reality. They have existed for the centuries in which modernity has been coming into existence, promising a new world that is seen as both possible and necessary: possible because of economic growth and the rise of oppressed classes whose struggles are marked by a new consciousness, a new awareness and education; necessary because of the daily denial of such a consciousness of hope by the brutalities of actual life. Utopias exist because the promise and a partial, fragmented reality of a prosperous society exist in the productive possibilities of the present, promising ecstasies of living in this world—but not allowing them to be realized. In an era where they can only foreshadow a distant future, utopias provide hope and even ecstasy for the masses. Once, however, the realization becomes possible, reason can be used to delineate the path towards the achievement of such utopias. Thus, utopias in the modern age unite reason and ecstasy, giving inspiration and outlining a path for the creation of the new society, achieving the utopian existence in which ecstasy is made real. Both ecstasy and reason will be recurring themes in this monograph. In India, utopias have been posed for centuries by the radical anticaste intellectuals coming from dalit and bahujan (former untouchable, former sudra) backgrounds. They can be traced from the early modern period of the bhakti movement, when they were only hints of a future, to the more determinate forms guiding the struggles under colonialism. The inchoate or determined forms of utopias have thus depended on the situation of the time; as modern developments increased, the new society seemed to become more and more one to struggle for, one with specific outlines. This monograph will give a survey of their development as they have been formulated to frame the socioeconomic vision 11 Seeking Begumpura of anticaste intellectuals from the ‘early modern’ period of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries to the end of the colonial period. ‘Imagining India’: Utopias and Indian traditions Thomas More’s The Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia, published in several editions supervised by the author between 1516 and 1518, gave its name to a tradition. More’s imagining of an ideal society of ‘Christian communism’ (xv) was an expression of sixteenth century Renaissance humanism which had promised a more balanced modernity – one uniting reason with emotion, universalism with concern for the particular and its diversities – than what actually came to exist after the advent of a more imperialistic and violent Europe. Strikingly, More’s Utopia was envisioned as a society of the ‘new world’, the still-mysterious continent lying to the west of Europe, later to be plundered, but imagined also as full of wealth and noble humanity.