Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (23 page)

222
For instance, see the list of NGOs that work with the multinational mining corporation Vedanta, under fire for land-grab and several violations against the environment and Adivasi rights, at
http://www.vedantaaluminium.com/ngos-govt-bodies.htm
. Accessed 20 November 2013.

223
Speech on 26 September 1896 at a public meeting in Bombay where he said he was representing the “100,000 British Indians at present residing in South Africa”. See CWMG 1, 407.

224
AoC 8.2–4.

225
BAWS 1, 375.

226
AoC 5.8.

227
There are different aspects of the Constitution that govern the
Adivasis of the heartland (the Fifth Schedule) and those of the Northeast of India (the Sixth Schedule). As the political scientist
Uday Chandra points out in a recent paper (2013, 155), “The Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution perpetuate the languages and logics of the Partially and Wholly Excluded Areas defined in the Government of India Act (1935) and the Typically and Really Backward Tracts defined by the Government of India (1918)…In the Schedule V areas, dispersed across eastern, western, and central Indian states, state governors wield special powers to prohibit or modify central or state laws, to prohibit or regulate the transfer of land by or among tribals, to regulate commercial activities, particularly by non-tribals, and to constitute tribal advisory councils to supplement state legislatures. In principle, New Delhi also reserves the right to intervene directly in the administration of these Scheduled Areas by bypassing elected state and local governments. In the Schedule VI areas, dispersed across the seven northeastern states formed out of the colonial province of
Assam, state governors preside over District and Regional Councils in Autonomous Districts and Regions to ensure that state and central laws do not impinge on these administrative zones of exception.”

228
Cited in BAWS 9, 70.

229
BAWS 9, 42.

230
As prime minister of a non-Congress, Janata Dal–led coalition government from December 1989 to November 1990,
Vishwanath Pratap Singh (1931–2008) took the decision to implement the recommendations of the
Mandal Commission, which fixed a quota for members of the
Backward Classes in jobs in the public sector to redress caste discrimination. The Commission, named after
B.P. Mandal, a parliamentarian who headed it, had been established in 1979 by another non-Congress (Janata Party) government, headed by
Morarji Desai, but the recommendations of its 1980 report—which extended the scope of reservation in public sector employment beyond Dalits and Adivasis, and allocated 27 per cent to Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—had not been implemented for ten years. When it was implemented, the privileged castes took to the streets.
They symbolically swept the streets, pretended to shine shoes and performed other ‘polluting’ tasks to suggest that instead of becoming doctors, engineers, lawyers or economists, the policy of reservation was now going to reduce privileged castes to doing menial tasks. A few people attempted to publicly immolate themselves, the most well-known being a Delhi University student, Rajiv Goswami, in 1990. Similar protests were repeated in 2006 when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance tried to extend reservation to the OBCs in institutes of higher education.

231
BAWS 9, 40.

232
See Menon 2003, 52–3.

233
In his 1945 indictment of the Congress and Gandhi, Ambedkar lists the names of these mock candidates in his footnotes: Guru Gosain Agamdas and Babraj Jaiwar were the two cobblers; Chunnu was the milkman; Arjun Lal the barber; Bansi Lal Chaudhari the sweeper (BAWS 9, 210).

234
BAWS 9, 210.

235
Ibid., 68.

236
Ibid., 69.

237
Tidrick 2006, 255.

238
Servants of India Society member Kodanda Rao’s account cited in Jaffrelot (2005, 66).

239
In Pyarelal 1932, 188.

240
BAWS 9, 259.

241
As Ambedkar saw it, “The increase in the number of seats for the Untouchables is no increase at all and was no recompense for the loss of separate electorates and the double vote” (BAWS 9, 90). Ambedkar himself lost twice in the polls in post-1947 India. It took more than half a century for Kanshi Ram, the founder of a predominantly Dalit party, the
Bahujan Samaj Party, and his protégé
Mayawati to succeed in a first-past-the-post parliamentary democracy. This happened
despite
the Poona Pact. Kanshi Ram worked for years, painstakingly making alliances with other subordinated castes to achieve this victory. To succeed in the elections, the BSP needed the peculiar demography of Uttar Pradesh and the support of many OBCs. For a Dalit candidate to win an election from an open seat—even
in Uttar Pradesh—continues to be almost impossible.

242
See Alexander 2010.

243
Fischer 1951, 400–03.

244
Eleanor Zelliot writes, “Ambedkar had written the
manpatra
(welcome address, or literally, letter of honor) for Baloo Babaji Palwankar, known as P. Baloo, upon his return from a cricket tour in England nearly twenty years earlier, and had had some part in P. Balu’s selection as a Depressed Class nominee on the Bombay Municipal Corporation in the early 1920s” (2013, 254). Baloo supported Gandhi during the Round Table Conferences and supported the
Hindu Mahasabha position. Soon after the Poona Pact, in October 1933, Baloo contested as a Hindu Mahasabha candidate for the Bombay Municipality, but lost. In 1937, the Congress, in an effort to split the Untouchable vote, pitted Baloo, a
Chambhar, against Ambedkar, a Mahar, who contested on the Independent Labour Party ticket, for a Bombay (East) ‘reserved’ seat in the Bombay Legislative Assembly. Ambedkar won narrowly.

245
For an outline of Rajah’s career and how he came around to supporting Ambedkar in 1938 and 1942, see Note 5 at 1.5 of “A Vindication of Caste by Mahatma Gandhi” in AoC.

246
The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, makes it mandatory for a person who wants to convert into another religion to seek prior permission from a district magistrate. The text of the Act is available at
http://www.lawsofindia.org/statelaw/2224/TheGujaratFreedomofReligionAct2003.html
. An amendment bill to the Act was sent back to the Legislative Assembly by the then Gujarat Governor, Nawal Kishore Sharma, for reconsideration. It was subsequently dropped by the state government. One of the provisions in the amendment bill sought to clarify that
Jains and Buddhists were to be construed as denominations of Hinduism. The Governor said that the amendment would be in violation of Article 25 of the Indian Constitution. See
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/gujarat-withdraws-freedom-of-religion-amendment-bill/282818/1
. To watch a video of Modi invoking M.K. Gandhi against conversion, see
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/modi-quotes-mahatma-flays-religious-conversion/75119-3.html
.
Also see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr6q1drP558
. The Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 2011, makes “transport of animals for slaughter” a punishable offence, widening the ambit of the original Act, which bans cow-slaughter. The Amendment Act has also augmented the punishment to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment from the earlier six months. In 2012,
Narendra Modi greeted Indians on Janmashtami (observed as Krishna’s birthday) with the following words: “Mahatma Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave worked tirelessly for the protection of mother cow, but this Government abandoned their teachings.” See
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/narendra-modi-rakes-up-cow-slaughter-issue-in-election-year-targets-congress/280876-37-64.html?utm_source=ref_article
. (All internet links cited here were accessed 10 September 2013.) Gandhi said, “Anyone who is not ready to give his life to save the cow is not a Hindu” (interview to
Goseva
on 8 September 1933; CWMG 61, 372). Earlier, in 1924, he said, “When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat, it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world” (reported in
Bombay Chronicle
, 30 December 1924; CWMG 29, 476).

247
See for instance,
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/keyword/mahatma-mandir
. Accessed 20 December 2013.

248
For a history of the terms Harijan, Dalit and Scheduled Caste, see Note 8 to the Prologue of AoC.

249
BAWS 9, 126.

250
Ibid., 210.

251
Renold 1994, 25.

252
Tidrick 2006, 261.

253
BAWS 9, 125.

254
Ibid., 111.

255
Tharu and Lalita 1997, 215.

256
Ambedkar 2003, 25.

257
Manusmriti
X: 123. See Doniger 1991.

258
Harijan
, 28 November 1936; CWMG 70, 126–8.

259
Reported by the columnist Rajiv Shah in his
Times of India
blog of 1 December 2012,
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/true-lies/entry/modi-s-spiritual-potion-to-woo-karmayogis
. Shah says 5,000 copies of
Karmayogi
were printed with
funding from the public sector unit, Gujarat State Petroleum Corporati
on, and that later he was told, by the Gujarat Information Department that it had, on instructions from Modi, withdrawn the book from circulation. Two years later, addressing 9,000-odd
Safai Karmacharis (sanitation workers), Modi said, “A priest cleans a temple every day before prayers, you also clean the city like a temple. You and the temple priest work alike.” See Shah’s blog of 23 January 2013,
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/true-lies/entry/modi-s-postal-ballot-confusion?sortBy=AGREE&th=1
. Both accessed 12 November 2013.

260
CWMG 70, 76–7.

261
See “A Note on the Poona Pact” in this book (357–76).

262
Menon 2006, 20.

263
This assimilation finds its way into the Constitution. Explanation II of Article 25(2)(b) of the Constitution was the first time in independent India when the law categorised Buddhists, Sikhs and
Jains as ‘Hindu’, even if ‘only’ for the purpose of “providing social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus”. Later, codified Hindu personal law, like the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, etc., reinforced this position, as these statutes were applied to Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. Pertinently, under Indian law an atheist is automatically classified as a Hindu. The judiciary has been sending out mixed signals, sometimes recognising the ‘independent character’ of these religions, and at other times, asserting that the “Sikhs and Jains, in fact, have throughout been treated as part of the wider Hindu community which has different sects, sub-sects, faiths, modes of worship and religious philosophies” (
Bal Patil & Anr
vs
Union Of India & Ors
, 8 August 2005). For Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains the struggle for recognition continues. There has been some success; for example, the Anand Marriage (Amendment) Act, 2012, freed Sikhs from the Hindu Marriage Act. On 20 January 2014, the Union Cabinet approved the notification of Jains as a minority community at the national level. Also see Note 246 on the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act.

264
See Guha 2013a.

265
While NGOs and news reports suggest a toll of two thousand persons (see “A Decade of Shame” by Anupama Katakam,
Frontline
, 9 March 2012), then Union Minister of State for Home, Shriprakash Jaiswal (of the Congress party), told Parliament on 11 May 2005 that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed in the riots; 2,548 were injured and 223 persons were missing. See “Gujarat riot death toll revealed”,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4536199.stm
. Accessed 10 November 2013.

266
“Peoples Tribunal Highlights Misuse of POTA”,
The Hindu
, 18 March 2004. See also “Human Rights Watch asks Centre to Repeal POTA”, Press Trust of India, 8 September 2002.

267
See “Blood Under Saffron: The Myth of Dalit-Muslim Confrontation,”
Round Table India
, 23 July 2013.
http://goo.gl/7DU9uH
. Accessed 10 September 2013.

268
See
http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/07/12/interview-with-bjp-leader-narendra-modi/
. Accessed 8 September 2013

269
See “Dalit Leader Buries the Hatchet with RSS”,
Times of India
, 31 August 2006.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2006-08-31/india/27792531_1_rss-chief-k-sudarshan-rashtriya-swayamsevak-sangh-dalit-leader
. Accessed 10 August 2013.

270
See Zelliot 2013, especially chapter 5, “Political Development, 1935–56”. For an account of Jogendranath Mandal’s life and work, see Dwaipayan Sen (2010).

271
PTI News Service, 20 March 1955, cited in Zelliot (2013, 193).

272
See Weiss, 2011.

273
For an account of how Ambedkar’s
Buddhism is an attempt to reconstruct the world, see Jondhale and Beltz (2004). For an alternative history of Buddhism in India, see Omvedt (2003).

274
BAWS 11, 322.

275
BAWS 17, Part 2, 444–5. On 14 September 1956, Ambedkar wrote a letter to Prime Minister Nehru. “The cost of printing is very heavy and will come to about Rs 20,000. This is beyond my capacity, and I am, therefore, canvassing help from all quarters. I wonder if the Government of India could purchase 500 copies for distribution among the various libraries and among the many scholars whom it is inviting during the course of this year for the
celebration of Buddha’s 2,500 years’ anniversary.” Nehru did not help him. The book was published posthumously.