Dalit Time

To fully appreciate the genius of the Dalit community, one needs to delve deeper into the dalitality of their complete experiences. These experiences are not rooted in the ­mono-version recorded narratives of non-Dalits. Dalits are a historical community—colourful and distinguished. To foreground the true nature of their existence, we need to theoretically examine how they came to be the most feared group in the world’s most ­prosperous region—South Asia circa 1000 BCE. Dalits have memories, passed down ­generations, about the richness of their traditions and their materiality that was prophesied into social conduct contingent upon compassion, Dalit love, Dalit art and Dalit humour. These are extended ideals of forgiveness, of livability: co-partnership was a module of shared life they inhered. Relations premised on temporal and immediate love were taught to be appreciated. There was no quid pro quo sought for in a relationship beyond corporeality. The Dalit extension of their self happened, foremost, by acknowledging the other and creating an archive of memories. If this was the secret sauce of Dalit existence, where did this richened legacy of the nation perish? The answer lies in the question.

Greed bred oppression, and they joined forces to eliminate the theology of love. It took several generations and epochs to bury the Dalit form of life. Among the ­ancestors of today’s Dalits, there were kings and queens; rulers of the past. As also artisans, singers, philosophers. Their ­histories were stolen from them. In an act of deceit yet to be matched anywhere in human history. Nowhere else in the world has there been a social-legal prison built on such a vast scale, with such elaborate rules. Untouchability is a peculiarly Indian-savarna invention, and nothing like this has been imposed on such a vast swathe of land with such consistency for millennia anywhere else. It was an ­intentional act that identified the preaching of love, the ­welfarist regime of Dalits—strong, democratic principles—as a threat to be abolished. In that regime, everyone was allowed to participate in creating an economy of passions and reproducing a non-negotiably equal society. To tame them forever, the oppressor had to come up with something ­sinister and devastating. They made the core of Dalit life—love, humour and art—a curse. How did they do it? By appropriating everything good that was there and subverting it, or worse, distorting it. Whatever was practically and ­aesthetically still useful, the oppressors claimed as their own; they plagiarised the content at will.

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However, they couldn’t ­completely erase the lived experience, those ­memories and those recipes of Dalit life handed down by the ancestors. For them, a person had to choose to leave the world and become a hermit in order to ­experience nirvana; the Dalit mother gets it from the smile of her offspring. The ­untiring wrists of the homemaker. The skills of the craftsman, earthly and yet ­almost unearthly, that were always passed on—not held as a guild secret. And the sweat of those who worked the fields with an intimate knowledge of the earth. These brought the community into union. This nature of Dalit life was a living threat to the empire of Brahminism. To permanently disable Dalits from exercising their true virtue, they were shunned from civic life and banned from the quotidian ­pleasures of social time. Dalits were made untouchables. The worst sin of humanity was wrought upon them. The erstwhile rulers, warriors, artists and philosophers of this land were condemned to unseeability, ­unapproachability. The proud sons and daughters of this land were made to suffer at the hands of those they had tried to redeem from the cardinal sins of species hatred. The ­curtain of steel came down with full force, shaking the earth and creating terror in the minds of Dalits. Manipulated ­history was sung as sacred prayers by the oppressors. The ­regime of caste was raised to regulate lives. This land, which once knew no caste, was now divided forever. Those from the same family of natives were cast into a web of mutual ­antipathies. Those who were once brothers, who had suckled at the same breast, were now at each other’s throats, each claiming a hereditary superiority of birth.

Progress always has enemies. That’s why an elaborate statecraft was devised to damage the Dalit mind—while, at once, robbing their cultures. Every festival, artifact, aspect of value was stolen and mythicised into non-existing gods and goddesses. Their melodious strings, the tunes created on the fields and under those thatched roofs, were taken away. Dalit forms of life were assimilated into what eventually became known as ‘Indic’, or Sanatan-Brahmin, culture.

Dalit life was not just concerned with the human species, but also equally invested in taking care of the ­non-speaking—wild fauna as well as domestic species. To be a Dalit was to find meeting points, to make love possible. They did not need to create enemies; they simply had to envision a life flowing from human possibilities. Their minds spun no evil catastrophes. For the oppressors, this ethos of conviviality had to be broken. So even Dalit names were twisted; they were forced to accept lowly, insulting epithets as their identities—names that would incite hatred and disgust, names that erased their umbilical connection with their ancestors. Their towering civilisations, their generous totems, their creative crafts were cast into ruination or oblivion—if not stolen.

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In all this, the Dalit’s resilience and fighting spirit remained unabated. They never lost the vision to fight for justice or to ennoble the weak with more strength through music, art, ­intellect, poetry, soldiery, crafts, and, indeed, a reverse ­statecraft of love—holding close to themselves their scarred memories. Dalits are not meek, that’s why they are feared—it’s as if everyone knows the strength and talent this ­community holds. Everyone fears that they may summon the heaven’s wrath of thunders to end their torment. That’s why everyone is invested in ensuring this behemoth does not rise. That it does not even aspire to rise. That it continues to sleep a dreamless sleep.

But they do not contend with Dalit subjectivity. Their sleep and their wakefulness cannot be dreamless. They have not lost the historical depth of their memory. They remember. When Dalits cry, they don’t cry for themselves, they cry for their ancestors and mourn the loss of the great civilisation they had raised. Even when they fight, it is their ancestors that they invoke. They cultivate no metaphysical ­contraband, only an archival link to antiquity. There has not been much research on Dalit emotions and mindscapes. A stereotyped understanding of their life comes through in tomes written by non-Dalits; they are forced into ­caricatures. The non-Dalit researcher is vested in not ­presenting a rational imagery of Dalits. One cannot write about Dalits without being one. It cannot be a project for the ethnologist or the archaeologist. It’s an experience that has to be lived to be understood.

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By codifying caste-based hierarchy, we have lost a great human potential to the ­artifice of belief. Dalits are feared because they are not known. Caste society ­exercises discrimination upon them ­because it does not know about them. We do not have Dalit friends with whom we are willing to exchange saliva, blood and sweat. Yes, Dalits are sexualised in the ­imaginations of the oppressors, but in a ­remote way—that’s why you see mostly rape, not love. The real contentment of their selves doesn’t get registered. Yes, the Dalit being is far too attractive to not be noticed. So beyond-caste relationships continue to happen, in spite of the policing of the three ­institutions—state, society and family. There must be ­something luscious in the Dalit’s eyes, their sharpened ­bodies and their embrace, that at least some children of the twice-born risk their lives and risk banishment by family to just be with the Dalit. But only a few make it—you have to wait, pass the test of patience and honesty, then only can you mix with the Dalit humanity that is so broad and vast that one gets consumed in the pleasure of peace. In a unique way of being that lives as a bridge between past and present—their tender bodies a runic stone of history marked by old clues that have not yet been read. A being that is itself ­resistance—exemplifying, in its primordial fight against ­injustice, a life worth living.

Ever thought why, of all the castes, subcastes and ­sub-subcaste groups out there, it’s only Dalits who are ­consistently in arms against the oppressor Brahmin and his servant castes—the lower savarnas and Shudras. Other caste groups have virtually accepted their spiritual subordination and material insignificance in the larger scheme of things. But Dalits have meticulously kept account books of bigotry and deceit. They strive to unravel the ethos of oppression not only for themselves; their concern is universal. Their ­compassion extends to the cruel and the criminal. They ­believe in ­reformation, conversion and reconciliation. Patiently, they advocate a society that doesn’t espouse ­violence as revenge. The deliverance of justice, for them, ­involves giving a chance for the wrong to correct their wrongs.

Dalit Scare

And yet, the hatred and fear of Dalits has not ended. Caste groups living in their false mansions of greatness are afraid when they notice successful Dalit stories. Having nothing to prove but an artificial story of hierarchy, these dominant castes have become loser castes. They don their unearned robes of privilege just to show the Dalits that they are the lowest. A Dalit earning high income or displaying their ­qualities in the service of art piques their envy—all other castes unite whenever a Dalit is seen speaking his or her identity in a confident language. But that language is woven out of virtue and compassion. Others may submit their pride and self-respect to serve someone considered higher. Dalits have preferred to live with dignity and fight for it at any cost—they know caste is a laughable notion.

They have known the ironies. How the mechanism of power operated via a ­complex grid: localised laws letting the ­relatively advantaged castes control the untouchables. The sight of Dalits getting educated and ascending to a relatively ­better life has humbled the violent, ­landowning ‘other dominant castes’ (ODCs) like the Jats, Patels, Marathas. These caste groups once wished to be ­excused from their ‘backward’ identity and preferred to bask in the saga-making of Hindu-Kshatriya nationhood. But the Brahmins and Kshatriyas did not accept them as lower-equals, only granted them the status of upper-superiors over Dalits. Their former chattels, meanwhile, started to send their children to schools by ­skipping two meals a day. Their sacrifices paid off despite the caste bully and the ­macabre cloak of poverty. School led to college and university. They got jobs, at times became sahabs and collectors. Elders from the landowning communities and the twice-born found themselves ­folding their hands in front of a sharp, young Dalit bureaucrat who could now write their fate with just a few letters of cursive writing. Yet, they refuse to believe what their eyes see—the meteoric rise of their servants’ ­children is an unpalatable fact for the dominant caste sphere. They discourage them at school, college, university and the workplace. They taunt; only snubs are salve for their hurt ego. “You?? You were just a small kid wandering here and there with your father and mother….” I get to hear this so often, especially in reference to my peon father and seventh grade homemaker mother. Nobodies, you could say. And yet, there was Dalithood, the inheritance of memory, the ways of our ancestors. History has taught Dalits fortitude.

We have now come very far from the verdicts of caste-based society. Yet, we practise caste as a divine necessity. We ­discriminate against Dalits almost as if not doing that would be voiding ourselves of some ethical imperative. Intimidation and humiliation are common currency in this exchange. But irrespective of caste society’s attempts to wrench Dalits away from living the Dalit life, they have outshined the crowd wherever they found a foot to stand. And when they stood, they created a solid foundation and rose like the phoenix. Never losing their sense of self, they reincarnated themselves as a collective Dalit being. They let truth be their sole ­companion, even if they had to occasionally spit the truth in the world’s face. Their life has been an inspiration to every Indian who wants to overcome the petty horizons imposed by society and establish a culture of humanity.

Even the twice-born secretly covet this way of being. Everyone wants to be a Dalit now. Those whose very sight would once bring unending wrath to their souls, they now want to be that. Now, the dominant-oppressive sphere sees pragmatism in seeking the very status they lobbied to be rem­oved. It’s the charade set loose by the Mandal Commission report on backward classes. The Dalit community, in effect, has created a dent in the rapacious, fictional meta-identity of superiority of birth. By petitioning for reservation now, the dominant castes have politely accepted Ambedkar’s genius.

Dalit Inspiration

The extraordinary individuals shortlisted in this special ­edition are those who have lived the Dalit life fully, with love and commitment. They have each responded to their calling in creative ways, contributing to the world’s betterment. You will find honour, dignity and dedication here. They are also snazzy, dapper, sexy, attractive and full of attitude. They are so common and yet so rare that one can feel they truly belong to us. They are approachable, you don’t have to stand away from them—they are not made of the nepotistic capital of caste. They are self-made, and through that they hold the capacity to inspire others, to make themselves into a surprise. You will not be untouched by awe when you regard the enigma of their talents—and yet that awe does not keep them in a charmed circle ­beyond your touch. The truest statement of their character is courage, but also ­humility. With that humility, they will teach you. Regardless of their chosen métier, they are bound by and to humanity. That’s why, in their one life, they are already inspirational. These extraordinary individuals have stayed true to the community and committed to their craft. And they keenly understand their own importance in the present time. They risked many things to remain honest to their people. They genuinely work towards a multiplication of human ­potential…and it will go a long way. We just have to revisit this essay a few decades later and assess its clairvoyance.

The idea of compiling this list first came to me when I joined the African and African American Studies ­department at Harvard University. Among the texts in the department library, one that caught my attention was a set entitled The African American National Biography, published in eight volumes and edited by literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr and historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. There was also a voluminous tome compiled by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr on the African experience. It was Du Bois’s unfinished vision that these descendants of the Du Boisian legacy had brought to fruition in the form of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Running through its pages, I was immediately taken to the plain fields of Marathwada and the rocky hills of Chambal. My mind ­wandered in the barren classrooms of Indian universities and those exclusionary literary festivals. There are so many great people in my community that their biography needs to be documented. I want to curate a biographical anthology of the Dalit past, of Dalit persons. Fortunately, an Encyclopedia of Dalits in India exists, compiled by Paramanshi Jaideva and Sanjay Paswan, that runs into 14 volumes.

I am concerned about the future and equally vested in ­optimism; thus, this is an attempt to think of our century. The 21st century will be sculpted by the minds and hearts of Dalits. They will be actors that the world will reckon with. Let’s celebrate their life and commit ourselves to their fight for an equal world.

(Suraj Yengde is author of Caste Matters and senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Views expressed are personal.)