Thinking Politically

Caste and Capitalism in India by Priti Cox

Uttarakhand, the 27th State of the Republic of India, is also referred to as Devbhoomi, or “Land of the Gods,” believed by Hindus to be where the sage Vyasa authored the epic Mahabharata. The sacred waters of the Ganges originate in the Himalayas of the state’s far north; the sources of the river’s four chief tributaries collectively make up one of the holiest pilgrim destinations for Hindus: the Chota Char Dham, or small four abodes of the gods. Travel to the area, once undertaken only by bearded, orange-robed sadhus, has become wildly popular in the past decade. By 2012, the state was seeing up to 28 million pilgrims and tourists annually, double its own population, and tourism was accounting for a huge 27% of the state’s economy. But the good times didn’t roll on. In 2013, tragedy struck. The Kedarnath Temple is the highest of the Char Dham holy sites. It was there, on June 17, 2013, where one of our many experiments with ourselves unraveled, with nature’s fury triggering a very unnatural disaster. It started on the evening of the 16th with an explosive bang. A mile and a half upstream from Kedarnath, a freakishly heavy, too-early monsoon rainfall had melted the already greenhouse-

The keystone of Hinduism is caste. The roots of what we refer to as the caste system today, Hinduism’s chaturvarna or four varnas, can be traced to Purusha Sukta, “The Hymn of Man.” It is believed by some scholars to be a late addition to the Rig Veda, the earliest example of Hinduism’s Vedic literature dating somewhere between 1200–900 BCE. The hymn contains the mythological origin of the universe, which involves the cosmic sacrifice of the purusha (primeval man) and his subsequent dismemberment. In this way the Hinduism and capitalism on one side and natural four-caste system was born. From the puecosystems and the country’s poor on the other... rusha’s mouth came the Brahmins, the priestly caste; from his arms, the Kshatriya, warrior/military caste; from his thighs, the warmed snout of Chorabari Glacier, triggering what Vaishya, business/trading caste; and from his feet science calls an “outburst flood” from a large lake were born the Shudra, the caste of toiling agriculturthat until then had been dammed up by the glacier. ists, artisans, and fisherfolk. The lake emptied instantaneously. But outside of this four-caste network, there And as if to tease us, the gods in heaven had the was said to exist yet another, fifth artificial category wall of water push before it a huge boulder, which of human being. It comprises those referred to as stuck in place just above the Kedarnath temple, savIndia’s avarnas, or outcastes―those today called ing the ancient edifice from being swept away. The Dalits, literally meaning broken, crushed people, as deluge skirted the temple’s sides, bringing with it well as the Adivasis, India’s original inhabitants, its flash floods, landslides, silt, rock, more boulders, indigenous communities. Other titles given to these swallowing everything in its path. Thousands, pergroups include pariah, untouchables, depressed haps tens of thousands of pilgrims died. There’s no classes, and Gandhi’s paternalistic epithet harijan, or accurate count. The torrent roared on for another “children of god.” In India, today, it is these comhundred miles down through the munities that make up the low-paid foothills, destroying everything farm hands and contract laborers. along the riverbanks and triggering One cannot help but see the But caste fundamentalism...is massive landslides all the way irony in the Shudra’s, or laboring down. thriving more than ever... castes,’ mythical birth from the This recent tragic episode of primeval man’s feet. They, along Indian history is symbolic of with the Dalits, Adivasis and other what’s unfolding throughout the nation’s religious, impoverished Indians of various faiths, share one of socio-economic, and ecological fabric. You have the world’s tiniest per capita carbon footprints, much Hinduism and capitalism on one side and natural smaller than the footprints of those who sprang forth ecosystems and the country’s poor on the other, and from purusha’s fat and muscle. a continuous experiment in all imaginable combinaOver the millennia, within this four-caste structions and permutations playing out between them. ture, evolved thousands of endogamous castes and Both of these paired systems are dying, but one of subcastes, or jatis. They are all intended to be disthem is dying faster that the other. tinct gene pools, with intercaste marriage frowned

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upon. Caste now burdens not only the Hindu population. It has proliferated throughout the Indian DNA and into the country’s practice of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Sikhism. Each has its own specific

Today in India, more so since the recent triumph of economic fundamentalism in 2014’s national elections, one hears talk of little other than the panacea of growth. Growth, like truth, is a very political word, and in India it can mean different things depending on where one stands on the caste ladder. But ...the outcaste Dalits...along with India’s tribal one thing is clear, that its application Adivasis...have been displaced by large infrastructure today creates a hundred losers for every beneficiary. projects like dams and mining operations. So far, at least, we have seen that for the religious technocrats and norms and hereditary occupations, all of which emeconomic fundamentalists at the top, growth simply ploy caste-style hierarchies of their own. could not have reached the lopsided frenzy it has A century and a half ago, Marx expressed the without simultaneously exploiting the earth’s review that mechanized transportation would dissolve sources and the hearts, hands, minds and livelihoods the caste system. But caste fundamentalism not only of the powerless laboring classes. It is largely the has survived in modern times, it is thriving more outcaste Dalits who are landless. And it is they, than ever under technologically sophisticated, neoalong with India’s tribal Adivasis, who have been liberal fundamentalism. displaced by large infrastructure projects like dams My friend Suprabha Seshan, an ecosystem garand mining operations. dener at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Wayanad, Kerala, India, makes a very interesting observation. “I have a different theory about the diGandhi never decisively and categorically versity of the jatis. I think there is an older and still extant huge Adivasi diversity, which is what the jati renounced...the caste system. system is trying to mimic, except it made this diversity into a hierarchical one, and an exploitative one. To the fields, forests, and rivers of India, and to The jati mosaic in a social and economic scape mimthe Dalits, Adivasis, poor Muslims, Christians, and a ics the Adivasi mosaic that exists in a landscape.” majority of the Shudra population, India’s economic And attached to this creaking jati network are growth is a tumor, a cancer, breaking off of their the twin doctrines of karma and dharma. Karma skins, first slowly like a rash and then spreading, justifies a person’s caste-assigned status in this life consuming them whole. according to his/her deeds in previous lives. And Such a campaign can’t be carried out without each individual is then expected to perform his/her violence. We Hindus were way ahead of the world dharma, or caste-assigned duties, in this life. The on this. Eras ago, we concocted for ourselves a hallucination is completed with a light at the end of a uniquely potent blend of the duallong tunnel: the possibility of a doctrines of “Shock and Awe” higher-caste birth next life around and “Winning Hearts and Minds” or, for the very good or lucky, and sanctioned it in our very own moksha or salvation. battle bible, the Bhagavad Gita, or Looked at closely, these cor“Song of the Blessed One.” It is a porate divisions of the purusha dialogue between the hero Arjuna dressed in religious finery that I and his charioteer Krsna. have just described are all deAccording to historian signed in accordance with their D.D.Kosambi, the Bhagavad Gita relationship to the land. But not was added to the epic the Mahabwith a sense of treading lightly on harata “somewhere between 150 it. A minority of upper-caste and 350 AD.” Kosambi writes, Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vai“The high god repeatedly emphashyas have managed to usurp sizes the great virtue of nonknowledge, trade, land, natural killing (ahimsa), yet the entire resources, access to health care discourse is an incentive to war.” and justice by using full-force There is a “slippery opportunism” physical and psychological extracthat “characterizes the whole tive mechanisms: drilling, bullbook.” It is therefore “not surprisdozing, karma, dharma, blasting, ing to find so many Gita lovers. damming, and the sickening disOnce it is admitted that material placement of tens of millions of reality is gross illusion, the rest rural people. And the poor are left follows quite simply; the world of with nothing but calloused hands ‘doublethink’ is the only one that and a resilience to survive against Road-scarred mountains, Gaurikund, unimaginable odds. Garhwal, Uttarakhand, Photo by Priti Cox matters.” Most of us are familiar with Green Social Thought 67: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Spring 2015

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super Gita fan Mohandas K. Gandhi’s famous quotations. Here’s one of his more infamous ones, referring to his vision of the ideal society: “The rich man will be left in possession of his wealth, of which he will use what he reasonably requires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the remainder to be used for society. In this argument, honesty on the part of the trustee is assumed.” As Arundhati Roy points out in her introductory essay to the “Annihilation of Caste,” by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, entitled “The Doctor and the Saint,” “Though Gandhi spoke of inequality and poverty... at no point in his political career did he ever seriously criticize or confront an Indian Industrialist or the landed aristocracy.” Furthermore, “In the 98 volumes of his writing, Dalit Home, Photo by Priti Cox Gandhi never decisively and categorically renounced his belief in chaturvarna, the iar? Like someone who once said, “The poor you system of four varnas”—that is, the caste system. will always have with you, but you will not always Roy goes on to say, “Gandhi’s idea of trusteehave me”? ship echoed almost verbatim what American capitalTraditionally Dalit livelihoods have been limists—the Robber Barons—like J.D. Rockefeller and ited to tasks such as sweeping India’s streets, and as Andrew Carnegie were saying at the time.” In The manual scavenging of excrement. India’s manual Gospel of Wealth (1889) Carnegie says, “This, then scavengers are usually from the Valmiki sub-caste is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to and also go by the derogatory term Bhangis, meanset an example of modest, unostentatious living, ing “broken identity.” In India as almost everywhere shunning display or extravagance...and to consider in the world, there is what Marx called a “metabolic all surplus revenues which come to him simply as rift” that occurs when nutrients are harvested from trust funds...the man of wealth thus becoming the fields of grain, eaten and excreted by humanity, and mere agent and trustee for his poor brethren, bringnot returned to the soil where new grain will be produced. The Bhangis’ specific “job” across InTraditionally Dalit livelihoods have been limited dia has been removing excrement by hand dry latrines, gutters, and drains, cleanto tasks such as manual scavenging of excrement. from ing sewers and septic tanks—and to deposit it in places considered to be out-of-bounds ing to their service superior wisdom, experience and wastelands where nothing must be produced. (Inciability to administer.” dentally, the Dalits themselves live out of bounds, My question is, why take something from on the fringes of towns and villages, in closer proxsomebody that they themselves have produced only imity to their harvest of excrement.) to give it back to them? Wouldn’t it be more effiTo Gandhi’s credit, he believed the nutrients in cient not to take it from them in the first place? excrement should be returned to the soil; however, In saying, “The rich man will be left in posseshis views on that, like those on nonviolence, never sion of his wealth,” Gandhi could just as well have prevailed. His views on retention of the Bhangi syssaid, “Poverty on the part of the majority is astem did prevail; thus a precapitalist form of dissumed.” The message is clear—that the rich man is crimination continues today, fulfilling another Marx rich in his karma, but it is his dharma that he must adage: that profit results from “simultaneously ungive most of his wealth away. And it is dermining the their karma that the poor are poor, but original sources of it is their dharma that they enjoy povwealth—the soil ...in 71% of the villages there is no all erty with humility and spirituality, and the worker.” while simultaneously shunning propGandhi could water tap at all in the Dalit area... erty. wax eloquent on But here’s the punch line. Gandhi the subject: “I love goes on to say that “humility does not mean abjectscavenging. In my Ashram, an 18-year-old Brahmin ness.” The poor man “serves no one except God.” So lad is doing the scavenger’s work in order to teach if society collectively keeps this caste-sanctioned the Ashram scavenger cleanliness. The lad is no retipped balance of property and poverty going, acformer. He was born and bred in orthodoxy. He is a cording to the mahatma, everyone, thanks to him, regular reader of the Gita. When he conducts the will attain moksha—that is, salvation. Sound familprayer his soft, sweet melodies melt one into love.”

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Nowhere in the Gita does it say that a sweeper voluntarily chooses sweeping Hindu society’s shit as an occupation. It was dealt to him by god in a game of cards. And there’s no bluffing your way out of this one. This is not just an obsession from the time of Gandhi. In November 2012, when a scavenger named Gangashri along with 12 other women in Parigama village in Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri district voluntarily stopped cleaning dry toilets, men

Ambedkar was trying to liberate Dalits from the shackles of “Gandhism.”

for the Indian Constitution. Ambedkar, as Roy points out, “was Gandhi’s most formidable adversary. He challenged him not just politically or intellectually, but also morally.” “Annihilation of Caste” is a speech that Ambedkar composed, but never delivered. It was meant as a lecture to a “moderate” Hindu reformist group, the Forum for Break-up of Caste of Lahore (in modern Pakistan). The group had invited him in May 1936 to speak his mind. But they wanted a sneak preview of the contents of his speech first, and when they saw, well, they changed their minds. They found it too “unbearable.” The text survives. Here’s part of what Ambedkar had to convey in that undelivered speech:

What Hindus call religion is really law, or at best from the dominant Thakur caste came to their homes legalized class-ethics. Frankly, I refuse to call this and threatened to deny them grazing rights and expel code of ordinances a religion. But the worst evil of them from the village. Sona, from Bharatpur city in this code of ordinances is that the laws it contains Rajasthan said, “The first day when I was cleaning must be the same yesterday, today and forever. the latrines and the drain, my foot slipped and my They are iniquitous in that they are not the same for leg sank in the excrement up to my calf. I screamed one class as for another. I have, therefore, no hesitaand ran away. Then I came home and cried and tion in saying that such a religion must be destroyed. Give a new doctrinal basis to your religion. cried. My husband went with me the next day and A basis that will be in consonance with liberty, made me do it. I knew there was only this work for equality and fraternity; in short, with democracy. me.” Dalit and human rights organizations have So while Gandhi was front and center in liberatmade a concerted effort to expose day-to-day abuses ing Indians from British rule, Ambedkar was trying and atrocities suffered by Dalits across the country. to liberate Dalits from the shackles of “Gandhism.” A 2010 Robert F. Kennedy and Navsarjan Trust In response to Gandhi’s desire to be reborn a study on caste-based discrimination conducted in Bhangi, Ambedkar said, more than 1500 villages in Gujarat revealed, “As The first special feature of Gandhism is that its phiIndia emerges as the world’s largest democracy, the losophy helps those who have to keep what they practice of untouchability remains, in stark contrast have and to prevent those who have not from getto the image of progress that the government of Inting what they have a right to get. This is the techdia seeks to promote to the international communique of Gandhism, to make wrongs done appear to nity.” Among other things they found—in 98% of villages—a refusal to serve tea to Dalits in non-Dalit households, or to supply it in a segregated cup called a “Rampatar,”— ...both caste and capitalism treat the weakest and meaning, cynically, a vessel of the god poorest segments of society with equal apathy. Ram; in 71% of the villages there is no water tap at all in the Dalit area; and in 29% of the villages Dalits are denied access to the very victim as though they were his privileges. common wells or taps. If there is an ‘ism’ which has made full use of relig“I do want to attain moksha,” Gandhi said. “I ion as an opium to lull the people into false beliefs do not want to be reborn. But if I have to be reborn, I and false security, it is Gandhism. Following should be born an untouchable. A Bhangi.” (That is, Shakespeare one can well say: Plausibility! Ingenua scavenger.) The question to ask here is not what ity! Thy name is Gandhism. Gandhi would do if in fact he was reborn a Bhangi, “For whose freedom is the Congress fighting?” but what could he do as a Bhangi to change this Ambedkar asked. When Gandhi met Ambedkar for cruel system. the first time 16 years before India got its IndependHere’s what did happen to someone who was ence from the British, he reprimanded him on that born a Dalit. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who evenstatement, to which Ambedkar replied, “Gandhiji, I tually came to be known as Babasaheb (respected have no Homeland. No untouchable worth the name father), was born in 1891 and was one of the first will be proud of this land.” Incidentally, Gandhi’s Dalits to receive a university education, with docsecretary Pyarelal pointed out that Gandhi at first toral degrees from Columbia University and the mistook Ambedkar for a self-hating Brahmin. London School of Economics. He also became a What political analyst and author of “The Perbarrister from Gray’s Inn. His focus was on the sistence of Caste” Anand Teltumbde reinforces is emancipation of his Dalit brothers and sisters. After that both caste and capitalism treat the weakest and India got its independence from the British, Ambedpoorest segments of society with equal apathy. That kar was elected chairman of the drafting committee Green Social Thought 67: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Spring 2015

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is, it’s not capitalism’s fault that In decades of struggle, the you are poor. If you can make it in Adivasis have had almost no one a capitalist world, then great. If (except Roy in recent years) on not, well, tough. And casteism their side. Shockingly enough, says it is their karma that the poor even Ambedkar’s views on Adiare poor. Tough. So, in effect, the vasis made him sound more like a capitalists and upper castes have Brahmin than a Dalit. He said, collectively and conveniently “these aborigines have remained rubbed their hands together and in their primitive uncivilized state brushed the poor and weak of soin a land which boasts of a civiliciety from their greedy agendas. zation thousands of years old...and Here are a few examples of are leading the life of hereditary the types of structural violence criminals.” that the privileged castes have On October 14, 1956, just a emptied on Dalits over the years: few months before his death, Am44 Dalits burnt alive in 1968 in bedkar fulfilled a vow he’d made Tamil Nadu, hundreds of Bangla21 years earlier to renounce Hindeshi Dalits massacred during a duism. He did it by embracing government eviction drive in 1978 Buddhism, along with Sharda in West Bengal, 6 Dalits murKabir, his Brahmin second wife, dered, 3 women raped and many and over 400,000 other supportmore wounded in 1984 in Andhra ers, making it the largest religious Pradesh, in Haryana, 5 Dalits conversion in history. He remains lynched outside a police station in to this day the Dalit population’s 2002, In 2006, a Dalit farmer, most revered figure. These days if Bhaiyalal Bhotmange’s entire you go into a slum in Bombay, Annihilation of Caste with The Doctor and chances are you’ll find a photofamily of 4 subjected to “gangrape, torture, unspeakable public the Saint, Navayana publishing graph of him, Babasaheb, not humiliation and murder by a mob Gandhi, hanging on the wall, ofof caste Hindus, neighbors from their own village,” ten alongside a picture of the Buddha. Kahirlanji in Maharashtra. All too often our response to conspicuous conBoth Gandhi the mahatma and Mukesh Amsumption triggered by market fundamentalism has bani, today India’s richest man, belong to the Vaibeen a conscious, personal demonstration of conshya, the business/trading caste. One was driven by spicuous abstinence. Again, as Roy says of Gandhi’s religious fundamentalism and the other by economic pursuit of the simple life during his years in South fundamentalism. And they both used their position Africa and later on in India, “The question is, can of power to further their own visions for India at the poverty be simulated? Poverty is about having no expense of the working classes’ sweat, humanity, power. It took a lot of farmland and organic fruit dignity and tears. trees to keep Gandhi in poverty.” Can everybody in Mukesh Ambani is #28 on the Forbes’ 2014 list the world afford to live poor Gandhi-style? with a net worth of $ 23.5 billion. He lives in the In other words, are we all islands by ourselves, world’s largest “democracy” (also, by the way, in able simply to wave the magic wand of localism and the world’s most expensive personal residence) good-examplism to stop ecological breakdown and alongside approximately 960 million Indians who live on less than 50 cents a day. So, for every $100 or so that Ambani owns, four Indians have no deIt took a lot of farmland and organic mocracy. fruit trees to keep Gandhi in poverty. Gandhi’s net worth is that he is the last mahatma standing between two experimental mantras: “the market will take care of it all” or “social coopsolve the global imbalance of property and poverty? eration will take care of it all,” both of which always Can we not see the layered complexity of root forces tugged at the mahatma’s hem for approval. And on beyond our control compounded by elitism that cuts the margins stand the last obstacle to total usurpation off all rational communication? This is not to take a and destruction of India’s landscape—the Adivasis, defeatist attitude but to acknowledge that there is that land’s original human inhabitants. Many thousomething that lies beyond the power of abstinence sands of these brave tribal people have been annihito contain. To do so is to know powerlessness. But lated, and they, as Roy says, have “rebelled time and to be powerless is not to be defeated. time again...and fought fiercely to protect their land, Maybe somewhere there, contained between the culture and heritage...but unlike the rest of India, assassination of a universally adored and powerful they were never conquered. They still have not been. Vaishya mahatma, the assassination of a radical They are waging nothing short of a civil war against speech by the Dalit Babasaheb Ambedkar and the the Indian state.” assassination of the last defenders of India’s forests

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still on their tribal lands, lies powerlessness, and the spark of revolution. Waiting for the right moment.

Priti Gulati Cox is an interdisciplinary artist living in Salina, Kansas. Her continuing project Vanishing India reveals the effects of corporate globalization on the social, political and economic fabric of India.

Police Were Created to Control Poor and Working Class People by Sam Mitrani

In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do. If only the normal, decent relations between the police and the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved. Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need. This liberal way of viewing the problem rests developed in the late 19th century echoes down to on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police today—except that today, poor black and Latino and what they were created to do. The police were people are the main threat, rather than immigrant not created to protect and serve the population. They workers. were not created to stop crime, at least not as most Of course, the ruling class did not get everypeople understand it. And they were certainly not thing it wanted, and had to yield on many points to created to promote justice. They the immigrant workers it sought to were created to protect the new control. This is why, for instance, Before the 19th century, municipal governments backed form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late 19th cen- there were no police forces. away from trying to stop Sunday tury from the threat posed by that drinking, and why they hired so system’s offspring, the working many immigrant police officers, class. especially the Irish. But despite these concessions, This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, businessmen organized themselves to make sure the but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate. police were increasingly isolated from democratic Before the 19th century, there were no police control, and established their own hierarchies, sysforces that we would recognize as such anywhere in tems of governance, and rules of behavior. the world. In the Northern United States, there was a The police increasingly set themselves off from system of elected constables and sheriffs, much the population by donning uniforms, establishing more responsible to the population in a very direct their own rules for hiring, promotion, and firing, way than the police are today. In the South, the closworking to build a unique esprit de corps, and identiest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. fying themselves with order. And despite complaints Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly about corruption and inefficiency, they gained more immigrant wage workers who were physically and and more support from the ruling class, to the extent socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy that in Chicago, for instance, businessmen donated elite who ran the various municipal governments money to buy the police rifles, artillery, Gatling hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods. The police increasingly set themselves off Class conflict roiled late 19th century American from the population by donning uniforms. cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886 and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with guns, buildings and money to establish a police penextreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the US sion out of their own pockets. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing There was never a time when the big city police the working class. In the aftermath of these moveneutrally enforced “the law” or came anywhere close ments, the police increasingly presented themselves to that ideal (for that matter, the law itself has never as a thin blue line protecting civilization—by which been neutral). In the North, they mostly arrested they meant bourgeois civilization—from the disorpeople for the vaguely defined “crimes” of disorder of the working class. This ideology of order that Green Social Thought 67: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration, Spring 2015

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