The controversy over caste census and the demand by the OBCs for reservations in jobs and education lend Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s The Clash of Cultures the immediacy it needs
The Hindu right wing, which has been ruling India for the last ten years, considers Professor Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd one of its most stinging gadflies outside of the parliamentary Opposition in the country. For over thirty of his 70 years of life, he has punched holes in the policies of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling his doles and statements on Dalits as not only mere lip service, but a sinister act to deny agency to the former untouchable castes, while further strengthening the upper castes and crony capitalists who uphold his parent political group, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
In doing so, Modi, his Bharatiya Janata Party and the RSS provide sinews to an Islamophobic and anti-Christiaan rhetoric that poses a constant threat to the unity of India, its constitutional secularism, and its otherwise pacific culture.
I have known Kancha Ilaiah (Ilaiah ought to be pronounced like you would the name of the Prophet Isaiah, he told me once so very long ago) for about thirty years, call him a friend, and follow his writings as indicative of a bridge between the early intellectuals and leaders from mahatma Jyotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) and DD Kosambi (1907-1966) to Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956), and the modern writers from the Dalit and backward communities who too are treading a brave and often lonely path in the national discourse heavily invested with violent religious and nationalist rhetoric.
The genie of hate and a deaf state
Despite strong criticism from fellow academics and abuse from Modi’s surfeit of friends in the media, Professor Ilaiah has been unsparing and unafraid in his criticism of the varna system, the caste stratification which provides the steel frame of the Hindu, or Santana faith which is the religion of 80 per cent of India’s more than 1.30 billion population (estimated, as the 2011 decadal census has not yet been carried out).
He has taught political science at Osmania University in Hyderabad, north capital of Telangana. He was one of the early ones to testify internationally on the continuance and possible strengthening of the caste stranglehold despite decades of Independence. He spoke at the US Congressional hearing on ‘The Abolition of Untouchability: the Key to Stability in India’, describing the roots and the ongoing reality of violence and discrimination against Dalits.
For those who may not have seen his many books, the collection of his many essays published in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and pamphlets, The Clash of Cultures: Productive Masses Vs Hindutva-Mullah Conflicting Ethics is an important primer on the ground reality of the Dalits and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The current controversy on whether India should have a caste census and the demand by the OBCs for reservations in jobs, education, and political presence, provide the volume the immediacy it needs in this age of Google and 30-word news capsules.
Ilaiah sets the tone, and brings us up-to-date, in his 10-page introduction which by itself deserves place in any contemporary anthology someone may want to edit on the million mutinies — that hackneyed phrase which still serves a purpose — in contemporary India where an impending general election in 2024 has released the genie of communal and targeted hate that often leads to violence, and a state which, by turns, is deaf to the developments, or causes its agencies to add fuel to the fire. The police, as always, look on, or turn away their gaze.
Brahminism and Islamism
He writes “Brahminism and Islamism have become bitter enemies after demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. Brahminism took revenge against the Indian Islamic culture by deploying the Shudra and Dalit muscle power and now it is in control of political power at Delhi with a total grip on the productive masses of India.”
“Brahminism yielded to Islamism for centuries. It lost power to the British. But it has been in control of the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses for millennia. Brahminism was in control of them during the Muslim rule and the British rule. But so far the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces never established their control over Brahminism. If there is a cultural war between Brahmanism and Islamism, who wins? We do not know. Globally speaking, Islamism is bigger and stronger. But Brahminism is more cunning. It can make the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses cannon fodder in the name of ‘We Are All Hindus’.”
He wrote these weeks before Modi declared India would henceforth be known as Bharat. The Constitution had called it “India that is Bharat”. A subtle but well-marked difference.
Ilaiah picks on the PM almost instantly. “Modi declared himself as an Other Backward Class (OBC) person, without telling the nation whether his family/caste has roots in the Shudra or Bania (as many Banias also acquired OBC certificates) heritage. The Shudra/OBC masses have a culture of production of a whole range of food and civilizational commodities, technologies and instruments which is different from what the RSS/BJP top leaders believe and practise. That will lead to cultural clashes as the RSS/BJP top leaders keep hegemonising their own culture over the other cultures.”
A democratic state, slowly subverted
The book explores this in well-chosen articles bunched in three sections dealing with each of the groups he discusses. In some ways, he is at his best while analysing the standoff between the Dalit-OBC and the BJP, while his brief discussions on Islam touch upon the critical support needed for the religious minority’s existential struggle. However, there are also areas of criticism, particularly with regard to the role of the Mullahs and the political elite that have held control, but failed to shepherd the community in the years since Independence.
Ilaiah is right in saying that sections of Catholics — wrongly singled out Jesuits who have often challenged the regime – have been roped into the RSS/BJP networks and they are willing to serve them. Similarly, a section of Shia Muslims (the majority of Indian Muslims, over 85%, belong to the Sunni branch of Islam) has been roped into the RSS/BJP ranks and they played a critical role in stabilising the RSS/BJP. During the BJP/RSS rule, India is likely to become an unstable and conflicting civil society, and even the democratic state may be slowly subverted.
Islam, which occupied vast regions of the Indian sub-continent, built a strong counter-culture to the age-old Aryan Brahminic culture. In a way, Islam weakened Aryan Brahmanism more than Indian Christianity because Islam took away Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh historically from the fold of Aryan Brahmanism and established a big Islamic cultural Asia.
The clash of civilisations
The Sangh Parivar is using the international and national tension between Muslims and Christians to their advantage, he writes. The anti-Muslim feelings that grew after 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks in several parts of the world fixated the Muslim position. The Hindutva forces used the occasion to establish more controls on not only Muslims but others as well. The disunity and unfriendly atmosphere between Muslims and Christians helped the Sangh Parivar to win the 2014 elections. Subsequent to that election, they have mounted a series of cultural attacks on Muslims and Christians through their campaigns of Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad, Cow protection, beef ban, Triple Talaq, Uniform Civil Code, FCRA issues and so on.”
Ilaiah says the Sangh Parivar intellectuals celebrate Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilization’ thesis, which predicted a major clash between the Christian and Islamic civilisations. What Huntington talked about was that those two biggest religious cultures of the world — Christian and the Muslim — would create conditions of World War III. The Sangh thinks that such a clash between the Christian culture and Islamic culture would give scope to the Brahminic culture to gain global acceptability. If World War III is fought on cultural issues, India will become the epicentre of that war.” Islamic Pakistan, and India, brandish nuclear weapons.
The Cold War protagonists, with their nuclear arsenals, were 5,000 kilometers apart. India and Pakistan share a border. Ilaiah is no military strategist, but he may not be far from what many others in civil society fear.
