Valson Thampu
Former principal of St Stephen’s College, New Delhi
Email: vthampu@gmail.com
As of now, neither the nomination of a Dalit presidential candidate nor the desperation to counter its political after-effects has any bearing on the Dalit predicament. Ram Nath Kovind and Meira Kumar are primarily weapons in a political battle and only incidentally Dalits. An analogy might help illustrate the situation clearly. If I were to throw a loaf of bread at someone in order to show my anger against him, the loaf of bread is, in the given context, not a nutrient but a missile. Bread it may be, but it has no reference to the victim’s hunger. That truth will not change if, because I miss my target, my intended victim, being hungry, chose to make a meal out of it. Its nourishment value is purely accidental and irrelevant, even contrary, to my intention.
But we should not push the ‘intention’ factor beyond a measure; all the more so in case of a multifactorial event of extensive public significance, as the presidential election is. One of the safe generalisations we can make about history is that human intentions get re-shaped, indeed re-configured, by forces and purposes beyond the conscious intentions of corresponding agents of action. This too invites illustration.
We talk metaphorically of ‘opening the Pandora’s box’. In Greek mythology, Zeus, the principal God, gave a box to Pandora, the first woman on earth, expressly commanding her not to open it. She disobeyed and a host of evils leapt out of the box, turning the beneficiary into a victim.
The intuition lurking in this myth is valid for the genius of history in all periods and contexts. Even God loses control over situations the moment the ‘public’ element is introduced into them. Zeus’ control over the ‘box’ ceases at the point of handing it over to Pandora.
Hegel gave this desideratum of history a curious name, ‘the cunning of reason’.
In so far as the nomination of a Dalit for what is symbolically the highest constitutional office in the country is a significant fact in the public domain, there is a case for considering its significance, immediate and otherwise, in the continuing unfolding of the culture and texture of our country. It is necessary that we set aside the ‘intentional fallacy’ even to make a beginning in this regard.
We do not know for sure if Ram Nath Kovind was nominated because he is a Dalit. But there is something we do know; he would not have been, if he were not a Dalit.
Why is it crucial to take into account this basic fact in reading the tectonic shifts this might bring about in the days to come? The answer lies in the essence of the Dalit predicament. While Kovind’s nomination could have been made as a concession to political expedience—or, without any sincere or conscious intention to ameliorate the Dalit predicament—it is almost inevitable that it impacts the social matrix of Dalit-ness in significant ways.
The pain of Dalit-ness is social degradation, resulting in internalised and institutionalised inferiority for a whole group of people. Those who have worked in this field, or encountered relevant situations on the ground, would know how deep-seated presumptions of inferiority and superiority are in this regard. Two factors, among others, contributed to the aggravation of negativity towards Dalits. First, the absolutisation of ‘merit,’ understood in a clinical and socially purblind fashion, made Dalits who seem, apparently on objective grounds, to be wanting in merit, look inferior items of mortality. Second, ‘reservation’—continued well beyond the shelf life envisaged for it—widened the social and mental cleavages further. The logic of reservation can be rooted only on admitted inequality which is, in public perception, a synonym for inferiority.
So the Dalits are inferior. But are they? That is the question that the nomination of Ram Nath Kovind raises in a fashion that can no longer be dodged. Or, how are we to understand the inferiority and merit-deficit ascribed to Dalits? Did it inhere in them, or was it inflicted on them? This issue, once raised, will serve as our political Pandora’s box for the years to come. Time will prove that Modi and Shah have, in this instance, very likely overreached.
What George Bernard Shaw said about the plight of African Americans is critically relevant here. The white American relegated, he said, the black to the rank of shoeshine boy, and then concluded that blacks were only good for shining shoes. The manifest inferiority of the blacks, according to Shaw, amounts to an indictment of the whites who consigned them callously to inferiority. How Kovind conducts himself in the office of the President of India —the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the country—could be the seed of a social revolution in this country.
Are Modi and Shah aware of this? Even more importantly, has the RSS establishment paid any heed to such an eventuality? It is hard to say. To me it is a miracle that flies in the face of the ideology and theology of the RSS that a Dalit is thus showcased as an embodiment of extreme merit. It is a most welcome thing and it has not come a day too soon. But this needs to be seen as an inaugural event, not a valedictory function.
What augurs well for the Dalit predicament, ironically, need not prove a happy honeymoon for Kovind. Every day in office, his Dalit-ness will be put to the test. How he sees issues pertaining to social justice and Dalit aspirations will exalt or expose him as a Dalit icon or a counterfeit coin vis-a-vis Dalit-ness. Be that as it may, the Pandora’s box will remain open, once it is opened. Discounting this on the excuse that we have had a Dalit president—K R Narayanan—once before and it proved a damp squib is like saying, “Well, the Vesuvius has not erupted for thirty years, so we’ll build our mansions on its slopes.” All it proves is that the eruption is nearer by thirty years.