In the years when the BJP was finding no allies and no political party would touch Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 13-day government in 1996 with even a barge pole, L K Advani was wont to use the term “political untouchability” to describe how his party was being discriminated against.
A political analyst I knew at the time was not amused. He had no dispute with what Advani was saying but his use of the word “untouchability” was highly objectionable, he said. Dalits in this country had recently risen above centuries of social untouchability, and to use the word loosely to describe how other political parties distanced themselves from an essentially privileged upper caste one completely failed to understand the isolation, ostracism, discrimination and, indeed, cruelty of a practice like untouchability, he said.
There were communities which had practised not just untouchability but also unseeability and unapproachability—Dalits had to get out of the way of approaching Brahmins so that they may not be polluted by their sight and proximity. If they did not, they were beaten to the bone and subjected to all sorts of unmentionable atrocities. Only someone who had gone through such discrimination would understand how painful even the mention of untouchability was to such communities, the analyst said. Advani was doing them and himself no favours by loosely bandying about a term of cruelty and distress, he said.
I was reminded of that lesson in cavalier patriarchy when a Twitter storm erupted last week over its CEO Jack Dorsey holding up a poster, given to him by a Dalit woman activist, asking to “smash Brahminical patriarchy”. It brought forth a range of reactions across the board, including from Congress leaders who should have known better.
In recent years, many social scientists have associated Hindutva and patriarchy with Brahminism and upper caste privilege and hegemony and they have not been far wrong. Since the propagation of Hindutva has largely been associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates, we tend to forget that discriminatory attitudes run across the board and Brahminism is not restricted to a particular party in the modern era—including Communist parties whose tallest leaders in both Kerala (EMS Namboodiripad) and Bengal (Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) ruled with a confidence and authority that could only have been bolstered by the circumstances of their birth.
But more than 70 years after Independence, with a non-Brahmin prime minister in residence, things should have been different. Yet while most of those trolling Dorsey for holding the poster were clearly patriarchal bigots leaning towards one particular political dispensation, I was startled to come across a tweet by a former Congress minister who said Brahmins of this country were the new Jews. That statement was as cavalier as Advani’s untouchability terminology more than two decades ago and completely failed to understand both the pain and horror of the Jewish holocaust as well as the atrocities and unbearable cruelty suffered by Dalits because of Brahminical patriarchy even today.
No wonder Australian activist Asher Wolf promptly responded that she had lost many family members in the German pogroms and just because feminists were demanding an end to patriarchy, it did not mean Brahmins had the right to compare themselves with Jews.
I have not seen many articulate responses from within the country on the issue but writing in 1916, Dr B R Ambedkar described caste discrimination and Brahminism as a “local problem, but one capable of much wider mischief”. In the era of social media it is indeed globalising the mischief.
What Dr Ambedkar said years before Independence holds true even today. He wrote that in his time “no civilised society of today presents more survivals of primitive times than does the Indian society … its tribal code, in spite of the advance of time and civilisation, operates in all its pristine vigour even today.”
He could have been saying this in 2018 instead of a century earlier. For we continue to be tribal and primitive or else why would educated, seemingly secular and liberal Congress men identify themselves with just a tribe and imply that Narendra Modi cannot talk about Hinduism because is not a Brahmin?
All those years ago, Dr Ambedkar had said India still favoured the clan system although the country had no clans on the lines of American Indians or Scottish Highlanders. Indeed, we continue to be clannish but in India it is not just a case of simple clans or dynasties. When clannishness translates into caste discrimination and the resultant patriarchy, we condemn whole tribes (and here I use the word not in its constitutional interpretation) to being children of a lesser god, rendered unable to rise above their circumstances because of that patriarchy and destined to remain poor and underprivileged all their lives.
So if a Dalit woman activist had a poster that asked to smash Brahminical patriarchy, she was doing no more than seeking equality and justice for the double discrimination—her being a Dalit and a woman (for even upper caste women can be victims of Brahminical patriarchy).
That Dorsey and Twitter could not understand that caste discrimination is the equivalent of racism is pardonable. That progressive Indian liberals should exhibit a singular lack of sensitivity by claiming reverse discrimination for themselves smacks of a wider mischief afoot.
Sujata Anandan
Senior journalist and political commentator
Email: sujata.anandan@gmail.com