Why not a Dalit priest?

Deepavali in White House
Why not a Dalit priest?
By Kancha Ilaiah
Let not the NRIs work for creating religious frictions by presenting one section’s festival as Indian festival.
The Non-Resident Indians of North America have been trying to convince the White House that they should recognise the Deepavali festival as American national festival by celebrating it in White House. They made such efforts during the Bill Clinton period but failed. Then they tried very hard during the George W Bush term and again failed. However, they succeeded during this time in convincing the Obama administration that it should celebrate the Deepavali festival in the White House. On the Deepavali day, Obama attended a celebration organised by Indians in the White House and lit a lamp. The main representative of India on the dais, along with Obama was an Indian Brahmin priest with a shaven head and semi-naked body covered with a Pattu Vastram and a dhoti. He also sported big three fold Vaishnava ‘namam’. Assuming that the NRIs were not willing to present a homogeneous Hinduism by keeping a Shaivaite priest also, the basic question that does bother is: does that priest represent Indian Dalits-Bahujans who hardly have any space in the Hindu religious temple structures? The NRIs living in America used Obama’s black background to convince him to attend the celebration and give a respectability to Indian-Hindu culture. What they have ‘hidden’ from Obama and his administrative staff was that in India still the Hindu priestly caste does not allow millions of Dalits to enter Hindu temples and they treat them as untouchables. We were all a witness to Obama’s oath taking ceremony where the black pastors played a key role, though there were white pastors side by side. In spite of an attempt to raise a controversy around his own pastor Jeremiah Wright, Obama refused to disown him. Since Hinduism does not even give such a scope to Dalits and other backward castes, they are forced to remain unequal and outside its ritual celebrations. No Dalit-Bahujan is allowed to become a priest in any mainstream Hindu temple. For a long time the American blacks faced a similar denial of spiritual rights (though there was no untouchability) within the white church. The blacks fought for decades to fight such spiritual racism and over a period of time they gained the right to go to the white church. But the blacks were not allowed to ordain as pastors and lead the church system. To counter such discrimination the blacks started their own churches, which have become a whole religious system in themselves. All great black leaders emerged from that black church. Whether it were the first major black leader, Frederick Doglas of Abraham Lincoln’s times, or Martin Luther King who emerged as the greatest leader of the civil rights movement and won a Nobel Peace prize at the age of 38, all were black pastors in black churches. Even Obama emerged as a political leader, while working in the black community church. When the Indian casteist forces celebrated the Deepavali in the White House, the Indian community would have realised that it would have destroyed his race neutral administrative apparatus if they did not take a Dalit priest to the White House. They should have done that, at least, to tell the world that the NRIs do not believe in caste discrimination and untouchability. Some of these NRIs were raising objections as to why the Congress House Committee of Human Rights (called the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations in the United States House of Representatives) heard the Indian delegation in 2005 about the existence of discrimination based on caste and untouchability in India. Back in India Sri Sri Ravishankar, Ramachandra Guha and others accused us (myself, Joseph D’Souza, Udit Raj and Indira Atwale were the main deposers) as people who were indulging in internationalising the internal problems. How do these so called reform seers and intellectuals respond to celebration of Deepavali in White House and that too with a Brahmin representing Indian culture? Suppose the Kerala NRIs ask for celebration of Onam in the White House, who will represent that festival? Would a Bali’s heritage Shudra represent it or a Brahmin from Vaishnava tradition? Do not these intellectuals, so called seers and NRIs understand that Deepavali as it is being celebrated today is an anti-Dalit-Bahujan festival as Narakasura, who was killed was a Shudra himself? How could a festival that celebrates the death of an Indian Shudra be considered as a secular festival? Secondly, how does Deepavali represent India as a cultural festival when India is a country of multi-religious people? The only festival that can represent all Indians is Independence Day (August 15) celebration. Let the NRIs not work for creating religious frictions by presenting one section’s festival as Indian festival. Let the NRIs stop globalising communalism and casteism also in this from. Let Obama’s administration realise that there are 200 million Dalits who cannot celebrate Deepavali as a festival in India. This is the reason why the Obama administration should have asked for the presence of a Dalit priest on the occasion of celebration of the Deepavali in the White House.   http://www.deccanherald.com/content/32772/why-not-dalit-priest.html

Ambedkar & USA

June 03, 2011   3:48:12 AM

Chandrabhan Prasad

A professor recounts Ambedkar’s foray with Columbia University

Dr Ambedkar was one of the first (and one of the few) Indian leaders to be educated in the United States. I am not sure what influence his years at Columbia University in New York City had on his life, but I know we can be proud to claim some part of this remarkable man’s early development. Two of the qualities which mark his life and career — optimism and pragmatism — may have been enhanced by his contact with this country, which prides itself on its charactersitics of hope and practicality.

The three years Ambedkar spent at Columbia, 1913-1916, awakened, in his own words, his potential. Columbia was in its golden age, and a list of Ambedkar’s professors reads like a catalog of early 20th-century American educators. The transcript of Ambedkar’s work at Columbia reveals that he audited many classes, more than he could have taken for grades, including such subjects as “railroad economics.” Later, Ambedkar wrote, “The best friends I have had in my life were some of my classmates at Columbia and my great professors, John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman and James Harvey Robinson. II (Columbia Alumni News, December 19, 1930).”

Although it was Edwin Seligman, Professor of Economics, with whom Ambedkar kept in touch after he left Columbia and to whom he sent students when he taught at Sydenham college in Bombay, John Dewey seems to have had the greatest influence on him. Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy, his theories associated with optimistic, pragmatic American democracy, which preached (although it did not always practice) equality, no barriers to upward mobility, the use of machinery to produce leisure, and an attitude of respect for every individual.

Ambedkar’s first political party, the Independent Labour Party founded in 1936, took its name from British politics. But two things lessened the importance of Britain for Ambedkar: the colonial presence of the British in India, and the preference of British liberals for Gandhi and his non-violent direct action campaigns for independence over Ambedkar and the slow parliamentary path. And it also seems likely that American optimism, and the lack of an obvious class system in America, met a natural response in Ambedkar.

Ambedkar’s American contacts did not end when he left Columbia University in June, 1916, although one must admit they became minimal. He continued to correspond with Edwin Seligman, his mentor in Economics at Columbia, and occasionally recommended Indian students to Seligman. In 1930, Ambedkar wrote an article for the Columbia alumni magazine which reveals quite a sentimental attachment: “The best friends I have had in my life were some of my classmates at Columbia and my great professors, John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman and James Harvey Robinson.” In 1952, Ambedkar went back to Columbia to receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws and it is clear that this recognition of his work meant much to him. It was in this period of the early 1950’s that Ambedkar was publicly critical of India’s foreign policy of non-alignment, which seemed to him to cut India off from American contacts.

I shall end this introduction with two stories, since this is not so much a scholarly tract as an essay which attempts to explore an American-Indian cultural interaction in a personal way. Mrs Savita Ambedkar tells a touching story of Ambedkar happily imitating John Dewey’s distinctive classroom mannerisms — 30 years after Ambedkar sat in Dewey’s classes. It is impossible to find in Ambedkar’s life story any hint of a guru or a personality which dominated him, but here at least is a suggestion that he was fond of both Dewey the philosopher and Dewey the man.

The other story concerns a letter of recommendation written about Ambedkar by Edward Cannon, Professor of Political Economy in the University of London, to the head of Sydenham College, where Ambedkar applied for a teaching position in 1918. Professor Cannon wrote: “I don’t know anything about Ambedkar except that he came to do a thesis and attacked it and me in a way which showed he had quite extraordinary practical ability…. I rather wonder if he is a pure Indian; his character is rather Scotch-American.” There is absolutely no doubt that Ambedkar was pure Indian, and no one who knew his background and the history of his caste would assign any other nationality to him. But this depiction of his character as “Scotch-American” rather delights me.

(Excerpts from a lecture by Prof Eleanor Zelliot delivered in 1991 in the University of Columbia)

http://www.c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/bhimrao_ambedkar.html

 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/296221/Ambedkar–US.html

The Untouchable Case for Indian Capitalism -Wall Street Journal

 The Wall Street Journal, New York

The Indian left’s caste-related justifications for

 state intervention are dying.

The plight of the Dalits, those whom the Hindu caste system considers outcastes and hence Untouchables, was a rallying cry of Hindu reformers and Indian leftists for half a century. But today these victims of the caste system are finding that free markets and development bring advancement faster than government programs.

Historically, Dalits were left to do the most undignified work in society, and were denied education or job opportunities. After independence, not only was legal recognition of caste abolished, but Delhi also created affirmative action and welfare programs. Intellectuals who fought for the betterment of Dalits worked together with leftists to pass laws righting historical wrongs.

That alliance is now breaking down. India’s economic reforms have unleashed enormous opportunities to elevate Dalits—materially and socially. In research published last year, Devesh Kapur at the University of Pennsylvania and others show this transformation occurring in Uttar Pradesh state in the north, a region notorious for clinging to caste traditions.

Mr. Kapur found that Dalits now buy TVs, mobile phones and other goods very easily—at rates similar to any other caste; they have also been spending more money on family weddings. These factors and others point to practical benefits Untouchables receive from growth, the same benefits accruing to other Indians. There are more such cases in the south and west of the country.

More economic choices are changing Dalits’ own expectations and, in turn, changing social structures for the better. Dalits may have seats reserved for them in public schools, but parents now prefer to send their children to private schools. Urbanization is one trend hugely in favor of those thought to be Untouchables in the village economy. Commerce in cities doesn’t discriminate.

Dalits have also launched campaigns promoting the use of English, which has both helped them earn higher incomes and more dignity in society. One Dalit intellectual, Chandrabhan Prasad, thinks his community should worship “English” as a goddess.

This has the left, with its belief that only the modern state can repair social ills, in a quandary. One refrain common among Indian leftists is that 20 years of economic reform have benefited upper castes and left those at the bottom of this hierarchy worse off. But Dalits clearly don’t agree.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Dalits pay tribute to a portrait of their leader, B.R. Ambedkar.

The only remaining argument for the Dalit cause to stay intertwined with statism is the fact that the Untouchables’ most respected leader, B.R. Ambedkar, supported affirmative-action laws. Because of this, he was long believed to have leftist leanings.

However, 50 years later, my research shows that Ambedkar was, in fact, one of the biggest proponents of classical liberalism in India’s 20th century history—not some proto-Marxist, as some have made him out to be. Last month’s 120th anniversary of his birth is a chance to reflect on how liberalization has helped and can further help Dalits.

It’s true that the Dalit leader often spoke in favor of affirmative-action measures for Dalits and, as the architect of India’s constitution, put some of these measures into the law. For instance, he feared that without a reservation provision for education, Dalits would not achieve social equality and freedom.

Seeing their leader support state intervention, Dalit intellectuals embraced Marxism. Mr. Prasad, a Marxist-turned-free-marketeer, notes, “The idea of Communism . . . seeped into the Dalit consciousness. Many claiming to be ardent Ambedkarites, including myself for a decade, spoke the Marxist language. A great amount of Dalits’ intellectual energy, time and resources was invested in Marxism.” That boosted India’s broader left movement.

But this whitewashes Ambedkar’s true legacy. Some economists and historians have pointed out that Ambedkar was no Marxist. My own research indicates that this man, born an Untouchable in 1891, anticipated a lot of what classical liberals like F.A. Hayek later said.

In the 1920s, Ambedkar was an early advocate of property rights. He also opposed central planning, writing as early as 1917 that it “must lead to inefficiency.” Under the 1950 constitution that he drafted, not only was there little hint of Soviet-style planning, but the right to property was enshrined as a “fundamental right”—the highest and most easily enforceable of civil rights in India’s legal framework. Politicians later amended the constitution to enable economic engineering.

Ambedkar was also one of few Indians to think seriously about monetary matters. He has left behind writings from the 1920s supporting the gold standard. Like the Austrian School of Economics after him, he defended private banks’ ability to issue competing currencies and decried the state’s monopoly over legal tender.

Ambedkar may have supported reserving seats for Dalits in public education, but he actually favored a review of the provision after a decade, so as to not make it permanent. All this was forgotten after his death in 1956.

It’s important to tell the real story about Ambedkar. For one thing, it could further invigorate the Dalit community in favor of free-market ideas. His influence among Dalits remains unparalleled to this day. That, in turn, will undermine the linkage of the caste system to leftist ideas. Policy makers often invoke freedom fighters and founding fathers for their cause. Ambedkar should no longer be a pretext for statist policies.

Reform-minded policy makers can press Ambedkar’s insights into service, though. In contrast to leaders who reckoned the English language was imperialist, Ambedkar once called English the “milk of lionesses.” Unlike Mohandas Gandhi, who saw the village as the basis for economic activity, Ambedkar considered the “individual” to be the ultimate economic unit.

Ambedkar isn’t the only classical liberal in modern India’s history; nor is caste the only pretext for leftism. But if someone as influential as Ambedkar believed that classical liberal ideas could help India’s most downtrodden, and if these ideas are starting to help in practice, then the political case for them only becomes stronger.

—Mr. Chandrasekaran works in public policy in New Delhi.

The Wall Street Journal American English- international daily newspaper

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303745304576354672790976918.html?mod=googlenews_wsj