Today 28th Novemeber is the death anniversary of the legend Mahatma Jotirao Phule who discovered Yshua as Baliraja of India. On this occasion I would Like to share this article. Hope it will enable everyone to rethink. Salute to Mahatma Jotirao Phule!!!! Phule, Gandhi, and India’s culture war by Braj Ranjan Mani In India, caste and brahmanism flourished and played havoc for centuries, dehumanizing and dividing a large majority of people as “lower castes”, “savage tribes”, and “untouchables”, known today as the other backward classes (OBCs), adivasis and dalits, respectively. Caste is the most vicious form of social stratification based on the belief that different castes and genders have different inborn essences and hence deserve differential treatment. It celebrates and reinforces the idea that those born in higher caste or gender (male) are inherently pure, intelligent and worthy of respect; and those born in lower caste or gender (female) are inherently impure, stupid and worthless. Caste system rewards and privileges the high born (brahman and allied upper castes), and relegates the rest to servitude of the high born. Brahmanism, named after those at the top of the caste hierarchy (the main beneficiary to the system) is the socio-religious and ideological engine of caste. Ambedkar (1891-1956), the great leader of the caste-oppressed, describes caste as “a diabolical contrivance to suppress and enslave humanity” and brahmanism as a negation of the spirit of equality, liberty and fraternity. Caste and its consequences are not the things of the past, nor are they unchanging or static. Caste dominates the domain of Indian culture, knowledge-production, the media and academia, which in their turns equate Indian tradition with Hinduism, and Hinduism with a benign multicultural religion that remains innocent of discriminations and brutalities. Though the cultural capital and the production and dissemination of knowledge is still dominated by the upper castes, the rejection of caste and brahmanism has a long history in India, and it has gathered momentum in recent years. Anti-caste voices of the lowered-caste majority have rejected the brahmanic way of looking at Indian society and history. Phule’s culture war against brahmanismMahatma Phule Mahatma Phule The appearance and reality of Indian society can be better understood through the story of two Mahatmas (Great Souls)—Jotirao Phule (1827-1890) and Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948). This comparison of two Mahatmas will point to the heart of many of India’s socio-cultural problems. Their very different struggles and legacies are an integral part of the raging debates on caste, culture, identity and conversion in contemporary India. Phule was India’s 19th century anti-caste hero, and a cultural revolutionary. The people recognized him as Mahatma (Great Soul) in his own time for his inspired struggle for liberating the oppressed, the lowered castes and women. But he remained a minor figure in the eyes of the elites and so diminished in importance after his death due to the upper-castes control of the educational engine. Lately though, Phule’s life and writings are again catching the lowered castes’ imagination. He is emerging—after more than a century of forced elitist obscurity—as a rallying point for the struggling women, underclass and the caste-oppressed. Phule is now widely considered the “Father of Indian Social Revolution.” Phule was the first major theorist of caste and brahmanism who saw caste as the lynchpin of the most vicious slavery, more sinister than the worst colonialism. He argued in his 1873 revolutionary book Gulamgiri (Slavery) that the relationship between the so-called high castes and the low has essentially been the relationship of one between the colonizer and colonized. Caste system, Phule stressed, divides and degrades the productive majority into hundreds of mutually antagonistic castes in a hierarchical order that allows the upper castes to live off the labor of the lower. Caste, in Phule’s analysis, was also responsible for the all-pervasive patriarchy and gender inequalities in Indian society. On this understanding, he wanted to smash the whole ideological and material matrix of caste for liberation of the lowered castes, women and all other oppressed people. This transformation, he insisted, would not come about without a struggle. But the struggle, he was emphatic, has to be based on unifying lowered castes with a universal liberation ideology. Phule was also the pioneer who pointed to the close relationship between knowledge and power. He stressed the need for education of the oppressed, which alone would enable them to see through the socio-cultural machinery of domination, ultimately leading them to launch their freedom struggle. A cultural revolution based on mass education was at the heart of Phule’s freedom struggle. Gandhi, the patron-saint of caste-brahmanic culture Gandhi is adored the world over as India’s apostle of peace and non-violence, the saint-statesman who won India her freedom Gandhi from the British colonialism through a pacifist struggle. His promotion of truth, non-violence and nationalism has often been presented as an emancipatory, indigenous anti-thesis to modernity and Western colonialism. Above all, Gandhi is glorified as the redeemer of the poor and powerless. Elitist Indian intellectuals—with their naive Western counterparts in tow—have over the decades been presenting this false picture of Gandhi. Brahmanical writers have succeeded in molding Gandhi’s platitudes, conveniently masking or setting aside his casteist and reactionary ideas, into an attractive mantra of peace, prosperity and progress. Biographers of Gandhi do not dwell on his great love for caste and brahmanism; many of them even present him as a crusader against caste. Gandhi was not what he posed himself to be, or what historians claim he was. Gandhi was pro-caste. He was not the champion of the poor and caste-oppressed. Gandhi was a die-hard casteist, a devout Hindu, who subscribed to the brahmanical worldview of caste. His politics and priorities were grounded in the Hinduisation of Indian culture and society. His anti-colonial politics was part of his more fundamental politics of pro-caste brahmanism. “The seeds of swaraj [self-rule, rejection of British rule]”, he preached, “lies in the caste system.” He wanted the British to leave India, but he also wanted to maintain the caste-cultural status quo in Indian society. Phule’s Bali Raj versus Gandhi’s Ram Raj Gandhi’s ideology and politics were polar opposite of Phule’s. Gandhi stood for almost everything that Phule so powerfully attacked and fought against. Gandhi saw in the caste system the “soul of Hinduism” and “seeds of swara, and his whole politics was oriented to nurture and strengthen the “fundamental, natural, and essential” caste system. In his writings and speeches, Gandhi often warned against any radical change in the traditional power relations and social hierarchy of India, instructing the oppressed to wait for the oppressor’s change of heart! Not any socio-cultural change through education and mobilization of the oppressed, but “the oppressor’s change of heart” was the Gandhi’s mantra for a new India. As intended, this approach induced passivity in the oppressed and allowed the oppressor to maintain the status-quo. The differences between the visions and worldviews of Phule and Gandhi are strikingly apparent in the very symbols they used to represent India. Phule’s “Bali Raj” and Gandhi’s “Ram Raj.” The contrast between the two is deep and multi-layered. Gandhi, in his characteristic style, uncritically adopted Ram Raj as a cultural symbol steeped in caste and patriarchal values, and hoisted it as a heavenly state of conflict-free India. Ram Raj became symbolic of Gandhi’s romanticized Indian village community. On the other hand, Phule’s understanding of the sub-continent’s history, and his struggle for a just, casteless and inclusive society was centered on the symbol of Bali Raj. Phule retrieved the real meaning of this ancient fable and infused it with vision for a new society. In the brahmanical lores, Bali was a rakshas, a demon king, whom the brahman Vaman hoodwinked into a false position and crushed him to death. King Bali, however, in popular legend, was the noble indigenous king, an embodiment of a just and kind ruler, who bravely warded off the attack of Aryan invaders. The Bali-Vaman contest has been a metaphor, of sorts, of the Aryan-non-Aryan conflicts that ravaged the subcontinent for many centuries after the Aryan invasion around the middle of second millennium bc. Phule took the story of Bali and made it into a subversive symbol, giving it a historical interpretation in terms of conflicts between the Aryan-brahman and indigenous people. He re-narrated the story to underline how the Aryan-brahman established caste and a pseudo-religion based on caste and enslaved the native peoples of the land. Phule’s Bali Raj—the utopia of an ideal and caste-free society—was to be built through struggle, education, and rational thinking. Importantly, he also employed the image of Bali by recalling the Christian vision of a coming Redeemer, and the Judeo-Christian paradigm of all human history as the working out of a battle between good and evil. Phule also identified Jesus as the coming King Bali in many of his writings—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, seeing caste and brahmanism as an embodiment of evil, and biggest stumbling block in the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the subcontinent. The rediscovery of Phule as the real Mahatma for India, is a recent phenomenon. Gandhi’s great betrayal of the oppressed majority is now being realized by the lowered castes. As Phule’s platform of liberation is being rediscovered and compared with Gandhian politics of brahmanical status quo, Phule is emerging as a prophetic figure among India’s lowered castes. The power and truth of Phule’s fundamental points about power, culture, knowledge and exclusion remain highly relevant in today’s India. Caste still remains the linchpin of India’s political, social, and spiritual dynamics. The significance of Phule’s social and spiritual war against caste cannot be overemphasized.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 02:24:56 +0000
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