Initial Thoughts on Makers of Modern Dalit History

 Many many years ago, I used to watch Caravaka Podcast religiously. Originally, during the pandemic and just afterwards. It was from here that I first came to know of Guru Prakash Paswan. He was a fresh voice in the Dalit discourse, BJP leader and dyed in Hindutva. Like something Badri Narayan talks about in his Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation (My GR Review here, the book should be read despite the low rating). It was from this podcast that I came to know of Guru Paswan's books, which I started yesterday. Only recently I have started to look into myself from a caste angle (which is OBC in some states, SC in some, but GEN is what I use on forms).

But the book doesn't really hold up as of now to my impression of the author (No offence to Ramabadran but I don't have much knowledge of or opinions about him and will sometimes use the author to refer to Guru Prakash only). And to be fair, I have just read the introduction and a small first chapter, my opinion may or may not change as I progress with the book. 

This book is no academic tome, sharp criticism or groundbreaking research and makes such explicit in the introduction itself. At the end of the day it is but to familiarise a general audience with these great figures. But still, the book is amassing citations on Google Scholar. I can only hope that the derived works' authors are aware of the book's scope and citing in keeping that in mind. But I have seen worse, and will expect such.

Before proceeding, I would justify why I should write a review (critque?) at this stage when I do plan to cpmplete the book. I think a GR review puts it best:

पुस्तक से परिचय कराते हुए लेखक ने एक लम्बी भूमिका तैयार की हुई है, जहाँ आपको पू:री पुस्तक का परिचय हो जाता है। यदि आप आगे न भी पढ़ें तब भी आप पुस्तक के बारे में ठीक ठीक जानकारी प्राप्त कर लेते हैं।

The 30+ page introduction is the longest and most important part of the book, dare I say, Bahujan of the Book. So lets get started. 

On page (viii), it clearly states that

we would like to state that profiles that the reader will find in the book are a combination of historical facts, stories that people have told about them over generations

So yeah, not an academic tract. Which, by itself, should be no problem. But then they go on and cite people like Suraj "Afro-dalitism" Yedge. No thank you. I prefer not to cut copy paste critical studies from halfway across the globe to study my own society. To be fair, some Subaltren Studies language has been adopted too. But given the political background of the author, I find the omission of  Badri Narayan intresting. The introduction tries to paint a broad painting as well as supplement it iwth data. But it didn't really gel well here. On the data front, the fact that during land the biggest, most glaring injustice to us have been that less than 0.5% of land redistributed agricultural land was given to SCSTs. In an land obsessed, non georgist society where agriculture is a mollycoddled tax free activity where the supposedly divine "Annadatas" (Only type of producers that the Nehruvian morality can tolerate) are showered upon my honest taxpayers' money, this means that this chunk of society prettty much lost on this part of the social welfare schemes. Combine this is what next to non existent land market, means that these misdeeds comitted 70 years ago can't be corrected now. This leads be to wonder if my own views on laws that restrict sales of land like those in Jharkhand needs updation? I am all for free market treating land as any other commodity, but quite evidently one side lacks market power here and a case for government intervention can be made. But that is another issue, and I don't know much about it at hand so let's drop that. 

The passages on Dalit litrature, expression and capaltilism where intresting and I did learn a lot from them, and had to add even more references to my TBR. Eleanor Zelliot is mentioned but thankfully the misconception that she was the first to do a PhD on Ambedkar is not repeated. I really disliked that the author couldn't decide if every Dalit is severely oppressed, fearful even to walk on the road (Knowing Guru Prakash, he himself is an exception to this rule and must be self aware of this fact) or an increasingly being accepted into the mainstream society. There is no need for hyperbole in the oppression olympics commentary when the reality itself will appear hyperbolic. This is just not done. You push away people like this. 

Finally moving to the first chapter. It's about Ayyankali from Kerala. Never heard of him, so yeah, great. Will actually learn something. But the writing is like of generic biography, there is no "voice". I needed to reread it to finally gasp that he was born in 1863, one can skip that line and willm never know what time period are we talking of. He is from the Pulayar castes, which were basically in a system of chattel slavery. They were porbabited from using "I" is conversation with so called forward castes. Casteism errors the very shelf of the depressed. They are made to belive they are less than human. This is not something I ever heard of. While there is a decent refrence section, I found the actual writing of the chapter amateurish and in need of editing. I double checked that it's a Penguin book and still can't belive noone flagged writing of the chapter. Events and even sentences are repeated in 2 or 3 paragraphs. Thrice is Ayyankali nominated to the Sree Moolam Popular Assembly (while its powers and structure are never even hinted at) for the first time across four paragraphs. And we never find out how he actually broke the shackles of slavery cum casteism. But there is all the time for quating Mandela and even a paragraph about  Y.B. Satyanarayana's memoir about casteism being present in India. What a shocker! And the author that the audacity to preface that with 

To understand the significance of his contribution, it is vital that one understands the circumstances under which Ayyankali fought for the rights of the oppressed. (Pg 3)

 This comes exactly a page after saying that status of the Pulayars were literally that of slaves. But yeah we need a vague sentance from a memoir set in Hyderabad about placement of houses to understand the circumstances. 

These things somehow diminished the seriousness that could have been there. Especially when the chapters are short, this one beging 6 and a half pages excepting the refences.

I will continue with the book, it is not a heavy read anyway but don't have much high expectations. But perhaps I am being more critical than I need to be, afterall this did lead to me writing this post, I am debating by priors on the caste based restriction on land sales as well the how-in-the-world-did-I-even-not-know of Pulayars' condition. Anyways, will read it. 

Also happy birthday to me I guess.