This is a response to Daipayan’s series of musings about subalternity in India. Deep (as I know Daipayan informally) picks up on ordinary anecdotes around him to reflect on wider issues of subalternity of Dalits and Muslims in India. I would like to expand on his thoughts. In particular, I argue that subaltern politics has to propose radical emancipation and this will require empathising not just with the subsets of social formations (Dalits, Muslims, Christians) but the subaltern within them, for e.g., women, homosexuals, children, non believers. This has to be articulated within a framework of Leftist thought rather than a market-based agenda, which only pays lip service to to the oppressed and subaltern.
In Modi, my maid and a few home truths (read here) Daipayan wonders why the Dalit, a subaltern, echoes the anti-Muslim view of India’s right. He also points to the co-optation of the subaltern Hindu by the right-wing, which began and largely remains a project of the upper-caste Hindus. In the second article, Being a Muslim in Mumbai (read here), Deep picks up on experiences of his Muslim friends in Mumbai and links them to the consequential position of the community after the 1993 riots.
By eschewing a polemical stance, Deep conveys a genuine concern for individuals as they circulate in their various identities (Dalit household help, right-wing Dalit, Muslim, middle-class Muslim in Mumbai). These are individuals who undergo annoyance and humiliation when the obscene underbelly of the society reveals itself (like in the cases of Rehan, Adnan, or worse still, Hamid Pir Mohammed Ghojaria, who was assaulted and abused on the Mumbai local for carrying signs of his religious identity on his body). Besides narrating the stories, which just about supress his own frustrations, Deep does not have more to offer. It is clear he bears the burden of guilt of the hate that one section of the Hindu right (overtly) and another section (covertly) harbours for Muslims.
On the other hand is the case of Deep’s household help who, despite being a Dalit, cannot reflect on her subalternity. She has been coopted by the discourse of the Hindu right-wing, and Deep wistfully wonders why she cannot see that she has been pitted against those who share her own position. Though he tries to account for this anomaly in Amitava Kumar’s arguments that hate is passed on from one generation to the other, it does not explain convincingly the Dalit woman’s attitudes towards Muslims. Does this imply a historical reservoir of hate for Muslims amongst Dalits? I am in no position to explain this phenomenon, so I leave it at that. But Deep makes the honest mistake of assuming that the subaltern shares cultural solidarity. His own words betray his intentions — he is shocked (I suspect because she exhibited an agency that revealed the darkness of emancipatory politics thus negating his own view of the subaltern). The woman in questions exhibits agency, but one that reinforces her subalternity.
Here I would like to turn to Gayatri Spivak, who informs us of the peculiar problematic of a logocentric assumption of cultural solidarity among heterogenous people. She had also asked in a manner only expected of a critical thinker: “Can the subaltern speak?”. These two assertions by Spivak help us understand why the Dalit woman expressed those words. Rakesh Sharma’s documentary Chet’ta Rejo further buttresses this point. The film, based on two years of research, looks specifically at the patterns of arrests and litigation since 2002 in Gujarat. A majority of those charged with rioting, arson, murder etc are either tribals or Dalits and OBCs (for more read full report here). While Deep rightly locates the problematic in the Brahminical order, which “othered” the woman into being a Dalit in the first place, he misses an opportunity to point at the elephant in the room, i.e., the subaltern cannot speak! That she merely rearticulated the right wing construction of the Muslim “other” proves this point. To borrow from horror films, it was as if a sinister voice from beyond had entered her body to disturb the serenity (in this case the bourgeoise abstracted existence) and reveal its grotesqueness. Her subalternity has been reinscribed by a new hegemonic logic of (re)acceptance into a Hindu structure, on which she will probably lack any critical view. Even if she did, it would be couched in the language of the new hegemon. When Dalit politics continues to use religion as a basis of social formation, mobility will be defined by the superstructure of Hindutva (or neo-Brahminical) ideology, which will not permit the formation of a recognisable basis of action.
It would be ridiculous to infer that I suggest the issue of social and economic exclusion and discrimation can be sidestepped in favour of some fuzzy egalitarian politics. Tyranny is a real problem that Dalits face on a day to day basis. Their subaltern position does not permit them to be equals at the village water well, education, jobs, lunch rooms etc. But as long as religion plays an important role in the Dalit identity, the group will continue to be stymied by the limits defined by the superstructure. Dalit politics should also rearticulate its basis of action outside of the religious/social issue. This will require coming up with an alternative view to their self. I am in no position to articulate it for them. All we elites and privileged can do is help them locate their voice, instead of speaking for them. This will require playing emphasis on education, particularly for women. To transform this into praxis requires steps in education not the one articulated by a bourgeoise logic of abstract citizens but which takes into account the historical legacy and local resources and empowers them with a humanist world view (not that they do not possess one already).
I admit this may appear as wishful thinking, when the route of the market is far more pragmatic. But in this symbolic gesture lies the potential for the radical and transformative, rather than the instrumentalism of the market, which will merely lead to a relocation of their position from one dung heap to another. What I am alluding to here is raising the consciousness of Dalit politics towards women, the real subalterns in this heap. Of course we can see shades of this already in action, for e.g, Kancha Illaiah’s stance Why I am not a Hindu (also read this interview). This politics of Illaiah not only promotes a Zizekian transformatory “violence”, but possesses the possibility of real change I admit I am slipping into a dangerous territory here but Illaiah’s stance strikes at the core of the problem. As long as religion is the prime organiser of Dalit consciousness, they will continue to be under the order as it mutates in the various interstices of modernity and post-modernity.
Similarly, while one lauds the amplification of the religious minority subaltern voice, one cannot help but reflect that this concern papers over the subaltern amongst the religious minorities, for e.g, women, homosexuals, non-believers. The left has shied away from this debate, giving the rightwing the fodder to make its case. While we stand up for the dignity of Muslims, we should not abdicate our responsibility to stand up for those whose voices are silenced within such groups (The silence in the left over Taslima Nasreen is a case in point. Read here).
What is the point of this you may ask. The Left rightly (pun unintended) locates the voice of the subaltern. But then is faced with the reality of world it lives in. In a market focused world, where all past prejudices, biases, injustices mutate into new forms the Left resorts to the politics of melancholy. Market ideologues offer seductive arguments asking us to turn over to their side of history. This hardly need be the case. There is a need for the imagination of a new radical politics.
Kishore Budha is nearing completion of his PhD from the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, UK. His interests include philosophy, critical theories of media and communication, transnational communication, Film industry & production, Film theory, Film and history, Communications Policy, Visual Culture, Communication Technologies, Web media and communication