Abstract
Social exclusion of Dalits in India is often understood in terms of discriminatory social structures embedded in oppressive cultural domains of pure versus polluted. Territorial demarcation of Dalits from upper/dominant castes is yet another way of perpetuating and sustaining social exclusion while segregating them in separate neighbourhoods built on the Varna principle of graded social inequality. However, over the last few years, Dalits have gathered some strength to say no to social exclusion while re-territorializing their segregated living spaces into radical sites of social contestation. Dalit counterculture and alternative Dalit heritage are what provided the necessary material for the re-territorialization of Dalit segregated neighbourhoods. The central concern of this study is to unravel what led to transformation of separate Dalit neighbourhoods into social territoriality of contestation.
Territory plays an important role in the critical understanding of the phenomenon of Dalit assertion in India (Guru, 2011, pp. 36–42; Ilaiah, 2005; Ram, 2016a, pp. 32–39; Rawat, 2013, pp. 1059–1067). The word territory is derived from territorium (generally referring to land comprising a village, town, city or district), which in turn is linked with two main etymological hypotheses about its origin. The first, traces its lineage to the Latin word terra (dry land) and -orium (place), thereby assigning a geographical/ sedentary meaning to territory. The second hypothesis linked territorium to word terrere (to frighten) that describes territory as a ‘subjective product, which cannot be inferred from mere characteristics of any objective physical environment’ and ‘a place from which people are warned off’ (Mubi Brighenti, 2006, p. 67). It resembles Deleuzian and Guattarian ‘functional component’ of territoriality, which gives birth to territories (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987). Since territory is not merely a geographical/physical product, its existence can be revealed only practically through a socially experienced interaction, often leading to encounters. It is the very social interaction that is eventually ‘stretched out’ as territory/space. While conceptualizing ‘space’ in tandem with ‘time’, Massey (1994) recognizes that they are ‘inevitably and everywhere imbued with power and meaning and symbolism’ (p. 3). She further adds that ‘the spatial is an ever-shifting social geometry of power and signification’ (Massey, 1994).
Territory is passive, stasis, recalcitrant and non-political, bereft of social interaction (cf. Massey, 1994). The conceptual divorce between social interaction and spatial structures hides the crucial underlying dimensions of territoriality. The basic concept, thus like in ethology, is not territory but territoriality (Mubi Brighenti, 2006, p. 67). Territoriality can be defined as ‘a habitus of action and, above all, of reaction’ (Mubi Brighenti, 2006, p. 67). It does not reveal itself on its own, nor does it transmit a ‘constantly visible behaviour’. Its existence remained hidden ‘until a cospecific (a member of the same species) displaying a type of behaviour that is considered intrusive, makes its appearance. In short, territoriality is [can also be] virtual: it is a disposition to act—or better, react—according to given patterns (generally, aggressive/defensive patterns) under given circumstances’ (Mubi Brighenti, 2006, p. 67). In this study, territoriality refers to all sorts of actions/reactions that take place between the inhabitants of the mainstream upper/dominant castes neighbourhoods (Pinds) and the segregated ghettoized Dalit localities/territories. The territoriality of a Pind and periphery remains invisible until encounters, both ideational and material, occur between the inhabitants of these two habitus spaces
Dalit territory personifies the existence of two diametrically opposite social-spatio reasonings and realities of protest and resistance. The continuous simmering of social protest within segregated Dalit territory against the structures of domination, on the one hand, and the stubborn resistance unleashed by the upper castes against the social protest by Dalits, on the other, has once again catapulted caste into centre stage: a kind of anti-counter-territoriality. ‘Anti’ in the sense of questioning/resisting creeping spatial apartheid by the upper castes, and ‘counter’ in the sense of offering alternative visions of space-place which are embedded in Dalit sense of territoriality. 1 The rise of Dalit social protest and the consequent upper-caste resistance to it set the pace for the emergence of new Dalit territoriality objectified in the form of a radical Dalit movement against social exclusion. Dalit counterculture and native religious heritage provided the source material for this new Dalit territoriality. How a Dalit sense of territoriality generates socio-spatial consciousness and empowers the socially excluded to challenge the oppressive social structures, has not been studied so far in the fast-expanding field of critical Dalit studies. This study attempts to fill such gaps in the relevant Dalit literature while exploring the emerging patterns of Dalit assertion within the segregated Dalit territories in the contemporary state of Indian Punjab.
The article is divided into four parts. The first problematizes the phenomenon of Dalit territory/ territoriality. The second part deals with the transformatory process of Dalit territories, wherein they are being converted from a living place of segregated peripheries into contesting domain of Dalit assertion. It is premised on the idea, that inmates of Dalit territories embolden by the struggles of their forefathers not only defy oppressive social structures but also establish new modes to endow themselves with moral and social strength while challenging their oppressors. The third part problematizes the challenge faced in progressing to social mobility by the Dalits. What distinguishes Dalit struggle in their segregated territories from that of the mainstream civil society and the state affirmative action, on the one hand, and from that of other Dalit activities like Sanskritization and religious transformation, on the other, is discussed in the fourth section.
Mapping Dalit ‘Territoriality’
Dalit territory has often been perceived as devoid of social mobility (Ilaiah, 2005). It is also considered a submissive site of despair, dependence and helplessness (Pal, 2016). Such viewpoints are based on the assumption that ‘(t)erritory has been traditionally imagined as almost the opposite of mobility’ (Mubi Brighenti, 2014, p. 1). But territory is not an object and cannot be defined simply in terms of space (Mubi Brighenti, 2006, 2010, pp. 56–57). Space, in the vocabulary of ‘territoriality’, defies to be confined within traditional realm what colloquially called ‘physical’. Physical space is often marked by distinct boundaries and embellished with ‘spatial’ features. But a space within the precincts of ‘territoriality’ is often referred to by some definitive form of patterns of relations. It is in this critical context of certain definitive form of patterns of relations that all varieties of social bondings can be presented and referred to as ‘territorial’ (Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 57). Spatial structures characterized by social interactions and underlined with multiple and mutually antagonistic dimensions can be equated with Brighentian territory. The concept of territory, argued Mubi Brighenti (2010, p. 57), needs to be investigated, ‘not simply as a specific historical and political construct, but more radically, as a general analytical tool to describe the social sphere and, ultimately, as a social process in itself’. Territory is, thus, social in numerous ways. Some territorial settings of community-living are considered socially cursed and segregated. While others are flaunted as blessed and guarded against the natives of the segregated territories. Thus, territory acquired its distinct appearance in the form of ‘expressive and functional components’, which in turn is based on some qualities and properties that emanate from its socio-cultural and material surroundings. A territory must have some element of quality and property to mark its presence (Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 58).
In the case of Dalit territory(ies), the graded caste hierarchy (a functional component of territoriality) segregates the lowest of the low within separate living space: ‘expressive component of territoriality’ (cf. Mubi Brighenti, 2010, pp. 57–58). Within the asymmetrical structures of the rural agrarian economy, a segregated Dalit territory stands nowhere near the privileged mainstream village territory dominated by upper/dominant castes. All public utility centres like schools, colleges, post-offices, banks, health centres, anganwadis (child day-care centres), ration-depots, panchayat ghars (offices of the elected village governing bodies), offices of the co-operative societies, etc., were built at a significant distance away from Dalit peripheries. These public utility centres were primarily concentrated within the precincts of the typical upper caste-dominated villages
Given the highly discriminatory nature of the land distribution regimes under the Land Alienation Act of 1900, Dalits were legally debarred from land ownership rights in Punjab
Since ownership of land in Punjab is being considered as an index of social status, landlessness among Dalits severely affects their status. Under such an oppressive social existence, Dalits were forced to find new ways for their upward social mobility. They give preference to counter-religious formation over conversion and Sanskritization. Consequently, they established their distinct religion (Ravidassia Dharm). It is this new Dalit religion that provided them required components for the emergence of assertive Dalit territories (Ram, 2012a, pp. 689–700; 2016a, pp. 32–39). The emergence of new Dalit religion in the form of socio-spiritual movement of various nomenclature of Ravidass Deras gave rise to counterculture and alternative Dalit heritage; what Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) have called de/re-territorialization continuum of the territorialization process.
The rise of new Dalit assertion in the form of counterculture and alternative Dalit religious heritage has not only re-territorialized Dalit ‘territoriality’ into ‘social’ but also challenged the ‘political’ of Dalit social inclusion as well. This study intends to articulate how Dalit segregated colonies have been coming up as new sites of Dalit assertion while challenging and negotiating at the same time with the agency of social inclusion in India. Under the neo-liberal regime, government jobs, till recently the mainstay of some sections of the Dalit population, are shrinking very fast (Shah, 2017). Moreover, this truncated Dalit space has turned into an arena of both caste contestations and political patronage (Ram, 2013, pp. 1–29). The shrinking number of vacancies in the public sectors and the resultant frequent inter-caste clashes have convinced the historically marginalized sections of the society that the only viable way left to them is to seek their emancipation and empowerment, on their own terms. This awareness in turn also acts as a catalyst for the articulation of an alternative sense of territoriality anchored in what some critical geographers have described as a ‘progressive sense of place’, or the ‘contemporaneous co-existence of others’ (Massey, 1994, 2005). In a society where ‘religion’ and ‘social’ are intricately intertwined, the former often takes precedence over the latter. It is in this context that Dalits are busy converting their segregated territories into stronghold of ‘Dalit counter-public’ to generate rich tangible and intangible sources for their upward social mobility. Territory, argues Mubi Brighenti (2010, p. 66), does not only provide passage to assets, rather it becomes an asset in itself. That asset/resource, according to Mubi Brighenti (2010), could become the base of identity formation of a given territory. This critical process of identity-based Dalit social mobility in turn re-territorializes Dalit territoriality into a ‘progressive sense of place’.
Dalit Territories and Countercultures
Dalit territory refers to segregated Dalit space/place. Such Dalit territories can easily be located at the south-western sides of the mainstream villages. The south-western locations were chosen from the specific vantage point of their disadvantage. Being on the low-lying margins of the mainstream villages, these Dalit locations receive the flow of the winds once they first passed through the upper-caste localities. Similarly, the dirt of the villages too accumulated at the end of the Dalit peripheries. This is almost an all-India phenomenon. All villages have similar social-spatial two-fold structures: mainstream village
Pind and Dalit territory are not only two separate socio-spatial domains but they also represent the dynamics of entrenched contradictions within the caste-ridden rural society, often eulogized for its cohesive and all supportive integrative political economy. Building a scathing critique of the so-called socially cohesive and mutually supportive rural political economy, B. R. Ambedkar considered Indian village as ‘a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism’. 3 He further equated village as ‘the working plant of the Hindu social order, where one could see the Hindu social order in operation in full swing’. For Ambedkar, Pind and Dalit territory are not merely two separate and independent rural entities. Rather they are sharply differentiated from each other in terms of social status and power relationship. As far as Dalit territory is concerned, it ‘is not a case of social separation, a mere stoppage of social intercourse for a temporary period. It is a case of territorial segregation and of a cordon sanitaire putting the impure people inside the barbed wire into a sort of a cage’ (Ambedkar, 1948, pp. 21–22).
Pinds for Dalits failed to offer a cordial image. On the contrary, they consider them as a dreaded space of oppression and humiliation. A Pind has its own subjective logic to measure social strength and political influence. Despite the more numerical strength of the inhabitants of the Dalit territory in the vicinity of the Pind, it is invariably the residents of the Pind who considered themselves as the majority community. They measure the volume of ‘majority’ not by the census numbers but by ownership of land and other power factors. Thus, despite their being in large numbers, Dalits would always be treated as a:
minor community, precisely because of their lower caste status as well their exclusion from land and other local sources of power. Social respect has also been an unique pattern of acknowledgment in caste-dominated rural settings. It is a common social practice at the village level that the elders belonging to the Pind are invariably treated venerably as wise and respected seniors citizens. This unwritten social rule does not apply on the elders of Dalit territory of the Pind. The opinion of the senior citizens of the Dalit localities were hardly sought by the inhabitants of the Pind. During my field work, I was told that how even the children of the landowners of the Pinds did not address the senior citizens of the Dalit territories with respect. They often call them by their nick names. Names of the inhabitants of the Dalit territory in general, argued Valerian Rodrigues, were clearly distorted such as Kiran became Kinno, Radha Devi became Radhiya. (Rodrigues, 2015, p. 15)
The social code of conduct, traditionally formulated by the inhabitants of Pinds, did not allow the residents of Dalit localities to compete with the former in terms of social status and prestige. 4 Social code of conduct used to dictate terms almost in all spheres of life: housing, foods, clothing, spatial distance and language (Moon, 1989). Such a draconian social code of conduct continued to impact rural social life even after more than seven decades of India’s independence (Nayar, 2012). This is what allowed to emerge two socially exclusive and mutually antagonistic socio-spatial realms at the grassroots of the Indian society.
Apart from a living space, Pind is a dominant territory characterized by varied attributes
Thus, social status-wise all Dalit and backwards castes come after the landowning castes in Pinds. However, of the two, Dalits were the worst sufferers. Since Dalits were forced to live separately in the segregated colonies at the village peripheries and agriculture labour happened to be the mainstay of majority of them, there emerged an unequal sort of relationship between the landowning upper castes and Dalits. Differentiating between ‘Brahmin waadas’ (mainstream villages) and ‘Sudra waadas’ (Dalit territories), Kancha Ilaiah (2005) wrote about the lack of fraternity between the children of Dalitbahujans and Brahmins (pp. 2–3, 9, 17). In his own words:
‘Upper’ castes speak of Dalitbahujans as ‘ugly’. ‘Sudra’ is an abusive word; ‘Chandala’ is a much more abusive word. ‘Upper’ caste children are taught to live differently from Dalitbahujan children, just as they are taught to despise and dismiss them. (Ilaiah, 2005, p. 9)
Manual wage labour in cash/kind happened to be the sole source of some interaction between the inhabitants of the Pinds and Dalit localities. To further quote him:
Dalitbahujans could enter these ‘upper’ caste streets and colonies only as servants, milk vendors, vegetable vendors, tapimaistries (supervisors of construction work), carpenters, and so on. They were the sellers of the skills, and the so-called upper castes, who were themselves unskilled, were the consumers. By and large the Dalitbahujans live in slums. They were debarred from doing anything that would allow them to improve their socioeconomic position or reach the level of the Brahmin-Baniyas. (Ilaiah, 2005, pp. 65–66)
As mentioned above, Dalits were also not included in the wage determining process of their manual labour. They were left with no choice but to accept whatever wage amount in cash/kind is determined by the agriculture landowners (Moon, 1989, p. 22). This arbitrariness in wage fixation process often leads to confrontation between Pinds and Dalit neighbourhoods as and when Dalit labourers challenge the capriciously fixed wage rates and also ask for their long-denied due share in the socio-religious local structures of power. Quite often such confrontations intermittently rolled into public calls for social boycotts of the Dalits by the landowning village upper/dominant castes (Gupta, 2020; Ram, 2012a, pp. 652–653; Tur, 2020).
The village agricultural castes had monopoly over the agricultural land. They also established their hold on other local structures of power
The inhabitants of Dalit territory performed the various above-mentioned intensive manual labour jobs under the jajmani system
Dalit territories and Pinds are two mutually exclusive territories. They are further separated by their respective distinct social and spatial domains. Both the mutually antagonistic socio-spatial spaces operate within their caste-based worldviews underlined with incompatible cultural traditions, ceremonies, rituals, religious faiths, etc. (Moon, 1989, p. 22). They celebrate their festivals and organize religious ceremonies exclusively within the spatial boundaries of their residential territories. The upper castes people of the mainstream Pinds did not send invite for the participation of the inmates of Dalit neighbourhoods in their marriage functions and other social gatherings. Nor the upper castes inhabitants of Pinds participate in the socio-cultural and religious functions organized by the inmates of the segregated Dalits territories. The popular discourses and songs of upper/dominant castes often mocked at the ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ realms of the Dalit territories. The wordings of the popular narratives and songs of the upper/dominant caste neighbourhoods belittled Dalits as good for nothing (cf. Guru, 2011, pp. 40–41).
Inhabitants of Dalit territories have also plaited their own narratives. Deeply rooted in their historical wretched social life, Dalit narratives and discourses exemplified the atrocities and severe hardships that their forefather withstood. In comparison to upper castes’ narratives, Dalit discourses were mostly circulated verbally. Kancha Ilaiah (2005) argued that despite the scarcity of a written word among the lowest of the low, the discourses of Dalit territories, preserved in the form of folk culture, unravel oppressive social settings they were forced to undergo (pp. 6 and 13). Dalit narratives and discourses provide a clear window to the hostile relationship between mainstream villages and Dalit territories. Much of such obscure narratives echoed through the popular Dalit music, songs and graffiti (Bhalla, 2018; Ingole, 2019; Rodrigues, 2016).
Dalit territories complement Varna (fourfold hierarchical division of Hindu social order) ideology (Rawat, 2013, p. 1064), which facilitated the perpetuation of Brahminical social order of caste hegemony over hapless Dalits. The social code of conduct of Varna ideology did not allow Dalits to put any claim for a share in the local structures of power. It is only recently that some of the Dalits have started converting their territories into radical sites of lower castes’ upward social mobility. The gradual Dalit transformation from stagnant system of agricultural manual labour under the domineering jajmani work relation into non-agricultural sectors, provided impetus to job diversification within Dalit territories. The state affirmative action under the legal provisions of the constitution of independent India provided further impetus to Dalit social mobility. In fact, the Dalit transformatory process from agriculture-based manual labour to government service began with the institutionalization of separate Dalit regiments in the British Indian army. After India’s independence, special constitutional provisions facilitated the entry of Dalits into education, governments employment and state central legislative bodies. Since the last few decades, the entry of lower castes into the glamorous corporate sector further strengthened the socio-spatial ingredients of Dalit territories (for Dalits’ entry into corporate world see Kapur et al., 2014; Kapur et al., 2010, pp. 39–49). Dalit diasporas also strengthened their back home segregated peripheries. All these varied factors played a significant role in transforming Dalit territories from colonies of squalor, desperateness and extreme poverty to throbbing Dalit sites of contestation, emancipation and empowerment. Dalit peripheries are now no longer motley of thatched huts amidst piles of filth and scum. Sprawling residential buildings and state-of-the-art air-conditioned pillarless halls of various Ravidass Deras speak volumes about the rising status of Dalit territories.
The historical dependence of Dalit territories on Pinds and the current emerging radical assertion within the former, on the one hand, and the consequent strong resistance shown by the latter, on the other, is what bring these two distinct asymmetrical rural settings into direct confrontation. The mushrooming of Ravidass Deras within segregated Dalit territories testify the Delezuian and Guattarian episteme of ‘three movements/vectors in the territorial process: deterritorialization, reterritorialization and territorialization’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1980/1987 as referred to in Mubi Brighenti, 2010, pp. 63–65; also cf. Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 63). The ‘three movements episteme’ of territorial process identify any territory as an act or a mode of processual, eventual and directional entities against the object-subject ontic of territory. ‘A territory’, argued Mubi Brighenti (2010, p. 63), ‘is something one makes vis-à-vis others as an inscription upon a specific material’. In other words, territorial formation processes move uninterruptedly. Demolition of a territory leads to the creation, at the same time somewhere else, of another one. Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) argue that
[o]ne cannot deterritorialize from some relations without concurrently reterritorializing on some others. It is this double movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization that evokes the primitive movement of territorialization, which otherwise tends to be taken for granted, perceived as a degree zero of territory, as non-movement. These three territorial movements proceed together precisely as movements, or directional vectors. (Mubi Brighenti, 2010, pp. 63–64)
Given the above mentioned Delezuian and Guattarian episteme of ‘three movements’, the confrontationist dynamics of Pinds and Dalit territories appears to enter into a phase where the de-territorialization process of Dalit peripheries, as distinctly segregated territories, seems to heading towards the herculean task of re-territorialization
Territorial Sacralization and Dalit Assertion
The emergence of Dalit Deras within segregated Dalit territories, what Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) called ‘refrain’, that is, coming together of rhythms and melodies into a territory, has not only emancipated Dalits from their forced social opprobrium of defiled territoriality but also re-territorialized them into sacralized space of Dalit self-respect and dignity (Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 64; Ram, 2017b, pp. 52–78). Dalit Deras, in fact, can be presented as structural forms of counterculture and Dalit heritage (acts of imagination) that perform the role of what Mubi Brighenti (2010) called territorializing through ‘myths and narratives’ (p. 58). Such structural manifestations of Dalit imagination turn them into obvious and visible working entities (Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 58). Dalits localities are territorial entities. Territorial entities proceed on imaginary binaries of ‘we’ and ‘others’ (Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 58). In the larger socio-spatial domain of the borderland state of Punjab, Dalits considered themselves natives/sons-of-the-soil and the upper castes/Aryans as the intruder. Such an imaginative inside-outside binary process manufactures mutually antagonistic entities of inclusive and exclusive descriptions, which eventfully give shapes to the emerging configuration of distinct social groups
In the process of re-territorialization and sacralization of the hitherto condemned separate Dalit territories, Dalit religious places metamorphosed into epicentres of peaceful social protest (Ram, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2016a). They led to the formation of distinct Dalit identity epistemes within the segregated Dalit space during its crucial phase of re-territorialization. Dalit sacred centres undertook the re-territorialization process of segregated Dalit territories by carving out their distinct religious paraphernalia and tapestry of symbols of social protest what Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) innovatively called ‘rhythmic characters’ and ‘melodic landscapes’ (cf. Mubi Brighenti, 2010, p. 58). Dalit Deras’ distinctiveness also lies in the fact that they neither take refuge in any of the established theology (conversion), nor do they imitate the dominant socio-cultural ethos of upper caste society (Sanskritization). On the contrary, they proudly distinguish themselves from the mainstream religious systems and contest the hegemony of the upper dominant/caste neighbourhoods over the Dalits territories. Fabulous architecture of some of the Dalit Deras provided immense prestige to Dalit neighbourhoods where until recently poverty, foulness and rubbish used to be a common sight.
Dalit Territories and the Challenge of Social Mobility
Distinct Dalit territories gained sudden notice after the assassination of Sant Ramanand of Dera Sachkhand Ballan (henceforth Dera Ballan) during his sermon session at a Ravidass temple in Vienna on 24 May 2009. 5 After this incident, Ravidass Deras, primarily led by Dera Ballan, publicly announced their new religion (Ravidassia) on 30 January 2010 (Amritbani, 2012, p. 15). This momentous move by the Dera Ballan fomented a feeling of bitterness between the mainstream Sikh Panth (community) and some of the followers of Ravidass Deras, particularly led by Dera Ballan. At a still deeper level, this unfortunate episode sharply striked at the political economy of the religion in Punjab. Dalits in Punjab constitute almost 32% of the total population. Dissociation of many of them from mainstream Sikh religious places bound to have serious repercussions on the volume of their offerings at the altar of the sanctum sanctorum (Ram, 2008, 2009b). It is in this context that the landless Dalit, who were historically deprived of land, can be seen building their unique sacred territory in competition with the long-established mainstream religious territory of the landed communities as a vehicle of their upward social mobility.
Within Dalits, the Vienna episode also generated confrontation between two groups of Ravidass Deras: Dera Ballan and Ravidass Dera of Sant Jurae Wale (Singh, 2020). The intra Dalit Deras’ confrontation revolves around the contention of Ravidassia Dharm versus Adi-dharm
The large followings of Ravidass Deras may also have serious political implications for the religion-dominated electoral politics in Punjab. Thus, the mushrooming of Ravidass Deras in the segregated Dalit territories does not only symbolize assertion of a separate Dalit identity but it also sharpens the underlying contradictions between the landed/dominant communities residing within Pinds and the landless/lower castes living in Dalit neighbourhoods. It is in this volatile context that the bhakti-based method of non-violent social protest invented by Guru Ravidass became the central agency of the Dalit re-territorialization process. The violence that erupted in Punjab after the Vienna episode was brought under control by invoking the peaceful lessons in the spiritual hymns of Guru Ravidass (Jag Bani, 2009). Followers of Ravidass revered Sant Ravidass as Guru. They have deep faith in his scriptures and life stories that instilled unfathomable confidence in them about the efficacy of peaceful approach towards the empowerment of their segregated Dalit territories situated in the vicinity of Pinds. The non-violent appeal of Dalit struggle, emanated from the all-embracing affections and spiritual philosophy embedded in the teachings of Guru Ravidass, lies at the base of the re-territorialization process of the segregated Dalit neighbourhoods (Ram, 2016a).
Dalit Territories and the ‘Political’ of Social Inclusion
Dalit emancipation process has so far gone through many phases involving varied state and civil society interventions. The civil society interventions can be further bifurcated into initiatives from within the Dalit territories and from the upper caste social reformers. As far as the latter are concerned, the main focus of such measures has been primarily on helping Dalits to improve their material conditions to some extent without decimating the oppressive social structures of caste hierarchy and the territorialized segregated Dalit space. However, the initiatives from within the ghettoized Dalit territories were always aimed at seeking self-respect and dignity and to build an egalitarian social realm free from the fetters of oppressive caste boundaries of low and high scales. Jyotirao Phule 6 (1827–1890), C. Iyodhee Thass Pandithar (1845–1914), Ayyankali (1863–1941), Erode Venkata Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar or E. V. R. (1879–1973), B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), Swami Achhutanand Harihar (1869–1933) and Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia (1886–1980) were among the most prominent radical leaders who emerged from the socially excluded sections of the Indian society. Along with the material uplift of the downtrodden, they strongly emphasized the urgency of social emancipation and empowerment of Dalits. Their main concern was to liberate Dalits not only from the scarcities of economic resources to lead materially comfortable lives, but also to emancipate them from their territorially demarcated social existence while simultaneously empowering them to make their segregated neighbourhoods upwardly social mobile. In other words, their central objective was to generate Dalit consciousness through the articulation of counterculture based on alternative Dalit discourse and heritage to eventually help the socially excluded sections of the highly segmented society to stand up against their tormentors and to reclaim their long lost rich native heritage and socio-religious space.
Phule (2002) in his seminal work Gulamgiri (Slavery) emphasized the need of developing a counter narrative to fix the hegemonic supremacy of the minority upper/dominant castes on the vast but segmented majority of lower (Shudra) and lowest (Ati-Shudra) castes in India. He scathingly attacked the oppressive social structures of caste hierarchy ‘as both mischievous and wicked and something engineered by the Aryan invaders to consolidate their preeminence’ (Doctor, 1997, p. 115). He also rejected the Varnashramadharma-based principle of purity-impurity and sacred office of priesthood as a necessary mediator between God and man/woman. Influenced by Thomas Paine’s (1791) doctrine of ‘Natural Rights’, Phule strongly advocated that all lower castes people, just like upper/dominant castes, have inalienable rights to enjoy the bounty of ‘Natural Rights’. He categorically rejected and ridiculed all those sacred and legal books, popularly referred to in religious discourses in Hinduism, which categorized society into Aryan and non-Aryan and deny Natural and Human Rights to the latter for no other reason but for their alleged low caste birth. In his alternative Dalit narrative, Phule projected lower castes as indigenous/native people who had their own distinct cultural heritage
Phule’s alternative Dalit discourse aimed at afresh territorialization of Dalit space was rooted in cultural and ethnic traditions/symbols of native people, who were incarcerated within the territorially segregated boundaries, superimposed by the Varnashramadharma, caste structures and sacred books. The enslaved natives continued to be segregated by Brahman elites ‘whose dominant position in the caste system and religiously justified monopoly of knowledge underlay their power’ (Omvedt, 1971, p. 1972). For Phule ‘[t]he masses, from peasants through untouchables and tribals, were the original inhabitants of India, “sons of the soil,” the elite and particularly the Brahmans, the irani-arya-bhats, were seen as aliens …’ (Omvedt, 1971, p. 1973). The main objective of such innovative and highly critical anti-Brahmin narrative was to empower the socially and territorially segregated natives and to establish their sovereignty under the egalitarian rule of Bali-Raja, a mythical king of the natives, who ruled over the land before the arrival of the invading Aryans (Omvedt, 1971, p. 1974). The narrative further reiterates that Dalits should not be afraid of their so-called forced low-caste social status; rather, they should turn it into an identity catalyst and deploy the same to contest the hegemony of dominant castes (Ram, 2017b, p. 60). The central thesis of this narrative depicts the natives of the region as the rulers of the land who were stripped of their rich cultural heritage by the alien Aryans. The Aryans, goes the narrative, forcibly snatched from the natives almost everything worth possessing and reduced them to slaves/untouchables. They erased their geographies while wiping out the tangible cultural heritage of the natives, deprived them of their history, and consequently pushed them into oblivion, thus, ultimately detaching them from their religion, culture, heroes, gurus and glory (Ram, 2016b, p. 373).
Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia, the protagonist of the Ad Dharm movement, ferried the radical idea of alternative Dalit vision to the grassroots of the Dalit territories in Punjab. He goaded them to create their independent Dharmik (religious) identity based on their own discrete religion. Although there existed a rich variety of Dalit castes, the lower-caste people belonging to Chamar community, his fellow community, responded to his clarion call tremendously to retrieve their lost kingdom of self-governance. Phule-Mangu Ram alternative Dalit narrative distinguished itself from the mainstream civil society and the state affirmative action, on the one hand, and the lower castes activities particularly rooted in religious transformation and Sanskritization, on the other. It neither aimed at helping the lower castes through state affirmative action nor motivating them to follow into the footsteps of the upper castes’ cultural traditions and sacred books-based rituals and ceremonies. It also guarded them against common practices of religious conversion for escaping the drudgery of caste-laden life. On the contrary, it aimed at restoring the lost pristine glory of the native religion of the lower castes. This unique Dalit social mobility model led to the establishment of various Ravidass Deras in Punjab, which attracted a large number of lower castes into their fold. The re-territorialization processes in Ravidass Deras generate ample exclusive social and cultural space for Dalits that they also replicate in their socio-spatial territories. It has generated a sense of confidence in them and provided them with an opportunity to exhibit their hitherto eclipsed Dalit identity (Ram, 2016c, p. 192). Morally strengthened and spiritually equipped by the teachings of Guru Ravidass and missions of Babu Mangu Ram, B. R. Ambedkar and Babu Kanshi Ram, the inhabitants of Dalit peripheries have learnt to take pride in their new Ravidassia religion and to confront the historically entrenched dominant social structures monopolized by the so-called upper-caste dwellers of mainstream Pinds.
Though affirmative action helped some Dalits to acquire upward social mobility, it has also led to social protests among the middle-class sections of upper caste people who allegedly feel discriminated in the merit-based competitive system. Affirmative action got routinized despite opposition from the mainstream civil society for no other reasons but, perhaps, of political expediency. Since scheduled castes (SCs also known Ad Dalits) constitute 16.2% of total population of India (2011 Census of India), no political party can dare ignore them. It was perhaps for the electoral value that the government policy of reservation for them continues to exist even after 72 years of India’s independence. As mentioned above, though the reservation policy did help some of them, it failed to bring structural changes in the discriminatory social structures at the grassroots. Dalits continue to live in segregated territories in the vicinities of mainstream villages in the vast rural settings of the country across the regions. It is in this crucial context, that Dalit territoriality assumes the form of ‘social’ in contradistinction to the mainstream-inhabited space dominated by the upper/dominant castes across the length and breadth of India. The ‘social’ of the Dalit territorialities started getting organized under the cliché of alternative narrative articulated by the intermittent Dalit movement from Phule onwards. In contemporary India, the alternative Dalit narrative of territoriality has become the most appropriate agency of upward social mobility for Dalits. It is aimed at revamping (re-territorialization) of the hitherto condemned segregated Dalit neighbourhoods while exhorting Dalits to generously invest in their monumental heritage and architectural infrastructure projects for separate Dalit religion (Ram, 2012a; Singh, 2016). The revamping of Dalit territories does not merely mean the physical renovation of the segregated Dalit space. It is, in fact, all about assigning a new and empowered meaning to Dalit sites of contestation what is proposed as ‘social’ of territoriality in this study.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Barbara Glowczewski, Sanjay Chaturvedi and P. S. Verma for their brilliant comments and suggestions. My sincere thanks to Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Doreen Massey, whose seminal works on space inspired me to critically explore the vexed question of Dalit territoriality in India. Last but not the least, my thanks to Parthasarthi Mondal and George Varghese for their motivation, and Seema, Sahaj and Daksh for keeping me free at home front. For all the views articulated in this piece, however, I alone am responsible.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Caste names are used in the article for academic analysis. Any offence caused by such an exercise is deeply regretted.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.