Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.

BR Ambedkar(1936)

Periyar

In 1925, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) was founded in the city of Nagpur on a seemingly anti- Muslim platform. The real cause for the formation of the RSS, however, was not so much the Muslim factor as the presence of strong lower- caste movements in Maharashtra since the last century, starting with Jotiba Phule. In the same city, thirty years later in 1955, BR Ambedkar, the architect of the great Indian Constitution, along with a million followers left the fold of Hinduism altogether and adopted Buddhism. His disgust and break with Hinduism was complete.

In 1926, a dalit called Mangoo Ram began an Ad- dharmi movement in Hoshiarpur district in Punjab. He gave voice to the feelings of his followers, "... Our forefathers ...were pushed back into the jungles and mountains...from that time to this time, the Hindu Aryans have suppressed the original movement." Sixty years later, in 1996, , Kanshi Ram, founder of the first Dalit party to rule an entire state in the country, was elected to the highest body of democratic India from Hoshiarpur constituency.

These two events symbolize the Dalit’s exclusion from the social life and the return into the centrestage of political life. This powershift has come as a shock to the ‘respectable’ urban (and let it be added here, predominantly upper caste) middle classes educated in the Nehruvian mould, which sought to eliminate casteism by banning it from the language and vocabulary, and not by waging a social struggle against it.

Unlike Gandhi, he and his socialist and communist followers were convinced that rapid economic development will automatically do away with the flawed inheritance of the centuries. In this regard, the only exceptions were the Lohiate socialists. Only they continued to advocate the primacy of caste in the political area, but they too represented the so- called backward castes, more than the dalits.

However, the coming of the Dalit is not sudden. It has been preceded by less well known and localized, but nevertheless powerful movements which laid the foundation for the contemporary Dalit consciousness. It includes names like Jotiba Phule, Ramabai, Tarabai, BR Ambedkar, Periyar, the Dalit Panthers and a number of Adi- Dharm movements at the state level in a number of regions. Unlike the paternalistic social reform movements initiated by upper caste social and political leaders, this stream had consistently fought for the assertion by the lower- castes and not their usurpation by the upper- caste dominated state and polity.

In the slender volume under review, the well- known sociologist and social- activist Gail Omvedt provides an insightful study of the phenomenon of Dalit assertion. Powerful in its statement and language, Omvedt’s study provides the intelligent non- academic reader with a plethora of information about these subaltern movements to reflect and understand the changing equations of Indian society, still only partially reflected at the political level. That she overstates her case at some places should only contribute to a more invigorating debate.

An interesting sidelight to Dalit politics has been the subtle and ambivalent influence of Marxism. In fact, it is more accurate to say that while Marxism has contributed to the development of the Dalit ideology, the Marxist and communist movement in the country miserably failed to learn from the dalit experience. Besides other reasons, the dalit movement was confronted by the formulation of the militaristic class ideology of Marxism which retarded its evolution.

The rigidity of Stalinist- Marxism and it subsequent failure to articulate the interests of the non- industrial Indian working class in a manner close to the ground reality has contributed to the ideological immaturity of both the working class and lower caste movements. It led to a fractured radical alternative. This shall continue to plague the emergent dalit movement in India until it is synthesised with other radical ideologies, notably Marxism. It is towards such a synthesis and integrated approach to the class and caste question that debate has to be directed.