Dalit identity and logically lead the Dalit movement-Subhash Sarki

SEP 05 -

Dalits have evolved officially as an identity group with constitutional recognition after a long and arduous journey of struggle in Nepal. They spearheaded their movement for social recognition and political space alone and together with both peaceful and armed movements. As a result, a Dalit does not hesitate to occupy a seat at a table where a high caste Hindu is sipping tea even in rural parts of Nepal. However, the fundamental question remains whether the high caste person actually looks up to the Dalit when he discloses his identity at the table.  

A diagnosis of the Hindu high caste mindset is not much difficult when we have so many Dalits who themselves do not prefer to publicly admit their Dalit identity. This is clearly shown by the decrease in the Dalit population from 15.7 percent in the 1991 census to 12.8 percent in 2001. Along with an improvement in the socio-economic status, Dalits seem to be inclined to hide or change their traditional family names with something sounding close to high caste 


Hindus. Changing the ancestral family name and assimilation with Hindu high castes has been their strategy to release themselves from the humiliation of being a Dalit.
A section of Dalits has nurtured and promoted the idea of Mahatma Gandhi who believed that their status could be raised by changing or obscuring their traditional last names while still retaining elements of the caste system. But their status has not improved significantly more than half a century after Gandhi conferred on them the name Harijan to elevate them to a Hindu high caste. Although India has achieved double-digit economic growth and a Dalit woman Mayawati has been elected to the position of chief minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, incidences of humiliation and caste-based violence against Dalits have not ended.  
The flipside of the proposition is even scarier because the effort to be absorbed into the Hindu high castes puts Dalits at a morally worse situation for promoting caste discrimination. Despite all the efforts and successes to assimilate Dalits into the Hindu high castes, a certain section of them is likely to remain where they were. Jacques Derrida, pioneer of the theory of deconstruction, has long before inferred that complete erasure is always postponed. The promoters of the movement have then obtained a place in the Hindu high caste and so bear moral obligation to sustain its characteristics. It requires them to impose discrimination and humiliation on the remaining Dalit population, from whom they have just separated, so as to maintain their position as high caste Hindus. A worse situation arises in this hypothetical situation when the former survivors surpass the ethical boundary of social justice which they had been pursuing until recently.
The movement towards assimilating into the Hindu high castes also puts its promoters at risk of psychological vulnerability of perpetuating humiliation upon oneself. For example, a person working in an organisation maintains a sufficient distance from Dalit colleagues for fear of his or her Dalit identity being revealed. They refuse to recognize themselves as Dalits. They do not fall short of inflicting verbal and behavioural humiliation at Dalits just to emphasize that they belong to the Hindu high caste.
A friend of mine who adapted a high caste surname said that his children grew up with their newly adopted last names, and never thought that their parents belonged to a Dalit community. One day, they went to a village where they encountered a taste of untouchability when entering the home of a high caste Hindu. These Dalits are destined to a fortune no better than that of Oedipus the King who suffered not knowing what he was running away from his whole life.
Entrapped in a similar deception, Dalits choose the route for their liberation engineered by Bahunbad. The route must be quicker and easier, but the destination they are heading for is, however, always procrastinated so as not to allow their liberation. Bahunbad always disguises the obviousness of sustaining its “superiority” only prolonging the emancipation of Dalits because the “superiority” of the Hindu high caste is a matter of their difference from Dalits and their delayed full-fledged identity evolution. It is done by disqualifying the ability to use the reasoning of Dalits via perpetuation of stereotype images. 
The whole range of Bahunbadi discourses have inundated the Dalit identity with stereotype images so that their vision to see beyond their traditional identity has been limited. They cannot look at their distinctly glorious history of occupational contribution to the evolution of the modern world. While society was immersed in the illusion of angels and super lords, the ancestors of the Dalits were laying the foundation of art and science. They were excelling in the use of iron, gold, silver, bronze, animal skins, clothes, wood, bamboo and whatever material was available during the time. No expert knowledge is required here to see the correlation between their work in the pre-civilization period and current science and technology to confirm that Dalits were actually down-to-earth thinkers and practitioners and not barbaric and impure as represented by the images in Bahunbadi discourse.
Any effort to escape impurity ends in its acceptance as long as Dalits look for their liberation within this Bahunbadi discourse. The politics of annihilation will thwart the evolution of Dalit identity to its entirety. Whatever economically and socio-politically elevated position Dalits attain, the Hindu high castes will continue to look down upon Dalits for their Dalit identity, whether they reveal their Dalit identity or not, as
long as the image of Dalits is perpetuated to maintain “superiority” of the Hindu high castes. Dalits will not be able to fully garner respect and dignity as long as they search for their elevation within the current Bahunbadi discourse. A new discourse has to be started by admitting that history has been constructed in a wrong manner so as to fully develop the Dalit identity and logically lead the Dalit movement that can place Dalits at the forefront as a graceful and dignified social group.
source: ekantipur 2011-09-06