The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception

GOPAL GURU

The public imagination in India seems to be increasingly gripped with Dalit issues and concerns. This is evident in the writings of both Dalits and non-Dalits, who have focused on a variety of Dalit issues ranging from theory to poetry. Books on Dalit themes now find nominal accommodation in some of the leading publishing houses in India. Dalit issues previously did not receive much recognition from those who had complete control over the sphere of critical public inquiry, but that group has now found the issues worthy of scholarly attention. Prior to the 1990s, continuous marginalization and ghettoization implicitly suggested that the so-called Dalit question failed to attract any serious attention from the intellectual mainstream. Thus it is rather gratifying to note that Dalit studies, though previously present at various levels, are now ending this silence and have begun receiving far more serious intellectual attention from the national and international scholarly communities. However, one of the distinguishing characteristics of such writings is that they claim to have found for Dalits a clear intellectual vision and efficacious political framework within which Dalits can realize their emancipatory aspirations. According to the writings of these scholars, Indian nationalism, electoral politics, and globalization are the three sequential spaces that provide the necessary framework for the realization of a Dalit vision. Moreover, in these spaces Dalits are represented as budding nationalists with sterling qualities and triumphant modernists. The scholars who claim to have found this vision for Dalits unquestioningly accept the validity of these claims. The faith and force in their assertions leave no room for any ambiguity or confusion that Dalits may have in understanding nationalism, electoral politics, or globalization. That is, these writers suggest that nationalism, electoral politics, and globalization are the spaces that tend to clarify the Dalit vision of any kind of confusion. These are the spheres, so the writers would argue, that provide an opportunity for Dalits to acquire a generic identity as Indian nationalists. This would mean that Dalits could appear in different spheres with secular but national identities. For example, someone might argue that in the sphere of nationalism a Dalit could change from an untouchable to a citizen; or in the realm of electoral politics a Dalit could shed the culturally attributed identity of dhed and, through the dynamics of electoral power, acquire a secular identity, possibly even as head of a political institution. However, at the other end of the spectrum, there are scholars among the Dalit community who seem to have developed a new set of aspirations for their social constituency. According to these scholars, Dalits need to aspire to become consumers of commodities. In the context of globalization, such scholars would further argue, Dalits have a unique opportunity to become part of a more homogeneous social space of global consumers. Constructing Dalits in terms of enlightened consumers in the global cultural sphere pushes them beyond the boundaries of nationalism. Imagining Dalits as global consumers also contests the intellectual claim that there is a particular construction of Dalits as nationalists.

In fact, scholars tend to claim that they have discovered a space for Dalits in Indian nationalism (Badri Narayan and Charu Gupta), electoral democracy (Kanchan Chandra), and globalization (Gail Omvedt). It is interesting to note that writers who are looking for nationalists among the Dalits are taking a nonlinear route that exists outside B. R. Ambedkar's conception of nationalism and its implication for Dalits. Claiming radical intellectual agency by writing on Dalits and attesting to the presence of a nationalist space for them, the nationalist scholars' claim is at odds with the Dalit articulation of these agendas, which contests whether Dalits have any space in nationalism, electoral democracy, and globalization.

These writers, claiming originality for their discovery of Dalits as nationalists, seem to be arguing that scholarship on Indian nationalism has neglected the role played by the Dalits in India's struggle for independence. It is fine if they criticize mainstream writing about the history of nationalism for its failure to recognize the contribution that the Dalits have made to India's freedom. One might even see some merit in writings that can claim to have led to recognition for Dalits as nationalist. However, in claiming to have recovered the Dalits as nationalist subjects, they seem to be suggesting that nationalism is the only sphere that can help Dalits gain some importance in the life of the nation. The writers also suggest that it is this historical recovery of the Dalits as nationalist subjects that give them a good reason to feel associated with Indian nationalism. Indeed, the claim to have delivered justice to Dalits by writing about their contribution to nationalist history also speaks of an ideological distance between the scholars and the passive objects of their historical narrative. Furthermore, such efforts end up insulating the idea of nationalism from the point of view of its Dalit critique. It seems that these scholars fail to detect the obvious contradiction associated with this recovery: that it makes nationalism a discursive space containing intersecting purposes and tendencies. For example, nationalism becomes available to different social forces for mutually exclusive purposes. The industrial classes had an interest in nationalism because it was expected to help them acquire benefits without any colonial constraints. On the one hand, workers put faith in nationalism for the reason that it would help them to gain a better deal from the industrialists. On the other hand, the Hindutva forces (right-wing Hindu organizations) had a stake in nationalism because it was expected to help Hinduize India. Naturally, the minorities and the "lower castes" were skeptical about nationalism because they rightly assumed that it would bring back the dominance of the upper-caste Hindus. Finally,...