The Sankaracharya of Puri, Swami Niranjan Dev, has come out finally against the entry of Dalits into Nathdwara temple, a struggle which has been going on for the past one year. The reaction to Sankaracharya's statement has been mixed. While certain sections, both among the Dalits and caste Hindus, have condemned the statement, demanded his arrest, organized demonstrations, other Dalits, particularly Ambedkarites, including B. Basavalingappa, a former Karnataka minister, have welcomed the stand of the Sankaracharya. The Ambedkarites say that 'the honourable Sankaracharya had spoken the truth and he should be commended for it. The Dalits, the original inhabitants of this country, were always kept at a distance by the Aryas !' They call upon the Dalits not to be swayed by political parties who want to include the Dalits in the Hindu religion and keep them under their thumb. They appeal to Dalits not to visit Hindu temples and to reconsider the issue of their being in the Hindu fold. These two positions represent the two different ideological stands taken by Gandhi and Ambedkar respectively on the Dalit question. While Gandhi was the great champion of Dalit integration within the Hindu community, Ambedkar exhorted his people to leave Hinduism and struggle independently for their liberation. Is Gandhian ideology of Dalit integration within the Hindu fold a realistic one ? What is the experience of the Dalits of the past half century of the Gandhian approach ? What is the rationale of Ambedkar's doctrine of struggle against Hinduism ? These are important questions to be considered because the issue at stake is the liberation of 150 million people. ### Ideology and Economic Reality Any ideology, to be realistic, has to take into account the economic exigencies and social existence of the concerned group. Otherwise, as M. N. Roy predicted, it would turn out to be dogmatic and deceptive. Now, what is the economic reality of the physical social existence of its Dalits ? Is there any economic base for their social and cultural integration with the caste Hindus or do the economic interests of the two conflict ? ### Sony ! Let us take the case of a region about which we have a lot of scientifically prepared data. Dr. P. Sivanandan of the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, who has studied the Kerala economy in all its details in relation to the Dalits over the last fifty years, concludes that '....analysis suggests that, in Kerala, a kind of economic dualism persists between two distinct sections of the population, Harijans and non-Harijans, which had its origins mainly in the sociological legacy of the past. The policies followed by the Government for the uplift of the Harijans have not had any perceptible economic impact on those sections for whom they were primarily meant. Glaring disparities are seen in the size and pattern of landholding, employment opportunity, income level and educational attainment between Harijans and the rest of Kerala society.' In an article in Economic and Political Weekly, he writes that, 'in short, caste-class identity is an inherent feature in the socio-economic relations in Kerala, although it has now a certain level of interpenetration on account of the influence of the social movements, political forces and administrative reforms. However, the intervention of these factions in the reorganisation process does not radically alter caste-class associations'. In another recent article Sivanandan says that the number of days of employment for rural labour particularly for agricultural labourers, the great majority of whom are Dalit, are steadily declining. Further, analysing the wages and the rising consumer prices, he concludes that the extent to which Dalits are able to sustain a reasonable level of living continues to be very precarious even after the implementation of basic programmes like land redistribution, employment generation, etc. ### Damning Statistics Given such a precarious state of economic survival among Dalits, it is no wonder that a survey conducted in 1985 in Kerala by Vakil A. K. found that out of 68 village temples, none is accessible to Dalits. If the relations between Dalits and caste people are so bad in Kerala, the situation is much worse, according to Vakil's study, in the other parts of the country like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, etc., where the exclusion of Dalits by caste people extends not only to their temples but also to village wells, hotels, barbers and washermen. In these states, according to recent studies, a civil war is going on between Dalit groups and caste Hindu landlords. Even in the official documents tabled in the Rajya Sabha in December 1986, 84,000 offences against Dalits were recorded in a period of less than four years. They included 3,200 cases of murder, 4,400 of rape, 5,540 of arson and 8,000 of causing grievous hurt. If this is the general picture of the socio-economic relations between Dalit and caste people, one can only be amazed at the naivette of the talk of integration of Dalits within the Hindu community. But, the absurdity of Dalit integration with the caste people is not simply an economic hypothesis : it is also based on the solid historical experience of people who spent their life in the cause. Swami Anand Thirth, who gave his whole life for the removal of untouchability with a do or die determination, after struggles extending over half a century, confessed that Gandhi had betrayed the Dalits and that he himself should have followed the path of Ambedkar. Swamiji found that untouchability pervades even structures of modern states like the judiciary, police, civil administration, not to speak of the traditional structures of Hindu society. Even the Left parties have found, to their great surprise, that their caste supporters ditch a Dalit community candidate in preference to a caste candidate belonging to bourgeois parties like the Congress and the Janata. Here too we have solid empirical data from Kerala. ### Ambedkar's Insights Dr. Ambedkar understood the need for an economic common base for any kind of common political and cultural ideologies. That is the reason why he told Gandhi that he had no homeland and community representation for his people would be a must, to bring about political and economic changes through their participation in the power structures. Dr. Ambedkar also understood the real nature of Hindu culture much better than Gandhi. Hindu tradition is shaped by the Brahminical religious authority. It is this Brahminical authority and its value system, which created the sacred hierarchy which has deprived Dalits of human status and rights and treated them worse than cats and dogs. The question, therefore is : Can the Dalits redeem their human dignity and rights while continuing within the same authority structure, its ritual system and practices ? Hindu political reformers, all without exception, had no religious authority to bring about changes in the concept of Brahminical authority, priesthood, rites and rituals symbolising hierarchy and ritual purity and pollution. Unless and until these changes are brought about, the Dalits cannot hope to redeem their self-dignity within the Hindu tradition even if their economic base changes. This, indeed, is what Jagjivan Ram and a number of other Dalit elites found out for themselves, to their bitter surprise. This is the reason Dr. Ambedkar asked Dalits to stand on their own feet and fight as best as they could for their rights. He told them that power and prestige will come to them only through their own struggle. This also explains his stand that nothing can emancipate the outcastes except the destruction of the caste system. He puts this forcefully when he said, 'if you wish to bring about a breach in the caste system, then you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and Sastras, which deny any part to reason, to Vedas and Sastras which deny any part to morality. You must destroy the religion of the smritis'. In other words, he believed that only through a counter-culture embracing the different fields of Dalit life, their liberation can be brought about. He acted on these convictions when he embraced Buddhism and founded a separate political party, trade unions, newspapers and educational society for Dalits. The strengthening of Dalit identity goes against caste Hindu identity, as the Marathawada riots against naming the university after Dr. Ambedkar and the recent Dalit-Hindu clash over Dr. Ambedkar's article, 'Riddle of Rama and Krishna' have proved. ### A Secular Movement We should understand that the Dalit movement is not a caste movement as some people have branded it, because experience in different parts of the country teaches that caste tyranny can be fought only by victims of such tyranny. The movements of Mahatma Phoolay in Maharashtra, Periyar E. V. Ramaswamy in Tamil Nadu, Sri Narayana Guru in Kerala are striking examples of this. In the West, secularism as a process of people coming out of religious control, was the result of divesting the Church of its enormous property and wealth and its power to control every aspect of the citizen's life. A similar process needs to take place in India. In our country, the historical agents who can divest temples of their enormous property and wealth, Brahmin priests of their power to control people's life totally, are the Dalits. The Dalit movement, therefore, is a secular movement. ### A False Assumption Apart from all these concrete historical considerations, the theoretical assumption that people who belong to the same religious tradition will have a common sum of meanings, expectations and understandings, regardless of their class and status character is wrong. Scientific sociological studies reveal that even people who belong to the same traditional religion have different value systems depending on their class and status character. Accordingly, they will support different political organisations and other instruments to promote their ideological aspirations in their efforts to solve their problems. This being the fact, the attempt to divide people according to supposed religious affiliations comes from vested dominant caste/class interests which wish to misguide and sacrifice the interest of the oppressed (in this case, the Dalits) on the altar of their own communal dominance. In the case of India, it is unscientific even to talk of Hinduism as a common value system (as scholars like Romila Thapar have shown). It is the Brahminical value system which is floated as Hinduism. This is a myth which became current in the last 150 years as a result of negatively defining traditions which were not Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or Sikhism. This was started initially by western scholars and was later increasingly accepted by Indian writers, though many reputed scholars, both foreign and Indian, questioned the historical validity of this myth. ### The Only Option It is important to remember that whatever values the traditional 'Hindu' groups have, are mediated through their own caste structure. 'Hindu' religious structure is caste structure. It is through the caste structure that each group perpetuates its value system. The historical fact is that Dalits and other backward caste groups, were hierarchically annexed and subordinated to the Brahminical value system and Brahminical structure of society. The 'Hindu' religious symbols have enough evidence in them of clash and struggle of peoples belonging to different cultural groups, as the respected scholar of Indian history and culture, D. D. Kosambi himself, has shown. It only goes to prove that Dalit ideology has to oppose these Brahminical structures and their values by reinterpreting their own traditional symbols in the light of archaeology and other material evidence. In fact, the ideology of Hindu consolidation is in many ways historically the result of a pathological fear on the part of some Hindus against Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and Buddhism. The ideology is not conceived as a positive programme to integrate the diverse non-Islamic, non-Christian communities in the modern era. If that were the case, there should have been imaginative programmes of dialogue starting with the ancient heterodox tradition of Buddhism which challenged Brahminism. Also, a programme of dialogue which took seriously later heterodox movements like Sikhism and some of the Bhakti traditions, which were truly anti-brahminical. May be history never moves so logically. No orthodox priestly class of any religion would make such a thing feasible. Protestantism, which challenged the sacred, monolithic authority of the Pope, wanting to establish an authority on personal experience of faith and human conviction, had to break into so many divisions. I do not think that Dalits have any other option if their problem too is to break the sacred authority of the Brahmins over them. It is unwise to put one's faith in well meaning people like Agnivesh. When Swami Agnivesh started his march with 100 Dalit supporters, the conservatives organized a counter march with 5000 caste Hindus. Several towns in the area observed hartal for days together, in protest. The government, which has abolished untouchability, arrested Agnivesh and his followers 12 km from Nathdwara, exposing the bankruptcy of its ideological commitment. The obscurantists celebrated the event with public processions and distribution of laddus ! The same bankruptcy is displayed by the courts and other arms of the government, as well as many political parties. Let us suppose that Swami Agnivesh succeeds. Dalits enter the Vaishnava temple in Nathdwara. Does it open the way to Dalit entry into the mainstream of caste Hindu religio-cultural life ? The answer is 'No'. Some of the famous temples, like Guruvayur in Kerala were nominally open to Dalits half a century ago. But do they have some share in the priestly function, religious authority, material wealth and civil administration of these places ? The nominal Dalit representation in some of the bodies comes to naught, as Dalits are still fighting for participation in some of the rituals connected with the temple even after half a century. Such being the reality, it should surprise no one when the Dalits said, 'Beware of socialist Brahmins', and Ambedkar cautions, 'Beware of Gandhi and the Congress'.