http://kufr.
06/02/10
telangana: a movement without a social agenda 3
kancha ilaiah in why i am not a hindu:
What further separated a Hindu from us was the nature of the
consciousness of the other world, the divine and the spiritual. For
children from our castes, Jeja (the concept of God) is introduced in
the form of the moon. As children grow up, they also get acquainted
with Pochamma, Polimeramma, Kattamaisamma, Kaatamaraju, Potaraju and
other deities. Among Dalitbahujans, there is no concept of a temple in
a definite place or form. Goddesses and Gods live in all shapes and in
different places.
i'd written nearly an year ago:
madigas, and over fifty other dalit castes in andhra pradesh have been
agitating over the last fifteen years for dividing the scheduled
castes into categories (as it is done in the case of obcs) to ensure
that, according to their view, not all the fruits of reservations are
cornered by a couple of castes. there have also been barely covered
reports of similar movements across the country. now this demand needs
to be debated seriously across a wide range of fora because it
involves not just madigas and other castes in andhra pradesh, but
dalits, primarily, and all other classes of people across the country.
from 300 million to one billion people.
no debate happened anywhere outside andhra pradesh, and in andhra
pradesh too the debate on categorisation of dalits, which had been
allowed to degenerate into an endless internecine war along the
mala-madiga divide among the dalits (watched, egged on many times,
eagerly by upper caste political bosses and various assorted
kind-hearted liberals among the brahminized classes) got drowned in
the debate over another synthetic divide, telangana. while the
debaters took to the streets and the courts and nothing got resolved,
they took the battle into their homes and their hearts. and to their
divided neighbourhoods in the villages, outside the villages. the
political bosses never took it to parliament, which in the supreme
court's opinion is the right forum to debate the issue, and powerful
parliamentarians, of course, never notice an issue that happens
outside delhi on their own unless....say, a famous cricketer or film
star is involved. but what would parliament have done?
it'd have taken an easy way out, like a very frustrated and tired
manda krishna madiga, perhaps. he, along with his organization mrps
('madiga reservation porata samiti'), joined the telangana movement
formally on the day kcr started his fast, a couple of months ago. as
recently as that. does that mean the dalits of telangana actively
support a movement that has been almost entirely led by upper caste
political leaders for the past nine years? it means they're frustrated
and tired running around every kind of constitutional institution
looking for just, constitutional solutions to their problems but now
have given up and feel geography might help. does it mean the dalits
of telangana have suddenly discovered they share a common culture with
their erstwhile feudal masters? that they were never separated from
the hindus, culturally, as ilaiah says? when krishna madiga shares a
platform with assorted reddy, velama, kamma, kapu political leaders
from the congress, bjp, various communist and other parties it doesn't
mean caste barriers have suddenly crumbled to dust, it only means
they've grown so strong that even dalits can't recognize each other as
equals.
so, the madigas of telangana think a separated telangana would help
them gain better access to reserved seats and jobs because they form
the majority (among dalits) in telangana. how about the other smaller
castes who would then be elbowed out of the race for reserved seats
and jobs by the dominant caste among dalits, the madigas? what'd
parliament do to resolve that issue? divide every region, district and
village in the country into separate states because so that no dalit
caste would dominate another?
the telangana movement is not a dalit movement, in fact it's a
movement designed to paralyse any concerted efforts by the dalits in
andhra pradesh to overcome caste, to fight caste together.
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