Unraveling
the “Project of Unseeing” and Revisiting Ambedkar - Gandhi Conflict in
Arundhati Roy’s “The Doctor and The Saint”
Dr.
B. R. Ambedkar’s most elaborated but undelivered speech “Annihilation of Caste”
got republished by Navayana publication with an introduction by Arundhati Roy.
The introduction is named as “The Doctor and the Saint” implying a fierce
comparative and critical analysis of life of Dr. Ambedkar and Gandhi. In a
speech, delivered at the University of Columbia, Roy states that the word
‘saint’ is used ironically, the reasons of which, she suspects, would and
should call into question the greatness of Gandhi who is the beloved figure and
would be distressing for many. Ambedkar was his nemesis, she stresses, who
challenged him not only intellectually and politically but also morally. He has
been left out of the master narrative of Indian history (“The Doctor and the
Saint”). By calling Gandhi “Saint of Status Quo”, the most consummate
politician the modern world ever known, Roy puts Gandhi in question. The
‘project of unseeing’ which Roy describes as a conscious political act that got
implemented in the case of caste and the controversial ideologies of the two
great Indians are discussed in this essay.
Caste and casteist attitudes: are
they just the matters of past? Roy provides terrifying statistical data of NCRB
of India which says that a Dalit gets murdered for every sixteen minutes and
every year 650 Dalits get murdered. She puts forward instances of interventions
made by the world on the lives of people such as Malala Yusufzai but an absence
of such interventions when it came to the case of Surekha - dalit woman, victim of caste atrocities at
Khairlanji. When other contemporary abominations such as racism, sexism,
economic imperialism and religious fundamentalism are politically challenged at
international forums, practice of caste has managed to escape similar scrutiny
and censor. She presumes that a mask may be of mysticism, yoga, vegetarianism,
Gandhi and all made it seem impossible to pry it loose and try to understand
it. The practice of caste cannot be compared to the practice of race and
apartheid.
Casteist ideology got embedded and
spread across territories and centuries with its ideals of ‘karma’. Ambedkar
had done comprehensive study on caste in India and he states that “there cannot
be a more degrading system of social organization than the caste system. She
points her finger at the most famous Indian M. K. Gandhi who believed that
caste represented the genius of society.
By stating the idea of the ‘project
of unseeing’ Roy enters into a discussion where she could explain how caste,
though pervasive in nature, began to get deposited under the new Marxist
reductionist view of society. She describes the ways in which influential India
intellectuals today, particularly those on the left, consider caste as a matter
of past or as a ‘footnote’. She states that “an awkward, inconvenient appendage
of reductive Marxist class analysis has rendered caste invisible.” She proceeds
“the project of unseeing exists in almost all of our cultural practice- does
Bollywood deals with it? Never. How many of our high-profile writers deal with
it? Very few. Those who write about
justice and identity, about the ill effects of neo-liberalism- how many address
the issue of caste? Even some of our most militant people’s movement elide caste.” ( Roy, “We Need
Ambedkar”)
Roy moves on to describe how
Varnashrama dharma plays out in our new Democratic nation where giant
corporations virtually own and run the country and politicians and political
parties have begun to function as subsidiary holding of big business. She
analyses how this phenomenon has affected traditional caste network. Some hold
an opinion that the caste system played an important in resisting atomization
of Indian society unlike other European countries after industrial revolution.
Some others argue that unprecedented levels of urbanization and the creation of
work environment have shaken up the old order and rendered caste hierarchies
irrelevant if not obsolete. But the economic lead, if examined, is made by
people belonging to upper caste but no any Dalit or Adivasi. Even in corporate
sectors or in small trade in cities or in traditional rural money lending
across the country the same is repeated.
Roy provides further accounts on how
majority of economy is scattered among the privileged castes if we look through
the perspective of caste. The tribal dominated states in India’s Northeast have
witnessed decades of insurgency, militarization and bloodshed. It is Bania
traders who have settled there, kept a low profile and consolidated their
business. They now control almost all the economic activity in the religion. Roy
argues that today India both caste and capitalism blending has created a new
scenario. though the population has declined of Brahmins, their influence is
still can be seen when it comes to the case of holding government gazette post.
Kushwant Sing’s “Brahmin Power” traces the distribution of such government
gazette post. They hold almost 70 per cent of government jobs and out of their
3.5 per cent population.
Roy, then, discusses the reservation
policy in depth which usually offended as something which preventing or
depriving non-Dalits from entering into government jobs. The formation of
Mandal Commission and its report disclosed the insecurities of non-Dalits and
‘myths’ of reservation for backward communities flared up. One could say ‘myth’
in the sense that the recommendations were not properly studied and revealed to
common people in its entirety. The response of the college students in March
2006 when the union government announced 27 percent reservation in central
educational institutions for the backward communities can be taken as an
example. There was an anti-reservation stir. This sort of response has got
reflected in several writings such as in the graphic novel Bhimayana the traveler, who represents non-Dalit youth, blames the reservation
system saying “damn job quotas for backward and scheduled caste” and this shows
the contempt which is explicit in the utterance.
Roy
agrees with the fact that reservation is extremely important. She states that
to be eligible for the reservation a Scheduled Caste person needs to have
completed high school. She figures out the fact that according to Government
statistics, more than 70 per cent of Scheduled caste students drop out before
they matriculate. This, Roy points out that this makes only one out of four Dalits
eligible even for low-end government jobs. For a white collar job, the minimum
qualification is a graduate degree and only just over 2 per cent of Dalits are
graduates. Roy thanks to the reservation system which at least could produce
lawyers, doctors, scholars and civil servants. She worries at the fact that
even this little window of opportunity is resented and is under fire from the
privileged. She notices that the track of government institutions, the
judiciary, the bureaucracy and even supposedly progressive institutions like
JNU (Javaharlal Nehru University) in implementing reservation is appalling. The
comments made by those in the dignified positions in JNU are repulsive. B. N.
Mallick, a professor of life science says “some castes are genetically
malnutritioned and so very little can be achieved in raising them up; and if
they are, it would be undoing excellence and merit.” (Roy 28)
A long section of The Doctor and the
Saint” is an analysis of how in the late 19th century when the idea
of ‘empire’ began to mutate into the idea of a ‘nation’, when the new ideas of
governance and ‘representation’ arrived. Roy states that for centuries before
that millions of people who belonged to the subordinated castes for thousands
of years had been converting to Islam and later to Sikhism and Christianity to
escape the stigma of their caste. But she wonders at how suddenly the numbers
began to matter. The almost fifty million “untouchables” became crucial in the
numbers game. There occurred a surge of Hindu reformist movements which began
to proselytize among them, to prevent conversion. The Arya Samaj started the
Shuddhi movement to ‘purify the impure’ to try and woo untouchables and
Adivasis back into the Hindu ‘fold’ (Roy, Manorama Interview). In another interview
Roy sees this scheme of purification as analogous to the contemporary ‘Ghar
Vapsi’ programmes of VHP and Bajrang Dal in which Adivasis are ‘purified’ and
‘returned’ to Hinduism (Roy, “We Need Ambedkar”) Even Swami Vivekananda, Roy
argues that, discouraged the conversion of untouchables. She opines that “what
Swami Vivekananda said was very much part of the politics of the privileged
caste anxiety over demography. She says that it was the genesis of what we know
today as Hindutva.
It
was all the more important for Ambedkar on behalf of millions of Dalits to
demand for the separate electorate for Dalits. Roy states that his idea really
was to create a situation in which Dalits could develop into a political
community with its own leaders. Ambedkar believed that the right to
representation was a basic right. The separate electorate was crucial need of
the time and it was at this juncture that Gandhi’s propositions against the
formation of separate electorate got vehemently counteracted by Ambedkar. Gandhi, at the Second Round Table Conference leld
at London in 1931, said “I claim “I
claim myself, in my own person, to represent the vast mass of untouchables.”
(Roy 53) S. Anand, the chief editor of Navayana, at the back of the book writes
of how Gandhi, in a reply to question from an untouchable member of the
Congress party asking if he would ensure that Harijans were represented in
state councils and Panchayat boards, said the principle was “dangerous” (Anand 348).
Roy states that Gandhi played a great role in making Ambedkar’s project of
developing untouchables into a political community that was aware of its
rights, a failure. Gandhi began an indefinite hunger strike, which Ambedkar
calls as the “foul and filthy act”, and Ambedkar was forced to give up his
demand and sign the Poona Pact. Roy questions the stand that allowing separate
electorate would lead to partition. She says:
“The impulse was exactly the opposite. He was trying to
bring liberty and equality to a society that practiced a vicious form of
apartheid. He was talking about justice, brotherhood, unity and fellow
feeling—not Partition. But caste hierarchy means that only the privileged can
close the door on Dalits”. (Roy, “We Need Ambedkar”)
The consequences of failure to
fulfill the demand of formulating a separate electorate, Roy says that Dalits
are still suffering the effect of the Poona Pact (Manorama Interview).
Roy, however, had to
counter the argument that Gandhi evolved over time and there was a process of
refinement. She argues that Gandhi did never change and never altered his views
on caste. In order to prove this she has quoted his speeches over the span of
his entire adult life- from his arrival in South Africa in the early 1890s
right up until he was an old man in 1946. In a Gujarati journal named Navjivan
he expressed his belief that caste represented the genius of Indian society
(Roy 21). Later 1936 in his classic essay titled as “The Ideal Bhangi” he
states “Such an ideal Bhangi, while deriving his livelihood from his
occupation, would approach it only as sacred duty. In other words, he would not
dream of amassing wealth out of it”(Roy 109). He is said to have hold the same
attitudes, for the sustenance of caste order, all of his times. Roy argues that
calling Black African as bestial “savages” and subordinate caste Indian workers
congenital liers whose moral faculties have collapsed, cannot be considered
acceptable to any generation. In order to offend the opinion that Gandhi was a
“man of his times” and we cannot graft a contemporary understanding of
political and social justice on to someone who lived more than a century ago,
she provides the account of progressive ideals of people like Pandita Ramabai,
Jotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule. They were Gandhi’s predecessors and adopted
measures against caste and casteist atrocities which became the basis for all
the upcoming movements against caste.
However, Roy criticizes Ambedkar for
his views on Adivasis. She says that Ambedkar spoke about them in the same
patronizing way that Gandhi spoke about untouchables. The speech that he
delivered at Bombay in 1945 shows this sort of attitude. She criticizes him for
embracing Western liberalism, his support of urbanization and modern
‘development’ and she says that he failed to see the seeds of catastrophe that
were embedded in it. She states that Ambedkar’s opinion about Adivasis betrayed
a lack of information and understanding (Roy 98).
Conclusion:
The
introduction provides an overall impression that it has an objective to educate
the people, especially non- Dalits to consider how caste, caste discrimination,
and caste atrocities are not a matter of past and to remember Ambedkar and the
complicated legacy that he had left behind. It shows how caste operates in its
varied and violent versions in contemporary India and tries to present those
significant. The personal life
experiences filled with the passion, the rage, and the anger that drove him to
his fight against caste. But somehow left out by the state establishments but
considers him only as a man of establishment. Therefore, the book becomes an
effective tool for communicating and fulfilling its desired objectives. There
was a “project of unseeing”; a political act done consciously which made it
invisible in any debates and made it remain like a footnote and a matter of
past. She provides an account of life of untouchables where they find that love
is polluting and rape is pure. In a speech held at the University of Kerala,
Trivandrum, Roy invited vehement criticism against her anti-Gandhi statements.
She argued that the generally accepted image of Mahatma Gandhi was a lie (Roy, “Manorama
Interview” ). The statement provoked controversies from several parts of the
world. Through the help of this introduction one gets acquainted with the
accounts of Ambedkar-Gandhi debate which Roy says, questions the conventional
ways of thinking. She does so by mostly quoting from the lesser known writings
of Gandhi. Anyhow, Roy too expresses her disappointment at the fact that the
controversy that had been generated around the book is about her, her
intentions, motivations and political sympathies and not what she had written.
The introduction must be dealt for its content rather than questioning or
shifting its authorial intentions which is definitely a sort of perspective but
must be analyzed to understand the purpose it serves.
Bibliography
“Arundhati
Roy Replies to Dalit Camera.” Round Table India. 15 Mar. 2014. Web.
“Mandal
Commission.” Simplycoded.com . N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://www.simplydecoded.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Mandal-commission- report.pdf>.
Omvedt, Gail. Ambedkar:
Towards an Enlightened India. New Delhi. Penguin Books: 2004. Print.
“Round
Table India: An Open Letter to
Ms. Arundhati Roy.” Dalit Camera: Through Untouchable
Eyes. 15 Mar. 2015. Web.
Roy,
Arundhati. “The Doctor and the Saint.” Introduction. The Annihilation of Caste:
The Annotated Critical
Edition. By B. R. Ambedkar. New Delhi: Navayana, 2014. Print.
---.
Interviewed by Saba Naqvi. “We Need Ambedkar—Now, Urgently…” Outlook. 10
Mar. 2014. Web.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/we-need-ambedkarnow-urgently/289691
---.
Interview. “Arundhati Roy Manorama Interview.” Navayana. 18 Sept. 2014.
Web.
http://navayana.org/blog/2014/09/18/arundhati-roy-manorama-interview/
---.
“The Doctor and the Saint.” University
of Columbia. The Campaign for Teachers College. New York. 13 Oct. 2014. Address. Web.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJ6oBENENo
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