Beggars or Enlightened Budhas

Beggars or Enlightened Buddhas

Gopal Guru discusses the issue of social sciences in India. Though he is talking about intellectual arena it focuses on the marginalised category 'Dalits and tribals' and how they are neglected in the realm of theory which is monopolised by TTB.

He points out that mere reservation in the field of employment or education is not enough to uplift them.Because opportunities without sufficient conditions to develop intellectual capacity to reflect is senseless .

Gopal Guru points out that freedom which denotes detachment from daily life is a necessary condition to attain the highest in theoretical realm. But when life become a struggle for survival the possibility of developing any reflexivity turns to be a dream.These ideas are fascinating, but when we read further he contradicts his own ideas and statements.

According to him Theoretical realm is eternal and the empirical temporal. But this categorization itself is absurd. There is no need to posit one mode of study as superior to other. He unconsciously support the Brahminical discourse by categorising all 'efforts' of Dalits as Empirical.

The same thing happens when he says that theory is more capable to draw the complex reality of life than poetry. If theoretical realm is the monopoly of TTB what kind of 'reality' it can portray.

The Ghettoisation of Dalits into inferiorised manual spheres and restriction of entry in

well renowned educational institutions and denial of important scholarships etc. weaken the participation of Dalits in intellectual discourses. At the same time getting foreign education is the solution he prescribes for solving this issue.

Finally he says that Dalits should test the validity of their theoretical formulations on the basis of its influence in the popular mentality. Even if they are able to formulate theories after 'walking out' and 'walking in' it raises a basic question that how can the mass whose perspectives are formed out of the experience judge the validity of theoretical formulations. The essay is full of paradoxes. Still it makes an awareness that designed empowerment create beggars not enlightened Buddhas.

It is also important that whether we can devide knowledge like a pieces of cake and reserve some for Dalits and some for non Dalits. If we do this designed empowerment it further permeates Brahminical supremacy. It is like throwing coins to the empty pot carried by Dalits from time immemorial.

If we consider the term Dalit Neo Budhist find it as humiliating. Epistemological opposition to Brahminism came from Jain and Buddhist school.The Dalit panthers and their major ideologue Baburao Bagul offer a radically different definition of the Dalit identity and category. They view it as revolutionary category for its hermeneutic ability to recover the revolutionary meaning of the historical past of the Dalit and its great capacity to reach out to larger section of people. It is not mere language construction rather based on a materialist epistemology. So Dalit identity is not a creation of language or theory. It is based on materialist epistemology. If the foundation is built on materialist epistemology why we are so pertinent on formation of theoretical formulations which we believe to rescue themselves from the existing 'regime of truth'.

“Where there is power, there is resistance.” (Foucault)and Gopal Guru may be pointing out the passivity from the part of suppressed. He is concerned with the existing “regime of truth” and its dissection for the purpose of upliftment of Dalits. I think Dalit here is not a singular identity .

“but a subjectivity which one consciously chooses by rejecting caste. In Derridean terms, it is an expression of denial”.

Essay

In this essay Gopal Guru raises a question “How far egalitarian Social Sciences in India are? Or Whether an egalitarian principle exist at all?

In India Social Sciences are divided into two. Inferiorised empirical social sciences and the privileged abstract Social Sciences. Former one belong to the mass of academics who pursue empirical Social Sciences and the latter belong to the theoretical bundits and they are intellectually superior to the former. Theoretical Brahmins and Empirical Shudras – Gopal Guru uses two terms in order to describe the existing shadow of logo centrism which exist in the field of Social Sciences.

Egalitarian principle not only provides capacity to question the exclusionary nature of social sciences practices in country. It suggest alternative modes of reorganizing boundaries of social science to make them more inclusive.

Egalitarian Principle first of all induce a moral responsibility in practitioners of social sciences and force himself or herself to justify his chosen ways .

It questions all kind of arbitrariness that exist in intellectual discourses.

To question the epistemological imperialism that empowers non dalits' transgression of dalits intellectual universe.

Egaliterianpriciple will not approve rigid ground rules or procedures or protocols which are restrictive in nature and this gives a hope to those cultural groups whose entry in intellectual field has been historically prohibited by social forces. Like Derridian deconstruction it may question the logical contradiction and silenced elements that exist in intellectual practices. It may question the politics of categorisation and construction of boundaries to intellectual practice in arbitrary manner.

Egalitarian principle undermine Dominant epistemological practices which deny or denigrate epistemic status to certain concepts and categories that do not fall in line with the intellectual discourse. Cultural hierarchy is created for hegemonic purpose. This ultimately lead to portrayal of those people as epistemologically dumb or shape their theoretical ambition according to the dominant methodological modes. Intellectual fanaticism was never questioned instead scholars lamented on the falling standards of social science practice.

The apex body who decides what is theory and what is trash is nothing but a slave of west and lack authenticity .The 'bridgehead methodology' is deployed by the juries to silence the voices which questions this cultural hierarchy.

Gopal Guru points out that certain social conditions are necessary to shape the 'reflective abilities' of any individual or group. He gives a glimpse of historical growth of Dalits. The labour process creates the epistemological ability in an individual, but certainly not all of them. Progressively transforming labour process unfolds umpteen opportunities for reflective capacities and dalits who was never the part of this organic labour process failed to develop an intellectual capacity to reflect.Occupations which have any possibility of innovation and imagination were neglected to Dalits.

Ghettoisation into inferiorised manual spheres resulted in loss of confidence which is inevitable for developing theoretical potential in the social sciences. Before independence both context and conditions were denied to Dalits and in post independence era opportunities in diverse spheres were given but Conditions to develop reflexivity was still beyond their reach.

If life turns to be a struggle for survival, the possibility of developing any reflexivity becomes a dream. According to Gopal Guru such 'freedom' is necessary to develop intellectual faculty . The freedom he talks about denotes detachment from tiring dull drab day day to day life.

Material security like scholarship is not enough to uplift Dalits. First because they are so meagre and second they do not guarantee the jobs that are crucial for any reflexivity. A congenial cultural context is however denied. Hierarchical past itself sanctioned epistemological closure to Dalits. Manu, Pv Kane and Louis Dumont are major figures who conformed this necessity of epistemological closure. TTB received modern education from imperialists and they even migrated to western countries despite of religious restrictions.All kinds of fellowships were showered on them and after independence they even received attention and appreciation from rulers. Intellectual monopoly of TTB will continue in well known educational institutions and Gopal Guru predicts that it may take ages for the dalits entry in these institutions. They are latecomers to such opportunities and excluded from all kinds of benefits.

In this situation Dalits will rely on UGC ICSSR and the number of Dalit beneficiaries of national and international fellowship programmes offered by these bodies is desperately low. The pot of TTB on seminars and magazines and government offices are overflowing . The language turned to be a weapon to restrict Dalits entry in academic circles which was based on Anglo American syntax. Language became a tool to camouflage TTB' s attempt to crush the intellectual confidence of the Dalits.

Language code , protocols and body language ensnares the Dalits and humiliation from these hostile environment adds more difficulty. High priests of theory shamelessly build their theoretical promises on data collected by Dalits.

Gopal Guru gives a spiritual aura to the realm of Theory. According to him theory demands moral stamina . Like Thomas Beckett, one has to resist the temptation from temporal gains in order to attain highest gaol of spirituality. One should be ready to overcome the sense of anxiety which sprouts from the desire to get immediate recognition. Temporal power needs only oratory skill and content is less of significance. While theory requires careful arrangement of content, discipline, patience and endurance. When Dalits are vulnerable to attraction of temporal power, theoretical concerns disappears from their cognitive map. The logic of the temporal dominates the academic agenda of Dalits and they prefer soft courses rather than tough coursers like philosophy and theory. This professionalisation of their interest creates a kind of casual attitude towards doing theory.

They compensate for theoretic deficiency by brilliant poetry. But poetry is never a substitute for theory because Dalits poetry is based on aesthetic and metaphors and though they are byproduct of rich experience they belong to the 'particular'.

“Poetry has no conceptual capacity to universalise the particular and particularise the universal”. Poetry gave connections through metaphors but not through concepts.

Theory can illuminate meaning embedded in complex reality.

Dalits are interested in empirical research for

They think that their lived experience is rich enough and even without theoretical representation it can stand on its own authentic terms.

Since they have privileged access to reality they can capture it with a full view without any theoretical representation.

So they believe that though they do not generate any theory their research can always contain some valuable theoretical insights, their experience alone can illuminate aspects of human relations.

To defend Empiricsm some of the Dalits offend theory.Doing theory makes a person intellectually arrogant egoistic and socially alienated.

It is necessary to move from empirical to theoretical

1.To confront the reverse orientalism.

2. They should become the 'subject' of their own thinking rather than becoming the 'object' of somebody else's thinking.

Studies on Dalits and tribals treat them as 'amusing object' and reproduces the reverse orientalism. The TTB claims that they by intervening Dalits situation at the theoretical level ,they restore voices and visibility to Dalits and advance the Dalits epistemological cause .But this in a very subtle way carries an element of charity and culminates in creating a patron client relationship. The patron ironically reproduce the brahminical mechanism. This designed empowerment makes them beggars instead of enlightened bud has. As a result patron does not find a need to exit from the epistemological fields that belong to Dalits. Patrons prompts the dumb to throw up more details in order to form grand formulations in a liberal mode or its post modernist deconstruction which ultimately pushes them into frozen essentialist trap.

When Dallits experience is narrated by a non Dalits epistemical violence happens. So it would be better if Dalits narrate their experience on thier own.

If Dalits wish to realise doing theory as an inner moral necessity they have to use their sense of freedom to walk out from Dalits experience for achieving theoretical heights in their reflections. At the same time they after developing their reflective capacity should make moral choice to walk back into Dalit's experience in order to accord their depth of reflections. Dalits theory comes as a double commitment both to scholarship and for social cause.Dalits should test the validity of their theoretical formulations on the basis of its influence in the popular mentality.

Problematizing the Metonymy of Representation in Gopal Guru’s ‘How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?’

Gopal Guru’s seminal essay ‘How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?’explores the intricate relationship between experience and theory in Indian social sciences. It focuses on question of Dalit experience and untouchability. Thematically divided into six sections, the first part of the essay discusses the problems associated with theory in the social sciences in the Indian context; the second makes inquiries into the socio-cultural context of intellectual hierarchies; the third explores how the hegemonic past which has made theory the birth right of TTB still survives in the present;  the fourth examines the moral prerequisites necessary for reflectivity; the fifth presses the need for theory as an inevitability for the dalits; and the last one focuses on how freedom of mobility in social sciences can make it truly egalitarian.

Guru begins his polemical essay by discussing how cultural hierarchy has created a yawning divide in the practice of social sciences in Indian academic circles over the past fifty years. While social theory has become the prerogative of the upper classes, the so-called top of the twice-born, the marginalised sections of the society like the dalits have to content themselves with the pursuit of empiricism in social science disciplines.  Guru’s essay critiques the cultural hierarchies that operate through academic institutions and analyzes why intellectually indigent sections like the dalits are deprived of the opportunities to do theory at a more abstract level. The essay also speaks about the epistemic violence perpetrated on dalits by the non-dalits who take up the cudgels for the former. Guru argues that in the end, by a kind of reverse orientalism, these self-proclaimed messiahs end up doing more harm than good because of the amount of condescension they subject the dalits to in the name of uplifting them. The essay, in short, delves into the lack of intellectual representation of dalits in social sciences and seeks to redress it through the adoption of a liberal ideology which would make social theory accessible to all.

Guru identifies the practice of theory as an emancipatory tool that can help surmount the impoverishment of the theoretically star-crossed dalit who has to ensure his representation in academic circles through the vainly charitable eyes of the wiseacre non-dalit theorist. Guru problematizes the polarization of theory and experience of the dalit question in order to bridge its gap by an inclusionary praxis that would promote dalit scholars languishing in empirical cesspools to the echelons of theoretical fecundity. The only way to resolve the implacable oppositionality between theory and lived experience, Guru argues, is by the rearticulation of a Hegelian dialectics of unrepresentable representability, which awaits the redeeming touch of an untouchable dalit for it organic synthesis. The polemics that Guru activates here is redolent of the perfunctory representation of Jews under the Nazi regime by Heideegger who had no lived experience of the Jewish suffering as against the immediately gripping one by Levinas who had direct knowledge and experience of Jewish oppression. But Sunder Sarukkai deflates the exigency of Guru’s argument with the contestation that there is a certain ubiquity to human experience, regardless of segementations into geographical terrains existing vis-à-vis a particular racial or casteist ideology.  Sarrukai refutes Guru’s argument that the dalit experience can’t be subsumed under the rubric of the collective transgression of human rights in general. Sarrukai’s argument can be read as a plea for the revivification of a Marxist ideological formulation comprehensive enough to slot into its prefigurations of class, proletariat, master, etc. the dichotomy between the theoretically well-endowed TTB and the empirically confined dalit.

In his essay ‘Commitment to Theory’, Bhabha asks: “Is the language of theory merely another power ploy to the culturally privileged Western elite to produce a discourse of the other that reinforces its own power-knowledge equation?” (29) In a similar vein Guru dithers about the generosity expressed by non-dalit academicians to extend the range of their representational universe to the underprivileged dalits. He sees in such an offer the insidious intent of a colonial master offering his hand to the pariah as a tokenistic sign of his magnanimity to redeem the latter’s iniquitous plight. The pouvoir-savoir paradigm as enunciated by Foucaut serves the role of a formal determinant here to gauge the complicity implied in the act of the naive dalit grovelling before the messianic non-dalit to emancipate him. As Earnesto Laclau rightly observes in Emancipation(s), any modality that is split irreconcilably down the middle in terms of the subject and the object is destined to chase its tail in a vortex of seeming significations that tantalizingly yield their finitude, only to bombinate in an endless void. The binarism that the metonymy of representation entails is both pornographic and detrimental as it happens with the borrowed intensity of spurious interiority and also because it “museumizes” the dalit as the Other. As Baudrillard puts it in The Ecstasy of Communication:

           Today we have entered into a new form of schizophrenia- with the emergence of an immanent promiscuity and the perpetual interconnection of all information and communication networks. No more hysteria, or projective paranoia as such, but a state of terror which is characteristic of the schizophrenia of the schizophrenic, an over-proximity of all things, a foul proximity of all things which beleaguer and penetrate him, meeting with no resistance , no halo, no aura, not even the aura of his body protects him.

 The problem then as Spivak laconically states is one of “epistemic violence” that has become the legitimate mode of making amends for the dalit’s reflective vacuity and its concomitant of the lack of representational freedom.

 The egalitarian principle proposed by Guru aims at weeding out exclusionary practices followed across social sciences in our country. It would question the prerogative of TTB to do theory on the conventional grounds that they are intrinsically entitled to it. The present scenario is one in which even the intellectual universe of the dalit/adivasi is monopolized by TTB in a way that caricatures the dalit/bahujans as epistemologically dumb. Guru adds that most dalits lack the proclivity to do theory because of certain socio-historical reasons which have proved inordinately advantageous to TTB in our country. The foremost cause is that dalits are pushed into manual spheres like scavenging that hinder the development of theoretical potential in the social sciences. Guru argues that in spite of having profound reflective and critical faculties dalits have not been able to nurture them because of their constant struggle for survival which impairs their freedom to make vigorous forays into social sciences.

TTB have consolidated their theoretical brahminism as a result of tacit valorizations of their intrinsic right and ability to do theory right from the time of classical thinkers like Manu himself. Foreign scholars who have only been too eager to jump on the bandwagon of the Manu-clan made further depredations on the dalit’s zeal to venture into theory. Guru goes on to say that TTB have a cumulative advantage over the dalits in many respects. They have had the privilege of being entitled to British education which helped them internalize a set of codes and protocols of language which the dalits are at large alien to. Further, they have greater prospects waiting for them in the field of research because of the foreign universities they can seek admission in and the number of fellowships they can avail themselves of. On the other hand, dalits have neither any proper training in the codes and conventions that govern language use nor any orientation in theory without which they can never gain entrance into institutions like Oxford or Cambridge.

According to Guru, a major hindrance confronting the dalits is the moral stamina required for serious theoretical endeavours. Doing theory requires some kind of intellectual rigour and prioritization of the spiritual over temporal gains. But most dalits sidetrack their interest in practising theory in favour of the glamour of the temporal growth they can otherwise achieve. Guru opines that Dalits make amends for their inability to do theory by writing poetry that depict their historic oppression at the hands of the upper classes. But the downside of poetry, he argues, is that, being more metaphorical in nature, it lacks conceptual clarity and dialectical power which theory possesses. It is sceptical whether Guru is fully conscious of the reactionary force of Dalit poetry to activate a discourse around material reality. He seems to conclude blatantly that theory is the aphrodisiac that can stimulate the dalit scholar into intellectuality without considering the effectiveness of poetry over abstract theory in communicating a long history of dispossessions and arbitrary alienations. If theory becomes the preferred vehicle for Guru to speak of subaltern alterity, then it must be remembered that theorization as such has a very low appeal to the dalit section, and if the principle of egalitarianism and liberal utopia in social sciences should not prove self-contradictory, the deconstruction of a totalitarian discourse should follow the trajectory of popular forms of dissemination rather than a vain exercise in theoretical obscurity. Theorization should be subsequent or at least simultaneous with consciousness-formation. Whereas both Guru and Sarukkai talk vehemently about the concreteness of ‘lived experience’, they keep a stiff upper lip when it comes to the consciousness of it. Lived experience as such is no guarantee of emancipation, and unless it is coupled with a transversal line of consciousness drawn from the periphery of experience to the centre of theoretical transgression, it can do little to palliate the squalor of the dalit scholar who is exsibilated out of seminar halls.

Dalits themselves justify their reticence in the field of theory by arguing that their lived experience is more powerful than any theoretical formulation to give them due representation. In addition to this, some dalits contend that doing theory can make them intellectually conceited and socially alienated in a fashion similar to TTB while empiricism helps them stay rooted to their reality. But Guru argues that it is imperative for the dalits to move beyond empiricism into the realm of theory in order to subvert the notion that dalits are theoretically inferior to TTB. Dalits should strive to become the subject of their own thinking rather than being objectified by messianic non-dalits in their condescending thought. It is indispensable that the dalits start representing themselves and do away with the element of charity that is invidiously implied in the non-dalit’s rallying cry to offer epistemological empowerment.

Guru concludes that only an intervention at the theoretical level can restore voice and respectability to the devoiced dalits who have a long history of being intellectually humiliated by TTB. The epistemological enthusiasm of the non-dalit loses its edge as soon as the question of interiority of experience arises. For a non-dalit who remains outside the purview of dalit experience, constructing a dalit epistemology will not only be experientially non-representative but will also be ideologically ludicrous. It is also not possible to deploy the Marxist notions of class, proletariat or labour in relation to the dalit situation as it has evolved in an altogether different context. Alternative categories are required to represent the dalit experience of class oppression. The solution that Guru proposes to the ‘dalit condition’ is that they earn more mobility and freedom to move out of their confining past into a future driven by intellectual triumphalism and the conquest of new epistemological territories. Though it is possible to laud Guru for the militancy of his rhetoric deployed in the act of reinstating egalitarianism in social sciences, Guru himself fails to take stock of the lack of empirical foundation of his study. Rather than having exceedingly romantic conceptions about dalits doing theory at large in the hallowed portals of Oxford and Cambridge, he should have talked about the accessibility of theory to the dalit community in general. Will a few dalits doing theory be potent enough to dismantle the strictures that bulwark the prerogative of TTB as regards theory? Will the proliferation of dalits in hallowed academic circles mean a displacement of TTB’s totalitarian ideology? If so, won’t it be a reiteration of the same vice that egalitarianism set out to surmount? Won’t the non-dalit academic then become a new Other in relation to the theoretically-upgraded dalit? These are questions that need to be addressed before raising the war cry for a radical redistribution of intellectual capital in social sciences.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean, and Sylvère Lotringer. The Ecstasy of Communication. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1988. Print.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Farías, Víctor, Joseph Margolis, and Tom Rockmore. Heidegger and Nazism. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989. Print.

Foucault, Michel, Alan Sheridan, and Michel Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon, 1972. Print.

Guru, Gopal. How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India? Economic and Political

Weekly, 2002. PDF file.

Laclau, Earnesto. Emancipation(s). Verso:London, 1996. Print.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Print.      

DALIT PNEUMATIC EXPERIENCE AND THE LOGIC OF METONYMIC VIOLENCE

Is punishment the binary opposite of justice? Michel Foucault opens his classic Discipline and Punish with the almost cliché description of torture associated with systems of justice and law throughout centuries. Foucault even reminded me of the world of macabre created by one of the favorite authors, Stephen King. But in Foucault, the evil, the dark force that permeates the pages of the book and projects into the realms of awareness of the reader is more tangible than in Stephen King. When we are too much scared, we could find refuge in the consoling act of suspending belief by being aware that Mr. King is telling us a story. But not Foucault. He isn’t telling us a story. He is for real. And this real man is showing us a real history of torture, discipline and a constantly watching authority that peeps from just behind our back. He analyses these structures of judgement and their corresponding punishing techniques. “[T]he flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses,” (Foucault 1) narrates the French philosopher.

The morbidity of these opening pages abates by the time the reader goes through the realization that the author had done some historical reporting in effectively juxtaposing punishment strategies prevalent in Europe with penal process. However, torture as a “spectacle” and punishment as a valid mode of subjugation still take place among individuals of various societies. This analysis gains a shocking perspective when one realizes that torture techniques are prevalent even among intellectually active academic folks.

“[T]he dalit may have a genuinely insightful point that might challenge the big boss in social science, but the moment the dalit questions the premise of the big boss, immediately loud laughter full of crushing derision is collectively produced in such gatherings,” analyses Gopal Guru in his essay, “How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?” published in Economic and Political Weekly, December 14, 2002. The laughter in a seminar hall with people of the elite communities or castes might induce in the person from a lower caste a sense of disproportion and ineptness. The idea of social equality will be consistently defied by the sense of overwhelming degradation. Mr. Guru goes on, “The strict observance of a language code, protocols, body language and ground rules effectively converts seminar halls into a hostile structure that very often inflict humiliation on the dalits who then feel nervous or intimidated to enter such structures.” The conclusion from these lines can be derived thus: the sense of punishment and torture as a public spectacle is still enacted in our societies. This discourse of pain and humiliation is not just a matter of penal systems or judiciary. Academics and political scene contribute to the propagation and maintenance of such defiling of moral consciousness. Punishment is enacted without a legal premise, without a judicial interference. The only interference, Gopal Guru maintains, “are historical reasons that gave a structural advantage to the top of the twice born (TTB) in consolidating its privileged position in doing theory.”

The binary of theory and empirical practices in social sciences harbors a rich conflict of the political nature, in Gopal Guru’s argument. Theoretical practices in the social sciences reward the participant with exclusive space within the respective epistemological zone. However, those who indulge in empirical studies, such as data collection and the like, inadvertently scaffolded as pariahs and “empirical shudras”.

Gopal Guru attempts to reconstruct the arguments raised by Ramchandra Guha, Partha Chatterjee, and Peter de Souza by transforming the political binary into an egalitarian moral interrogation. Guru works on the premise that “inferiorised empirical social sciences and the privileged abstract social sciences,” while remaining silent on the agent that dispersed this mutually defiant dichotomy. This division, though, is grounded in the prevailing epistemological structures. He underscores an eclectic purpose for inviting the spirit of egalitarianism into the discourse of the binary of theory and empiricism.

Guru addresses the issue of scholarly exclusivity and denies the role of this competitive notion of epistemological interaction and favors inclusivity in social sciences. Guru in turn, offers “inclusivity” as the accepted practice to undermine the academic brahminism. However, “How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?” sternly advices against any non-dalit involving into the particular epistemological environment of dalit experience. Guru identifies these attempts and labels them “epistemological imperialism”. In attempting this argument, Guru ruptures his own positive verdict on the exclusivity of theoretical brahminism. Still, this goes with the spirit of the essay and narrows down the concept of a dalit pneumatic that is a unifying medium existing in crossroads between a dominant academic practice mentioned attributed with irreverent exclusivity and egalitarianism that Mr. Guru implements in undoing the causes of this narcissistic dichotomy that observes itself and locates its aesthetic and spiritual perspective upon the particularities of the marginalized Other.

Through creating a comfortable path into dalit ontology the non-dalit attempts to enthrone an epistemological imperialism. Thus, when a non-dalit endeavors into theorizing dalit experience, this results in an “epistemic violence”, to use a term from Spivak. It is to this sphere of arguments Guru brings egalitarianism. In Mr. Guru’s argument, egalitarian discourse would set the tone for a morally sound practice in social studies as well as other areas that experience authoritarian exclusivity. It “promises to undermine the dominant epistemological practices which are not only exclusionary but also authoritarian in their intention and tend to become a force that seeks to discipline, denigrate and even deny epistemic status to certain concepts and categories that do not fall in line with the intellectual discourse which feeds on cultural hierarchy as a hegemonic necessity.”

A History of Hierarchies and the Hierarchy of Needs:

Where do a society end and the subject begin? Is it human mind that pictures and manifests one’s social environment? Or is the creative force a social one that manages to manifest into the individual with all the complex psychological functions? Within the purview of a positivist argument, the space for creation theory of the origin of the individual and development does not hold. This initiates an inevitable discourse of social construction. However, the subjectivity of the individual and personality often showcase an interaction that operates towards the mechanisms of the social order rather than being just a flow in components inward the individual. The outward flow of subjective elements becomes problematic when they cater a specific prejudice prevalent in social order. In “How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?” Gopal Guru invites our consciousness towards the historical and social context of the construction of hierarchies that helped coagulate theoretical brahmins and empirical shudras.

Labour process is crucial in moulding the psyche of the individual subject that undergoes it. Being one of the social, political, and cultural breeding grounds of interpersonal behavioral pollination, these locations, professional arenas often are locations for the origin of knowledge as well. Often professional environment motivates the individual to assume the role of the receiver and conceiver of knowledge. Guru addresses this arbitrary interaction and underscores that professional interaction “creates the concrete possibilities for such epistemological abilities.” He also points out that “reflective abilities develop only in certain kinds of labour processes.”

Dalits, in India, have existed through political and social suppression manifested culturally in their absence from the realm of any major discourse. To use a certain argument from Guru, dalits are denied the possibility to interact in contiguity with the field of theory that, according to Guru, involves more “reflective thinking.” In unveiling the epistemological underpinning of social discrimination, Gopal Guru attests that dalits in India, before independence were never given any labour that could provide them with the intellectual freedom to practise reflective thinking, thus prohibiting a group of bahujans/dalits to exist within their own mind. Dalits in India are a people, thus, without an image of the self. In the post-independence era, mainstream political interests kept dalits aloof from any possibility to exercise reflective thinking.  

In 1954, Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist published a book on a ground breaking concept. The book was titled, Motivation and Personality. In this timeless classic, Maslow postulates the Theory of Needs. The Hierarchy of Needs proposed by Maslow contains a set of needs starting from physiological necessities and growing into self actualization. Maslow’s self actualization is in close proximity with Guru’s notion of the “capacity for reflective thinking”. However, in order to reach the level of self actualization, the individual must satiate the needs that form the base structures of the hierarchy of needs, such as safety, love and belonging and esteem.

To remind the earlier statement about the torture culture of seminar halls, the argument raised by Guru, manifests into a portrayal of why dalits/ bahujans do not make it to the heights of intellectual activity through participating in theoretical social studies and reflective thinking. Here is a quote from Mr. Guru’s article that mirror’s Maslow’s hierarchy and supports my argument that Guru has raised a potential discourse in harmony with the emancipation of dalits. “If one does not enjoy that freedom and is completely trapped in the ceaseless struggle for survival, one is completely handicapped in developing any reflectivity,” says Guru.

Pneumatic Experience and the Logic of Metonymic Violence

Once public executions were aborted in many European countries, the body-punishment relationship too was remoulded. “The condemned man was no longer to be seen,” (13) writes Foucault. The culprit’s face would be covered with either a black or white clothe before execution. In other words, the condemned became a symbolic representation of the crime, rather than personal tragedies under a penal system. The face of the condemned was covered as if it’s a vulgar sign of prohibited act.

Perhaps in our times, we see similar metonymic representations, where the face or the original identity disappears under the weight of the attributed one. For example, the binary created by Guru in addressing the discriminatory practices in social science institutions in India—theory and empiricism—appears a complementary label for both the elite academicians belonging to TTB and dalits respectively. Guru also gives examples of institutions where still enrollment of dalit students seems impossible. Through invoking the imagery of the “earthen pot”, Guru grounds his provocative work in historical metonymy. The logic of this violence perpetrated through the displacement of identities is historical. The “because”, “therefore”, and “in order to” discourses provide ample spaces of hiding for those who involve in active labeling and displacement of the marginalized in present culture.

While keeping the notion of theory and other existing elite practices within a reverent space, Guru may also invite plausible criticism. His argument for dalit students involving extensively in theory may be seen as valorizing the existing norms without acknowledging his respect for the reverential space occupied by the current practitioners of the exclusivity of theory. However, Guru maintains that dalits need theory in order to assert their own space and location. By mimicking the very mechanics of the dominant politics, perhaps, Guru is urging the reader, any individual who felt marginalized or humiliated because of the circumstances of one’s birth to manipulate the very textuality of domination into their favor.

Guru draws his conclusions by knitting a seamless contact with spirituality. “Doing theory is a moral responsibility based on sacrifice that the dalit have to make in terms of pursuing spiritual rather than temporal power.” Thus the self actualizing individual of Maslow makes his appearance through a dalit pneumatic experience. Participating in theory and endeavoring theory becomes a spiritual act for the dalit. Although the dalit may write poetry, Guru discounts its impact with reference to the impact created by theory.

Gopal Guru articulates his urge to formulate a pattern in taking up dalit cause through asserting the significance of dalits taking up “doing theory”. As if it’s the only aspect of beauty available for a community crushed by the wheels of academic brahminism and elite epistemological imperialism.  

WORKS CITED

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: Penguin Books, 1991. Print.

Guru, Gopal. How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?. Economic and Political

Weekly, 2002. PDF file.

Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality. 1970. Library Genesis. Web. 22 July 2015.