DALIT

Who are you really? Why is it that your Mum an Dad find it very difficult to explain to you the simple facts of your very own identity? They seem to know their own identity very well and they do not seem to have any problem with it.  You can not really blame your parents for their failure to teach you to understand your identity. In order to explain everything to you they will require you to spend a few years in India. They will also need to be experts in some dozen of so subjects all of which come under the umbrella called Indology.  As you are probably already aware, caste system is not as straight forward as racism. With caste system things are much more complex.

With racism, at one time, black people could define their identity on the basis of skin colour alone  or shared oppression. To their oppressors skin colour was sufficient justification for exploitation in colonial times and remain so till today. The concept of race had no scientific basis but pseudo sciences were created to justify racism.  We now today that the DNA of a  Scandinavian person is nearer to a Black South African than it is to an Italian.

Identity wise, Black people in USA are different to the black people in the UK. There are also other problems of identity even amongst the blacks and the Asians in the UK. Black people are divided by country of origin, religion, class etc. Serious people do not expect to see any substantial changes due to Barrak Obama having been elected as the President of the USA. Nevertheless, in the West, as a collective group Blacks (and Asians) are still subject to racial discrimination. No group of people  on this planet have a single identity. We all have multiple identities. Even the seemingly monolithic Sikhs do not come together on a single basis of agreement. They can not understand why all non- Dalit Sikhs can not unite together. Defining identities amongst the Muslims is even more complex business.  Christianity unites as much as it divides as in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. It can only be used as an identity marker in some circumstances and not in all.

So how do we define our identity?

We do this by not arguing about what is our primary identity and by accepting that we have complex diversity patterns amongst ourselves. How do I relate to a Dalit from Tamil Nadu who does not speak my language, does not eat the same food as me, does not have a common culture with me but somehow I feel that he is much more near to me than a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin in whose eyes I may be nothing? We may  also hate someone from our own clan because he is always aping the Hindus. This is called class love where class is not defined by your financial status alone.

In the past, our identities were defined by ex-tribal clans and sub clans by ourselves. The Brahminical ideal defined us by an intrusive and oppressive caste system, a label against which we rebelled wherever we had a chance and we continue to do so. So in negative terms we can not define our identity by our given caste name. Having said that, if someone was to use these labels as an act of 'reclaiming the word-attitude' we should understand it. As history unfolded we found it convenient to challenge Brahminism by the use of religious means, as other means were denied to us by force. When the followers of Guru Ravidas, the Satnamis rose up, they were put down violently. We got together on sub clan and clan basis which had and continue to have highly co-operative nature and thus these had survival values, but these can also have negative impact as a sub clan can also be exclusive.  We have to eliminate this exclusiveness if we are to have an identity. This identity can only come out of the struggle against the caste system both in the Diaspora and in India.

Brahminism destroyed our ex-tribal primary identities. We can not go back in history but we can reconstruct it in the present settings. We do this by accepting that for historical anti-caste reasons, our people practice multiple religions. We are Ravidasis, Valmikis, Sikhs, Christians,  Buddhists and unbelievers too. These are our religious and non-religious identities. These are like clothes that we wear. Clothes do not change the person underneath them. There are families in which Valmikis, Christians and Sikhs rub shoulders with each other! We may come from the Punjab or not come from the Panjab but we are all from India. So an identity may take the form of Indian, Dalit, Punjabi, say Ravidasi (or Ravidasi  and Sikh - both are possible). To argue any other way is to fall in the exclusive,  casteist trap and end up arguing against the very point we are trying to preach i.e. equality and acceptance. One of the saddest scene is a young Dalit who is arguing why his way of defining his identity is the only way. Put a number of such persons together and it is like four blind men describing an elephant by its parts.

In India there are groups of people about whom it is almost impossible to tell if they are Hindus or Muslims. The whole of Indian culture is highly synergistic. Do you know for example, that in Maharashtra, the home of Hindu fascist RSS, more than 40% of the words in the Marathi language have Arabic or Persian origins? Do you ever wonder why, when you hear an Arabic or Persian person speak, you can pick up the odd word here and there? Punjabi culture; from food, religion, love stories, music, philosophies, dress etc. has a very strong Islamic backbone running through it. So before anyone even suggests to you that you are a Hindu ask him  or her why the oldest written form of Punjabi culture is by Baba Farid and Waris Shah, both Sufis? Going further back than that it is strongly Buddhistic.  Why do almost all rich men in Bollywood movies wear Islamic dresses in wedding scenes? And when you are bowing in front of the Sri Guru Granth Saheb, the sacred book of the Sikhs, you are actually bowing in front of Muslim holy men as well. Kabir who was very closely connected with Guru Ravidas was neither Hindu nor Muslim but every inch a fighter for Dalits.Why is Guru Ravidas also described as a  Sufi Pir a title normally reserved for Muslim holymen?

Think about these. If you do not, you will not only end up confused about your own identity yourselves, you will pass on some very inflexible, intolerant and non cool ideas of superior and inferior and monolithic culture to your children whilst in the 21st century the world is moving away from such concepts. You are also likely to stand out as a bigot and an ignoramus. If you adopt a liberal stance that is required to study Panjab and its history, you will be forward, progressive, hip and cool without sacrificing any aspect of your primary, secondary or any other aspect of your identity.

Why watching the films the Blade Runner and the Matrix may be a good idea?

In both of these films the people are given artificial identities. In the Blade Runner, the androids who are very nearly human, have artificial memories implanted in them. In the Matrix people are kept in battery farm like environment, as a power source, to power their masters the machines. They are also implanted with false identities and false life perceptions. Both these sci-fi films are set in the future. Many time, stories set in future are but a commentary on the present. Both of these films make an excellent comparison with the power of the Matrix known as the Brahmnical ideology to keep the people enslaves and chained, even mentally, by providing them false conciousness that is extremely difficult, but not impossible, to break out of. 

Have you even felt, that even in the Diaspora, mentally you are still living inside the Brahmnical Matrix? Now you can think about liberating yourselves and others by swallowing the red pill.