EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
What is identity politics? Discuss the main trends in Dalit movements in India. (UPSC CSE Mains 2021 - Sociology, Paper 2)
- Identity politics is when people of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or religion form alliances and organize politically to defend their group’s interests. The feminist movement, the civil rights movement, the Dalit movement and the gay liberation movement are all examples of this kind of political organizing.
- Dalits are the people who make up the last caste division according to the Varnasrama Theory. The main issues around which most of the Dalit movements have been centered in the colonial and post colonial periods are confined to the problem of untouchability. They launched movements for maintaining or increasing reservations in political offices, government jobs and welfare programmes.
- The ideologies of Dalit movements varied from time to time and leader to leader. Ghanshyam Shah classifies the Dalit movements into reformative and alternative movements. The former tries to reform the caste system to solve the problem of untouchability. The alternative movement attempts to create an alternative socio-cultural structure by conversion to some other religion or by acquiring education, economic status and political power. Both types of movements use political means to attain their objectives. The reformative movements are further divided into Bhakti movements, neo-Vedantik movements and Sanskritisation movements.
- The alternative movements are divided into the conversion movement and the religious or secular movement. The latter includes the movement related to economic issues. In the context of dalit identity and ideology Shah has classified dalit movements into movements within cultural consensus, competing ideology and non Hindu identity, Buddhist dalits and counter ideology and dalit identity. The first three are based around religious ideologies whereas the last is based on class. Patankar and Omvedt classify the dalit movement into caste based and class based movements.
- In the 1990s with the increased political participation in elections and success of Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh some scholars consider their mobilization as a new political movement of the dalits.
- Assertion for dalit identity has almost become a central issue of dalit movement. This involves local level collective action against discrimination and atrocities. Statues of Dr Ambedkar are found not only in urban dalit localities but also in many villages where their number is fairly large. Dalits contribute to installing Ambedkar statues in their neighbourhood. They struggle to get a piece of land from local authorities to install the statue. The statues and photos of Dr Ambedkar are an expression of dalit consciousness and their assertion for identity.
- The Dalit movements are dominated by their middle class raising issues related to identity and reservations of government jobs and political positions. There is widespread local level assertion against the practice of untouchability and discrimination. Their struggles have brought dalits on the agenda of mainstream politics. In academic circles the movements have forced a section of intellectuals to critically review not only Indian traditions and culture but also the paradigms of modernity and Marxism. They have exploded number of myths created by Brahminical ideology. The Dalit movements have also successfully built up a good deal of pressure on the ruling classes. However several scholars and activists feel that dalits have been reduced to a pressure group within the mainstream politics. Gail Omvedt observes that the post-Ambedkar Dalit movement was ironically only that in the end- a movement of dalits, challenging some of the deepest aspects of oppression and exploitation but failing to show the way to transformation. Annihilation of caste system requires a consideration of the multi-faceted mechanisms through which caste operates.
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