Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics

310 Pages·2018·4.716 MB·English

by  Mukul Sharma

Title Pages
Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian
Environmental Politics
Mukul Sharma
Print publication date: 2017
Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001
Title Pages
Mukul Sharma
(p.i) Caste and Nature (p.ii)
(p.iii) Caste and Nature
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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Dedication
Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian
Environmental Politics
Mukul Sharma
Print publication date: 2017
Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001
Dedication
Mukul Sharma
(p.v) To my friends and their organizations:
Vijay Pratap, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
Ashok Bharti, National Confederation of Dalit Organisations
Deepak Bharti, Lok Shakti Sangathan (p.vi)
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Acknowledgements
Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian
Environmental Politics
Mukul Sharma
Print publication date: 2017
Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001
(p.ix) Acknowledgements
Mukul Sharma
In early 2000, I came in close contact with several Dalit organizations, activists,
intellectuals, and writers from India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, mainly
through my involvement in the World Social Forum. I met Paul Divakar of the
National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) in Hyderabad and New
Delhi, India, in 2002–3, and we planned a joint programme at the Asia Social
Forum, Hyderabad, in January 2003. In some of our discussions on democracy,
development, exclusion, and human rights, we had exchanges on Indian
environmental movements. Other than Paul, another prominent activist of
NCDHR, Vincent Manoharan, was always engaging and thoughtful, and it was
with him that I shared my preliminary thoughts on the complex relationship
between Dalits and environment for the first time. Later, on my request, Vincent
also elaborated his ideas in a small note, which further spurred my thinking. I
lost his note, but I remember him and his thoughts, and extend my warm thanks
to him.
From 2001 to 2010, I worked very closely with the National Confederation of
Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), New Delhi, India, and the World Dignity Forum,
India. Dalit leader Ashok Bharti, an engineer by profession, a tireless activist by
choice, and the founder of NACDOR, became a key person in my life, and in
many ways has driven me to work on this subject. We travelled, discussed,
planned, and organized many things and events together for many years, and I
think all my Dalit-related research, including this one, has some of its roots
there. Ashok and NACDOR became a major school for me to learn about, reflect,
and write on the Dalit cause and the socio-political issues around the rallying cry
of ‘dignity’. With, and through, them, I met and interacted with a large number
of Dalit organizations, activists, and thinkers across (p.x) the length and
breadth of the country, who enriched my thinking on the subject. I particularly
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Acknowledgements
wish to acknowledge the contribution of Bhagwan Das, A. Padmanaban,
Ramanath Nayak, Rakesh Bahadur, Durga, Harbhajan Lal, Nitin Chowdhary,
Mansukh Rathod, Rajni Tilak, Pushpa Vivek, Rahul Manav, Pushpa Bharti,
Tabassum, Achhutan, and Arshad Kureshi.
In the World Dignity Forum, we aligned with a large number of organizations
and individuals. In particular, Ashok Chowdhary and his National Forum of
Forest People and Forest Workers, Ali Anwar Ansari and his All India Pasmanda
Muslim Mahaz, and Deepak Bharti and his Lok Shakti Sanghatan immensely
enriched my knowledge and understanding of Dalit perspectives on livelihood,
forest, food, water, space, and environment.
In the academic world, Pradip Kumar Datta (PK) has been thought provoking
and very generous in providing much-needed direction and depth to my research
through his comments and suggestions on each chapter, as well as an overall
feedback on the entire work. I remember and thank him with great respect and
admiration—for being a wonderful human being, a supportive teacher, and a
serious intellectual and historian. Ujjwal Kumar Singh has been encouraging and
forthcoming since the beginning of my research work and has played an integral
supportive role in the fruition of this book. Mahesh Rangarajan, Deepak Kumar,
and Aditya Nigam gave thoughtful comments that further improved my
arguments. S. Anand of Navayana Publishing House and Rohan D’Souza of
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, were the first ones to comment
critically but positively on my article and research proposal. Ramachandra Guha
provided some pertinent references to begin this work, and later on too he had
some wise words. Gopal Guru read some chapters closely, and I am grateful for
his feedback.
This research has been enriched through several interactions, workshops,
seminars and conferences. I am thankful to E. Somanathan, Indian Statistical
Institute, Kolkata, India; Gunnel Cederlöf, Uppsala University, Sweden; Bengt G.
Karlsson, Stockholm University, Sweden; Professor Prasenjit Duara, Duke
Kunshan University, China; and Professor Navnita C. Behera, Delhi University,
India, for the same.
Fieldwork in different parts of the country was made possible by several people.
Ashok Kumar Anj, Tushar Vyas, Chandresh, and Subhash Gatade offered their
time, contacts, and every possible resource at short (p.xi) notice. Language,
literature, and translation have their own challenges, and I requested support
from Nivedita Menon, Sohail Hashmi, Sana Das, and Sheeba Mathew in this
regard. They took time out to find and connect me with some people who could
help with translations. Hima S., Kapilash, Mehul Mangubahen, and Madhu Dar
carried out meticulous translations from Malayalam, Odiya, Gujarati, and Hindi.
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Acknowledgements
I have also gained a lot—knowledge, reflection, facilitation, encouragement,
material, and improvement in research—from Jeremy Seabrook, Anand
Teltumbde, Ishaan Sharma, Assem Shrivastava, Ashish Kothari, Gangesh Gunjan,
Itishree Kanungo, Madhushree B.N., Sanjay Kumar, Anand Pradhan, Vidhya
Raveendranathan, and Aseem Prakash. To merely say thanks to them is not
enough; still I mention them here with a lot of warmth.
My friend Anand V. Swamy has had an overarching presence and contribution in
my life for several decades. More so in the pursuit of this research, as I heavily
relied on his resources to access crucial books and research papers from
overseas. He never got tired of meeting my constant requests for relevant
materials. Anand’s unconditional affection and belief in me has always taken me
forward, and it is very true here as well.
Charu Gupta is, in fact, the initiator of this research, as in the case of most of my
other serious works. Her role has been manifold—objectively intellectual and
deeply personal, reader and commentator, discussant and critic, and much more
—and it cannot be recognized in plain words. Her recent work, The Gender of
Caste, also coincided with the development of my research and I was lucky and
privileged to have access to her fresh knowledge and thoughts on Dalits. Her
love and support seems lifelong, and is embedded in every page of this research.
(p.xii)
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Introduction
Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian
Environmental Politics
Mukul Sharma
Print publication date: 2017
Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001
(p.xiii) Introduction
Mukul Sharma
O black girl
You reap the paddy field
You reap everything with your sickle
Come along! O come along with the wrath of Kali!
O black cubs
You shade the black soil
You cubs of lions and panthers
Take the staff of the Vela
And the rope of the Kaala
Come along striding like demons!
You became the manure in the soil
The colour of the river
You were pushed down alive
Under the mud as slush
As many Pulaya heads were chopped
And the blood drained into the fields and farmlands.
—K.K.S. Das, a Malayali Dalit writer1
My eyes opened and I saw a broken piece of sky, agitated, caught in
the square of the window. A big, inky black cloud had grabbed the
feeble sun and squeezed it, breaking the sun’s legs.
—Ajay Navaria, a Hindi Dalit writer2
Brahmanas recited ved mantras and poured offerings
And, then, arrived the time for the final sacrifice
And, then, Maya’s head was served and offered
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Introduction
Blood splurged, so did the water in the well
Was it just water? (p.xiv)
No, it was the blessing of gods.
It was the salvation of untouchables
Whose blood had turned into water
In that water bathed shavati, bathed the Brahmins,
Bathed the ruler, bathed the subjects
He, who saved the people from misery,
Was declared the saint of twelfth century
Maha Saptami invoked
But never was he honoured.3
—A Gujarati Dalit folk song, ‘Mayavel’, describing the sacrifice of Maya, a
Dalit, for bringing water in a cursed, dry pond
Caste and nature are intimately and inextricably interwoven in India; and yet
their interconnectedness has rarely been a subject of examination. However,
Dalit experiences and narratives constantly underline their everyday ecological
burdens in a marked hierarchal order. Images of land animate caste anxieties
around labour, blood, and bondage. In dry regions, Dalits must often sacrifice
their lives to recharge ponds and water resources. From village to city and
temple to school, caste metaphors of pollution, impurity, and dirt dominate
places and spaces through imaginaries of dangers posed by the presence of
Dalits. Forests can be heaven or hell for Dalits. A river is some place to dispose
of your body. Nature, entwined with fear and violence, horror and hardship,
bloodbath and war, makes environmental experiences of Dalits distinctive and
different. Dalit landless agricultural labourers in Kerala have, for example, such
memories of forest, animal, wood, and weather in their songs:
Collecting wood in the forest
Wild animals accost us
The weather is against us!4
At the same time, Dalit eco-experiences have their own vibrancy and dynamism.
Living with nature, they are constantly negotiating with, and challenging, caste
domination, while simultaneously articulating their environmental imagination.
Dalit thinkers and contemporary excavations of Dalit memory create varied and
alternative spatial and social metaphors around environment. This book traces
Dalits’ quest for their place in nature by taking in different voices—songs and
narratives of early bonded labourers; writings by leading Dalit ideologues,
leaders, and (p.xv) writers; myths, memories, and metaphors of Dalits around
nature; their movements, labour, and footsteps—which together highlight Dalits’
attempts at defining themselves in casteized nature through heterogeneous
means. The book deploys the term ‘Dalit’ in a wider, inclusive, encompassing
sense—sometimes including boatmen and fisherfolk—as the ecological caste-
and-nature paradox creates a larger pattern, which impacts the body, self,
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Introduction
presence, and position of the oppressed.5 This intertwining of caste and nature
presents a critical challenge to Indian environmentalism, which has hitherto
marginalized such linkages. On the one hand, this work attempts to fill this
lacuna by highlighting what environmentalists have largely missed and on the
other it demonstrates how by studying Dalits’ complex relationship with nature
we can bring forth new dimensions of both environment and Dalits. The work
hinges on three broad themes through which I attempt to see Dalit and caste
conceptions of environment. The first is the apologist and recuperative
Brahminism and a stream of environmentalism in modern India. The second is
Dalit environmental thought—mythological, anecdotal, theoretical, and rational.
The third is Dalit activism, with its certain embedded conceptions such as the
new commons. These are interconnected windows through which I look at
different aspects of Dalit environmentalism as a comprehensive terrain of
ecological contestation and appropriation, and conceptualization and activism.
They represent how Dalit meanings of environment have counterposed
themselves to ideas and practices of neo-Brahmanism and to certain
mainstreams of environmental thought. They underline that with all its
ambiguities and mulitiplicities, Dalit thought represents an attempt to produce a
new conception of environment as spatial equity and build a case of
environmentalism free from burdens of caste. Rather than looking for a single
united Dalit thread and a coherent understanding of ecology, the study explores
diverse and rich Dalit intellectual resources that give nature a social, political,
and cultural underpinning.
Nature and Caste
Nature and caste are rarely seen together in academic and environmental
discourses. Nature is considered as natural, common, and inherent; caste is
understood as a constructed and distinct historical and social entity unique to
India, and based on a system of stratification and (p.xvi) division of Hindu
society. However, the two are deeply intertwined in the country. Hierarchical
social structures—and similarly nature—are often believed by many caste
Hindus to be organic, intrinsic, and natural, originating together with and at the
same moment of the creation of the universe by and out of a sacrifice of the body
of Purusha, the ‘Cosmic Man’. However, scholars have pointed out that not only
caste, but even land, forest, and water are complex historical and social
products. Actions of humans and non-humans have been constantly inscribed
upon most of the so-called natural world.6 Vast forms of nature—land use,
vegetation, rivers, mountains, even climate—bear the marks of human influence,
including caste exclusion. From the times of the Rig Veda7—‘naturalizing’ an
unequal social order—to the recent intellectual debates on caste, dimensions
and determinants of human behaviours and nature have often met through
diverse paths, times, and spheres. The interrelationship between caste and
nature affirms and reaffirms particular kinds of cultural representations;
legitimizes and delegitimizes spaces, places, and people; creates and reproduces
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Introduction
social hierarchies; ignites conflicts and violence; and offers creative arenas for
challenging domination. There is a specificity of casteized nature, different from
the universal question of accessing nature in relationship to nature. Village,
occupation, agriculture, food, water, land, and irrigation have been important
sites for imposition of hierarchies of caste, and caste economy thrives on the use
and abuse of natural resources. We need to ask how caste hierarchies are
reproduced by uses of nature. What is the role of purity and pollution? What are
the structuring principles of access and exclusion? Is it a question of touchability
or hierarchy in general? Are other principles of caste hierarchy, besides
touchability, also in operation here? What is the caste of water? How do caste
relations structure irrigation networks in a village? Why should Dalits feel and
work for conservation and promotion of traditional water bodies and water-
harvesting systems when these leave aside issues of ownership and when they
are not even allowed to take water from these ponds, tanks, and wells?8 Why
and how do caste and its culture determine pure and impure food, what we eat,
and what we prefer to eat? How is the use of animals declared legitimate or
illegitimate through caste? Why should Dalits fight for restoration of traditional
community-based occupations when it is precisely these that support their
ghettoization and do not empower them or improve (p.xvii) their situation in
civil society and the market? How does a specific environmental and
occupational set-up play a role in the making and unmaking of the collective
entry or exit of a caste in environmental politics? How do certain other
environmental arenas, for example, the tank irrigation technologies and
practices in south India, explicate caste and Dalit intersections at the site of
environment? How do physical and social environments, characterized by
ghettos (known by different names like Chamar tola in the north, Cheri and
Hulgeri in the south, and Wadas in the west of India) and untouchability
(pollution, filth, stigma, and isolation), act as a material context for Dalit
environment subject formation?
History underlines the intertwining of casteism and naturalism. Different ages
and times have scripted the characters of this coupling. According to the Rig
Veda, pervading earth and all its creatures, eternal life, air, and animals filled up
with the sacrifice of Purusha. The world was formed and the Brahman was
Purusha’s head and the Kshatriya his arms. The thighs became the Vaishya, and
the Shudra was produced from his feet. The universe—moon and sun, sky and
ocean, people, and their existence—naturalized the varnashrama or
chaturvarnya system, in which people were believed to be born with natural
characteristics and inclinations towards a particular occupation. Later, some
environmental discourses provided a defence of the caste system. Aligned with
Brahmanical thinking, these discourses shared a passion for caste and developed
a vocabulary of nature that eclipsed Dalits and their everyday environmental
lives.9 More recently, ‘casteized’ nature has become a contested space, where
caste domination of natural resources has led to several cultural representations
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