Prof. Anupama Rao: What is Anti-Caste movement?

how do you see caste see there is a different ways of narration of caste one is about the Vedic literature which Mehta speaks about and there is a recent colonial history where people say that car has been bought by the Colonials and there is another thing is in 80's and 90's they say caste was bought in because of Mundell so this kind of for debate share so how do you how do we see yes where the cost emerged I think you know I I would respond to that question first by by arguing that you know one of the things that I think would be important to do and something that I have suggested is that rather than thinking about the question of what caste is because as you say there are a number of responses from ontology to a very important school you know kind of colonial sociology of knowledge which believed in a sense that caste was hardened and in a sense verified because of the practices at the colonial stage to the argument about the new politics of caste in the post-colonial period so that would be one way of saying you know what is caste and what has become what has happened discussed I think the other way and something that I think is equally important and and one that really throws light on the fixation on caste please to ask what is anti curves right what is anti caste thought or what his anti cos practice or what is the Antichrist so one of the things that really I began doing in in my earlier book in the cast question mrs. thing that you know alongside or as important as asking the question of how do we think about cars how do we think about Antichrist because it is by asking that question that we can begin to think about the necessity canticles movement or the antic our struggle but more importantly for me that we can begin to think about anti-castro thought come back to this in a roundabout way by responding to your question of how do I see casters you know I was trained in the early 90s late 80s into the 90s and was trained really in the wake of Orientalism right in sides critique of Orientalism as a tool but also in the wake of people like Bernard Cohen and it kills Turks in a number of others who had begun to really make a very strong argument about the way that cars taken shape under colonialism so that was in a sense my my training but once I started to do research and once I was sort of in the field and and got interested in looking at anti cast thought and attica's movements in I really what was that colonialism itself and so if you want to ask me who I think about ontology and you know a kind of long term history of caste that's not what I do I would really think about caste in its modern form caste is a modern category that is always in a kind of which is which is being which is in which is related to the state right that is that the state actually produces but is also affected by closed and that colonial and capitalist modernity play a very very important role in transforming caste I think that so in that sense colonialism is important because it does a number of things it does give to cast a certain kind of bureaucratic or institutional life the second thing that it does which i think is equally important is that cost becomes in a sense for the colonial state a category that can become two enumerated it's a demographic category of population but caste is also a qualitative network it's not merely quantitative but there's also qualitative aspect of question of civil degradation the ritual exclusion services and so in this theory becomes very complicated kind of object or analytic and so in the colonial period I think what we also see is not merely the practice of the colonial state and defining categorizing naming controlling cost and what caste is but we sleep equally on the part of lower caste communities they live in lower customer takes a deep investment in precisely those politics representation representational democracy number count etc because what it allows especially nonviolent communities to do is to begin to claim for themselves the status of a demographic majority so the colonial question right and people have tended to you know the easy reading of the colonial question is to say well people want to argue that you know the colonial state and colonialism invented caste and I think this is really a profound miss reading of that partly its to say that the coming together of capitalist modernity and colonial rule really transformed caste in very complicated ways and if we are to really think about the elephant lower caste in this period they are both constrained by colonial categories of cost but colonial institutions and colonial ideologies also gifted Ellison lower castes a very important space of Minerva and so that investment in number actually becomes very important for our customers so I would say that you know one part of what the way that I see caste is certainly that colonialism plays an important role in shaping cost but I think that you know we also need to see it alongside longer practices critical practices intellectual traditions social practices of criticism that anti-cosmo concerns sometimes in relationship to the colonial state and sometimes outside of it so rather than thinking about whether you know caste is a colonial construct I think we could think about how God's changed to transform how mutates under colonialism but always by keeping in mind but there were other practices and critiques and social struggle that went together with this actually yeah when we read about amicus book on caste any nation of Ghana history of anthropology study of caste this one is there and there is other writers Daleks writers even Cooley and there are other people in the in the past even before the colonial in innovation there are writings and about caste even historical writings even the religious takes various literature's which came before the colonial periods and what third thing is colonial Cologne with colonization and thus colonial period during the British it did give a different shape a very complex shape to the cast to the cars but isn't it true that it was not an invention no it is not an important question but I want to say there was the only option the British hat in the sense to complex and make it very complex they were not here to give an emancipation life but rather they did what did they they stringent the cast formations one of the examples is in the medical journals they say when the day public they say that when a municipality is formed it is literally given to an upper costume so that the upper caste landlord will be the municipality so the British didn't do anything they just structure alized the formation of it but in other words British gave some space for them this is what I'm given which you were arguing but I I would want I would like to say that isn't it that cast was earlier their British made complicated yes but till the British gave a space for the lips which was not there in the earlier period of history in anta cos struggled in a structural form which Ambedkar say is that we don't want freedom we want freedom from India not from Britishers that in that context to put : more than the complexity it is the Britishers at least structuralist the formation of caste which was there already yes and then it is sure sure I mean in that sense you know and and again as I said that's what's very complicated about it you read somebody like kool-aid and he's writing at a moment where the British bureaucracy yeah yeah right is is you Judith funny and actually using caste he is giving to the you know what he calls a new Brahmin a very important place so the the ritual Brahmin is a ritual specialist no because the bureaucratic grounded a fine yeah right and so for me I think is very very astute and recognizing at an earlier social hierarchy is actually the grounds on which colonial rule could be justified let's keep in mind with an important perspective for the new was to argue that native Iraqis existed and that the British themselves for a progressive improving Calgary right and so the argument and so it's a very complicated way in which the British both strengthen existing social hierarchies even as they argue that what they're doing is merely respecting what's there but they're not going to interfere yeah so this an argument about non interference while structurally embedding themselves within a caste order which gives to the upper castes a new kind of power it's secure arises I think up accounts okay right that is it secular rises them it brings them within the bureaucratic order it gives them English and so on and so forth that is one thing but I think the contradictions also that the British and British colonialism put simply this is you cannot just be restricted to what the British think they're doing right because the other aspect of this is to say what are the unintended consequences of what they do so by investing in things like you know modern institutions the school the khechari the you know the hospital and so on and so forth by investing in this modern institution the British can also open up new institutional spaces happening well you know mill workers people who are going to the municipality as you're saying and so on and so forth now these are people who continue to perform manual labor but they are performing in under conditions of a modern organization of labor now this becomes the contradiction that Dalits and your house constantly experience right they're able to for instance coming to the city but once they do that what they end up performing is manually but under conditions that are modern you're in a factory space right you're in a textile mill labor is organized differently right you experience the possibility of social equality even though on the ground you're prevented so that imagination of social equality that's opened up I think is varying and so that's the complicated thing right there may be a distinction between thought and practices oh yeah actually you were the discussion was talking about the Britishers trying to structure like the upper caste we begin a new kind of ramen with a powerful stratagem so let me put this way actually this is the reason I was discussing earlier can we put this way that Britishers really gave power for the upper castes can you say that instead of that complex City made caste in other words can we say that British has literally gave full power more power to the upper castes who didn't have power till then now they had power but in a structural form of state formation kind of perfection rocky I mean the 19th century globally is the period of the emergence the rise of the modern welfare state that is the state you know the regulated by bureaucratic institutions which is to say a number of institutions that take on the project and so because is a modern capitalist formation of the state albeit in a colonial form as marked by notions racial and cultural difference and so on and so forth you could I think certainly say that brahminism is transformed mrs. budahas right so what brahminism is was a structure of power and a structure of governance is France away it is secularized also this I think is variable and so that far absolutely but because these are institutions that are based on an idea of equal axis of equality the unintended consequence is that the let's begin to make the argument of saying if this is a public space why are we prevented from I mean temple entry struggle is bank access water etcetera the minute that this notion also that the state must have the notion of public interest that's behind it once it begins to do that or once it begins to bring in let's say scavengers sweepers municipal workers tram drivers textile workers who are lower castelbello well in a sense getting also influenced and infected with this language of public interest then there is an internal contradiction that is built into the structure of the state right and that internal contradiction is to say that this is a state that cannot behave or act on behalf of civil right this is the difference from let's say something like an earlier caste state to what the colonial state does it first then the question emerges if it acts on behalf of everyone why does it exclude large numbers now you have to justify inequality won't totally new permits it can no longer be that we've always done it this way you know here are religious books that governments now inequality has to be justified as property private property inequality has to be justified through a completely different normative order so this I think is this is what begins to give lower cousins and it's also a lot of space for mobilization so that's the contradiction of the colonial state

Channel: Dalit Camera

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Keywords: Caste (Literature Subject), Emergence (Field Of Study), caste system, emergence of caste, anupama rao, Caste System In India (Film Subject), coloumbia university, caste in india

Id: NgmtD7XDZzc

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 31 2014