[Reader-list] sea of lies arundhati roy

[Asit Das]

Sea of Lies


*Arundhati Roy begins her Mahatma Ayyankali lecture saying, “Forgive me if
I disturb the comfort level here because that is what I do.” And she does
disturb the comfort zone of a false Mahatma while making a case for a true
one.*



[image: Roy-Ayyankali] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx3Lv0A-Ukg>

What did Arundhati Roy say in her Ayyankali Memorial lecture delivered in
Kerala University, Trivandrum, on 17 July 2014? Major newspapers including
the *Times of India
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Mahatma-Gandhi-was-a-casteist-Arundhati-Roy-says/articleshow/38580172.cms>*
 and *The Guardian
<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/18/arundhati-roy-accuses-mahatma-gandhi-discrimination>*
reported the event. Reading/ viewing the full lecture here, readers can
judge for themselves the accuracy of the reporting. While someprotesters
<http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-protesters-send-mahatma-gandhi-s-biography-to-arundhati-roy-2004304>
(who
may not have read *Annihilation of Caste*) of planned to send copies of
Gandhi’s autobiography to Roy, the Speaker of the Kerala Assembly, G.
Karthikeyan, wrote in *Malayalam Manorama
<http://beta.english.manoramaonline.com/news/kerala/this-silence-is-reprehensible.html>
*saying
Roy’s views on M.K. Gandhi must “hurt anyone who was born in India”. We
think many of Gandhi’s views should hurt a lot of people—irrespective
of where they are  born.



Much of what Arundhati Roy said in her lecture has been elaborated at
length in “The Doctor and the Saint” (excerpted in *Caravan
<http://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/doctor-and-saint>*), her exhaustive
introduction to the annotated edition of Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s *Annihilation
of Caste
<http://navayana.org/blog/2014/07/25/the-flotsam-on-a-sea-of-lies/navayana.org/product/annihilation-of-caste>*
published
by Navayana in March 2014. In the well-attended Kerala University public
lecture, after outlining Ayyankali’s radicalism, she said: “Enough of the
old bigoted people who have been sold to us on a sea of lies.” She asked
people to question the “political conspiracy” that kept a person of
Ayyankali’s stature “away from the popular imagination”. After detailing
Gandhi’s views on Blacks and “bhangis” (Dalits), she cautioned against
celebrating wrong heroes and said: “So, my question is, do we need to name
our universities after a person like Gandhi or do we need to name our
universities after someone like Ayyankali?”



For the record, this is the full transcript of the lecture (the *video
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx3Lv0A-Ukg>* misses the first
few minutes). It’s indeed time we decided whom we celebrated as heroes.



“My comrades on the dais and friends, I’m a little nervous because I wasn’t
expecting that I would have to speak to such a large audience. I told Dr
Suresh [Jnaneswaran Director, Mahatma Ayyankali Chair] when I was coming
that I’m just going to come and make a few informal remarks. I thought
there will be hundred people. Thank you so much for coming. I’m going to
try and… please forgive me if I disturb the comfort level here because that
is what I do. First of all I’m here not  as an academic or a scholar but as
a storyteller. We all know that every society needs heroes, and in India we
are not short of heroes except that I think the ones we celebrate are
mostly the wrong ones. When we look at the life of someone like Mahatma
Ayyankali … as a novelist, as a person who has written screenplays, I
wonder how is it possible that we do not have a really amazing mainstream
film about a man who is a hero. He doesn’t need a scriptwriter. You know he
doesn’t need us to add things or exaggerate things about him. He had
everything that should make us so proud as a people, as a country and yet
so little is known about him outside of Kerala and even inside Kerala among
the elites so little is known about a person who as many speakers have
said, even before the Russian revolution—many years before the Russian
revolution—had organized peasants against landlords and *successfully*.
Ambedkar at the Round Table Conference, the First Round Table Conference
[in 1930], was trying to make a legislation about social boycotts in rural
areas… but years before that Ayyankali was fighting it on the ground. What
a story! And what a political conspiracy it is to keep this person, this
absolutely amazing man, away from the popular imagination. I did say that
sometimes we celebrate the wrong heroes. In 1904 he (Ayyankali) started a
movement to ask that his people, the Pulaya people, Pulaya children, be
admitted to schools. We come from a nation that suffers a great ill health.
The caste system is… it’s not just that it has oppressed Dalits or
oppressed, the *lower* caste as they call them, the subordinated castes—but
it has made the dominant classes a sick people. So it’s not just an act of
charity for people to think of the annihilation of caste… it is for
everyone, for our society as a whole, because we can forget about being
like China or being like America as long as we have this disease in our
souls.



While I’m talking about changing our heroes, I just want to read you
something. In 1904, when here in Kerala there was a movement led by
Ayyankali that was fighting for the rights of Dalits to be educated, the
Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi was in South Africa. What is the legend
of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa? That he fought caste, that he fought
race in South Africa… when he came back from South Africa in 1913, he was
already being called a Mahatma. Let me tell you that the story of Mahatma
Gandhi that we are taught in school and that we are made to believe is a
lie and it’s time we faced up to it. It is time we unveiled some real
truths here because we cannot be basing our ideas of ourselves as a nation
on a lie. So, while Mahatma Ayyankali was fighting for education of Dalit
children here, Gandhi was in South Africa and I want to read to you what he
said about Dalit peoples in South Africa. In South Africa at that time
there were two kinds of Indians. One were the Passenger Indians who went
there to do business, and the other was indentured labour who mostly came
from subordinated classes and caste and here is what Gandhi said about the
bonded labour.

*“Whether they are Hindus or Mahommedans, they are absolutely without any
moral or religious instruction worthy of the name. They have not learned
enough to educate themselves without any outside help. Placed thus, they
are apt to yield to the slightest temptation to tell a lie. After some
time, lying with them becomes a habit and a disease. They would lie without
any reason, without any proper… prospect of bettering themselves
materially, indeed, without knowing what they are doing. They reach a stage
in life when their moral faculties have completely collapsed owing to
neglect.” *(CWMG 1,200)



Now this goes on, this same tone is used about black African people… when
Gandhi was in jail he talks about Africans in the most horrible way. Here
is a passage written by Gandhi about [sharing] jails with Kaffirs, black
people.

*“We were all prepared for hardships, but not quite for this experience. We
could understand not being classed with the whites, but to be placed on the
same level with the natives seemed to be too much to put up with. I then
felt that Indians had not launched our passive resistance too soon. Here
was further proof that the obnoxious law was meant to emasculate Indians…
Apart from whether or not this implies degradation, I must say it’s rather
dangerous. Kaffirs as a rule are uncivilized, the convicts even more so.
They are troublesome, and dirty and live like animals. Then he goes on to
call them savages… and I have resolved in my mind on an agitation to ensure
that Indian prisoners are not lodged with kaffirs or others. We cannot
ignore the fact that there is no common ground between them and us and
whoever wants to sleep in the same room as them have ulterior motives for
doing so.” (CWMG 9, 256-7)*



I have followed Gandhi’s writings in South Africa. I started out with
looking at the debates between Gandhi and Ambedkar and went back looking at
his attitudes on caste and further back at his attitude on race. His
doctrine of nonviolence was based on an acceptance of the most brutal
social hierarchy the world has ever known, the caste system… what does it
mean? What does it say to us? A person who believed that the hereditary
occupation of people who belonged to whichever caste they belonged to
should be maintained. So I ask you … a person who believed that a scavenger
should remain a scavenger all their lives … I will read to you an essay
Mahatma Gandhi wrote called *The Ideal Bhangi*, the ideal scavenger. So, my
question is, do we need to name our universities after a person like Gandhi
or do we need to name our universities after someone like Ayyankali?



At some point we have to stop being dishonest, at some point we have to
face up to centuries of lies we have been told and lies we have told
ourselves. There is nothing I’m saying here that is not straight from the
horse’s mouth. Everything I’m saying is quoted from the writings of Gandhi
himself. I’m not making any judgments. In 1936, when perhaps one of the
most famous revolutionary texts, *Annihilation of Caste,* was written by Dr
Ambedkar, one of the most brilliant intellectual, erudite, texts full of
rage against a system that still exists today… that same year, in 1936,
Gandhi wrote an essay called *The Ideal Bhangi*… bhangi, as you know in the
North is a scavenger…

*“**He should know how a right kind of latrine is constructed and the
correct way of cleaning it. He should know how to overcome and destroy the
odour of excreta and the various disinfectants to render them innocuous. He
should likewise know the process of converting urine and night soil into
manure. But that is not all. My ideal Bhangi would know the quality of
night-soil and urine. He would keep a close watch on these and give a
timely warning to the individual concerned.” *(*Harijan*, Nov 1936)



Many years later, today’s Prime Minister Modi wrote a text too, which was
called *Karmayogi*,and here is what he says. He is also talking about
bhangis, the Balmiki community…

*“I do not believe that they are doing this job to sustain their
livelihood. Had this been so, they would not have continued with this type
of job generation after generation. At some point of time, somebody must
have got the enlightenment that it is their (the Balmikis’) duty to work
for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods and that they have to
do this job bestowed upon them by Gods and that this job of cleaning up
should continue as an internal spiritual activity for centuries.” *(
*Karmayogi*, by Narendra Modi)



So this is what the powerful people in this country believe and our… the
question we have to ask ourselves is that is it all right to go on naming
roads and universities and bazaars and statues and programmes after them or
is it time for us to be a little more honest.



I just want to end with a small assessment of caste today. Today we have a
government that is proud to proclaim itself as a government of the Hindu
Rashtra. It is proud to say that we are a Hindu nation. How did this idea
of Hindutava first begin? Early on in the 17th century and earlier, the
subordinated castes, Dalits, were converting to Christianity and to Islam
in the millions. There was no problem. Nobody minded that. But at the turn
of the century when the idea of an empire began to be replaced by the idea
of a nation-state, when it was not enough to ride a horse into Delhi and
say now I’m the emperor of India… the politics of representation began.
There began a huge anxiety about numbers. You know at that point the
“upper” caste Hindus decided, the privileged caste let me say, decided that
it would be terrible if the 40 million Dalits continued to convert. That’s
when the whole upper caste reformist movement started, of which Gandhi was
a legatee. Before that Hindus never referred to themselves as Hindu; they
used to refer themselves as only their caste names. But then Hindu became
not a religious but a political identity. They started to talk about the
Hindu nation, the Hindu race and that’s how Hindutava started. Today you
have the secular liberals. The difference between them and the Hindutva
brigade is about how Islam came to India. The seculars say, “You are
exaggerating. The fact that there was no such vandalism.” And the Hindutava
brigade says, “No, Islamists came and they broke all our temples and they
destroyed our culture.” But you have someone like Jotiba Phule, one of the
earliest modern anticaste intellectuals, who said: “Yes, they broke the
temples but thank God they broke the temples. They invited us into their
dining rooms to inter-dine and inter-marry.” There was that whole breaking
of the caste system which people celebrated. So even our contemporary
debates become so weak when you don’t put justice at the core of things.



When Dr Jnaneswaran introduced me, he said: “She has always stood with the
marginalized.” I actually have a different view of myself. I think that
it’s an awful thing when people introduce me as a writer who is the “voice
of the voiceless”. I don’t believe there is anything like the voiceless.
There is only the deliberately silenced. Nobody is voiceless. I don’t claim
to represent anybody but myself. I think what we need to ask ourselves is:
what kind of people are we? Are we the people who place justice at the
center of our society or are we a people who enjoy the idea of
institutionalizing injustice? Are we a people who are so sick that we
actually believe that there are some people who are… who deserve more
entitlement than others… because if we are that kind of people we are a
very, very sick people. But once you put justice at the core of how you
think than the stories you tell are different.



Today people talk a lot about how this new economy has broken the caste
system and that there are a new set of networks and so on. I want to end
with a very brief description of how caste and this new corporate
capitalism are playing out. At the turn of the century, the debate on caste
was actually what created Hindutva—the idea of trying to bring Dalits into
the Hindu fold. Today we have a Hindutva government that has come to power
and has proved that it doesn’t need the Muslim vote, it doesn’t need the
Dalit vote, because it has the whole section of what is rather known
obscenely as OBC, Other Backward Castes, which has swung towards Hindutva.
So what does all this mean to the marginalized? In this nation of a billion
people, 800 millions live on less than 20 rupees a day. We celebrate the
Dandi March where Gandhi mobilized millions of people—however much we
criticize him, we cannot deny that he was a great mobiliser. He mobilized
millions of people against the British salt tax. But we do not remember the
Mahad satyagraha where our own people prevented our own people from
drinking water from public tank. That is the real satyagraha. But that was
referred to as duragraha. In the Mahad satyagraha Ambedkar fought for
water, for the access to public water. In the salt satyagraha people fought
against the salt tax. Today we have a corporation, the Tatas, who control
the trade of salt. We have the Gujarat model put before us. In Gujarat
studies show that 98 percent of its villages practice caste in egregious
ways. Dalits are not allowed near common water. They are given different
glasses, they are murdered, you know, caste is practiced and this, our
media says, is the great model for development.



If you look at fact that a hundred Indians own more wealth than 25 percent
of the GDP, now you look at these big corporations… Reliance, Adani,
Mittal… the major corporations, all of them are owned and run by Baniyas.
Ambani, Mittal, Birla, Adani, Shangvi, Jindal, Mittal again… all the top
corporations… all the wealth on the top is controlled by Baniyas who own
the corporations. At the bottom of the social ladder, whether it is the
Maoists, the adivasis, in the Dandakarnya forest who are surrounded by the
Baniya traders… or the people in the North East… Baniyas, who make up 2.7
percent of the population, virtually controls the economy. Who owns the
newspapers? *Times of India*, *Indian Express*, Zee TV… now Reliance owns
27 news channels… even the media is owned by Baniyas and controlled by
Brahmins. The corporations are owned by Baniyas so Capitalism and Caste
have merged to become the Mother of Capitalism. And in the mean time,
according to National Crime [Records] Bureau, a crime is committed against
a Dalit by a non-Dalit every 16 minutes. Every day more than four Dalit
women are raped by upper caste. Every week 13 Dalits are murdered and six
are kidnapped. In 2012 alone, the year of the Delhi gangrape which was
reported all over the world, 1,574 Dalit women were raped and only 10
percent of rapes are reported … so you can look at the figures. In 1919, in
what came to be known as the Red Summer in the US, 76 black American men
and women were lynched. In India in 2012, 651 Dalits were murdered and
that’s just the rape and butchering, not the stripping and parading naked,
the forced shit-eating, the seizing of land and the social boycotts… As
Ambedkar said, “To untouchables Hindusim is a veritable chamber of
horrors”, and today we live in a country where since 1947, when we
supposedly became independent, there has not been a single day when the
Indian army has not been deployed against quote and unquote “our own
people.” So from 1947 whether it’s Kashmir, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland,
Telengana, Punjab, Goa… every day of the year the Indian army is fighting
its own people. And who are these people? Think about it. Muslims,
Christians, Sikhs, Adivasis, Dalits. So its an upper caste in its DNA… an
upper caste Hindu state always at war with the subordinated, with the
religious minorities… so how are we going to change this? It has to be done
in a hundred different ways. But it has to be done with a change of who we
think our heroes are and our heroines are. Ayyankali,  Pandita Ramabai,
Savitribai Phule, Jotirao Phule, these are the people our people need to
hear about. Enough of the old bigoted people who have been sold to us on a
sea of lies. I think we need to change the names of our universities to
begin with. Thank you.