There is nothing new in the social scientist, Ashis Nandy’s formulation that “most of the corrupt” people in India “come from the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) and the Scheduled Castes (SC), and now increasingly Scheduled Tribes (ST)”.
Those defending Nandy as an original thinker and so-called public intellectual may be reminded of a similar statement made by another learned professor, while delivering a guest lecture at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie in 1990, during the height of the anti-Mandal Commission agitation.
At that time, this Delhi University professor told the 300-odd probationers that “all SC and ST officers who got in through reservation in the civil services were corrupt”. Moreover, “since the reserved category officers came from poor economic backgrounds, they couldn't resist the temptation of money”.
Inglorious traditions
As for Nandy, what can one say about somebody who, in the past, even projected ‘Sati’ as an act of courage reaffirming efflorescent Indian traditions against the onslaught of modernity and a market-oriented political economy?
The same crude modern-versus-traditional dichotomy was employed by him more recently to justify the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat’s claims of rape largely being an urban phenomenon and alien to rural India, a.k.a. Bharat.
Rapes, according to Nandy, happened more in “highly individualised, personally thin cultures”. Cities, by virtue of producing “anonymous societies (where) kinship dies and community ties weaken and become superficial”, are hence natural breeding grounds for rapists.
Well, clearly, neither Bhagwat nor Nandy know — or deliberately choose not to — of the thousands of Dalit and Adivasis women in villages, who are victims of daily sexual violence by upper-caste men. And the perpetrators here are hardly anomic or socially disoriented individuals. Their acts are, indeed, as deep-rooted in tradition as Sati!
But coming back to corruption, let there be no illusion on what Nandy was trying to convey. Not only did he stop with saying that SCs, STs and OBCs accounted for “most of the corrupt”, but also sought to illuminate this “fact” by citing the example of West Bengal, which is “one of the States with the least amount of corruption”.
And that was only because, “in the last 100 years, nobody from the OBCs, SCs and STs has come anywhere near power in West Bengal”. So, “it is an absolutely clean State”.
The qualification of being a public intellectual, perhaps, gives Nandy immunity from having to furnish any statistics showing Dalits and Adivasis to make up for “most of the corrupt”, leave alone proof of West Bengal being corruption-free.
But his statements definitely qualify as hate speech, especially when directed against communities that have suffered centuries-old oppression sanctioned by the very traditions our esteemed professor and Bhagwat choose to glorify.
If Akbaruddin Owaisi’s inflammatory anti-Hindu address at Nirmal in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district qualifies as hate speech, what makes Nandy’s gems at the Jaipur Literature Festival any less despicable?
How can entire communities — that too, Dalits or Adivasis — be branded as corrupt? How different is it from considering Muslims inherently unpatriotic? And what is unfortunate is how the academic community has come together to defend Nandy’s intellectual freedom, while portraying his critics as intolerant, humourless and displaying a Holy Cow mentality.
Passive is passé
There is a pattern to all this, starting with the Ambedkar cartoon introduced in a Class XI textbook. Till date, no intellectual has explained how this cartoon could in any way enriching the knowledge of history or the Indian Constitution among school-going students.
When many sensible voices warned against the wrong message it might send — of Pandit Nehru holding a whip alongside Babasaheb driving a snail — they were instantly dismissed as enemies of academic freedom.
Interestingly, this is happening even while Dalits are coming under parallel attacks on the ground in States like Tamil Nadu and Haryana.
Unlike in the past, the underlying motives for these have more to do with the relative upward mobility that Dalits have experienced in recent times from access to education and government jobs.
The fact that they are no longer keen to work in farms or do menial jobs obviously rankles the upholders of tradition in rural India, provoking their violent responses.
Whether it is the beleaguered Tamil Nadu politicians or the Delhi academia, a common chord uniting them is their inability to come to terms with the new Dalit, who is more aware, self-conscious and assertive than his/her forefathers. No one had problems so long as the Dalits were unorganised, meek and submissive.
But today, their symbols are under attack and there is even a clamour for sub-dividing SC/STs and identifying a ‘creamy layer’ within them in order to deny reservation benefits.
All these are mere diversionary tactics to obfuscate or sidetrack the real issues of communities that are still struggling to claim their place in the sun.
(The author is the founder of Centre for Dalit Studies, Hyderabad.)
Keywords: social scientist, Ashis Nandy, public intellectual, civil services, corrupt, poor economic backgrounds, education and government jobs
Comments:
"How can entire communities — that too, Dalits or Adivasis — be branded as corrupt?".I agree.However, this is the same logic used against "brahmins" and other forward castes to justify hatred instead of looking at them as individuals who have acted wrongly. I believe to compare this with Akbaruddin to Asis nandy is quite insulting. Much wrong and abusive language used against bramhins, upper castes yet there is no objection ever.
I am sorry but i disagree with the narrative of this article because the very approach the author is condemning, is being taken here to justify his own opinion. Like Ahis Nandy, the author is doing the same thing by attributing personal judgements as characteristics of an entire group of people. The author is also contradicting himself as on one side the rationale presented is development of a particular class and their disagreeing to do menial work as the reason for resentment, yet there is the image presented as still struggling to claim their place in sun.
It is opportunistic on the part of the author Lakshmaiah to use this
episode to generalise how non-Dalits are treating Dalits, particularly
when Nandy has clarified that what he meant was that the corruption by
Dalits is highlighted more than that by non-Dalits. The founding
fathers of the Constitution of India, including Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar
had stipulated one decade's time for reservation of the Dalits in jobs.
Now More than six decades have passed depriving the legitimate
opportunities to three generations of non-Dalits. For what? The alleged
discrimination perpetrated by their distant forefathers against Dalits?
By the same logic, if it is established that some of our distant
forefathers have committed heinous crimes, we should be hanged. One can
understand affirmative action, but the perpetual reservation policy by
holding all the subsequent generations of non-Dalits as culpable for
the acts of their distant forefathers can only cause brain-drain and
disintegrate the country.
Even Nazi germans, british slavery and killings of native folks/cultures of most countries all around the world, muslim invaders, christian crusaders etc are all living happily but brahmins and hinduism in India are humiliated & persecuted like no one else. The typical reasons cited are something like this: Aryan invasion, Rig veda & manu smriti have casteism, brahmins and upper class have oppressed dalits from centuries. All of which are plain concoction. This false propaganda is used as a pretext for selfish motives of few who need someone to blame. Because this false narrative IS A MUST for justification for reservations, jobs, winning elections on false pretext etc . But no one talks of the oppressions by muslim rulers and british (who did not allow indians and dogs inside their places) for last 1000 years???? This is not to say there is no problem. But there seems to be no true leader who is addressing this the right way. Sadly there seems to be only exploitation.
It is unfortunate for me to be an Indian, where still castism rules. Mr. Nandy Good & Bad are everywhere, they have no cast or creed. We are unlucky............if we want to succeed than we should wipe out the cast system from our country otherwise our offspring never forgives us. we are lagging behind the world due to cast system. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar has suggested reservation only for Ten years, but it is our political system which allows to continue it till date. Mr. Nandy please check the data and History and see which class is corrupt.
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