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The
one-eyed twice-borns
Confronting
the extremist fringe of the Right comes easy to the liberal-secular
set but it ignores the more widespread casteist slurs by other sections
of society
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S.
Anand |
Two recent incidents,
seemingly unrelated, demonstrate how the “secular” common
sense can react in shockingly contrasting ways. The first, much publicised
case from MS University, Vadodara, involves Chandramohan Srimantula’s
paintings, the rightwing opposition to his work, and the subsequent
rallying of the secular-liberal intelligentsia around the victim. About
the same time, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi,
a case of blatant victimisation of a postgraduate student, Sukhbir Singh
Badhal, was reported. The case came to light through the findings of
a three-member committee inquiring into caste discrimination at AIIMS
headed by University Grants Commission chairman Sukhdeo Thorat. Badhal’s
case was highlighted by The Times of India (May 13, 2007) and followed
up by cnn-ibn. Badhal had stood first in a selection examination in
lab medicine, but he was superseded by the second-ranker in the appointment
to the coveted post of senior resident at the department of lab medicine.
Like Chandramohan,
a Lalit Kala award winner, Badhal had distinguished himself in his field.
Both were wronged. In both cases, the deans of the departments concerned
— Shivaji Panikkar at MSU and RC Deka at AIIMS — stood up
for their students whereas the respective managements not only justified
their maltreatment but actively participated in their persecution. Where
the similarity begins, it also ends. While Chandramohan’s victimisation
outraged a cross-section of voices — artists, academics, writers,
actors, public intellectuals, lawyers, concerned citizens — there
was no one to take up Badhal’s cause. While a Free Chandramohan
Committee quickly came into existence, a Help Badhal Committee did not
materialise. Crucial here is the fact that Badhal happens to be a Dalit,
and a Dalit who could stake a rightful claim to an institutional position
without taking recourse to reservation. He had topped in the General
category.
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In Chandramohan’s
case, the very obvious villainy of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the
Bajrang Dal provided an ideal foil for the righteous though predictable
indignation of the Left-liberal-secularists against the loony Right.
Many times in the past they have appeared to feed off each other, and
seem to unwittingly participate in a theatrical ritual where words and
phrases such as “artistic freedom, cultural freedom, land of Khajuraho
and Tantra, freedom of expression, moral policing, cultural intolerance/
hijack”, etc, cross swords with “Western ideas, Hindu culture,
hurting the sentiments of the majority, desecration of gods”,
and so on. These tiresome expressions, in turn, occupy placards, editorials,
television bytes and SMS polls.
In this secular
theatre, Chandramohan and not Badhal would appear “the good victim”.
This phrase was used in another illuminating context by Gary Younge
(The Nation, April 19, 2007) while comparing Rosa Parks’ case
in Alabama, 1955, with that of Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who too
had a few months earlier refused to get up and offer her seat to a white
man. But unlike Parks, Colvin was too dark, too poor; and worse, an
unwed mother. Colvin being the trigger for the boycott that spurred
the civil rights movement would have been unacceptable. Parks, however,
was seen by Martin Luther King Jr as a woman of family values, someone
who had “character, integrity and Christian commitment”.
Strategists of movements, argues Younge, need a good victim and wait
for one if they have to. In India, this plays out a little differently.
There are people whose victimhood, however grievous and morally grounded,
does not qualify as campaign-worthy for the rest of civil society.
Twenty-nine
students — all Dalits and Adivasis — were forced to shift hostels
at AIIMS due to harassment. But such ghettoisation and segregation
— justified by the institute’s director P. Venugopal and his appointees
— did not become a campaign issue for the secular-liberals |
AIIMS is a high-profile
institution headed by P. Venugopal, an unabashed opponent of reservation
who has done little to hide his prejudices against Dalits and other
oppressed sections of society. (A white man in a similar position at
Harvard Medical School would not have so zealously paraded his prejudices
as Venugopal has.) Badhal, with his indisputable academic “merit”,
represents an attack on the new sense of victimhood claimed by the entrenched
classes and castes, the likes of Venugopal and his no-less-tactful supporters
in the media. When news of Badhal’s victimisation broke, we did
not see any outrage from the usual interlocutors who launched email
signature campaigns and organised protest meetings in support of Chandramohan.
Badhal’s, for that matter, is not an isolated case. Reports of
Dalit and Adivasi students being hounded at AIIMS surfaced in April
and September 2006. One student, Umakant Nagar, had reported that an
“abusive and threatening” message had been inscribed on
the door of his room forcing him to shift out. In due course, 29 students
— all Dalits and Adivasis — were forced to shift hostels.
But such ghettoisation and segregation at AIIMS — justified by
Venugopal and his ad-hoc appointees — did not become a campaign
issue for the secular-liberals.
More recently,
Ajay Kumar Singh, an mbbs student at AIIMS, testified at the Indian
People's Tribunal on Untouchability organised by the National Council
for Dalit Human Rights. His account of systematic abuse by the AIIMS
administration appeared in Tehelka (June 2, 2007) in which he describes
how the privileged caste students and management at AIIMS had joined
hands to make sure he does not get his medical degree.
This selective
indifference is not so inscrutable. It could be argued, perhaps rationally,
that Badhal’s being a Dalit is not the sole factor, and that the
secular-liberals who show up at these protests relate more easily to
a case of denial of freedom of an artist’s expression than to
a case of denial of a job to an otherwise qualified candidate. The latter
comes across as a dull, drab case in comparison with one like Chandramohan’s.
It is likely that most of those who identified with the Baroda student-artist
were in fact offended by the encroachment by unenlightened lumpens on
the turf of art. Art becomes a good cause to fight for and Chandramohan
the perfect victim. However, the reason why most players who took to
the streets for Chandramohan did not deem it necessary to react to Badhal
goes a little deeper than the attractiveness that “art”
provides.
When students in
elite institutions across the country (led by iits, iims, AIIMS) protested
the suggested reservation for the Other Backward Classes in Central
colleges, and demonstrated their protest in the most vulgar and demeaning
manner — by sweeping roads, polishing shoes and selling vegetables
— the same secular-liberal intelligentsia that jumps at the opportunity
that a Chandramohan or a Husain provides, remained completely indifferent.
Perhaps they decided that the protesting students could not be denied
their rightful freedom to express their contempt towards the labouring
castes.
It is this silence
— ‘indifferentism’ as Ambedkar had prophetically termed
the caste Hindu/liberal attitude to anti-caste concerns — that
continues to echo for Badhal.
What happened to
Badhal was unconstitutional, as much as what happened to Chandramohan.
MSU Vice-Chancellor Manoj Soni, Narendra Modi’s rss-backed appointee,
is quite easily the ugly villain compared to Venugopal; unlike Soni,
the AIIMS director does not have any direct Hindutva connection. We
are left with a scenario where confronting the obvious wrongs of the
overzealous Hindutva brigade seems an acceptable national-secular pastime,
whereas taking on the casteist non-Hindutva demons who have prowled
this society for far longer, becomes nobody’s burden. When only
Dalits are forced to bear the burden of articulating Dalit issues they
are dubbed sectarian; the casual betrayal of Dalits by the rest of society
passes for secularism. While everyday secularism in India is animated
by concerns for issues that relate to religion, and especially the religious
Right, issues concerned with caste discrimination leave them cold. Such
secularism fails to acknowledge, forget understand, that for civil society
to come to real terms with the Modis, Sonis, Goradias and Togadias,
it has to first take a position on invisibilised everyday caste discrimination.
In the hierarchy of wickedness, Venugopal must share space with Soni
and Modi. We can no longer afford to choose to free Chandramohan from
Soni and yet allow Venugopal to hold Badhal a prisoner of caste.
The writer is publisher, Navayana
anand.navayana@gmail.com
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