The king you mentioned as fomenting a marginal rising, Ranjit Singh,

And Shriman/mati Risible where did I say that? Where? Shows how blatantly the Sanghis live by the Goebblesian bluff.

Go back to Tukaram, Namdev and Raidas before comparing their transgressions (???) with those of Kabir and Nanak. Please note that I am not naming any other Sikh Guru as a poetic transgressive signpost. Otherwise with your unbridled Sanghi enthusiasm, you will read my writing the way you have been indocrinated to do so.

Also, the Dalit Sikhs are treated brutally. For long periods they were not even admitted into the Golden Temple. They are made to build separate gurudwaras and are looked down upon by Jats. The king you mentioned as fomenting a marginal rising, Ranjit Singh, paid homage to Brahmins and according to Khuswant Singh ran not a Khalsa state but a Brahmanic state. But Marxist myths die hard.

Amazing how utterly obsessed you are with the idea of dispoving anything that you imagine I have said. Did I ever say that the Mazhabi Sikhs are treated equally by the rest of the Sikh community? On the contrary, I had clearly mentioned that the Shudras were not allowed to enter the precints of the Golden Temple till the last quarter of the 19th century. The fact that the fifth Sikh Guru commissioned the Guru Granth does not make Sikh into an egalitarian society. They never were and I doubt if they ever are going to be one. Had they been nso kind to the Mazhabis, the Arya Samaj Movement in the Punjab would never have had the sort of success it initially enjoyed. The crucial word is initially and I am mentioning this because you have a habit of wilfully not reading the words properly like your Sanghi biraadaraan.

A word or two about Khushwant Singh. How is his history of the Sikhs authentic and why should one not prefer, let us say a Ganda Singh, JS Garewal, Sohan Singh Josh or even a Bhagwan Josh or a sociologist like SS Jodhka’s formidable scholarship to his brand of story telling? The problem with the disinvolved outsider is that they have much like the western ‘fantasists’ – India’s snake charmers, the rope tricksters etc – not seen beyond Khushwant Singh. Once and for all, KS scholarship is suspect and Marxism has nothing whatsoever to do with that. The fellow does not even know how to read and write Punjabi properly.

And yes, Ranjit Singh was a bumbling paradox of a (Sikh) ruler. As for his homage to Brahmins, well there are more stories about his organic comaraderie with the mirasis – there has recently appeared a book by JS Kairon giving delightfully copious details of his rather viscereal engagements with the mirasis. Such archival material, of course, would never ever reach the critical gaze of Harjot Oberois of the world. You do not seem to have any idea of the existence of Denzil IbbetsonÂ’s Punjab Gazetteer of 1881 otherwise you would not hold forth on the caste question with the sort of recklessness as you display in your posts so copiously and so touchingly.

It does not surprise me that you should choose to identify Narendranath Dutta rené Swami Vivekanand and Aurobindo Ghosh rené Aurobindo as shudras. It is quite in keeping with the Sanghi rhetoric of prevarications, half truths and lies. As for my insistence on not conflating of the Shudras with the OBCs, please refer to Messrs Manu. Says he:

vaishyashudrau prayatnen swaani karmaan*I kaaryet tau hi chyutau swakarmabhyah kshobhyayetamidam jagat

arthaat

the king should keep the shudras and vaishyas always busy in their caste-proper activities, for they can cause extreme trouble for not being so engaged.

The problem is that you can only see “Hinduism” through the bigoted Marxist goggles.

You said that the instances were a marginal rising, and I pointed out to you that they were much more pervasive so as to invalidate your rather brazen introduction of Manu as dispositive throughout Indian history. Abraham Eraly notes in his book “The Gem and the Lotus” that the old Ksatriya lineages died out early, and that power accrued to the hands of the strongest. The entire history of South India demonstrates that the Brahmanic varna framework was a fiction. In his introduction to his translation of Manu, Patrick Olivelle, a Sri Lankan Christian of all things, asserts that the particular bitterness in Manu may have owed to the original author’s resentment against Maurya hegemony in North India. That goes a long way in demonstrating how historically contextualized an understanding we must have of Manu. The smritis in force in the Vijayanagara Empire, the parasara smriti and the yagnavalkya smriti are not nearly as harsh, check them out.

That there is discrimination in India is not in question, but so what? There has been slavery in the west, genital mutilation in Africa and to this day, browns are subjected to macaca-like slurs. I am questioning your particular retrofitting of an ancient document onto modern conditions, which are more complex, and involve factors entirely outside the purview of religious texts – like natural resource wars, land disputes, property heists, an inefficient state, and so on. Also please do not confuse Shudras with Dalits. Shudras empirically are the greatest victimizers of Dalits. While there are shudras who live in decrepit conditions (most backward castes) the dominant castes in much of India are indeed OBC Shudras -Jats, Reddys, Kamas, Nairs, Kapus, Mudaliars, Chettiars, Vokaligas, Marathas. I could go on and on. There is little correlation between ritual status and temporal status in India. Marxist critques of Hinduism conveniently ignore this very crucial distinction. They also ignore the fluidity of the caste system itself. Castes rise and fall in the hieracrhy all the time. What you consider a rising of the lower castes is in truth a rising of some castes displacing other castes. And if the caste system is so evil, why is everyone trying to move up? Why do so many Dalits claim to be fallen Ksatriyas? Why do the Tamil Vaniyars claim to be Aryans? Its much more complex than you make out.

And Brahmins have absolutely been subjected to hierarchic ignominy. The Namboodiri Brahmins practiced a form of untouchability against Tamil Brahmins. The Pir Ali Brahmins in Bengal are scorned by other Brahmins. The fact that very few Brahmin subcastes will marry to this day indicates they all have a sense of their hierarchy. And the Dalits have vicous caste distinctions among themselves.

c) The point about the Bhakti poetry has to be understood in terms of caste mobilizations. Absolutely no point would be served by comparing the ecstatic poetry of surrender by the artisanal Bhakti-poets to the angry and passionately subversive poetry of say fdor example much of Kabir’s oeuvre. The intransigence of both Kabir and Nanak make them very different kind of poets. Once again, one should use the umbrella term, Bhakti poet somewhat judiciously as such classifications would be invalid without historical, sociological and, above all, literary insights.

I diagree. The nayanmars (70% of whom were Shudra) definitely influenced the hieratic function within Shaiva Siddhanta, which was dominant throughout the Tamil country. The Tamil Agamic Hinduism is textually far more equable than the Sanskritic complex, as is the entire cluster of traditions known as Tantra. (Remember in Tantra anyone could be initiated.) The Agamas themselves, which constitute the backbone of South Indian Hinduism, are not caste-centric at all. Even among the evil Brahmins, there were notable reformers. Ramanuja took Dalits into his fold and made them Brahmins, The Lingayat movement, headed by another Brahmin, Basavva, was an out and out caste revolt. Among other Bhakti poets, Tukaram was openly critical not only of Brahmins but of powerful landlords. The Sikh gurus were not singular in this respect. For details of the Fathepur manuscript, please check out the Construction of Religious Boundaries by Harjot Oberoi. He is not a sanghi.

Also, the Dalit Sikhs are treated brutally. For long periods they were not even admitted into the Golden Temple. They are made to build separate gurudwaras and are looked down upon by Jats. The king you mentioned as fomenting a marginal rising, Ranjit Singh, paid homage to Brahmins and according to Khuswant Singh ran not a Khalsa state but a Brahmanic state. But Marxist myths die hard. On the other hand, there are Vaishnava Dalits who wear the poonal and chant the Vedas in Karnataka – check Vasudha Narayan’s work. The Dalit Satnamis boldly refused to recognize the authority of Brahmins in ritual matters. The Tamil Goundars do not use Brahmins for funeral services. The Ramananda order is entirely caste free. Virtually every modern Hindu movement, including the Arya Samaj, does not recognize caste distinctions. Name one modern guru who condones untouchability? Also, consider that Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Narayana Guru – three of the five or six most influential modern Hindus, were all shudras. Gandhi, who is probably most influential of all, was not a Brahmin. There is tremendous dynamism within Hinduism, it is not a static construct.

There is a commonality among Hindus throughout India, even a secular commentator like Nirad Chaudhuri concedes as much in his petulant introduction to Hinduim. Why, as Pankaj Mishra says in disgust, even the Congress Party evokes Hindu majoritarianism whenever there is a national crisis, as with Pakistan. Now why would they do that? And why would Marxists try to (unsuccessfully) erode that sense of commonality among not just Hindus but all Indians that has existed from time immemorial – when Ashoka placed his pillars throughout India, when Tamil kings made voyages to the foothill of the Himalayas to pay homage to what they conceived of as part of their own land? When Sankara built his mathas at the four corners of the subcontinent? And a secular form of nationalism has found its way into the Indian state too, which uses Ashoka’s Dharma Chakra as the symbol of the Republic.

a) Nowhere did I aver that the Shudras did not have their own politically empowered space in our history. All that I said was that compared to their continuous and unabashed exploitation by the other classes, such spaces are proportionately too few and historically ineffective. The Shudras have by and large been kept disenfranchised from the process of proactive mainsteam space. You have surely heard of the practice of begaar which continues to be practised in many parts of India. Likewise, in many parts of India the Shudras are still not allowed to mount a horse at the time of their wedding; they are not allowed to pass in front of the houses of caste Hindus with their shoes on…. the deails are horrifyingly large. We should not try to brush aside these unseemly facts by invoking the the poor Hindus in the rural India. If you do not conveniently forget or wilfully gloss over, I have referred to sub-caste hierarchies practised even amongst the Shudras themselves.

b) The distinction between the Shudras and declassified Vaishyas – the modern day OBCs – could be clearly seen as an operative distinctions in the smrutis. In fact this declassification, at times, extends also to the Kshtriyas as well although I am not aware of any of the Brahmin sub-castes historically subjected to such hierarchic ignominy. But I am not ruling out the possibility.

c) The point about the Bhakti poetry has to be understood in terms of caste mobilizations. Absolutely no point would be served by comparing the ecstatic poetry of surrender by the artisanal Bhakti-poets to the angry and passionately subversive poetry of say fdor example much of Kabir’s oeuvre. The intransigence of both Kabir and Nanak make them very different kind of poets. Once again, one should use the umbrella term, Bhakti poet somewhat judiciously as such classifications would be invalid without historical, sociological and, above all, literary insights. This is where even the class intellectuals such as Kapila Vatsyayan, Geeta Kapoor and their equally privileged class followers such as Rajeev Bhargava so blatantly err. (As an aside, both Geeta and Rajeev profess to be Marxists.) They are unable to rise above their class positions when the argument is about to become ideologically complex.

d) The discovery of a text-compilation poetry from across the Indian sub-continent 20 years before the Guru Granth may be a hypothetical possibility – although with the Sanghis you never quite know – the point about the Granth is not that it happened 20 years too late. The point is that is a first, politically articulated act of connectivity cutting across linguistic, ethnic and caste identities. The idea of Granth was conceived and executed by the 5th Sikh Guru, Arjun Dev, who was eventually made to undergo unbelievable tortures which lead to his death. His martyrdom has, in my view, a semiotic link to his politically intrepid and challenging move to forge a creative unity amongst the Indian people.

e) The gender insensitivity towards women has never been allowed to be even articulated. There are a few articulations to which Susie Tharu drew our attention a few years ago. The Gargis and Maitreyis are no more than mere euphemisms. It is in this context that artists like Amrita Shergill and authors like Mahashweta Devi, Annapurna Devi and even Amrita Pritam and, oh it is so difficult to bring oneself to say this, even Ajeet Caur acquire enormous significance.

A debate about about secularism as enshrined within the Constitution of India purely in reference to how the concept developed in the west is, as such, peurile and childish.

PS: A day after the sea-water around the Mazaar of Makhdoom Shah in Mahim, Bombay was rumoured to have turned sweet, the Sanghis went into an overdrive to spread rumours about how the Goddess Durga and Lord Ganesha in temples across India have started consuming milk offered by the devotees. When it comes to the rumour-industry, the Sanghis are unsurpassable and they wouldn’t let the Muslimeaguees have more than a day of Mahim mahima (glory)!

You prove that your knowledge of the great sudra lineages is indeed parboiled, while maintaining that an utterance from this or that sufi constitutes the building blocks of Indian secularism (maybe? , while willfully and disingenously ignoring lower caste bhakti movements, that to this day constitute the backbone of Bhakti revivalism throughout North India. And why just Punjab? In Mao Mao Naxal infested Chattisgarh, check out the number of new temples on the approach to the Raipur railway station. Communists will not search beyond their discredited grand narratives, which, in Europe, led to the gulags and sixty million dead.

Indian communists are a breed apart, unlike western communists, who paraded out new shibboleths like the New Left when their dreams were crushed. They will never look to political psychology, neurological substrates or even the post-colonial “response to modernity” jargon for clues to this revival. They will blame the manipulative sanghis.

Speaking of casteism, do you know what Ambedkar’s attitude to Indian communism was? He brushed it off as a Brahmin’s boys club. Yes the Dalit patriot who chose neo-Buddhism so as not to alter the demographic make-up of India accused the egalitarian communists of casteism. Or perhaps you know all this and its just an act, a la the Tibeto-russo-Sufi magi Gurdijieff who believed that theatrics lead to uniquely liberative spiritual experiences. Gurdijieff’s work inspired Stanislavi’s method which contributed to the modern understanding of acting. Perhaps Indian communists should learn a lesson or two, because their charades are increasingly transparent, and tiresome becomes the obfuscations, periphrastic style and bigotry.

I’m going to listen to Emerson’s Borbor Bele and watch some Premiere League Football while throwing down some Brooklyn lager. And for the record the only Sangh I know of is Sangh Fransisco, where the denizens, much like the Indian Sanghis, are known to occasionally walk around in saffron robes.

Have a great weekend.

If you go down the parks of Amritsar and by inference the whole of North India, you would find a miniaturized view of the risibile clans of Sanghis virtually colonising these overcrowded spaces where hapless people go in search of early morning jogs and walks of oxygenated refreshment.

You have seen a bit of this in Munnabhai MBBS but let me repeat.

Every now and then they raise a falsely thunderous groan of laughter – much like their vaunted patriotism/ nationalism and their avowed prevarications on the badly imagined role of their grandfathers and granduncles in the struggle for India’s freedom – announcing to the world that gasbags of the saffronised variety are having a feast and hastening the ungainly rise of many a one who sit on their haunches outside these gardens of delight in their early morning open toiletteries. People are born with distinct destinies – both inside and outside these gardens of delight… Those who occupy and others who sing:

Chin-o-Arab hamaara, HindustaaN hamaara Rehne ko ghar nahiN hai, saara jahaaN hamaara

You tread the territory-masquerade of the Sanghis at your own risk. At worst you may die of asphyxia. Their spindly legs hanging out of their outsized khaki knickers, their tummies shining forth through their pre-exercise sweat – amazing how some people can sweat without doing anything – before they get into their wonted risible temper, their listless-canes held aloft in a mock-martial swagger (how Charlie Chaplin would have loved it!) looking for an unsuspecting puppy to be surprised in the middle of its innocent sleep, their hands in an unbelieveable clenched fist once in an accidental while knocking at their chests prouding at times the expected bout of a hollow cough.

I didn’t catch this. You are very disingenous. I know you know that the OBCs are Sudras and that the scheduled castes are the ones heavily discriminated against (they call themselves Dalits). Manu is railing at OBCs, who are very inconveniently for the Marxist historian in power in the states throughout India at the moment; even a large section of the Hindutvan vote comes from the ‘oppressed’ OBCs. Manu is probably turning over in his grave.

Panini, are you absolutely out of your mind? Vijayanagar, the Marathas, the Cholas? Do you think they were opressive brahmanas? You appear to have no knowlege of Indian history!

If you really wish to understand the complexity of how a large section of this so-called egalitarian society addressed their miserably fettered lives, you should look at the issue of conversion – not the Mehmood Ghazanvi kind, for God’s sake – in the 12th century India under the influence of the Sufis beginning with Gharib Nawaaz Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti as well as subsequent searing critiques by both Kabir and Nanak.

You are conveniently forgetting all of the Hindu contributions, which is par for the course for Marxists. (Though much respect to Nanak and Kabir.) The Alwars, including Tiruppan Alwar the untouchable Vaishnava, the Nayanmars who went about the Tamil countryside flailing the caste system and brahmanas. The entire Maharashtra Bhakti movement, which included potters and weavers, including Chokamela and the very great poet Tukaram, who decisively interrogated Brahmins. You mentioned the Granth Sahib as a signal of secularism in a previous post but did you know that 21 years before the Granth Sahib, scholars have found a very similar document tentaively known as the Fatehpur manuscript which is very similar and predominantly contains the poetry of Surdas but includes, for example the weaver Ravidas, widely revered throughout North India?

Upon this very dynamic foundation, you the Marxist quote the 1800 year old Manu as the rationale for all of the discrimination in India. Thats called Orientalism. Poverty, political conflict, natural resource wars, including water well wars which routinely take place between OBCs and Dalits, must all have a Hindu basis. And we shall see how Commies stay in power The people rising decisively indeed.

You have probably heard of the case pending in the Supreme Court of India about the non-brahmins’ – a euphemism for the Shudras – right to conduct prayers in Hindu temples. You have heard of the last week’s castist slur involving India’s finest soccer star Vijayan – a Shudra – in Kochi (Kerala). You have heard of how the shudras and the obcs, especially the former, are routinely humiliated and often slaughtered in Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP and how out of caste marriages turn fatal for those who dare. If not, you need to look around. Moreover, there are sub-caste hierarchies even amongst the Shudras. The Sikh religion which claims to be reformed view of the newly emergent humankind in the light of the Sufi-bhakti surge, did not allow the Shudras to enter the precints of the Golden Temple till as late as the last quarter of the 19th century.

As I had observed in one of my previous mails, the problem with at least a part of western paedagogy and theory is to keep on creating pockets of complexity within the binaries. It suits their purpose to straitjacket the ‘other’s this way.

As for Orientalism, I don’t know which one you are actually referring to – the 19th century Anglo-saxon Orientalism – or the eufearia (combo of euphoria+fear) of it as reflected amongst the Brahmos or the Anglo-Vaidics under the heady influence of Dayanand Saraswati or the Anglo-Arabics under the equally strong influence of Sir Sayyed Ahmad or the Singh Sabhaites under the inglorious aegis of Hony Magistrate Sir Arur Singh and Sir Sundar Singh Majithia both of whom had gone to the extent of honouring Gen Dyer – the butcher of Jallianwala – from the precints of the Golden Temple after the massacre.