169Demarginalisation and History: Dalit Re-Invention of the Past

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Badri NarayanDemarginalisation and History: Dalit Re-Invention of the Past

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DEMARGINALISATION AND HISTORY:DALIT RE-INVENTION OF THE PASTBadri Narayan1

G.B. PANT SOCIAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE, ALLAHABAD, INDIA

ABSTRACT The article demonstrates how the ongoing demarginal-isation of Dalits in India today works on a variety of levels. Throughcreating new narratives and virtually inventing a new alternativehistory and language, this movement for demarginalisation uses aparticular style of popular and widely circulated booklets, vigor-ously read and disseminated by the neo-literate Dalit population.The construction of this alternative history through such new texts,seen as an existential necessity for the Dalits, works by weavingtogether stories found in religious Brahminical popular texts aboutdissenting lower caste characters, glorified as Dalit heroes whofought against upper caste oppression and injustice. It also includesstories of unsung Dalit freedom fighters, transformed into localmyths. Importantly, the language used is different from Stand-ard Hindi, since folk proverbs, idioms and symbols, as well as thegrammar and vocabulary of local dialects, are used. The articledemonstrates in some detail how these processes of constructingnew literature work, and indicates that these new sources may

well be laying foundations for the histories of the future of manysubaltern communities of South Asia.

KEYWORDS:Ambedkar, Brahminical discourse, caste,Dalits, democrat-isation, history, invention of history, mobilisation, myth, reservations,subaltern movements, texts

Introduction: Towards a Democratisation of History

A major project of re-inventing their own histories has been going on among thevarious Dalit communities of the Hindi belt. These histories and new narratives arehelping the Dalits to demarginalise themselves and become a part of mainstreamcontemporary Indian life, while strengthening their own identities, inculcating self-confidence, improving their present, and carving out a brighter future for themselvesand their children. Through exercise of their historical imagination, they are envision-ing an alternative past, different from the Brahminical notions of history that have

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170 South Asia Research Vol. 28 (2): 169184

helped to create those cultural narratives in which Dalits are presented as degraded

social beings, relegated to the fringes of society due to their low birth and certaincaste-based unclean occupations.

An exploration of the discursive strategies and politics of imagination and narrationof the Dalits own history are helpful to understand their protests and demands.2

This goes much deeper than studying politics, though political parties, especially theBahujan Samaj Party (BSP), have been using these strategies for mobilising grassrootDalits, helping them to demand social, economic and political privileges based onthe history of injustice done to them. This complex process of identity reconstruction

has a deliberately subversive input in socio-political discourses, providing a strongbasis for alternative claims that undermine and challenge the historically grown dom-

inant discourses and combat the everyday humiliation still encountered through largelyBrahminical and Sanskritic cultural narratives.

This study offers an analysis of the past as an important constitutive element ofthe recent assertion of a positive Dalit identity and its creative utilisation as a libera-tionist medium for coping with a still oppressive present. An epistemological challengeis made through the creation of history in popular form by booklets and printscomposed by the Dalits themselves, together with political discourses of literate Dalit

activists and leaders. From both activities, it seems clear that history is being createdand epistemologically confronted for direct political purposes.

Over the last two decades, Indian electoral processes and policies of affirmativeaction have produced some powerful leaders from the Dalit and low caste communitieswho have emerged at many different levels of public and political life. The direct

impact of this development has been seen in the politics of the historiography ofIndia, an impact that has led to the deconstruction of the legitimacy of history as adisciplined form of knowledge and, as an unavoidable result, its dominant meth-

odologies. The effect of this has been the democratisation of history as knowledge ofthe communities themselves, which ultimately has led to the bigger question of thedemocratisation of history as a discipline. Dalits now claim ownership of historicalknowledge about themselves and assert their own interpretations of such knowledgeand material.

The recent period has also seen vociferous demands by the marginalised commu-nities for an appropriate share in the power structures of state and society. The past is

being openly usedsome might argue abusedby these communities to strengthentheir demands. To fulfill the need for a past to suit their purpose, the social andhistorical meaning of the Dalit past is being re-created and reinvented. In this process,the past is intrinsically built into the present; it becomes the subject of present reflectionand re-construction as a primary mechanism for changing the marginalised socialposition of Dalits. Thus, their past is one that helps in their ongoing struggle of carv-ing out their future against an oppressive present, constructing an identity that grantsthem the self-respect to elevate themselves above their present, still largely socially



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Narayan: Dalit Re-invention of the Past 171

South Asia Research Vol. 28 (2): 169184

degraded status. By rallying around this newly carved positive identity, Dalits andother groups have been politically mobilised in Indian society, bringing about a

noticeable change in the socio-political milieu of the Indian democracy. Conversely,

the changing nature of the Indian democracy has also acted as a catalyst for thisprocess.

The power of writing histories is being used by the Dalits as a critique of thenation-state through invented narratives of nationalism. These narratives are beinggenerated as a knowledge and resource base for their democratic struggle for a betterquality of life. The earlier professional empiricalanalytical history, in which Dalitswere treated as passive subjects, marginalised them politically and culturally. It notonly made them uninterested, not merely in this kind of history and its concept of

truth, but ultimately dispossessed them of the images of their own histories of life inwhich they have always lived (Turner, 1990: 4). Interestingly, this professional history

formed the images and representations that intertwined in their memory and mythand served as a vehicle for a more critically informed awareness of the present, toanticipate a future in which they will return to their glorious past. This phenomenoncan be widely observed in Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra,and is also a growing tendency in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana.

Dalit and Bahujan

The word dalit, etymologically derived from the word for crushed, ground, destroyed,leads to associations with depressed, and actions like to tread upon, to suppress.While the category of Dalit is certainly not a monolithic whole, it is divided into many

castes. These include the untouchable communities of the lower castes, ScheduledCastes, Scheduled Tribes, ex-criminal castes and nomadic tribes, even Other Back-

ward Castes (OBCs), and other marginalised social groups. The Scheduled Castesand Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) are those Dalit castes and tribes that have been specifi-cally included in the Schedule of the Indian Constitution as vulnerable communities.Dalit has become a political identity as opposed to a caste identity, expressing theDalits knowledge of themselves as oppressed people. It signifies their resolve to demandliberation through a revolutionary change in the system that oppresses them. This

term found ready acceptance among all the untouchable communities of India, sinceit allowed them to name themselves as a collectivity rather than be named by others.Earlier terms likeAchhut, Panchamas andAtishudras, or government-assigned designa-tions like Depressed Castes and Scheduled Castes, or the name Harijan bestowedby Gandhiji, evoked much pain and conflict.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Chamars make up the largest percentage of Dalits. Theiroriginal caste-based profession was to remove the carcasses of dead cattle and to skinand tan them. Their women used to work as midwives and cut the umbilical cordsof babies born to upper-caste women. Today the Chamars are the most politically

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conscious Dalit community in Uttar Pradesh and many have relinquished their caste-based professions. A large percentage has acquired education, and the illiterate sectionworks as manual labourers or as rickshaw pullers.

Pasi, the next largest Dalit caste in Uttar Pradesh, is a martial community whichworked as stick wielders(lathail) for kings, local rulers and feudal landlords(zamindars).They also reared pigs and trapped the sap of trees to convert it into liquor. Todaymany of them have also acquired education and are politically highly mobilised, al-though the Pasis as a whole are still a poor community. Other important Dalit castesof Uttar Pradesh are the Khatik and Kori (Prasad, 1995: 20), castes that are alsofound in the Hindi belt, although their caste names differ.

In the recent past, the BSP in Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the major mobilising

force among the Dalits in northern India. It has developed a confederation of OBCs,Dalits, tribals and minority communities under one title, Bahujan, conceived to bindthem under one identity, aiming to establish ethnocultural unity and a wider politicalbase. The terms Bahujan and Dalitare now being used in parallel to represent thecultural meaning of the newly emerging Dalit identity in northern India. Some 6,000castes and communities are now included within the Bahujan category.

(Hi)Stories of their OwnThe narrative histories (stories or kathas) invented by the Dalits constitute an alter-native history and language, much of it oral. They tell of Dalit aspirations, dreamsand ambitions, and are intended to create more coherent identities among the groupsand communities making up this community. The term katha is different from bothhistory as established by Western(ised) academic historians and itihas (history) asdefined by Indian traditionalist historians as a peculiarly Indian way to know thepast through the dominant Pauranictradition of ancient religious texts of the Hindus.Rather, the story of the katha is a form of liberation for marginalised groups ofIndian society that enables them to enter the domain of knowing, inventing, creatingand telling the past (including their own past) as a constant dialogue with the present.The story as narrated by the communities is not just fiction, but is an existential actthat reflects living cultural contexts. Various Dalit castes have their own caste stories(jati katha), written versions of their oral traditions. These stories attempt to representtheir traditional or fictional as well as historical past of a particular community and

they contain most of the features of narrativity of the oral culture. These jati kathasare now being claimed as theirjat ya itihas (caste history), as an expression of subalternself-consciousness.

This recent assertiveness among lower caste communities in northern India cannotbe understood exclusively in terms of their self-definition, but must be seen withinthe framework of attempts to acquire social respect through such processes. The firmbelief that as Dalits they were never provided with what they see as their proper statusin Indian historiography has led Dalits to create their own histories. The authors of



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these histories believe that till now Indian history was mostly written by Brahminhistorians, as a result of which the Dalits have not attained the cultural status due to

them (Prashant, 1994: 3). Thus, history written by Dalits can be called Dalit popu-

lar history, or a peoples history of Dalits. One may also legitimately call it themythohistory of Dalits.

These re-invented histories are circulated within their own community not onlythrough oral culture, but are extended to written tracts in the form of popular bookletsprinted on cheap newsprint (akhbar ) and are about 5060 pages in length. Generally,the printing standards are low in Western terms, the form reflecting the lack of moneyavailable for their production. However, their content and affordability help to sellthem in large numbers in local fairs, meetings and political rallies. During the last

10 years they have been written and published on a large scale, giving rise to a distinctclass of authors and publishers. Many small bookstalls run by Dalit writers can beseen at Dalit political meetings, fairs and Chetna Mandaps, small bookstores set upby the Dalits in district towns and cities to sell books, cassettes and artefacts connectedwith the Dalit movement. Most of the books deal with Dalit history and literature,while others are biographies and autobiographies of pioneer leaders of the Dalitmovement. These Dalit booklets are also displayed along with folk literature in stalls

in political fairs.The newly emerging educated and politically conscious middle stratum of DalitBahujan origin in north India is playing a leading role in writing, publishing andpropagating this kind of Dalit history among the masses. This section was in partbuilt up by Christian missionaries in the eighteenth century who began the processof imparting modern education to the Dalits. The British eventually made educationa state subject and invited children from all sections of native society to join schools.Later the Arya Samaj, a prominent Hindu social reform movement started in north

India towards the end of the nineteenth century, opened schools for Dalit childrenand tried to uplift the Dalits under the Brahminical fold by granting them the rightto use Brahminical symbols otherwise denied to them by Hindu upper caste culturalnorms. Some Congress leaders and a few philanthropic organisations also openedschools for Dalits in various parts of north India.

In Uttar Pradesh, an important social reformer who contributed much to awakenthe Dalits was the aptly named Swami Achhootananda,3 who himself belonged to a

Dalit community (Kumar and Sinha, 2001: 42). He became a member of the AryaSamaj and played a leading role in raising Dalit literacy levels by setting up a numberof schools for Dalit children. He was also a pioneer in inculcating print culture among

Dalits, establishing printing presses for publishing Dalit newspapers, books andmagazines, helping to develop an educated and articulate element in Dalit society.

Today this educated and politically conscious middle stratum of DalitBahujansociety is active in writing, publishing and propagating literature related to the DalitBahujan mission of raising the awareness level of the Dalit masses. An analysis of the



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composition of the BSP shows that it includes 120,000 Dalit employees, of whom500 hold doctoral degrees, 3,000 are doctors, 15,000 are scientists and 7,000 aregraduates (Singh, 1994: 88). The steady growth of communication technology, and

its use by Dalits to write and publish their own popular booklets and pamphlets topropagate their ideas of social justice and equality, accelerated the process ofundermining prejudice against them throughout the past century, particularly duringrecent decades. Factors like the development of fast transportation, growth of modernmarkets, decline of rural handicrafts and artisan professions, decrease in the scope ofcaste-based professions to absorb new entrants, with consequent increases in poverty,and natural calamities that particularly affect poor people, led to the steady migrationof many Dalits to urban areas. This exposed them to new life patterns and increased

their aspirations for a better future. In addition, their introduction to the politics ofidentity and self-respect made them ever more conscious of caste hierarchy, givingrise to an urge to challenge and break it. All these factors led to an increase in thereading and writing of booklets centering on history.

The histories written by the Dalits themselves are different from the books authoredby professional historians (such as Illaiah, 1996; Omvedt, 1996) on Dalit history.They are also different from the Dalit history written during the Dalit movement inMaharashtra in the 1960s, in both form and content. These histories also differ from

the history of the shudracastes belonging to the lowest rung of the Hindu caste hier-archy, written by empiricalanalytical Marxist historians who attempted to locatethat group within a class framework(see Jha, 1998). In the Marxist histories of thelower castes, social and economic dimensions are highlighted. However, in Dalitpopular history, there is greater emphasis on re-constructing a counter-socioculturalhistory. The history of Dalits and Bahujans written in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar(Prashant, 1994; Sagar, 1987; Saran, 1998) interprets Indian social history through acaste prism in an effective but apparently crude story telling manner.

Dalit Politics and Discourses in North India

The Dalit movement in north India gathered momentum from the end of the nine-teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, although it had stronghistorical roots. As far back as the medieval period, the bhaktimovement led byKabir, Sant Ravidas and Mirabai contributed a great deal to imparting consciousness

about Dalit identity. These poets tried to express pain, pathos and suffering in asociety dominated by Brahminical norms through devotional songs and poetry. Underthe influence of some of their leaders, religious groups like the Kabir Panth, SatnamiPanth and the Ravidasi sect were formed. The Arya Samaj also tried to inculcate self-respect in the Dalits, combined with a desire to rise in the social hierarchy by annexingsymbols of Brahminical traditions. Their efforts were to integrate the Dalits in therespectable Brahminical society by granting them the right to use the symbols deniedto them by Hindu Brahminical cultural norms. Though this was actually strengthening



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the Hindu hierarchic caste-based socio-cultural system, it also provided a kind offeeling of respectable identity to the Dalit communities.

The Adi movement, launched in many parts of the country around the same time

and in competition with Christianity (Jenkins, 2003), strongly influenced the Dalitmovement in north India. This was an assertion of Dalit autonomy within and fromHinduism and the dominant socio-political organisations of upper caste Hindus. Itwas led by politicised social activists who claimed that the Dalits and Adivasis werethe original inhabitants of this land, enslaved by the conquering Aryans who hadcome in from Central Asia (Kumar and Sinha, 2001: 3). In the later period of his life,Swami Achhootananda left the Arya Samaj to join the Adi movement and workedhard to popularise it in Uttar Pradesh.

In south India, there developed a strong Dravidian movement that interpretedhistory by asserting that in the centuries just before the Christian era, there had been

a casteless Tamil culture in south India before the Aryan culture arrived. Early anti-Brahmin parties included the Justice Party founded in 1916, the Self-Respect Move-ment founded in 1925, and the Dravidian Kazagham founded in 1944 (Kolenda,1978: 120). Another stream of Dalit reform movements during this period demon-strated the trend towards integration within the existing Hindu social order. Some

benevolent Christian missionaries and Muslims, magnanimous Hindus and revolu-tionary non-Hindus also lent their support to this cause. The coming of the Britishexposed these leaders to new values of equality, liberty and fraternity, given fresh

impetus by modern education and the emergence of new professions (Kumar andSinha, 2001: 3). The echoes of these movements in South India can be found in oneform or another also in the construction of Dalit consciousness in North India.

However, the one person who almost single-handedly carved a new history in thestruggle for ameliorating the condition of the Dalits and raising their socio-political

consciousness was Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, who started the Dalit movement fromthe middle of the second decade of the twentieth century. In the initial phase ofAmbedkars leadership, his major emphasis was on social reforms among the Dalits,particularly the untouchable Mahars of Maharashtra, within the Hindu social order.Later he sought political safeguards for all Dalits by asking for Dalit representationby their own elected leaders. He opposed the concession given to Dalits through

their representatives being nominated by the government, instead of allowing them

to elect their own members to the provincial councils and Central Legislature. Hewas also critical of the philanthropic roles played by the Hindu social reformers and

the lip service extended by the Indian National Congress to the moderate social up-lift of the Dalits. In 1932, he asked for separate electorates for Dalits, but faced stiffopposition from Mahatma Gandhi who accepted them for Muslims, Christians, Sikhsand Anglo-Indians but, in his commitment to the unity of the Hindu community,drew the line when it came to untouchables, whose interests he claimed to represent(Dirks, 2002: 269).



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After the death of Dr Ambedkar in 1956, the Dalit movement in Uttar Pradeshwas taken over by the Agra branch of the Republican Party of India, established in1958 as the successor of the Scheduled Caste Federation. The Scheduled Caste

Federation of Agra, formed in 194445, had been linked with Dr Ambedkars AllIndia Scheduled Castes Federation. The Republican Party of India, which was incontact with branches of the party working in Maharashtra, emphasised the economic,political and social plight of the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. In 1962, the Agra branch ofthe Republican Party of India contested parliamentary elections, winning one seateach for a Member of Parliament and a Member of the Uttar Pradesh LegislativeAssembly. But then this independent organisation lost both seats in the 1967 gen-eral elections and the 1969 mid-term state assembly elections, and was disbanded

in 1969.After this, the Dalit leadership in the 1970s fell to the Dalit leaders of the Congress

Party. Despite the Congress politics of patronage of Dalits, there was insignificantimprovement in their general socio-economic status. Indeed, during the 1970s therewas a spurt of atrocities on Dalits, which gave birth to the militant Dalit PantherMovement in 1980 in Lucknow and Kanpur, based on the Dalit Panther Movementformed in western India in the 1960s.

The Dalit Panther Movement gradually faded out, leading to the emergence of

the BAMCEF (Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation) in 1979in Lucknow, headed by a Dalit leader called Kanshiram. In 1981, he formed anotherorganisation called DS4 (Dalit Soshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti), a broad-based socio-political platform. In 1984, he launched the BSP on Ambedkars birth anniversary.This was a full-fledged political party, which fought the general elections with thesupport of the Dalits, OBCs and minorities including Muslims, who were at that timetogether given the nomenclature ofBahujan. Kanshiram argued that the Bahujans,who constitute 85 per cent of the countrys population, have been suppressed, op-pressed and exploited by the 15 per cent upper caste population (Kumar and Sinha,2001: 70).

In the Dalit and Bahujan discourses that emerged in the Hindi region of northernIndia, the past increasingly occupied a central place. When north Indian Dalit politicswas taking shape, the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, a Com-mission formed by the Indian government under the Prime Ministership of IndiraGandhi to formulate protective discrimination policies for the backward and scheduled

castes of India, placed history at the forefront in the debates about reserving a certainfixed number of seats in educational institutions and government offices for SC andST. The upper castes strongly opposed the implementation of the Mandal CommissionReport, saying that meritand not casteshould be the guiding principle for ac-quiring jobs and seats in educational institutions. The SCs justified these discrim-inatory protective policies for Dalits by using the logic of past injustices to them byBrahminical culture and power that had historically deprived them of education andjobs (Kushwaha, 1993). At the popular level, during mass agitation and self-immolation



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by some upper caste students against the implementation of the Report, manyscheduled and backward caste organisations distributed leaflets and booklets anddelivered popular speeches highlighting the atrocities committed on them in the past

that had led to their remaining backward.In Uttar Pradesh, the BSP, in its speeches for mobilising illiterate Dalits who hadnot read Brahminical texts, gave examples showing the ill-treatment of Dalits inancient Hindu texts, especially in theManusamhita,adharmashastratext attributedto an ancient Indian saint, Manu.The Manusamhitais believed to be an ancientBrahminical code of conduct, still followed consciously or unconsciously by mostupper caste Hindus. The essence ofManusamhita, also called Manuvadby the Dalits,was that Dalits and women, the latter as a category irrespective of their caste, should

not have access to wealth, education and sacred knowledge. As restitution for thesehistorical injustices, the party demanded further reparations in the form of reservationor positive discrimination in educational institutions and jobs. Thus the historicaldebate on ancient Indian society constituted a major plank in the BSPs political dis-course (Singh, 1994: 13).

Confronting Brahminical History and the Politics of the Past

Dalit history developed in the form of a counter dialogue against this Hindu history,which continues to play a hegemonic role in Indian social and intellectual life. Thishistory is often presented in the form of Itihas Puran, the history that originatedfrom the Pauranic Brahminical texts, widely circulated through rituals, story tellings,religious songs (k rtans), and in other cultural forms prevalent in everyday life invillages. In these Itihas Puranbased cultural performances and discourses, Dalitsalways find themselves assigned a lower, degraded and identity-less image. As a re-action to this everyday humiliation, the dominant texts of the great tradition andthe grand history of the elite were explored meticulously to reject them and offeralternative historical symbols. Epics, scriptures and ancient religious texts like theVedas, Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabharata, popular among the upper castes inNorth India, were partially replaced and vigorously contested by folk histories filledwith local Dalit heroes. The dominant symbols enshrined in the traditional religiousepics were thus challenged, saying that they were full of falsehoods and fiction, usedto maintain the intellectual, economic and cultural superiority of the upper castes.

For example, in discussions on the Ramayana, Dalits will mention the name ofShambuk, a low-caste character killed by Lord Rama, the upper caste hero in thisepic, for trying to read the Vedas. In the story of the Ramayana, Lord Ramas army,which helped him to rescue his wife, was a motley crowd of monkeys, lower castesand tribal communities. The Dalits, however, interpret the story as one of injusticeagainst their community, since Lord Rama killed Shambuk, who they claim belongedto a lower caste (Prashant, 1994: 1620). Kanshiram, in one of his speeches formobilising Dalits, appealed to them to perform dramas based on the life of Shambuk,



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called Shambukl la, in place of the Raml la, a popular dramatic performance producedby upper castes during the Hindu festival of Dussehra (Kushwaha, 1996: 11). Similarly,while talking about the Mahabharata, Dalits prominently emphasise the injustice

done to Eklavya, a low caste boy who was not accepted as a pupil of the teacher of therulers because of his caste status. Exploring these intellectual spaces, Dalits developalternative narratives to counter the dominant narrative. For example, they claimthat the composer of the original Ramayana, saint Balmiki, came from a lower caste,but is at par with Tulsidas, the Brahmin saint-poet of the medieval period, who com-posed Ramcharitmanas, the Brahminical popular version of the Ramayana.

The task of deconstructing Dalit identity within Brahminical hierarchical para-meters was made more arduous because of the various socio-cultural Hindu reform

movements that also tried to define Dalit identity. The Arya Samaj Movement andthe campaigns by Mahatma Gandhi, who tried to uproot untouchability by givingDalits the name of Harijans, were attempts to create and retain their identitywithinthe dominant culture. These imposed identities, however, were not accepted by theDalits. Mahatma Gandhi, too, who occupies a sacred place in the psyche of uppercastes, was rejected because he wanted to preserve and maintain the hierarchical struc-ture of Indian society by saying that each caste should follow its own caste-basedoccupation as indicated in the Hindu religious texts. Political efforts to define them

in the Marxist paradigm were also strongly rejected. The Dalits wanted to constructtheir identity by reviving their own folk memories as guided by their contemporaryaspirations. Often this process has provided the space for protesting, resisting andcontesting the present structures and also for deconstructing the dominant and hege-monic structures of the past.

The past thus becomes the constitutive element in this exercise of identity con-struction by the Dalits. This past is a contested terrain, often selectively rememberedand sometimes conveniently forgotten. History, therefore, might no longer be regardedas primarily factual, because the facts about the past may actually be imaginationsbased on the present (Seneviratne, 1997: 5). Accounts of the past are embellishedand interpreted through the perspective of present-day ethnic and other group iden-tities, aspirations, values and interests. Whatever facts are known of the past are inter-mingled with myth and fantasy, and a new perception is created of a glorious past.Selective remembrance from the cluster of popular memories plays an important rolein the process of acquiring power and influence, and the symbols, myths and legends

of popular memories that are re-invented in this process give an effective commu-nicative power to the marginalised (Gordon, 1995). The significance of this was wellunderstood by the BSP, which has used it as an effective mobilisation technique inparliamentary elections since 1995. Other political groups trying to mobilise Dalitvotes also employed folk historical narratives for developing interactive relationshipsbetween present identity and past.

For meeting the political requirements of this kind of alternative history, the BSPhas constituted a research committee during the 1990s, composed of Dalit people of



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the intellectual class in Uttar Pradesh to conduct research on popular historicalmemories and Dalit heroes. Its task includes collating local caste histories and collectingmyths and, on that basis, building up Bahujan Dalit literature. This reveals how local

caste myths have now become important to the political history spin-doctors of Dalitand Bahujan politics in the Hindi-speaking region. The BSP activists arrange smallgatherings and secret meetings among people of specific castes with caste leaders aschief spokespersons. In their speeches they tell about the glorious history of theircaste to promote feelings of self-identity. Slowly a belief is promoted that the castereached its present deprived state because of earlier conspiracies of the dominantcastes. Discussions on local and caste history are also undertaken in these meetings.

The history being circulated through Dalit popular literature influenced by Bahujan

politics is now gradually becoming part of the peoples memory. During the initialcampaign and the formation of the BSP in 1984, a grand Dalit political discoursewas established. After 1990, changes were brought in the political language of theparty. Apart from the old symbols and icons of Dalit movements, local traditions,caste histories and myths came to dominate its hustings. A Cultural Awakening Squadwas formed to present this discourse of the past through songs, theatres and poetry tocommon people, performed just before a political meeting to gather a large crowd tolisten to the political discourses that will follow. Thus stories, cultural performances

and political discourses are intermingled to create popular narratives for mobilisingDalits. Strategy makers have finally realised the importance of local roots thatfor apolitical priceenabled common people to understand their own values, know theirown realities, understand their own mistakes, and help them to advance and progress(Prashant, 1994: 5).

Use of the heroic female figures of Jhalkaribai in the Bundelkhand region andUdadevi in the central region of Uttar Pradesh are examples of how local figures andhistories are used for political mobilisation by the BSP. Jhalkaribai, described as amaidservant of Rani Laxmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, who became a heroine of the1857 movement when she led her army to defend the kingdom of Jhansi after it wasattacked by the British army, appears now in a novel written by Brindavan Lal Varma(1991 [1951]). Jhalkaribai was adapted and cast as a Dalit heroine of the 1857 revoltand thereby established as the symbol of the active role of Dalits in the Indian freedomstruggle. Her statue has been installed close to Rani Laxmibais fort in Jhansi, wherefairs and gatherings are held annually to commemorate her memory.

Similarly in the Lucknow region, the history and memory of Udadevi, a Pasichivalrous lady (v rangana) who was a close associate of Begum Hazrat Mahal (aruler of Lucknow who fought against the British during the 1857 revolt), was suc-cessfully used by the BSP and the Lok Janshakti Party, a Dalit party led by Ram VilasPaswan. In the Mokama region of north Bihar, the myth of Chuharmal is used forthe identity construction and political mobilisation of the Dusadhs, a marginalisedcommunity of the region (Narayan, 2001: 56).Many more examples can be found toshow how history is creatively being used in a growing democratisation process,



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emphasising important contributions of Dalits, to strengthen the mobilisation ofDalits in various localities in the continuing struggle for acquiring power.

Forms and Features of Dalit History

Dalits believe that their history has four functions. First, it imparts self-respect. Second,they understand their specific place in society. Third, history is a means to acquireself-confidence and self-esteem. And fourth, it establishes a platform for self-analysis.The literate Dalits who claim their narratives to be history, present its ideas throughreason and logic to challenge Brahminical beliefs and values based on Hindu religiouscodes, and deconstruct the dominant and hegemonic upper caste history and myths.

These, they claim, silence Dalit history or describe it as low (n ch), degraded (adham),or criminal and uncultured (Baudh, 1985: 3).

The histories written by the Dalits are figurative, embellished with stories of theirpopular folk heroes and lower caste characters of the Brahminical religious texts whohad suffered injustice due to their low birth. The language used is Hindi, but not theSanskritised Hindi used by urban elite people. The sentence constructions andvocabulary are based on local folk dialects, filled with popular folk idioms and proverbsfamiliar to the semi-literate Dalits. Although the language cannot be called literary

Hindi, the writers of these Dalit histories are more concerned about reaching out tothe people in a communicable language that can express their feelings, anger and dis-sent against the prevailing caste system than about literary or grammatical standardsand precision. Through their localised language and choice of words, symbols andcommunicative strategies, they try to create an alternative language for narratingtheir own history.

There are several other striking features of Dalit history narratives. First, they pro-ject their freedom fighters as unsung heroes of the freedom struggle in popular booklets,in souvenirs published during annual conferences of Dalit caste associations, and inother popular discourses. Some Dalit castes claim in their histories that many of theirheroes were kings who fought against the Mughals and other invaders, but lost theirkingdom due to the conspiracies of the upper caste feudal lords (Thakurs) and thepriestly caste (Brahmins). Some castes like the Bhars and Pasis, now among the lowestcastes of Dalits in north India, declare their role as freedom fighters who laid downtheir lives to free the nation from external aggressors (Chaudhary, 1997: 16).

Another feature of Dalit story telling is that folk lyrical metres such as doha, chaupai,chaubolor laharaare widely used to make the narrative more powerful and commu-nicative. Narrating a peasant uprising that took place in Tanda, near Faizabad, UttarPradesh, in 1918, called Tanda Kisan Andolan, the author Pawan (1992: 9), expresseshimself in the following poetic metres:

Utpidan samrajya is kadar chhaya thaBahu-betiyon ki izzat bhi nahi surakshit



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Goodar Ram us samay atyachar ke virodh meinKhade ho gaye shakti dhariya man mein kar sanchit.(The oppressive reign was so pervasive and dominant that the purity and prestige ofdaughters and daughters-in-law was not safe. At that time with chivalry and patience,

Goodar Ram stood up in opposition to the tyranny of the British.)

Gaon gaon ja ja kushti aadhaar banaakarYuvakon ka sanghathan ek majboot kar liyaAur akhade ke agua ko har gaon meinKrishak sanghathan ka bhar de diya(Youths were invited to practise wrestling in every village and an organisation wasformed. The leader of the wrestling centre (akhada) in each village was made responsiblefor peasant organisation.)

The narrative strategies of their history writings, either based on historical events ofpeasant movements during the colonial period, or caste histories, emerge by searchingfor and developing myths to support their claims. This is epistemologically differentfrom the rational or scientific representation of professional or modernist historywriting. Dalit history writings use poetry, a variety of folk metres, and story telling ofan overt political nature. Popular idioms and folk terminology are also widely used.

Through various folk stanzas, chhanda, doha, chaupai, dauda, ghazal, qawwali orchauboli, poets try to speak their own history. The tradition of orality remains predom-inant, although booklets of historical songs written in these forms and illustratedwith pictures are sold and purchased in large numbers.

In the process of writing their own history, Dalits have thus attempted to developa counter-historical discourse by exploring oral traditions. Essentially, these alternativehistories have tried, first, to deconstruct dominant Brahminical epical myths andhistory; second, to explore history, caste history and narratives glorifying the local

myths of Dalit castes; and third, to record the unwritten history of Dalit leaders,saints and social reformers. As often noted by Mayawati, again today the Chief Ministerof Uttar Pradesh, a Dalit woman belonging to the BSP, the westernised and educatedpeople who wrote history, wiped out all traces of Dalit kings and emperors, rajas andmaharajas. While important Dalit rulers like Bijli Pasi found no mention in historybooks, although there is strong evidence that Pasis were the one-time rulers of theregion, Mayawati claims that the Dalits are not inventing history, but are merelyhighlighting a hidden history, one that has been consciously suppressed (Chaudhary,1997: 2).

The new Dalit history seems to be not unified but fragmentary in nature. Smallepisodes narrating incidents of dissent by Dalits, found in various locally narratedpopular Hindu texts, are woven together to form a grand Dalit history. These includeDalit interpretations of stories like the Shambuk and Eklavya episodes from theRamayanaand theMahabharata. Sometimes the histories of the various Dalit castesbased on folklore may not be uniform, but contesting myths of the same story can be



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found. For example, in the Mithila region there is a story about Dina Bhadri, a hero

of the Mushahar caste, a very low caste known to eat rats, usually employed for digg-ing fields. Dina Bhadri was killed by Sahlesh, a hero of the Dusadh caste, a Scheduled

Caste known for its martial instincts and for rearing pigs. But in the written form,Dalit historians try to downplay the killing of the hero of one community by a memberof a similarly disadvantaged group to avoid confrontation of the two castes. In UttarPradesh, Dalit historians highlight both Jhalkaribai, of the Kori caste, as well asUdadevi, of the Pasi caste, as heroines of a homogeneous Dalit community. At thesame time, the Kori and Pasi castes individually identify Jhalkaribai and Udadevirespectively with their own castes. Thus caste identities are converted in a number ofways into a broad Dalit identity in their written histories to ally all Dalit castes.

Writers of Dalit popular history enter the memories of Dalits in two ways. First,they explore the content and form of their folk memories. Second, they serve as a

link between the popular medium and folk memory. Some of these popular historio-graphers clearly enter into Dalit politics, while others choose to remain outside. InUttar Pradesh, Bahujan politics have caused an increase in the composition and pub-lication of such types of popular history and literature. In the political discourse ofBahujan politics also, local, popular and Dalit caste histories are used for political

mobilisation and substantially contribute to the flourishing of such popular historyand literature. In Bihar, too, the use of popular myths like that of Chuharmal andSahlesh by the Dalit Sena, a branch of the Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan,

clearly reveals this growing trend.

Conclusions

This article demonstrated that the re-invention and writing of their own histories by

the Dalit communities of the Hindi belt is helping to demarginalise these communitiesand allows them to acquire a respectable position in contemporary Indian society. Inthis process, the Dalits are strengthening their own individual and collective identities,acquiring self-confidence, improving their condition and carving out a new futurethrough histories circulated via popular booklets. Such publications are also creatively

used for mobilising grassroot Dalits and their political interests by Bahujan politicalleaders. This also supports Dalits demands for greater social, economic and politicalrights based on the history of injustice done to them in the past. In other movements,

the idea of being the original inhabitants of the subcontinent is used as an instrumentto motivate the masses to acquire social respect and a better quality of life.

Such developments display an avowedly political character. Two main objectivesof the BSP, visible in their historical language, are to develop a homogeneous identityamong the fragmented Dalit castes, and to inject and encourage necessary feelings ofsuspicion and class opposition against the upper castes. The reconstruction of thepast provides support for claiming acquisition of more democratic and other benefits



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today and particularly to justify positive discrimination policies for Dalits. Subvertingthe dominant discourse provides at the same time a strong basis for an alternative.

The construction of an alternative history for the Dalits combats also the everyday

humiliation encountered through dominant Brahminical cultural narratives. It ismainly created by both opposing and weaving together stories in religious Brahminicalpopular texts about dissenting lower caste characters. Dalit history glorifies Dalitheroes and heroines who fought against the oppression and injustice of the uppercastes and colonial rule. The stories of unsung Dalit heroes, who participated in thefreedom struggle and have been transformed into myths in the local oral traditions,are central to their history. The language of these histories circulated through popularbooklets is necessarily different from standard Hindi in their use of folk proverbs,

idioms and symbols, as well as grammar and vocabulary.These new histories are political mechanisms and tools for carving out a better

future position of the Dalits. With the growing democratisation process and the pol-itical need to incorporate marginalised and minority communities, the boundaries ofhistory are expanded beyond the empiricalanalytical to include the myths and heroesof the subaltern entrant communities. These new histories may prove to be historiesof the future of the Dalits, as well as other marginalised and subaltern communitiesin South Asian societies that will help to demarginalise them, freeing them from theburdens of the past.

Notes

1. I would like to warmly acknowledge the patience shown by Prof. Alun Munslow whometiculously went through each draft of this article until he was satisfied. The commentsand suggestions of the anonymous readers, which helped to make this paper publishable,are also gratefully acknowledged. Needless to add, any shortcomings in the article aremine.

2. Important reading on this is found, inter alia, in Hoy (1986), Norris (1992), Bhabha(1994), Chakrabarty (2003) and Davies (2003).

3. This name conveys something like the pleasure of being untouchable.

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Badri Narayan is a Hindi poet of national repute and a senior academic. A socialhistorian and cultural anthropologist by training, he has been a Fellow at the IndianInstitute of Advanced Studies (Shimla), MSH (Paris), and at the International Institute

of Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands. He has authored many books and articlesin English and Hindi on popular culture, memory, migration, social and anthro-pological history, Dalit and subaltern issues of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and has alsoconducted national and international projects.Address: Centre for Culture, Power and Change, G.B.Pant Social Science Institute,Jhusi, Allahabad 211019, Uttar Pradesh, India. [email: [email protected]]
http://sar.sagepub.com/

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169Demarginalisation and History: Dalit Re-Invention of the Past