From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual: My Memoirs 9789381345412

Table of contents :
Sage history page
Half title page
By the Same Author
Full title page
Copyright page
Dedication page
Marketing page
Contents
Preface
1 Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?
2 Eating the Brains and Learning the Unknown
3 Getting Free from Saraswathi
4 The Song of Death and Rebellion against the Priest
5 Choosing between Two Lusts: Life or Knowledge?
6 Do Ilaiahs Teach in the University?
7 Working between Adivasis and Anglicans of India
8 My Experiments with Untruth
9 International Victory and National Defeat
10 What I Ate, How I Wrote and How I Lived
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual MY MEMOIRS

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

se ec

SAGE was founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune to support the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative and high-quality research and teaching content. Today, we publish over 900 journals, including those of more than 400 learned societies, more than 800 new books per year, and a growing range of library products including archives, data, case studies, reports, and video. SAGE remains majority-owned by our founder, and after Sara’s lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures our continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

By the Same Author Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy (1996) God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism (2001) Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism (2004) Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, SocioSpiritual and Scientific Revolution (2009) Untouchable God: A Novel (2013)

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual MY MEMOIRS

KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

se ec

Copyright © Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, ­recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 2019 by

se ec SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in

Samya 16 Southern Avenue Kolkata 700026 www.stree-samyabooks.com

SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 18 Cross Street #10-10/11/12 China Square Central Singapore 048423 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in 10.5/13 pts Casablanca by Zaza Eunice, Hosur, Tamil Nadu, India and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-93-81345-41-2 (PB) SAGE Samya Team: Aritra Paul, Amrita Dutta and Guneet Kaur Gulati

To The women who cared for me with their lovingly prepared home cooking: Alli Eeravva, my grandmother, whose cheti vanta I ate in my early years, Kancha Bharathi, my sister-in-law, who did the same for me for most of my life, and for my sisters who did so after our grandmother’s death.

Thank you for choosing a SAGE product! If you have any comment, observation or feedback, I would like to personally hear from you. Please write to me at [email protected] Vivek Mehra, Managing Director and CEO, SAGE India.

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Contents

Prefaceix Chapter 1  Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

1

Chapter 2 Eating the Brains and Learning the Unknown

18

Chapter 3  Getting Free from Saraswathi

31

Chapter 4 The Song of Death and Rebellion against the Priest

53

Chapter 5 Choosing between Two Lusts: Life or Knowledge?

91

Chapter 6  Do Ilaiahs Teach in the University?

151

Chapter 7 Working between Adivasis and Anglicans of India

217

Chapter 8  My Experiments with Untruth

241

Chapter 9 International Victory and National Defeat

289

Chapter 10 What I Ate, How I Wrote and How I Lived

316

Index352 About the Author360

Preface

IN

to write my memoirs. My two books Why I Am Not a Hindu and Post-Hindu India generated debate and controversy among the Brahmin-Baniya readership and at the same time also inspired thousands of young people coming from Dalitbahujan backgrounds. Even the Shudra upper castes like Kammas, Reddys, Marathas, Patels, Jats, among others, took a supportive stand. These two books divided the productive and unproductive forces on caste lines. Because of these books the whole question of production and caste culture came in for a live debate and in the process much ideological discourse got generated about the future course of Indian struggles and transformation. If Ambedkar were to be alive he would have been happy that after him and Mahatma Phule a person from a shepherd community (Dhangar in the Maharashtra context) has taken up the battle at least a little bit further. However, he would have been unhappy that neither he nor Phule left their own life stories written by themselves, which may have told us something different. Even Mahatma Phule who deeply distrusted brahminic writing, had to have his life story told by Dhananjay Keer, a sympathetic Brahmin of Maharashtra. I, therefore, thought I should leave my own account of my life. Given the kind of attacks that the Brahmin-Baniya communities of the Telugu region launched against me recently, I thought I should complete my memoirs as soon as possible. I have been living in an environment of attack on intellectuals fighting for equal rights of people. I have stood by the Dalitbahujan masses all my life. This led me to write it in a hurry. ever Intended

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In 2016–2017 much dust was raised mainly by two communities—the Brahmins and Baniyas—about my intention in writing my two books, which they rather strongly felt have changed the discourse about production relations and the caste system in India. Even within communist circles my books have become a bone of contention. Since both books dealt at length about the nature and character of the Hindu religion and its historicity, the right-wing political forces, mainly Brahmins, Baniyas and Jains, working around the BJP took up a major campaign against my writing. It was in this context that the Arya Vysya community with the support of conservative Brahmins and the BJP launched a major agitation against me personally and also my books. In 2017 the Arya Vysya agitations and death threats created a national and international counter agitation. Mass organizations, student bodies, came in support of me quite openly. In two Telugu states Joint Action Committees (JAC) were formed to defend my writing. Public meetings, dharnas were organized. T-MASS (Telangana Mass and Social Organizations) with which I work has taken up a major campaign. Similarly in Andhra Pradesh the JAC organized several meetings. The university campuses played a key role, apart from the Dalitbahujan, progressive social forces in countering the Arya Vysyas and right-wing forces. This situation also led to several court cases against my books, particularly Post-Hindu India, and Why I Am Not a Hindu also came up for scrutiny in some of the petitions. The court cases involved the Supreme Court of India, the Joint High Court of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states and also about half a dozen local court cases. In 2015 one of my articles ‘Is God a Democrat or Not?’ published in Andhra Jyothy, a popular Telugu newspaper, had to face a court case, and a famous High Court lawyer A. Satyaprasad, who is progressive and stands for democratic values, got it quashed. As I am writing this preface I am going round the First Class Magistrate Courts of Korutla,

Preface

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Jagtial district, and Malkajigiri, Hyderabad, and three other cases are pending in police stations. All of them are filed by the same Arya Vysya forces and when I go to attend the cases they try to attack me in the court premises itself. The attack on 22 November 2017 at Korutla court is well known. However, I have filed a quash petition in the Joint High Court of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the same A. Satyaprasad is arguing on my behalf. Since I have a lot of respect for the Indian constitution and the Indian judiciary I will go through the judicial process. The Brahmin associations of the Telugu states in 2015 attacked my writings. They abused my name Ilaiah as an unworthy name, my caste as not worthy of respect. In order to answer them I had to add the word ‘Shepherd’ to my name, as a mark of my parental profession as it is a most respected profession globally, both spiritually and socially. It was at this stage I decided to write my memoirs because the Brahmin-Baniya castes are respected by the lower castes even though they show disrespect to my caste people. In many parts of India the shepherding communities do not have any sense of being humiliated, disrespected and even abused. They still do not abuse the abuser. This is true of many other OBC communities. A sense of self-­respect needs to be injected into their being through various modes of writing. Autobiography, memoirs, and biography of people who fought against oppression, humiliation and exploitation are definitely better tools. Many people from the Brahmin-Baniya castes have written about their own greatness in their autobiogra­ phies, in English and in the regional languages. But I have not even seen a single autobiography of a person born and brought up in the shepherd community in regional languages, particularly in Telugu, leave alone in English. And also I have no hope of somebody writing an authentic biography of mine from a lower-caste background because they have not yet realized the importance of ­writing their own memoirs.

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An interesting thing happened after Post-Hindu India was dragged to the Supreme Court of India by the Arya Vysya Sangham. On 12 October 2017 a three judge bench of the Supreme Court constituting the following judges gave a historic judgment. Chief Justice Dipak Mishra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud stated: We do not intend to state the facts in detail. Suffice it to say that when an author writes a book, it is his or her right of expression. We do not think that it would be appropriate under Article 32 of the Constitution of India that this Court should ban the book/books. Any request for banning a book of the present nature [Post-Hindu India] has to be strictly scrutinized because every author or writer has a fundamental right to speak out ideas freely and express thoughts adequately. Curtailment of an individual writer/author’s right to freedom of speech and expression should never be lightly viewed. Keeping in view the sanctity of the said right and also bearing in mind that the same has been put on the highest pedestal by this Court, we decline the ambitious prayer made by the petitioner. The writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed.

This judgement gave not only to me but also to Dalitbahujan writers and thinkers confidence that they can write their opinions without any fear of attack or ostracism. Writing is the only medium that can change the conditions of the oppressed Dalitbahujans. After Ambedkar, I took up this task, and this writing has to be done on a continuous basis, generation after generation. There is no doubt that such writing generates fear among the oppressor caste forces. What I have realized in my lifetime is that caste-centred change is resisted more than class-centred change. This is because caste hegemony gets into the bloodstream of people born into those castes. So also caste inferiority gets into the bloodstream of the oppressed castes. Class inferiority could be easily

Preface

xiii

overcome but not caste inferiority. That is the reason why caste struggle is more difficult than class struggle. Since caste is both cultural and economic, the fear of changing caste relations haunts much more than changing class relations. Those castes that constructed indignity of labour as spiritually so feel terrible if the changes are on the cards. Hence the anger against my writing has come from all men (not so much women) who were born and brought up in Brahmin-Baniya communities, irrespective of their ideological location in their political lives. The fear of the basic unproductive castes is that their hegemony gets smashed if my writings are allowed to influence the social forces: castes, classes, groups, interests. It is so because I am a member of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The Backward Classes are the mainstay of the Hindu religion and they are the biggest pillars of the economic activity and service to the Brahmin-Baniyas. Though Dalits are at the base of Indian economic activity, by sheer numbers the OBCs, who have never challenged the Hindu system, are counted as gullible followers of Brahminism. Even if Dalits are given a separate nation, as Ambedkar demanded during the colonial times, the Brahmin-Baniya labour-free life can be lived with the services of the OBCs. If the OBCs move away from Hinduism, like Dalits are doing now in many areas, the very structure of Indian society will change. All the hopes of the oppressor castes will collapse swiftly. Several groups took up a campaign that I am already a Christian convert and that is the reason why I am writing all these books. By writing this book I wanted to tell the nation that it is wrong. My critique of Hinduism, Brahminism and Baniyaism is being done from my positioning as an OBC, who as I said in Why I Am Not a Hindu, is from a large community that has had nothing to do with Hinduism for millennia. But is it more ‘Indian’ than what the upper castes call their nationalism. These memoirs once again will relate that the Dalitbahujans of India

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historically are more nationalists than the castes that have not contributed to the basic production of India. Memoirs by and large deal with people, places, castes, communities, with whom an individual has interacted. In mine I have dealt with institutions, individuals, their behaviour with me, my work and also my intellectual being in a conventional way. Most of the interactions, happenings with individuals I have seen in relation to their caste background, not based on their individualism. Because of caste cultural training of people from their childhood individualism has not yet taken roots in India. By and large we are what we are based on, how we are trained in our caste culture in the childhood. I strongly feel that a keen love for equality and a fair promotion of talent are important for a nation to prosper and challenge the hegemonic countries in the world. My critique of Hinduism, Brahminism and Baniyaism is meant towards evolving a human society of equality in this country and making India a great nation. It is also meant to evolve democratic individualism in India. My purpose is my strength. There were questions, when I was writing this book, whether the caste behaviour of individuals is the same everywhere in India. Particularly if the Brahmin-Baniya readers, who feel a serious critique of those caste cultural, academic and political behaviour in relation to me is generalized too sweepingly because all over India these persons do not behave in the same way. Since these two, Brahmin and Baniya, castes are the major hegemonic castes and they have a pan-Indian existence with the same caste name, they complain, No . . . No . . . this behaviour cannot be generalized for every Brahmin or Baniya living in all parts of India. What they do not realize is that I am generalizing that behaviour based on my experience, interaction working with them, living with them, discussing and debating with them, wherever I did. I cannot talk about people I never met or worked with. That is what memoirs are all about.

Preface

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This is not a research work on communities. Even the research work on a community or a caste cannot study every individual of that community or caste and generalize that community’s culture, character, behaviour, attitude, and so on. Those who do not agree with me have a right to do so. But they cannot stop me exercising my right to come to my own conclusions about communities and castes and their socio-economic and behavioural patterns. The way I want to come to a conclusion is based on my encounter with them and is entirely based on my personal relationship and understanding. This is also true of men and women. A woman’s conclusions cannot be questioned by men when they have no similar experience. Subjective negativism may develop in an individual from an oppressed caste as against an oppressor caste. That is not unexpected. But the oppressor caste could wholly be subjective towards the oppressed castes, which form the base structure of the Indian society. There is a universally known character of a shepherd. When a shepherd sees a baby in the hands of a mother, whose life is in danger along with the baby, the shepherd knows how to mislead even the king who plans to kill that baby and the mother. That kind of misleading of the killer king is actually leading humanity on a proper course of survival: development. As a community the shepherd community is known as the most honest and hard working. It is this community, the world over, known as the community that knows the truth better and lives for taking care of lost sheep. In India for millennia this community has been seen as worthless, wretched and stupid. All my life I lived to change this narrative. When writing the story of an Indian shepherd, I do not need a certificate from the community of priests, who never loved a sheep, never taken care of one in the whole history of this nation. They have no love lost for the shepherds, even now. My generalizations in this book are purposive. Yes, they are biased to some extent to the shepherds, who

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established the base economy, culture, if not politics of Indian society. When the whole community or caste remains oppressed in all spheres that generalization is certainly valid and in their own interest. No social transformer should depend on the opinion of a person from an oppressor caste or community. That is what I did all my life. My memoirs also operate outside the framework of what is usually defined as autobiography, with dates, chronology, events, phases of life and so on. These are memoirs of a Shudra, of a people who are all over India, outnumber others, but are unknown in the written world of India. The most known autobiography in India is that of Mahatma Gandhi, from a Baniya vegetarian background. The other most known autobiography is that of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who was to some extent a de-­ Brahmanized Brahmin (an un-Hindu in his own way, a meatarian, beefarian and an arch enemy of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Quite tragically no Shudra leader of a national stature has written an autobiography or memoirs that I know of, at least. Mahatma Phule, Periyar Ramasamy Naikar, nor Narayana Guru (all were OBCs) did not leave an autobiography of their own. Ambedkar, the Indian messiah of the Dalitbahujans did not leave his own account, but his biography, written by Dhananjay Keer, is a well-known book. Of late, many Dalit writers are writing their own autobiographies or memoirs. But the Other Backward Classes have not even been doing that. In that sense mine is the first story of a Shudra, written in English, to tell the truth upside down from the point of view of the Gandhian truth and also the historical brahminical truth. That is the reason why I wrote Chapter 8, ‘My Experiments with Untruth’, in this book. Truth and Untruth are two different and opposite values from the Dalitbahujan and Brahmin-Baniya points of view and value systems.

Preface

xvii

This book would not have been in this shape but for the support offered by my friends at Samya. Ever since I put my first book Why I Am Not a Hindu, into their hands, their editing has enriched my books and improved their readability. I thank the Samya team for all their editorial fine tuning work from the bottom of my heart. I also thank SAGE for publishing this book jointly with Samya. I thank Mohasina Anjuman Ansari, research assistant at Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, for help in writing this book. I thank all my family members for helping me in various ways all my life. I thank all the productive castes and communities of India, whose labour power helped me to live in the higher educational institutions that have hardly done justice to their productive ethics, culture and history. I hope this autobiography encourages many Shudras (OBCs) to write their own memoirs. Hyderabad, 29 January 2018

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

1 Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

M

y First name is Ilaiah and my family name is Kancha. My newly added name is Shepherd, and this is a decision I took just after the Brahmin organizations of the two Telugu states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana threatened to attack me in May 2016. Thus, my full name now is Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. In South India, particularly in the two Telugu states, we write the family name first and the first name later, unlike the western and eastern Indians, who write their personal name first and family or surname name later. This is also the same when calling or addressing one another orally, in that order. While surnames or family names were rarely mentioned in ancient Indian texts, the origin of personal names in India predominantly denotes the village of origin, occupation, caste, ancestry, and so on. My name Ilaiah has been given by my illiterate shepherd parents out of a devotion to a local deity called Iloni Mallanna. This deity’s original name was Mallaiah, since he was believed to have settled in a village called Iloni, near Warangal. The Iloni Mallanna temple in this village dates back to the eleventh century and was built by the Kakatiya rulers. I was given this name Ilaiah, indicating the fact that the village deity was my God. This is a theophoric name, which is supposed to both invoke and display the protection of the deity. It is a practice in our area that wherever a particular deity exists, that place is also

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

considered to be sacred. So our names come to us either after the deity’s name or from the place’s name. Therefore, there is a spiritual dimension also to most names coming from these geographical regions. My father’s name was Komuraiah and my mother’s Kattamma. These two names also were given by their parents, again after two local deities called Komurelli ­ Mallanna and Kattameedi Mallanna. My elder brother’s name was Kattaiah, given again by my parents after the same deity from which my mother’s name originated. I have four sisters whose names came from the local ­cultural ­context— Mallamma, Butchamma, Ramamma, Laxmamma—all have similar divine name origins. I had an adopted brother (my mother adopted her elder s­ ister’s son before all of us were born), whose name was also Komuraiah. The local God called Mallaiah was believed to have planted himself in three villages of Warangal district: Komurelli, Iloni and Katta. Most of the people of the productive castes, that is, the castes who work with their hands, in that area are given their names after these local deities. My brother’s wife was named Bharathi by her literate father, whose name was Mallaiah, who was believed to be a great shepherd. Many occupational castes, particularly shepherd, gave such names to their children since time immemorial, all relating to the local deities and the surrounding or nearby places. Our family histories revolved around sheep, goats, buffaloes, the terrain that we lived on, and also the deities that we worshipped. Ours was a semi-nomadic family before my grandmother and grandfather’s generation. Their names were Kancha Mallaiah and Kancha Lingamma. After my grandfather’s death, Kancha Lingamma, along with her widowed sister, migrated to a forest zone called the Pakal Lake area and settled in that thick forest. In my family, I was the first to go to school, college and university. My family members for several generations did not know what education or reading and writing meant. Perhaps, many generations

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

3

before my grandmother and grandfather must have had similar names. Since we do not have a family history, even an oral narrative, I do not know how they lived and what their names could have been. But these names around the deities carry a historical lineage and arise from a perspective of the region’s cultural geography. One can find such names all across South India. In Tamil Nadu the name paraiah has itself become an untouchable caste name. Karnataka too has similar names, while Kerala has house names with geographical and spiritual origins. However, this geo-tagging of given names are also prevalent in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra extensively, apart from South India. I do not know the exact etymological meaning of my name. The word ‘Ayya’ stands for father, elder or head in Telugu. Ayya is also written as Aiah in Telugu. Amma is the feminine word. Similarly, Appa stands for father in Kannada. Another view is that ‘iah’ in Telugu meant husband of land and cattle wealth. There is a local discourse that ‘ila’ means land and ‘iah’ means husbanding or taking care. In that area, land does not mean just land, but includes people, cattle, other animals, birds and reptiles. A derivative meaning could be that Ilaiah means one who takes care of land and cattle. Each such name could be having a meaning of its own in that local context. Those who had such names were food producers or cattle rearers. The relationship between land and cattle is very clear. I know for sure that these names have very, very local spiritual cultural roots, which in studies on modern Hinduism were referred to as the little traditions, low culture or lowcaste names. Such names are prevalent all over South India, which is known as the Dravidian Land or Buffalo Belt, because of the colour of this land’s people—black. Not that there are no light-skinned people in South as there are buffaloes in the North. The North is known as the Aryan Cow Belt though there are dark-skinned people there. The civilizations’ formations of these regions are

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

based on Dravidian and Aryan races. If the cow begins to play a more decisive role in the North, the two nation theory of Buffalo Nation and Cow Nation will come to the fore. If the South celebrates Buffalo Nationalism they may celebrate Cow Nationalism. My book Buffalo Nationalism will play a decisive role in the discourse of new nationalism and new ‘Two Nation’ question. The North and western Indian Brahmin-Baniya and Jain vegetarian cow nationalists are responsible for the South-North racial and cultural division. The cow nationalists are anti-developmental forces with primitive views of life and death. The South Indians have always been more modernist and less colour discriminatory. Because of the North Indian brahminic anti-multiculturalism and cow worshipping Hinduism the Buffalo Belt may not be willing to co-exist with such primitive animal worshippers in future. This situation may even lead to a civil war between Buffalo Nationalists and Cow Nationalists. My name also has that typical South Indian specificity. Those who treated it as a name of buffalo people, under the influence of North Indian Vedic literature, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and of Puranic values would have to realize that there is a fundamental difference in many core values between these two cultural values. After 1999 when the Bharatiya Janata Party began to come to power the cultural conflict has increased. The English spelling of my name Ilaiah was believed to be based on the popular pronunciation in the village environment. Quite surprisingly, this spelling was given by my village schoolteacher, Rajalingam, who considered himself a Hindu. In the early 1960s when I was going to school, our schoolteacher’s English was not very well grounded. However, he knew that a name like mine and my brother’s should be spelt in a particular way. My village name was Papaiah Pet, which has also gone into the land revenue administration and police records of the area as such. And obviously, it was named after a person called Papaiah. The

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

5

villagers used to pronounce my name as ‘Iylayya’, as all other similar names are pronounced like that. But when the teacher entered my name in the school register, he entered it in English with a spelling ‘Ilaiah’ and my brother’s name as Kattaiah. And he was the one who taught us to spell and pronounce such local names in that specific way. The pronunciation and the spelling have been matched through a process of this kind of local creativity, where the educated teachers wield a sort of final authority on such matters. After I finished my studies at Narsampet High School, I joined a famous, district-level educational institution, the College of Arts and Science at Hanamkonda, for the PreUniversity Course (PUC). At the college level, there were not many persons who bore names like mine. Most of the students had what I later began to call Hindu names. Vishnu, Venkatesh, Suresh, Srinivas, Shastry, Reddy and Rao, and so on, and they were considered respectable, cultured Hindu names. There were also names like Narsimha Reddy or Narsimha Rao. This name Nara+simha actually mean ‘human lion’ indicating a ferocious nature. Such names came from the Hindu Gods like Narasimha (a halfman half-lion, one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu). Such names were never indicative of positive human values, but of destruction. When a human being becomes a lion, he will develop tendencies of hunting others. I was not aware of the normative implications of this name back then and was feeling sorry for not having a heroic-violent name like that. It appeared that if a name indicates violence, that person bearing it carries more weight in society. Moreover, it indicates that violence is more respectable. A name is one of the indicators of the culture in which it is found. The name Narasimha denoted a high caste. Names, like mine, ending in ‘iah’ denoted a lower caste. What became painful right from my school days was my name—Ilaiah. When I was admitted to Class 8 at Narsampet High School near Warangal, my class teacher,

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Narasimha Chary, the moment he saw the slip that the headmaster wrote to him allotting me to his section said, ‘Why does he send all the useless folks like you to my section? I am not here to teach Ilaiahs, Yellaiahs, Pullaiahs, who know nothing about education, whose brains have nothing to do with education. I cannot suffer teaching you kids, who could never be taught!’ This was Section B and it was supposed to admit less meritorious students as against Section A. His name Narasimha was seen as great and modern. Whereas the names that end with ‘iah’ were considered by schoolteachers and the educated elite as a dirty, low-caste names. They would conclude that our mental capacity was indicated by our names. Consequently, throughout that academic year, I sat in the class with a feeling that I was not as respectable as the other students. The difference between me as a person and my name as an indicator of ‘myself’ disappeared. I began to feel that it was because I must be worthless as a person that a ‘worthless’ name like Ilaiah was given to me. I also began to think that my parents were worthless and cultureless; hence they had given me such a worthless name. Once our parents were seen as worthless in our own eyes, our history was bound to suffer a setback. We were rendered history-less. All along the years of being at school, I had a feeling that this name was causing a loss of respect, dignity, and even loss of life. My brother Kattaiah was also my classmate and we had another classmate called Sambaiah, who came from a toddy tapper’s family. They too must have experienced such humiliation but we never discussed this because that would have killed our spirit even more. In our villages, such names were not a major problem, as I have said earlier many villagers had only such names which end with ‘iah’. In our cultural context, only the Brahmins, Baniyas, Reddys and Raos would not have such names. I used to have a Brahmin classmate in my village school and his last name was Prasad. In my childhood such a name appeared

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

7

to be strange and surprising. All my relatives had names like the one that I had and they were not educated. At one stage I began to feel that with such an undervalued name I should not have been sent to school at all. So I began to feel depressed because of my name and, at the same time, angry with the deities who were the source of such unworthy names. I developed an antipathy to my socio-spiritual culture itself. When one hates one’s own culture one hates one’s own being. That being becomes a being of Nothing. Nothingness was made my cultural content. I felt more depressed in my B.A. class because there were no students with my kind of name. But villages around Hanamkonda town had people who had similar names like that of mine. The earlier mentioned three deities were also found in these nearby villages. But people with high-caste names routinely refused to respect them, as they were known as gods of dirty people, whose bodies would smell of sheep and look like buffaloes. Name, colour and caste were the source of respect and social status, not character, behaviour and knowledge. According to the prevailing local culture, knowledge of production was not considered as true ‘knowledge’. I came to understand that violent names and violent behaviour of persons were part of the knowledge of arrogant people. Deities like that of Mallaiah, who has a huge lower-caste following, whose culture was rooted in animal husbandry and food production and not in the killing of fellow human beings, were never respected. Recently an orthodox brahmin Governor, E.S.C. Narasimhan, of the two Telugu states, visited the Yadagiri Narasimha temple near Hyderabad, roamed around it semi-naked and said Narasimha is the greatest God, the purpose of whose incarnation was to preserve hierarchy. The Governor never visited the temples of Komurelli Mallaiah or Iloni Mallaiah. When the Governor of the state ignores, if not hates, productive deities and loves killer deities, the culture of that people begins to crumble. That is what

8

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

happened in India. Over a period of time the lower-­caste masses began to feel that their spiritual culture is worthless, their names are worthless and finally their beings are made to feel worthless. Several tribal cultures have crumbled within the last seventy years of independence. This is because in the process of Hinduization the nationalist brahminical leadership did not see any contradiction in nationalism and undermining the Dalitbahujan and tribal cultures and promoting the brahminic book-centred deities, images and symbols. In other words they promoted the Vedic cultures and systematically and de-legitimized the mass culture that existed outside the socio-spiritual culture of Hindu Brahminism. At school, I started working more and more to overcome the indignity and humiliation inflicted on us because of what our teachers would call ‘cultural backwardness’, and I scored the highest marks in my school graduation examination. But my marks did not change my status. At college, the feeling of inferiority and indignity only increased. The feeling of having a backward name added to the feeling of looking ugly with the large smallpox spots on my face. Of course a number of people appreciate and admire my mental makeup, my ideas, my way of thinking. Perhaps that has helped me. However, in my early days what mattered in the peer groups were one’s looks and one’s name and the respect of one’s relatives and friends. In order to overcome that humiliated self of mine I focussed more on individualized reading and writing. Added to this was my lack of good English, as the PreUniversity Course (PUC) was being taught in English. To overcome these problems, hopes of learning English and getting a good government job in the future or becoming a doctor, were keeping me in good spirits. But English was a real nut that needed to be cracked. It was said to be ununderstandable, alien. But that was the only language through which one could become a Collector—the bureaucratic head of a district. So I needed to crack that nut.

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

9

One or two lecturers thought that there were a few bright qualities in me, particularly in my effort to learn English and my attitude to hard work. But even they did not expect much from me. The good qualities in me were always written off by what they considered as a backward name and ugly facial features. With all my efforts to overcome them, I got very low grades in my PUC and B.A. that is, what we know in India as a pass in third class or a ‘Gandhi class’. I had opted for biological studies in my PUC and was hoping to get a first class with a lot of hard work. The idea was to get admission into a medical college. But a third class pass dashed those hopes, forcing me to choose English literature as my major in B.A., along with political science and history. When I passed my B.A. in 1974, I hardly had any hope of getting a seat in M.A., as I barely managed to get a third class with about 45 per cent marks. Indignity and humiliation must have had an effect on my mental faculties. In such a situation, I was no longer myself. I was becoming more and more what others wanted me to be. I was constantly trying to work against myself. When my self-worth was forcefully being kept low by the civil society around me, I consequently suffered from a syndrome of low self-esteem. But I continued to learn English in an attempt to overcome that. I would read books and newspapers, whether I understood what I actually was reading or not. I would avoid meeting upper caste, confident young fellows. Reading became part of my suffering. I was learning new words. I used to speak in English only to myself, in front of a mirror because I was afraid to speak to others; not those who knew better English but those who were arrogant as human beings. However, that very same year I got a seat in M.A. Political Science along with History but not in English Literature at Osmania University, Hyderabad, as I had done well in the entrance tests. By then, I was hopeful of becoming an IAS officer, which would give me more respect, status, and of

10

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

course, plenty of money as the discussions in our educational environment revealed. People in the villages used to believe that a Collector can print his own money. I joined the M.A. Political Science course at Osmania University, Hyderabad. During my B.A. course itself I developed a kind of love for political thought, which ­ again was unusual in my university environment. To overcome the humiliation of my personal name and the backward-caste culture, I was focussing on unusual things like reading of political thought and the history of the West. Knowledge of international thought was giving me increasing confidence. Reading the thoughts of Plato and Marx gave me a different outlook on the world. The struggles of slaves and the working class gave me solace that there were people in the world who suffered more than me. I began to slowly turn my weakness into strength. But the essence of my backwardness—my name and my ugly appearance—kept haunting me. After I joined the M.A. in Political Science course, my name, as they wrote it in the rolls—K. Ilaiah—stood so alone. A few others with similar ‘backward’ names, who made it to university, started running round to the State Secretariat to change their names. I remember one Ch. Gopaiah, a research scholar in sociology, went around the State Secretariat month after month, and finally changed his name into Gopala Krishna. He thought that if the Hindu God’s name is adopted, discrimination and social humiliation would come to an end. Nobody in our university knew that all those Hindu Gods and Goddesses were against us. After all, the propaganda about Hindu Gods was all powerful around us. There were two major radical communist student organizations, the Progressive Democratic Students Union (PDSU) and the Radical Students Union (RSU). There was also a rabid Hindu student organization at the university called Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP). But the leaders of both left- and right-wing fundamentalist

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

11

organizations had highfalutin names that were associated with Hindu brahminic culture: Visnuvardhan, Rajavardhan, Prasad, Prabhakar, Rukhmini, Lalitha, Geetha, and so on. An Ilaiah, or a name like that of my mother’s, Kattamma, amidst these names were seen as ugly, irrespective of the ideology of the leaders. With the names like that, which end with ‘iah’, a sense of not being part of the community of high culture was a constant reality for all of us. I too dreamt of going to the Secretariat to change my name. What name would I adopt? I did not have the imagination to choose one that would boost my image. At the same, time a rational being was emerging in me. In such a trauma of transition, it was confusion and not clarity that dominated my thinking. At the same time, when we went back to our village, we were the kings of knowledge. Among the illiterate village masses, I felt I was a master of masters. A deep desire to become an agent of change had started stirring-up in me. This desire kept me going. In the urban other world, my name still continued to be the ugliest of all. More significant was that it was associated with an un-divine ugliness. That feeling of being considered ugly was a constant living reality. Though as a student of English literature, I read that famous saying of Shakespeare ‘What’s in a name?’ I was experiencing the horrors of my name in my day-to-day life. Friends would come to my room, where I would sit alone and read, and suggest, ‘Why don’t you change your name; just go to the Secretariat and get it done.’ Those who were making rounds to the Secretariat would advise me to go along with them. They would tell me that after changing their names, their stature in their friends’ circle has gone up. They would tell me that only then they began to feel that they were a part of the Indian nation. The whole cultural context of what is a ‘good name’ or a ‘bad name’ or a ‘great name’ became the bane of my existence. Only brahminized or Sanskritized or Aryanized names are linked to

12

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

the ‘nationalist’ culture. Indian nationalism was couched in Hindu culture and our names were not considered to be a part of it. I finished my M.A. with a first class in 1976, one of many such grades in my class. At that time I had come under the influence of radical Marxism. Reading political philosophy has become my passion. This was largely due to the influence of a deeply Marxist classmate of mine, Vinayak Kulkarni, a Maharashtrian Brahmin, whose parents had settled down in Hyderabad because of his father’s Central Government job. Having been born in a highly sanskritized Hindu middle-class family, he turned to radical Marxism, then called Naxalism or Maoism. He was an avid reader of political philosophy, and a serious Marxist in outlook and practice. He hated his middle-class culture and decided to become a revolutionary, leaving his fairly good chance of becoming a lecturer in the same university. He wanted me to join him as a revolutionary, but I was reluctant. However, he convinced me to join one of the Maoist groups. He later went on to work among the Bombay slums, and as I write this story, he is living among the tribals of Gujarat, who are moving into Christianity in a substantial way. The Maoist revolution did not alter their life significantly but the Christian mission work made a significant difference to their lives. I soon discovered to my chagrin that even among the Marxist-Maoist circles, there was none with a name like mine: an inferior name with no cultural heritage of reading books and writing. Several youths from Reddy and Rao landlord families also came into that movement, but there was no spiritual sympathy among them. Their caste culture was their protective valve. For us social discrimination, indignity and historically built-in inferiority were non-negotiable even in that ‘noble movement’. The influence of western thought was so overwhelming that we hardly had any Indian philosopher that we could quote or refer to in our discussions. From Plato to Mao, we

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

13

had respect for only non-Indian thinkers. Of course, many a time M.K. Gandhi was one around whom our criticism would revolve. But we were admirers of Marxist thinkers and bitter critics of the Indian nationalists. I began to feel that there was no political, social or economic thought among Indian leaders and there was no single Indian academic thinker whom we could appreciate, who had a worthy enough thought. In those heady Marxist-Maoist days, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was not known as a thinker even to us. Ambedkar’s life story was never part of any school textbook. Unlike Gandhi and Nehru, Tagore, and so on, Ambedkar’s was a deliberately undermined life before the Mandal movement. Among the communist circles at best, he was known as the writer of the Indian constitution, which we dismissed as ‘bourgeois’ and did not appreciate very much. In the organization structures the Indian constitution was seen as a b ­ ourgeois constitution. Several times this question came up for discussion in Left forums that I was part of. Invariably the Indian Constitution was condemned as bourgeois, which should be replaced with a socialist constitution. He was not even on our reading list and not a single book of his was known to us. We were more familiar with the European Renaissance and Reformation than the lines on our own palms. Though I was reading all about the world, the sense of shame of a worthless name—a very, very local name that constantly gets humiliating reference but not reverence—while living in a university, kept haunting me. As students of Marxism, we knew more about the family and personal lives of Marx and Mao than that of our own. Their names appeared to be more culturally respectable than that of any Indian upper-caste or Hindu name. While we were bitter critics of European imperialism and colonialism, we had more respect for their culture, character and civilization. Their names appeared civilizationally far superior to that of Gautam Buddha, communist leader Puchalapalli Sundaraiyya, leave alone Ambedkar. There

14

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

was hardly any discussion about the Islamic heritage. In my M.A. course I studied about the Nizam period but the communist organizations never discussed Indian Islamic culture so that they would handle it before and after the revolution. Quite unfortunately the communist leaders and activists do not seriously study the religious cultures of the world even today. Suddenly one day when I was searching for a Marxist book in the huge cellar racks of the Osmania University library, I came across a book by Isaiah Berlin or a book on Isaiah Berlin. The spelling of his first name was exactly like that of mine except that there was a ‘s’ instead of a ‘l’ (Isaiah—Ilaiah). For a minute I misread the name as Ilaiah Berlin, immediately realizing my mistake. I just picked it up and looked at the spelling of the name quite carefully. His second name was also familiar to me as I read a lot about the city of Berlin. I read a lot about the fall of Berlin at the end of the Second World War and the building of a Berlin Wall after the war. In fact, I knew more about Berlin than about Delhi or Hyderabad. I tried to read the introduction to Isaiah Berlin’s book quite carefully. It said that Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest living philosophers and historians of the world. He was not from Germany but was from the UK (born into a Jewish family of Latvia that moved first to Russia when he was a child and then to the UK; thus ‘Berlin’ was a made up name as many Jews have had to do in the West). I looked at the racks again to find out whether there were any other books that he wrote. And to my surprise, he was a globally renowned living thinker. His ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958) made him most outstanding authority on liberty after John Stuart Mill. Born in 1909 he died in 1997, influencing the whole world with his philosophical and historical writings. I looked at the name once again. I felt as if I were Isaiah, not Ilaiah. That day, in my notebook, I wrote my name in full in the form that his name figured: Ilaiah Kancha, not just Ilaiah K. It sounded new. I thought the name Ilaiah

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

15

Kancha sounded like the name of a world famous historian, philosopher, thinker with whom no Indian thinker would match Isaiah Berlin in contemporary times. I jumped up and down amidst the book racks—a worthless name like mine is very much like that of a world famous historian and philosopher . . . Waa-re-waa! I wanted to find out whether there was any historian, philosopher like that. I looked at the history and philosophy racks with names like Shastry or Sharma or Reddy or Rao, Patel or Chaudhary, Chatterjee or Banerjee I could not find one. Somewhere, I found a book by Neelakanta Shastry. But there was no book authored by a Reddy or Rao in the racks of history. I opened the book of Neelakanta Shastry. It was just an explanatory story book of the history of kings and their wars. Why were Reddys and Raos, who were so powerful in my university and in the state unable to write a book like Isaiah, However, his name was exactly like that of mine? The cultural divide of names between the South India and North India must be located in Vedic Aryan and Dravidian productive cultures. The names that emerged from community occupation, land and animal relationship were projected as unworthy. Even the South Indian Shudra upper castes slowly got influenced with the Vedic and Puranic Brahminism and began to give up their self-respect. This seems to have done more during the freedom struggle. Even among Shudra, Brahmin-Baniya castes of South India, particularly of Telugu, Tamil and Kannada regions there were names that ended with ‘iah’. For example Mamidipudi Venkatrangaiah was a somewhat known Brahmin professor in Andhra University. Konijeti Roshaiah was a senior Baniya leader, who became the Chief Minister of the state and later Governor of Tamil Nadu. Siddaramaiah, who came from a similar shepherd caste like mine went on to become the Chief Minister of Karnataka. However, the upper castes of the South also began to give up such names in the post-independence

16

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

period of Brahmanization. But I experienced the horror of humiliation with the cultural ignorance of the upper-caste boys, girls and even of teachers. Then I began to consider what could have been the source of a name like mine in the Bible, but such names do not have Vedic origins. The Bible has several names that end with ‘iah’, apart from Isaiah. Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Zechariah are the most well known. A name is also an indication of the cultural heritage of the community and civilization. It was at this stage that I had to decide that I should continue with my name as a proud Indian, that too, a South Indian Dravida citizen. My later experience, the struggle for a place in history with the same name proved that I took a right decision. Even after getting the highest degree, Ph.D., in a university like Osmania, even after becoming a professor in that university, constantly looking back to my roots with dignity and self-respect shaped my mental framework and cultural character in subsequent years. Social humiliation in the formative days and years of life may lead to distress, suicidal tendencies, or it may lead to driving persons to acquire violent behaviour with an urge for revenge. One can even become a terrorist with cumulative anger that got stored up from the days of school and college. In my case it turned into something else. It forced me to get into the furrows of an unwritten history of the humiliated communities. I realized that my humiliated name and self are not an individual issue. These collective entities deprive some and enrich some. My identity and its expression for millennia, more particularly the written mode of expression, has a history of its own. My humiliated name gave the adventurous opportunity to challenge the others, who are powerful, deceitful with multiple weapons of destruction, selfishness and crookedness at their command. I am therefore all the more grateful to my illiterate parents, who gave me a name that was similar to that of the great Israelite prophet, Isaiah. Once the Aryan culture

Is Ilaiah an Unworthy Name?

17

constructed caste and migrated down to South India, great names like Mallaiah, which exist in very popular divine forms even now, were reduced to an unworthy status. They established temples to Aryan deities in South India too. For example, in Telangana a Rama temple is built with massive money and the Komurelli Mallaiah, Iloni Mallaiah temples were reduced to nothing. The agrarian deities have become small cultural deities and the war mongering invader deities have been projected as big cultural deities. Normally the battlefield does not develop a philosophy of human equality. As Mahabharata and Ramayana developed ideas of more and more wars and killing, the epics only developed destructive and cunning ideas. On the other hand agrarian production, cattle rearing constantly negotiates and renegotiates human relations. Since their struggle with nature is part of production and for the common good, their need is to love others in the community. Not that landed property did not engender oppressive and coercive systems but even then production is source of life and war is source of destruction. The deities that my ancestors worshiped do not even have their roots in landlordism or aggressive property ownership. Hence my name that came from such a primitive spiritual source of South India became my property of pride and self-respect in my future life. If Shakespeare said, What’s in a name?’ I would say a name is everything in India. Let me, however, turn to my childhood and see how I was made what I am now.

2 Eating the Brains and Learning the Unknown

IV

aguely Remember that it was what we called kodikuutha yalla, a time of deep sleep. It was the early 1960s. I heard all kinds of sounds—of men talking and murmuring—was I dreaming? The village clock in those days were the cocks that kept waking up men and women to start their day’s work. I suddenly got up to see as to what was happening around me. The cocks were continuing to ring their alarm bells.

Kokkuroo…Kooo Kokkuroo…Kooo

That was the perpetual tone of that bell. That alarm. And one after the other several cocks rang the bell in multitude voices to wake as many people as possible. Nobody had a wristwatch in my village but the cock’s wake up bell would ring around 4 a.m. of watch time. I looked around. My mother along with all other female members went to the murky village roadside that was their toilet. Children like me, that, too, boys, could go any time and shit around roadside. But once the day broke even the girls of my age, ten or twelve, had a terrible problem. They could not squat on the roadside. One would have to search for a bushy place to hide behind to ease oneself in the daytime. Such places were becoming rare, as denuding of bushy lands and expanding of agriculture were taking place quite fast.

Eating the Brains and Learning the Unknown

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On festive days the village had more population to spoil the roadside. The earlier the women and girls went to a neater patch the better they would feel because there was no worry about passersby. Every woman’s constant worry was to protect her honour. Sometimes stomach pressures made their life miserable. Somehow I used to think that my village women had sphincters that withstood that pressure; these were lacking in men. Bhatkamma Panduga, the flower bed festival, followed by Dasara (for us this was a festival of meat eating and liquor drinking, for upper castes it was a festival of worshipping weapons, Ayudha Puja) would come one after the other. Thus, the whole festive days in the mid-rainy season would cover ten days. To celebrate this festival all married daughters, aada biddalu, would come to their parental homes and enjoy the activities of the combined festival for ten days. For women Panduga was most important as every woman of the house was supposed to get the best possible new clothes and as much gold and silver ornaments as possible from the parent families. Women and girls wore their multi-colour clothing during that festival, particularly in the evenings. To make their daughters happy, parents would take loans and buy silk clothes. They would also buy as much jewellery as possible. The first nine days were meant exclusively for the aada biddalu, and Dasara was for men, as it brought a massive celebration of day-long drink and dance. Eating the best available meat on that day got treated as celestial significance. Men gathered around the well in our backyard during the early hours to cut the best rams and male goats for the Dasara feast. This took place in my house as we were the Pedda Gollas, the head of the shepherd families of the village. All my sisters and their husbands landed up for that festival, and our house was full of people in that season. Each one of us, particularly children like me, would wait for that season because that was when we all got new

20

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

clothes. Every day the pleasure of going along the procession with flowers placed in copper plates to different places around the village would leave a feeling of ecstasy in our memories. Of course, the ninth day called saddulu had the biggest procession, with people dressed in their very best. There was a fairly big tank on the western side. Usually at the time of the Bhatkamma the tank would be full as it was in the middle of the rainy season and the lush greenery gave a feeling both of desolation and hope for the future. The flourishing green crops around the village would be the hope of our tomorrow. In any drought year the festival would be dull. Unhappiness came with the heavy rain because there was hardly any place to play. The rain alone would fill the tanks and wells. When we went to play Bhatkamma frogs would keep singing songs. The songs of frogs meant different things to different people. Bekaa…Bekaa…Bekaa Rukh…Rukh…Rukh Bekaa…Bekaa…Beka

Frogs jumped from pool to pool and pond to pond and left a scene of life. Sometimes a frog sat over another one, gripping the lower one in its arms. Some elders would warn us not to see such sights. The just weeded paddy fields kept moving like waves of water back and forth, which was worth watching, and fun to play around. We all hoped for sunny, clear days during Bhatkamma and Dasara. The year in which we did not hear frog songs our elders would tell us that it would be a year of drought and daridram or poverty. That year we had very good rains, a year of kaalam, of rains and crops, but not of karuvu, drought. There was an excitement in the air. That year Bhatkamma was going to be big. All the farmers looked happy and hence bought good clothes to their children. We also went to Warangal on a bullock cart along with our mother and bought the best clothes ever. It was a year of hope.

Eating the Brains and Learning the Unknown

21

About a dozen fellow caste men were already gathered in the backyard of my house and were talking all kinds of things near the well. Someone said. ‘Cut—cut.’ Another person said, No…no… we have to pour water on the body of the ram and put a turmeric bottu on its head and see whether the Goddess sits over it and makes his body jerk and his ears flutter.’ What happened later I did not realize. I went back to sleep again. They cut four healthy well-grown rams and a tall hefty male goat (not halal but full throat cut). I got up just at a time when the cattle were supposed to be released from the night halt place called Doddi, where each one of them was tied to a pole with a rope. As it was the Dasara festival day, the ram and goat meat was meant for distribution among all the members of shepherds and goatherds. On every Dasara day my family was supposed to get the better deal, receiving the brains of the killed sheep and goat and extra thigh meat as the head shepherd’s bonus. Along with caste men there was a Chakali and a Mangali man to do the real work of cutting the animals, skinning them off and putting equal heaps of meat. They too got their own share of meat apart from the skins for sale. It was a bit of meat socialism in our homes. The women came back much before the day broke. They swept the surroundings of the house and mixed water with cattle dung and sprinkled the dung water all around the house. My mother meanwhile pasted the inner floor of the house with red soil and drew muggu patterns in white with a powder. My elder brothers brought mango leaves and the yellow banthi flowers and made garlands of leaves and flowers, putting them across the doors of the entire house. A day before, that is, on the Saddulu day, we had made a big Bhatkamma with thangedu and banthi flowers so that the Pedda Golla family’s Bhatkamma would stand out in the procession. On that day I was going in the Bhatkamma procession with new clothes on. Because of my silly childish behaviour I really gave a bad name to my

22

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

Figure 2.1 Family group; fourth from left, brother Kattaiah; next to him author; third from right, Kattaiah’s wife, Bharathi, next to her author’s sister Ramakka and her family (author’s collection).

family. As the Bhatkamma procession was proceeding I targeted the daughter of the Police Patel (who incidentally belonged to my own caste) and hit her with a small green fruit called papedkaya, putting it in my wooden gun. Her father, Kore Veeraiah, somehow had managed to get the Police Patel job, which was generally assigned to Reddy or Velama landlords. However, it hit that girl hard in her back; she bleated like lamb and that disturbed the whole procession. Her mother ran after me to beat me, all along scolding, ‘You bastard! How dare you hit my daughter!’ The girl’s mother and my mother had a heated argument over the incident. A full blown fight was averted because of the intervention of other villagers who explained that it was part of the children’s game and that festival was meant for that kind of male-female playfulness. The fun of hitting at a girl one chooses was part of that festival but the rivalry between the two families was aggravated by that incident.

Eating the Brains and Learning the Unknown

23

It preyed on my mind and that gave me a disturbed night. But the Bhatkamma song that was sung by almost by all the women that late evening at the back waters of our village tank had a special imprint on my mind too. Bhatkamma . . .Bhatkamma . . .Uyyalo, Bhangaru. . .Bhatkamma . . .Uyyalo, Palu Perugu Techi. . .Uyyalo, Pantallu. . .Techindi. . .Uyyalo, Vaanallu . . .Techindi. . .Uyyalo, Vaagulla. . .Techndi. . .Uyyalo, Cheruvulu. . .Nimpindi. . .Uyyalo, Pasupu. . .Kunkuma. . .Thoti. . .Uyyalo, Muthaidu. . .Lochindru. . .Uyyalo, Bhatkamma. . .Bhatkamma. . .Uyyalo, Bangaru. . .Bhatkamma. . .Uyyalo. (Bhatkamma. . . O. . .Bhatkmma! (You are Gold and the only Gold for us. You brought the rain, You made the ravines flow, You filled the tanks. We, the married women have come. We brought you turmeric and kumkum For your glory and well-being. Bhatkamma. . . O. . .Bhatkamma Bless us for this year.)

I just got up, jerking my body to see the whole range of things happening in a collective combat in the backyard. The rams and goat heads were being roasted in a glowing fire and the aroma spread all around the house. Rubbing my eyes I went there to see the meat heaps and the burning animal heads. One of the old men sitting there asked me to clean my teeth with a neem stick and he gave me one, he was holding many in his hands. He then said, ‘Go and get ready. You have to eat the brains that would be cooked on fire in a chippa, a small earthen bowl. You are the youngest boy of the head’s family and you deserve it.’

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

The old man asked me to bring some chilli powder, salt and little spice powder and oil. He put some oil in the chippa. Put all the brains in that and sprinkled the required chilli powder, salt and spice powder and fried it up in oil. The smell was fabulous. The biggest portion was given to me. I could never forget the taste of it and for several subsequent years I ate this dish. As I was eating the fried brains of the ram and goat the old man said ‘ Son eat . . . eat. We can eat only on such occasions. Few years ago half of the herd was going to the ZagirdarDora’s family.’ He continued, ‘That bastard . . . was born to a Muslim Nawab—you know when one Turka Nawab fellow, came for hunting to Pakal Lake. You know…you know… that he fathered that landlord. And that Nawab bastard wrote all this area in his name as he was his own son. But no respectable family gave him a girl, you know. Then he took some unknown woman as his wife. So his sons are called in all sorts of names. They are now not Reddys. Their gurus are Brahmins. They suck our blood and eat our brains. My grandson, eat this goat brain your brain will grow. You are going to school . . . where brain . . . brain but not body is important. Eat . . . eat a lot of brain so that your brain will grow.’ There was much anger against Mahaboob Reddy’s family. Abuses used to be on lips the moment his name came up for discussion. What was his relationship to Nizam of Hyderabad, who was his wife, was a matter of speculation. Nobody knew exactly what his family’s social evolution. The speculations were nothing but an expression of their anti-feudal aggression. As the Nizam’s rule ended his family power collapsed. The masses of our area were picking up the courage to abuse the history, the heritage and the culture of that family. My village was one of many such subject villages that had just begun to feel free to abuse their abusers in the past. They began to count the brain cells of their brain eaters.

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Meanwhile, Alli Ilaiah, my mother’s younger sister’s husband, arrived from Upparapally village, which is about 17 km. away, walking all the way on that festival day. His two hands were like the hands of a bear and he limped as his knee bone was bent like an arrow. Yet he walked those long miles. He had a lengthy moustache. He was a famous man as he had fought with a bear, which had just delivered her cubs. When his sheep went near her babies the mother bear started killing his sheep. My uncle, according to his own version, ran after the bear to chase it off but the female bear stood up on her legs and hit him with her long nailed hands. He too held her forelegs and tried to push her back. The man and the animal had a big fight. Finally he defeated her and saved his flock but in the process got wounded badly. His hand and knee bones were broken and bent. They were re-set by a village bone-setter. He then began to be called Guddelugu Ilaiah (Bear Ilaiah). I heard him relate the account of the fight with the bear several times. But that day he was in a different mood. He said, ‘You know, my son, many of us could fight these bears very easily. These bears were trying to break only our bones. But the human bears—the Reddy ­landlords—these dreadful animals were breaking our skulls and eating our brains every day’. This was the result of land becoming the property of a few people. The landlordism of Telangana was most barbaric and the Nizam state was interested only in getting the revenue from the landlords and did not provide any means of keeping them in control. The shepherds were the worst affected people as they had to graze their sheep and goats in those lands and forests. The Golla-Kurumas of his area were the victims of the Janna Reddy family who were big zamindars with a significant vatan from the Nizam. Though the Nizam was a Muslim, we were under the control of his feudal Hindu subordinates, mostly Reddys. All the lands, waters, forests and above all people’s lives were under their control.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

In our taluka Mahaboob Reddy owned most of the land. The shepherds had to pay huge taxes for being allowed to graze their sheep on the green grass around the waste and forest lands. Even for the sheep to drink water in and around the tanks they had to pay tax. The shepherds had to give a certain number of sheep on every festive occasion. As the government was pushing its machinery the forest guards called choukidars, sardars and range officials were making rounds mainly to put a check on the movements of the shepherds. It was quite a long time before independence when my grandmother Kancha Lingamma, a widow, along with her daughter, Komuramma, and son, Komuraiah, migrated from Vursu-Warangal to that forest area along with her sheep and goats. She was one of those who laid the foundation stone, boddu rai, of Papaiah Pet village. How that village was named as Papaiah Pet I do not know. It actually should have been Lingamma Pet. Kancha Lingamma played a key role in shaping up the economy and culture of that village, as many of my relatives told me. It is said that one fisherman called Papaiah and my grandmother seem to have settled there and the village is named after Papaiah as Papaiah Pet, as the patriarchal relations were strengthening in that area. Caste, fragmentation, untouchability, forced illiteracy among all the Shudra castes, kept the whole village so backward and underdeveloped that even among the most brilliant brains there was no imagination that went beyond their horizons. There was no education among them at any point of time in their history. Their imagination was only experience-based. The Pakal Lake area was a dense forest even around the time I was born. In the late forties and early fifties our villages had barely jumped out of a tribal existence. My village had about eleven castes. The lowest of all were the Madigas, above them were the Chakalis (dhobis), Barbers, above them fell the caste of toddy tappers, the Goudas, above them was my caste called Kuruma-Gollas, then came the

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Mudirajas whose main occupation was fishing and fruit gathering. In my childhood they too were turning to agrarian labour-cum-fishing-cum-fruit gathering. There were Kummaris (pot makers) in between. There were three Vadrangi (carpenting-cum-ironsmithing) families in the village. They themselves were ironsmiths too. Over and above them were Kapus, who were just then adding the title Reddy to their names only to establish a nexus with the Reddy landlords of the area. There were about four Velama families. Apart from all these families there were several Lambada families living in clusters called thandas around the village. In fact the largest population was that of Lambadas. In addition to these Shudra castes, there were two Komati (Baniya) families, which were said to have settled in that village a few years before but by the time I began to go out with our family sheep and cattle they were known as rich business and moneylending families. There was one Brahmin family, whose only delicate son became my classmate and subsequently they migrated to an urban centre of which I have no clue. His name was very different from ours. It was something like S.V.V. Prasad. He never played with us. Never ate with us and drank with us. That only Brahmin house used to be on the western side of the village so that the wind would first touch their house and go over rest of the houses. The two Baniya houses were located in the middle of the village. Their children also never played with us. When we went to the Baniya shop to buy sweetmeats called pipparametlu they used to ask us to put the money on the desk and throw the pieces at us, that too from a distance. Around the Baniya shop there was not only Dalit untouchability but also Shudra untouchability. The Madiga wada was to the east of the village, and remains so even now. They could not go inside the compound walls of the Baniya house where they were treated as untouchable.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

The caste structure was thus in the village and it was encircled by the thandas of the Lambada tribes who carried out cultivation in tiny plots and had some kind of a cattle economy. The Kurumas were undergoing a torturous transition during that period as they hardly had any agrarian skills and their cultivating culture was zero. The men were occupied with the sheep and the women were in the village, doing their many tasks, fearful of castes higher than them who would humiliate, maltreat them, subjecting them to all kinds of exploitation. My grandmother broke through the cordon put by the Islamized Mahaboob Reddy. She organized within her caste, went and talked to him to reduce the tax that the caste would pay, and to reduce the number of rams and male goats they needed to give them every year for their feasts. If there were a marriage among the Mahaboob Reddys, the Kurumas would tremble. They would be forced to give several sheep and goats. My grandmother took the first step to limit this loot. She was known as bold Lingamma. My childhood took place in the transitional economy of Telangana. The Telangana Armed Struggle had ended in 1948. As my date of birth in the school record indicates 5 October 1952 (which was decided by my school teacher but not my God), I was born, if not on that date in that year, then certainly in a period of transition from the Nizam’s rule to democratic rule in the early 1950s. The popular memory of my village had no idea of independence or of the longer Nizam rule; what they knew was that that ruler of the area was Mahaboob Reddy of Dwaraka Pet as well as a new dora—lord—called Epuru Laxma Reddy of Gudur was ruling them. All the Shudra castes were under his unquestionable authority. After Mahaboob Reddy died his sons, Narayana Rao and Ranga Rao, lost control of their feudal estate and in their place the Epuri Reddys of Gudur came to prominence. The youngest Mahaboob Reddy’s son, Ram Babu

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(he had no Rao tag to his name), went to America and once he returned with a white woman as his wife. Having returned from America with a white wife he started tilling the land, cleaning the rice with his own hands. His white wife was actively involved in such labour. It was a talk of the time. The son of a feudal lord, that too having returned from America with a white wife, was doing field work. After sometime it was said that he returned to America and died there. How? Nobody knew. But gradually that whole area went out of the clutches of the Mahaboob Reddy’s family and their system of brutality and its semi-medieval feudalism. Instead, my village moved into the grip of Gudur modern political feudalism.  Epuri Laxma Reddy and his cousins were in command of all our villages when I was in my village school. The Epuri Reddys used their proper Reddy titles, established connections with Janna Reddy families who controlled the nearby Mahboobabad Taluq and linked themselves up to Hyderabad. If my grandmother, Kancha Lingamma, had to deal with Mahaboob Reddy, my mother had to deal with a Congress Reddy dora Epuri Laxma Reddy, who was almost a lifetime Member of the Legislative Council (MLC), which could be had without contesting any election. The talk in the village was that because of Laxma Reddy a single teacher government school was started in my village just then in the mid-1950s. But for a long time there was no teacher. Maybe nobody was willing to come there. The landlords worked to establish a school but they would also see that no teacher taught there. Their firm belief was that if the village children begin to go to school no farm workers would be available in the villages. Several landlords in that area ordered the teachers not to teach but to take the salary with a cut for the landlords’ too and look after their own family affairs, agriculture or other things in the village. If the landlords of the Nizam period were brain-­eaters, the post-independence landlords were manipulators,

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modern controllers and vote mobilizers and brain ­pickers too. Thus the vote came to my village earlier than the school in the year that I was said to have been born by my school certificate: 1952. That was the year in which the First General Election also took place. Thus my grandmother had to deal with a zagirdari autonomous feudal lord and my mother with post-independence Congress politicians who mediated between feudalism and democracy. Maybe school education got some attention after the formation of Andhra Pradesh as a separate state, by combining all Telugu-speaking regions. Incidentally one of the earliest teachers to have been appointed there was of the Padmashali caste (Padmashalis were weavers, who took to dwijahood, that is, being twice-born, though Brahmins never recognized them as dwijas). Rajalingam changed the course of my life at a time when I was eating goat and sheep brains and the local landlords were eating the people’s brains. The village knew no bus. There was no road connected to any town. The nearest bigger town was Narsampet, which was our taluka headquarters. I would have been eight when I went to school. How both my brother and I went to school at a late age even after starting our career of cattle- and sheep- and goat-rearing is a story in itself.

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uddenly, One morning, Rajalingam came to my house when my mother was sprinkling buffalo and cowdung water around our house. He had worn trousers and a bush shirt with rubber slippers on his feet. What attracted me most were his clean white feet with blue slippers. His longish face with curly black hair made me think that he was an unusual man from unknown world. He was entirely different from the men I had seen so far. What he wore itself was fancy dress in my village. In his red, long and roundish face and jet black hair, very well combed, he looked like a different animal in the village. As he came home my mother hurriedly left her work and put out a cot and spread a bedsheet on it while he was just standing at a corner politely. That could have been in May or early June of 1960. My mother requested him to sit. For the first time in her life she heard someone address her politely as Kattamma garu, telling her, ‘You must send your two sons to the school.’ My mother heard him attentively. She was in a red-blue sari and black blouse. I was standing at a far distance of that place, listening to their conversation carefully. My mother first resisted his appeal. She said, ‘Ayya, education does not go well with my family. My elder son, Mallaiah, died after we sent him to a private master. I do not want these two beggars to die, as my attha [motherin-law] says Saraswathi would kill our children if they

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are sent to school.’ He tried to convince her that those are superstitious beliefs. Saraswathi would bless them and give them education, said he, with his own understanding of Saraswathi. My mother would not budge. She said, ‘Saraswathi teaches the children of Bapanollu and Komatollu but she becomes a devil when it comes to our children. She will not allow our children to read and write. She will kill them. That is how my elder son died.’ He requested her to think about sending us to school, beginning from that academic year, and left. She gathered some information as to who were sending their children to school. She found out that Kore Veeraiah, who was an arch rival of hers, put his elder daughter, Komuramma (this was the girl whom I hit with my wooden gun on Bhatkamma day), that very year in school. She was of my age. My mother took the opinion of one of our nearest relatives, called Anna Komuraiah, who knew reading and writing. He too advised her to send us to school. Then she bought each one of us a slate and few chalks to write with. She took both my brother Kattaiah and me to school and met with Rajalingam in the school and told him, ‘Ayya . . . Saaru . . . . they will come to school, perekkiyyi (register their names). His eyes had glowed like electric bulbs . . . two more fellows to keep his job alive in the village. He opened a register and asked her roughly when each one of us was born and gave us a birthday, month and year. We have no janma namam or ritual recording of birth time and date with a name, but a school naman (a birth record was created in the school in our names). Now I own that date, month and year as God-given, though I was not a God’s child in terms of the Indian caste system. In the school I became a being with a name that was written on a paper for a future of my own. A date, a month and a year has entered into a log book of history along with my name. So it was for my brother, Kattaiah. But my twin younger sisters were not fortunate enough to get into a school. The Police Patel sent his second daughter,

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Chandrakala, to school as he had no sons. And they too had to stop as they were married when they finished Class 5. I remember when I first went to school I was in my buffalo boy dress: a small panche, loincloth, folded and tucked back in between the buttocks and a half-shirt to cover the upper body. I had bulky silver bangles on my wrists and had small gold earrings in my ears. Within the caste and village culture for a child to wear such things on child’s body was a symbol of well-being. But quite surprisingly my brother never had such earrings. Even now those holes are there in my ears. We never knew what knickers or underpants were. Like a frog that jumped out of well on the shore I jumped out of larger field world of free movements into a well called school. A feeling of being confined haunted me all along. Of all the things, sitting with folded legs on small leaf mats that we carried along with us from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break was the most torturous course. Right from the age of five my brother and I had begun to have a jungle life. I already had the experience of tending cattle, sheep and goats. In the field-world one does not focus one’s eyes on just one thing. One sees many things at a time. You have the cattle or sheep having their own variety of behaviours, moving, running and eating before you. At the age seven, I was a master of a flock. We were woken up early morning. By then the cattle would have been untied from the poles. We used to have some buffaloes to give milk, some cows to procreate bulls for tilling the land. We had two pairs of cattle that were meant to till the land. They would get the priority of feeding well, followed by the milking buffaloes. We would go along with them, of course, walking behind them, inhaling all the dust that they raised, crushing the dung they excreted on the way. The most interesting period of cattle grazing was the early monsoon time when rain had given birth to green

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

grass all around the village. Crossing the summer dusty storm season and entering into the monsoon season gave a pleasant feeling, and green grass was beginning to sprout all around the village. The beauty of green grass spreading out like a carpet around the village would give us energy to run all around. We used to play in it, sleep on it. Kottha neeru, rain water, forms ponds all around the village. That is the real pleasant playtime. Exactly at that time the school starts, leaving the summer vacation behind. The feeling of all playtime getting taken away by a jail-like school used to linger around my mind. School was boring; the field was thrilling. The topography of my village has special attractions. To the west we had the tank and the wetlands meant for paddy cultivation. To the north we had the rivulet flowing from Pakal Lake (dug by the Kakatiya dynasty way back in the thirteenth century), to the east the village had some dry crop fields, which would produce mostly jawar, a kind of millet. To the south there were Lambada hamlets, which, as mentioned earlier, had the single largest population. Cattle grazing in the early monsoon times, in the yet to be tilled wet lands that made a green carpet, was fun. Exactly around that time we were put in the school. Our relations with the Pakala Vagu (rivulet that originates in Pakal Lake) were unusually intimate. In summer we spent most of the time there: playing on its banks, swimming in its deep waters, occasionally fishing with a fishing hook, offering the fish a dead earthworm struck to the hook at the other end of the rope. We would wash cattle, sheep in summer, to the full satisfaction of our father, who never would get into the washing business. Our big bulls called Devudeddhu (God) and Ramudeddhu must be washed absolutely clean almost every second day. Otherwise my adopted brother and the farm workers would get enough scolding from my father. He would check them after his nice toddy drink. The excitement of

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sitting in a bullock cart when the big bulls overtake somebody else’s bullock cart is beyond description. We had got used to that world of pleasure and pain that took place in that village environment. Going to school every day was a boring business. I enjoyed the ecstasy of the fun of play and had to suffer the drudgery of the damned place of school. What was outside was a world in itself. That was a life in itself. One always looked at the sky for reading the sun’s movement, then measuring the length of the shade of the tree to work out the timeframe for eating the midday meal, for driving the cattle back home. Everything was naturally measured. Suddenly the school not only took me away from my freedom to engage with nature and cattle or sheep but also brought down my stature from being a master to a pupil. As one among ten to twelve students of Class 1 with a daily routine to learn the letters of the alphabet was a horrible beginning. Suddenly there was a tall, well-clothed, fair-skinned teacher before me controlling me minute after minute. The first day when I sat in the class more looking at the teacher than doing any other thing, the big question in my mind was what does this Big Fair Teacher eat? Does he eat buvva rice, jawar, like we all eat? Does his stomach digest all that my stomach would digest? Even though he was much, much older than us his skin was far more softer than ours. When he touched my hand his palm was softer than that of cotton. Much later we learnt that he was from Karimabad town, which was part of Warangal city. Unlike us, he was urban-bred but committed to his profession: teaching children. He looked like an unusual big animal in an orderly jungle of children who were reading the alphabet aloud: Aa . . . Aaa. . . Ea. . . Eee. Nobody could control our voices, which were habituated to loud shouting. The teacher would order the kids to read a bit quietly but the new comers like me were happy with a shouting sound. For the first few days I was sitting so uncomfortably

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

in the school that I was feeling like running out to the green fields, singing a song while watching the fun of a bull fight, as it was the season of bull fights. Yellavu Yadakochindi, Bullikodelu Yenta Thalignai. Yavardi Gelusthadi . . . Yavardi Gelusthadi, Oha . . . Yellavu . . . Bullikode… Oha . . . Yellavu . . . Bullikode. (The white cow has come to the season of crossing The Big Bulls are running after her. Which will win . . . Which will win? Oha . . . White cow . . . Big Bulls, Oha . . . White cow . . . Big Bulls.)

I began to feel the loss of life . . . the loss of song in the school. That was the time when we used to play chirragoney: village cricket. It was very simple. We took a long bamboo stick with a sharp one side edge, goney karra, and a small roundish stick, chirra, thus, chirragoney. Each batch would consist of six-six or seven-seven, based on the number of boys available on the field. The chirra would be thrown, putting it on the ground in a small hole that we dug called baddhi. The opposite team members would be ready for a catch and if the chirra was caught in the air then the boy who was hitting the chirra into the air would be out and the next person from his batch would take over the batting. If the chirra was not caught in the air it would be thrown towards the person standing at the baddhi, with goney in the hand and he kept on hitting it from the air so that it would not fall, touching any part of the boy holding the goney. If the boy holding the goney hit it back while in the air (like the batsman in the cricket) and if it fell on the ground without getting caught in the air the goney holder scored a point. This game was discovered and played for generations without knowing that cricket

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existed in colonizing England. This was the best and most popular game in the beginning of monsoon, as it was not so hot and the land turned into a green pasture, letting us enjoy the game. I started feeling that school was taking away my pleasure of playing of playing chirragoney. While I was with cattle or sheep I had the freedom to pick up a stone and hit an animal, or a tree for fruit to be felled. I had all kinds of birds playing in front of me. In chitta karthe (this season comes slightly later than the time school begins), the rainy season, watching the dogs fight for the female: a dozen and more male dogs would follow her in a row, biting one another, was part of any child’s funny world of fight for life regeneration. The inimical or friendly relationship of animals, birds, insects, and so on has its ecstasy and fear. Sometimes snakes kept playing a drama in front of my eyes. Fear used to make us run for our lives. Then we would take a stick to hit the snake to kill it but the snake would run into a hole. The fear that a cobra following, once hit but not dead, used to haunt us night after night and day after day. The school took away that challenge: that fun and fear and ecstasy. Life amidst the four walls of the school was not only boring but seemed uncreative and unchallenging. What I missed the most was the thrill of the bull fight. The fight of bulls in the early monsoon season was so thrilling that I used to bet on our bulls versus the others. When they keep fighting I used to feel the tensions and anxieties. When the cow was on heat, an array of bulls kept running after it. In that course bull fights broke out on an unimaginable scale. The big fights of heavy bulls occurred then and there as the cow kept running for safety. That would be a thrilling scene as each bull fought to the finish to possess the cow for itself. But when the fight of the big bulls continued, the cow was mated by some other small fry and afterwards when the winner bull came to the cow she would have gone cold. To watch the frustrated bull turn to green grass was sad but fun as well.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

Watching nature getting re-generated differently than that would happen among humans was a thrill and education. School I felt was just opposite of that; a jail, nowhere to run around, no varieties to look at. No challenges to face on a hourly and daily basis. As a buffalo boy I used to have the fun of guarding the chor or thief buffalo or cow or bull, which kept an eye on somebody else’s green fields of maize or jawar. Within a moment of one’s eye turning to other animals the chor jumped the fence and you too needed to jump with it and get it back to the herd. Some times when the field owner saw that our animal has destroyed his crop he would come running and beat us up. There was fun, fear, challenge and amusement in the everyday field life. I began to feel that the school was boring where I needed to focus my eyes on a slate and the two Telugu letters the teacher wrote for my re-writing on the same lines again and again. I would learn them in no time and turn my eyes to the unpolished and completely cracked walls of the school that were on the verge of collapsing. There was nothing to learn on the walls. I used to turn my eyes to the roof when there was no relief either. I used to turn to my next student and try to cause a quarrel. By every evening a fight situation with one or the other of classmates was the norm. The best way to get out of the school boredom was to get into a fight and generate an environment of challenge, revenge and fun. I was doing plenty of that. Within a week my mother bought a pair of knickers and bush shirts for my brother and me. She allowed us to have a short haircut like every male child in the school had. From clean shaven head to English haircut was a new avatar in itself. We thus moved away from our father’s dress code. A multidimensional new avatar had landed in my family that had a no history. Thus began a divergence from the normal lifestyle of Kuruma boys, particularly from that of my relatives. I began to enjoy that. My penchant for being different seems to have begun from those days.

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During my school days there was no notion of soap in my house. A year or so before I went to the school, I had visited my relative Chitte Earamma’s house in Bollepally, which was about 8 km. away from my village. My mother took me eventually after I had wept for an hour or so while drenching myself with water that dripped out of my nose and mouth. She finally agreed to take me with a promise that I would walk all the distance without creating any ruckus on the way. As my mother walked I almost ran all the way just behind her. My mother was a taskmaster. Once she had said you have to walk non-stop you have to do it. She would not rest either till she reached the other village. Chitte Earamma was yet another female head of the family as her husband had died a long time back and her family was richer than ours. Her grandson Chitte Kattaiah was my age, and he had several very good knickers and bush shirts with a pair of shoes to put on his feet. By then that family was using white Lifebuoy soap for washing clothes and Red Lifebuoy soap for bathing. Chitte Kattaiah was already going to school that had just started in his own village. He was fair and had a beautiful face; whereas my face was of full of smallpox scars and I was dark. He looked like a Brahmin landlord’s boy. There was none like him among my other relatives. In addition he wore very good clothes, neatly washed and ironed too. His grandmother bought shoes for him too. They had a much bigger modern house instead of our mud-wall, rough-tiled roof house. I felt as if I had seen a different way of life, a different experience of childhood. I wanted to have a bath with soap and wash my loincloth and half-shirt with soap. Chitte Kattaiah refused to share his soaps with me. I begged my mother to buy such soaps for me too. She took me to an isolated place behind their house and warned me that she would buy these after we got home but not to beg from Chitte Kattaiah. As she promised, the first soap came to my house the day on

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

which we reached home. But I was deprived of knickers and bush shirts of the kind that he wore for more than a year. Once I started to wear rubber slippers, in the place of Madiga cheppulu, or footwear that as Pedda Golla children we could afford (the rest of the caste children of my age would go barefoot along with sheep, goat and cattle, and I was privileged in that sense) a difference of degree began between the Kancha brothers and others of our age in the caste. Because sending two boys of about ten and eight to school who were now no longer part of the workforce of family labour was a sign of wealth in the village. There were many boys of our age in the village and caste who could not afford that luxury (for me, boredom) of sitting in the school. From age six a child in our families, in those days, would come under the proverbial kaallu rekkalandandi kadupetla ninduthadi (unless one works with legs and hands how does one’s stomach get filled)? From my caste of about fifty houses only my family and (the Police Patel) family of Kore Veeraiah could afford sending children to school. These two families were relatively rich, with some sizable land of agriculture; some caste headship power with our family and village Police Patel had power to support his family. His second daughter, Chandrakala, was the first girl to have a very high sounding name in our caste circles. A new consciousness of adopting Hindu names, along with that competition was creeping into our village. After independence, the school had its role in that process. But slightly before the school was founded, the Police Patel bought a radio and that was big news in the village. School education began with all its unfamiliarity at a late age. I began to get accustomed, with our attempt of balancing school and play, of playing rural games after school every day and on Saturday, as that was half-day and the whole of Sunday. Since the arrangement for cattle and sheep tending were adequately made, we were released for full time study, which was a historical departure from

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our family norms, culture and heritage. We have had chirragoney, koti komma (monkey play on the trees), gooleelu games to play on holidays. Running round the village rivulet for variety of fruits, for occasional fishing and also swimming sustained us as we would have sat shut out for five and a half days in that cocoon called school. Within a few days we could learn the alphabet and the basic numbers and went on to study Balashiksha (the Class 1 child reader). Our privileges at home also started growing as we were being seen as learners in our family. Rajalingam was a taskmaster and was interested in teaching as much as possible. He taught the alphabet almost within a month. Within another half a month or so, the numbers up to 100 were taught. The counting of numbers was very familiar to us by then. We used to count the sheep as our sheep got separated from the general village pool every morning because they got mixed up in the nights. A shepherd and a dhobi are known for his/ her counting, as one counts animals and the other counts clothes. Aa for Arati (banana tree) Aaa for Aaavu (cow) E for Illu (house) Eee for eega (home fly) Uu. for Uudutha (squirrel) Uuu for Uuuyala (cradle)

But there was no B for Barre (buffalo), with which we were more familiar than the cow, Thus exclusion of the buffalo starts so early in Indian (actually Hindu) school education. Learning was easy. They were familiar things and beings. Even though Aa, Aaa, Ee, Eee, Uu, Uuu. letters were new to us, the symbols like the banana tree, cow, house, home fly, squirrel, and cradle were as familiar as our palms. I leant them just like that. The problem started with the letter rruu for rrushi (saint).

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As the letters moved upwards to our familiar world their connectivity began to disappear. I have never seen a saint in my life: he was sitting with fully grown knotted hair on his head with a beard and legs folded under him. I asked innocently, ‘Who is this rrushi, saaru [sir]? (I did not know how the word ‘sir’ should be pronounced. But the English word even by the early 1960s had become ‘saaru’ in our village Telugu). Rajalingam gave an answer with a folded hands and revered face. A great divine human being, who sits in the forest and does tapasya, meditation. No further question was possible at that stage. I pretended to have understood and closed my eyes too. Much more serious problems started with the first bigger lesson in the Balashiksha. Cheitha Venna Muddha, Chengalava Puudanda, Bangaru Molathradu, Pattu Datti, ……………. …………….. Chinni Krishna, Ninnu Cheri Koluthu. It translates roughly as: (A butter ball in your hand, A changlva flower garland around your neck, A golden belt around your waist, A silk handkerchief in your hand, O Baby Krishna, I will come and worship you.)

This lesson had blue baby Krishna’s photo, showing him stealing butter from a pot. Though the lesson sounded rhythmic, the story did not relate to our experience. The name Krishna did not originate from our cultural context. Starting with this lesson many other lessons needed to be mugged up at home in the night, putting our books

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around a an oil lamp that was lit by pouring in some mustard oil in a small open earthen bowl, protected from the wind by putting it in niche in the wall called deepam guudu. Every mud-walled house would have three or four such deepam guudus, as our villages did not even have glass protected lamps then. My brother and I mugged up these unfamiliar lessons in a loud voice. In our early school days, my grandmother, Kancha Lingamma’s elder sister, called Alli Earamma (we used to call her Eravva), was living with us. She had become a widow at a young age. Unlike other widows she refused to re-marry and preferred to stay with her younger sister and look after the family as my grandmother worked mainly in the public domain. After her sister’s death her role continued to be the same. My mother too took up the role of her mother-in-law and Alli Earamma continued her role of looking after us. She was dead against our both going to school as she believed that Saraswathi might take us away to heaven or hell early. She would say: Bapani Saraswathi Bathukanistha, Enduku Bidda Badiki—Savana. (Does Brahmin Saraswathi allow you to live? Why, my sons, do you go to school…to die or what).

She was so worried that she would remind us every day that our elder brother Mallaiah had died because the Brahmin devil Saraswathi did not like a Shudra boy going to school. Several times she fought with my mother on the issue of sending us to school. My father, of course, grumbled every time the discussion of our school came up and used to say, ‘Only mother and sons know.’ Obviously he did not like it that we were going to school. Hence he would spit around his sitting space, make faces and look the other way. My mother’s mother, Bala Komuramma, also pleaded with our mother that in our family history, there is none

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who is lettered. Why risk . . . why risk? Saraswathi for a long time was running down my spine. I would suddenly get up in the midnight with Saraswathi haunting me. I did not know what she looked like. Does she look like Pochamma, who sits in the form of a rock in that small temple under the massive mango tree in the chilli garden of Mogili Papi Reddy (who was earlier known as Papaiah but just then his sons were demanding that he should be called as Papi Reddy) or does she look like Katta Maisamma who sits again in white colour stone in the open air on our village tank bund? Our families and caste used to worship Pochamma on a yearly basis. Every year after the rains came, after the seedlings came up, the whole village, except the Brahmin, Baniya, Reddy and Velama families, cooked rice with jaggery in it, to prepare what they called bonam, fully decorated with turmeric paste, kumkum tilaks, neem leaves tied around the new pot in which the sweet food was cooked. By then the crops would have grown little bit. The women would walk with yellow bonam pots on their heads in a procession. We children would wear neatly washed clothes, if not new, on our bodies, put whatever little gold or silver ornaments one would have on our hands and ankles. Men would also bathe and wear their best clothes. They took a ram or he-goat that was dedicated to Pochamma during that year. Those who could not afford a sheep or goat would bring along a chicken. They also brought some toddy drink or village home-made liquor. They offered everything to the Goddess and sacrificed the animal. They used to talk to Pochamma in their own language. Telugu. She was presumed to understand all the blessings that were seen to have been received. Apart from this we Kurumas had our own caste God called Beerappa. Similar bonalu would be done to satisfy him also in the same season. But we never knew Saraswathi as Goddess at all. After my grandmother put the fear in my psyche of Saraswathi killing us if we went to school she would

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appear in my dreams in white sari, white blouse, with untied hair. Actually this was the costume of a female ghost graphically narrated to us in our village stories. I do not remember when I heard about Saraswathi being Chaduvula Talli (Mother of Education). I do not think our teacher Rajalingam shared the same opinion about Saraswathi as my grandmother did. However, I never asked him about the danger of Saraswathi killing us if we were educated. But the fear of getting killed if we read and write haunted me for long time. My mother and grandmother told me that I used to get up in the mid-night shout Ghost . . . Ghost . . . Badi (school) . . . Badi (school). I was a thin and frail and short boy, who narrowly escaped death when I was six months old with a massive attack of smallpox. Then I escaped death when I was six years or so with burns of a winter fire, which disfigured my face. The marks of smallpox on my face and body and the patch of burnt skin on my left cheek have remained with me all my life. In a way I was a demon-stricken boy. My mother used to call a Banjara mantric, who cut limes on my head, turned a living, howling cock around my body and cut its neck in my presence. I looked at the dying chicken with a fear that the Ghost might kill me like that. He used to tell that the Ghost of Education is around me and he had driven it out with the force of his mantra, limes, broken coconuts and with the blood of the cock. My grandmother used to say Ghost Saraswathi needs more blood than any other Ghost. Several months after we joined the school Alli Earavva slowly reconciled to the fact that we were going to school. As we sat and read under the deepam, she would sit with us and keep telling us to stop reading as reading spoilt our eyes and that was also bad for the brain. According to her, reading heated up the brain, made the eyes burn and ooze water. If we read too much that would even boil our brains. This notion of ‘reading books boils the brain’ was around me all the time. When I was tired of reading I

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used to think that my brain was boiling. Whatever she said was held to be the truth because she used to feed us on a daily basis. My mother was always busy looking after caste affairs. Alli Earavva organized our lives. She started fighting with my mother that she was pushing both of us into brain boiling activity. To cool our heads every Sunday she would apply a lot of mustard oil and massage the head and bathe us with very hot water. School education started to change certain basic things in the family. Now along with school occupying the priority position in our daily lives, books coming to our house, Sunday entered into our life as bathing day, that too headbath day. We would wait for that day as we could play the whole day. Once it was dawn, we would play in the field and as the huge red sun kept sinking we felt frustrated, as that day would again come after long six boring days. School had not yet become a place of pleasure. The fear of wrong pronunciation of words like rrushi, Krishna, the hard looks of the teacher, Rajalingam, with red blood lined eyes fully open (his eyes were also big) with a stick in his hands would make us wake up Monday early morning and mug up with proper pronunciation of unfamiliar words and a story that landed in our life through a book. Bad aadiwaram turned into a good Sunday in our life. In a way that was a historical change. If Sunday was not clearing the rust of the whole week, it was washing the boredom of school of the whole week. Historically Mangal Varam (Tuesday) was a sacred day for many Indians. The word ‘mangal’ has been explained as ‘shubham’, which means sacred. Now in South India, married Hindu women wear a gold necklace called mangalasutram. This amounted to wearing a tiny gold plate that was tied to a rope of turmeric colour around their necks, and its significance was that it protected the husband from all kind of dangers. There used to be a strong belief that if a married woman does not have the mangalasutram on her around her neck she is likely to become a

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widow. Though the practice of wearing a mangalasutram has continued, the notion of Mangala Varam being auspicious has gone out of circulation. After the Muslims began to rule India, Islamic ­culture spread across the villages, and even non-Muslims got influenced with the Jhumma prayer day and they too adopted the Friday as their sacred day. Thus, for long time the Friday (Shukra Varam) was a good day and Sunday, which was known as Aadi Vaaram (that is the day of ­beginning) was known as the worst day. That was also known as MadigaCraisthava (Dalit Christian) day. As I said, the importance of Friday came into our villages with the spread of Islamic culture with a Muslim ruler above our villages at Hyderabad till 1948. At the local level Mahaboob Reddy, a pro-Muslim Reddy, was the zamindar and Islamic ­culture was becoming a part of our day-to-day life. Peerila (Moharrum) festival also became one of our festivals. In order to get favours from the Nizam several Reddy landlords, Mahaboob Reddy, for sure, would not only wear pyjama-shervani and the kulla (cap) but also visit the mosque on Friday. Thus, Friday began to be seen as a sacred day in the villages too. Actually for many lower-caste masses Mangala Varam (Tuesday) was the ­ most auspicious day. Now with a school that has become a symbol of colonial Christianity school education in India adopted Sunday—the Sabbath—began to enter into our lives a new day as Holy Day. One of our favourite occasions of my childhood was going to Annaram Dargha with a huge adult ram tied to the bullock cart. It would be killed, cut up and cooked for biryani under the Durga trees. To kill it in the halal mode we used to employ a Muslim Sufi peer, by giving him some money, the skin of the ram and also some mutton. The Dargha celebration takes place on every Friday. Though it was a local Muslim festive place, for many Shudra families it was a place of worship. People would place green datties there. A Muslim medicant would do halal of our ram

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

and he would help us in cooking great biryani, a special dish of the Dargha, in our circles. The bullock cart took a long time to reach Annaram from our village, almost a full night and a half day. On the way our bullock cart had to cross the Gadi (fort) of the Kalleda Velama doras. This was the longest and tallest Gadi I had ever seen. The bullock cart took almost one and half hours to cross the gadi only to enter the huge Kalleda forest. That entire forest belonged to this landlord. Quite a few Kapu families of our village migrated from Kalleda, as they could not put up with the atrocities of Kalleda doras. The youngest son of this dora, Madhan Mohan Rao, who studied in Doon school, where Rajiv Gandhi also studied, became my contemporary, studying economics at Osmania University. Feudalism had its heyday during the Nizam’s rule and became Islamized. The encouragement to such Dargha culture in that feudal estate was part of that feudal acculturation. Though Friday began to be replaced with a Christian Sabbath day, Friday still remains as the day of wealth. If anybody asked for turmeric on Friday my mother would never give any because turmeric was a symbol of wealth in our families. Since we went to school Sunday began to gain importance. We would also demand that any big thing should be done on Sunday as it was a holiday. So our grandmother cooling our boiling brains with oil bath became part of that Sunday activity. Later when I read somewhere ‘Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week’ I did not understand what it meant. But in our early school days at least once in a week the sweat and dust on the head was getting washed with a good oil bath. As I have said, Alli Earavva was also always worried about the possibility of our losing our eyesight since we focused reading such small letters. She would plead with us to close the books as soon as possible. But when I did not like to read I wanted her to force me to close the book as early as possible. My brother, Kattaiah, unlike me, used to read for longer hours and always got more marks than

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me. I slowly began to become jealous of my brother as he used to stand first in the class. In a very short period we both became pet students of Rajalingam. As we were moving on to higher classes, third, fourth and fifth (that was the last class in my village), our grandmother Alli Earavva’s brain boiling theory began to increase to intolerable levels. She was fighting with us and our mother on a daily basis, using choicest abuses against our self-­ destructive ­ education. She became tense and unstable as we began become more and more indifferent to her opposition to reading. One fine morning at Kodikuutha Poddu, around 4 a.m., she went to her usual open air toilet and came back and kept her copper tumbler at the backyard golem, big water container, and fell down and died. It appeared that she had had a cerebral haemorrhage. When she died Avva did not arrange her funeral rites performance from our home, as she did not belong to the Kancha lineage. My father led her funeral procession with a pot in his hands (talagoru); all other activities were performed at our field’s well. That too was finished with a minimum activity: no gangireddulas and no kaatipapalas (those beggars who ring bells sitting on the funeral fire place and take money were not called). This hurt me a lot. She had taken care of us, much more than our mother had. But after her death she was being treated as a non-family member. A deep sense of guilt filled my heart and whenever I was reminded of her I wept. Since I weep very easily, my mother’s mother would call me a boy of girl’s heart. In our cultural context men were not supposed to weep, however, big the problem one faced. In that sense I was unusual.  As long as we were in the village school our association with cattle, sheep, goats, and so on, remained intimate. Washing the cattle in summer, as that would keep them healthy, was an activity that involved enormous pleasure. Swimming in the village rivulet, occasional attempts to till the land, though I was not so strong enough to hold the

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

Figure 3.1 From left, Kancha Ilaiah and his elder brother Kancha Kattaiah, at Narsampet, 1969 (author’s collection).

plough in full grip, my intimate relationship with agrarian operations left me a lifetime ally of agrarian relations. My educational journey from a single teacher under the free primary school in my village to an upcoming high school at Gudur, a bigger village 7 k.m. away from my village, to an established high school at Narsampet was wrought with fear and anxiety. Thin and frail, I had to cook along with my brother, who was usually never involved in cooking. I was dead scared of so-called evil spirits on our way from the village to Gudur and Narsampet. I remember as I was going to Gudur from my village there used to be a small stone temple called

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Peddamma temple. As I was walking past the temple I used to feel that a ghost was running after me. I would run without looking back till I met somebody on the way. If I could not see anybody near around the fields, then I used to shiver and shake. Once I was going alone and began to feel that Maisamma was coming to grip me. I ran and ran. From a distance I saw somebody walking towards me. I felt relieved. As we were told many ghost stories, fear was all around me. In the nights I used to feel Maisamma would come to kill me. There was a small river between my village and Gudur. In the rainy season we had to cross it by swimming as otherwise we would miss our classes. By then I not only overcame the class-jail concept but began to enjoy the new knowledge that was getting into me from the six teachers who taught six different subjects in six periods. From Class 6 onwards English began to become my favourite subject. I therefore gathered all my strength to swim across the river even when it was flowing full with one hand, carrying the food items with the other hand. Once I almost drowned but my brother, who was far greater swimmer, let go of his bag with food and saved me. We had to live with borrowed food for that whole week. My love for English began to grow because of its easily writable letters, that too only twenty-six. I thought that Telugu and Hindi letters were designed to drive away children from learning and English letters were designed to make us learn. Though the English teacher called Laxminarayana was boring the lessons used to be absorbing and attractive, even though more lessons were from European writers. Quite spontaneously I started paying more attention to English. Since the alphabet was easy to write, the sentence formation was much easier than Telugu. For example, writing ‘A’ in English is much more easier than writing the first letter ‘Aa’ in Telugu. I found English sentence writing to be more grammar hassle free than Telugu sentence writing or Hindi sentence writing.

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Whether South Indian Dravidian script writing or North Indian Aryan Hindi script, they are more unfriendly to learners than English as a language. This may be very pure subjective feeling and experience. Yet it is noteworthy. All Indian languages could be better written in roman script, as many do in social media on mobiles and computers. Many rural non-English writing people write such SMS messages on mobile. A shepherd boy, who could not have got admission in any urban convent school, as his parents were illiterate from the first generation to his generation (I do not know of how many centuries), fell in love with English. What that love did to him is a history.

4 The Song of Death and Rebellion against the Priest

O

n A Hot summer day in June, my mother, Kattamma, had just returned from her work in the fields at around 5 p.m. She did not look herself. She was always a sturdy walker. But that day she was walking slowly, dragging her feet with painful steps. Her face seemed blacker than usual. She was a jet black person with a brightness of her own. Her eyes used to be always shining and sharp. That day, her face appeared heavy and there was no brightness to be seen. As she approached the shades of our house I could see her eyelids drooping. Her jet black hair remained very untidy, she looked unusually different. When going to the field she used to runs her nails through her hair to tidy it, and when leaving the field she would do that again. She would try to return as fresh looking as possible from a long hard day in the fields. But that day she did not seem to have bothered about her hair, even though she had sweated all through a long day’s work and her skin had shown salty traces but she did not wipe them with her pallu draped over her left shoulder, which she usually did. She always had a long pallu on her left shoulder and took it from behind her back and belted it up to her waist. When she needed to, she untied the belted pallu and turned it into a towel. Her short and tightly tucked in sari was so soiled that it looked as though she had bathed quite a long time back. I had never seen her face in that form even when she was angry or when she was hungry

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and suffering acutely. She was never, never like how she appeared that day. That day somehow was different. About half a dozen crows were shouting in criss-­ crossing tones, jumping from house to house, cauw . . . cauw . . . cauw . . . sitting on different corners of the top of the houses within our mud walled compound, as my mother was entering. We had four tiled and mud walled houses in a semi-crammed space. Two were meant for cattle, sheep and goat, one for our exclusive living. Another one was for our workers, men who would share shelter with our cattle. We used to have friendly family relations with them, if they belonged to Shudra families. If they were from Madiga families we kept them away from the main house, like the crows whose entry into the house was seen as bad and deadly. The crows were sitting, shouting and were jumping from one house to another. Of course, no crow entered our house even on that day, but they continued with their cacophony, which was new, at least around my house. My mother used to tell us, if one crow shouts, at least one relative would come . . . and a crow’s cry used to be seen as a positive sign. But I have known on several occasions many relatives have come to my house unannounced without the singing signs of crows. The belief goes that if many crows cawed at the same time something unusual would happen. If somebody saw crows mating he/she would die. Such stories were not only told by my mother but also by many of my relatives; stories in which all of us believed, a belief that was as important as a belief in our Gods and Goddesses. My father, Komuraiah, was about to go for his routine toddy drink. So as not to miss that toddy drink he never left the village. In our village drinking time used to be called kalluyalla, toddy time, just as the meal eating time was known as buvva yaalla. Sometimes he used to take me along with him to the house of the toddy tapper where I too drank toddy with him only to come back home to create a ruckus about the food that was offered to me.

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When I drank toddy I needed to eat neechu: mutton, chicken or fish. But to get that neechu every day in a shepherd-farming family was almost impossible, so it was substituted at least by a dry fish curry cooked in tamarind liquid called vattichapala pulusu. For a fifteen-yearold boy with a feeble body, a murky face full of smallpox spots, eating neechu had become almost a daily habit. My older brother Kattaiah was never as lucky as me to go to the toddy tapper’s house along with my father and drink. Ayya, as we addresed our father, thought that the youngest son was more eligible for encouraging a love of drinking toddy. Of course, for the rest of the family there would be a pot full of toddy delivered to our home as it was contracted to be supplied on a yearly basis. But that pot full of toddy which came home did not match that of Ayya’s, as his lottikallu was a privileged drink: a small and special pot of juice from the palm tree, which was known as vaaduka kallu, a regular drink, about a litre and half in quantity, cost more than the normal price. It was drawn from only one toddy tree and only a few could enjoy such a drink in my village. That day my father and I were about to leave for that privileged drink. My mother just then stumbled in and looked very, very abnormal. At that time, as mentioned earlier, my family was just transforming itself from a shepherding one over generations to a semi-agrarian one. The trauma of the transition was felt in the family, because my father had no idea how to till the land whereas my mother picked up every agrarian activity very quickly. Around that time we had begun employing two farm workers. We also had an older adopted brother from my mother’s sister’s family. However, a conflict developed between the sister, her husband and my mother. Maybe he and his wife did not like my biological brother Kattaiah and my going to school. Naturally, this created tension in the family and so when my mother returned home looking abnormally disturbed and troubled, I thought this was the cause.

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Her whole body looked blacker than normal. Her left arm was swollen as she had taken an injection in it two days back. I hardly understood what was in store at that time. Her sharp eyes lost that distinct sharpness. Her milk white teeth could not be seen between her normally smiling lips. She did not ask her usual motherly question: ‘Did you eat, my son?’ In her sweet and soft tone. Her strange behaviour was actually making me run amok, all the while thinking about Ayya’s offer of taking me to that sour-sweet toddy. ‘I am feeling bad’, she said, as she went to the backyard of the house through a lane between two mud-tiled houses we had at that time. Even now we have those two houses standing side by side. She came to the arugu, the verandah, and sat wiping her face with her pallu while sitting with her bare legs crossed up to her knees. That was her usual style of sitting on the arugu. She would fold her sari and tuck it in between her thighs above her knees. My father never wore a shirt on his body and always lived like a replica of the Gandhi statue in our village, which had specs on his eyes, a stick in one hand and a book in another hand. I did not know who installed that Gandhi Taata Bomma (Grandpa Gandhi’s statue) as we used to call him. But whenever I used to see him and compare him next to my father they used to look similar with their bare bodies, clean shaven faces. My father had a jittu, a tuft of hair on his head too, as did the Gandhi stature in my village. My father covered his head with a white turban, leaving a long tail of fine white cotton hanging down his back. He did not care about what my mother was saying. He was sitting on his folded legs stretching his back to a wooden pole. He used to sit for hours on his legs like that. He was just listening to what my mother was saying without any expression. ‘Something strange is happening in my head and body’ said my mother, again. ‘My eyes are reeling. My body is becoming stiff’, she said for the second time. My father quite indifferently said, ‘Call that Kamma old Dakasari

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(doctor) fellow and ask him to give an injection.’ He spat all around himself and wiped his mouth with his hanging rumalu, picking it up with his left hand from his back. That indifference was rooted in his anxiety of going for his drink of toddy. He was not seriously interested to find out what was happening to my mother. Enquiry was never part of his life. In his whole life he was not seriously interested in anything. But that day a hidden tension could be seen on his face too. In tension and anger he pulled his lips up and down. His nose kept jumping like a frog. He put his hands on his clean shaven head and kept pressing it and stroking it with his fingers, putting his head down. He spat all around himself. Cleanliness and hygiene were not his concerns. While smoking chutta, a cigar, spitting all around him was his usual habit. I used to think that Ayya and anger were born twins. But he never ever beat his children. He would only grumble and spit loudly when somebody was not listening to him. I had never seen him initiating anything. He was always dependant on what our Avva decided. He was also not interested in the disease that was growing in her body. That kind of indifference was cultural. For him, she was capable of managing everything including the disease that was growing in her black roundish body of an average height. Not that he did not love her. But his love had no expressions in any public visible form. He never used to call her by name nor she him. Even if they went to another village they never walked side by side. Ayya used to walk far in front of her and Avva walked far behind him. They did not have affectionate words to say to each other in public. Everything appreciative about each other was deeply hidden, maybe in their hearts. I never saw them quarrelling either. But Avva told us in his absence that she was beaten by him several times when she miscarried her pregnancies much before we were born. They finally adopted her sister’s son and our arrival followed after.

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I was the fifth surviving child, followed by twin girls. After my grandmother’s death, my mother took over the management of the house. My father never dared to beat her afterwards. He was his mother’s follower when she was alive and after her death he was his wife’s follower. Under Avva’s headship our family economy improved. Our total dependence on sheep and goat decreased, our agrarian production increased and the family income steadily grew. My father’s skills in agrarian operations were limited. I never saw him handling the plough by himself. He was sort of supervising both the care of sheep and agriculture. As I have indicated, his knowledge of sheep and goat was deep but of agriculture it was peripheral. My mother was very knowledgeable in both the fields. That was why the caste men and women were more dependent on her knowledge of male and female tasks. In the 1960s my father was leading a rather leisurely life and my mother was in the peak of activities building up the economy of both family and caste. In his leisurely life he used to smoke more chuttas and drink toddy in the morning and evening. If anything disturbed that routine he used to get angry and upset. His habit of spitting increased when he felt disturbed, angry and upset. That was more or less the conduct of the caste men and of the village men’s conduct too. Grumbling, spitting, cursing and abusing somebody who happened to be within one’s vicinity were natural habits of our men in that cultural context. My father would abuse the nature, air and anything around him without any serious ill will towards that person or object. Similarly he abused the disease that was growing in his wife’s body. Of course, all that gave legitimacy for going for his dear drink. As she was sinking he was dreaming about his toddy drink of the day. My younger sisters, the twins, were born two years after me, and were married at the same time in a dual ceremony, one to a nearby relative, another to a distantly

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known caste shepherd boy. These two sisters still lived at home with us as they were married at twelve years old; child marriage was the custom of the caste culture. These twin sisters, Ramakka, and the other Laxmakka, were so named because of the influence of the Hindu mythological stories that professed that the God Rama and his brother Laksman were part of ten incarnations of Vishnu. These Gods reached us in childhood as stories that were a part of the Indian nationalist campaign at that time. A relative asked my brother Kattaiah to run to the old Kamma man (quack), who, shouting, ‘I told him to come quickly’. But the old quack was such a slow walker; he took half an hour to reach us from his small shed, which actually was on the other side of the street. My father had already started abusing him in his own style whilst spitting everywhere again. ‘This old bastard walks like this only when he is supposed to be saving the dying. He does not save people but kills them by coming late,’ he said he in a casual tone. Within minutes my mother started losing her senses. We all herded around her, wailing and weeping. Meanwhile some members of our caste heard that my mother was undergoing something unusual. The old quack reached over with a bent body and with shaking hands gave an injection. But that injection never cured her as she was already infected by the injection given two days ago that gave rise to the deadly disease called tetanus (dhanurvaatham). Popularly known as Kancha Kattamma, our mother was like a patriarchal head of the caste while my father was just a figurehead. She would attend all death and birth occasions of the families of the caste. Father went only on major occasions to get the headman’s place, the attention, what used to be popularly known as bottu and kankanam. He would get the first turmeric thilak. A woollen thread would be tied to his wrist. Avva was involved in all ­practical politics of management, and dictated the caste cultural processes. Men too followed her orders. Women also

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gathered around her as they shared their pleasures and pains. Hence the caste people were as worried about her health as we were. Within minutes the news reached the whole village that Kancha Kattamma was not only unwell but she had turned a deep black. Leaving their cooking pots behind every woman started running towards my house. What happened to Kattamma? What happened, Kattavva? There was a steady flow of people. My mother’s mother, Chitte Bala Komuramma, came beating her chest. What happened to my daughter? What happened? For quite some time her younger brother and her mother were not on talking terms with our mother. My mother’s youngest brother, Chitte Komuraiah, had some time back joined the camp of my mother’s enemy, Kore Veeraiah. As my grandmother was living with him she too was not visiting our house. But when my grandmother heard that her daughter was not well she came with the help of her stick. She was the oldest woman in my

Figure 4.1 Kancha Illaiah’s mother, Kattamma, in 1964 (author’s collection).

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family circle at that time. She was sobbing and ­weeping. The Chitte family was much poorer than ours. For as long as I can remember they lived in a tiled house with mud walls. Chitte Komuraiah’s sheep used to be part of our mandha herd of sheep, formed when several flocks of sheep belonging to different families came together, formally headed by my father but in reality headed by my mother. According to my mother, her enemies had lured her brother to destroy her aada pettanam (female headship). For some reason my uncle joined them and was spearheading the fight against my mother. She became so angry that she made them compensate her with money for the valuable help she had rendered while they were building their house, without letting my father know about it. She used to hide only two things from my father: one, her morning chutta smoking, which she definitely indulged herself in whilst going to the toilet, and occasionally when she was in the field; two, the favours that she would do to her younger brother’s family as her mother used to live with them. But by the same token, despite fights, she did many things to help them that were known. For some of them she expected to be paid back. She would not even listen to my father who used to tell her, ‘Forget about them. Whatever you gave them does not belong to us. God will give them whatever belongs to them.’ At least for certain things she managed to force my uncle to pay her back. Until that point she did not relent. That is the reason why my uncle came to Narsampet only after he heard that she was very critical; he had not been to our house for a very long time. Only after her death the family managed to become re-united with great difficulty. The other major problem between the two families was that there was no possibility of continuing the meinarikam (blood relationship through marriage). There was no matching girl to be given either to my brother or to me

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from their family. There was a feeling among them that the generational meinarikam was going to be cut. In addition we were becoming educated; hence we may not care for this custom. The fear of breaking custom brings its own tension, rivalry and arguments, which may well break the remaining family ties. These two families were fortunate or unfortunate enough to have had several generations of meinarikam. How much that effected the growth of our physical and mental health I had no idea. One thing was physically verifiable even by then: all of us were weak. As my mother was losing consciousness, she said, ‘I am worried about my sons. They should have been married by now. But that has not happened.’ She made an attempt to hold my hand. She used to call me her pitchikoduku (mad son), ‘How will my sons survive?’ she said. She tried hard to hold my hand, but she could not do so as she was losing consciousness. Hurriedly she was taken in a bullock cart to Narsampet, the taluka headquarters, to a hospital of an R.M.P doctor who was not a graduate in allopathic medicine but a certified doctor as Regular Medical Practitioner. That was the only well-established private hospital available in the town. Our hurry was not the hurry of bulls that pull a cart on a rough path way. Driving the bulls as fast as possible meant they were whipped. While unconscious, mother was lying down in the jerking bullock cart and the bulls were enduring the whip blows of my adopted brother who was driving the cart. The rest of us walked behind the cart on a long narrow track in pitch darkness. We reached Narsampet in the early hours of the next day. As the doctor hardly understood the disease of the patient she died within twenty-four hours. As it is written on her memorial stone she died on 17 June 1967, the first ever recorded date of death in our family history. Before that the family did not know any birth or death date of any member, as we had no notion of calendar dates. The days and years remained in our memory as long as we could remember. When the memory failed

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history ceased to exist. When the doctor declared that she was dead, it was as if hell broke open. We fell on her body and started weeping in our loudest voices. The hospital staff forcefully removed us from her bed and put her body back in the bullock cart. My elder sister Mallamma hugged me and my brother Kattaiah at the gate of the hospital, and weeping, she began a mourning song in a sorrowful voice. The Song of Death Tammulara . . . Na . . . Tammulara Avva Manala Adavi Pal Chesindi—Tammulara, Manaku Adavila Poddu Kukindi—Tammulara, Manadi Andaleni Batukaindi—Tammulara, ManamuTalli Leni Pachulamainamu—Tammulara, Meeru Rekkalu Rani Pachulu—Tammulara, Manaku Puttinappude Rekkalu Levvu—Tammulara, Avva Manaku Rekkalubokkalaindi—Tammulara, Mana Batuku Adavi Kasina Ennilaindi—Tammulara, Mana Batuku Neellu Leni Edaraindi—Tammulara, Meeku Vanta Dikku Ledu, Panta Dikku Ledu—Tammulara, Meeru Bhoommida Etla Bathukuthrra—Thammulara. (Brothers—My Brothers . . . Our mother has left us in the forest—my brothers, For us the sun sank in the forest—my brothers, We have no source of life blood—my brothers, You are birds without wings—my brothers, We did not have wings when we were born—my brothers, Mother was our bones and wings—my brothers. Now our life is like the moon over the forest—my brothers, We are in a desert without water—my brothers, You have neither a crop cutter nor a cook to feed you—my brothers. How do you live on earth—my brothers—O my brothers.)

That afternoon, as she was singing a mourning song in her melodious voice that reached almost to the other end

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of the town, scores of people gathered around us. Many people on cycles and rickshaws stopped on the road to see what had happened and who had died. For the first time from my village we took a mother who was still alive to a place called hospital, paid money for her to die there, and brought her dead body back. Up until that day, all my family members were born at home and died at home. Many of both the old and the younger men attacked us for taking her to hospital after we reached back home and laid her body to rest—finally after a life lived in ­restlessness— in front of our house on a dry bed of hay with a leaf mat and white cloth on it. Her body was covered with a blue sari of hers with her eyes closed, and all her senses were shut down so that she could neither see us nor hear our weeping and chest beating scenes, nor talk to us anymore. Her black face with a shining gold nose button ring still on and golden genteelu hanging to her ears, she was looking as if she were sleeping. The whole village gathered around her dead body: Papam Kancha Kattamma is no more. What a women she was . . . what a woman she was. Many were weeping aloud. The moment her body was laid on the straw bed, my grandmother, Bala Komuramma, fell on her, beating her own chest and head. She was pleading with her to take her away along with her. ‘How do I live and how do you go before my eyes like this. You were the queen of my family. Why did you not talk to me for the last two years?’ And so on. She was forcefully taken away and made to sit in a corner. For the first time my grandmother started narrating her family history while weeping. How many generations of meinarikam the Kancha family and the Chitte family had. She said that it had been five generations. Would that now be cut was her biggest worry. How could that happen? In my mother’s death she was seeing a definite ending in the marital connections within the family.

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Her death was not usual. We were told by the doctor that she died of tetanus. But even in those days there was supposed to be treatment for tetanus. We began to search for the reasons why and how she had contracted this disease. As she was a fighter, the tetanus had its roots in the fight that she had with the village Police Patel, whom the Tahsildar of the area appoints, based on hereditary or on corrupt payments that he received. In our area all the Police Patels used to be Muslims or Reddys who had allegiance to a local talukdar called Mahaboob Reddy. But in this case a skilful semi-literate Kuruma man managed to become Police Patel and he was the only man who used to ride his bicycle from the village to Narsampet, where my brother Kattaiah and I were also studying at school, from which we would graduate. His bicycle was the first ever modern machine that reached our village when we were just kids via the colonial modernization process of India. If the Police Patel was a symbol of modern state power in the village, my mother was a symbol of the traditional caste-cultural power of our own caste. Because she wanted to assert her autonomy from that modern power structure she ran the risk of attack and she was the first and last victim of the modern patriarchal power structure and no other woman of that stature later emerged in our village. She was the last matriarch of the caste. Her robust illiterate mind had all the energy to fight neo-police feudalism. She fought with all the strength, tact and intellect available at her disposal. She had a fight with the family of the village Police Patel and got attacked because he wanted to take over the caste institutional headship under his control and combine both the police and caste institutional authority. My mother was not willing to give away the caste institutional power. She fought several civil disputes in Narsampet Munsiff court. She competed with the Police Patel in corrupting the Munsiff judge by giving him heavy rams and pots of ghee and finally won the case. ‘Corruption should

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be fought with corruption’ was her saying. In those days I hardly understood her emotional energy to fight the enemy on his own war terrain. The only thing that convinced the judge, a Muslim at that, was that everything being equal, justice was on the side of this illiterate shepherd woman. A corrupt judge who got his payments from both sides delivered his judgment in favour of an illiterate steadfast women who was willing to fight against all the odds of modern institutions. To win the case she cooked her food under the trees of the court, slept on the court veranda along with her adopted son to protect her. Later we acquired a small rented shed just behind the high school, nearby the court, as we needed to cook our food and sleep under a roof because we were high school students. It became a centre of her court battles too. She became more and more determined to educate both of us, to see that at least one of us ended up as a lawyer in that court. That became her biggest dream, which we never fulfilled. Apart from fighting the Police Patel she was fighting the forest officials on a daily basis. The village’s herd of sheep needed the forest for grazing, though the forest was far away from our village. The lands around the village were being brought under cultivation and the sheep and goats were being herded around the forest lands. The forest officials called chowkidars and sardars were the most corrupt and they used to harass the herders quite brutally. Their target was the goat herd which survived on forest plant food. The forest officials would visit our house quite frequently and Avva used to provide them sumptuous chicken and mutton curried food with a heavy drink of toddy and government liquor (that was the costliest drink in our village). The caste elders would join in eating this meal with the forest officials. Avva organized all the required things and fed those ‘pigs’ (that was what she used to call them) sitting in the backyard of the house. She would never directly talk to them but they all knew Kancha Kattamma’s abilities to bend their backs. There were several occasions where she

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challenged the lower officials and went to those higher up to prove that they were harassing innocent sheep and goat herders. She won several battles and lost several and suffered monetary losses. Sometimes they would take bribe money and harass the herders and the village Police Patel would collude with the forest officials to harass her supporters. In order to teach a lesson to the Police Patel she fought with him on many counts. Finally she faced a physical attack by men and women of his family on a day of the caste community’s Bayiti Vanta when we cooked and ate together near the forest, requiring the cutting of several rams to propitiate the Nature Goddess for the well-being of sheep and goats. Some of his relatives beat her on her back, leading to heavy chest and back pain. In order to get relief from the pain, she sought an injection from the old quack in the village and that resulted in sepsis which led to her death. My new, enormously critical period of life, started with the death of my mother. She was a heroine to all our family members and for a major section of the caste and also the village. She died before we had seen her major failures. I held her talagoru, the water pot that leads the dead to their destination. As I was walking before the carrier—pade—of Avva’s dead body, held by four people on their shoulders, the whole village was wailing, crying, beating their chests, walking at the back of that shabayatra, the procession of the dead body. I was weeping, beating my chest and head with the left hand while carrying the funeral pot in my right hand, and also laughing at times as I was going mad, making her pet name, mad son, true. The one and only question that was maddening to me was why: why did my mother die when so many people around me were alive? Why? I was abusing all our Goddesses and Gods. I held such a hatred for all those people walking alive while my mother could no longer walk and talk. A world of total irrationality was making me seem mad and was slowly opening up before my eyes. Her body was taken

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to the family field just on the eastern side of the village and put down at what our people call Dimpudu Kallam, a place where they call loudly into the ears of the dead person as a last attempt to see if there is any life left. Her ornaments—her gold earrings, the nose rings, her silver ankle belts—were removed from her dead body, amidst the increased cries of women who gathered around her body in hundreds. My elder sister Mallamma, who was our only source of substance and confidence, was beating her head and chest. ‘Avva how do we live without you and why should we live without you? How about my unmarried brothers? Take all of us with you, was her theme of weeping in mourning style.’ The mourning song-style weeping of women was echoing everywhere. From the Dimpudu Kallam the dead body would go into the firewood heap, around which I was supposed to circle seven times. After each round a hole is put to the pot that I was carrying on my shoulder (the water that flows out each time is considered to be a sacrament). The funeral procession took quite a bit of time. Just before the procession began her body was washed. All her ornaments were put on her body. Her golden upper arm ornament, kadem, her massive earrings called genteelu, her button nose ring, her neck wide ornament, naanu, her silver ankle belts, baavadalu, her silver toe rings (quite huge ones) called mattelu were re-put on her body as if she was going for a marriage. She was not in the habit of putting bottu on her forehead every day but on all special occasions she would sport a bottu. She would put a wide kumkum bottu on festive occasions, otherwise she would put a turmeric bottu. The last bottu was put on that day. She did not possess many silk saris. She had only one silk sari bought on the occasion of my twin sisters’ marriage. It was of a beautiful rose colour. The sari was tied to her that day with a green jacket, for her last journey. She never knew about combing her hair. She used her nails to shape it up after oiling it with her own hands. But that day

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her hair was neatly combed with a comb she bought for others’ use. Her jet black hair that suited her jet black face with a shining gold button in her nose with huge hanging gold earrings, she was looking like a queen of the day. She was now going to rule the other world. She had finished her task of ruling the sheep and their herders here in this world. She had finished her fight with the Patel’s family; perhaps the only family that stayed away from her funeral procession as the forest officials also did. Her body was laid on the funeral bed, which the Madigas of my village prepared beautifully. By custom it was their right to prepare the funeral bed of every villager. That was the time they drank to the brim. They beat the drums and dance in front of the funeral procession. Someone from our caste took charge of looking after the funeral spending and gave them enough money to drink and dance. You drink for the pleasure and satisfaction of the Pedda Golla Kattamma, he said while giving them enough money for their potent local liquor, a drink called sara. The death drums started ringing, which led to the weeping and beating of chests by all our relatives, increasing in speed and echoing in the air. The whole village— men and women—were there to see Kancha Kattamma’s last journey. Some women were saying, ‘Talli Kattavva what have you done? How could you leave your unmarried sons, but married not so grown up daughters?’ As it was late summer the roads were not yet muddy, they were rather dusty. The procession started around midday. The dappu dancers took quite a lot of time on the way as they had to show their talents in picking the rupee coins put on the road thrown by the drum dancers without stopping the drumbeat and bending their bodies so that they could pick the coin with their lips. That was an upcoming art among village Madigas—otherwise untouchables and considered to be people without any art—who had ­displayed an art of dance with drumbeats even in a drunken state.

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My head began to reel. A Kuruma mother who put her two sons in the school, who just finished their Class 9, in Telugu-medium, would be getting burnt within no time. My whole world, though a small world at that, was about to turn into ashes. As I was walking in front of the body’s procession with no shirt on my body, and lot of cold water poured on my entire body including my head, with wet pants, which both my brother and myself started wearing even in the countryside as a mark of colonial education. My body was shaking while holding the funeral pot with a relative, acting as an aide, holding my left hand. I became unconscious as the procession was proceeding. I believe the people around me thought that I too would die. However, I got up. I was getting angry with the village and the street that was now taking my mother’s dead body. Every woman and man who was joining the procession would look into my eyes. ‘Poor fellows, not even married yet’, would be the comment that ran on for years. I felt why had nature done this: killed my mother but not the person standing and looking at me? Why should not the whole village die? Why only my mother? Why not his mother . . . his mother . . . and his mother. I hated all and everything that came into my sight. The notion of death was all around me. The street corners where I played, the shady trees where I escaped the burning sun while playing all day, everything around me appeared to be ugly. The sheep, goats, buffaloes, cows and cattle that I played with, spent my energy on their welfare, were appearing to me as worthless objects. I felt as if the sky was falling in on me. Education for us had no other purpose except what my mother desired us to do. We both, my brother and I, learnt how to write her caste headship accounts. We would write the small loan agreement papers that she entered into with Reddys and of course other caste fellows, who were poorer than us. She was known as,’ generous Kattamma,’ daughter-in-law of her famous mother-in-law, Kancha

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Lingamma, who too was a caste head in the area, while her husband, Kancha Mallaiah, was a figurehead. It was a family of two generations of Ada Pettanam (female headship). Her mother-in-law, after her husband’s death of rat borne disease called nalladattu, migrated to Pakala Patte (Pakal Lake) in search of forest-based green pastures for sheep and goat. Kancha Linagmma was part of a new migrant generation who laid the foundation (Boddu Rai) stone of my village Papaiah Pet. The widowed Lingamma had no alternative but to build her own herd of sheep along with her other child widow sister called Eeramma. Lingamma had a son and daughter. My mother was Lingamma’s younger brother’s daughter, with whom my family followed meinarikam, which was a deadly inbreeding through the intra-family marriage system. Thus, we were born neither with any great health or wealth. Perhaps early death was written to be the fate of our family. As fate would have it on that very day my second sister, Butchamma, in her ninth month of pregnancy developed labour pains just before my mother’s dead body was about to be lifted. The barber woman, Narsamma, who was supposed to follow mother’s funeral procession, took over the responsibility of delivering her, leaving the task of doing the funeral work to Chakali Butchamma. The barbers and washerwomen were part of our caste and family life. They worked for us and ate from our share. But they were certainly given less than what we got. The procession amidst weeping, crying, chest beating and drum music reached our family’s chilli producing field, which was not very far away from my house. The log heap called kaadu meant to cremate her body could be seen from a distance. My sisters started weeping again with new tones of singing, ‘Avva, You are reaching your new house. You left our old house that you yourself built after it was burnt down in an accidental fire about thirteen years back along with the whole village.’ As the song progressed, her paade reached Dimpudu Kallam, just a

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few yards away from her kaadu. With a last, really last, hope that she would respond to that call in her deeper ears and wake up from her death we waited full of anxiety. Somebody took the water pot from me and I was asked to call her aloud, as my call was the most important of all. I called ‘Avva, O Avva come, come back.’ No response. By any stretch of imagination I could think that she would get up at that point. All her ornaments were removed. Her jacket was torn off from behind. Her bottu was rubbed off. Everyone called her, putting one’s mouth deep in her ears. This is where one’s last love towards a dead person is shown. One who does not call the dead pushing one’s mouth deep into the ear would become suspect. We were all looking at my adopted brother and his wife. He must have been in his thirties. After his adoption she used to believe that Goddess Pochamma gave her seven children including my twin sisters. Her own eldest son, Mallaiah, had died at the age of eight after he was sent to a private tutor. Now when we were in Class 6 Saraswathi took our mother away. So the adoption of her sister’s son was good but Saraswathi was angry about our education: maybe as it was meant to be reserved for Brahmins and Baniyas, as the belief went. Education and Saraswathi were said to have been set a curse upon us. My adopted brother and sister-in-law called out to our mother as loud as any one of us did. They were as grieved as us. As the village custom and that of the caste goes, the ornaments removed from a mother’s body at the Dimpudu Kallam would go to her daughters. This is why the daughters were worried as to whether their brothers’ wives would allow all the ornaments that were put on her body for removal at Dimdupu Kallam. ‘Kallam’ in Telugu means a place of profit. This is a place of profit for daughters. My sisters, unlike other daughters, knew all the items of jewellery that our mother had. As luck would have it, my sister who developed labour pains when the funeral

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procession started gave birth to a female child almost exactly at the same time when my mother’s dead body was being buried under an enormous amount of logs and was about to be set alight. The news came as I was going round the kaadu that my sister has delivered a female child, named Shobha. But amidst all the weeping and wailing, some women started saying the dead Kattamma is now born in the womb of Butchamma. Some began to abuse the child, saying that she came only to take away my mother. My body began to shake. While the pain of the permanent loss of my mother was tearing me apart— that jet black face of my mother would be burning within minutes—I thought about the newborn girl. I questioned the impossibility of my mother being born in my sister’s womb. Would my father, who loved his toddy even on the deathbed of my mother, bother to see the face of that girl who had nothing to do with her death? After the seventh round I forgot the water pot being carried on my shoulder. It fell and broke into pieces as my family broke into pieces bereft of its head. The death of my mother left the headship to my father who never knew how to head it in its day-to-day functioning. The uncle who was in the camp of Kore Veeraiah, who was my mother’s arch enemy, whose men beat her which resulted in her being forced into taking that old quack’s injection, was holding my hand, even though I detested him doing so. Life divided and death united. All her enemies came to weep for her death. Weeping on such occasions took on several forms. Real and heartfelt weeping where the loss of life would impact the entire existence mechanism of family, caste and community; the other one was pretentious weeping for public consumption that was superficial. Those who were weeping because of their depth of feeling were the ones telling the stories of my mother’s daily activities. You helped my daughter when she was delivering, said one woman; you gave me money when my son was sick was another ­woman’s comment.

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Many Madiga women were weeping as loudly as they could. ‘You gave some rice just yesterday. My family had full bellies after two days of fasting and of going hungry. You are a mother who fed us in our hunger’, were some of the story narratives one could hear even in the midst of the noise of the drum. They forgot the exploitative relations that they had with my mother. She was the mistress with a soft tongue for Dalits. At the same time she was a subject of the feudal lord of the area, Mahabub Reddy’s family, with trembling obedience. When the shepherds reported that the sheep and goat were eating and living well she would feel as if she herself were eating well. She would practice untouchability towards others but would do that softly. My mother had several friends from our caste and other castes of the village community. The Madigas and Lambadas, Gouds, Mudirajus, Chakalis, and so on, were in the real weeping camp apart from my family members and her own Manda members, those of the herd groups. There were others who would weep for the loss of past memory, and there was general sympathy for us (my brother and me) who were not married. My brother did not get married until late into life, about seventeen years old. All along the funeral procession I was hearing utterances about us, poor fellows, who were not yet married because of that unfortunate abstinence enforced by their mother for paduchaduvu (bad and meaningless education). At the age of seventeen, or even fifteen, to be unmarried and without a wife to accompany one on a mother’s funeral procession itself was bad enough and to this an added bad omen was that her daughter delivered her first baby while her kaadu was being set alight. These were stories to be talked about for months in the village and other villages that were located around us in the semi-forested area. That village has a rivulet flowing by and the Warangal kingdom. After I lit the fire to my mother’s log buried

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body I was taken immediately to the Pakal rivulet. I visited the source, Pakal Lake, only once as one needed to take a bus journey that cost a great deal for us. As students we walked a distance of 17 km since there was no other transport facility from my village to Narsampet where the high school, Taluka headquarters, the Munsheef Court and the biggest market of that area were located. Visiting even that Pakal Lake was a big event in our life. My mother had never seen that lake. Though she would discuss the news she heard about it being full or halfempty or half-full. As I was having the funeral bath in cold water along with men and women of my caste and village the toddy drink was already waiting for all of us. This drink was a symbolic one for the beginning of a new future. I was supposed to have the first drink as the funeral pot holder, as the son who holds a direction to my mother’s soul in heaven that was said to be located above the skies. As I held the moduguaaku leaf that was usually used to drink toddy, while a Gouda man kept on pouring the drink in a thin flow, rather artfully, I began to gulp the toddy and also to think about my mother’s soul that would be omnipresent around me whilst I was having this symbolic drink. When she was alive she would drink toddy after everyone in the house had drunk some. She would smoke her modugu leaf chutta only in the early morning around 4 a.m. while going to the open air toilet. One day when I took some tobacco for my secret chutta smoking, my mother beat me so heavily that I rolled like a dying snake on the ground. She said, ‘You bloody thief, don’t you know that those who go to school should not smoke chutta?’ That day, I gave up my chutta but continued to drink toddy. That day I was drinking for her soul but not for my intoxication. I never forgot what the toddy tapper said while pouring the drink into my leaf doppa. ‘My son what a tragedy you encounter now. The only thing that will leave your mother restless, even in swarga

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is that you and your brother are not married. What is the use of wealth and education when a mother dies, leaving her grown up sons unmarried. She will keep weeping constantly in the other world.’ That statement churned my stomach. Our lack of marriage partners was destined to deny a swarga seat to my mother. I was exposed as a sinner. But I had some solace in that my brother too shared a part of that sin, in fact, a bigger share, as he was older. As we were walking back home after burning my mother’s body, having washed our bodies clean, without any soap, just with cold water, having had funeral toddy and liquor, looking a little drunk, my mother’s elder sister’s son (whom we call peddavva koduku) who was younger by a year or so and had got married some time ago, was talking with a friend of his about our family’s cursed days. The sun was about to sink then. Cattle were also returning home. The clouds of dust were all around us. For us it was a long day which had passed like a minute as Avva’s physical body, if not her talking soul, was leaving us and we had to burn her body brutally, burnt her in the presence of everybody. I lit the fire. That scene of lighting her body laid down under logs came before my eyes, again and again. The toddy inside me and the guilt of not getting married when she was alive was making me walk like a dead animal. I began to feel that I myself was a living ghost. Such a deadly day was ending, leaving all its curses on us. Those three-four days of sleeplessness, the tearful sorrowful songs of my sisters ringing out ever since she died in the hospital, were resounding in my ears. Then I overheard my cousin’s comment. ‘This family got surrounded by ghosts and omens ever since these fellows started going to school. Where on earth did we see Kurumas going to school? That thing was meant for Baapanollu and Komatollu. She dying like this suddenly without even getting these fellows married is an indication of those ghost signs. I doubt whether they

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have “that thing” to get married and sustain their wives. I heard all those fellows who go to school turn impotent as they keep on reading those bloody books. We are lucky. Our mother did not send us to school. In fact my mother persuaded my aunt to not send these fellows to school,’ said he with a sense of pride and self-respect. ‘Now things came this far,’ said the other man walking besides him, pitying us not for the loss of our mother but pitying the loss of our potency. ‘Poor fellows what life would they have without that and without marriage,’ said he again. I put a towel around my head and neck. I preferred to hide myself within the folds of my towel. I pretended as if I did not hear their conversation. After some time we all reached home only to listen to one more round of weeping ragas about the achievements of Avva. The day of death, crying, chest beating, the day that saw all human potencies evaporate like water from a boiling pot evaporates. Never to return again. That night I went to sleep as an impotent son of a potent mother. The third day, the fifth day, passed by with customary activity of cleaning Avva’s kaadu, gathering the ashes and bones and putting them in different pots so that they could be placed right in the middle of her memorial gadde, which we decided to build for the first time in our family history. The final day to bid farewell to her soul, the eleventh day, came in. The whole caste, in fact the whole village would feast by cutting up as many sheep and goats as possible. Our economic condition was not at all good. Our mother had fought court cases, bought all the necessary agrarian inputs for that year. But this unexpected death of Pedda Golla Avva had to be met with feasting for everybody who wanted to attend that day’s feast of lunch. By 5 a.m. a team of bull dancers called gangireddulas, a team of kaatipapalas (who play games with musical instruments on the kaadu, and sleep on it until they get

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a sufficient amount of donations in her name) reached our home. It was a house of full scale noise. The relatives poured in. Whenever a new relative arrived yet another round of weeping by almost all the female members took place. They would hug each other and weep by telling the story of Avva as they knew it, as they remembered. Since I was emotionally settled by then I listened to their method of storytelling through weeping. I vividly remember how the younger sister of my mother, whose husband fought with a bear and survived, who lived at a village called Upparapalli, 12 k.m. away from my village, wept telling a rhythmic story of Avva’s success and failures. They walked that distance within three hours. As she arrived she started weeping in a rhythmic song of mother’s story. Akko . . . Na . . . Akka, Nuvvu . . . Ee vurantha Elinavei . . . Akka. Nee Cheti GanjiTaaganollu Leeru . . . Akka. Nuvvu Andari Pendlillu Chesinave . . . Akka. Nee Kodukula Pendli Evvaru Chyyale . . . Akka. Nee Kodukula Badikenuduku Tolthive . . . Akka. Mankachiki Raadani Telvada . . . Akka. Manam Bammandla Manukunnava . . . Akka. Manam Komatla Manukunnava . . . Akka. Akkoo…Naa…Akka. Manda Kosam Mandini Bathikistivi . . . Akka. Nee Biddelemi Kavvale . . . Akkaa Vallee Deevuni Notle Mannu Posiri . . . Akka. Mana Devathalaketla NyayamKadu . . . Akka. Nuvvu Ee Mandanetla Pastivi . . . Akka. Nuvvu Ee Kulannetla Pastivi . . . Akka. (Sister . . . O . . . my Sister. You have ruled this whole village . . . Sister. There are no people who did not eat food off your hands . . . my sister. You performed everyone’s marriage . . . my sister. But who should perform the marriages of your sons… my sister?

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Why did you send them to school . . . my dear sister . . .? Don’t you know that education is ominous in our families? Did you think that we are Brahmins . . . O Sister? Or did you think we are Baniyas . . . my sister? O sister, my sister, you worked for sheep herders. O Sister, my sister, you neglected your own children . . . my sister. What should happen to your children . . . my sister? Did they throw any dust in our Gods’ eyes . . . my sister. How do our Gods justify your death . . . my sister? How did you part with all your herds . . . my sister? How did you part with your caste . . . my sister?)

She hugged me tighter than anybody else, as she was singing this weeping song. For ten minutes she continued, all the while weeping and hugging each one of us: my brother Kattaiah, my sisters Mallamma, Buchamma, Laxmakka, Ramakka. She did not hug my father as she was his younger sister-in-law hence was not supposed to touch him. I was getting tired of these hugging and weeping songs as they would remind me of my mother again and again. But at the same time, I was learning her history from various angles. The weeping mourning songs began that morning as that was the final day of collective remembrance. Each particular woman relative wept in a particular manner, in a particular tone. For the first time I began to realize that Avva had tremendous influence on the people around her. She was a woman among women and a man among men. In those days all those who held the surname, Kancha were not supposed to enter the kitchen even into the inner parts of the house. My father, my two brothers and the wife of my adopted brother, Odemma, and I were untouchables for the rest, as we belonged to her vamsham (lineage, more often known as suudakam. Only my sisters,

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their husbands and all their children took care of the inner house, cooking for us and taking care of all the household chores until the eleventh day of mourning had ended. On the eleventh day the final chaavu snanam (death bath) takes place in the same Pakala rivulet which marks the end of the mourning period. Before the bath the men of my mother’s immediate family, my father, two brothers and me, had to shave our heads. Until the men had clean shaven heads and women have had their cold water head baths we could not enter into the house. The long eleven days of mourning would finally end with another round of weeping, drinking and feasting. That practice was known as Dinaalu. Another full one year mourning period was also expected. After the feast of the year-long mourning period, my mother would be joined with the elders of my family who died before her. On the eleventh day by 7 a.m. one Brahmin called Venkat Prasad and another, Jangmayya, known as Jangam Lingaiah, arrived on their bicycles. Bicycle owners were looked upon with amusement, particularly by children in those days. We all gathered and went to visit the kaadu. Yet another round of weeping by relatives took place. The kaadu was cleaned and pasted with thick dung water. Our relatives put muggu (decorative drawing with white powder) on the entire kaadu. The twin pots containing ashes and bones were lifted and placed at the memorial we had built. The Brahmin and the Jangam remained at my home where they were occupied with preparing their own food for the feast. They refrained from eating each other’s food. The moment they arrived they were each given some rice, plus all the vegetarian requirements: vegetable, dal, ghee, oil, milk, and so on, for their spiritual cooking. Since they did not trust and respect each other they preferred to cook their food separately. They belonged to two different and opposite sects: Vaishnavism and Veerashaivism.

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Touchability and untouchability go beyond caste and operate among the sects in Hinduism. After preparing the spiritual food that was not meant for my mother nor for their Gods, but for their own feast, they went directly to the rivulet and were waiting for us to arrive. The gangiredulas and kaatipapalas reached the kaadu before we could get there. At once they began their games. The gangireddulas asked their most beautifully decorated bulls to run round the kaadu. High sounding bells were tied to their forelegs. My mother’s greatness was sung. Their flutes were tuned to praise Kancha Kattamma to the sky. To our utter surprise they had collected quite a lot of information about her life and activities. After the decorated bulls in almost seven rainbow colours, had run around the kaadu, the big bull was called to its centre. The elderly man asked the bull some questions and guided it to act in a manner that resembled an answer. As there were two midsummer rains that year, green grass was sprouting all around Avva’s gadde. Our dry land around the gadde was already tilled for seedlings. One young gangireddula man ran in front of the bull, asking the bull to run and show his skills. He then began to demonstrate his bulls’ acting. What a training they had been given! Ore, Basavanna do you say Kancha Kattmma is great? The bull lifted its right foreleg, Do you think she is happy in the heaven? The bull nodded its head and shook its ears. Her husband, Kancha Komuraiah, His father, the younger Kancha Mallaiah, His father, the senior Kancha Mallaiah, Her sons, the younger Kancha Komuraiah,, Kattaiah, Ilaiah, All are great—do you agree? The bull nodded and lifted its forelegs one after the other. In the honour of Kancha family you stand on my stomach.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual He lay down in the midst of the kaadu. The bull climbed on his stomach holding its breath fully within itself. Kancha dynasty is great . . . Kancha dynasty is great… They all sang in chorus. This was followed by the Kaatipapala play. They started ringing their bells, half a dozen of them. Kancha Kattamma Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho Her husband, Komuraiah Ho . . . Ho. His father, Mallaiah Ho . . . Ho. His father, senor Mallaiah, Ho . . . Ho. Kattamma’s sons, Komuraiah, Kattaiah, Ilaiah Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho. They moved away from the kaadu.

Until the gangireddulas and kaatipapalas related the family genealogy I had no idea about my family history. The only occasion on which we used to hear my grandfather’s name was the day of petaramavasya (the first day of the Bhatkamma festival on a no-moon day/moonless night) when all the dead family elders would be offered rice and sweetmeats. A Brahmin, accompanied by a Jangam would come to offer rice to elders and take their own share. They would ask about the names of the elders to whom the family was offering the rice. My mother would tell them, Kancha Lingamma, her husband, Kancha Mallaiah, his father, senior Kancha Mallaiah. There the dynasty’s history would end. My mother and father’s eldest son was given that very same name Mallaiah, and their eldest daughter’s name was Mallamma, a feminine version of Mallaiah. In my relatives’ circle there are many Komuraiahs and Komurammas, many Kattaiahs and Kattammas, many Ilaiahs and Ilammas. These names were adopted for both men and women among lower castes of that area because, as I have mentioned earlier, there were Gods with those names: Komirelli Mallanna, Katta Mallanna and Iloni Mallanna. Though the God’s name is the same, at each one of these places there was a temple. Whichever specific

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God’s name is given to a boy or girl the first haircut of that child would take place when the child was one year old in that specific temple, followed by a large celebration. Whilst my mother’s elder sister, Anna Komuramma, was weeping and hugging me, she narrated the torturous course they underwent when they went to cut my first hair at the temple of Iloni Mallanna. This temple was about 50 k.m. away from my village, located on the southern side of Warangal. Several families went there on foot, including my mother and father, taking me with them, though they were uncertain as to what would happen to me on the way. As a baby of six months old, I miraculously survived a brutal attack of smallpox along with my brother, Kattaiah, who at two and a half was attacked by the same disease. Goddess Pochamma was believed to have cured us while we were made to sleep in neem leaf beds with constant applications of turmeric to the whole body. As he grew older, my brother was said to have grown in strength, but I remained thin and always looked unhealthy. They decided to take me to Iloni and prepared a bamboo pole with two bamboo baskets at both the ends for carrying luggage or even children. This was called a kavadi. According to my grandmother, I was too small and too weak to be carried on the shoulders. During those three days of our arduous trek I was made to sit and sleep in a basket into which some wool and clothes had been placed to turn it into a soft bed. My father carried that kavadi for three days as I was sleeping or sitting in one basket whilst the other held enough food rations to feed three of us for six days. My mother carried on her head all the clothes along with woollen blankets required for our beds, baths and change of clothes. The special turmeric mixed rice needed to be carried on a human head as well, so my mother combined the two loads. Though they started out on the journey in the early summer season there were unusual rains on the way. This meant halting and sleeping at a village en

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route. They slept through the night until the next morning when my mother decided to clean the basket bed. As she gently lifted the cloth there was a young cobra sleeping in the warmth of the wool. She, it appears, screamed silently. She carefully placed the basket on the ground and the cobra slithered out, only to be beaten to death by another family member. Had she reacted violently and thrown the basket to the ground, it would have resulted in my certain death. No one really knew exactly when the cobra joined me in the basket, but possibly it could have been when my mother took me out of it during the rainy night and deadly darkness. In either case, everyone agreed that, Iloni Mallanna was protecting me hence the cobra did not bite me. They started thinking I was a lucky fellow. My mother never put me in the basket again and carried me on her shoulders to Iloni and back to Papaiah Pet. I did not understand why but my mother believed and said that if I sneezed before anything was about to take place only good would come of it. So my grandmother in her weeping song said: Nuvvu Adrusta Manthuda Vanukunnamu, Koduka Ninnu Ammatalli Mingaledu, Koduka. Ninnu Pakkala Paamu Karuvaledduu, Koduka. Nee Adrustamantha Addivila Kalisnddii, Koduka. Pendli Peeakulu Lekunta Avva Poinddi, Koduka. Meeku Adivila Poddu Kuukindi, Koduka. Kodukoo, na, Koduka. Meevi, Yemiratalayeera, Koduka. (We thought you are the luckiest of all, my son. Smallpox could not swallow you, my son. The snake in the bed did not bite you, O son. All your luck has gone into the forest, my son. You lost your mother before you got married, my son. The Sun sank when you were in the forest, O son. My son, O my son. What has been written on your forehead, my son?)

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I never realized till then why mother used to consider my sneeze as sign of good fortune. Whenever she used to start out to a city like Warangal to sell our grain by bullock cart, she would call me and ask me to sneeze before they set out. If I could not manage a sneeze at that particular moment, she would wait until I got one with some effort. Maybe she used to think that Pochamma, who was thought to have saved me from smallpox, and Iloni Mallanna, who was thought to have saved me from the snake, always remained with me and my sneeze would be a positive signal from them to start the journey. One day whilst I was still only a small child of five or six, and had never heard the word ‘school’, I awoke to hear my mother weeping loudly but in a singing song voice. It might have been a few years after her mother-in-law, Kancha Lingamma, had died. Kancha Lingamma’s body was cremated far away from the village on the banks of the Pakal rivulet. Sometimes I visited the spot when I accompanied our herds of sheep or cattle. My mother and father never built a gadde for her. In my mother’s sorrowful ‘Kodi Kootha Poddu’ song, sung in the early morning, she related how great her mother-in-law and her family were. Perhaps in those days she was undergoing the trauma of transition of the family headship from her mother-inlaw to her. Whenever she was in crisis she would weep in those early morning hours before leaving for the toilet with a chutta in her mouth. She said: Attoo . . . Na . . . Atta. NaakuYemi Bharam Beditivi, Atta. Nee Koduku Amayakudu Kaadu, Atta. Nee Koduku Dharma Raju Kaadu, Atta. Nuvvu Adivila AakuluTinnavu, Atta. Nuvvu Uulle UshilluTinnavu, Atta. Mandanu Kottukoni, Atta. Nuvvu Mannem Vachinavu, Attaa. Naaku Pillalu Dakkani Naadu, Atta. Nannu Kotti-Titti Ella Godite, Atta.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual Nenu Sachi Sadidda Manukunna,Atta. Nee Mogadu Sachi Pote,Atta. Nuvvu Mogonivaitivi, Atta. Ippudu Neebaruvantha Nenu Moyyana, Atta. (Mother-in-law, O my mother-in-law. Don’t you know that your son is innocent, Mother-in-law? What a burden you put on my shoulders, Mother-in-law? Do you know that your son is a Dharmaraju, my mother-in-law? I know you ate leaves in the forest, my mother-in-law. You brought our sheep herd for their survival her, my ­mother-in law. You brought them to these green forests, my mother-in-law. When I had no children, my mother-in-law, I was beaten by your son and sent away, mother-in-law. I wanted to die and teach you a lesson, my mother-in-law. After your husband died, Mother-in-Law You became a man by yourself, my mother-in law. Now you place all your burdens on me, my mother-in-law.)

As the gangireddulas and kaatipapalas were praising the family genealogy I was reminded only of Avva’s narration in those weeping songs. Where she referred to my father as a Dharmaraju, she was talking about a character of that name who appears in one of the great Indian epics, the Mahabaharata. We all moved to Avva’s gadde. A light was lit. We offered toddy, liquor, mutton and sweet rice to her soul. Everyone was served a small quantity of sweet rice called padi. Quietly, we proceeded towards the rivulet where the priests and the family barber were waiting. The barber shaved the heads of all the male members of the family. I was first to be shaven followed by my brother and father. We were asked to get into the cold water collectively. As we were dipping our clean shaven heads with a tuft on the top the priests started reciting their mantras.

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The Brahmin priest was reciting in a language that none of us could understand, at top speed. Occasionally he would throw some water from his copper container with a mango leaf on our heads. In between he would say: Kancha Kattammaaaaa, Wife of Komuraiahaaaa, Daughter-in-law of Kancha Mallaiahaaaa, Their sons, the younger Komuraiah, Kattaiah and Ilaiahaaaa, Om . . . Om . . . Om. Om Shantihi . . .Om Shanthihiiiiiii. Danyamam Samapayaamiiiii. Jalam Samarpayaamiiiiiii. Phalam Smarpayamiiiiii. Pushpam Smarpayamiiiiii. Swahaa . . . Swahaaa . . . Swahaaaa.

(They raise some rice upwards. Sprinkle some water towards the rivulet. Raise towards the sky a fruit and some flowers. But subsequently all were put into their bags, as they had shared them equally much earlier than when the act started.) Nowhere were daughters mentioned. We were asked to get on to the bank of the rivulet and to sit in a row. Grass rings were made and put on to our fingers. Again mantras were recited. Jangam Lingaiah chanted mantras in a much more simpler form. He was using some words in Telugu some in Kannada, but we hardly understood what it was. The Brahmin priest recited only Sanskrit slokas. We understood much less. All the relatives stood in a round circle around us attentively listening to the mantras. Both the priests were given quite a bit of rice, dal, vegetables and some ghee, all of which was brought there for their spiritual performance. The Brahmin priest got the bigger share than the Lingayat one. After every ritual activity was finished, the Brahmin priest set both his feet together. Stretched them towards us and asked me to prostrate at his feet placing my head on them. Then my brother

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Kattaiah was supposed to follow and, of course, all of the mourning party would follow suit. This request came as a shock to me. Whilst we were in a period of deep mourning for the loss of our mother, why should we have to engage in the demeaning act of prostration? I became very upset and angry and said, ‘We will not do that come what may!’ My brother, Kattaiah also refused these instructions. Both the priests looked around in a surprised manner at everyone present. Almost all of them, including my father and sisters, became furious. They in fact started weeping again. ‘This is the price your mother is paying for educating you,’ said the Brahmin priest. The relatives gathered there were quite huge in number and they suddenly began to plead with us to obey the command of the Brahmin priest. They were also getting worried that the time for them to drink toddy was getting delayed because such foolish acts of the two school-going boys. We refused to accept that logic. The priests tried to convince us. They then instigated the relatives to abuse us. When nothing worked, they rebuked, condemned us and walked away. All my relatives began to feel that we had caused our mother to lose her chance of paradise. My sisters started crying now not for relief but for the loss of her paradise. My youngest sister started weeping Neekentha Gathi Vachane Avva Annalu gitlenduku Chesiri Avva. Vallake Manchikade Avva Meemeithame Avva

(O Mother. what fate awaited you, Mother. Why did my brothers behave like that, my mother. Don’t they know that it is harmful only to them, Mother. What will happen to us also, Mother, O Mother.) All the relatives walked towards the tree where the drink was awaiting them. They later walked homeward

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with miserable faces. One could clearly feel that something bad had happened, and that maybe Mother’s death was linked to this terrible notion of education that was bad for us. The priests, however, got paid more money than the Madigas who had worked hard on the ceremonial events around my mother’s dead body: they prepared the kaadu, constructed the paade, beat the drums and danced, helped me in lighting the fire, yet received far less money and drink and food. The gangireddulas and the kaatipapalas were given some money and the leftover food. But the Brahmin priest quite apart from receiving money asked for go danam, bhudanam (gift of a cow and also some land). For refusal to prostrate at their feet they asked more money than they usually received. Finally for the cow and land, money was substituted. They carried the biggest amount of money, largest quantity of rice, vegetables, pulses and ghee for the feast of their families living in the towns. This mourning feast ended on an abrupt note with our absolute refusal to prostrate ourselves, a sort of rebellion against the priests. A deep sense of guilt began to haunt me for quite a long time. Did we really contribute to my mother’s loss of heaven? Did she go to hell in spite of giving so much money and food items to the Brahmin priest? Where she would be at that point of time when we were asserting our self-respect? Did she bless us or did she curse us? If our later life is any indication she definitely blessed us. The world knows what I am now. What the world does not know is my brother Kattaiah, who was a heart patient when she was alive, had undergone an open heart surgery for a mitral valve replacement at Vellore Christian Medical College Hospital in 1979 and still survives. His wife, Kancha Bharathi, and our four sisters stood by the family. Particularly, the third sister, Ramakka, shifted her family to my village and stood by the family all along. Kancha Bharathi suffered more than women of our caste usually do. I was busy with teaching, writing and

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activism. I could not help her. A woman in transition to modern living, she saw to the education of her children and took care of her husband. She saw this as her destiny. My brother’s daughter and two sons were educated in Hyderabad and are living abroad with their children. All along it were not the mantras that stood by us. What stood by us was our labour power. After the rebelling against the priest my resolve to study more increased.

5 Choosing between Two Lusts: Life or Knowledge?

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hen I was in M.A. political science, final year, I contested for the post of class representative. My opponent was a Reddy student who had a tall and well-built body and a so-called good complexion. I was sympathetic to the Progressive Democratic Students Union (PDSU) and he was sympathetic to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The class consisted of 40 students of which 12 were girls. That was the first batch in Osmania University, filtered through an entrance examination, in 1974. The Telangana region got infested with mass copying after the 1969 separate statehood agitation. Almost all the rural students came from Telugu-medium school education background and all the girl students came from urban English-medium education background. Two urban male students called Vinayak Kulkarni and Mauzan Ali came from English-medium schools. I was the only rural student who spoke in English with girl students and other English-loving classmates. Vinayak Kulkarni, whose mother tongue was Marathi, did not know Telugu. We both discussed everything in English. He was more committed to Marxism than any one of us. He was a voracious reader of Marxist and other theory books. He was my strategist, and always liked to work secretly. I was his public speaker. Both of us talked to every student but the class was divided. I depended on the votes of girls and except for one girl all voted to me and I won. In turn the girls asked for a dosa meal and I agreed.

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The next day we went to the canteen near the majestic Osmania Arts College building; I was privileged to study in that historic stone building built by the last Nizam, Osman Ali Khan. I was the only boy going along with all the twelve girls, as I asked the girl who told me that she did not vote for me to join us. As we were stepping down the steps of the college the girl just behind me asked. ‘Is Ilaiah an eligible bachelor or not?’ She also said, ‘Is there anybody who could think of him?’ Another girl quickly replied, ‘Who will marry this old fellow? By then some of my male classmates were married. But no girl was yet married, as all of them came from upper-middle-class background where marriages took place a little later. At that time caste was not known as an issue among us, but class was. According to that girl I was already an old man. By 1975 I was twenty-three years old. I finished my MA in 1976, which was late as usually urban students would complete their masters by twenty-one or twenty-two. By that age here I had some grey hair. Perhaps, I must have been looking as if I were in my early thirties. Their intellectual engagement with me or vote preference was one thing and their marriage choice was another. I would not fit into that scheme. What was painful for me was my old appearance. In our class there was a student called Yadagiri, who was in his thirties and he was also bald. I knew what kind of jokes the girls were cracking about him. When I heard that comment of ‘old fellow’ I knew what such a comment meant. That day I went to the hostel room and saw myself, particularly my face, repeatedly in a small mirror that I had. I really looked old, with a face full of smallpox marks and a burnt scar. My mother told me I was born weak and small; added to that smallpox attacked me when I was just six months old. Again, when I was two years old I burnt my face at the hearth where a fire had been lit and I had been placed very near it to keep warm as it was winter. In my childhood till I completed Class 5 in the village I used to eat all kinds of meat, drink plenty of toddy but I did not

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grow properly from Class 6 onwards, when we cooked our own food in an unhygienic rented room, a small room of several rat holes with dust and dirt till I completed B.A. with English literature at Warangal Arts and Science College in 1974. There were a few girl classmates in my high school but we never used to talk to them. There were no girls in my undergraduate class. English literature was a dreadful subject. But I dared to take it up. Hanamkonda was a reasonably big town in backward Telangana, where my ambition of higher education with an intention to become scholar was out of the question. I began to think what made these girls to vote for me and not for a tall and fair Reddy boy. My realization was that I knew English and had knowledge of the subject, which impressed them. I was a much better communicator in English than our little master, Kulkarni. Nobody knew whether I was a Dalit or an OBC. Except those students whose names had caste tags like Reddy, Rao, Shastry, others’ caste backgrounds were not known. I had a classmate called Ravindra Shastry from B.A. to M.A. He later became my colleague in the university. He cut all his relations with me as he was a Brahmin. Where did the learning of English and book-based knowledge, apart from living experience in the productive fields, cattle and nature, begin in my life? The shift from being hesitant in the classroom which I used to think was a place of boredom to acquiring impressive English and new ideas took place in my college library at Hanamkonda. The real shift took place at two different junctures; one, I heard about the Warangal District Collector called Kaki Madhava Rao, who was said to be a Dalit, and who was ruling over the Reddy landlords of the district. Of course, I knew that to become a District Collector at such a young age one would have to pass the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) examination. He could have been a Madiga or Mala but the name Madhava Rao could not be related to being a Madiga or a Mala. Most of the Dalit names in my area would be like my name. Apart from the OBCs, Dalits

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have adopted the names of the same deities. In many respects Dalit and OBC culture was the same. My village had several Madiga families, whose social conditions were much worse than that of Kurumas. Such a Madiga becoming a Collector and ruling over the Reddy landlords, who were known for their atrocities, arrogance and power was thrilling news. I wanted to see him and could do that in my college when he came to attend a meeting. He was tall, lean and dark and spoke in good English. I realized that his power over the landlords lies in his English. Then the question arose why could not I too think of becoming a Collector? But how? With good English and higher education, well, I could do it. One day I accidentally laid down my hand in the college library on a short book called The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. With the first but very difficult reading I became a fan of the book and also of its English: ‘A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of communism. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ Those English sentences (though a translated version from German) made their own impact on my mind. For a person who had lived and studied for two years in Gudur village where the Reddy landlords ruled the roost, two words attracted my attention most: ‘class struggle’. By then I knew what class struggle meant. Though the agrarian class exploitative relations were not as bad as the Brahmin-Shudra or Brahmin-Dalit relations, which make everything including food culture, ritual culture different and oppressive, the relationship between Shudra landlords and the lower-caste masses is of only economic exploitation. That exploitation had a relatively shorter timeframe than that of the brahminic exploitation. Of course, some landlords in that area were Brahmins, whose cultural oppression and economic exploitation were more brutal than the Reddys. The Reddy landlords were/are meat eaters. They too worship the Shudra God/Goddesses. However, in those days I did not understand all those

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differences. My anger was built around the Gudur Reddy landlords. To get admission in Class 6 my mother took both me and my brother and literally put us at the feet of a landlord called Yepuri Laxma Reddy, known as a benevolent landlord. I could never forget that power and aura of the landlord, who gave his majestic slip of admission into a government school. It was an admission of class struggle of my mother in her own way, laying her sons at his feet. I could then see how tears were brimming in her eyes. She did not like that happening to her sons. Perhaps she must have thought that she was putting her sons’ heads in bondage to be the slaves of that landlord. Yet she decided to put our heads at his feet. Back in her village there was that Kuruma Police Patel who, with the power of his old fashioned literacy, was harassing her on an everyday basis. When I saw my mother’s face and eyes at that landlord’s bungalow I realized she was determined to educate us. In her vision the landlord was distant enemy and unconquerable at that but the Police Patel was an enemy who was round the corner. Our education up to sixth, seventh or whatever possible thereafter was a further step in her fight to defeat that enemy, as he was a drunkard and crooked too. For years after her death I remembered that agony of hers but luckily got out of that ‘eye for eye’ and ‘head for head’ cultural vengeful politics of villages. My reading in English of any book that I could get and practise by myself speaking English became a ‘lustful’ act. I had very cooperative roommates, who allowed me to do the dishwashing job early morning and sometimes in the evening too and be busy with my reading work. They used to cook food for me too. I used a simple principle to do that day-long job of reading–never in the nights. If I were unschooled I would have been with our sheep or goat or with agricultural work all day. Why not do that here too? My friends would do no work in the day, except attending classes, but read late in the night. I read quite a lot of books

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of the college library and also the regional library, which was just opposite the college at Subedari of Hanamkonda all through the day. My method of speaking English came from two sources; one was my teachers. But some of them were very bad in communication. So emulating the good communicators was my mode. Second, the accent was picked up from the community radio news reading at 9 p.m. My resident room, for quite some time was just opposite the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Welfare Hostel. That hostel had a public radio. Listening to the English news every night was what I did conscientiously every day. Sometimes I used to bunk the class if the teacher was not very good; but not the listening to the evening English news. Meanwhile, I began to enjoy political science, history and English literature, in that order. I used to dislike Telugu as a subject, which ceased to be there after B.A. second year. My disgust with Telugu was not because of the difficult letters or diction. Its fifty-six letters and other associated problems of sentence formation apart from the subject did not relate to any aspect of my environment. The books we were supposed to study in Telugu literature were from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Prabhanda kavyas. Studying Telugu literature, however, seriously I learnt it, would confine me only to the Telugu region. I had already developed a universal mode of thinking and wanted to get into the IAS. I thought English literature was the best option and that would be a better way of fulfilling my mother’s dream. However, my love for English but not for Telugu was a peculiar one. At one level mine was a selection between a language that would expose me to universal knowledge and leave out a language that had only a local appeal. At another level my choice was between an unknown future and a known world around me. But I thought the Telugu texts that we were reading were not making much sense also, though it was a subjective feeling.

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The so-called best Telugu text, which actually was a translation of Kalidas’ Sanskrit Meghasandesham (in Telugu Megha Sandeshamu) was not only difficult to read but it was around a silly subject of sending a message to a beloved through a cloud. There were texts written by Telugu Brahmin writers like Bommera Pothana, Viswanatha Satyanarayana but most of them would be around some mythological figures or around the Brahmin life, which always appeared meaningless and irrelevant to me. Slowly I was forming a persona. Learning English through The Communist Manifesto, though a translation, was far more relevant. It was talking about workers and exploiters. Their workers were proletariat but our workers were shepherds, farmers, labouring dalits, and so on. Their exploiters were industrialists and our exploiters were feudal lords, Brahmins, Reddys, Velamas, and so on, and they were all around my life. As a student of the European history I found out that there was a kind of similar feudalism in Europe. The only difference was that their feudal lords were class feudals who shared the same spiritual and social culture with their working class. The Brahmin feudals of India would have entirely different spiritual, social and even food cultural life. The Reddy feudals had the upper-caste arrogance, apart from their control though landed property. When the feudal class exploitation was compounded with caste hegemony the socio-economic controls got multiplied. If I were not a student of English literature and European history I would have not understood that there is a different world out there. For example, Wordsworth’s poetry was more interesting than any other Indian’s, particularly Telugu writers’ poetry, because I never found any description of nature—forests, animals, birds. Though Wordsworth wrote about the nature as existed in Europe I was familiar from my childhood of the nature of my area. But nature has some common narrative whether of Indian or European.

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I liked Shakespeare’s Othello because the characters resembled many of our village characters. I had a sense of comparison. The sense of comparison with what is around made me what I was and what was being told in the book gives a sense of relationship to the text that one reads and the life one is leading. This was my strong point. And that led to my determination to move towards learning English in a rural setting where its day-to-day use was nil. In a way Marx, other English writers like Wordsworth, taught me English and ‘Indianness’ because it was a question of mapping the description of those texts onto my own location, replacing words like capitalists with feudal lords or working class with working castes. I used to get pictures only of Indian exploitation while reading the European books. What the priest did after my mother’s death. How Epuri Laxma Reddy the Gudur landlord made us fall at his feet. How Narsimha Chary insulted me in class. I used to think whether the British Christian pastors do that to the churchgoers. The 1960s and 1970s were times of transition and some amount of self-respect was germinating among the lower castes of India. I was a product those times. Madhava Rao, a Dalit Collector, gave me an ambition and Marx, a German author, gave me a direction. My frantic reading of western philosophy books like Rousseau’s Social Contract, English literary texts like Othello, history books like E.H. Carr’s What Is History? Hegel’s The Philosophy of History and learning English during my graduation days had a price. My avoidance of marriage till I reached college education was seen as a crime, even by family members, particularly my widowed father. As I have said, all my relatives got married by twelve or thirteen. Girls got married much, much younger than boys. Afterwards, my father’s demand, apart from other relatives, for my marriage was not only torturous, but also scary and dreadful. I was doggedly opposing the process of the search for a girl and the attempt of some parents to

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spoil my game of life by an early marriage by 1970 itself. As I had said earlier, in 1967 my mother regretted that she was dying without performing my marriage. In 1969 my brother Kattaiah got married when we were in Class 10 at Narsampet. When I was in the Pre-University Course (PUC) my father and my elder sister started looking for a girl. For them it was a responsibility. For me it was a choice between lust for sex and lust for knowledge. The former is a known aspect of life in every village but the later course is an unknown experiment. But I decided to go that way. My father would grumble and say your mother died without seeing you fellows married and I do not want to die like that. If my ambition was only a government job I would have got some job after my school graduation as I was an excellent student and always topped at school. Or I would have turned to agriculture as my brother did. But I was determined on improving myself. When my father wept about my marriage, all my sisters would weep too. In the 1960s child marriage was very normal in our villages. This practice cut across caste barriers. If somebody was not married nor craved for marriage by my age the doubts of such person’s sexual potency became a subject of the whole village. Old men would ridicule and old women would ask me even poignant questions whether I ‘Have’ or ‘Don’t Have’. The village sexual morality and language had its own narrative. There was normal narrative that by the time of puberty a girl begins to crave for sex and by fifteen with the beard sprouting on the face a boy craves for sex. All kinds of sexual stories involving boys and girls keep circulating. Particularly in the cattle grazing fields, in crop weeding and cutting fields the not yet married boys and girls behaviour becomes a hot topic. Perhaps my indifference to marriage must have been one of such topics, I was not sure. But my family was fully working around that issue.

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I avoided marriage in the PUC and entered the B.A. first year. I could see how my father was depressed because of this single question of my marriage. But I decided to put up with it and work my way. I was fortunate that in those days there were no phones or cell phones that would torture me as I was engaged with my lust for knowledge with a demand that I should have lust for sex by that age. I later learnt when I read Mahatma Gandhi’s Autobiography how lust for sex plagued him even at a time when his father was dying outside his bedroom, that too when his wife was still under age. The child marriage and entering into a lustful engagement was not only Gandhi’s mode of handling that age and relationship with his wife but it was prevalent in all caste cultures even in my area, as just mentioned. In a society with a child marriage system, boy and girl relationship is seen only in terms of sexual urges and the need to control these, and there is much public and private talk around that life. To some extent the tribal communities were out of that kind of child marriage and using adolescent girls for male sexual lust was not a systematic practice, custom or convention. When I travelled in Parvathipuram Koya tribal belt I found out that their marriage system was far better. Both girls and boys have choice and only when both of them agree to marriage and sexual relationship they are married by the community. Even this was the practice in Kondareddy tribes of the East Godavari district. However, I am not sure how it operates in many other tribal communities in different parts of India. A lower OBC South Indian caste like mine was known for child marriages for centuries. Only in recent years the practice is being given up. My father died when I was in B.A. first year (1971), that too when I was in Hanamkonda, without getting his desire fulfilled. Almost for a month or so I did not go to my village at that time. The whole village was more furious this time. I was being treated as the worst offender against custom and a killer of a father without fulfilling

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his desire. This time I refused even to shave my head on his eleventh day ceremony. But this time more than anything, treating me as an educated ‘Have Not’ was the main issue. Men and women talked in my very presence, ‘What is the use of education when that Asli Thing is not there in him.’ Those who thought of giving me their daughter in marriage spread more rumours that I was ‘Not Capable’. Slowly the pressure of offering their daughter in marriage disappeared as the rumour spread in the area and within the caste. Whether this was only in that regional culture or was it in vogue in many other regions and communities I do not know. Such implications/insinuations did exist and there was no challenge with medical examinations. The village and caste community life was full of superstitions and unverifiable accusations and counter accusations. My only option was to live within such environment whenever I was in the village. I got on with my education and cut down on my visits to my village. Even if I went I would just confine myself to my home because people were not interested in my lust for knowledge or in my new articulation in English. Occasionally what job would I get with that much education was a question of enquiry. I completed my B.A. but got a Gandhi Class. As we were students of mass copy days, no examiner was bothered, which answers were original which were not. All were given a third class. That was my biggest crisis as I was determined to do M.A. political science. But that problem was solved by the entrance examination. If I were to yield to my family, particularly my father’s pressure, and marry an illiterate girl child would I have done to any good to her or would I have educated her like Mahatma Phule educated Savitribai Phule? I am not sure because in the nineteenth century some upper-caste husbands educated their wives, and among the lower castes, perhaps only Jotiba Phule did so and made her a teacher. For that Phule’s father threw him out. Yet he continued his mission along with his wife with more determination.

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However, I did not know anything about him when I was going through the crisis of marriage and morals. I knew and read something about Gandhi and his example was more in support of my family members and against my attempt to experiment a different path of life. Even assuming I were to know about Phule’s example I had a much more difficult issue at hand. My village was never exposed to the cultural modernity that Phule’s Poona got exposed to. Phule has been sent to a Scottish English-medium school. His father manufactured vessels and also had a flower business. Though Poona at that time was dominated by brahminical culture, it also had an upsurge of British English education growing all around. It got exposed to some forms of modernization: railway lines, bus travels. Even in the 1960s and 1970s the villages in Telangana region were more backward than the villages in British administered Maharashtra in the early nineteenth century. Teenage girls, once married, had to do lot of work at home and also in the fields. We had somewhat growing agrarian assets. Men and women were to work in the fields to make those lands profitable. Once one is married, fathering a child even in shortest time was the norm. That would endanger my education. That is what happened in my brother’s case. Within two years of his marriage he became a father. Education and employment become distant dreams. The same villagers would say look after your sheep, agriculture and, more importantly, wife and children. The intimate knowledge by everyone about the other person’s life in the village would create conditions of torture; particularly on the sexual relations between persons. In that environment I do not know what I would have done if I were married. Even great social and political thinkers of our freedom movement days like Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru never educated their wives. It is said that Kamala Nehru was educated at home, did not know English when she got married; after marriage, she must

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have also been taught English and westernized social practices at Anand Bhavan, the home of her parents-in-law. She and Kasturba are a bit different. They were able to participate in politics. They came from advanced BrahminBaniya social backgrounds. These two castes were more in touch with British culture, while struggling to retain Baniya vegetarianism and Brahminic varnadharma spiritualism. Particularly, Nehru’s family was more influenced with British culture. They became meat eaters and wine drinkers. That is one of the reasons why the RSS BrahminBaniyas hate the Nehru family as they want to build India as vegetarian nation. Ambedkar’s family did not have the Brahmin-Baniya luxuries. That is why his wife had to pay a heavy price. Our families were primitive in nature. Though their food culture was/is progressive, their work ethic was/is progressive, but their lack of education made them vulnerable in every field of life. Divorce and re-marriage was a norm. I would have gone through a torturous course if I were to get into that vertex of marriage at that stage. Wife beating was also another major problem in my village and caste. My father, I was told, beat my mother before she gave birth to children. My adopted brother beat his wife two or three times. When my mother resisted her being beaten, he also beat her. That was when I thought of even killing my adopted brother. I used to think I must go with an axe when he was in deep sleep and attack him. He became my enemy since then and I never reconciled with him till he got separated from my family after my mother’s death. I met him only when he was about to die in his seventies in 2013. My biological brother also beat his wife before he became heart patient. Even now my sister-in-law keeps suffering from the memory of the deep blows she received from him and keeps reminding him of how his beating crippled her life. In his seventieth year as a chronic heart patient she looks after him with the memories of getting beaten. That is terrible thing for both. Millions of women

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were reconciled to such beatings and lived with their husbands. Beating women always horrified me. I do not know that if I were married at an early age maybe I would have become a wife beater. The village and caste culture around me and my wife would have dragged me into that barbarity. At the age of 65 (while writing this) I am happy that I avoided a situation of being a bad husband, as I do not know whether I would have been a good husband, if married. In India good husbands are an exception and being bad husbands are the norm. Changing this situation still remains to be in the future. However, in my village and in my caste wife beating has come down drastically. That is a good sign. Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru left their young uneducated wives back in India while they lived abroad for years and years to study. The reason of not taking the wives could have been because how would the wives be looked after in a foreign country while their husbands were students? If I were to marry I had only two options before me: either I would have to stop studying or I would have to leave her at home and continue my studies. Given my family and the culture of my caste, that would have been the more torturous course. Take, for example, the life of Ramabai, the first wife of Ambedkar. She had no clue about what he was studying. Over a period of time his world and her world were too different. He was a scholar of world repute, whereas she was totally illiterate. Their four children died in utter poverty and finally she too died in poverty and distress when she was just thirty-nine. When I was studying Gautam Buddha’s life, much later for my Ph.D. the only issue that troubled me was that he left his wife, Yashodhara, when he was 29 and she was much younger, forever. He did not tell her where he was going and why he was going. He left her when she was in deep sleep. Was that morally right? Why was she made to pay a huge cost of living alone thereafter? She refused to join the Sangha even though all his family members, including his father, stepmother and son joined the order. Did she

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have the right not to excuse him when he deceived her like that, whatever could have been the right and great cause he left for? I would compare Ambedkar to Karl Marx in his zeal for study, understanding the world and taking over the burdensome struggles to change social systems by constructing new knowledge. Karl Marx was married (not in an arranged marriage like that of Ambedkar). The societies were different. The suffering of Ramabai and Jenny differed. Jenny Marx also suffered poverty. The point is that if the first generation of educated persons like Ambedkar take up a cause of their choice and decision when the wife is not capable of understanding that cause or has the necessary wherewithal to live and bring up the children, they would suffer most gruesome problems like Ramabai suffered. The problem is that the first-generation of educated people in India do not know what would be in store for them. The parents force the female and male children to marry as the educational course moves on, as the opportunities keep getting opened they move along with it. Ambedkar was married before the path before him was clear to him. He too had only the option of either going abroad or dropping out of education. Ambedkar’ s wife laboured hard in the Bombay slums while her husband educated himself abroad, for instance, at the British Library of the British Museum, where he had access to the knowledge of the world. He must have suffered several such heart wrenching thoughts for his wife and her severe deprivations. Kasturbai and Kamala Nehru did not have to suffer materially because they had economic resources and caste cultural capital to live a reasonably good life with their in-laws. Yet they too were deprived of their husbands’ company and economic support. Since Gandhi and Nehru came from rich BrahminBaniya families, their wives were supported by the joint families. After returning from America and England Ambedkar became a full time nationalist like Gandhi and Nehru who had the support of Baniya industrialists and

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Brahmin professionals. Ambedkar had no such support. Ramabai’s struggle was incomparable. She suffered greatly in the absence of her husband. Wife and husband struggling for a cause with a good understanding of each other’s agenda is one thing, and forcing the husband’s knowledge, agenda on one’s wife is, in a way, a cruel thing. If I were to marry when I was in school either my wife would have suffered the similar fate of the illiterate child wives of many Indian leaders or, much worse, I would have given up the study, cutting back on my gathering of knowledge and whatever future contributions I would have made. I have known other cases where such early married youth after getting college education look for an educated wife, and if they find one, they divorce the illiterate wife. In the process the women and children suffer massive hardships, even suicides. In a caste-ridden society the ambition of lower-caste boys is to get an upper-caste wife. A number of Dalit and OBC youth in the universities go on hunting for uppercaste female relationships. Some succeed and many fail. Several Dalitbahujan male student suicides occurred because of this problem. Several Dalitbahujan first generation civil servants managed to marry upper-caste women and cut their relations with the parental family, caste and community. Instead of helping their own brothers and sisters who could not get a good education or jobs, they would rather serve their upper-caste in-laws, brothersin-law and sisters-in-law, and so on. This has done huge damage to the social transformation process. Inter-caste marriage in such an unequal caste cultural system does good and bad. For the educational transformation of the illiterate castes it does more harm than good. I had to negotiate with all such problems. However, I had a lesson in Mahatma Phule’s example. I would not have been like Phule, who was an exception. I could not even educate my own four sisters and my sister-in-law who got married very early and remained illiterate all their lives. They all helped me so much. My

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sister-in-law did much more but she too remained illiterate all her life. Once they had children, took on the family burdens, they never could find time even to learn the alphabet. In the villages tutoring such adult women becomes rarely possible. Some women pick up some basics by going to adult education programmes that the government started but the women in my village somehow could not do that. My village was a village of all season work. They would never get time for themselves as the household, agricultural work and children kept them busy all the time. Whereas I travelled all over India and to foreign countries by air, my sisters had not even seen an aeroplane. This was bad enough. So in retrospect what I have done seems to be good in a given situation. I do not blame anybody for that. The choice was mine in the given circumstances. But how did I handle my feelings of lust? I handled it they way Gandhi handled when he was in England. Did he not have at least minutes of sexual urge in England in a much more youthful age than the one that he had when his father was dying and he committed what he called a lustful act? In my view sex is not an unavoidable need like eating food, drinking water for survival. If one does not have the scope to fulfil that desire with a woman, a man has other means to satisfy himself, with his own body. If procreation is not the goal of human beings one can handle that problem quite humanly. Sexual urge is a human urge but pushing that urge into a form of lust is a social construct. Imagine if I were to respond to the social pressure of my village, relatives and family members and got into a mode of proving myself I would have got into other illegal means within the village system. That would have put me into a trap. That kind of involvement at times could lead to rape or destroy other families. Personal humiliations could lead to many modes of vengeful acts. In a culture of patriarchal projection of manhood, when a man is being attacked on that so-called social essence of manhood, human beings tend to commit atrocities.

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Patriarchal manhood is constructed around the ability to commit atrocity on women. I realized much later that the Vatsayana mode of Brahminism has super imposed that mode of manhood with writing the Kamasutra, that too in such ancient times. In my view it destroyed Indian womanhood and the capacity of Indian system to creatively handle the problem of sex needs. That also destroyed the capacity to apply our minds creatively on other issues of system building. I think I handled this problem much better than those who preached about celibacy or inevitability of marriage. I never advocated celibacy as Gandhi or as any other Hindu sanyasi or Catholic priest did. It is a question of judgement of one’s own course of life. What a human body needs is regular food, water, sleep and a social life with other human beings. I also do not believe that God directs somebody to marry and others not to marry. The old women or men who were ridiculing me were wrong because they did not understand that a person could need something that could be different and have other ideas on what is a pleasure-based life. The caste leaders follow the custom within the framework of marriage. For them life does not exist outside that institution. When almost all the villagers were thinking that without marriage and procreation of children that human life is worthless, I chose a different mode of life to make my life worthy enough to live by. I had my own times of pleasure and pain. I had my own ways of experiencing pleasure and happiness. Pleasure, pain or happiness or sorrowfulness keeps changing from time to time, situation to situation. The purpose of life that one set for oneself determines what is pleasure and what is pain. I produced my own mental children in the form of Why I Am Not a Hindu; Post-Hindu India; Buffalo Nationalism; God as Political Philosopher; Untouchable God; The Weapon of the Other; Buffalo Nationalism and so on, which no one else from my background could do. One can choose between production and procreation based

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Figure 5.1 Kancha Illaiah at his study, writing Why I Am Not A Hindu, 1976 (author’s collection).

on social needs more than personal needs. Having been born in a caste that was insulted as incapable of producing knowledge by ‘smithing’ words, I took it as challenge that I will do so in English, not just in my mother tongue. And I realized that it has great transformative role to play. In the process I have overcome the sentiment of mother tongue-centred knowledge construction. I decided to communicate to the whole world. When I wrote my long lasting poem ‘I Am an Unconquered Lamb’ and got it published many were surprised that I changed even the narrative of Baliraja and Ekalavya and Kabir. Not many realized that that a shepherd can change the narrative of the nation. I am born as a lamb In the meadows of caste. All around me were wolves Educated abroad to be nationalists.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual My competition on the grassland Was seen as anti-national. My knowledge of the land, water, forests Was seen as meritless madness. My awareness of myself Was seen as Un-Indian absurdity. They wanted to swallow me Yet I survived as I am not Eklavya. I advanced as I am not Baliraja. I declared, I Am Not a Hindu, as I am not Kabir. I know the language that they never knew. I rejected the authority of all wolves, I operated outside their ideology, I am Ilaiah Shepherd.

Not that those who married and gave birth to children did not write books. Not that some of them wrote much more usefully than what I did. There were people who had done much greater things than what I could have done having got married. The issue was that how would I do what I did causing minimum pain for others. I would have felt completely unsuccessful if I were to do a job, have children but could not have done what I have done now. That would have been a loss to society at large. These ‘intellectual children’, that is, my books, will have a generational impact on human societies. I wrote my books in English. It was with an unknown desire of producing something new. I refused to be distracted by thoughts of sexual desire. Mine is not spiritual celibate life for attaining moksha. I did not think of running away into forests like many Hindu sanyasis did. I am not a sanyasi, who wanted to live by others’ sweat and blood. Hence I became a teacher with a determined course of life. My course was read, write and fight. I wrote this slogan on the walls of my brain. I came to Hyderabad for the first time in May 1974 to apply for the M.A. course. The imposing Arts College building was fear-generating and also made one feel proud to study in such a college. The campus at that time was an intense political battleground. A brilliant left-wing

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Figure 5.2 Back row, sixth from the left, Kancha Ilaiah with his M.A. first year batchmates at Osmania University, 1974 (author’s collection).

Ph.D. scholar called George Reddy was brutally murdered by the forces of the right-wing students’ union, ABVP, just a year back. In those days ‘seat guarantee’ squads used to operate for both groups, the Right and the Left, but the right wing would guarantee this for those who had not done well in the entrance. We rural guys would generally prefer left-wing friendships. Since Marx was already my English teacher, even though through English translations, I liked the content and the language of those books; my relationship with him was established only in English language. I avoided the right-wing elements, most of whom happened to be from a landlord background. I preferred to make friendship with those who claimed to be Marxist. Of course, they left me to myself as my name and body language informed them that I was an unworthy fellow to be lured. I was admitted in political science with a seventh rank. The first year was full of student political turmoil. In my M.A. days the concept of the Dalitbahujan has not become a part of my consciousness. There was no Bahujan Samaj Party. There was no Kanshiram to tell us

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about Ambedkar and Phule in the national political realm. Fortunately, later I met Kanshiram, spoke at his party seminars, but did not join the BSP. I have never met Mayawati so far. I have defended her on all English channels and written articles in English newspapers. She has not contacted me and I never sought an appointment. Maybe because she does not see English channels and read English newspapers; maybe she does not even know that there is a supporter called Kancha Ilaiah. There was a lot of class consciousness. The rural-urban differentiation was quite visible. Perhaps I had no caste language to perceive all those humiliations in caste terms. If there are no adequate concepts and proper language of diagnosis of the social diseases one does not know how to analyse it and how to overcome the humiliation. That was what happened to Dalitbahujan society of India till Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar came up with their analyses; people did not even know that caste was the source of their problems. Though in South Iyothee Thass, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and Narayana Guru did their bit till Ambedkar became a force to reckon with; no other Dalitbahujan thinker was recognized in my living academic environment. This is where evolution and advancement of social science played a key role in modern times. With the deployment of caste language my worldview of social science changed. My perception of social reality changed. The radical Left organizations were far more powerful than the ABVP. Yet constant clashes took place. It suited me well. Marx and Mao were all the time in the discourse. Boycotts, dharnas, hall meetings of the Progressive Democratic Students Union (PDSU) were a regular activity. Then a conflict arouse. The far Left treated attending classes or reading books in the library as an expression of bourgeois consciousness. In those days, nobody was asking why we were in the university. The leaders would only remind the students of their so-called higher purpose of liberating the exploited classes from feudal lords and the bourgeoisie; rather make it appear true for many

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rural students. There were discussion sessions on issues of national importance. For example, how India was a still a neo-colony of American and Soviet social imperialism. How India was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. How Mao’s agrarian and New Democratic Revolution was the only way to liberate the villages from feudal lords and encircling the urban areas would destroy the capitalist exploiters. I was finding a solution to the problem of landlordism around my village. At times PDSU organized lectures by Marxist experts. I remember attending the British-Pakistani intellectual Tariq Ali’s lectures and also Puchalapalli Sundarayya’s long speech. Tariq Ali spoke on American imperialism, whereas Sundarayya spoke on agrarian problems. But all my radical friends treated Sundarayya as anti-­revolution and a lackey of Soviet social imperialism. He wore simple pyjamas and a bush shirt. Though his speech was not impressive his presence made an impression on me. All those radical ideas of Naxalites began to appear impracticable. When the Mandal movement came in the 1990s most of these radical upper castes turned anti-­ reservationist; hence I began to feel that that they were in practice anti-­ Dalitbahujan, though they slowly reconciled to the fact of reservation with vacillating perceptions. Quite surprisingly, the right-wing forces never organized any theoretical lectures. I have never even seen a poster during my student days by the right wing about organizing a lecture on their ideologues like Savarkar or Golwalkar. But they wrote slogans on walls ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, celebrated every festival. Nobody knew who that Bharat Mata was. For them Vinayak Chavithi was the biggest event. I have never come across an ABVP student arguing theory with any other student. But all the Left organizations would have one meeting or the other. Pamphlet distribution even on theoretical issues at the dining hall was quite common. That helped me. Listening to theoretical lectures, locating them in the people’s problems or struggles led to good clarity and deeper understanding

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than the classroom lectures being given by the teachers. However, the radical Left had very strange slogans like ‘China’s Chairman Is Our Chairman’, ‘You Must Dip Your Hands At Least Once in Enemies’ Blood’. The Naxalite groups had their own theoretical understanding of the Indian system itself. The Muslim teachers at Osmania were not bothered about these movements. In the departments of social sciences, there were very few Muslim teachers; they used to confine themselves to their basic academic duty and whatever research that they were involved in. More of the Muslim teachers were in departments like Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Islamic Studies. Most of the Muslim students studied in these departments. I had only one Muslim classmate called Mausam Ali, who was a rabid anti-­ communist. He wanted to prove that the Soviet Union was a bad totalitarian state. He joined the JNU School of International Studies after his M.A and did his Ph.D. on the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in the late 1980s he was very elated because he was proved right. I had gone through very depressive times when the Soviet socialist system was collapsing like a house of cards within such a short time. Naturally my conviction about democracy began to grow since then. Kulkarni already had clarity about the Maoist line but was reading books and documents for pamphlet writing and also to guide new leaders. I began to understand the differences within the Left. One group called itself radicals and was shouting slogans: ‘China’s Chairman Is Our Chairman’. It imported that slogan from Naxalbari of Bengal along with idea of cutting off the heads of landlords, with a vision of creating thunder even in the dry midsummer, and they called it ‘Spring Thunder’. My ‘small master’ from a Marathi Brahmin family was de-caste and de-classed. He ate everything with us, mutton, chicken, fish and beef. We occasionally drank beer but he would not drink. He used to educate me to say that Naxalbari ‘line is wrong’. According to him the enemy must be killed

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only in the natural course of armed struggle; no use targeting landlords in their homes. Terrorizing families and children is not a revolutionary part of violence. The PDSU leaders and also the so-called Charu Majumdarwalas were not very much interested in theory. The Charuwalas were interested in dipping their hands in the enemies’ blood. Their major programme was known as ‘Landlord Khatam Karyakramam’ (Annihilation of Landlords). But my little master introduced me to a soft peddling line called the Nagi Reddy line. This line of thinking was that through mass movement and armed struggle the lands of the landlords should be confiscated but not through individual annihilation. It had a small but very serious study group, which was willing to study the Marxist classics once again. I liked this line, more particularly their approach to the reading, writing and fighting. There was a team spirit in that. The radical students, working under the leadership of K.G. Satyamurthy and Kondapally Seetharaiah used to ridicule us as belonging to a ‘Book Reading Party or IdliSambar Khatam Party’. Theirs was the party of heroes who were killing some landlord or a police officer. And in the process they were also getting killed. Such things were making huge headlines in the newspapers and on radio. The Nagi Reddy group never used to make such headlines. That, of course, had its own depressing moments because we were no newsmakers. The politics of individual annihilation did not start with just Maoists. The Hindu system had historically developed a culture of individual annihilation for millennia. Several Dalitbahujans were annihilated if they challenged the brahminic Hindu order. That process continued throughout history. After the BJP came to power in 2014 we all witnessed a different mode of Muslim and Dalit individual annihilation using the beef food ban as cultural radicalism. The Naxalite notion of individual annihilation and RSS notion of the individual annihilation differ in their ultimate goal. I always thought that the method itself is uncivilized. The RSS treats Muslims as enemies,

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when mass murders do not suit, it indulged in individual annihilation. The Naxalites practice of landlord annihilation was for so-called liberation. I opposed that mode of solving agrarian problems then. I decided to oppose and fight the individual annihilation of Muslims or Dalits now in the name of nationalism. We had gone into the mode of production debate and got convinced that Indian democracy was a sham. India, according to us, was still semi-colonial with a semi-­feudal nation. But we only mapped up the Chinese theory on India, which we have not studied with a creativity of our own. We used to read Economic and Political Weekly to have a good understanding of the critical issues of the mode of production, but all of them were in my view imitating the western Marxists. Kathleen Gough’s ‘Mode of Production in South India’ (EPW l, 15, 5-6-7, 16 Feb. 1980); ‘India and the Colonial Mode of Production’ of Hamza Alavi (EPW Special Number August 1975); Ashok Rudra’s ‘Indian Economic Growth Performance and ProspectsRejoinder’ (EPW 17, 39, 25 Sept. 1965) and many such writings were on my reading list. But many of these economists were imitating the theoretical models coming from either Russia or China. More than all these Tarimela Nagi Reddy’s ‘India Mortgaged’, a court statement that got subsequently published as a book was our main source of theoretical formulation. Even this was an imitative study. For example, Lenin’s ‘Development of Capitalism in Russia’ and Mao’s ‘Semi-Colonial, Semi-Feudal Relations in China’ were its sources. In my view none was original, based on a critical study of Indian caste-class feudal Hindu cultural system. I also used to like songs that youth would sing in the Left movement. Particularly, a song called ‘O Pala Buggal Jeethagada’ (O Milk-Dripping Cheeked Bonded Labour). It described how the landlords employed small children who have not yet given up drinking breast milk. I knew a number of such children even in my village, who were bonded to the landed gentry. Of course, I also went along

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with my family cattle at five and six years of age. But I was not bonded hence it was a pleasure. I remained at home whenever I did not want to go. But bonded children had no choice. If they did not work every day, the members of the master’s family would beat them. Most of the Dalit children were employed like that. The ABVP as a student organization were not opposed to such child labour. They never organized any seminar or meeting asking for changing the life of the poor. Later I realized they do not do that in any university campus. But at least in theory the sons of the landlords who were working with the Left organizations used to oppose such a practice. I knew that there were many landlord children with the Left. The president of the PDSU was one Prabhakar Rao, who came from a Velama landlord family. That organization at that time was being guided by a Naxalite group called Chandra Pulla Reddy. He himself came from a landlord family. I also heard that Puchalapalli Sundarayya and T. Nagi Reddy themselves came from such landlord families. Some of them distributed their own lands to the poor. Sundarayya’s original name was Sundar Ramreddy but he dropped that Reddy title. The right-wing (mainly working around the Jana Sangh) forces did not understand head or tail of this debate in theory. Their leaders also never attended classes and never would be seen in the library. Kulkarni brought a master document called ‘India Mortgaged’ without any author’s name on it. It was later printed in Nagi Reddy’s name. It was supposed to have established that Soviet Union was more imperialistic than America and the real revolutionaries should fight USSR more seriously than America. In any case, that being the last phase of the Cold War period 1974–1985, even the classroom teaching was full of USA and USSR. By the time we entered M.A. final year Kulkarni was working almost as a full timer and was treating degree and job as bourgeois matters. I was following a middle path, a hard working student, but a brilliant student like Kulkarni stopped attending

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classes. I attended classes regularly, defying Kulkarni’s understanding of bourgeois education. My activity was confined to attending some meetings. I absconded from processions, occasionally gave speeches in English on theory. I would speak about the need for revolution to liberate the farm workers, peasants and shepherds and other artisanal forces, who were living very primitive lives. How they did not know change for generations. I was better equipped to talk about rural problems. I was not very good at explaining about the conditions of the working class in urban centres. However, among the serious revolutionary students who did not attend classes I was known as a careerist. In 1975 Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency. All open activities were curbed. The encounter era was began by Jalagam Vengal Rao’s government. He was a Velama landlord with a personal vendetta against Naxalites. His own family members were victims of that revolution hence killing young activists was his vengeful activity. Many students whom I knew were shot dead. Kulkarni occasionally came to class. In his final exam he narrowly missed his gold medal because the department must have thought such an absent student should not be given the gold medal. In terms of marks I proved to be an average student with a bare first class. Subsequently Kulkarni left for Bombay to organize slum dwellers and the working class; from there he went to the Dong tribal belt of Gujarat. At the time of writing, he is still there working, unheard and unsung among the tribals of Dong. He neither married nor lives what one considers a good life. He lives like a tribal among tribals. He was my Marxist teacher married to that ideology. How did I turn to Gautam Buddha from Karl Marx, as he was not the Marxists’ favourite? Indian Marxists did not have an in-depth study of ancient Indian social relations by then. Though historians like D.D. Kosambi, R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar did some work, there was no serious understanding of contending thinkers in ancient

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times. There was no literature to tell us about the conflicts of Brahmins and Shudras, who formed two opposite camps of Indian society. I slowly developed a view that the Buddhist thought was a challenge to Kautilyan and Manu’s political ideas. Most Indian political science students were more familiar with ancient Greek than ancient India. This idea struck me when we were learning about Kautilya and Manu as the Indian ancient political thinkers. No teacher would take the name of Gautam Buddha as our ancient political thinker. This approach surprised me. I later joined M.Phil. classes, and worked on land reforms and got my M.Phil. degree in 1981. But subsequently I decided to work on Gautam Buddha’s political philosophy for my Ph.D., which I received in 1991. The delay was because after my M.Phil. I had joined the civil rights movement. I did not leave my Marxist leanings after the Emergency. I was part of the civil liberties movement that sprang like wildfire in the post-Emergency era. But my main focus shifted from becoming an IAS officer to teaching and research with a will to combine theory and popular writing and public speaking. I was a debater from my undergraduate days. I worked as a tutor in the IAS coaching centre, located on the Osmania campus for two years after my M.A., That experience convinced me that I should not take a line where there is uncertainty in reaching that goal. I decided firmly to become a teacher in the university. That forced me to write articles to Mainstream, Economic and Political Weekly and Frontier, not of data-based empiricist ones, but of argumentative ones. I wrote a major report on the drought conditions in Andhra in EPW, but my most significant article that shaped up my methodology of India in fresh and creative way was ‘Reservations” Experience as Framework of Debate’ (EPW 25, 41, 13 Oct. 1990). I wrote several articles in Frontier; the most significant one from my point of view was the ‘The Kautilyan Political Culture’.

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Meanwhile I met a woman, whom I thought I could engage with. I was dead against an arranged marriage. But I was always mindful of what a girl had said on the day of the dosa party: ‘Old man at 23’. Since then I was becoming more and more a ‘read-and-writewala’. I was never conscious of my appearance and dress. Many girls used to meet me and I would have discussions with them but they were perhaps liking my brains but not my body. No women told me that she was attracted to me physically. However, this girl was very dark, and I had some liking for that colour which gets expressed in my later writing like Buffalo Nationalism, along with Nalupu (black) journal. In the conventional Indian middle-class sense she was not beautiful because there is a fixation on a light skin in the culture. But I had my own understanding of beauty. But the process was painful. She was leisurely, appeared to be interested and disinterested. She would be neither forthcoming nor withdrawing. There was an engagement and then a disengagement. When I tried to propose she remained silent. I thought silence was agreement. Politics used to make only academic sense to her. In personal relationship, even in private, she remained highly moral. One day I realized that she too thought that ‘I am an old man of 26’. That seems to have been the metaphor among girls for me. Some of them used to take my ‘English’ help thinking that there is no danger with an old man of that age. Apart from my girlfriend some other girls used to come to take academic help. At one stage I realized such help takers would be many. Politics and social good had no value for them. In their view, perhaps, I was a harmless useful male creature, with some good English writing skills. I began to discourage them and focus on my own work, reading, writing and doing my civil rights work. I stopped being a ghost writer, which I did in one or two cases for women students. If I were not to realize this quickly, if I were willing to ghost write for long that too would have destroyed me. In fact I realized that the thesis or research proposal writing requires basically mediocre English and

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some content, which they gather. I did ghost writing for a woman student’s M.Phil. dissertation. Later she never showed any respect for my activism or intellectuality. I never expected anything from her. She had asked for my help, so I helped her. It helped strengthen my writing skills. However, I realized that such practice would turn me into a ghost. I stopped. I became selfish thereafter and many talked about it. After empiricist research gained ground in Indian universities ghost writing has become an industry. What the real researcher needs to do is to get formulated tables based on real field work or fictitious field work and a degree comes out like a surrogate baby. It was self-destructive work without resulting in any social good or academic good. However, my marriage proposal got into a mess in the early struggling days of learning and unlearning in the research field. In India arranged marriage is caste-centred. It certainly blocks options. If one is trying to go for a choice marriage (I do not like the phrase ‘love marriage’ because that is very subjective and in a constantly changing psychological condition love has no meaning) the caste of the persons involved is a critical thing also. Caste constructs a cultural condition of the being—meatarian, vegetarian— interacting with the relatives of both the families, names of the family members, their dress code, and so on. In a multi-God/Goddess spiritualism each caste has one’s own divine image. One may not like the other. In my view no party’s family members should be treated as unwelcome. Even names matter. If everything being agreeable a non-Sanskritic rather un-Hindu name like that of mine could also come in the way. The so-called modernity of India is mixed up with a heavy dose of Brahminization of names, food culture, dress code, and so on. I was not willing to accept that brahminic/Sanskritic superiority. It is a culture where the worst violent name like that of the Rig Vedic hero Indra becomes acceptable but a great king like Bali’s name does not become acceptable. Vali, Sugriv, Ravan, Duryodhan do not have acceptability.

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Maybe because of the dominant cultural campaign even the lower castes did not think of adopting names like Bali or Sugriv or Draupadi, Amrapali, Surpanakha. The other reason could be that the lower castes were also influenced by the culture of Hindu Sanskritic texts, particularly in educational institutions. Secondly, there was hardly any education and critical thinking among lower castes all these years. Hinduism as a religion survived because the ignorance of the lower-caste masses. However, among the Indian tribes you do find the name Draupadi. For example, the name of the governor of Jharkhand is Draupadi Murmu. Some rationalists gave their daughters names like Amrapali. From Buddhism people adopt names like Gautam, Rahul, Maya, Yashodhara but they do not adopt names like Amrapali because she had been a courtesan. For example, there is an IAS officer in Telangana called Amrapali Kata. I am told that she comes from a Shudra upper-caste family with a rationalist background. But these are exceptions. There is a need for a cultural revolution in India. I was careful enough not to think of a girl with too much of brahminic, vegetarian background. Yet it ran into problems. It was a process of frustration for both. Like many male youth I was in a hurry and the other party was judging me from every point view, that I could be deceptive, unreliable or too radical from the point of view of a future family. It was a process of double checking for her. This went on for two and half years. I was getting frustrated at times, leaving it to her. Meanwhile, I was busy with my departmental job, Documentation Officer in a Research Project, and I worked in that job for 8 years and in addition, as I have said, I was in the civil and democratic rights movement. We were to part with mutual consent. The old man went into his old nest and the young woman flew into her own world. When I became friends with her I did so with the same philosophical bent of mind that I have described earlier. Man-woman, wife and husband relationship should not

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be simply to fulfil sexual desire. It should not be meant just for procreating children and making a family; that every person in my village from Hyderabad to Delhi was doing. I had decided on a course to follow. The other person could have her own course to follow, which may not coincide with mine. But there must be some common ground. Based on this even now I do not think that I was right and she was wrong. She made her choice and I respected it. I know that there was no way I could change my physical appearance. I also did not choose my parents’ caste, village and also my name. The name that my parents gave, for many who had Sanskritic names, it sounded like an old villager’s name, a farm worker’s. I could have changed my name. But I deliberately did not do so. I thought I should

Figure 5.3 Author in 2009 (author’s collection).

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change the so called negative accidental birth into a positive virtue. I thought it ought to carry more respect than what many consider modern or Sanskritic names to be. Now I have added Shepherd to it. I could even have a new religion for myself. These are all in my hands. But since I could not change my body, I started living with enormous respect for myself: body and brain. I knew that my body works and my brain thinks from within that body. How to make my body work and my brain think was within my control, as I believed in self-respect and self-control. In those spheres my hands are longer than my size and that of six feet tall people. In the process of my work, as the great biologist Lamarck said (his Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics, first presented in 1801; Darwin’s first book dealing with natural selection was published in 1859). I have elongated them. If those women who thought that I was already an old man when I was t­wenty-three, happened to meet me now, they would realize that I have a brain and body that functions much better than they could think of. This is what self-confidence and self-­ control can do to a person. I took up writing in English and also in Telugu to spread Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar’s writing and understanding among the common readers, particularly to the OBC/ SC/STs. I was instrumental in naming a Telugu journal as Nalupu, mentioned earlier, because my love for the colour black was not confined to getting an educated black wife, but had a deep rooted anti-Aryan and pro-Dravidian ideological logic. I worked for that journal as if it were a black baby from that relationship. From then on, I gave priority to be a potential intellectual rather than brood about a girlfriend. I realized that reading any amount of Marxism or Maoism written in different country contexts, that too from class perspective, does not make me an intellectual of an organic nature. Reading a bit of Gramsci in those days helped me to understand people’s common sense knowledge as part of their philosophical engagement with nature and

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production. The difference between Marx and Gramsci was that Gramsci developed a theory of cultural control of workers by the ruling class through different institutions: religion, schools, and so on. Though he examined the culture in the context of Italy it gave me better clarity about caste cultural exploitation in India. It was only theoretical help. I needed to develop my own theoretical formulations based on the experience of mine and the whole village around me in different stages of life. Thus the village became the main source of knowledge construction. Since then it has become my nature to see some kind of philosophy in every individual I spoke to, either positive or negative. Meanwhile, somewhere I read that Marx did his Ph.D. on ancient Greek thought: ‘The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature’. I, therefore, thought I should study the difference between ‘Buddha’s Political Philosophy and Brahminic Political Philosophy’ of more or less the same period in India. It was a very purposeful project to fight Brahminism that was living in all schools of thought in India. As I came from a Left school that was arguing that the social imperialism of Soviet Union was more dangerous than that of the American capitalist imperialism, I came to a conclusion that Brahminism in the Marxist school was more dangerous than Brahminism in the RSS and Hindutva forces. ‘Brahminism in the RSS, temple system offices, markets is a white snake in the green grass’ but ‘Brahminism in the garb of Marxism is a green snake in the green grass.’ But that has to be addressed in changing the perspective of the historiography of India itself. Maybe because I completed my higher education at a regional university like Osmania, located in an educationally backward region like Telangana, I had an advantage. The main advantage was I did not get brahminized in my understanding of society. Of course, the disadvantage was that I was not exposed to elite structures of knowledge. And there was a lack of absolutely admirable intellectuals, who were engaged in intellectual discourse of writing

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and speaking, and who had national recognition from this university even from Hyderabad. Such an intellectual discourse was by and large confined to Delhi among professors educated, in foreign universities or in Jawaharlal Nehru University or Delhi University. I am talking about Delhi because the old knowledge centres like Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Lucknow went out of the reckoning of students in Hyderabad and other South Indian centres, by the time I was a student in Osmania. The social science research being done at JNU was getting referred to more and more from M.A. onwards. However, I was forming an opinion that their intellectualism was more influenced by western writings, as I said earlier. Even the Muslim writers did not reflect the Dalitbahujan mass life. The books written by the upper-caste historians were only about themselves and their own philosophy. Treating their philosophy as Indian philosophy is crime, in my view. In so-called Indian history the Indian masses were never recognized to have innovated things even by the Marxist historians. For many writers in India innovation came from the books. Pot, leather, blacksmithing, wood crafting though were mentioned, the people, who innovated, those instruments of history were never part of writing. When I first read in the Introduction to Oxford University Press’ s History of India: From the Earliest Times to the End of 1911 (published in 1911), I was shocked: ‘India primarily is a Hindu country, the land of the Brahmans, who have succeeded by means of peaceful penetration, not by the sword, in carrying their ideas into every corner of India. Caste, the characteristic Brahman institution . . . dominates the whole of Hindu India, and exercises no small influence over the people and the Muhammadan minority. Nearly all Hindus reverence the Brahmans and all may be said to venerate the cow.’ When I read this kind of history my blood boiled. This is not a land of Brahmins. It was/is a land of Dalitbahujans/ Adivasis. Brahmins are a small minority in this country. They have hardly contributed to production and agrarian

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and civilizational growth. Without them India would have survived. But without the Dalitbahujan masses India would not have survived. Studies on Harappa (Bronze Age 3300–1300 BC; Mature Period, 2600–1900 BC) show there were no Brahmins in India. It was a land of Dravidians. The name Harappa could have been the name of a shepherd. This name is very similar to that of Beerappa, a popular God of the whole shepherd community of India, as I discussed in detail in Why I Am Not a Hindu. In Karnataka, Rayalaseema, the name Appa is very common. Beerappa is a popular deity of many Kannada communities. Names like Nijalingappa, Veerappa Moily have come from that heritage. The social history of Harappa builders has changed beyond recognition because all the people of that region became Muslim and by changing their historical names and socio-cultural history took a different turn. However, building villages and cities in the name of leaders who took initiative to build village/city is a common practice in Asia and more so India. Touring villages, writing human right reports, addressing press conferences became my main work in the 1980s. During that period I travelled in the whole of Andhra Pradesh (now two Telugu states), some parts of India including Dalit wadas, tribal areas. In the whole of the country I was the only civil rights activist with this kind of name and social background because of which I used to be discriminated against by all my Brahmin colleagues all over India. This discrimination was subtle and unless one is conscious one cannot understand that discriminative marginalization. The civil rights activism by and large is an elite one. The post-Emergency period was a time of massive civil rights activism of upper-caste, mainly Brahmin, intellectuals where I began to feel that their own caste self-promotion, which is subtle and carefully done, was being carried out, apart from promoting general human rights. This process is rooted in their construction of the idea of civil rights only around the state but they would see to it that the discourse does not get

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into oppression and exploitation through spiritual and social institutions. By and large I was in the margins of the movement, not because of my age; there were some Brahmins as old as me in leading positions. My economic background could also be one of the reasons. However, after the Mandal movement I began to feel increasingly that it was because of my caste that I remained in the margins. This feeling could be seen as subjective if there were others, who had come from my social background and were in the mainstream. But there were none. Why? If it were because of education, why did the majority castes remain outside that education? If it were the knowledge of English language, then why did the majority castes not get that language? These questions troubled me. V.M. Tarkunde, K.G. Kannabiran, Rajinder Sachar (Peo­ ples Union for Civil Liverties), K. Balagopal, G. Haragopal (Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee) Kobad Gandhi, Anuradha Gandhy (Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, Maharashtra), Arun Shourie (only for some time with PUCL), Manoranjan Mohanty, C.V. Subba Rao, Sudesh Vaid (Peoples Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi), all came from upper-caste backgrounds. Not that they were not concerned about what was good for others. The question before me was why more and more Shudra, Dalit, Adivasis cannot/could not become intellectuals like them, civil libertarians like them. Why should I remain in the margins of that movement? The so-called sacrifices do not justify the majority not coming into the spaces that the people of the brahminic communities could get in. Unfortunately, Anuradha Ghandy died in the Maoist movement of Chhattisgarh. The question is not that they lack commitment. Thousands of lower-caste people died for their belief and commitment unsung. The question before me as a civil libertarian was why were intellectual fields dominated by Brahmins, who could not be seen in the agrarian field or in working class or in the artillery of the army? Why did caste play this kind of divisive role?

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Though I could speak and write in English and knew Marxism, as much as they knew, even then communist Brahminism has a way to operate and marginalize those who come from outside their fold. That fold has its own signals, symbols. Even though they oppose exploitation, inequality based on class, they never wanted to talk about caste inequality and the exploitation based on it as an equally important component of civil rights violation. They never wrote anything on caste nor did they recognize the Dalitbahujan thinkers like Mahatma Phule, Narayana Guru, Shahu Maharaj, Ramasamy Naickar and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who wrote and spoke about caste exploitation. Quite interestingly not a single Shudra (including castes like Reddy, Nair, Jat, Patel, Gujjar, Maratha, and so on) could be seen in the civil rights leadership, even in the post-Emergency period. The leaders of the Civil Liberties movement came from Brahmin background like the ones I named above. Historically the Brahmin-Baniya community evolved a knack of constructing so-called intellectuals (writers, musicians, artists) and promoting them to preserve its own hegemony in those critical areas, from the days of Raja Rammohan Roy to the civil rights movement, where reading and writing were involved. The political group I was associated with, (T. Nagi Reddy group) and its civil rights wing OPDR, were small and was not creating news for cutting off heads. That had its own discriminatory problem. Among the Naxalbari hero forces my group, known as Idli-Sambar Khatam Party, as mentioned earlier, at a time when it should have been a Landlord Khatam Party. Apart from some mass activity, some revolutionary Dalam activities (armed squad activity) huge discussions on every issue were the main work of this group. Not that there was no some mass activity. That activity was not very visible to the outsiders. Though the state was supposed to be their main enemy, the enmity among each other was far bitter. Killing each other was also not uncommon. This trend was disgusting

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and looked like a wastage of time. Meanwhile my organization made a proposal that I marry a tribal girl who was semi-literate and was part of a singing team of the cultural squad. I thought this was mindless and criminal. Though the revolutionary movement and ideology had several good things in transforming the caste-centred Indian society, even in a marginal way it could not play any role. Most of the intellectuals who worked with this movement had particular interpersonal relationships in which I never fitted. For many reasons, apart from such trivial things, I along with other friends left that organization and started drought relief work in Mahabubnagar district, where people on the Krishna bank, who were displaced because of the Somshila project, were dying of hunger. We did a major report on the impact of the drought and started food supplying centres in three worst affected villages. There I understood the role of caste. Even though people were dying of hunger, the upper caste did not want to eat food in the common service and drink water from the same pot. We insisted that they should eat at a common dining area and they should drink from the same pot. We told them stories of sinful curses that they faced because of such practices. Finally they agreed and by the time we left the villages they were eating happily at one place and were living like one caste. That taught me that the poor will compromise with their caste culture but not the rich upper castes. This needs an anticaste ideological battle. To live my civil rights life in an independent way I wrote my first book The State and Repressive Culture, which the brahminic civil rights forces never recognized as worth reading. It was never reviewed within the civil rights circle. They never referred it in any public forum nor in their writing. Choosing to quote an author in one’s writing is also a political act. I used to think this was a work that links up culture and civil rights both theoretically and in terms of field work. As they were ignoring my writing I

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too was ignoring their writings. But they have writers and promoters’ networks that I do not have. I have never recognized their writings as worth reading. I turned to reading the writings of Ambedkar and Phule in these peer group conditions. Caste and cultural humiliation slowly begin in the garb of Marxism and class struggles, which hide the social reality of contemporary society. Ambedkar gets quoted by everyone now. But in the 1980s and 1990s taking his name as a thinker and a scholar would only generate repulsion. My own personal experience in the civil rights movement convinced me that I should think of an independent method of propagating Ambedkar and Phule’s ideology, which the civil rights leaders, who came from the Brahmin background, are not part of. But to evolve your own path of liberation is a major struggle. Particularly in intellectual field it was next to impossible. Most of the Brahmin-Baniya intellectuals by then were foreign educated and foreign travelling. The training in foreign universities has one advantage and a huge disadvantage too. Those who got educated in the West may critique colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and so on (such a thing is done by Euro-American scholars also); they has no personal experience about the Indian p ­ roduction processes. Take, for example, how the ­western universities influenced the western-­educated Indian scholars (living abroad or living in India); the western scholars wrote about class exploitation and the Indian scholars also wrote about Indian class exploitation. The Europeans talked about ­feudalism and the Indian scholars also talked about feudalism. Any Dalitbahujan ­scholar’s written word is unworthy of even reading but western scholars every word is worthy of either appreciation or contestation. All this goes in the name of nationalism. After the Mandal struggle scholars like Nicholas Dirks, Anupama Rao, the late Sharmila Rege, Gail Omvedt, Braj Ranjan Mani, Sukhdeo Thorat, Gopal Guru, have written about caste issues, cultures and economics. Others,

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in subsequent years have written about caste issues and cultures. Among these scholars, Sharmila Rege has done some original work. Most of these scholars who came from the upper-caste or (foreign) background did secondary source work once the caste question has been opened for the larger debate. Even here they followed the western methodological models. If the western scholars did footnoted work the Indian scholars also followed them. Western scholarship’s focus increased after the issues of caste and untouchability were taken to the UN conference at Durban, 2001. That was the most important achievement of the Durban conference, about which I will talk in another chapter. My understanding is that if the Brahmins wrote their Vedas, Upanishads invoking Agni, Vayu, Indra, the Priest as social spiritual knowledge of their community, invoking God as part of that writing, without showing any evidence whatsoever, the Dalitbahujan also can write their own spiritual texts bringing the socio-spiritual life of the Dalitbahujan into textuality. If Gandhi could write Hind Swaraj without any footnotes, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd could also write Why I Am Not Hindu, Post-Hindu India without footnotes. If Gandhi’s writing is respectable my writing should also become respectable. More importantly, if Rig Veda is treated as a great spiritual text whatever the Dalitbahujan write as their spiritual text should also be respected. This is where the difference between the West and India lies. No western spiritual texts declared that some people were created from the head of God and others were created from the feet of God. Acceptance of any text whether footnoted or not comes from the hegemonic position from which that writer writes. Productive Dalitbahujan society has actually so far not been written about. I never considered that the brahminic texts like Rig Veda, Upanishads, and so on, belong to all Indians. The Dalitbahujans have still to write their socio-spiritual texts. I always worked with that mindset. Footnoted work brings back the written texts about

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people whose life is recorded into some kind of textuality. A lot of ethnographic work had to be done about the life and work of the Dalitbahujan masses and also about the tribals. Most significantly, work based on the field work was not at all done by the organic scholars, who were of the first generation, and got an opportunity to work in the academic realm. As against this mode it was Mahatma Phule, way back in the nineteenth century, who chose an indigenous method of writing Indian history, economics, and politics. What is this indigenous method? This question is a genuine one. In my view if the Brahmin writers wrote Rig Veda to say their God created them from his head and the Dalitbahujans were created from his feet, unlike the other Gods of the world, the Dalitbahujan should write their spiritual book, which says they themselves were created from God’s head and Brahmins were created from his feet and assign the tasks that they assigned to Brahmins what they did in their books. The Rig Vedic assignment of work is nothing but Brahmin assignment. There is nothing spiritual about Brahmin books; there is also nothing universal in their books. This reversing the roles in work ethics should also become the function of academic writing. The Dalitbahujan historian, political theorist, sociologist, anthropologist must write with that kind of vision. Though Ambedkar used the same western mode of writing he seemed to have been more influenced by black writings than of the white scholars of his time. As a keen student, I feel certain that he would have read activist writers like Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes and the slave Jupiter Hammon, who were very popular among American black circles and among sensitive whites. There is evidence that Ambedkar studied black struggles. The fact that he wrote a letter to Professor W.B. Dubois and received one in reply makes it clear that Ambedkar was also thinking of making the black question a common cause with that of Indian Dalits. Dubois reply also informs us that the Black movement knew about the untouchability problem

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in India. From Daniel Immerwahr’s work, I reproduce the correspondence between Ambedkar and Dubois here: Dear Prof. Dubois, Although I have not met you personally, I know you by name as everyone does who is working in the cause of securing liberty to the oppressed people. I belong to the Untouchables of India and perhaps you might have heard my name. I have been a student of the Negro problem and have read your writings throughout. There is so much similarity between the position of the Untouchables in India and of the position of the Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary. I was very much interested to read that the Negroes of America have filed a petition to the U.N.O. The Untouchables of India are also thinking of following suit. Will you be so good as to secure for me two or three copies of this representation by the Negroes and send them to my address. I need hardly say how very grateful I shall be for your troubles in this behalf. 

Du Bois’s response, dated 31 July 1946: My dear Mr. Ambedkar, I have your letter concerning the case of the Negroes of America and the Untouchables in India before the United Nations. As you say a small organization of American Negroes, the National Negro Congress, has already made a statement which I am enclosing. I think, however, that a much more comprehensive statement well documented will eventually be laid before the United Nations by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If this is done I shall be glad to send you a copy. I have often heard of your name and work and of course have every sympathy with the Untouchables of India. I shall be glad to be of any service I can render if possible in the future.

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(‘An informal memo on B. R. Ambedkar and U.S. Blacks’, May 2008 by Daniel Immerwahr. http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/daniel-immerwahr/Ambedkar.pdf)

As he was a Buddhist, Ambedkar used the middle path. In that sense I am not a Buddhist, as Buddhism was defeated in its struggle against Brahminism. The Dalitbahujans must not lose the battle now. It should be a decisive battle of ideas. Otherwise Ambedkar would not have written his first essay in 1916, ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’. Mahatma Phule in his very first book Gulamgiri (Slavery) realized the importance of examining Indian history and mythology from the point of view of caste and also to look at the Dravidian and Aryan conflict. A most celebrated scholar like Romila Thapar has said the following about Mahatma Phule’s work and my work as follows: Apart from this, this was one theory that had a very widespread popular appeal. All kinds of groups, all over the country picked up this theory [the Aryan invasion] and built their political ideologies on the basis of this. Let me give you two extreme examples of the way in which the theory was used. First of all in the later part of the nineteenth century there was a very famous person called Jyotiba Phule in Maharashtra, who accepted Max Müller’s theory and went on to argue that therefore, the inheritors of the land in India are the lower castes because they are the real, original Indians and the upper caste, particularly the Brahmins, are the Aryans that came as alien invaders. The Brahmins were aliens, they were oppressive and they imposed their rule. . . . this becomes an ammunition in the hands of an ideology which is arguing for caste confrontation and saying that the Dalits and the tribals are the indigenous peoples, not the upper caste people. He uses a lot of mythology very interestingly. In fact it is quite fascinating. He uses for example the myth of Parasurama, who destroyed the Kshatriyas twenty-one times. And he says, there you see this is the clear example of Brahminical

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There is no one view this question. Those of us who have been part of the society and history of caste exploitation take one view. Others take other view. On this issue Phule and Ambedkar has different views. I agree with Phule but not with Ambedkar. Some DNA studies suggest that Thapar is wrong (Tony Joseph, ‘How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate’, The Hindu, 16 June 2017; Michael Danino, ‘the Problems of Genetics and the Aryan Issue’, The Hindu, 29 June 2017). Thapar made this clear in her lecture at the JNU Staff college (now called Human Resource Development Centre) and was published later in 1999. She does not even write the full name of Mahatma Jotirao Phule, notwithstanding the fact that she does not refer him as ‘Mahatma’. I do not think that if she were mentioning Gandhi she would not mention him just as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, leaving out Mahatma. Secondly, both Phule and I are only trying to advance a theory for ‘caste confrontation’ but not for liberation. Let us not forget the fact that the Pre-Aryan or Pre-Vedic Indian history from the time of Harappa city building and Rig Vedic established brahminic hegemony in India. Mahatma Phule’s assertion was that the Brahmins were Aryans and they migrated from outside. He says in his famous book Gulamgiri: ‘Recent researches have demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that the Brahmans were not the aborigines of India. At some remote period of antiquity, probably more than 3000 years ago, the Aryan progenitors of the present Brahmin Race descended upon the plains of Hindoostan from regions lying beyond the Indus, the Hindoo Koosh, and other adjoining tracts’. Mahatma Phule was very clear about this racial division

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but Ambedkar was not. Ambedkar believed that the Shudras are Aryans themselves. His book on the Shudras itself was titled as follows: Who Were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society. This very title of Ambedkar’s shows that he considered them as Aryans; subsequently the whole book is written with that premise. In my view in this regard Mahatma Phule was right and Dr. Ambedkar was wrong. My understanding of Dravidian and Aryan conflict is based more on the village culture and the Brahmin anti-production behaviour, living and understanding of human societies. History writing till then was based on literary sources or epigraphic sources or artefacts from excavations. But no Indian historian was willing to treat the living Indian village itself is an archival source; the Indian villages where there is stagnant productive force remained unchanging for centuries. While building the Harappa city our ancestors used brick, carpentry, pot making instruments which are available in our villages more or less in the same form. The village instrument makers are mostly from the lower castes and also happen to be darkish in colour. This is an indication of their Dravidian roots. Not that there is no colour mix up among our rural people but the work division is a clear indicator of racial feature of the societies. The Aryans by and large avoided physical labour and lived on myth making, building of mythology and also ritual priesthood and so on. The system continues more or less in the same mode, particularly in South and Northwest India. One can see these race and caste divisional characteristics in our civil society, across productive tool usages. In Why I Am Not a Hindu and in Post-Hindu India I have shown the fundamental differentiation based on my study of villages, centring on caste. But I believe that the caste and race relationship must also be examined based on the work ethic. One of the tendencies of Aryans was to avoid productive hard work and acquire the

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living resources through the exploitation of the labour of Dravid/Shudra masses. This thesis so far has been proved to correct, as the caste studies have shown. This also clear with the Aryan disrespect to the buffalo and spiritualization of the cow. The cow was not an Indian animal before Aryans came here. In Indus Valley sources only the buffalo is mentioned. The Indian race-caste relationship needs to be examined even from the point of view of the Indian racial institutions. The Dravidan and Aryan races used clear racial language. In Karnataka, for example, the Lingayats, who worship Basava and want to have a separate religious identity for themselves like Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains do not consider themselves Aryans. Broadly they go with Dravid identity. The Brahmin-Baniya caste organizations in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh call themselves as ‘Arya Brahmin’ and ‘Arya Vysya’. They run institutions in those names. In North India, Dayanand Saraswati, a Brahmin, established the Arya Samaj. No Shudra community in the North or South called itself ‘Arya Shudra’. Most of the Shudras in Tamil Nadu call themselves Dravid and Dravida Khazhagam (DK) of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy became popular because of that consciousness. This division has gone into the village layers in terms of productive work and anti-productive work ethic. In the South no Brahmin or Baniya tills the land nor do they have anything to do with the discovery of productive tools like plough, sickle, hammer, leather technology. In my discussions with the rural masses they repeatedly said that Brahmins and Baniyas in terms of race and jati are different from us. I have asked several students who came from the rural areas, why do they not read Vedas, Upanishads now. They said, ‘they are not our books, they do not reflect our life in any form.’ This othering of the Vedas by newly educated Dalitbahujans, including Shudra upper castes, offers a good indicator in future that a fundamental spiritual struggle is likely to take place.

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But the brahminic sociologists want to hide the feelings of the productive masses because they see it as threat to their socio-spiritual system once these masses are educated. The caste culture among the lower castes is based on their division of labour. But such division of labour was used by the brahminic spiritual system to divide them into perpetually unequal people. For that they used the written texts like Rig Veda, even Bhagvad Gita (which were not at all spiritual books in my view) to protect the socio-­ economic interests of the Brahmins first and subsequently the Baniyas also got into that protective mechanism by assigning only business work for themselves. This question of perpetual anti-production existence of the brahminic writing was not brought up by anybody, including Ambedkar and Mahatma Phule, before Why I Am Not a Hindu book was published Quite interestingly, after Siddaramaiah, a first generation educated lawyer, became the Chief Minister of Karnataka, decided to give the Lingayat religion a religious status, based on the twelfth-century Kannada writings of Basava’s Vachanas. Lingayats want the Lingayat religion to be separated from Hinduism and given constitutional status like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. The Vachanas made fun of Brahminism and asserted their God’s superiority, a correct approach. Many more religions should come into operation with a specific philosophy of opposing Hinduism, which is nothing but Brahminism. Since Siddaramaiah comes from the Kuruba (shepherd) community, as did Akkamaha Devi, the famous Kuruba woman, who became Basava’s follower, he realized that this is the only way to handle Kannada Brahminism and its Hindutva forces. He recently renamed a major women’s university as Akkamaha Devi University, which inspired many women and also Lingayats of the state. This is an inspiration approach of an OBC chief minister than that of OBCs like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav, and Nitish Kumar, who operate in the same brahminic

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Hinduism. I am told that Siddaramaiah read Why I Am Not a Hindu and compared the main principle that brahminic Hinduism was against production, whereas the Dalitbajujan mass is for production and distribution of resources, as also in Basava’s philosophy. Though Ambedkar and Phule discussed the social relations of caste they had not realized that idol worship was a huge spiritual system that sustained caste. For a long time if the Brahmin-Baniyas were worshipping idols of three murthys—Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva—the Dalitbahujan caste worshipped their caste-based idols, like Beerappa, Pochamma, Maisamma, Yellamma, as I have shown in Why I Am Not a Hindu. Thus the worship of idols by both the Dalitbahujan and brahminic forces reduced the importance of ‘book worship’ or the ‘Worship of the Word’, sustaining illiteracy and recitational culture. This has stunted the growth of the Dalitbahujans and the brahminic forces. Those who worshipped the book by opposing idol worship promoted literacy and through literacy also advanced the philosophical vision of people. By remaining in the realm of idol worship from the Vedic period to now (we do not know what was the worship form in the Harappan culture) India became a nation of no historical records from ancient to present. How can idol worshippers maintain a historical record through writing? In my view this is one reason why we are far more backward than China, which had a tradition of historical records from the days of Confucius, who was a great socio-spiritual philosopher, who believed in writing and reading as a cultural practice. The tragedy among Dalitbahujans today is that they do not even have a culture of maintaining their family history in record form. Of course, the Brahmins kept some of written history of their families, reducing Indian history to a mere record of Brahmin history. Now Brahminism survives in the form of spiritual and social vegetarianism, cow worship without the Brahmins

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themselves grazing the cows. The RSS and its other wings like the BJP are expanding and deepening this vegetarianist, cow worship Brahminism to all parts of India by using state power. Though the majority Indians, including the East Indian Brahmins are meatarian there is no serious contestation to this campaign. Even the issue of cow worship is not major for the Shudra/Dalitbahujan masses. Though certain regions are resisting this, the mainstream is being projected as cow worshippers. I have travelled to several parts of rural India and I have not seen anywhere in the Indian villages cow being worshipped as they worship idol Gods/Goddesses of the caste/region. This is where writing plays a role. I strongly believe that Dalitbahujan writing should tell the truth that there is a separate culture between caste and caste, community and community and region and region but not just Hindu-Muslim-Christian culture. India is the most diverse country in the cultural realm and caste contributed to that diversity. The RSS and BJP want to unify this without abolishing the brahminical control over the rest of the Shudra/Dalitbahujan masses. Brahminism and Jainism constructed their godheads as vegetarian. Kashmiri Brahmins, Bengalis, and Assamese are meatarians; the South Indian Brahmins and North Indian Brahmins and western Indian Brahmins, who are vegetarian, have done this quite consciously. In all the Hindu temples like Tirupathi, Bhadrachalam (Sriram temple), Srikrishna temple in Kerala only vegetarian food is offered. In the Ganapathi festival all the Ganapathi statues are offered only vegetarian food. Quite surprisingly Shri Shirdi Saibaba, who lived as a meatarian and beefarian (as he was a Muslim), is now being treated as a Hindu vegetarian God. In Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, this kind of pure vegetarianism as divine food does not exist. Apart from the Brahmin priests, it is known that a section of Baniyas and Jains are also vegetarian. But they have also not allowed an intellectual class to emerge and question this kind

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of vegetarian spirituality. Either this was seen as a trivial issue or a sacred thing that should not be debated. There is no critical writing on this issue. This small minority constantly projects India as a vegetarian nation and since the RSS also adopted that food culture it wants to give vegetarianism a nationalist status. In all my writings I countered this vegetarian nationalism as not only dangerous but it national becomes actually self-destructive and has anti-­ moorings. Every child should be trained to eat what is nutritious food. In my view the spiritual systems should be delinked to human food habits. Training children in pure vegetarian food culture is a negative value because it is the parental food culture that shapes up their taste and finally their future energy levels. Indian Brahminism, at least vegetarian Brahminism, has destroyed the scope of multi-cuisine life experience. Several sub-castes among the OBCs and Dalits have emerged because of work division, lack of inter-caste marriage and also prohibition of inter-dining between castes. For example, among the OBCs there are castes which came from the same cultural heritage like Golla and Kuruma. Even now in many places they do not intermarry and inter-dine. Among Dalits, for example, the Mala and Madiga have practised similar social relations. Even now there is a tension between these sub-castes. In my childhood no Golla would allow his/her daughter to be married to a Kuruma. Though there is some change in this relationship, this change cannot be called equalization of sub-caste engagements. The caste cultural differentiation among many sub-castes is notional yet it plays barrier role. In the post-Mandal period there is an attempt to change this notion but it still persists. If you carefully study South Indian Brahmins like Iyers, Iyangars, Namboodris, the Sharmas and Shastris of Telugu, Kannada Brahmins, ritual inter-dining is not being allowed even today. Bengali bhadralok may find it difficult to believe that in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana no

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Brahmin eats food in any Shudra house whatever could his/her economic and political status when they come to perform marriage or death ceremonies, as this is not the practice of a Bengali Brahmin priest. Though the caste cultures within Brahmin-Baniyas are diverse the negative values of vegetarianism are quite strong in many parts of India. At a much more fundamental level the Shudras of India did not get into the domain of spiritual philosophy and did not ask why only Brahmins should control the spiritual domain of Hinduism. In South, North and western India no Reddy, Kamma, Nair, Mudaliar, Yadav, Kurmi, Maratha can become a priest in any major Hindu temple. There are no theological education centres, where even the Shudras can join to study Hindu theology (in Sanskrit or in any other language) and get qualified for the post of priest. With the recent Supreme Court judgement about the Agama Shastra and caste-based Hindu priesthood; a Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N.V. Ramana invoked Article 16(5) of the Constitution to hold that ‘exclusion of some and inclusion of a particular segment or denomination for appointment as archakas would not violate Article 14 [right to equality]’ (The Hindu, 27 Sept. 2016). In other words the court has affirmed the brahminic hierarchy in the spiritual system, thereby allowing the caste and spiritual untouchability to continue. I used the 1990 Mandal movement as a launching pad and started studying Shudra, Dalitbahujan and BrahminBaniya societies. This study required an altogether different methodology. Understanding the caste culture of people needs to be observed over a period of time. One has constantly to interact with people of each culture and experience how they deal with one another. During the Mandal movement my anti-brahminic campaign was vigorous and double-edged. Every day, I addressed a public meeting in universities, colleges, in factories, in villages. I was also writing in Telugu newspapers, and the special

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journal known as Nalupu which became very popular among students, political activists, school and college teachers. As part of our civil liberties work several leaflets were distributed. That was the most challenging time for me. That was the time when I was forced to speak in Hindi/Urdu and English from various platforms, apart from speaking in Telugu. The problem at that time was twofold. The brahminic upper castes within the communist movements and parties were also opposing reservations. The Hindutva Brahmin intellectuals, politicians, both Rajiv Gandhi and Vajpayee, opposed the Mandal Commission’s suggestions. L.K. Advani and other BJP leaders used the occasion to start a Ratha Yatra and demolished the Babri Masjid. All opponents of the reservation may not have the same political ideology. But when it came to reservation they held a similar view. This kind of situation made our struggle more difficult. Yet we were willing to struggle. At my university the Vice Chancellor downwards everyone was opposed to the reservation. They could show cause and remove me from my job. All the time the authorities were waiting for an opportunity to serve me notice and push me out of my job. Luckily that did not happen. The Left and the radical Left movement were useful in that sense. In those days the judges in the courts were also against the reservation struggles. I do not know in case of my removal from my job how the court would have responded. After all, judges are not free of their own prejudices. Upper-caste persons working in the communist parties and organizations were playing a dual role of accepting the principle of reservation to the SCs/STs as necessary but not accepting the extension of the reservations to the OBCs as a necessary condition for their upward mobility. By 1990 the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal had not been founded, and Dalit leader-headed party like Bahujan Samaj Party was not strongly visible. In the Janata Dal of V.P. Singh there were significant OBC and Dalit

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leaders. The Congress and the BJP were opposed to the OBC reservations. The pro-reservation forces were hoping that the communists would support them unconditionally. But Dalits/OBCs within those parties had to wage a war with them to force them to take a pro-reservation stand. After a long internal struggle, the OBCs working in these organizations, like me, U. Sambashiva Rao, Gaddar and number of other young Dalit/OBC students came out into the streets in Hyderabad. It was a very difficult time for all of us. The upper castes in the communist movement had their own problems. Their families were more opposed to reservation, as their children were just moving into good government jobs. Secondly, in South India the landlord class against which the radical struggles were taking place were the Shudra upper castes. In the Telugu region of those who are in the present OBC list hardly anybody was a landlord. The landlords were mainly Reddys, Velamas, Kammas, and so on. The old type of feudal landlord were mostly Reddys and Velamas (the Kammas were neo-rich but not old feudal). The artisanal communities had no social recognition. By the early 1990s their socio-economic status was very bad when compared to the present. Of all the civil libertarian Brahmins, only Balagopal was writing reports in Economic Political Weekly, with some acceptance of OBC issue as a civil liberty issue. K.G. Kannabiran too took a pro-reservation stand and wrote in support. Among Telugu Dalit writers, Katti Padmarao, K.S. Chalam, Bojja Tarakam and many others were very active. and writing in support of OBC reservation. The Dalit and Ambedkarite participation was quite strong. For example, J.B. Raju a Dalit employees’ leader was a major source of mobilization and public speaking. He was working almost full time. The OBC participation was very weak. Apart from me, Balagopal was the only known English writer from the Telugu region. Gail Omvedt wrote in support from Maharashtra. However, all Balagopal’s. But all

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his reports were written from the point of view of constitutional rights. He was taking care to see that he was not dubbed as an Ambedkarite, and not go out of his sacred position of Marxism. During this period Balagopal had written some articles in Telugu and also some pamphlets. In all of them he confined his arguments to constitutional rights and tried to defend the Mandal movement. However, some women activists and academics wrote articles in the mainstream media. The Stree Shakti group was part of the reservation protection movement. They were in a way ideologically supporting the anti-caste struggles; from the Telugu region Susie Tharu, Kalpana Kannabiran and others could be mentioned as those who took a clear Ambedkarite position. They wrote wherever possible with conviction and clarity in support of reservation and its transformative potential. Balagopal looked to the other way when it came to both Feminism and Ambedkarism. He retained his manhood along with Marxism in all his writings. As my villagers thought in my college days that I had no manhood and was not marrying, in my Marxism days my Marxist friends thought that I had no manhood but have only some Marxism. At that juncture of our national level struggle we needed intellectual support in the mainstream media in the face of very strong anti-­Mandal media mainly lead by Arun Shourie as the editor of the Indian Express (at that time there was only one Indian Express fully under Shourie’s control). I was attacking him and the media in Nalupu but its reach was small and it was a local magazine. Definitely the upper-caste Marxists had a bigger reach in the media as they were strong in Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and also Andhra Pradesh. They were the ruling political force in some states. I was at a disadvantage because of my lack of status as a writer and also Ambedkarism itself was just taking shape. I was just formulating my ideas on caste. I was also not known at the national level, as I had not written any book as yet. In Why I Am Not a Hindu I made a serious attempt

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to mediate between Marx and Ambedkar by deploying an analysis of labour and caste relationship and the same methodology is extended to my book Post-Hindu India. To understand ancient India I started by reading wellknown Marxist historians’ writings: D.D. Kosambi, R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar, and so on. They never examined how caste formed the bedrock of the Indian society and human inequality and un-dignifying of productive labour by Brahminism. They seem to have hardly realized that from Rig Veda, to Upanishads to all other ancient medieval Sanskrit texts reflected only the Brahmin life, spirituality, aspirations and understanding. No Indian writer till Mahatma Phule began to write what reflected the socio-economic and productive life of the majority of Indians. Iyothee Thass (born 1845) of the Madras Presidency and Periyar, apart from Ambedkar, did significant work and also mobilized the Dalitbahujan masses. The books written by the upper-caste historians were only about themselves and their own philosophy, though in every country the elite wrote books that reflected their own philosophy. But in class societies the social division between the rich and poor or between feudal and the serf or between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is mediated by a spiritual system that had some common cultural bonds. After Marxism came to India, a writing of empathy towards the working class took place but the caste system did not let that writing seep into the layers of the caste system. Ambedkar wrote extensively to liberate the Dalitbahujan but a much more nuanced methodology by combing empirical interaction with the masses and a theoretical formulation that catches the imagination of Dalitbahujan masses is needed. I made some effort in that direction in all my writings. That is, however, not enough. It is also true that the right-wing school has not produced even writers worthy of naming. If it had produced some writers they were/are all inimical to the Dalitbahujan liberation.

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When I read those books written by the Left liberals and looked back to village system in India the village system, in many parts of India did not get reflected in those writings. The reader would feel that there is an Indian village system in my books. In Why I Am Not a Hindu I have shown how my childhood life differed with the Brahmin-Baniya life mainly in the village setting. In Post-Hindu India the whole village’s social-economic relations were shown by under a taking journey in the village from the tribal hamlet via a Dalit Madiga wada, and so on. The journey goes up to Brahmin-Banyia village life by analysing the cultural and economic relations between different castes. The village is the central unit of the Post-Hindu India book. Such an attempt was not made by any academician earlier. The villages in different states may have different structure but the Hindu caste cultural hierarchy would not differ in its basic character. The village mass life was not like what appeared in the Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata and so on. Sociologists like M.N. Srinivas (The Remembered Village, Village, Caste, Gender and Method, 1976), André Béteille (Caste, Class and Power, 1965) wrote books on rural sociology. But for them the Dalitbahujan castes were doing menial jobs and eating impure food. They did not find any innovative skills among them. Both Srinivas and Béteille considered meatarian food that the village Shudras and Dalitbahujans eat as polluted food. Their popular concepts like purity and pollution were constructed around food culture of people. They consider the brahminic vegetarianism as ritually pure food; the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi meatarian food as pollution. Both of them did their main work on the village caste system of South India. During the Bengal Renaissance and nationalist period the Bengali Brahmin intellectuals have played a leading role. The Bengal Renaissance was a fertilization of two knowledge systems, western knowledge introduced by British Rule and the indigenous one but only

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Raja Rammohan Roy has been recognized by modern historians. Mahatma Phule, who did another kind of fertilized work and who came to a conclusion that the Hindu culture was more responsible in keeping the Shudras and Ati-Shudras and women oppressed for centuries, was never recognized. The ideas of Raja Rammohan Roy to Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838–1894) to Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), were very different from each others. Not that there were no thinkers in Bengal who thought that Vedic culture did not represent the whole Indian life. But they were marginalized. Roy also names his organization as Brahmo Samaj that actually enriched the Brahmin community. That is the problem. But Phule disagreed with Roy’s thinking and says Roy’s Brahmo Samaj is nothing but Brahmin Samaj, and started Satyashodak Samaj (Truth Seeker’s Society). These are two different faces of the Bengal Renaissance. Even the present leading intellectuals, like Amartya Sen, Ranajit Guha, Gayitri Spivak, Partha Chatterjee—living abroad or in India—have written several books using their Bengali bhadralok background. From that region scholars of that stature could not emerge from the lower castes. That is a sad state of that state’s Renaissance. Quite interestingly, the opposite knowledge emerged in Maharashtra from Mahatma Phule, Savitribai Phule and Pandita Ramabai. The latter was a Brahmin who converted to Christianity to make a statement against Hinduism and she worked for the cause of Dalitbahujans. She carried the agenda of Savitribai further. They examined the life of Shudras and Ati-Shudras and women from a totally different Dalitbahujan perspective, experience and day-to-day life. Today, the writings, that too in English, by Dalits and OBCs (very few at that), that are telling their history are encouraging. Particularly Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (2017), and Y.B. Satyanarayana’s My Father Balaiah (2013) are worth mentioning. Both of them were written from Andhra, Telangana experience.

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Sujatha Gidla’s book has exposed the casteism among the Non-Resident Indians. She wrote this book as an Untouchable Christian and she established a new dimension that the larger Hindu casteist society did not leave her family and caste from caste brutality. She also established that even in America her background was discovered and untouchability was made to follow her. Since this was published by a major American publisher (Farrar Straus and Giroux) it opened up new mode of international debate about caste and untouchability. I am glad I could read and review this book (The Indian Express 10 Feb. 2018). Two translations into English, Omprakash Valmiki’s Jhootan (2003) and Manoranjan Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of Dalit (2018) are texts that made an impact on Indian discourse. I can only say that unless very good English-educated Dalitbahujan leaders emerge from all corners of the country, undercutting regional language barriers, changing the basic structure of India is impossible. Now that the right-wing forces have taken over and they are organizing the OBCs/Tribals and Dalits into the Hindu system and also the political system, what kind of shape the future will take I am not sure. In any case I am also not hopeless. I live with the audacity of hope. I took up to writing in English and also in Telugu to spread Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar’s writings and understanding among the common readers, particularly to the OBC/SC/STs.

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n 1978 I went for an interview for the post of a lecturer in Osmania University. Afterwards, I walked back to the Arts College building where I worked on an ad hoc basis as a documentation officer in the Department of Political Science. At the majestic steps of the college building stood a teacher, who was a Reddy. The Reddys are a feudal landed community of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. They were granted the title Reddy in the fourteenth century under the Kakatiyas as they were part of the power structure in the villages, holding police and revenue positions. They became the political rulers of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and gradually they dominated administrative institutions of the region. In Telangana they are the most powerful Shudra community even today. They are still the biggest land-owning community in Telangana. After the recent creation of the Telangana state they share power with yet another small but equally feudal caste called Velamas, whose feudal title is Rao. All Velamas invariably have their last name as Rao. This title has migrated from Maharashtra. The last name Rao is added by Brahmins and Kammas, Kapus, like P.V. Narsimha Rao (Brahmin) and N.T. Rama Rao (Kamma). But in these castes not all male names end with that suffix; this last name has existed for several centuries. For instance, Mahatma Jotirao Phule’s father’s name had that suffix (Govindrao). This name is found in many

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upper-caste Maharashtrians and the upwardly mobile Dalitbahujans, for instance, Ambedkar’s family’s given name was Bhimrao. In Telangana we never imitated the Shudra upper-castes’ names. We had our own culture. The Kurumas did not believe in Sanskritizing or brahmanizing themselves, may be because of their self-respect. The man asked me whether I had gone for the interview. I said, ‘Yes.’ He quipped back, ‘What do you do after you get selected?’ This question shocked me. I said, ‘I will teach.’ He said what bad days have come, even Ilaiahs, Yellaiahs, Mallaiahs also think of becoming lecturers in a university. He was actually speaking in very bad English, but speaking only in English. That was the approach of many feudal Reddys, Raos and also Brahmin teachers, even though they were Telugu-speaking people, they used to speak only in English with the students and youth from the rural areas, the first generation to come to university, who were terribly scared of English. Since English was the medium of instruction, the teachers would use it as a weapon of control rather than as a language of communication. In a slightly raised tone I said, ‘When we have taught sheep, teaching human beings is not at all difficult.’ He realized that my English was much better than his and kept quiet. I had to survive in Osmania University under the feudal Reddys, Raos and conservative brahminical forces, who had hardly acquired control over knowledge. There were a few Muslim teachers but they were also living in a feudal culture, that of the Nawabs. I was among the very few OBCs, the first generation to receive formal education, as just mentioned, who was entering what these three sections thought of as their domain, to become a teacher at the same place. After the merger of the Nizam state to the Indian Union in 1948 the feudal forces coming from rural Telangana controlled the region. Their education levels were not very good but they had muscle power. After the interim

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government was abolished in 1952, a popular government was set up with a Brahmin, Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, as the Chief Minister. The character of Osmania University changed in accordance with the political environment. I was also dead scared of that environment. Reddy, Velama boys and Brahmin boys and girls looked down on us as unworthy fellows. However, my resolve was that unless I acquired mastery over English, in both speaking (as I needed to lecture in English every day in the classroom) educated and in writing—there were some convent-­ English-students—I would not be my own person. I would then either become a slave of the Reddys and Brahmins for survival or give up the job and go to some other deskbased job. But I was determined that I must become a popular teacher. I increased my reading—that too its variety. I read English newspapers and I used to practice lecturing before a mirror. Within a short time I established myself as a teacher. Though the upper-caste students used to pretend to dislike how I taught, I knew that the fault was not mine. More students were taking my classes than those of senior teachers. I had a passion for teaching, therefore, I decided to hang around the university and do the research. I gave up the idea of taking the IAS examination. I had also tried for admission in the M.Phil. at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, with a loan but could not get admission. Hence I settled back at the Osmania and completed my M.Phil. on land reforms, as I have said earlier. I studied what was the impact of the 1973 Land Ceiling Act in Andhra Pradesh. But I had some problems with my supervisor, Madhusudhan Reddy, who himself came from a landlord Reddy family. He was a professor who had influence on the university administration and was against my studying Buddha as a political thinker. I slowly moved away from him and worked for my Ph.D. on Gautam Buddha’s political philosophy under a Left-leaning woman professor Rama Melkote. Why did I choose this unusual topic,

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which no Indian who studied abroad or in India, who did their Ph.D. in most prominent universities, thought of proving that Gautam Buddha was a political philosopher. Not that there wasn’t a religious point of view, as was Ambedkar’s famous book The Buddha and His Dhamma. He put in several of his discourses around which he built up a spiritual argument. My project was entirely different. I wanted to examine whether there was political thought in Buddha’s discourses or not. If there was, how much of that could be comparable to that of the ancient Greek thinkers and how much of that could be compared with that of the ancient Indian political thinkers like Kautilya and Manu. In the teaching courses of Indian political thought only Kautilya and Manu were part of the syllabus. Though there are other philosophers like Charvak, Yangyavalkya and others. But they never get taught as thinkers. Maybe because Kautilya and Manu have authored specific books, Arthashastra and Dharmashastra. In my view a Gautam Buddha is a far more superior thinker to any other ancient Indian thinkers. He was never taught as a thinker. A discourse around these ideas is not time-specific. The ancient ideas have relevance for a long time. The nationalist movement brought Kautilya and Manu to the fore and they will remain to be discussed in the future also. I thought let us bring Buddha into the classroom of Indian political philosophy. When I was settling down in teaching I began to look for those who changed the world with their teaching, not mythological figures like Rama or Krishna. I thought Gautam Buddha, till our modern times, was the only Indian teacher (Tathagatha), who acquired a universal name and fame and a massive following all over the world. He had many similarities to Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed and also differed from them on fundamental issues. Buddha never believed in the notion of God, whereas Jesus and Mohammed taught mainly around God and His powers. Buddha was also different from a

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philosopher like Socrates because Buddha built a Sangha system, which admitted people and trained them into a disciplined army, not to fight war but to fight superstition and the Brahminic social values of his time. Some of the brahminic values remained the same today. For example, only Brahmins were supposed to conduct yagynas and yagas and even today only Brahmin priests do so. The Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao, an OBC, performed a chendeshi yagam in 2015 by employing 1500 Brahmins for 10 days. They were given gold, money, rice, apart from feeding them with the best vegetarian food they could think of. This used to be the case in ancient times also. Because of Buddha’s message across the region Buddhism became a huge movement and his thought reached all over the Far East but he was not being studied as political thinker. I, therefore, thought of working on his political philosophy and when I began to read his own personal discourses I found his political ideas were much more philosophical. He was the first person to form an egalitarian society called Sangha. Though it did not admit women in the beginning; it did so later, even if not on an equal basis. The fact that women were given a place itself was the first step towards establishing an egalitarian society. Further, the most positive aspect of that Sangha system was that it admitted lower-caste women and even a courtesan like Amrapali. This was a very progressive step in a country of caste hierarchies. The Greek thinkers proposed speculative ideas but they did not work out any practical utilitarian system like Buddha did. I used to foreground his thought even to teach Greek political thought that made a lot of sense to rural Indian students. With this kind of approach my classroom was becoming my experimental ground of ideas. In the university I taught western and Indian political thought as my specialization. Western thought was very rich and inspired a lot of new ideas but Indian thought

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was not so rich. A few Brahmin teachers used to think that it is richer than western thought but they failed to show how. If it were richer then why were Indians not teaching it? Western thinkers starting from Aristotle to medieval times were talking about slavery and the course of its negation even in ancient and medieval times. Though the nineteenth century initiated specific debate around slavery; and the American Civil War (1865–1866) was fought on slavery. There was a theoretical foundation in the ancient Greek thought against slavery. Their debate on slaves was replaced with that of the classes. In India the debate on caste was never an integral debate. Only thinkers who came from the Dalitbahujan had to start a debate afresh. This in a way started mainly with the writings of Ambedkar. I had to build on that. All societies have contradictions. If only those contradictions were discussed in written texts rich discourse develops from time to time. Most of western thought even in the early modern period in Europe got constructed in opposition to the biblical traditions and scriptures. Machiavelli’s main ideas, for example, were to challenge biblical authority. The notion of state, civil society and man-woman relations were examined in negation of the biblical ideas. In Indian thought such a rational challenge to the Vedic thought was not constructed. Though there were many opposing schools like Buddhism to Vedism, the main opposition should have come from the Shudra philosophy of production. Historically only the Shudras were in production but never were the writers of Vedic texts involved in the production of the wealth. Hardly any texts were written drawing upon the productive culture of the productive castes and communities. Wealth production has its own cultural evolution along with economic ideas. Even though in western thought sometimes production was a neglected area but there is no negation of production either in the spiritual theory or the in the socio-political theory. But Indian Brahminism has built

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theory of negation of production both in spiritual theory and socio-political theory. A majority of the students in my university were from the Shudra (which includes Shudra upper castes and OBCs and Ati-Shudra, to use Phule’s concept for Dalits) social background and the panthulu (teacher or priest) had in the past never allowed them to read any book. Most of my students, as I have said, have no reading culture in their family history at all. If the philosophy texts use the concepts like Vedanta or Karma Siddhanata or Transcendentalism or the theory of reincarnation, it did not make any sense to them. Kautilya’s Arthashastra or Manu’s Dharmashastra, perhaps would make some sense to Brahmin students. But they do not make any sense to the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/ Adivasi students. Interestingly by the time I became a lecturer except for some Brahmin girls the Brahmin boys had shifted to engineering and medicine. America and Europe became their beloved destinations; obviously for better economic life but certainly for a nationalist cause. The OBCs also want to make those places their destinations for the same reasons but the very same people in South India oppose their leaning English and imply that going to the same countries is anti-national. The social forces around the BJP take up such campaigns in a more systematic way than others. The so-called Hindu religion had not drawn the agrarian masses into spiritual book reading activity because the caste system did not allow that. Some exceptional individuals got into some regional language education but once there is a historically in-built feeling like what my grandmother had that reading and writing are only Brahmin-Baniya tasks that itself becomes a barrier. I saw that caste culture itself builds a barrier. If the Brahmin caste built a barrier not to allow Brahmins to get involved in leather work or tilling the land, the lower castes built barriers around themselves that should not take full time reading and writing or ritual activity. Though the situation

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is changing in post-independent India, the philosophical foundation of the caste still hangs on. The Christian Euro-Americans are different. Every child knows the basics of the Bible. Sometimes social deprivation and dysfunction plus the decline of religious beliefs in the West have changed that norm. Post-9/11 has reinitiated that kind of spiritual emphasis. For them God would be worshipped through prayer. In Hinduism Gods/ Goddesses are worshipped in the idol image form. That is the main spiritual activity. Book reading is not an individual or family habit but it is only the Brahmin caste’s ritual. No doubt that many Brahmins have gone out of that ritual reading but those who remained in that profession are only Brahmins. I have had a long-term engagement with the ritual Brahmins, particularly in Telugu regions. They talk on the phone. Some of them abuse me. Some of them debate, even on Telugu TV channels, but they do not want to change. The priest only recites, never reads; only in Shudra families like that of Reddys, Kammas, Velamas or Kapus or in Brahmin-Baniya families he recites slokas in Sanskrit, which makes no sense to the listeners. In the South after Brahmins have gone out of social science study, the philosophy departments became centres of those students of all castes who could not get admission in other departments. In that atmosphere teaching philosophy itself became a problem. At least western political philosophy made some sense to such students because its discourse around class, state and political institutions appeared to have had some use in their lives. There was also speculative egalitarianism in that thought. For example, Plato’s ideas or scheme of education was a negative experiment which in India was meant only for Brahmins and Kshatriyas. Though Plato’s education system was meant for the ruling class but there was futuristic hope for the rest of the masses. In the Indian brahminic gurukula education there was no such futuristic hope. For example, Robert Owen’s Utopian Community of

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Harmony would appeal to the masses. In Indian thought even that was missing. At no time has India produced such utopian ideas. Indian thought that was being prescribed in those days by many universities, including Osmania, was sheer Brahminism. By the time I came to the university the in­ fluence of Muslim culture had got displaced by Hindu nationalist ideas. Unless teaching reflected the self-image, human dignity and dignity of labour I would feel disinterested. Therefore, in the classroom I used to negotiate between unwritten knowledge around the villages (most of it I have discussed in the Post-Hindu India book). Before the reservations began to be implemented students must have found it relevant because the teacher and the taught came from the same brahminic background. In some states certain castes like goldsmiths and weavers tried to get co-opted into brahminic culture. But they got disappointed. One seventeenth-century Telugu preacher called Potuluri Veerabrahamam tried to elevate their stature but that was not allowed by the brahminic forces. I have addressed several meetings of such castes in the Telugu region. They are now angry and upset with Brahmins as a caste because this caste kept writing of texts and history under its control and it deliberately negated the role of productive forces in Indian history from ancient times till the constitutional governance was established in 1947. I thought that there is a need to change the course of discourse theoretically. For this even western thought needs to read from the point of view of Dalitbahujan social forces. Plato speculated on a new education system that could give rise to philosopher kings. Though it was an authoritarian concept it has a positive philosophical dimension. I would have been happy if even a single Brahmin writer were to write a book like that of the Republic in ancient India, where justice became the centrality of the text. But sadly none has done so as yet. But those philosopher kings could be perceived by the Indian Dalitbahujan students as

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Brahmin philosophers because mostly Brahmins were projected as philosophers in India. The damage of the caste system extended to every aspect of life in India. As a teacher I saw this damage on an everyday basis in the classroom. No Indian ancient thinker, except Buddha who talked about samata, or equality, made some sense to the Dalitbahujan students. This used to bother me all the time. The ancient Greek thinkers, particularly, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle were so challenging, in comparison with Kautilya and Manu (who were part of the syllabus) who were boring and un-substantive. What bothered me most was why a small country like Greece produced such powerful thinkers and why a vast country like India could not produce great thinkers like that. Though India was not one country like the one today in the ancient times, later, the whole of the eastern world was made ­invisible because of the colonial process, the eastern thinkers, particularly of India were not seriously examined in the departments of Indian philosophy or of political science. What I realized was that the Dalitbahujan masses of India had their sense of philosophy (tatwam in Telugu) which is closer to the Buddhist philosophical domain. Brahminic thought from the days of composing of Vedas, particularly the writings of Kautilya, Manu, diverted the attention of the nation towards war and social divisions. The village Shudra/OBC elders, who resolved disputes at caste panchayats, or gram sabhas take a very rational view of human existence. Whenever I visited my village I made it a point to go and sit in those panchayat meetings and listen to the disputations, the arguments and the resolutions. That helped me a lot. If only the Indian thinkers who wrote books were to come from the students’ background, altogether different textual knowledge would have been constructed in India. Since the Brahmin-Baniya scholars have no culture of interacting with the productive masses their knowledge systems were never brought into textuality. My students would become more alert when I

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talked about their village common sense ideas as thought. These could be ideas of improving the agrarian production, or that of cattle rearing, or of improving the village administration or fighting against the caste system. When I talked about Kautilya and Manu they would express a feeling of irrelevance. Students showed interest to learn about Buddha and his ideas or about Basava or of Potuluri Veerabrahamam. I found that Indian writers and publishers came from brahminic background too. There were small Muslim publishers here and there but they were interested only their religious affairs. The multinational companies followed the brahminic ideas as only they were the book writers. Any experimental writing and experimental teaching would be seen as dangerous. As a teacher I was getting more and more frustrated with the kind of Indian teaching material available. In a postcolonial context of teaching and learning only blaming colonialism for everything was appearing to be unwarranted and I thought that kind of social science knowledge does not take us anywhere; they missed out in looking at caste and the kind of India that institutions constructed. India lived with people of rational thinking with their courage to encounter powerful natural elements. I decided to explore those areas and put before my students, whom I thought were better judges. I was also writing and many were rejecting my research papers and popular articles sometimes with questions like where are footnotes? It is quite obvious I was not a teacher like other upper-caste teachers at a regional university like Osmania where there are not many elite students. There was a lot of disconnect between the teacher and the student even in the 1980s and 1990s. I was reading and reflecting on Indian texts that were written by scholars like D.D. Kosambi and politicians like Ambedkar and Nehru. It was around this time I decided to write on a variety of areas like contemporary India and ancient India.

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In the classroom, I chose my own method of constantly comparing Indian thinkers like Buddha, Kautilya and Manu with ancient western thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, which used to be my strength because I was also thinking about our idea of the nation. In my view nationalism jells in the productive fields, in artisanal productivity, which sustains the nation for millennia. The textual nationalist idea was the Brahmin or bhadralok idea, which saw nationalism in Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata. In a country where there is a huge gap between the productive lower-castes’ experience of life and the book writing community, communication becomes a problem. There were no teachers and students coming from peasant backgrounds and artisanal backgrounds. Unless a thinker’s thought and life relates to the life at the ground level process it does not interest the students in the classroom. To them, Gandhi, Nehru’s thinking did not appeal as much as Ambedkar’s thought did. The syllabus has to be framed to be done in a manner that the student community should feel that they could visualize a better future through classroom engagement. I brought Ambedkar into the syllabus. But I did not find a utopia in the ideas of politicians, which give hope. Secondly, any thinker who constructs some utopian ideas is generally very creative. In ancient Greece Plato and in the modern period Robert Owen appeared to be very creative, which in turn makes the student creative. As a student I was very thrilled when I read Robert Owen’s New Lanark child school education system, where workers’ children would learn along with industrial owner’s children. If workers’ (Dalit, OBCs and Adivasis) children could sit and educate themselves in the early modern period, India as a nation would have been different. Modernity had to wait till the British arrived, particularly till the English education was to arrive. Even the first English-medium school in Kolkata was started with Brahmin children in 1817. This

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school was initiated by the so-called Bengal Renaissance thinker Raja Rammohan Roy. St Francis Church school at Fort Kochi was established again in 1817 by Rev Judeson, a Christian missionary, as an English-medium school. A few Brahmin Syrian Christian upper-caste children were admitted. This was because India could not produce utopian writers who could change human thinking. This educational reform in India in the early nineteenth century was also casteist reform that was later projected as great social reform of India. Studying and taking exams in English was difficult for the students. They believed that English is a colonial language and first-generation students cannot learn it. Though it was being taught from Class 6 onwards, that scotoma (mental black spots) that they cannot learn English affects them. I realized this quite early and overcame it. In higher education the syllabus content was divorced from the socio-cultural background of the students. The catchment area of Osmania was Telangana. Most of the first-generation students were not used to understanding abstract thought. I was trying to experiment the teaching of political thought in various communicable modes that would help them grasp political thought. Unlike mathematics, physics, chemistry or medicine or engineering, which could be taught throughout the world with the same basic principles, social science cannot be. Now scholars believe the sciences are also not something so different; they have a lot of social science influences as formed in society with its biases. That is true to some extent. Social science studying and teaching requires conscious adaptation of the textual knowledge to the classroom socio-cultural background. Western thought obviously is class-centred. From Plato to Karl Marx the class question runs through the text in a continuum. In Indian thought from Kautilya to Gandhi, Hinduism is the running thread with a total silence on caste, spiritual inequality with horrendous practice of human untouchability.

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I realized this problem when I was a student of M.A. and adopted a method of studying Indian philosophy in a very critical mode. I did not write examinations in textbook language, but in an argumentative form by using some issues raised by Manu and Raja Rammohan Roy. That was one reason why I never scored very high marks in my M.A. I got a bare first class. I was conscious of the fact that I am an Indian and I know the society as much as Kautilya or Gandhi knew. I knew that we were living in different times and came from different backgrounds. But I also knew that they were hiding something Indian called caste that existed from ancient to present times. In my view, the caste system and the historical negation of universal education even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries caused a major loss of evolution of ideas. If only all the sections had the scope to educate themselves perhaps India would have gone through a different process. Why did the Brahmin community, historically the custodian of Sanskrit language, fail to make it a living language among people of India? Sexual engagements, which are natural things in animals, birds and human beings were treated as more worthy of describing. I always wondered why around the first century BC Vatsayana wrote an erotic book. Even in modern times writers like Pavan Verma wrote commentaries on that erotic book as if that was the essential philosophy of India. Though it is said that Kamasutra, is a much more complex book, I did not find it so. In my view it has only damaged the reputation our country, as I have shown in my novel Untouchable God. Isaiah Jackson in that novel saw only that book from India in Amsterdam airport wondered why he was going to such a country which produced books like this in very ancient times. That character represented only the opinion of many such travellers. My point is that it was perverse life style in ancient times that could produce this kind of a text. Eroticism itself cannot be avoided in life or textuality. To write a graphic text like Kamasutra but not to write any

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text about the productive activity of the masses, based on which the society was surviving, was part of the castesist and sexist existence of Brahminism. Such Brahminism has created a social and educational void. I argue that the major Indian philosophy is in productive people’s lives but not in books. I realized this fact when I started studying the Hindu scriptures from Rig Veda to Bhagavad Gita. War and romance were their main driving principles. They do not engage with production and distribution even in a marginal way as other spiritual texts like Buddhist Suttas and Pitakas, Bible and Quran do. This was one reason why Indian society did not construct its social relations around class. It was also the basic reason why it slipped in human history into constructing the very inhuman system of caste. I had to mould my classroom by constantly connecting to that production and village people’s philosophy that existed in their proverbs, jokes, sayings, and so on. I started collecting them and analysing them. In that effort, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, to some extent, served as a model for me. Unless both productive labour and writing are combined, quality writing becomes difficult. As I said in the earlier chapters, my family, caste and my village did not bring me up in a culture of reading books like Ramayana, Mahabharata, or for that matter books written by any writer at all. I grew up in nature learning from it from my own observation. I was with sheep, goat cattle, birds, snakes. Tasks like grazing them, protecting them, tilling the land with human labour, cattle energy. I grew up playing with water, swimming in streams and tanks. There was a philosophy or lifestyle, which led to a different way of thinking, which did not correspond with any book written by any writer of India I came across in my early days. I realized that their dis-connectivity from production and disallowing the productive masses to be educated could be one reason why this region could not produce philosophical knowledge as much as China produced. The writings

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Confucius combined with Taoism and Buddhism produced a different ethic around production and human relations that avoided a system of caste in that country. No doubt there was the question of class in the Chinese society. Maybe because of its class and feudal system it produced a Confucius who was very conservative and elitist, yet a moralist. Imagine if the tillers, the pot makers, the shepherds, the fishermen were granted the right to read and write perhaps very vibrant writing would have emerged in the ancient times. For any nation to progress on an egalitarian course the texts that teach dignity of labour are important. The lack of an ancient knowledge base around dignity of labour leaves no scope for modern creative knowledge of production and positive human relations. At one level indignity of labour has a universal pattern. But the kind of indignity of labour that the Indian brahminic forces validated in the whole of the spiritual system does not exist in many societies. Perhaps no nation is comparable with other nations in terms of their historical evolutions. Once Brahminism established its own institutions the literature that it produced was meant to sustain those institutions. I also realized that those who were living away from production could never produce thinkers of world repute because a book is not just subjective expression. It is true that even great thinkers of Europe like Marx, Rousseau, Gramsci did not live in productive fields. We do not also know what work their ancestors did. But is certain is that neither in their social history or spiritual history productive works like tilling the land, carpentry or pot making, ironsmithing were never considered as pollution. This is clear from their biblical tradition and family stories. But the Indian Brahmins never had a history physical work. My assumption based on my experience is that unless the productive becomes part of a text in modern India, putting the dignity of labour in the centrality, abolition of caste and moving towards man-woman equality become almost

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impossible. Indignity of labour has got deeply embedded in the Indian elite psyche. This no longer remains a problem of the Brahmin-Baniyas. It has become a problem of all elites, who emerged from the Shudra upper castes. All through in my teaching career I felt there was something basically missing in Indian textual knowledge. This feeling got confirmed after living among contemporary Brahmins; they have no such knowledge. I discussed with many Brahmin colleagues about their knowledge of nature, production, animal life, and so on. They were/are mostly ignorant. This is not a problem of individuals but it is a problem of communities. Brahmins and Baniyas as communities remained away from production and also treated that human activity undignified. This was one reason why after Why I Am Not a Hindu was published many Brahmins whom I know were angry with me. But they could not dare to counter my arguments because my arguments are based on a social terrain that they hardly know. However, for any person to diagnose exactly what was that missing thing in the knowledge system and to construct new textuality around it is not a small matter. The long interaction with young minds from rural society helped me in understanding their lives and knowledge, which so far has not come into the books that we were studying and teaching in the university classrooms. The literary standards of the whole region, for a long time, were decided by a small caste which had no interaction with the outside world. In independent India the single largest text writing communist (the Brahmin) has not got connected to the day-to-day of food production. They are mere observers from outside or from a distance. The majority of the Indians till date live in the agrarian sector. Their living processes are different in many respects from that of the Brahmin writer’s day to day life. There are no family connections between them. The social connections between Brahmin and Dalitbahujans in every aspect

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of life are minimal even today, and brahminical writings do not reflect the nation’s life. Since India was also a nation of several regional languages, between state and state there is no communication among the lower castes. This happened in Europe too and that also led to the establishment of different linguistic nations themselves. The Brahmins communicated in ancient days in pan-Indian Sanskrit and they moved into the English language quite easily. The regional languages also caused loss of multiple knowledge production process that could have got exchanged between different productive people of different regions. This situation also convinced me that I should bring the rural knowledge into the English language and see that language spreads among the Dalitbahujan communities. I used to discuss some of my doubts with students. I found that the rural students were more creative because they had a lot of interaction with the practical world in their villages. The urban students had no idea how different productive communities work or how they resolve their conflicts. What the rural students lacked was systematic training and control over a very powerful language like English. I also came to a conclusion that the Indian languages had not developed enough vocabulary to produce high quality philosophy. There is a claim that some regional languages are more developed than others. That could be right but the issue is how much anti-caste discourse these developed and what kind of theoretical formulations were made in those language writings? As far as I know Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which was originally written in Gujarati and later translated into English, acquired pan-Indian recognition and Rabidranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, his book of poems, originally written in Bengali, got recognition after it got awarded Nobel Prize. These two texts hardly helped the Dalitbahujans to improve their status or position or in the struggle for equality. The only text written in the regional language that helped the Dalitbahujan mass in

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the struggle for liberation is Mahatma Phule’s Gulamgiri (Slavery). After this text got translated into English it has become a weapon along with Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste and Why I Am Not a Hindu in the hands of the struggling masses (both were written in English). I realized this truth when I was writing both in English and Telugu simultaneously. I started writing newspaper columns in English and Telugu. Even for a non-­Englishspeaking person like me the English language proved to be more convenient to express and argue many dimensions of life than Telugu. I found that to construct many scientific arguments there was no enough terminology in Telugu. Hence even in my Telugu articles I started using English words, concepts, phrases, and so on. Over a period of time since I became a known writer with a large readership, particularly in the rural areas and also among the new Dalitbahujan elite that settled in urban areas through reservation jobs the anglicized Telugu I was writing became popular. Telugu papers were willing to publish my articles, as that was helping them to expand their readership. I was also writing human rights reports released to the media both in English and Telugu. Though some good writing was done in Telugu, it was confined to Brahmins and Shudra-Indian discourse. Only in the recent past some writings from Dalitbahujan castes are appearing. Vemula Yellaiah’s Kakka is one the best I have come across. Some of the good regional language writings of the Dalits (not so much of OBCs) are also being translated. This accelerated after the UN Durban conference 2001 when the Dalit question was internationalized and its market expanded. In my view, the market for books in English on the life, history and struggles will increase further if most of the Dalitbahujans, present and future generations, get English-medium education. What I have noticed in the Telugu region was that even the most wealthy Shudra upper castes like Reddys and Kammas left the philosophical writing to Brahmins.

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They never developed the ambition of getting into philosophical discourses. This was because the control of Hindu religion, to which they believed they belonged, was completely left to Brahmins. Dalitbahujans also believed that they were Hindus but their writings were never respected by Brahmin writers, at least in South India. The Self-Respect movement has produced hundreds of writers who wrote in Tamil. But not much has come into English, therefore, most of it is not known widely. Meena Kandasamy, a Dalit writer from Tamil Nadu, has written When I Hit You, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in Fiction, 2018. Periyar wrote in Tamil and since the 1990 Mandal movement, universities and the informed public have taken note of these writings. A very rich temple of India called Tirupathi is located in Andhra Pradesh, Chittoor district, and much of its funds come from the Reddy, Kamma, Velama and Kapu communities; yet they never demanded that temple priesthood position should also come to them. They never asked theological schools, colleges to be established where every Hindu should have right to read and interpret the so-called scriptures of Hinduism: Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, that includes the Gita. I realized that unless philosophical discourses encompass the vast productive masses of India, mainly in the religious domain, involving all castes that are said to be part of that religion, Indian languages do not develop and they do not expand beyond their regional base. There is a view that Marathi, Malayalam, Bengali and Tamil are very well developed but they too have not developed any major egalitarian texts that have been translated. The entire Shudra community (that includes the OBCs) not developing the ambition of engaging with philosophical discourses is one of the main reasons for language underdevelopment, also for religious conversions. By not allowing such philosophical discourse to get accessed by even Reddys, Kammas, Jats, Patels, and so on, Dalits

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and Adivasis, at least those who considered themselves Hindus, the Brahmins have destroyed Sanskrit in the past. The Hindu religion never believed in establishing theological colleges, where every Hindu child has the right to get admission and pass the examination prescribed and becomes a priest or religious leader. No ancient Brahmin thinker prescribed such an examination system. Whereas in China the examination system in every sphere including the spiritual domain was an old one; Confucius made it systematic. Such a system in religious education would have mitigated the caste system, at least, to some extent. Now English has become a national language because the Brahmins and bhadralok Indians shifted to English with British rule. The Dalitbahujans have no option but to move into English learning, as I have discussed. Perhaps to prove their nationalistic love for Sanskrit, Brahmins should move back to it. That is the reason why my slogan is Brahmin Bache Sanskrit Pado. Our children need only English along with our regional languages. Hence my slogan for them is ‘Bahujan Bache English Pado’. Today, many Brahmin intellectuals take the lead in stopping Dalitbahujan people from learning English. In the Telugu region, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu they oppose English being made the medium of instruction in government schools. I addressed several meetings in all these states. I realized that by and large the Shudras and Dalits are afraid of philosophical discourses and of the English language. I have decided to break that fear by writing on religion and writing in English in a manner that the whole world could understand my discourses. I have in a way shifted the philosophical discourse from Hindu religious war, violence and sex to production, dignity of labour and human equality. By the time I was in the university, writing in English was for those who got educated in England or America, except persons like Khushwant Singh or Mulk Raj Anand. During the freedom struggle only those who studied in

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England (from Dadabhai Naoroji to Nehru) or in America (Ambedkar) could write books in English. Very few persons educated in India wrote any major work that influenced the national psyche. Though India is a diverse country to formulate some kind of coherent one national psyche there is a need for writing books that influence beyond the regional languages. For example, were I not to write Why I Am Not a Hindu in English it would not have influenced the national readership. Even in the popular media, translation from English to regional languages has become a common practice but from regional language to English is not so common. This we see in the newspaper and TV industry happening on a daily basis. In subsequent generations, those who studied in English-medium schools of Delhi, Kolkata, Bombay, Bengaluru, and universities like Delhi University, Jadavpur University, JNU, could write in English. Though even cities like Lucknow, Allahabad had thrown up some intellectuals the main were the above mentioned. This is true at least during my lifetime. During this period the Shudras (Reddys, Kammas, Jats, Patels) hardly developed confidence to be independent public intellectuals by writing and speaking. I decided to change that narrative. While doing my research on land reforms I realized that empirical research has its own limitation. I worked for my M.Phil. on ‘Land Reforms in Andhra Pradesh: A Study of 1973 Ceiling Act’. I studied its theory and implementation aspects. While doing that study there was not much methodological problems because doing empirical research has become a norm in Osmania or any other university in India by then. Those were the days when American empiricist research was in much demand. Most of Indian social science research by then was influenced by the American empiricists. Doing research, however, on a theoretical area like Buddha’s political philosophy was a difficult task. I read lots of books on ancient India available in the libraries in Hyderabad. Then I went to The

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National Library, Kolkata, to read and to take notes from other books available in that library as Kolkata was known for education and books in those days. During my stay in Kolkata I met a very well-known political science theorist, Professor Partha Chatterjee, who was part of the Subaltern group of scholars and told him that I was working on Gautam Buddha’s political thought. He asked me whether I knew Sanskrit. I said, ‘No, I do not.’ He said in which case how can you do Ph.D. on Buddha? I was a bit shocked. In turn I asked him ‘what does Sanskrit has to do Buddha’? If he were to ask me whether I knew Pali it would have made sense. I further asked him, is it not possible to do a Ph.D. based on English translations of Buddha’s discourses? He was not very enthusiastic to discuss this. He realized that I was not shaken by his question, that, too, a very brahminic question; not that one should not learn ancient languages to do very serious research but when enough translations are available that should not deter from engaging in serious research. I knew by then that several PhDs on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were only based on translations. Not that one would deny the importance of learning ancient languages like Pali. Such an effort of learning Pali was made by European scholars like Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Rhys Davids and others but not by many Indian Brahmin scholars, of whom there were a few exceptions from Bengal. Hardly anybody learnt Pali, which was not made to survive like Greek and Latin by the same brahminic forces of India. It is for the Buddhists to fight for establishment of Pali schools, colleges and universities. But Buddhism in India has become a Navayana Buddhism of Buddha and Ambedkar hardly any Brahmins, Vaishyas, Shudras are embracing that religion. Hence Brahmins have no interest in Buddhism and Pali. I have not seen even the Buddhist Dalits fighting for a Pali school, college or university. After Sanskritic writing acquired hegemony Pali was almost eliminated from India. Rhys Davids worked from Sri Lanka. I would either have to do my Ph.D. based on

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English translations or I give it up. If I were to give up, my book God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism would not exist. Without my research I would not have been considered even that half-scholar, as I am being considered today by some who have their own approach to research. Unfortunately the assessment of scholarship flows from one’s own caste position, sometimes based on the region that one comes from. Or it also flows from one’s own personal relationship. It is subjective feeling that makes for acceptance or rejection. In my view every attempt to build knowledge is an experiment. One needs to break the rules framed by earlier generations in experimenting with new ideas. The Subaltern scholars think they have done this, and I think I have done it from an altogether different vantage position. For example, my book Post-Hindu India is not considered to be a scholarly book by an academician like Meera Nanda. Anand Teltumbde did not see it as a work of great scholarship. That book has shaken the foundations of Hindu ideology simply because it brought the whole range productive knowledge system of various Dalitbahujan castes, the opposite of the Brahmin-Baniya castes. Yet another problem I faced during my Ph.D. was that one of the external examiners had not sent his report. Out of the three examiners, two had sent their reports quite quickly. Perhaps both of them were sympathetic to Buddha if not to me. With a great difficulty I found out who that third professor was: Professor Venkateswarlu from Andhra University, Vishakapatnam, who used to be a regular member of Osmania selection committees. He hardly knew political science and was very arrogant. He was from an upper caste among the large group of Shudras that was divided hierarchically thanks to the caste system. Though Venkateswarlu who came from a Shudra upper caste, Kamma caste, he had no consciousness that what earlier was considered to be knowledge could be rejected and a new text of knowledge could be constructed. He

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did not even realize that Buddha was the most liberating philosopher as far as Shudras were concerned. He simply must have seen the title and kept it aside, without ever reading it. He was one of those mediocre teachers who hated new ways of thinking. I met him on some occasion. And quite ironically he told me that my thesis was with him. From his expression I could see that he did not like Buddha being studied as a political thinker. He never sent the report and hence the viva was held quite late with a special permission of the Vice Chancellor with two reports. I thanked my supervisor and Buddha for that. This only shows that in the academic realm the Shudra intellectuals have surrendered to brahminic superiority, almost beyond repair. I have seen even in the Osmania and also in the University of Hyderabad the Shudra professors were very loyal followers of Brahmin professors. The Brahmin professors extend the religious priesthood to the universities and the Shudra/OBCs follow them. The best example is Apparao Podila, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, who is a Kamma by caste, in whose tenure Rohith Vemula died. The real power managers in that university were the Brahmin faculty members. Apparao simply followed their directions. Yet another example was my M.Phil. supervisor Madhusudhan Reddy, a Reddy by caste. He was most power wielding person when it comes to managing the physical structures of administration of the Osmania University. But intellectually he would surrender to brahminic knowledge with total obedience. This kind of Shudra intellectual obedience to Brahminism that treated them as ‘Feet Born’ also kept India as an underdeveloped country. I encountered a huge hostility in a central university interview for a professorship. In my first attempt Professor G. Haragopal, as head of the department, saw to it that I would not even get a letter for the interview. The competitor at that time was Dr. Shantha Sinha, who could use her influence from Delhi to Hyderabad, and if necessary

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from the USA also. She was that powerful. Haragopal and she eliminated me at the entry level itself. Quite interestingly, at that time Hargopal was the Vice President of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee and I was its joint secretary. When I applied for the second time, Professor Haragopal, was the senior-most professor of the department, and had the power to sit on every selection committee of the department. Perhaps with full knowledge of this collective protectionism against the dangerous Ilaiah joining what I used to call, an agarhara or Brahmin neighbourhood. Quite interestingly a new Pan-Indian bhadralok got formed by different brahminic castes. They began to guard the Indian universities from the so-called dangerous entry of the Dalitbahujan. The then Vice Chancellor Goverdhan Mehta, whose caste I do not know, but it was certainly not Shudra or OBC, invited his own brother, Professor V.R. Mehta, who was the then Vice Chancellor of Delhi University, as a leading expert. Throughout the interview the senior Mehta tried to prove that I should not have done the Ph.D. on Gautam Buddha’s Political philosophy. I did not think he had actually read anything on Buddha. The whole effort of the selection committee was to exclude Buddha from the collective consciousness of Kautilyas and Manus, and see that India remains a nation of thoughtlessness. As my research on Buddha has shown that by avoiding teaching him as a political thinker our student folk were not allowed to learn about the roots of our republic. Professor V.R. Mehta showed his ignorance of the contending socio-philosophical ancient India. I was searching for a thinker in ancient India, who could become a source of the idea of equality, which did not interest them. Unlike many other societies the presence of the Buddhist school in ancient India would allow us to think about republican ideas. But how would that be possible unless we teach generations of our students about those ideas. The question of castelessness was a major

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social utopia in those days or even now. But it makes a student think that a day would come when the whole of Indian society could live without knowing each other’s caste. Or they could also think that they could marry any person without bothering about caste. Younger people would be influenced by the vision of a society that has no caste system. They succeeded. In these institutions, cultural connectivity plays a bigger role than the intercourse of knowledge in the interviews. Connections matter but it is the caste that establishes connections. By then I was very much experienced in getting excluded from the knowledge zones of the Brahmins and I learnt to survive in my own pond of knowledge. I know that they are masters of manipulation. Shantha Sinha was a somewhat progressive Brahmin lady (her last name Sinha comes from her husband Ajay Sinha, a North Indian Kayastha family settled in Hyderabad. Shantha Sinha is the granddaughter of Mamidipudi Venkatrangaiah, an older generation Brahmin teacher in Andhra University), with a lot of clout in the world of civil services. Haragopal in the so-called ideological realm appeared to all to be in disagreement with her, but in eliminating me they found common ground. The person who got selected for the second time too was a Brahmin with a lobby of Oriya Brahmins, Dr. Prakash Sarangi. I do not know how much of his research is known beyond his own circles. At least I never read anything substantial from him. But he beat me in the game of writing and research. This is not just one person’s experience but throughout India the central institutions were/ are guarded. These institutions are central in restructuring knowledge. This strategy of retaining the central universities as the Brahmin preserves by systematically eliminating Dalitbahujans, whatever could be their talent, is part of the larger plan. However, they could not avoid admitting students and some faculty members in subsequent years

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because of the OBC and SC/ST reservation. Before the UPA asked them to implement the OBC reservation they were systematically avoiding the OBCs at the faculty level. In most of the universities, particularly in the University of the Hyderabad, such a brahminic hegemony and control lead to many suicides including Rohith Vemula’s suicide. The Central University of Hyderabad was made a vegetarian university by the very same brahminic forces. This is the university that does not serve even meat and fish in its guest house, leave alone beef. The same forces know that I would change that culture on a daily basis. Hence they collectively planned to keep me out. A systematic elimination of Muslims is also an unfortunate strategy of the secular Brahmins and also other upper castes. Though there are well-qualified Muslims, with the similar foreign degrees that the brahminic forces have, even then they do not get teaching positions in our central universities. However, the Muslims now have three universities: Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Milia and Maulana Azad National University, where they could prove themselves. Is it not interesting that even though I applied for a professorial position in Hyderabad Central University I was not allowed to get in but as a director-cum-professor and I worked there for more than six years till I retired at my sixty-fifth year? How many Ilaiahs must have been denied their legitimate positions in the educational institutions, nobody knows. But I am an example, whom they wanted to crush at every stage. If Rohith Vemula were to survive like me, maybe he would have changed the very structure of Indian educational institutions. But he decided to tell a story by choosing death as Socrates did. The worst example is that of West Bengal higher educational institutions. This is a state where the bhadralok brahminic communist forces ruled for 34 years (1977– 2011). There is a very significant Muslim population with a historically good education background up to Partition. Though rural-urban divide among Muslims is shown as

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the reason for Muslim backwardness, and also for the loss due to middle class migration first to East Pakistan in 1947, and then to Bangladesh after 1971, such divide is there in all states and it is also true of all castes In fact the post-­ reservation developments proved that from among the Dalit/OBC/Adivasi sections the rural students performed better and most of us came from rural areas. For example, from my own caste community the urban Kurumas are more backward than rural Kurumas in education and modernity. The urban Kurumas of Hyderabad are not only conservative but more loyal to the Brahmin-Baniyas, who are their exploiters. It is from this community that Badaru Dattatreya, the central minister, who served Brahminism more loyally than his own community came. He is from Hyderabad. It was his letter to Smrithi Irani, the then Human Resource Minister, Delhi and the subsequent developments that caused expulsion of five Dalit students from Hyderabad University in 2015, and they camped in what was called Velivada and the death of Rohith Vemula. The problem was that the bhadalok Brahminism of Bengal did not evolve an education policy wherein all children, rural and urban, could be educated in uniform language, syllabus and standard school and college system. From the communist leadership this much was expected. They should not have allowed class difference in the education system. They have done this much better in Kerala but failed in Bengal. Therefore, today the whole of India is talking about success of Kerala model but not of the Bengal model. The failure of Bengal model of communist bhadralok rule gave enough scope for the BJP and the other brahminic fundamentalist forces to tell the nation that the communist model does not work in India. The Dalitbahujans of India also have come to distrust the communist model, which has huge implications for the future of socialist welfarism in this country. Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, the first education minister of India came from that state. Bangladesh, which

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was part of that state before Partition produced the first Muslim Nobel Laureate for Peace, in Mohammed Yunus. Neglecting identity-based promotion of the social forces, indifferent sectors of life pushed the SC/ST/OBC minorities of Bengal into backwardness. In 2018 elections the BJP defeated the Manik Sarkar led CPM in Tripura by using the tribal identity question. Manik Sarkar is a Brahmin who ruled that state for 25 years, no doubt with honesty and simplicity. But was it not his moral responsibility to promote a tribal leader to head the state after his 25-year rule? Jyoti Basu, a Kayastha, ruled Bengal for more than 25 years; Buddhadeb Battacharjee, a Brahmin, ruled for 10 years. In Bengal also they did not think of promoting a Shudra or Namashudra leader to head the Bengal government. Now Mamata Banerjee, again a Brahmin, is ruling in her second term. In Odisha Naveen Patnaik, a Brahmin, is ruling that state for more than 20 years. Of course, Patnaik’s is family centred party. But the communist leadership is supposed to see the writing on the wall. At least the Communist party should have promoted Dalit and Muslim leadership and scholarship in that state. But that did not happen. My friend A.K. Biswas (a retired IAS officer), who also writes in national magazines like Mainstream thinks the communist bhadralok did more harm to the Dalit evolution than the Bengali religious conservatives, who are shifting to the BJP. There is a fine Dalit song in Telangana written by a Dalit boy whose name is not known: Ambedkar Nuvvu Lenatlaite, Anadhaluga Migilevallam, Ambedkar Nuvvu Ranatlaite, Andhuluga Nadichevallam, Gandhi Vunna Nehru Vunna, Manudharmam Kalchevalla, Gandhi Vunna Nehru Vunna, Kula Dharamam Kulchevall,

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Marx Vunna Mao Vunna, Kula Dopidi Sooche Valla, Marx Vunna Mao Vunna, Kula Shaktini Koolche Valla, Lenin Vunna Stalin Vunna, Brahma Rata Marche Valla, Lenin Vunna Stalin Vunna, Maa Charitanu Marche Valle, Ambedkar Nuvvu Devudugochi, Rajyangam Rasichavu, Maa Bandal Tempesavu. (Ambedkar if you were not there, We would have been living as orphans, Ambedkar if you were not to come, We would have been walking as blind. Yes, there were Gandhi and Nehru, But, would they have burnt the Manudharma, Would they have destroyed caste Dharma. Yes there were Marx and Mao, But would they have seen caste exploitation, Would they have written Annihilation of Caste. Yes there were Lenin and Stalin But, would they have killed Brahminism. Would they killed Gods of weapons. Ambedkar you have come as God with a Pen. Ambedkar you have killed all the gods of weapons You Liberated us by writing the book—Constitution.)

But for the presence in the Constituent Assembly of a highly conscious intellectual leader like Ambedkar, with the kind of consciousness and knowledge with the skills to write in English, Indian democracy would not have been the same. There is a feeling that the Left Front in Bengal stagnated a very powerful Dalit/Adivasi community otherwise great organic intellectuals would have emerged from that state. This feeling gets expressed in every part of the country by the Dalitbahujan intellectuals not with an opposition to Marxism but with a concern about the

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change. Most Dalitbahujan intellectuals are pro-Marxists or themselves Marxists at one time or the other in their life. They are categorically opposed to the Hindutva ideology. It appears that the Bengali bhadralok intelligentia did not allow the Muslim minority identity to grow. They should have realized that one of the reasons for disintegration of the Soviet Union was not allowing the religious identities to assert their rights. In West Bengal the Muslim population was significant enough to assert its identity. In no democracy identities of communities could be suppressed with the government continuing in power. In my view democracy is a system of identity assertions and that is good. The Bengali intellectuals by and large did not realise this aspect of democracy. They have also forgotten that Bengal once produced outstanding Muslim leaders, who played a very key role in the freedom movement. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first education minister of India, one of the greatest nationalist scholars of India, was brought up in Kolkata and did all his major wri­ ting from that state. Most illustrious was Humayun Kabir, another great education policy creator. But there are hardly any Muslim teachers in higher educational institutions in the recent history of the universities of the state. It is true that is no reservation for Muslims in Bengal. In fact, they should have thought about and would have given them reservations as Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy did in Andhra Pradesh. Identity politics have their positive role to play. The communists of Bengal did not allow multiple identities to spring up and grow. In Telangana state the Muslim rulers, particularly Osman Ali Khan created an independent university in 1918. That has produced some male Muslim scholars. But that university has also not promoted women’s education. It is true that there is a major problem among Muslims of India, including that of Bengal, the question of women’s rights. On that score they have given a major handle to the Hindutvawadis.

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Famous Muslim faculty members emerged from Osmania; some were women. For example, Professor Haroon Khan Sherwani, a famous historian-cum-­political scientist. Professor Rasheeduddin Khan, who headed the Jawaharlal Nehru University department of political science, he was the former head, department of Osmania University’s political science department. His brother S. Bashiruddin, who was known for major electoral studies, was from Hyderabad. During my teaching my own department had Professor Kausar J. Azam and in the department of geography there was Professor Fatima Ali Khan. Both of them were know in their disciplines. During the Osman Ali Khan period Osmania Medical College was established, which was attached to Osmania Hospital and is still the best in the region. Even then Hyderabad city could not develop medical science in many key sectors. Somehow the Muslim world did not develop medical science beyond a point and the Nizam’s rule is no exception. In 1976 when my brother got the major heart problem, as mentioned, I took him to Dr. Hyder Khan, who just by physical examination (in those days there were no diagnostic centres to do major tests for heart-related diseases) told us that he needs a valve replacement. He asked us to go to Vellore CMC hospital. The Muslims who are being excluded in Andhra are going to different Muslim nations and proving their worth. The Dalitbahujans do not even have such a scope. I happened to be the member of the University Grants Commission committee to review one of the Jadavpur University’s major projects given by the UGC in 2007– 2008. I asked the registrar to give me the list of the teaching staff, with a separate list of the SC/ST teachers. He avoided doing so with all kinds of excuses. However, I found out that in that the university avoided selecting SC/ ST candidates and this was part of the Bengal communist ideology. There were hardly any Muslim teachers in the university. The Maulana Azad Institute of Asian Studies

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of Kolkata had no single Muslim faculty member nor was there any Asian outside India. Bengali bhadralok represented Asians, Muslims and Dalitbahujans of India, without having any sense of guilt. Though I was happy to give a keynote address along with Gayatri Spivak, a well-known Brahmin intellectual, in one of the seminars at that institute, I was shocked to see the bhadralok complacence, not allowing even a single Muslim on the faculty of Maulana Azad institute. In that communist culture Maulana Azad has already become an institute where no Muslim could get a faculty position. When I went there, perhaps in 2011, there was nobody in that institute who could read Maulana Azad’s writings in Urdu. Under the communist rule Azad institute was turned into a centre of Bengali and English reading and writing place. Though there is a migration problem from Bihar of Muslim and non-­ Muslim, the communists have failed that state in terms of equal education and diversified employment. In the case of the bhadralok, Goddess Saraswathi has shifted to English, leaving her Sanskritic roots to a few priestly Brahmins. Bengali intellectuals like Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, and Amartya Sen have global visibility. But in their writings there is no evidence that they have asked for uniform medium of education in the government and private school systems. They have better exposure than me to the global systems. Any individual or group or class of people think that English-medium education is good for one’s own children that should also be good for the rest of children in a state or a country. Since intellectuals remained indifferent to such huge public-private division and they operated around private English-medium school education but never asked the same English-medium education in the government sector, they would in essence go against the principle of equality. These well-known intellectuals spend their time in foreign countries, which might help them in acquiring ideas

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emerging in those countries. But for a nation like India working within its universities, engaging with its day-today problems and producing knowledge from that base would help much more. One of the common principles for intellectuality is that the elite and the productive masses must study in one language; if they take any test in one language and they should face any completion in one language equal competitive levels are like to emerge. If the national cake has to be shared by all of them with equal opportunities the same language education is a must. This is where I have a problem with friends and foes in the same way. The Sangh Parivar forces do not want all people to study in the same school and in the same language with same syllabus. The progressive intellectuals also do not challenge them in this sphere. This is a problem. They went along with the Bengali sentiment, so far as the government Bengali-medium schools were concerned. If only they had demanded that the communist government in West Bengali should teach English from age three in all government schools, the communist government would have changed the nation’s direction in education. The Bengali Dalitbahujan masses are made to be happy with the Bengali-medium education, while the bhadralok put their own children in private English-medium schools. In the post-Mandal era the poor Dalitbahujan also began to send their kids to English-medium schools in all states including Bengal, which a big drain on their economy. Communist rule should have allowed English and Bengal from pre-school to Class 12 in all government schools. They should have realized that the education system with a uniform language and content of the syllabus is necessary for establishing a socialist society as well. Why did the communist government follow the general model of bourgeois education? In Kerala where there is a better education system the Dalit/Adivasis are demanding for English-medium education in government schools.

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The present Pinarayi Vijayan government is resisting such equality in medium of instruction. Mere 100 per cent literacy with huge gap between private English medium education and public Malayalam medium is not going allow socio-economic equality to come about. This dual language education creates its class system. When I have taken up the cause of English-medium education in government schools it were the communists who opposed along with other brahminic diabolic forces. But I went on writing in Telugu and English in Andhra Jyothi and Deccan Chronicle that private Englishmedium education and public regional-language education is a capitalist model of maintaining class hegemony. The Maoists along with other revolutionary organizations formed an organization called ‘Save Education’ and propagated for only Telugu-medium in the government schools. I along with several Dalitbahujan student organizations, like Bahujan Students Forum, Dalit and Minority Students Association in Osmania opposed their pro-rich agenda. Their main ideological position was that English was/is a colonial language and it was Lord Macaulay who introduced English in India. I then pointed out why are you sending your own children to English-medium private schools? They have no answer nor would they stop sending the leaders’ children to English-medium schools. Deceiving masses in the name Marxism and Maoism is more dangerous than deceiving them in the name Manu and Savarkar. However, the communists are slowly understanding the importance English-medium education in the government sector. That is a positive sign. Finally the Telangana State Communist Party of India (Marxist) realized the problem with their stand and in 2015 they took a position that English-medium must be introduced in all government schools with an admission policy of admitting children at the age of three with good pre-school connectivity, that is every child should get school admission at kindergarten level and move on

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as the private school system does. Then they formed The Telangana Education Reform Movement and I became the chairman of that school teachers’ network and the movement. In 2016 about 10 per cent of the government rural schools have admitted kids at the age of three with a programme of pre-school facilities and they also connected the primary school English-medium teaching with a state government syllabus. The idea is that every village student should finish his/her twelfth class school graduation within the village school. There is every possibility that all government schools in Telangana become English and Telugu (double medium), with an emphasis on English in due course. But combining English education with a dignity of labour syllabus is still a problem. In my view the syllabus would be around dignity of labour and with production-related knowledge. Dignity of labour, mathematics, engineering from tank construction to ironsmithing to carpentry to pot making and so on, should be part of it every child’s learning process. They must add the engineering and medicine that all our villagers know to the medicine and engineering courses. It can start with simple people’s life experience in their production process to higher learning of national and global knowledge. Production of food has been treated by all ancient and medieval Brahmins writers as pollution. The modern Brahmin writers quite tactfully popularized those writings. After they got into English education they wrote commentaries on those anti-productive mythological stories and popularized them even in the West. The West never learnt anything about Dalitbahujan lives, even about untouchability. Max Müller and William Jones wrote on India only interacting with Brahmin pundits of their times. The problem with this kind of white and Brahmin interaction is that they could not even understand that there was human untouchability in the society. Caste and untouchability hardly influenced their thinking. Perhaps the only person who seemed to have interacted

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with untouchables and tribals was William Carey. Though his institutions were established in urban Serampore and Calcutta he lived among tribals for quite some time. But by then even in urban areas there was massive practice of caste and untouchability. His teaching has influenced the rural part of the Northeast and also Bengal. That was one reason why Christianity reached the Northeastern tribal belt. Of course, the American missionaries have done more substantial work there. Subsequently English education also reached that region by improving their educational standards. But missionaries like Roberto De Nobili (1577–1656) did not interact with the Shudras of his time, leave alone untouchables in the Tamil Nadu region. The problem with Brahminism is that once it declared caste and untouchability divinely ordained there is no possibility of producing a reformer from that community to work for the abolition of the caste system. Even after the emergence of modern intellectuals from that caste not even one took up the task of working—either organizing a popular movement or by writing elaborate theoretical ­proposals—for abolition of caste and untouchability. When some of us were organizing and writing and propagating against this inhuman structure none from the Brahmin background stood up against Brahminism as an ideology and supported us with full conviction. The support to our work was a very low key one, if there was one. This situation made our struggle more and more difficult. Particularly in the universities the opposition to Ambedkarism was more pronounced. The task of ­abolition of caste became more difficult because even from the contemporary West there was no large scale support. They too did not see it as a problem worth comparing with racism in the USA or in South Africa. Some missionaries wrote about caste. But only as a divine curse; not a system created and sustained by some social forces in their own interest. Westerners also carried

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a belief in their racial superiority that had many things in common with caste. In South Africa, the campaign against apartheid saw the support of some white intellectuals. But not a single Brahmin intellectual worked on the problem of caste and untouchability to make it visible in international circles. Some Indian descent people in South Africa were closely involved with Mandela’s movement. Why this happened is a serious question to be examined. Gandhi himself realized social humiliation and worked against it. But in India nothing was done for the Dalitbahujan masses, who were suffering atrocities, humiliations and more brutal poverty. Indian support for the liberation of South Africa from the white tyranny would also help Indians, along with the native Africans. But in India empowerment of Dalitbahujans would dis-empower the upper castes. Maybe that was one reason the silence was more sustained. My writings like Why I Am Not a Hindu, God as Political Philosopher, Buffalo Nationalism, Post-Hindu India, The Weapon of the Other and Untouchable God discussed these issues and Ambedkar’s ideas across the world, which displeased brahminic intellectuals. Mahatma Phule’s writings were not allowed to reach the global readership. Their silence about his work and their propaganda about Raja Rammohon Roy, Ranade and Bankim Chandra, and so on, was enough indication. In many seminars I have noticed that the very reference to Phule and Ambedkar would irritate them. They engage with Brahmin reformers, who have remained totally silent about caste and untouchability very comfortably. The names of Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar were not mentioned in school textbooks. The conspiracy of silence was all around. Ambedkar’s writings became available widely only after the Maharashtra government started publishing his volumes in the late 1980s. The 1990s in a way began a new discourse, which attracted global attention,

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particularly after the UN World Conference against Racism at Durban, 2001. My book Buffalo Nationalism has created a crisis among the Hindutva circles that were expanding the Cow Nationalism discourse when the Vajpayee government was in power. This crisis was both metaphoric and real. Metaphorically no writer counter-posed buffalo to cow as a nationalist animal. In real terms it proved very effective because the buffalo is a more popular economic animal than the cow. Academics like D.N. Jha were critiquing the cow sacredness theory from the secularism point of view. Nobody saw the cow as a representative of an Aryan brahminic animal and buffalo as a representative of Dravidian Dalitbahujans. I thought in a society of idol and symbol worship the enemy’s symbols should be countered only with alternative symbols. In Teluguland Haragopal and others created small islands in the institutions of higher education. They succeeded in keeping me out of central universities as I do not know the knowledge that they know. Now looking back, such a situation mutually benefited both of us. They did not get dalitized and I did not get ­brahminized. As a teacher, whom I know from my graduation days, Haragopal can as well claim this as his credit point. After all Marx taught Indian Brahmins how to benefit personally and collectively and keep the Dalitbahujan outside the spiritual and intellectual domains. The abstract class language that Marx provided them was very useful to keep the caste issue under the carpet. Class struggles do not help the Dalitbahujan in changing the caste relations. Upper-caste intellectuals working around Marxist ideology never realized that. They were also not bothered. Ambedkar negotiated with brahminic communities in the colonial context in a very sophisticated way as he had a family background of negotiating with Hindu scriptures because his father was an avid reader of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He also has some knowledge of Sanskrit and English, and because he was in the British

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army, he had greater awareness in comparison with other Dalits. Ambedkar, thus, was a second-generation educated man. In contrast, my father was totally illiterate, living in forest areas with sheep and goats. We were living in the Nizam’s domain, where there was no news of anything outside. My father’s narrow world was facing the forest guards and watching the sheep and goats but beyond that he had no world. In my childhood there was no contact with Brahmins as priests for weddings. A Brahmin’s presence at my mother’s death gave me a feeling of repulsion. Ambedkar had taken his Brahmin teacher’s name and was married to a Brahmin woman at the last stages of his life. All this makes a difference. I had only two options: Either to fight the brahminic forces by completely hegemonizing my shepherd productive background or to give up by surrendering to them by operating within their ideological domain. My struggle was not taking place in a colonial context. I do not have the sympathy of the ‘love thy neighbour’ culture of the ruling class. A positive neighbourhood is possible if families go to a common religious institution and share some values, food cultures, and so on. The British rulers’ religious and social culture though not brahminic required both the educated Brahmins and ruling British to engage with each other. Even though the British culture was more friendly to the poor than the Nizam ruler’s culture in our area that did not reach our area. Even in the Nizam rule the top officials were Brahmins and Kayasthas imported from different parts of the country. Such officials were also against the education of the lower caste in the Nizam state. The British opened schools in the Bombay, Bengal and Madras Presidencies. I had no such advantages in my region. Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar, Narayana Guru, Ayyankali, all had that the British Christian environment around them. (The British cantonment in Secundrabad was only for army purposes.) In Kerala, for example, apart

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from the British, Christian institutions were opening up many spaces for untouchables that Brahmins were not opening by the early twentieth century itself. Christian missionaries were appearing to the Dalits and Adivasis like angels. I had never seen such a missionary angel in my area. The postcolonial ideological discourse was a very positive environment to the Hindu ideological forces. The Hindutva forces were only one section of them. Hinduism that denied us history has become very legitimate in all institutions. I decided to critique that very fundamental structure. That really created a torturous course. In 2000 the Osmania University administration was under a very powerful feudal Reddy Vice Chancellor called D.C. Reddy. He was from an engineering background, who had no faith in social science research, discourse and knowledge. At that time in Delhi the Bhartiya Janata Party was in power, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister. By then Why I Am Not a Hindu had already acquired its popularity and continued to sell as a bestseller in its publishing year. Ch. Vidhyasagar Rao (who became the Governor of Maharashtra during the present government of Narendra Modi) was the minister of state for Home at Delhi. He was a former student of Osmania University and came from very big Velama landlord family. It appears that he pressurized the government to see that my writing was stopped. Hindutva and landlord forces were also against my writing. I wrote in the newspapers like the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle and it was also not to the liking of the Brahmins, who had a monopoly over English writing. Particularly the Tamil Brahmins did not like my column in The Hindu, which they knew was making a big impact, and that would weaken the Hindu religion itself. Even the feudal Shudra upper castes like Reddys, Nairs, Kammas (once a caste that was active in the anti-Brahmin movement, now turned pro-Brahmin), and so on, were not challenging

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them in philosophy and writing. All joined hands against my writing because it was fighting them in different ways. For example, the Reddys, Nairs, Kammas were against reservations for a long time. They have not also developed any ambition to take a hegemonic position in Hinduism. As I said earlier, they were/are more interested in making money by accepting Brahmin hegemony. In the absence of any critique of Hindu inequalities in the Left and Radical Left movement my writing was also seen as diversionist. No communist party wrote on how the component of Hindu social structure divided people into castes. If the Brahmins do not respect a piece of writing, it was also not respected by the Shudras, OBCs and Dalits. Acceptance of the written word requires an environment that several readers should read and discuss such a written word. If a Brahmin sets aside a particular kind of written word even the Shudra refuses to read it. Because of a long historical influence of the Brahmin the Shudra creativity and self-decision making capacity, particularly in the realm of philosophy, has suffered quite substantially. They were willing to use only muscle power but not brain power. When the university opposed my writing in the p ­ opular newspapers there was considerable protest. This was be­ cause of the new wave consciousness that started ­emerging the Dalit/OBC sections. Both teachers and students from these sections participated in the protest movements quite actively. That gave me a big moral support. I was regularly writing a column in the Deccan Chronicle. On 15 February 2000 I wrote ‘Spiritual Fascism and Civil Society’. It was said that Vidhyasagar Rao told the V.C. to initiate action against me and the university served a letter to me which said: This is with reference to some of your writings in popular papers. In your article “Spiritual Fascism and Civil Society . . . . Deccan Chronicle Feb, 15, 2000 you have elaborated on caste system in our country. As is well known to you the problems existing in the society can always be viewed

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This was just a first warning. They were planning for a show cause notice and initiate serious action against me. When I released this letter to the media a whole lot protests broke out: Teachers, students, civil society organizations sat in dharna in front of the university administration building. But my Brahmin civil rights friends never spoke a word against the letter. Newspapers wrote editorials condemning this kind of threats to academic writing. Much later only K.G. Kannabiran wrote an article in the very same Chronicle condemning the university action, but neither Balagopal nor Haragopal wrote anything nor did they participate in any agitation. In Chapter 7 we will see what happens when a colleagues working in the civil rights movement do not support you when the right to freedom of speech is attacked what kind of mental trauma is faced by the writer who is writing for the first time that community history. The intellectual domain has to provide an opportunity where one could re-write the history of this nation. The opposition for such a work is very strong in India. The postcolonial environment was very much opposed to serious intellectual churning. I realized I was not at all strong in writing a book by quoting from other books. On the

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contrary I was better placed in constructing knowledge out of the production process, human relations, land-­human relationship, and so on. I had decided to put the very methodology, to understand India from its very roots, on its head. But through my struggle the Brahmin colleagues of mine did not like my methodology at all. They believed in quotation-centred writing. But called such writing ‘Lift Irrigation Writing’. I paved my own path. In the research realm the only surprise institutional victory of mine was getting the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Teen Murti fellowship in 1994. Perhaps I was one of the few Indian university Ph.D. holders from a regional university like Osmania to get that fellowship. Therefore, I would restate what I wrote in the acknowledgement section of the book The Weapon of the Other—Dalitbahujan Writings and the Remaking of Indian Nationalist Thought, which was the Teen Murti project book (Orient Longman, 2010). Mr. P.N. Haksar, who was the chairperson of the selection committee, after my interview hugged me and said ‘God Bless You’, with that affectionate gesture of his, I went back to Hyderabad with a hope that I would get the fellowship and I got it. I later on learnt that Haksar himself came from a Brahmin background, related to Nehru. But this gesture of a liberal Brahmin towards me is not going to indicate Brahminism as an ideology or Brahmins as people have changed. The intellectual environment in these institutions was very anti-Dalitbahujan even now. For that movement Haksar’s positive gesture had its use value for me no doubt. Several Dalit scholars from Tamil Nadu helped me both in my stay as well as my theoretical engagements when I was in New Delhi. Gajendran, Chandrashekher, Somu from Tamil Nadu were the most helpful friends. The Teen Murti fellowship certainly expanded my intellectual horizon. I used to have several serious debates with Neera Chandhoke, a political scientist from Delhi University, Mahesh Rangarajan, who later became the director of

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Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Kunkum Sangari, an independent scholar. Neera Chandhoke several times argued with me that I should stop essentializing caste, as I was writing a column in The Hindu during that time. She told me that whenever she read my article in The Hindu she gets upset. Neera Chandhoke is a Khatri from Punjab. Later on a friend of mine told me that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also came from the Khatri Sikh family. He was not very uncomfortable with reservation just as Neera Chandhoke was not. Many people all over India are uncomfortable. They say, why isn’t reservation an economic category that applies across all communities who are right now ignored? Why should the rich OBC still get reservation for their children who go to private schools and live wealthy lives? I know opinions like these were negative in nature. For the simple reason that by 2017 not 70 per cent of reserved seats in the central services are being filled by all OBCs put together. This is another door for transferring the reserved seats to the general quota. Their strategy is simple. The regional language educated rural urban youth cannot reach to the central institutes to claim the reservation because lack of English makes those institutions inaccessible to them. The English educated youth who could reach there are condemned as ‘Mis-Users of Reservation’. All these arguments they put forward as ‘Nationalists’. They get upset if Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard educated upper-caste youth do not get teaching positions in Indian institutes and consider their own students from the very same institutes getting selected for teaching positions under reservation quota (backlog) as spoilers of institutions. All this keeps happening by justifying nationalism itself. I began to feel that all the SC/ST/OBC masses were being treated as anti-national because they were producing food for the survival of the nation. All those outside of the food production activity are nationalists. The theory of nationalism is nothing but defending ‘Leisure as Life’ in

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the name of education, qualification, and so on. I decided to fight this very foundation of knowledge, whatever be the consequence. In the process I encountered failures and successes. Just before my retirement at Osmania University, the Maulana Azad National Urdu University Vice Chancellor Professor Mohammed Miyan invited me to head the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy of that university. I joined that university on 1 January 2011. This was a very young university established with a special Government of India Act in 1998 for the purpose of promoting education in Urdu and most of the students and faculty members in that university were Muslim. That was when I interacted with large number of Muslim students and teachers from all over the country, and I learnt much about Muslim culture. I, therefore, got an opportunity to work among the Muslim and Dalit teachers for about six years. Many Muslim youth came from several states of India including Kashmir, West Bengal, North Indian states; it was important to engage with Indian Islam. I also got an opportunity, to some extent, to study Islamic history as a whole. The interaction with the Muslims students tells me about brahminic discrimination against them at many leading universities of India. The Muslim presence in those universities is minimal. The Muslim intelligentsia and leadership, in several places have joined hands with brahminic forces and deceived the Muslims and Dalitbahujans, Muslim youth whom I met in the Maulana Azad University and elsewhere hope that they would have a better future in this country if they are treated as equal citizens. For example, Muslim historians, sociologists had a lot of scope to critically study the Indian caste system and sources of untouchability. Muslim food culture and Dalitbahujan food culture have many things in common. A Brahmin scholar who believed in purity and pollution theory could not study the caste society at all. But only when the caste studies became popular and even the publishing

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world started recognizing them some Brahmin scholars made some attempt. They too were pure academic and data-based studies devoid of ideology. Abolition of caste never became their ideological direction till date. There is no such notion of purity and pollution in the Islamic tradition. Except a simple difference like the halal and murdar while killing an animal for food. Even then they never tried to seriously examine the caste system and impact on the Indian Muslim society. No Muslim scholar realized linking the history of ancient India to the Islamic period is important. Muslim historiography does not connect to the ethos of pre-Mohammed times in every country. Every country has its own ancient history that sustained humans in that country. India as a country has a long history. The Muslim history of spiritual egalitarianism could well be linked up to the Buddhist past and India as a nation could be seen from a holistic point of view. In Kerala, Islam reached in AD 629, when the first Indian mosque was built. Many Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis became Muslim. Simple things like women getting allowed to wear upper garments influenced many women to move into Islam. Islam is a religion of no idol worship. There is no evidence in Muslim thinkers’ writing that they opposed caste and untouchability in any form. The Shia-Sunni divide sometimes creates huge violent clashes. Within India also this division took its own toll. Now the world over the Shia-Sunni divide has created war situations. Islam as a religion could not evolve to suit to the changing capitalist conditions. It innovative skills have been pushed back. The women’s question is an un-resolved question. The control of men over women’s life is as high as it is in any other religion. In certain areas it put more conditions on women which no other religion imposed. Individualism did not get into its social fabric. Though the Quran granted some rights to women, which no other spiritual text has granted, in practice Muslim women’s social seclusion demands reformation.

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Very few Muslims read Phule and Ambedkar. Every Muslim scholar’s history begins with the Muslim period. No single Muslim intellectual after Alberuni examined the social relations of people in medieval India. Alberuni very seriously studied the Vedic culture, its strengths and weaknesses. But he also did not study Buddha because by the early eleventh century, the Indian Brahmins had driven out Buddhism and established the hegemony of Vedic Brahminism. The Muslims never seriously examined the role of Gautam Buddha in Indian history before Islam reached here. However, my experience in teaching Muslim students and guiding them in their research work was very good. Muslim women in MANUU were in varied dresses from complete burkha to wearing Punjabi churidar and kurta, sari and blouse like any Hindu woman and so on. There is no single dress code among them. Their work culture and non-discriminatory attitude was much more progressive than most Hindu women. One only hopes that reforms will catch up among Indian Muslims so that the Indian Muslim society could become a model to the rest of the Muslim countries. That was way back when I was teaching at Koti Women’s College of Osmania University in the 1990s. I faced the slogan, ‘We shall not learn from a Dalit’. The B.A. second-year class was full. I told them that my approach to teaching was not their attendance but they must listen to my lectures. From the second day onwards some girls stopped coming to the class. After four or five days a girl told me that this was because I am a Dalit. The girls had decided this from my name and appearance. I marked them absent but they were not bothered. One day after I finished my class I was going to the staff room and the girl who told me about my boycott, said that those girls were sitting on the lawn. I went there and asked them why they did not come to class. Most of them were traditionally dressed with flowers in their hair and with a visible tilak on their forehead and so on. They were silent.

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I said they did not know what they were missing and they should come tomorrow. They started coming and some of them became my admirers later as I used to tell them about women’s rights. I learnt that all of them were Telugu literature students with political science as one of their subjects. In Osmania I knew that the most casteists used to be in regional literature subjects and most progressive students used to be in English literature and journalism. I also found out that most of them were either from Brahmin-Baniya or Reddy backgrounds, whose association with Dalits and Brahmins was ambiguous. Among the Hindu upper-caste women casteism is a serious problem. Human casteism takes shape from the childhood stage. The role of mother in giving the casteist training is very important. From childhood onwards it is mother who keeps teaching the children how to follow the caste segregation and why such segregation is very important. Father creates that environment and mother injects those values. I had one bitter experience when I was teaching in a mostly upper caste—majoritarian— women’s college as teacher. Some of these casteist ideas are injected into the childhood consciousness by mothers themselves. In India the role of father in inculcating social values is little. In several castes and communities father is most of the time in the fields or in my case, with the herds. Women on the other hand, live in the village environment and are part of village struggles, pleasures and pains. Therefore, they learn several new things and develop aspirations about their children’s future. Men mostly remain indifferent to such new aspirations. The feminist movement never addressed this problem seriously. Perhaps, because the upper-caste women working around the feminist movement also know that their class status comes actually from the caste gradations in India and they are comfortable with such a graded social differentiation.

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There are caste divisions among the shepherds mostly based on caste and regions. Unlike the Brahmins and Baniyas there is no all India common cultural thread and connectivity among them. So far they have not become a national community. The Brahmins and Baniyas have common occupations and the common sacred thread. Except the Jain Baniyas, all Baniyas, including the OBC Baniyas have in common the sacred thread. The BrahminBanyias, thus, established a pan-Indian cultural connectivity, with communicable end names, common symbols on the body, and so on. The productive castes do not have such common bodily symbols and communicable end names. They are so localized that beyond districts or states their identities could not be known. Hence the Dalitbahujan intellectuals need to work out methods to overcome the problem of localized caste life. New last names that can communicate the occupational roots of the productive communities need to worked out. I have added the English word ‘Shepherd’ to my name; at least that will give a common surname of occupation across the country. As a teacher one is bound to take stands on social, economic and cultural issues. How much influence I had on my students I cannot assess myself. But one incident makes me think that there was a definite influence of new ideas on the student community of my generation. When I was the Head, Department of Political Science on a Student Farewell meeting day there was an incident of clash of ideas on the question of symbols of education between the right-wing Hindutva ABVP students and the Dalitbahujan students. The Left were a still undecided social force in those days, 2005–2006. But the students who were with the Left organizations having come from Dalitbahujan background were in support of the new ideas. The Dalitbahujan students, who happen to be the majority, wanted to put Savitribai Phule’s portrait, as an ideal teacher of India, in the meeting hall, whereas the

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ABVP students wanted to put Saraswathi’s portrait, who in their view was Goddess of Learning. The Dalitbahujan students argued that Saraswathi is a mythological figure, and there is no evidence what she said about education or whom she taught. During the ancient and medieval periods the Shudras, Chandals, Adivasis men and all women were not allowed to read and write. Thus, Saraswathi was not only against our education but she was against her own education, as the Brahmins were also not allowed to educate themselves. As a Brahmin women, as the wife of Brahma, she was not allowed to be educated and could not be the source of education. Savitribai, on the other hand, was the first women teacher of India, who not only started a school for untouchable girls, but worked for the welfare of Brahmin widows. She was a writer, both in Marathi and English. Because of her initiatives the modernization of women in India began. They also argued that Mahatma Phule and Savitribai’s social reformation brought in ideas of modernity. Even Raja Rammohan Roy’s Brahma Samaj movement though it worked for the abolition of Sati, essentially it was a movement of monotheism. The ABVP students, though some of them were from lower castes, and Adivasis, mostly male, do not believe in reasoned arguments. Their only opinion was that Saraswati was Goddess, therefore, you cannot oppose her portrait. They hate reading and writing culture whereas the Dalitbahujan and the Left students have some culture of reading and writing. Finally the Dalitbahujan students won the battle. A teacher has to develop new ideas and arguments from the life of living people. In the realm of research people, who believe in mythological figures can never produce good research work that improves society. I experimented by putting forth several new ideas in the classroom. I told the rural students that each one of their villages is a great knowledge centre. They have to

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examine the production knowledge that each caste community has. Once the village knowledge is brought in for discussion the rural students were giving a wealth of information about skills, strategies of production and nature management. The Hindu religion separates human from nature as it follows brahminism at apex level. Right-wing intellectuals like Hanuman Chaudhary, a RSS man in Hyderabad, teachers like Manohar Rao (a Velama landlord, who was for a long time ABVP’s national president in my university who basically came from an upper-caste landlord background) were propagating that Kancha Ilaiah teaches anti-national stuff in the classroom. Even those lower-caste students, who were working around those organizations used to believe such propaganda without understanding that the very same forces did not want them to evolve as intellectuals. They were being used as muscle power. But the children of those very same intellectuals were being educated in an elite environment, keeping them away from physical fights. The right-wing students remain non-serious about education so long as they remain students, after that stage is over they become business men/women or politicians or real estatewallas. The recent trend is that they also become educational businessmen opening private colleges and making large amounts of money. This trend could also be seen among those radicals who talked a lot about revolution through violent means, once they give up those politics they became the worst real estate businessmen or private education businessmen or politicians. Those Radical Left forces who worked for a separate Telangana state, once that state was achieved they all joined the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and became the worst exploiters of the people. Now their lifestyles are worse than that of the feudal society, whom they fought once. I was shocked to see these changes in ideologies and lifestyles. That is the reason why I came to a conclusion that if a communist becomes an exploiter there will be no limits because

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he/she is not even afraid of God. They just turn Marx and God into real private property. One of the major problems of my classroom was very, very weak levels of English, communication and writing skills of the students. Even the best of the lectures in English were not getting communicated to the average students, as most of them came from rural Telugu-medium background. Added to this the diabolical discourse of uppercaste intellectuals that English is a colonial language whereas Telugu is the mother tongue (matru bhasha) and Home Language (inti basha) has gone deep into the rural psyche. They used to think that English is not ours and hence we cannot learn it. The spontaneous reply of most of the students on why they cannot learn English was ‘that it is not our language, it is a colonial language’. If that were so, ‘why do you think the upper-caste children were learning it?’ They replied that these children study in Englishmedium schools. I asked them, ‘Why is it not a colonial language for them? I realized that they were brainwashed by the same English-educated fellows to see that they do not become competitors in the English-knowing market. This has to be fought at the ideological level. I started a campaign that ‘English is Indian’ and the rural schools should also transform into English-medium education. This argument shocked the upper-caste intellectuals, who were actually educating their own children in English-medium but preaching about the greatness of Telugu-medium for historically deprived people. Everyone knows that without a good grounding in English nobody can play key role in Indian academia, bureaucracy and politics. In the early years of independence only those who knew good English were given important portfolios in the central cabinet. The BJP is reducing the importance of English in all spheres of life. The Indian ruling class has already become anglicized. Unless the rural masses also see that their children get English education they will only be on the margins. I wanted to change this situation. Those who got the reservation benefits also think that their own

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children should study in English-medium schools but not all children, which would increase the competition. The same forces did not allow the Indian masses to understand that what was good for the upper caste, particularly the Brahmins, would also be good for the masses. There is a view among the rural students that Brahmin life is great and they should emulate it. One of the views is that they do not do hard work. The lower castes also should live like them. The Brahmins of South India became vegetarians most probably during the Adi Shankara’s campaign in 700 AD and started a campaign that vegetarianism is Indian and also good for health even in the modern times. They believe eating beef is anti-Indian and their campaign has gone to the extent of making laws against eating beef, in North and western India. If anybody eats beef, they get attacked. In future the anti-beef Hindu culture may spread and weaken the nation. My book Anti-National Vegetarianism published by Juggernaut (2017) made this point very clear. Though state governments are resisting such laws the Hindutva trend is to declare India as vegetarian nation. In this situation some Osmanians a ­ decided hold a beef festival on the Osmania campus that became very controversial because the Hindutva forces opposed it and brought anti-social elements from different parts of Hyderabad and attacked it. However, the festival took place. Naliganti Sharat a song writer composed the Beef Anthem in English. When he sings that Anthem the audience really get moved. We resemble a black lotus, We shine like a black Sun, We have been living very healthy, We have been singing the song of nature, We have been learning very easily, The reason for all this—is—Beef. Beef is the secret of our energy. Beef is the secret of our knowledge. We resemble . . .

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual It’s fantastic—It’s an aesthetic, It’s our favourite—It’s our native food. It’s delicious—It’s precious. It’s marvellous—It’s our dearest. It’s pure and solid International brand Beef Secret…………………….. Buddha, Socrates, Plato Aristotle Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Ambedkar Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawking Martin Luther, Malcolm X., Lincoln, Lenin, Stalin, Guevara, Bob Marley Bob Dylan, Mike Tyson Serena Williams, Paul Robson Michael Jackson, All the legends, beef eaters Beef Secret of life………….”

The campaign of what is Indian and what is not is initiated by the educated upper castes like the Brahmins and Baniyas. The intellectuals in the universities from these castes acquired huge legitimacy because they were in the teaching professions for a long time. Later on the Shudras and the lower castes carry that banner. Historically the Shudras and Dalits did not acquire the energy to challenge the brahminic forces. The reason is simple. They were not allowed to educate themselves. The simple claim of the Brahmins that they are Gods on the earth has unarmed the rest of the social forces. This belief has been put into the lower-caste brains for centuries and even in the modern times they are unable overcome those beliefs. Belief of people is historical dead wait. It needs to be changed with a massive dose of social reforms. These Dalits and OBCs never thought in philosophical terms. They came to believe that they cannot excel in writing and constructing philosophical texts. Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar, Periyar Ramasamy, Narayana Guru of Kerala have attacked this notion. But even now the Shudras have not acquired the necessary confidence. That is because historically they were said to be philosophically

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incapable hence Hindu Gods do not want them to be even priests in the temples. The Shudras did not develop in philosophical discourses because they have not claimed the priesthood role in Hindu religion to which they were said to have belonged, which necessitates philosophical engagements. Though those working in the Hindutva organizations are Hindus, they do not demand the right to priesthood. Any community that does not engage with serious reading of religious books and interpreting them does not acquire a good understanding of philosophy. Religion, particularly a religion that operates around the written word is nothing but philosophy. Hinduism is now being projected as Vedic text reading religion. But even now the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis are not supposed to read as part of the priestly profession. It is still confined to Brahmins. The campaign against English education in government schools where the upper-caste and rich students do not study is particularly dangerous. The very same people allow English education in private schools where their children study. Recently the RSS educational wing started a forceful campaign that English teaching has to be withdrawn from all levels of Indian education. For example the educational wing of the RSS gave a representation to the Ministry of Human Resources Development that English teaching must be withdrawn from all government schools. While the Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants development and push that English education brings, the Brahmin forces in RSS want no English education now. The strategy is clear. Their children will learn English also to become leaders of all castes who live in the regional languages. Even the Shudra upper castes like Patels, Jats, Gujjars, Marathas, Reddys, Kammas, Velamas, and so on, did not understand the implication. What was private to a small caste in the Gurukula education is now shifted to the rich who happen to be more or less the same force that studied

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in ancient and medieval gurukulas. This will not change the basic structure of civil society. When I started a movement for English education for all, both the Left and the Right brahminic forces joined hands to oppose English education in government school in the rural areas. This became a most painful struggle compared to other struggles. The Dalitbahujans and the Shudra upper castes also do not understand the design. But in Telangana the mass movement for English education in government schools is deepening by the time the writing. In 2016–2017 academic year about 10 per cent rural government schools became English-medium schools. To defeat the RSS Brahminism or the left-wing Brahminism what is needed is to transform at least one state through totally Englishmedium education. This requires a far greater struggle than land reforms and we will make all the efforts. The Christian English school method of admissions (particularly the Catholic) also added to this diabolism. They used to propagate that English-medium learning is possible only for the children of educated parents and they would consider the parents’ level of education and admit the children. Naturally that process helped the Brahmins and other upper castes that had an advantage of generational education. I decided to fight against this treachery. But mine was a lonely fight. Not many educated lower caste or Dalit intellectual were willing to join this fight because their own children have joined that English learning class in private schools. Within the reserved quota they get the best jobs. Hence the conspiracy acquires a character of class. I decided to fight everybody who opposes English education for the poor in government schools. The second problem was the fear of learning English by the first generation students. They have been repeatedly told that English is a difficult language to learn. My experience was different. English is a much easier and richer language than any of the Indian languages. I have realized while reading and writing in Telugu and

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English. This could be true of all other regional languages. When I started learning English I began to feel that writing the English alphabet was much easier than writing Telugu letters and sentences. I write both in English and Telugu very regularly. Firstly, formulating ideas in English is much easier because of its rich vocabulary. Secondly, since India does not have one national language which all Indians understand it better to adopt English as the Indian national language and teach every child English, so that all Indians could communicate with one another from all corners of the nation. The sentiments about the language need to be overcome through discussion and debates. I know that the brahminic forces oppose anything that brings about a level playing field between them and the rest of the society. If I could learn English so could Telangana’s rural children and they would become better intellectuals and professionals than the urban convent-­ educated children. If children get education in the villages they would have a good understanding village economy, culture, which means they would also understand India as a nation better. A child knows the whole village population by name, and its castes; knowledge that would be of immense use. But encoding that confidence into the rural students is an extremely difficult task. I wrote several articles in Telugu and English that in whatever language rich children study the poor should too. This is a better approach, and a good way of competing. Any child can learn more than one language at an early age. The brahminic castes have become an international English-speaking community. This is a small community in terms of numbers but it controls several institutions like temples, education, judiciary, railways, banks, and so on. It is almost impossible to retrieve the situation. The only way out is that the whole Dalitbahujan masses’ children must learn English. There are already good results. Many English-medium private and government schools are coming up in the rural areas.

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We organized several meetings on this issue. Finally, with the help of a friend, Dr. Joseph D’ Souza, an organization called Dalit Freedom Network (DFN) was set up by drawing several networks together in India and abroad. They have started a few English-medium schools deep into the rural areas. I was fortunate to establish such a school in my village in 2002 called the Good Shepherd English Medium School. The Telugu-medium school in which I studied in the same village is upgraded as a high school but only in Telugu-medium. Nobody else could come up to my level from that school. The starting of an English-medium school in such a remote village, that too for all the poor and Dalits was a first experiment. At the time of writing, the school has enrolled more than 500 students and has a reputation as one of the best in the district. It has already sent out five batches of school graduates with hundred per cent pass: that too with first class and distinctions. These students speak good English and write well with a reasonable knowledge of the subject. Lambada tribal students score the highest marks and are moving out for higher education. The Good Shepherd English-medium school has brought about caste reform in my village, Papaiah Pet. The school building foundation stone was laid by a Dalit widow of 80 years called Abbadasi Sayamma. This is a village of several castes, including Reddys, Velamas, Baniyas, several castes of OBCs, Adivasis (mainly Lambadas) and also Dalits like Madigas. When I decided that only the oldest Dalit (Madiga) woman would lay the foundation stone all castes, the Adivasis and Dalits also opposed it as all of them believed that if a Dalit women laid the foundation, It would be disastrous. Some even spread rumours that Kancha Ilaiah would not involve a Brahmin priest and allow coconut breaking. Which would add up to more disasters; children sent to such a school would die. However, the villagers wanted an English-medium school as many of them were sending their small children to

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Narsampet, which is 17 k.m. away. I said either she will lay the foundation stone or there will be no English-medium school in the village. But all were unhappy when she laid the foundation. The unhappy people included the OBCs who wanted to send their children to school, as it was where Englishmedium education was offered cheaply, within the village. Some thought their children might be harmed in such a school. But within three days after the foundation stone was laid the management dug a bore well that gave sweet drinking water. The village had no good drinking water source and the management sent a word that the water from the bore well was so sweet that they could take it for drinking. Several villagers started taking water from that well. I used that accidental good happening as a blessing of God, in whom most of them believe, propagating that God blessed that village because Abbadasi Sayamma laid the foundation. Now a big school with a two story building has come up in that compound and about 500–600 children study in English-medium from the lowest class to class ten with very affordable fees. People from surrounding villages queue up for admission. It has also changed the village household culture. Families maintain their houses neatly. The self-respect of the villagers increased as every house has an Englishspeaking, neatly dressed child. It could be seen in their parental lifestyle. I constantly visit the school and talk to the students. Many of their parents—particularly the father—stopped or reduced drinking. Ambitions for the children’s future have changed now. If I set an ambition of becoming an IAS officer when I was in my B.A., my village’s Dalitbahujan children have that kind of ambition in Class 8 or 9. I thank Dr. Joseph D’Souza and his team for setting up that school in my village. It is also an accident that I am born in a shepherd family and the school’s name is Good Shepherd English-Medium School. I put some pressure on a Dalit District Collector, whom I knew, to improve the

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road to the school. Such school education for all would certainly change India. My critics like Rajiv Malhotra, Hanuman Choudhary (both of them are RSS organizers one at Hyderabad and the other in the USA) among others keep accusing me of making India an English-speaking country. Unfortunately, some communists and revolutionaries like A.B.K. Prasad a (a Kamma), senior journalist of Andhra Pradesh Divi Kumar (a Brahmin literary activist) repeatedly wrote on these lines too. I strongly believe that not just the Telugu region but the whole of India should become an English-speaking nation, and I hope a day will come that my wish would be fulfilled. One day I addressed all the Good Shepherd school students at the prayer meeting where they sing the national anthem and say a prayer ‘God, You Created All of Us Equal’. God, you created all of us equal, God, you created male and female equal, God, you created no caste among us, God, you allowed no untouchability among us, God, you created all of us equal, God, you told us to work and live, God, you told us to respect our parents, God, we pray you as proud Indians, God, you created all Indians equal.

This equality prayer is meant to instil the notion of equality by birth in every child’s mind, which would undermine untouchability and caste. I asked the boys, ‘How many of you sweep your home with a broom every day?’ No hands were raised. When I asked what the problem was, they said boys are not allowed to sweep the house, wash the dishes and cut the vegetables. Even in my childhood no male child was allowed to do these chores. We had only earthen pots even for cooking food and no boy was supposed to wash those pots. As a result, when we were cooking our food and studying from Class 6 to B.A., our living room was very dirty and dish washing was

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the most detested job among my roommates, so I washed the dishes. House cleaning was nobody’s job. I realized that India is the dirtiest country in the world because the men do not do any cleaning work at home and the upper caste do not do cleaning work in the public spaces. The women and lower castes, particularly Dalits, are forced to do these jobs, for which they are disrespected. In my view the school must change this situation. I told the male students that all must do house cleaning and wash dishes and clothes. I requested the teachers to go house-to-house and talk to their parents about the importance of boys and girls doing every work at home and outside. Particularly, they must tell the mothers that they must make their male children do these chores. This training has to be integral to every child’s living process at home, in the school and later in life. The next day a grandmother came running to me and said that if we make the boys do these tasks then who will give them a bride to such boys who sweep houses? I asked how is the house sweeping related to marriage, and she said that if boys do female tasks their manhood will disappear and no girl’s parents would give their daughter to such a boy because they would say he is adibokillodu. I know what that word means. For not getting married like other youth in the village I was also called adibokillodu. It virtually means impotent. I asked her what she wanted her grandson to do after he completed his education in the English-medium school, and she said that he should do a big job. I asked how much salary did she want him to earn and she said as much as I am earning. I told her that to get a big salary job he should go to America. Not that America is a destination but after the 1990s the hunger for an American job even in villages has increased, more so in South India. If he does not do these chores, no wife would stay with that kind of a husband in America. She said that then she would see that he learns all these things and gets married to a good girl

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and goes to America. She would close all the doors and make him do these things so that it would be kept hidden from others. India turns the little boy into a God because he is a son and he is not taught values or the virtue of sharing home tasks, or worse, to respect women. It is this God who becomes a killer of human values. No Swachh Bharat can be achieved with these values. These values could be changed only by teaching dignity of labour and that too with gender-neutral value-based teaching. That school is experimenting on education through dignity of labour where all students have to help their labouring parents at home and also in the agrarian fields. As is well known, India is a brutally patriarchal society, so teaching male children to help their mothers in dish washing, clothes washing, home cleaning, toilet cleaning is a herculean task. When I go to that school and take classes (I do that quite frequently) and also speak to their parents what comes out very clearly is that the mothers and grandmothers of boys think that if their male children do the above mentioned household chores their manhood would disappear, as I have mentioned earlier. It takes a lot of time to convince them on this count. The hurdle is not only the attitude of men, but of women. But my village school succeeded to some extent. The brahminic forces destroyed the very confidence of people learning anything and everything. Most of so-called classical literature tell Indians that production is pollution and manwoman tasks should not be mixed up. A man must do manly things and a woman must do womanly tasks. This is one of the reasons why India is still poor and unclean and underdeveloped. Though the Indian economy is said to be growing, the kind of poverty the Indian masses suffer shows that certain aspects of Indian life are far more backward and primitive. Indian women were never trained to teach male children to do house chores. This is the reason why I took up a campaign to teach dignity of labour. However, in the campaign I am a loner. Maybe it takes generations to change the situation.

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I learnt in my school and college days on my own that there is no contradiction between leaning in the school/ collage and working in the agrarian productive fields. Indian society thought that those who work in the fields cannot learn reading and writing and those do reading and writing work should not do the field work. Maybe because Brahminism has separated these two tasks everybody has come to believe it to be so. In fact combining both field work and reading and writing would strengthen ones learning process. Not that in every respect the West should become our model. If I were to study only in Telugu I would have hated all productive tasks as unworthy of an educated person. Telugu literature injects lot of anti-dignity of labour culture into human beings. I think even the other Indian literatures, as they have the same Sanskritic roots, have the same anti-dignity of labour ethics. For example, in the Dravidian languages dignity of labour is not a major subject of discussion. This has to be changed. Though during the freedom movement because of some efforts of Mahatma Gandhi persons involved in freedom struggle started doing their own personal and family tasks like washing clothes and cleaning the house, the basic culture anti-labour has not changed. But by and large it remained an activity of tokenism. No upper-caste family is involved in bhangi work. The basic work of seeping the roads and cleaning public toilets is being done by Dalits. The day-today productive and public cleaning tasks were/are being left to the lower castes. Even the job of tilling the land is defined as the Shudra job and no brahminic forces like Brahmins, Baniyas, or Jains take up such a job. I thought a campaign needs to be taken up. I started giving lectures in the universities, colleges and schools on the importance of teaching dignity of labour in India. It definitely had a positive response. In order to have some good teaching material on dignity of labour I wrote the book Turning the Pot Tilling the Land—Dignity of Labour in Our Times (2007). It is a

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well-illustrated book by an Adivasi artist called Durgabai Vyam. This book teaches dignity of labour through small lessons. It has now become an instrument in the hands of teachers and students to teach to all levels of school children. The village-level children understand this book much better because the lessons are essentially on things like tilling the land, washing the clothes, making shoes, cattle rearing, making pots, home cleaning. They can easily relate to their parents day-to-day work while reading the book and while experimenting the tasks related in the book. Undoing the anti-dignity of labour culture requires a cultural revolution. Making English language education accessible to all and imparting lessons on the dignity of labour would be a challenge for future generations also. But we made a beginning. Perhaps for initiating this experiment in Indian education the Brahmin pundits would not excuse me for generations to come. Though there is a view that they have become unimportant, they still play key role in controlling the people’s mindset. The brahminic forces have a fear that their children may have to take up agrarian production, which they condemned as impure work for centuries. The male hegemony remains basically anti-labour. Even men in the lower castes do not do cleaning work at their own home. All such tasks are left to women. Added to this there is also a wife beating problem among lower castes. These problems need to be addressed. In my view it has to be addressed at the stage of childhood.

7 Working between Adivasis and Anglicans of India

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tarted Using two platforms for communicating my ideas: the classroom in English and the civil liberties’ platforms in Telugu among the rural and urban activists and others. These two are interrelated areas and were exciting for a person of my background. I was not at all satisfied with just confining myself to classroom teaching because of its limitations. The civil and human rights’ platform gave me scope to address small and big meetings on a regular basis and also travel to villages and towns. In 1984 during the general election I got an opportunity to stay in Parvathipuram tribal constituency for a month as an election observer. That was the forest belt where the Naxalite movement of 1969 had its major impact. I lived in several Adivasi homes and thus had a glimpse of their culture and history. I ate whatever food they gave and drank whatever drink they offered. I ate all kinds of meat, including piglets that they then and there killed and cooked as there was nothing else to eat. They offered jeelugu kallu and I drank that too. Sometimes that was a substitute for food. It was slightly different from the toddy drink, which as I have talked about earlier, I had drunk in my childhood. I travelled up and down the hills and met several villagers and groups of people. I visited the West Godavari district tribal areas when the Nagi Reddy group led a land struggle.

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If these things are not done we cannot understand tribal life at all. While living among them, in their homes I learnt about their family life, their food and drink habits. I noticed that men and women ate together along with the children, whereas in my family or caste men are served by women first who then feed the children and they themselves eat last. Sometimes by the time the women’s turn comes there would be no food left and they have to cook again. But the Adivasis share good and bad equally. Their poverty levels were very harsh. Many houses survived on paltry food items bought from distant markets or they survived by following a fruit and root economy. After living for a month among them and also by visiting their hamlets time and again I saw that their lives should never be romanticized. A massive dose of English education in their environment with a positive spiritual and social culture among them should be institutionalized. If the Catholic institutions that established elite colleges like St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and their chain of Loyola Colleges that are educating the elite children of India closed down, they could start Englishmedium schools in Adivasi areas and Dalit wadas, that is, if they have any reverence for Jesus Christ. They are doing a disservice to the nation by teaching the rich. Though elite children who have studied in Christian schools were influenced by their school education, their casteist and anti-labour life did not change much. That is because they also do not teach dignity of labour in the schools. Why have the Christian schools remained elite and upper-caste teaching centres? Why have the Indian Christian missionaries failed to give English education to the poor and the Dalitbahujan castes? I saw that the early Catholic Christian leadership also came from the upper castes. In South India they came from the Brahmin and Shudra upper castes. They did not fight casteism but rather sustained it. Their school education system also reflected that caste system.

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To do this job of teaching the rich in English they need not remain as Jesuits and nuns but could marry. The Bible does not show any evidence of Jesus teaching the Pharisees, who were the rich and priestly class of his times. Jesus himself did not go to school as there were hardly any schools in Israel at that time. He left a moral code through his teaching. He worked among the poor, fishermen and abandoned women. The Christian missionaries from the days of William Carey initiated teaching English to Indian children in eastern India. As part of the English education campaign some teachers and students at Osmania University started celebrating 5 October as the ‘Indian English Day’. During the 2016 celebration we issued this broad statement. All lovers of equality should celebrate October 5 as the Indian English Day. We declare that ‘English is Indian’. We study in English and preserve our buffalo cultural nationalism as against the unproductive forces of cow nationalism. English teaching started in Calcutta sometime in October 1817 by gathering a few Brahmin male children both by British educationalists and Indians. In 2017 we need to celebrate the 200th year of English education in India. In the last few years we, the Osmanians at the Osmania University’s Monumental Arts College, built by the famous Osman Ali Khan, the last Nizam, celebrate October 5 as the ‘Indian English Day’. Everyone knows that October 5 is the ‘International Teachers Day’. Some of us thought that it should also be celebrated as the ‘Indian English Day’. In 1817 English teaching started by imparting English alphabet to some Brahmin children because in those days there was no scope for the Dalitbahujan or even the upper Shudras to study in any school. Even persons like Raja Rammohan Roy, who were associated with these initiatives, were casteists. Roy thought of reforming the Brahmin women’s life but never took any initiative for educating the lower castes.

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The first educated modern Shudra in India was Mahatma Jotirao Phule, in a Scottish English-medium school in Bombay province. That was much later in the 1840s as Phule was born in 1827. The Calcutta province was in the grip of the Britishers and Brahmins. No caste reform movement was initiated by the Bengali Brahmins. A Shudra ruler like Shivaji resisted Brahmin hegemony in the Bombay region and initiated some changes there. Subsequently, his grandson, Sahu Maharaj, took a serious step of anti-Brahmin mobilization of Shudras and Dalits. Thus, English education began in the land of the Dalitbahujan. If Calcutta province represented the Brahmin English, the Bombay province represented the Dalitbahujan English. Not that there were no Brahmins who did not get English and got entangled with the colonial rulers. From Gopal Krishna Gokhale to Savarkar all of them studied in the English-medium schools and got educated in England. But that very same region, unlike Bengal produced Mahatma Phule (studied in Scottish mission school) Pundita Ramabai (who went to England) and finally Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who changed the very socio-political discourse of India. The Bengal and Madras provinces have not produced good English educated Dalitbahujan thinkers, who are of the stature of Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was the first Dalit to get an Englishmedium education and later on a world-class higher education. Even the Muslims of India were pushed back in English education because they were for Persian and Urdu education. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan pushed the ideology of English education into the Muslim community. Now there are several English-educated Muslims in India due to universities like Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia. Today the Dalitbahujans and Muslims and other minorities are in the present position because of English education, though they are the least educated. If a person like me, having come from a totally illiterate shepherd family, could challenge the mighty Brahminism that controls

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state power, temple power, even the educational power structure, it is because of English (earlier Sanskrit), though learnt under a tree, at a very late age in my village. The celebration of the Indian English Day is to checkmate the Hindutva forces from confining the SC/ST/ OBCs to regional languages and to educate the rich and upper castes in private English-medium schools with their money power. Our struggle is to establish common medium and syllabus-based schools for all children—the rich, poor of any caste. This statement has been published in the Mainstream (vol. 54, no. 43, 15 October 2016) and in many other websites and in Facebook.

It is a known fact that not even a fraction of the Christian school educated upper castes became Christian by faith. In teaching the upper-caste children in Christian Englishmedium schools what became the factor is money. Because of English the upper castes not only became pan-Indian by identity but became global later. Except very few, that too mostly women, the English-educated people are not sympathetic to the Dalitbahujan movements that have been working for the abolition of caste. The reason is simple. The upper-caste status and English education gave them enormous power that even the Sanskrit language could not give in ancient and medieval times. I thought that the only way to overcome this power of the English educated upper castes is to see that all children of the lower castes must learn English through government schools (see Chapter 6). That is possible only when the government schools in rural areas teach in English-medium. In order to achieve that goal the English language must be defined as an Indian language. Every year 5 October (which is the International Teachers Day and it being my birthday is accidental) we started celebrating ‘English Is Indian’, along with the slogan ‘Read, Write and Fight’, which has began to spread in the rural areas. This is a most difficult battle

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that we the Dalitbajuans need to fight in the future. Once this language battle is won the remaining battles could be won easily. My campaign among Adivasis, mainly Lambadas, Koyas of Parvathipurams definitely has made some impact. I mobilized lot of information about tribal life during my stay. That helped me more than them. I learnt a lot about tribal life, about their creativity, their productive interaction with nature. I learnt about how they discover new food items and spread that food culture to plain people. For over a hundred and fifty years, the Northeastern Adivasis have been well educated in English because of American Baptist missionaries’ efforts. It may take generations to take the tribes in central India to their level of transformation. The only way is that they must be taught English along with tribal languages. The argument that they would lose out on their historical culture is deceptive, and mischievous. They have been deprived for generations of any meaningful interaction with the outside world. Through good English education in their own location they could be connected to the national mainstream and also to the international platforms by using the English-centred internet, travelling abroad and attempt to settle there, even if the new immigration laws are not conducive. In my view the immigration laws keep changing. What is important is every citizen of India should be bilingual—English and one’s regional language. That would help them use the opportunities on an equal basis. The Indian upper castes, mainly the Brahmins-Baniyas, Shudra upper castes like Reddys, Kammas, Patidars, Jat Sikhs, Nairs, Menons, Marathas, Nadars, and so on, are connected to international markets. They look for jobs in many countries. The tribals should also get into such green pastures and should lead a modern life. I found their children to be very active and courageous. They learn many skills that non-tribal Indians do not learn. Their interaction with animals, birds, snakes and other harmful and not-so harmful creatures made them brave and skilful. That life

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teaches them humanness. Good education will go a long in harnessing their knowledge, which is not available in other communities. It was, however, very difficult to communicate to Adivasis. Though they understand Telugu they had their own language called Koya bhasha in the Parvathipuram region. This was when I realized that there is no point in romanticizing that life; instead, we need to work for transformation of that life into a modern civil societal democratic life. That experience of living among them in Parvathipuram was very useful for later researches on tribal life. By the time I reached home I had become very weak and my skin had developed rash and ulcers. One of the most difficult aspects of life was bathing. Water was a very scarce commodity in the villages. I stayed in Parvathipuram in the month of December and it was very cold. Whenever I could find some water there was no vessel to heat the water. For the whole one month stay I did not have a bath. After leaving my home at Hyderabad I could wash my hair only while returning in the train. The train I travelled was known as East-Coast from Secundrabad to Howrah and back. I was one of the worst trains I have travelled in Southern Railways. The sleeper coach stank unbearably. I had to spend lot of time in the toilet to clean my head in the washbasin because I had been suffering from headaches. Another engagement with rural masses was in the Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar drought-hit and starving masses in the 1980s–1990s. In the Mothkuru area of Nalgonda district, U. Sambasiva Rao, a communist colleague as a revolutionary party representative, worked to mobilize masses to demand irrigation canals in that region from the famous Nagarjunasagar irrigation project. I joined his campaign for a month. We travelled across the villages and depended for food and water on the very suffering masses. As it was summer of 1985 getting food was a major problem and we used to camp in remote villages. Though we were working for their water resource

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they thought that we were a burden on their economy and food resources. Sometimes we starved. We did our bathing and sleeping around their agrarian wells, which could supply water for cattle and our morning and evening needs. During that campaign I carried Mao’s Hunan Report and also Edgar Snow’s Red Star over China with me to read. Though the stories of suffering of the Chinese Communist party leaders and cadres in their revolutionary journey from North to South called the Long March in which they ate anything, even if it had rotted, and also starved for a long time, sustained me, I found it difficult to continue the work as the people were not getting any immediate benefit from it. They must have also thought the electoral political parties would give them better results than we could. We lectured to small groups of villagers and sang several newly composed songs on the drought. Though villagers liked our work, they could hardly support us, and as a result after 20 days we withdrew the campaign. With great difficulty I had managed to stay for 20 days and by the time I returned home I had become further weak and could recover only after a week’s rest. But Sambashiva Rao continued the campaign for long time. The second major drought relief work of mine was that of feeding three villages on the bank of the river Krishna of Mahabubnagar district. They were dying of starvation. This was in 1986–1987. A group of us started a different notion of human rights movement. We moved away from the traditional definition of civil, democratic and human rights that focussed around state-centred atrocities. On this one issue I differed with the Maoist leadership of the Nagi Reddy group. I thought that they have hardly understood the meaning human rights in the Indian context. India is country of several layers of caste and tribal societies. We need to look at rights from each section’s point of view and also their levels of deprivations. The Indian communists read Marx’s writings literally and never

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contextualized them to suit the Indian caste-based denial of rights. Some of us were trying to examine how caste and untouchability denied rights in different ways. We defined suffering from drought as a human rights’ issue. We began to define caste discrimination also as part of the violation human rights. All the upper-caste intellectuals working around human rights disagreed with us. We also went to the extent of defining discrimination by state and upper castes in the context of drought should be a part of our understanding of rights. We realized that the poor and lower-caste masses suffer more during natural calamities like drought and floods than the rich and the help of the state reaches more to the rich than the poor. We mobilized resources from individuals, organizations and started a regular, rice, dal and vegetable feeding centre in Somashila, Malleshswaram and Manchalakatta. Two remarkable activists from Nalgonda district , Nunemunthala Ilaiah (an OBC) and Narketpalli Nagarjuna (a Dalit) lived with the villagers, managed the cooking and serving operations. U. Samabshiva Rao, K.J. Rama Rao, Ravi Maruth were part of the organizing team. They changed the villagers’ cultural character within that drought period. Stree Shakti activists like Rama Melkote, Veena Shatrugna and her husband M. Shatrugna and few others helped in mobilizing resources. M. Shatrugna was a columnist in the Economic and Political Weekly and a good friend of mine. He spent quite a lot of time in helping these centres by using his government contacts. A famous IAS ­officer, S.R. Shankaaran, helped us in mobilizing rice and Shatrugna was his good friend. He exploited that friendship to the hilt. Unfortunately Shatrugna died very young of cancer. I lost a great supporter at a time when I needed his help in my activities. Several times I used to eat in their house. Veena and Shatrugna gave moral support when brahminic discrimination was highly prevalent. They also supported our Mandal movement.

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In the beginning the higher castes of the villages where the food centres were established were not willing to sit with Dalits and eat their food and drink water from common pots. They said we would rather die than eat with Dalits. But we convinced them by invoking, spiritual and moral language that these villages are drought hit because the upper castes committed the sin of practising untouchability. They slowly came round by the time we left the village; not only was there no untouchability but they also had good rains. This made them believe that human beings must live in good social relations for their upliftment. For two years, I used to travel to those villages every Saturday and oversee the cooking and serving management and return by Monday morning to take my classes. My friends U. Sambashiva Rao, Nagarjuna and Motkuri Ilaiah did the real ground work in those villages. We also injected a culture of sending children to school. This was one of my most gratifying works as we literally saved several lives from starving and dying. Every Sunday almost for two years I spoke in the village gatherings. In these villages communication was easy. They were really following the instructions I was giving. We did this work for two years and had stopped the feeding centres. All three villages, when we closed the feeding centres and left, cried not because they would not have food but because we were leaving those villages. Apart from addressing small and big public meetings in the Telugu region, doing so in other parts of India like Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Odisha (occasionally Bengal) was something I did often. Attending seminars, symposia in the universities, colleges have become a routine activity of mine for decades. The best of the universities and central institutes were for a long time meant for the upper caste ‘Anglicans’ of India. After interacting and working among Adivasis and also Dalits, and writing Why I Am Not a Hindu, I began to interact with these privileged people whom I call Indian Anglicans. They operate mostly in Delhi, Mumbai,

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Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai. They handle the most influential structures of power, propaganda and connectivity. I started writing to English national newspapers once Why I Am Not a Hindu took me into that world. In the late 1990 the private English TV channels sprang up apart from the English Doordarshan. NDTV was the first and most popular among them. It was started by Prannoy Roy, who is known for his jounalisitic and analytical talents. The best of English anchors were trained in that channel. Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt were the most well known, who had done commendable work on the Gujarat riots and Kashmir atrocities respectively. Rajdeep was conducting a famous show called the Big Fight and Barkha Dutt was anchoring another popular show called ‘We, The People’. When I first got an invitation from NDTV Delhi to participate in Barkha Dutt’s ‘We, the People’ programme that gets telecast at prime time, every Sunday from 8 to 9 p.m., I was a bit scared and also surprised. I knew Rajdeep Sardesai but I had never met Barkha Dutt. Rajdeep Sardesai wrote a very critical review of my book Why I Am Not Hindu and most of the upper-caste journalists in the post-­ Mandal period were anti-reservationists. The reservation question is a complex one. For all beneficiaries it sounds useful and transformative. For those who are outside of it, it is the most anti-merit programme. Generally uppercaste intellectuals, writers, journalists do not define merit in transformation terms but explain it in terms of marks. This issue was debated in both 1990 Mandal and 2006– 2007 second Mandal times very vigorously. Muslims and some Christian (mainly Syrian Christians) also opposed reservation. But by the 2006–2007 debate the Muslims, Christians, the Economically Backward upper castes started asking for reservations. Rajdeep Sardesai or Barkha Dutt, or any other journalist for that matter, was struggling to handle that question. Their concern for the poor cannot be undermined but at the same time they were uncomfortable with the question of caste getting put in public and policy domains beyond that of Dalit/Tribal issue. The

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OBC issue has become a very troubling issue for all them. I got an opportunity to engage with them both in print and electronic media. For me also it was a great learning as well as a struggling experience. It was during these troubling times that Why I Am Not a Hindu and Buffalo Nationalism were published. I met Rajdeep in his home at Delhi when I visited Sagarika Ghose, his wife, on her invitation after she interviewed me at Hyderabad. Sagarika was the only wellknown journalist who wrote a remarkable interview review article in Outlook about the impact of Why I Am Not a Hindu, when I was getting an intellectual bashing from all sides in the print media. For Barkha Dutt’s show I flew to Delhi and stayed in the NDTV guest house, a nice place in Greater Kailash, New Delhi. For the first time in my life I stayed in that neighbourhood. I do not think after my death I will go to Kailash at all. I know that it is meant for the Brahmins and Baniyas of India. This was during the second Mandal phase in 2006 when the then Manmohan Singh UPA government planned to implement 27 percent reservations in all central educational institutions. All upper-caste India was against it. The nation was again divided as pro- or anti-reservationists and there were hardly any English-speaking and writing intellectuals in the pro-reservation camp. Even the Dalit elite, who supported the Mandal movement in the 1990s was divided with a view that the OBC reservation in the higher educational elite institutions would also go against their interests. The question that reservation going against somebody’s interest did not arise. It was a programme of educational inclusiveness. The Shudras who were said to have born at the feet of the brahminic God Brahma were made to remain illiterate for millennia. If fact if the reservation programme had not evolved the whole Hindu religious structure would have collapsed gradually. The electoral arithmetic of the OBCs was letting the upper castes know their strength. My books put a map of spiritual and social inequalities before the nation. By 2006 Why

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I Am Not a Hindu was a very well-known book. Therefore, I started getting invitations to write in popular media and also participate in the English TV channels. Fortunately, in English-speaking elite circles I am known as a Dalit intellectual. Some Dalit intellectuals were opposed to that kind of branding me as Dalit. Though I repeatedly clarified that I am an OBC from the shepherd caste, the newspapers and TV channels introduced me only as a Dalit scholar, activist and intellectual. I went to the NDTV studio for the pre-recording of the programme. The studio was full of students, apart from the panellists, in which, Kiran Bedi, who was anti-reservationist, was there. Barkha Dutt in the beginning appeared to be neutral. She knew how to drive the debate to the advantage of upper-caste bogus merit theory, with care and caution so that other Indians should not feel that she was against their interest. The discussion about merit in those days was purely based on marks percentage points. The upper-caste students were going to public spaces and mentioning their marks’ percentages and how the lower castes who got lower percentages than them were getting seats and jobs. That kind of discourse does not connect itself to the levels of creativity and productivity of different social backgrounds. If marks were knowledge India would have been most knowledgeable and scientifically productive country but it was not. Whenever the panellists were making a point against reservation and argued that merit (of marks) should be the basis of admissions in the higher educational institutions, the youth in the studio were clapping in such a way that the few pro-reservation panellists would get nervous. Particularly when I was talking they were trying to heckle me, as if an ugly faced joker was brought by Barkha into an elite Hindu meritorious English debate of high order. They thought I was a real representative of the other meritless India. I got angry with those ill-informed youth. I demanded to know how many SC/ST and OBC youth are

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there in that crowd. Barkha tried to avoid the answer. I demanded that I will not allow this debate without taking a count by raising hands. Barkha could not avoid this. Just two-three raised their hands up. But they too said ‘Yes we are OBC but we oppose the reservation’. I wanted them to reveal their caste background. They were hiding their faces. I said these are actually Baniya-like OBCs; maybe they came from Bihar. I knew Sitaram Kesari, the former Congress president, paraded himself as an OBC, while being a Baniya of Bihar, opposing reservation. Susheel Modi of the BJP has used that trick also. In certain states the Baniyas and near about Baniya like dwija castes succeeded in registering themselves as the OBCs. The Baniyas of Bihar and a section of Brahmins of Uttarakhand managed to get OBC certificates. According to Aakar Patel, Modis (of Gujarat) are neighbourhood shopkeepers (kirana store owners). They are retailers who operate on fixed rates. Unlike the trading Baniya, the Modi has no need to be flexible or accommodating. Take what he has to offer on his terms, or leave it (The Times of India, 18 June 2017). One does not know whether Modis sport the sacred threat. But is well known that they are vegetarian. It is a known fact that before Modi became the Prime Minister he never spoke in favour of reservations. During these debates I realized that there are number of fake OBCs who were working to subvert the reservation policy itself. Such youth were coming to the TV shows and shouting that ‘we are OBCs but we are opposed to reservations’. I demanded an explanation as to why there were no Dalit, OBC and Adivasi youth in this studio? Barkha Dutt knew that this was an intentionally planned mobilization of upper-caste youth in order to show that the majority of the youth were against reservation; the upper caste in all political parties were trying to sabotage the reservation programme from the governing structures itself. Manmohan Singh was playing his cards very safe, as he himself came from the Khatri Sikh background. There were rumours that Sonia Gandhi was very serious about

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pushing the OBC reservations and also reservations in the private sector. Her Christian and un-Indian background was thought to be the reason for such a step. They also spread rumours that she decided to disrupt the hegemony of Brahmin-Baniya forces of India. Brahmins were the most dominant in bureaucratic power and the Baniyas were very hegemonic in private capital assets. It is said that from then on the Baniya industry started cultivating Narendra Modi as their representative to be the Prime Minister and they have been giving that signal to the RSS also. The Baniya industry, however, decided to dethrone Sonia Gandhi and they did. Poor Barkha had to cut a sorry figure. With that one meritless technique of mine that the OBCs must declare themselves, they all lost the debate. Reservation has come to stay. That was the final defeat of theirs. From then on I was on many English TV channels facing several such tricks of the big and small anchors. I learnt the tricks of the trade. I used the technique to have the last word the way I wanted it put and come out of the channel. The upper caste youth were/are very angry with me. Unfortunately, till today I did not come across a Dalit or Adivasi or OBC anchor in the English TV channels. Not that there are no Dalits, Adivasis (Christians and NonChristians) to take into TV network and train them, for instance, people from the Northeast who are fluent in English. But like the universities they also avoid persons from that background, by using similar tricks. Many central universities do not fill the backlog posts of SC/ST/OBCs because the selection committees are basically constituted of the upper castes who claim the lower-caste candidates are not suitable for the position. When the dwija upper castes were entering these institutes in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s they recruited master degree holders as lecturers. Their standards were no way better than the average SC/ST/OBC candidates of today. They headed the higher educational institutions all these years. Yet they claimed that our central universities and institutions under their

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leadership were the best. Actually even when they alone— mainly Brahmins—are running these structures our central institutions are not among the best of the world. Not that individuals that got educated in some of these institutions did not get high positions in India and foreign countries. Many IIT educated young men and women achieved good positions. Some got very high positions even though they were educated in medium level institutions. For example Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft was from medium range technological institute at Manipal (Mangalore University) and CEO of Google Sundar Pichai was from IIT Kharagpur. Many Dalitbahujan youth will reach this kind of position in times to come, if only they get quality English-medium education. The argument that SC/ST/OBCs would have not have made such marks if they too were educated for generations is misplaced argument. People who were denied opportunities to educate themselves for centuries cannot be accused of lack of talent based on their marks or communication skills within one generation. The Indian brahminic castes have a historical responsibility to pay back to the Dalitbahujan forces in various forms. The notion of standard and quality is time-and space-specific. Any section of society would achieve results in particular time and space. The Dalitbahujans must be given such time and space opportunities. All these structures till the reservation system came into operation have not helped the poor even of the upper caste. They did not create any scholarships for Dalitbahujan or poor if they get qualified and were willing to study in those institutions. Every time they protect their caste interests by building up hypocritical arguments. I got an opportunity to directly confront them on the TV channels, like the IIT Delhi former Director Indireshan one of the chronic anti-reservationists, who used to oppose reservation. Later in my study of caste, I found out that after the Brahmin priestly forces projected the brahminic divine figures as pure vegetarian (for offering purposes, particularly

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in the South and North India) the educational institutions were also converted to be vegetarian. There is a food cultural divide in many educational institutes hence they started preferring only vegetarian forces to get into these institutions. The Hyderabad Central University is classic case. No meatarian food could be served. Many student organizations raised this question. I was a regular guest speaker, mostly invited by student organizations. I raised this issue in many meetings. Even the pro-communist, pro-Maoist teachers on the campus were comfortable with the pure-South Indian Brahmin Baniya community’s vegetarian food culture. They projected it as if it were Indian food culture for millennia. This was actually insulting the Shudra, OBC, Dalit Adivasi, Muslim, Christian, Sikh food culture of India. Till I brought it out in my book AntiNational Vegetarianism, not many raised the fundamental question that how could Gods/Goddesses be constructed as vegetarian and how communities train children to eat only vegetarian. This is against the human nature. Only in Hinduism the Brahmin-Baniyas and Jains eat vegetarian right from childhood days. This is unthinkable anywhere in the world. People by personal choice may become pure vegetarian for medical reasons. In some parts of India like Bengal the Brahmin food culture is Fisharian. Mostly vegetarians survive around universities, civil services, politics, IT sector, management of industries. They are the ones who wrote books to tell us what is nationalism and what is anti-nationalism. I have not come across a single Shudra theoretician who has written books or interpreted the Hindu scriptures. They constitute such a huge population and they live such un-philosophical lives. That is the reason why all the philosophical powers are with the Brahmins or bhadralok. Unless the control is broken the liberation of the SC/ST/OBCs would not take place. I have seen in my travelling, lecturing, sitting in central government institutional meetings in the committees of Ministry of Human Resource Development, University Grants Commission, ICSSR, National Book Trust, and

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Planning Commission subcommittees that hardly any upper-caste Shudras like Jats, Patels, Gujjars, Marathas, Reddys, Kammas, Lingayats, Vakkalingas could be found in those committees. There are some Dalits because of reservation. From all states we find Brahmins and some Baniyas handling all these institutions. This is one reason why I justify the reservation demand of the Shudra upper castes like Jats, Gujjars, Patels or Kapus. The tragedy of the Shudras (upper and lower) is that they do not understand that in all religions priesthood (pasterhood in Christianity, Mullahood in Islam) controls philosophy and those who control philosophy control every other structure. Unless the Shudra upper castes take over the philosophical realm of Hinduism, the master key, their status in Hinduism does not change. They need to learn English. They must acquire a definite control on philosophy. Till then they will not be able drive anything on their own. As I said repeatedly, but for the reservation I would not have got a seat in the MA and also a lecturer job, which has led to my writing and my campaigns against caste hegemony. Even if I were to try for a TV anchor’s job I would not have got one because of my caste, face, accent, with all my good English. They might even say my English is bad because I did not study in a Christian school, pick up that accent. The upper castes working in every sphere have two lives: one for private and another for public. The ultimate guide of their living process is how to avoid social transformation where the hegemonic forces get down to the real work of production, cleaning the streets, giving equal education to all in the same language, namely, English. The media are no different. But yet I engage with it and work with it. After independence some change has come about because of political democracy. But the political democracy is not a substitute for spiritual and social democracy. It is true that the OBC and Dalit politicians are wealthy but do not create their own educational institutions. Why? Because they cannot run them without the support of the

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Brahmin-Baniyas of the region. They do not have enough trained teachers from their communities. Most of the OBC political leaders aim at making quick money, meant for fighting elections. Unless a leader has a philosophical vision he will not be able run good institutions. Why did Ambedkar start educational institutions even though he did not have much money? He had a philosophical vision. Ambedkar had a greater philosophical vision than most Brahmin leaders of his time because he was operating outside the fold of Hindu philosophy and had an alternative philosophical Buddhist vision, which had educational ethics. After all, Nalanda was a Buddhist educational institution. Leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav or Laloo Prasad Yadav are no philosophical leaders but slaves of Hindu Brahminism. They had no exposure to the world outside or sense of social reform among them. Social reform ideology is again linked to philosophical understanding and vision. Most of the OBC leaders do not own the legacy of Mahatma Phule and Savitribai Phule. The main reason could be that most of them are politicians who emerged out of street fights and are not intellectuals. The UP and Bihar OBC politicians are ideologically Lohites who never believed in educational reforms. Ram Manohar Lohia propagated ‘Hinduism’ in a slightly modified form and that is what many OBC leaders in North India do. Even if they make their own children doctors, engineers or politicians their children also will not be in a position to change the ground. These basically are earning professions, not socio-spiritual change agents. The change has to take place in every sphere of life. Again I blame the Catholic Christian schools (now there are a number of Hindu schools too), for creating such manipulative intellectuals in that good English language from the brahminic forces. The majority of the English media men/women are taught in such schools for money but not for the service to Jesus’ cause. They in turn have a duty to the larger society. The Hindu institutions like Ramakrishna Mission though admit a section of the

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Dalit/OBC children they never make them self-confident because they teach them to respect the existing caste hierarchy and the Brahmin hegemony. Since most of these institutions are headed by the Brahmin-Baniyas, that is what they are expected to do. Nationalism is giving every section a fair representation in powerful institutions. A serious change will come about only when every institution teaches children a massive dose of dignity of labour. Every person irrespective of caste should be in a position to take any job without assigning disrespect to that job. A shoemaker if he/she plans should be able become the priest in the temple and a priest should be able carry on the shoemaking job without undergoing social indignity. Indian secularism is a strange commodity. It is available only to English-educated Hindus. Elite Muslims, educated in English-medium too were caste-blind. They have never written a serious book on caste relations or untouchability. There is a need for Muslim scholars becoming caste-­ sensitive. I have heard, even the anchors like Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami, Karan Thaper, Barkha Dutt declaring ‘I am a proud Hindu’. Though there are different shades of Hinduism and different levels of commitment to that religion among these people, they on the whole believe that Hinduism is a positive religion, in spite of the fact that it practised caste and untouchability for millennia. No Brahmin pundit thought of writing something like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; some upper caste people like Mulk Raj Anand wrote Untouchable, a novel that acquired fame during the freedom struggle. But they have not taken up the campaign against untouchability as a basic agenda of theirs. Within the Hindu frame Narayana Guru of Kerala experimented with a system refusing Brahmin hegemony and since then on that low-caste community of Ezhavas advanced. Ambedkar experimented taking away Dalits from Hinduism into Buddhism, where the Dalit Bikhus do their own ritual reading interpretation and their philosophical positioning has changed. Ambedkar is read

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and interpreted and re-interpreted as the Christians do in relations to Bible and the Muslims did in relation to the Quran. The Shudras have no such experience till today. By the time I retired from the Osmania University on 5 October 2012, I have travelled to many parts of India and to some parts of the world and experienced so much of life, struggles, frustration and excitement than the Brahmin, Reddy, Velama colleagues of mine in that university have ever imagined. Some of them must have travelled for a purpose of tourism but not as part of their transformative activism. In 1992 I toured Kashmir as part of civil rights investigation. This was after the Kashmiri Pandits had left Kashmir. I realized that Kashmir represents a different culture of India. At that time from a rickshaw-puller to a high court judge was in a mood of asking for independent Kashmir. I noticed that they were more against Pakistan than they were against India. I enjoyed their food. I ate lot of good goat meat and mutton, fish and stayed in a boathouse. The beauty of Kashmir impressed me. In my view Kerala is much more beautiful place than Kashmir. The food culture in Kerala is much more diversified. I have seen Kerala from one end to the other. Lectured in several universities, student forums, Muslim and Christian organizations and even in public meetings. Since I had a good understanding of Kerala society and history I could write a chapter in my novel Untouchable God. I also travelled to give lectures in other states. But my favourite place is Kerala. Its unending greenery, its ever flowing rivers and streams, its deep lakes and bays make me feel that it is really ‘God’s Own Country’. Whenever, I visit Kerala I noticed that all my books have been translated into Malayalam by D.C. Books. I also travelled in the Northeast in 1986 in order to understand those societies, which are in another dissimilar cultural zone of India. Its people’s physique itself is different. Their food culture has its own flavour. What I liked most was that I could converse in English with the young and the old. One question that everyone asked was

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‘Are you from India’? I then realized that it was not a fully integrated region. Apart from the article I wrote in the Deccan Chronicle called ‘A Black Stone among White Marbles’ (3 Oct. 2012) on the occasion of my retirement from Osmania on (5 Oct. 2012). I wrote an article in Telugu in Andhra Jyothi called ‘ Osmania Ika Poyyivastha’ (O Osmania I will Come Back) that will give a good picture of my pleasure and pain during my teaching and research work in that university. As I have said elsewhere, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, when he visited the university main building where I studied, was supposed to have said ‘Though this building is built by marbles it never produced a marble’. Radhakrishnan’s philosophy is based on the Vedic texts, which could be described as the modern Vedantic philosophy. Maybe that philosophy is alive among the Brahmin and Baniya pundits. But for us the Dalitbahujan his philosophy is a very negative and dead philosophy. Never in the Dalitbahujan discourses does he figure as a thinker to be studied. Ambedkar in a way ‘finished him’ by writing Buddha and His Dhamma (after he completed writing this book Ambedkar asked Nehru for `10, 000 for its publication. By then he had resigned from the cabinet. Nehru forwarded that letter to Radhakrishnan, who was apart from being the Vice President, was convenor of the International Buddhist Conference. But he refused to grant that money). It was said that Radhakrishnan never liked Ambedkar and Ambedkar did not have much respect for him too. Though he became the President of India his influence on the Indian youth in general is hardly seen. After the 1990 Mandal movement Ambedkar’s image has grown by leaps and bounds. Among the Dalit circles if anybody praises Radhakrishnan he/she would be shouted down. Yes that is not a democratic approach. When deliberate promotions and demotions are made based on caste background of the thinkers such things are bound to happen. The only Dalit who praised him in the recent times is Ramnath Kovind after he became President of India. In my view

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Radhakrishnan was one of the most casteist scholars of India. Though Radhakrishnan’s birthday is being celebrated as Teachers’ Day in Indian schools, as part of the Government of India mandate, the Dalitbahujan teachers and students do not do so. They celebrate Savitribai Phule’s birthday as their Teachers’ Day. I strongly believe that Radhakrishnan did not help the Dalitbahujan cause when he was Vice Chancellor of Andhra University and Banaras Hindu University or as Vice President and President of India. Savitribai replaces the image of the Hindu Goddess Saraswathi and Sarvepalli Radhakrishna in the field of education. This campaign will expand in future. The Dalitbahujan masses have to evolve their own thinkers, philosophers and spiritual teachers. This I realized in my academic and activist life. Even if a communist revolution were to succeed without changing the spiritual and social base of these masses their history would not have changed. As a teacher, as an activist who worked for four decades among different sections of the society, taught several batches of students, who came from the villages, whose parents suffered humiliation, poverty, illiteracy, I always thought that our philosophy of production and equality of human beings should be brought into books that must be spread all over India. As long as I was in the Osmania University I worked as a team member with several of my Dalitbahujan teacher friends. Professor S. Simhadri of geography, Professor P.L. Vishveshwar Rao of journalism were very important among them. They were OBCs. We also formed a Satyashodak organization of teachers that did a lot of positive intellectual work. I was not at all comfortable with the separate Telangana movement. I was of the opinion that the region would go into the hands more conservative feudal forces. But all my friends including Simhadri and Vishveshwar Rao became very strong Telanganites. During the whole period of about 10 years when the Telangana movement was active I became a loner on the campus. However, it

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was during this time some of the bravest students like Naliganti Sharat, a research scholar in Telugu department, who wrote the Beef Anthem, and Sudarshan, a Ph.D. scholar in political science department took several anti-brahminic programmes like Beef Festival, Narakasura Jayanti and Ravana Jayanti. I was fully with them. I must have addressed several dozens of student meetings, seminars on the Osmania campus. I lived every day following an active life in my academic career, apart from my activism outside. I left Osmania University on 31 October 2012 on my retirement, aged 60. If had not become a teacher in that university I would not have done what I have done. If I were to have become an IAS officer, perhaps I would have worked for some administrative reforms. Or I would have retired as a rich man lived in a different way. Or as bureaucrat working under all kinds of politicians I would have become a corrupt man. Osmania, and the world I worked with shaped me as a different man. Therefore I bid a farewell to that university I served for 34 years as follows: O Osmania I bid you a farewell, O Osmania I bid you a farewell with my tears, When I entered you, I was an old man of 21, Today I am leaving you as a young man of 60. I was a youth of invisible lust for knowledge and sex, I searched for both, but failed in one, It is for others to judge whether I succeeded in the other. A Brahmin guru said you did not produce a marble. I am leaving the marks of a black marble all around you. The world only can read or reject what I produced But India will not be the same after Me, As I am neither Eklavya to give him my thumb, Nor I am Baliraja to surrender to that Vamana, I am Ilaiah Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. With an English pen in my hand.

8 My Experiments with Untruth

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ahatma Gandhi wrote an autobiography with the title The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Gandhi’s autobiography is most famous, and it played a significant role in building up his image in India and abroad. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan wrote a short autobiography, My Search for Truth (Shiva Lal Agarwala, 1956). Radhakrishnan’s autobiography is not as well known as his philosophical writings are. Yet another notable autobiography is that of Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Macmillan, 1951). This book actually established him as an author. While Gandhi is a known Baniya leader with a great influence on the Indian socio-political scene, Radhakrishnan is a Brahmin from South India and Nirad Chaudhuri is a Kayastha from Bengal. Gandhi mentions his caste background but the other two never talk about their caste background, though they lived in their caste culture from birth to death. Even when they lived abroad the caste values were taken there. Caste conditions human being so much that it does not leave Indians anywhere. Hence hiding that background indicates only hypocrisy. In that sense Gandhi was more honest than Radhakrishnan and Nirad Chaudhuri. He told the world what caste he came from and how it was important in his life. Others remained silent about their caste even in their autobiography where they need to tell the fact of life as fact.

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But Gandhi, in my view did not speak the truth in many aspects, though he titles his life story as His Experiments with Truth. I am more concerned about what he calls Truth and I will examine in this chapter what truth and untruth in my own experiment of life was and is. Gandhi was a Baniya, a Vaishnav. Aakar Patel, a Gujarati Shudra upper-caste journalist, who studied that state’s caste system very well, said, ‘Gandhi was a Bania after all (as is Shah, though he’s Jain, not Vaishnav’, Times of India, 18 June 2017). Aakar Patel wrote this after Amit Shah, the president of the BJP, called Gandhi a Chatur Baniya’. Truth for a Baniya like Gandhi, a Brahmin like Radhakrishnan and a Kayastha like Chaudhuri is different from that of a Shudra OBC like me. People can question even my mode of understanding truth and untruth. In my opinion they should. In India hundred thoughts must contend to establish a society of equality. No truth is absolute and no untruth is also absolute. Both are relative and contextual. Gandhi consistently claimed that he was a Hindu Vaishnav. He sang the hymn ‘Raghupathi Raghava Rajaram’, for instance. Gandhi did not avoid child marriage, whereas I did quite consciously. Though the times were different, the fact that my family in the 1970s and 1980s was more backward than Gandhi’s family of the nineteenth century tells the story of difference. This difference is because of the caste and class nature of our society. In fact, as I have said earlier, I avoided marriage altogether to keep myself free from certain limitations that a married life imposes for a person of my background. However, this view of marriage has its own weakness, I know. According to Gandhi when he ate the goat meat the goat cried in his stomach. Even then some people believed him and called him Mahatma. I have eaten goat meat many times, but it never cried in my stomach. Sri Chinmoy has said that Gandhi had a Muslim friend who told him to eat meat as he was so weak. Gandhi replied that Hindus do not eat meat, none of his ancestors did. In the end he did eat it and then said the unhappy goat was crying inside

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his stomach; it was so miserable (Sri Chinmoy, Mahatma Gandhi: The Heart of Life, Agni Press, 1994). Gandhi was said to have done this experiment with truth when he was eighteen and his first son was born by then. By saying that the goat had cried in his stomach he was propagating vegetarianism. Each time I ate goat meat it was digested and became a part of my flesh and blood and helped me to survive and grow. As I said earlier, I ate goat brains fried with salt and chillies many times and that helped my memory power to be strong. This also helped me in removing the fear that OBCs would be dull and could not learn English, which I learnt in bad and unequipped schools. Till I was sixty-five I never fell sick and never got bedridden. Naturally this food experiment of mine in Gandhian language is untruth. My living and writing this autobiography is also, maybe, to be untruth. Those who believe in the Hindu philosophy of Maya a Shudra like me writing book is also a Maya. Gandhi created a belief system of his own in this nation and now it bound by that belief system. This belief system largely is superstitious. This is nothing but the paradox of understanding truth and untruth in the Hindu caste culture. Hence let me write more how my experiments with untruths went on in the life of a shepherd. Unless these mythical notions of Truth and Untruth are unravelled India as a nation does not progress. The Brahmin-Baniya notion of truth is untruth for us. Our notion of truth is untruth for them. We always walked in opposite directions in life and lived in opposite values. This caused a huge damage to the nation. In Gandhi’s story you do not find even a line about cattle rearing, tilling the land, or leather work, or pot making. Of course, he takes a broom only to prove that Dalits were children of the same God that he believes in, as different people but not as Untouchables. Similarly in Radhakrishnan’s autobiography nothing related to production was written. Life in their caste communities does not relate to production all. Nothing about people who

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are involved in those tasks or with cattle that the Indian human beings live with was mentioned. However, I would take Gandhi’s story as a more serious example because that it has influenced the Indian upper castes and general civil society more than any other life story. For a long time in Indian history personal story writers came from the anti-production Brahmins and Baniyas. Gandhi was an exceptional truth experimentalist from a Baniya background and he became the most famous of all. I came from the opposite, a low-caste background, and also with an opposite understanding of the universe. My childhood universe was more discriminatory and adulthood has passed with problems of parental death and manhood passed with struggle against the oppression of the productive castes, even though I was a university professor. The 2017 Arya Vysya assault on my culture, character, knowledge on the streets of both the Telugu states is a story for a different book altogether. They have burnt my effigies on the roads just as they burn incense to their lust for money, though in the name of God. Their children were made to urinate on my photographs. Their women were made to sit on the roads to abuse me of their choicest words, though they did that rather unwillingly. The two Telugu state Baniya population have not shown an iota of understanding of Gandhi or respect for the notion of non-violence. They were violent verbally and physically. I have experimented with several things in my eventful life, of which the most eventful life was spent during September and October 2017, as the Arya Vysyas of two Telugu States displayed their vulgar muscle and money power on the streets. How life experiments happen in the productive communities would tell the bigger story of India. India has not become a nation because of books written by anyone— brahminic or non-brahminic—writer. India is not unified by Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata but because of a common agrarian ethic, by common productive ethic. Common productive cultures from Harappa days to

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Beerappa days (Beerappa is the God of the sheep rearing community in the Krishna basin), which means till the present modern days there is a common pattern of human names, work ethics. Only after that civilization got destroyed much dis-connectivity between the ancient, medieval and modern took place. A nation becomes a life-saving nation because of people’s productive labour and the experiments that take place in the productive field. The definition of a western nation and the Indian nation have several uncommon characteristics. For a long time after the Aryan invasion and destruction of the Harappa civilization, the sources of civilization: brick, pot, ironsmithing, carpenting were devalued; only Vedas were treated as the defining basis of the Indian nation state. That is the reason why even today the disconnect between our village knowledge system and the Vedic knowledge system is total. More and more books should be written about the experiments in that field. Nobody wrote about these life experiences in the English language. When I was hardly six I used to go with my father along with the herd of sheep. We had a fairly big herd and also about fifty to sixty goats. Sheep rearing was easier because they eat grass available in the open fields. But goats required a forest base as they eat only leaves. Even for those fifty to sixty goats my family used to pay a very burdensome forest tax and the forest officials harassed shepherds a lot, as I have discussed earlier. I ran along with the herd even though my mother or my sisters used to try to stop me. Once out with them meant we would return only by late evening. The family worried about my missing pagati buvva, the mid-day meal. My father ate in the morning and would never carry anything with him. Sometimes I starved for the whole day but I would rather run after the sheep and play with young ones born during the day. Sometimes my father milked the sheep in leaf cups and would give me some to drink as he knew I was hungry. I used to enjoy that un-boiled milk too.

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One day a sheep was in labour and it was having a difficult time. Usually, they deliver on their own but because of the labour pains they cry out and the shepherd becomes the midwife. My father started doing midwifery for a difficult delivery that day. I started watching the process of the birth of the lamb very carefully. My father never used to speak much. Perhaps his vocabulary was not too large as he hardly interacted with village civil society. My mother’s vocabulary and explanatory skills were much better, as she handled village and state affairs. As nobody was literate in the family, her major problem would be reading government notices to the community and family. For a long time Urdu was the official language, later on after 1953 with the creation of the separate Telangana-Andhra Pradesh state the administration shifted to English and Telugu. Telugu began to have greater usage after the 1956 creation of the united Andhra Pradesh. When it comes to reading and understanding there was hardly any difference among these three languages, all of them were Greek and Latin to my people. In those days the written Telugu used to be totally different from people’s productive Telugu. It was in that productive Telugu that my mother was better than my father. Generally the herds would be made to sleep in a land-owning person’s land as the night stay of sheep and goats added to fertility with their dung and urine. For each night’s stay there was a payment. My father would sleep there to keep a night watch on the herds. He would just come for dinner around 8.30 p.m. or 9 p.m. and immediately get back to the herd. I came back home with him. The whole day was spent in walking along with the animals and they went far and wide to graze. Many children of my age trained themselves to be professional shepherds. I wanted to be one. A shepherd is trained to withstand rain, thunder, hot summers and cold winters. He slept in the heavy rain on a very narrow bamboo stick cot and covered himself with a woollen blanket (made of the same sheep’s wool) and a cotton dhoti used for double purpose:

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for tying to one’s body and also to protect from rain, heat and cold. A long time ago, I wrote a poem in Telugu called ‘Gongadi’ (Blanket) on the shepherd’s science which is translated into English by a website as follows: Gongadi (Blanket) Suddenly If the sky sends a heavy downpour You will gape in surprise, get drenched. I will spread my rug over my head And beam like a lotus leaf on the ocean. If you need fire in that storm You’ll stand on your head and do penance. To light a cigar, I will produce my piece of flint And a little cotton And start a fire in an instant. In winter, when you get the shivers You’ll roll on the ground begging God to save you. I use the scissors from my ironsmith brother, Shear wool from my sheep And weave a rug to wrap myself! You grew to be landlords from the crops Grown with my flock’s shit. I offered you my sheep, raised like a child, for your feast But, you called me a mad Golla; You brainless crook! Now I’ve come into the street, My gongadi on my shoulder and holding my stick, Now I shall watch over men, not sheep, Now I shall fertilize the nation not fields, I’ll wrap my gongadi around this nation Shivering from your atrocities! I can not only watch over sheep, I also know how to cut down useless ones!

When I was going along with the herd of sheep, I had no I idea that I would go to school and enter another profession. The caste professions at the most in those days were shifting to a common multi-caste profession called agriculture. That was only the biggest change of hope for

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the new generation. My hope was to shift from sheep rearing to agriculture and live a village-centred life. Huge jumps were never expected because such jumps were not known in that area. Coming back to our midwife story my father was carefully pressing the would-be mother’s vagina back as one could see the nose of the lamb. The mother was in distress, crying and crying, and the baby was not coming out. Another shepherd came and started helping my father. He used a new technique. He milked a newly delivered sheep and started wetting his hand and inserting fingers to widen the delivery path. Within minutes the whole head of the baby came out. I was jumping up and down in excitement. I realized as early as age 6 that in the birth of a lamb that the head coming was the critical thing. I was seeing how the head came out and the rest was no problem. With his own hands my father cleared the mucus on the body of the lamb. He did not allow me to touch the baby for some time. He asked me to look after the rest of the sheep, as I might harm the baby lamb. Within an hour the lamb started playing. I was its playmate. I did not read the story of such a delivery process of an animal, how humans handle such life generating and life saving process in any book later in my life. Perhaps writing about such things and reading about such life process of animals and humans was not seen as education. Education means reading some story of war in Sanskrit like the story of Ramayana or Mahabharata. Birth and death of humans and animals were not seen as worthy items of the Indian education. If for a child studying Sanskrit books of war and love was defined as education, a child learning from day-to-day life in the field should have been treated as receiving better education. If a great scholar like Amartya Sen’s early school days was filled up with studying Sanskrit and mathematics (as mentioned in his book edited by his daughter Antara Dev Sen, The Country’s First Boys) maybe along with other subjects, my childhood was filled with running around cattle,

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watching their delivery processes and so on. Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory’s School in Dhaka in 1940. From autumn 1941, Sen studied at Santiniketan. However, later as a scholar he wrote mostly in English by adopting western methodologies and ideologies. Finally he settled down in the West. For me that kind of scholarship does not give confidence to the rural students of India even of Bengal because it is too far removed from their imagination and resources. Even if they read about the childhood life of Amartya Sen they think this is out of ‘our existential conditions’. This was one reason why having studied like a poor village child does even today I have engaged in the intellectual activity that has immense importance for the life of the rural kids, who struggle to educate themselves. Therefore I began to write in detail about my experiments in the childhood and later. The meaning of education and even the meaning of scholarship has to change in India based on its social conditions. They must change in a manner that the children coming from the food producing families or families of animal economy must be proud that they came from where they came from. Gandhi’s life was filled with doing prayers with his mother, and at age 9, Gandhi entered the local school in Rajkot, near his home. There he studied the rudiments of arithmetic, history, Gujarati and geography. My father taught me mathematics by counting all our sheep early morning. He taught to graze them in an orderly way. He taught me how to do midwifery when the sheep had a problem in delivering their babies. This is how the human world and the animal world became helpful to each other. They were our economic animals and we were their social animals. Our living process is interlinked. But Gandhi’s childhood and Amartya Sen’s childhood have no connectivity with the living lives of the masses, who produce everything for this nation’s survival. Yet one was given the title ‘Father of the Nation’ and the other was the title of ‘Bharat Ratna’. I grew up in that economy of struggle for

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survival of the nation. Thus, two different nations existed in India one is the nation of food producers and other is the nation of book producers. One did not interact with the other. Perhaps I am the first link. I know many ‘book born’ scholars would say I am speaking untruth. Yes, when the productive knowledge is treated as untruth what I say is also untruth. But I lived in untruth and loved it also. Brahminic learning was practising letter and number writing, whereas our learning was practical and theoretical simultaneously. It was a school of life generation, combined with medicinal value. If Amartya Sen’s grandfather, Kshitimohan, had the title of Acharya my grandfather was known for teaching his son (my father was his only son and he had a daughter) midwifery of sheep and goat and had no respectable title. What I was learning was the base knowledge, which alone guaranteed the things for survival of human society. Writing of any human experience was/is important, but what is unwritten because of those who had the base work knowledge of the society do not know writing or they were not allowed to learn to write does not mean they can be treated as worthless people. They live without any titles that have values in the schools and colleges. On one mid-June day when I was about seven the tilling of land and planting the seedling of the dry-rain fed crop was going on. In those days my family also started agricultural operations. It already had acquired some cultivable land. There were two ploughs tilling and they keep tilling one by one in a line. It used to be thrilling to watch the process. My adopted brother Komuraiah was driving the back plough and the front one being driven by a Dalit, Yakaiah, a wage labourer. My mother was seeding the furrow of the back plough; another woman was doing that for the front furrow. As the bullocks (one plough had only male buffaloes) were walking slowly and very systematically, my brother was holding the threads and a cudgel to discipline them as my mother was leaving the seeds one by one in the furrow.

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As the plough was moving red-insects (arudra purugu) were coming out from the soil in hundreds. They were of a beautiful red colour and nice to look at and play with. I have not seen a single insect dying under the plough. I used to feel that ploughing was producing life, but not killing life. I asked my mother, ‘What will happen to the seed that she was dropping in a measured distance leaving a place one between the other?’ She said, ‘Adi molkethi chettai pillala peduthadi’ (it sprouts and becomes a shrub and produces its own children). It grows as a plant and within two months becomes a shrub then it would produce a cob in with hundreds of such seeds would be born. She was seeding maize and I know how maize cobs would be on the maize plant. In my childhood, even before I went to school I knew the names of the varieties of crops. We used to pluck tender maize cobs and burn them on the fire and eat. It was so tasty; I used to love that. This love for sheep, its babies, love for tilling, seeing insects emerging from the furrow but not dying, listening to my mother that plants reproduce themselves, coincided with my later reading of Marxism, namely, production and reproduction. This practical experience of mine went totally against the Sanskritic brahminic theory or Jain theory of tilling that says it kills insects, therefore, it is an act of sin. When I asked a Brahmin why Brahmins do not take to plough, his reply was we believe in non-violence. Tilling land kills several insects therefore we do not take to ploughing the land. This theory of non-violence of modern Brahminism is borrowed from the Jain philosophy which believed even if one inhales air without cloth to ones mouth insects get inside human body and die. My experience tells me the simple fact that tilling the land advanced production of food which would not have taken place without a Shudra philosophy out there about the positivity of tilling. Tilling is not killing but it is to regenerates life. According to Brahminism the Dalitbahujans are the main tillers of the land thereby k ­ illers of millions

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of insects, thus, sinners. But why do the non-sinners who do not want to till the land eat food produced out of that sin? It was in this process that I understood that not only animals but seeds and plants also have life. When I studied botany later I knew the essence of that subject in my childhood itself. As children being part of tilling and taking care of animals and birds we helped the process of regeneration of life. My brother Kattaiah suddenly developed a strange disease of swelling in knees, feverish and losing weight when he was in Class 3. There was no doctor or hospital in my village. An active boy, suddenly he became immobile and my mother was very worried. She jumped onto the first mode of treatment. She called for a mantric, who had funny moustache and beard and also long hair. He looked at my brother from top to bottom. Then he said, ‘I will come by evening’, and asked for a black cock, raw neem fruits, turmeric and a bottle of liquor. He came back in the evening and first took the liquor bottle went to the back side of the house and drank two-thirds of it. The remaining liquor he brought back. He poured few drops of it in the mouth of the cock and moved it up and down the body of my brother. He put the lime fruits all around my brother. Turmeric and kumkum powder was put around him in a line. He was already shaking with the influence of liquor in him. Then he murmured some unheard words. I stood by my brother as I was curious to know what this mantric would do. He was smelling very bad. Then he took the cock into his hands, moved it around the body of my brother and while it was crying he twisted its neck to death. He said the devil has gone away from him and everything will be fine. My mother looked relieved and everybody appeared to be relieved also. My brother also became little bit confident. The fever and the disease remained. He was becoming weaker. She took him to all the village temples— Pochamma, Beerappa, but to no avail. We went into Class 4 but he was unable to walk to the school. She took him

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to higher up temples, including the Yadagiri Gutta near Hyderabad on the advice of some villagers. Meanwhile the teacher, Rajalingam, who admitted us to school got transferred. My mother went to him and cried before him. He said God Tirupathi Balaji (Venkanna) will cure many diseases. My mother agreed to spend the money. He took my brother there to Tirupathi, but the disease did not get cured. Finally she took him to Hanamkonda Mission Hospital. There he had his first medical treatment. She used to cook her food in front of the hospital and attend to the patient. His health improved. When she brought him back she was so happy that the doctors told her that he will not get the problem ‘again’. That was when she went to Ravi Varma photo studio in Warangal and got a photo of herself along with my brother and elder sister. My father never went before a camera when he was alive. We got his dead body photographed in 1972 after his death. The mantras and temples did not cure him; the hospital cured him. But the problem recurred in 1976 when I was in M.A. final year. I took him to the only known Muslim heart specialist in Hyderabad, Hyder Khan. He told us that he does not have two valves in his heart. This diagnosis was based on his physical examination and the only place he could be operated, according to him, was The Christian Medical College Hospital Vellore. At that time Hyderabad had no great medical expertise. By then he was working in agriculture and had two children and his wife, Bharathi, was a very young woman (and already mother of two). My brother was about 27 and my sister-in law was 19. The responsibility fell on me. I took him to Vellore via Tirupati. He refused to visit the temple and did not have a darshan as he had lost confidence in temples and gods. He said it was a waste of time and money. Either I shall be cured by doctors and medicine or else I shall die, said he. In Vellore they diagnosed the loss of the mitral valve in his heart. In 1978 the estimate was `50,000 for the operation. The whole family mobilized the money, took loans and got him operated in 1979. I took

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some friends from Osmania University for donating blood as he needed several bottles of blood. I was prepared to bring him alive or dead and alone handled the whole process at Vellore. It was in the Vellore canteen I started eating beef as it was cheap and sustained me with one meal per day. I was saving every paisa possible in that situation. If I were sentimental, either I would have starved or would have entered into more debts. I was practical. My brother is now 70 (at the time of writing) with a steel valve in the heart, and is fine with the support of his wife. His three children are living abroad and he has five grandchildren. On 17 July 2018, his birthday, the date decided by his first teacher, Rajalingam, his 71st birthday was celebrated with his grandchildren. All mantras and temples curing diseases are untrue. Modern medicine and surgical technology saving a life are true. My scientific spirit had its roots in learning from my illiterate parents and sorting out the good and bad. For me the mantra of the mantric who pretended to cure my brother and the mantra of the priest who pretended to send my mother to swarga were one and the same. They do not have the values of religion either. These are tricks to make an easy living. They are part of promoting superstition among gullible people. A religion should have book-based performance of a ritual and everybody within that religion should be able to read that book-based moral or ritual conduct. Book reading along with physical work strengthens one’s mental and physical energy no doubt. The mantric was a lower-caste deceiver and the priest was a Brahmin deceiver. If deception becomes part of a spiritual book that spreads far and wide it produces more deceivers. The difference was that the Brahmin priest would also establish a social hegemony through which he would get wealth, status and convert that into caste and community asset depriving the entire following lot, namely, the Dalitbahujans. Whereas the mantric would eat and drink whatever the family gave and keep the benefits for personal and family advantage. The

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Brahmin priest sets forth his own demand for everything and claims a superior status than the family members. This was a much higher deception. I rejected both these forms in a quite early stage of my life. That does not mean the psychological role of an organized religion in human life could be ruled out. Religion should play an educative role rather than superstitious role. It should play a congregative cultural role rather than playing mystic role invoking mythical images and dividing people into castes. Congregative culture has an advantage of sharing social and spiritual knowledge. Congregative culture promotes common eating as against caste culture, which does not allow any such common sharing in many respects. Unless congregative culture evolves among communities marriages of choice between young adults do not become a social practice of acceptability and the society does not advance on egalitarian direction. My engagement with a Brahmin man after my fight with a priest after my mother’s death and also my humiliating experience with Narsimha Chary in my high school, was again with a teacher. I got to know a college lecturer in the Hanamkonda Arts and Science college. G. Haragopal was sympathetic to rural students and he used to be known as a liberal. He is known for constant talking whether in the classroom or outside. As he himself admits that he came from a very conservative Brahmin family and was a pure vegetarian. At one stage I thought I should also become vegetarian like him but realized that I have to continue my own cultural route because that has already become constitutional. I went to his house and learnt from his unstoppable talk on variety of issues. There was sympathy for a boy like me coming from the village but never any appreciation of my learning abilities. However, I liked his fluency in English. That was useful. I was surprised that he too was vegetarian with a considerate view of others’ food but would never think of eating meat by any means. I thought that he too was superstitious in a different sense but actually it was a

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training of childhood formation. In interaction with him I began to realise that the caste cultural childhood formation would have deeper impact that can undercut one’s education and attempt to change in later years. In the college when my higher education began, books and book writers were the talking points. But back home whose herd was more productive and whose agriculture yielded more crop were the talking topics. But no book had anything to do with the kind of work the villagers were doing. The book and real life in the village had a disconnect. My consciousness began to split and move towards a feeling that book writers are far, far greater people and food producers were inferior and simple people. The idea of taking the IAS exam and learning English began to shift my wisdom base. Haragopal would repeatedly speak about the greatness of achieving the IAS, as he missed narrowly at the stage of the interview. But Marx’s Communist Manifesto created a cultural crisis in me. Marx in his Manifesto was talking about workers of the world. I easily understood that my parents and other villagers were part of those workers of the world. In Haragopal’s talks such workers of India never figured. It is not that the teacher was teaching the manifesto. I began to think that because of this kind of higher education, maybe, I was getting out of the human culture that was nurtured in my village. Since Haragopal became some kind of a role model lecturer two things of him must have influenced me. One he was still un-married. Two, his fluent English, of course, with a somewhat confused thinking, and trying for a balance between right-wing and left-wing ideas. As I started reading Marx, somewhat seriously, he was appearing to me too liberal to be emulated. His influence on me ended there. Once I shifted to Hyderabad, Osmania, my world of intellectual interaction changed for more rigorous reading, deeper discussions with variety of minds. However, I used to cite his example whenever my marriage question came up at home. As I said after my father’s death, maybe because I was understood to be a ‘Have

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Not’, the pressure had come down. My brother who was supporting me completed his school graduation was not forcing me at all. Of course, the second major Brahmin intellectual intercourse in a real sense started with my classmate in M.A., Vinayak Kulkarni, a different kind of Brahmin altogether. He was too mature for his age. He was the only Brahmin who became de-caste-de-class with a commitment for revolution, in my view till date. Kulkarni went to work among Bombay slum dwellers and chawl workers. In the early 1980s I went to see his work there. I was shocked to see his life. He had no room to live in. He rented a night bed in a slum that stank. He had to sleep and get out. The toilet queue used to be long, sometimes taking an hour. It was almost impossible to sit in that toilet because of its narrowness and the smell. He used to tell me for the sake of revolution he was prepared to put up with such hardship. I thought it was not a rational choice but a beliefbased choice. He used to eat cheap food that constituted beef and other items. Somehow I did not approve my friend’s approach to revolution. He went to Dong Tribal areas from there. At the time of writing, he is still living and working for a revolution among tribals. He lived for the lust of revolution. I am the only classmate he is in touch with and occasionally we meet with warmth and eat rice with mutton curry cooked by my sister-in-law at my home. Looking back now I feel he would have chosen a different course of life. But he never turned back. He was a misfit in his house. His parents never approved his thinking, his way of life. His mother and father died with a feeling that he was not their son. Since he is more than sixty, or of my age, he may die an ignominious death in the Dong Tribal areas as one among them. When I last met him he said he was not disappointed with his present tribal life. He too never married. He did not want leadership roles, averse to acquiring name and popularity. Revolution for him was penance. I never liked a self-torturous course whether

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in revolutionary activity or spiritual activity. He may die as a failed Marxist with a first class M.A. political science degree that got burnt in a revolutionary utopia. But he is a great de-brahminized Brahmin of India. My later serious interaction was with a team of Brahmin men in the civil liberties movement. This was a challenging time. We were all believed to have committed for people’s rights and of course in the background for a revolution, an agrarian revolution at that. Through writing and speaking we were supposed to propagate the human rights of people. The writing and speaking roles used to be considered theirs. The Shudra upper castes were also not competing with them. There was a fear of philosophy among the Shudra leaders and activists. There were a number of civil and human rights organizations in the country in the post-Emergency period. Most of them were a being run by the Brahmin intellectuals who had control over English. I had not come across a single major Shudra intellectual working in the civil rights movement in the country in those days. Aakar Patel today, and the late Gauri Lankesh, were well-known journalists, both Shudras. The Shudra communities like Patels, Kammas, Lingayats, Marathas have a lot of wealth but their educational levels were very low in those days. Among the Patels of Gujarat, there were exceptions like I.G. Patel or among Nairs exceptions like Krishna Menon, who were very well educated. (The Gujarati Patels were influenced by Gujarati Baniyas and Kerala Nairs were influenced by Kerala Christians but the Shudra upper castes in other states were not so advanced in education, particularly English education. Those who were educated were mainly confined to regional language-based writing and activism. Not that exceptionally one or two writers who could write in English were not there. For example, Shashi Tharoor wrote several books without challenging Brahminism anywhere. Therefore his writing has no social impact. But by and large the Shudra intellectualism quite willingly got subordinated to

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Brahmin intellectualism. They never demanded the right to priesthood in the Hindu temples, while treating themselves as Hindus. Priesthood is a philosophical position. It is not the question that how much money does a Brahmin priest get while heading the temple. But the question is whether he controls the nerve centre of the civil society through that post or not? He does. It is from here that the Brahmin teacher derives his authority and superiority in the class room, in the school, college and university. It is from here a Brahmin politician derives his authority to run the administration. Gandhi knew this truth but kept silent about it as if it were untruth. But a person like Vallabhbhai Patel never understood that truth. Therefore he could not win in his fight against Nehru, who derived all his powers from his Brahminhood. Now many of them have achieved a mark in the regional language press. But even today in the English-speaking world they are few and far between. In the academic realm I know the Shudra professors grumble about the Brahmin hegemony but never challenge it. The intellectual inferiority is an inherent dogma among the Shudras. In my view to some extent the Dalits have overcome the inferiority complex because of the unchallenging stature of Ambedkar in the realm of intellectuality. The Shudras never owned Ambedkar. They owned Gandhi but Gandhi did not liberate them from the historical inferiority because he himself believed in the Varnadharma hierarchy. So far the Shudra society of India has not produced a thinker who could liberate them. While working in the civil rights movement and as an intellectual writing in English the Brahmin intellectual do not recognize me. They did not treat me as intellectual. There was a national network. I would not get any invitation for any national-level seminar, which I was craving for. That was when my ambition to write more than them, that too, in English increased. I used to read more books on Marxism and biographies of Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Ambedkar and so on, books on Indian

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history and philosophy by Radhakrishnan, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. Some books were positive teachers and some others were negative teachers. Radhakrishnan’s books were my negative teachers. I began to read more and more on ancient India once I decided to work on Buddha’s political philosophy. As some Marxist friends wanted to kill my spirit I wanted it to grow taller. In the process my struggle with a consciousness of making history and writing history began to reshape. I began to feel that there was a pattern. Marxists keep saying that the people are the makers of history but they write about people without their names or faces. The Brahmin intellectuals themselves live in the history again. In India because of Brahminism history writers became history makers. By the time I came into civil and democratic rights movement and the realm of writing in the Telugu region the reference names were only that of Brahmins writer like Sri Sri, Veeresha Lingam Panthulu, or Gurijada Appa Rao. Since I knew several global known writers like John Locke, Rousseau, civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., none of those Telugu Brahmin writers or leaders appeared to me respectable because there was no universal appeal in them. Their language was cut off from productive work, instruments, animals and positive tools. Their linguistic idiom was that of mythical ideas, symbols of war, violence or romance was their mainstream motive force not land, people, productive instruments, crops and seeds. They were actually living in caste-specific culture thinking that it was national and universal. This was one reason why no Indian writer influenced world literature, I thought. Kautilya or Manu of ancient India did not get global recognition. In modern times Radhakrishnan and P.V. Kane had limited global recognition as their books were available to a specialized audience. Since the Hindu Brahmin thinkers and writers operated within the varnadharma philosophical framework that thought cannot have

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universal appeal. Even within the civil and human rights discourse our contribution is not praise worthy. Rabindranath Tagore was regularly invited to give lectures and the western ruling establishments knew him well. His family had three generations of contacts with western intellectuals and artists and aristocrats. He was opposed to British policy in India and got away with it. That opposition was very mild. He gave up his knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Even then the British did take his opposition very seriously. Without the British intellectual support he would not have got the Nobel Prize. When I was a student he was a big name even in South India. There were lessons on him at various levels of school education. But afterwards when I read him as a thinker, as part of the Indian political thought, I realized that there was nothing substantial in his thought that could help India transform. But as a thinker he is one of those reformist Brahmin thinkers of Bengal and the Dalitbahujans have nothing to take from him. He promoted Gandhi and Gandhi promoted him. The Shudras in the Madras Presidency had the ­benefit of the British education. Some of them became lawyers, cabinet ministers, and so on. Persons like Raghupati Venkataratnam Naidu (1862–1939, a Kapu by caste) played an active role in establishing the Justice Party. He was the Vice Chancellor of Madras University and also got a knighthood from the British government. He did not write any philosophical text that challenged the Brahmi­ nism of his time. Yet another person was Kattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy (1880–1951, a Reddy by caste). He was the Vice Chancellor of Andhra University. He too never wrote anything substantial critiquing the caste system. Periyar emerged from that political churning. However, what we must understand is that intellectual and philosophical domains cannot be resolved by political ­parties by socio-political activism. They did not challenge Brahminism through writing of counter ­philosophy based on their caste-communities’ historical ­ contributions.

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When I tried to read something concrete in their writing there was nothing serious. They have never examined their productive philosophy and made a statement how Brahminism stood against production. That required a serious study of the productive philosophy of the masses that was an anti-thesis of Brahminism. The Telugu Brahmins who produced literature basically around their cultural life have done no great service to the productive communities. They wrote poetry and prose basically around non-productive elements, issues, brahminic life styles and have claimed all the space in the written discourses. Not a single book around the productive history of major communities was written by them. Their notion of literature was around re-writing about the brahminic books like Ramayana, Mahabharata, and so on. Persons like Kandukuri Vireshalingam Pantulu wrote about social reform but it was basically about the Brahmin widow re-marriage and also against the Brahmin child marriage. He wrote nothing about caste system and its bad effects on the society. He too saw caste as a necessary social system. They were considering the entire Shudra/ Dalit/Adivasi masses as unworthy of thinking—leave alone me—even the economically powerful Shudra upper castes used to be treated as second-rate people intellectually. Once the Shudra upper castes like Reddys, Kammas and Velamas became politically powerful the Brahmin writers wrote some praise material on their political life in order to get economic benefits. While they educated their children in English-language schools, they told the lower caste Telugu people that ‘Telugu is our mother tongue you must educate your children only in Telugu-medium schools. Almost all Brahmin Telugu writers taught mother tongue nationalism to the lower-caste masses and their own children were educated in an international language: English. They opposed the government schools teaching in Englishmedium knowing well that the Dalit/OBCs/Adivasi masses cannot send their children to private English-medium schools. Most of them use Mahatma Gandhi’s name to live

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their hypocritical life. They do not let the masses know Gandhi himself studied in an English-medium school. Mahatma Gandhi propagated regional language education for all children. But today we know in which language all his grandchildren and great grandchildren got educated and in which languages they are writing in. Rajmohan Gandhi lives in America, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a retired IAS officer, former Governor, writes in the English language. Ramchandra Gandhi obtained his Ph.D. from Oxford University, naturally studied in the English language. Arun Manilal Gandhi lived in America. The available information tells us that only Tushar Gandhi, his great grandson, studied in Gujarati-medium but is comfortable in English (as I was a co-panellist with him on English TV channels). I am not saying they should not study in English-medium schools or they should not settle down in America or Europe. But the system of education that Gandhi advocated was not accepted by his own family members. That is the truth. There is Gandhian propagated truth and there is a Gandhian practiced untruth. The propagated truth is untruth in day-to-day real life practice of Gandhians. Why should the Shudra/OBC/ Adivasis follow the Gandhian moral code of language of mother tongue? For others the idea of writing in English was outside their horizons. During the British period there was respect for English writing and speaking, therefore, even a few Dalitbahujans middle class men tried to learn that language. But somehow they did not get into philosophical writing in that language. But I decided within myself to break the mindset of inferiority of the Dalitbahujan and the superiority of the Brahmin. But I have faced opposition from various quarters more from the right-wing Hindutva forces quite openly. A more serious problem was the silent discouragement of the Left-Liberal brahminic friends. Thus, I had to fight my friends on an everyday basis, quite silently and fight the enemies from time to time quite openly. The enemies put my own Shudra

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community goondas against me. But they do not realize what the intellectual goondas nurturing them as street goondas were up to. The Shudra inferiority and timidity became its own enemy. But one has to go through this battle and I decided to do that quite consciously. The RSS forces put a poster in front my university college after Why I Am Not A Hindu was published in 1996 that nobody would believe that Kancha Ilaiah, who came from a small village, that too from a single teacher Telugumedium school could write that kind of sophisticated book in English. They also said that some Christian organizations are organizing such writing in his name from abroad. A national organization headed by Brahmins (the RSS) came to a conclusion that such writing in English was an impossible task to be performed by an OBC man. This has a background. My civil liberties’ colleagues, like Kannabiran, Haragopal and Balagopal, who worked with me, who travelled with me, who knew that I was capable of writing good English, never said in public that Kancha Ilaiah is an intellectual of that stature. They never said in public that I was a worthy writer in English to be acknowledged in public. They were either totally silent about my abilities or they were critical of me in my absence. They were unhappy that I was putting the caste culture discourse on the national map. As I said earlier, Kannabiran was more open and was engaging in the discourse with his own disagreement. But Balagopal and Haragopal would never discuss with me as to what they think about my writing. That was more painful, more agonizing process for me. Generally the Brahmin writers were/are more worried about their history in writing. The secular and communist Brahmins were/are more conscious about the history of writing than pujari Brahmins. The pujari Brahmins appeal to the God in Sanskrit to protect their control in this world and in the other world. The communist and secular Brahmins write history in English and in regional languages to sustain their hegemony in this world and never

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allow others to do that. If popular writing goes out of their hands, they know that the ground under their feet would slip. They know the power of English. If a book is written in English it will get translated into many languages. However, I realized this power of English from my B.A. days. I had to throw an open challenge to the RSS forces and say, ‘You bring any English-knowing intellectual of your choice I will give a dictation.’ But they never came back. In the 1990s, before the feminist movement challenged the men, mostly again in the domain of writing, no Indian woman was also believed to be capable of writing and much less in English. Not that academicians like Leela Dube, Iravati Karve did not write in English. But perhaps the only Brahmin woman who challenged the male brahminic force even in the domain of writing was Pandita Ramabai. But she too was not a major force to reckon with in the public and philosophical domain. The limitation of the Brahmin women writing is that they too did not hegemonize the knowledge of production, because their life experience remains outside that domain. A Shudra challenge can come from an altogether different knowledge base. By the 1990s feminist women have already won that battle. But let us not forget even those women came only from a privileged unproductive background and the brahminic social reform had worked in their favour. The Dalitbahujan women by then have not even entered into the English writing domain. By the time I am writing this memoir Sujatha Gidla and Meena Kandasamy emerged as challenging writers. That is a great hope. Raja Rammohan Roy legitimized English education among his community. The Telugu writer called Gurijada Appa Rao 1862–1915) wrote a play in Telugu called Kanya Shulakam in order to reform his own caste. The reform has two dimensions: one was to change the culture of bride price in his own caste community; two was to encourage the Brahmins to learn English. His effort was to see that the Brahmins have to learn English on par with

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the British. But by the early nineteenth century, the OBCs (in those days they were known simply as Shudras) were much more backward. He has not written anything on caste and untouchability. He was treated by later generations as the father of Telugu literary reform. All Telugu progressive writers and leaders have also treated him as the father of modern Telugu literature. The Telugu writers recognized the reformist role of Raja Rammohan Roy. But the very same people refused to recognize Mahatma Phule. There was opposition to bringing the caste issue into public domain from ancient days. The same trend continued even during the freedom movement. Since caste question did come into public discourse the productive culture also did not come into public discourse. Naturally when the production process does not come into the textual discourse scientific temper also does not get a significant place in the public discourse. Phule was the first writer to link up productive knowledge with history. The untruth is that Brahmins are alone knowledgeable. The truth is that for generations, they have been trained to read and write, preserving their monopoly as writers and teachers for centuries. The truth is that they have no knowledge of production at its base. This followed that their knowledge did not promote science and scientific temper among people. If Phule followed the path of truth seeking the Brahmin reformers followed the path of untruth—moksha—seekers. Gandhi operated in the brahminic domain but not in the Phule’s Shudra domain. I knew that not a single shepherd of India visited England, perhaps, by that time I was writing in English. At least I have not known one. For most of the shepherds, education, that too English education, was/is a distant dream because as I have shown in earlier chapters the male shepherds live most of their lives in the forest belt along with the sheep and goats and their women struggle to run the families in the villages. In this sense the Karnataka Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah’s achievement, having come from a similar shepherd family, is no means

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a small one. He is one of the most rationalist leaders after Nehru who emerged as leader from the fold of the Congress Party. This kind of non-exposure to the motherland of English, Britain or America, making an attempt to write in English as I did poses more problems. My English can be considered not so sophisticated or even rustic. But I was not worried about such opinions. My publishers also helped me out in my effort. If only Gandhi were not educated in England he would not have acquired the stature that he acquired and so also Ambedkar in America and England. Particularly Ambedkar’s command on the English language was because of his education at Columbia and London School of Economics. His achievement is exceptional. My English, thus, came to be the most organic Indian English version and I am proud of that. I am also glad that I did not live in England to write this English and would not die in England like Nirad. C. Chaudhuri, though a British loyalist, was treated as an Indian nationalist writer. Not that he had no critics in India. The right-wing people were very critical of him. But he also had huge admirers. The question of the relationship of Indian upper castes with the English language is quite diabolical. It is this diabolism that does not allow teaching in English-medium in government schools as it is allowed in the private schools. The spread of English language among the very rich took place during the British regime, in England. After independence it is spread among the rich through private expensive English-medium school system. But it was denied to the poor and lower caste as it was not allowed in the government schools, where school education is free. This is modern Brahminism. All this was passed off as nationalism. What a tragedy of Indian nationalism of that variety. In my view Indian farmers and shepherds were better nationalists but the only question is that they were not given opportunity to write their own nationalist contribution in English, as they were not allowed to do so in Sanskrit in ancient and medieval times.

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The civil liberties movement used to treat the RSS as an enemy of civil liberties. At the same time my Brahmin colleagues like Balagopal and Haragopal did not treat my writing as part of their team writing. They always saw me as an enemy from within. They never defended me from our common enemy. In their writings and speeches they would only refer to each other, the Brahmins. I was writing better than what they were writing in both English and Telugu but they would never refer to my work as worthy of referring to or defending. They also quoted each other but never quoted anything from my writing. For so-called credibility or authenticity they quoted foreign writers, Marxist and non-Marxist. One of the main problems of the Brahmin men is that they cannot and do not want to handle production and production-centred critique of the evolved textuality. Production started during Harappa days. The production has longer history than the Vedas. But production never found place in the Hindu textuality. From Rig Veda to Bhagvad Gita they talk mainly about war. Maybe because the Aryans destroyed the cities of Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and Dholavira (Gujarat) their literature is centred on war and killing and destruction of cities and civilizations. But in my family, caste and village war and killing were never the main subjects of discussion. It was/is always production that occupied the centre stage. Therefore my consciousness roamed round production from my childhood to today and survives as a process of living. Even the communists, those who came from the Brahmin-Baniya family backgrounds never focussed their thought around production. The history of production naturally starts with animal economy. The animal economy naturally starts with shepherding. Since even the idea of communism and socialism came from books from the West the Indian communists did not relate their theory to the Indian production process. They never saw a shepherd like me as worth noticing. It is a simple dialectical process that the book is a byproduct of the production

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process of the masses. The communist idea having been borrowed from the West, from their books, they too hegemonized the book as against the labour process. Hence a communist like Dange found socialism in the Vedas. With small exceptions like Kulkarni, the book-based knowledge has become brahminic life blood. This is what I wanted to change. The book in India was never a reflection of real life. In future it has to become a reflection of real life. The real life is only embodied in the Dalitbahujan engagement with nature. Nature becomes useful for humans only when they transform it with their labour power—the Dalitbahujan labour power. But my communist Brahmin colleagues never saw that truth in my writing. They too treated my written word as non-existing untruth. I understood this neo-brahminic strategy and started writing and speaking as if they too do not exist for me. Writing Why I Am Not a Hindu with a content that they cannot handle and in the kind of English they themselves cannot write shocked them. Their writing hegemony fell apart. They never discussed that book. They never thought of reviewing it. They never reconciled with it and with me thereafter. A small goodwill gesture here and there on either side does not make much difference. BrahminBaniya men, I believe, do not change easily. This I have realized during the two months struggling against the Arya Vysyas. All Vysyas were united to say that the PostHindu India kind of books must be banned. Two communist Baniya-Brahmin intellectuals called K. Nageswar Rao (an Arya Vysya Professor in journalism at Osmania University and was a two-term MLC with communist support and Telakapalli Ravi, a Brahmin CPI(M) journalist) were the first to write that the book hurt the sentiments of Arya Vysyas. They were in full sympathy with the sentiment of the richest caste of the two states. In fact, every organization during the Arya Vysya vulgar fight against me got divided on caste lines. All the productive castes from Advasis to Kammas, Reddys along all other OBCs were on the one side and the Baniya-Brahmins were on the other

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side, pushing that Ilaiah’s book must be banned. The productive caste that the book Post-Hindu India talks about were of the view that the Vysyas live in exclusion in the villages and accumulation of wealth is only their human values. This situation made the two states debate even in small villages how unproductive castes defend themselves and privilege themselves over all productive castes. Individuals with sympathy towards me from the Baniyas and Brahmins were few and far between. What comes as untrue in this whole experience is that individual sympathies do not alter caste culture. Men lead the social discourse of India as a nation from their caste location. But that will not be able to change the situation for centuries. That period of my writing and working with Balagopal and Haragopal was the greatest torture. If you are in the enemy camp you do not deal with them on an everyday basis. Hence your course of life would be less torturous. But I am in the camp of revolutionary friends who do not recognize the revolutionary potential of my mind. I was working with them because there was this commitment to human rights. I then realized that like the problem of gender, caste also carries a consciousness of its own self. This is a real problem in India. What they wanted was the Dalitbahujan body power: that they should paste posters on buses, on walls, make copies of their written material and if at all they speak they must speak about their great intellect and sacrifice. That is what the rest of the Shudra colleagues of mine in the movement did. I then came to a conclusion that such men are ‘green snakes in green grass’. I must watch them with four eyes but not just with two eyes. I did that in a somewhat successful manner, not breaking the relationship completely but at the same time not giving up my project of writing on caste. My experience with upper-caste women—particularly Brahmin women—has been different; it was reassuring and demystifying the notions of truth and untruth that have been handed down by Brahmin-Baniya men. Maybe because historically all women experienced the Shudra

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life within their lifetime. Not that it did not have cultural conflicts, as the productive and the brahminic life has two different modes of living patterns. But the women, whichever caste they were born and brought up in, have certain living experiences that are in common with my own living experiences. As I said in Post-Hindu India the Dhobi women had a different consciousness of keeping the human society clean even though the village did not respect her. Similarly in the feminist movement I found they had a serious concern of personal experience. They know how their own men control their beings at home and outside. That made them co-operate with the Dalitbahujan movement in a much more humane way than men coming from the Brahmin-Baniya families did. Though I climbed the higher education ladder I never left my rural cultural norms that shaped up my being. The more English literature of the West I was reading, the more I realized my roots have more universal character than the urban upper-caste life. Having been influenced so much with my mother’s life I was always enthusiastic to learn from women, as they teach certain nuances of life that the general society and men working in that society would not be able to teach. Even Brahmin women taught me some positive things. When I was in my M.Phil. course there were some interactions with a young Brahmin woman, who basically was seeking assistance for her private studies. Again it was an English-related problem more than the subject. She sought my assistance and I agreed to help her. She used to come to my office and residence. I know if a woman visits a man frequently that would lead to all kinds of rumours as the 1980s were more conservative days for man-woman relations. Both in Indian villages and urban centres a woman’s life was horribly suspect for being sexual. India even today is not a conducive place for understanding man-woman relations from the point of view of mental engagement. This understanding has its roots in brahminic culture as they never studied even animal psychology. Even animals

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(male and female) live gregariously not for the purpose of sexual engagement. As a shepherd in my childhood I had a deeper understanding of animal world. My engagement with many females was mental and it was part of my learning process of this country and in its diverse cultures. I went to that friend’s home several times. She and her family were progressive, were a supporter of the radical politics with some Telugu literary reading of their own. They belonged to a lower-middle-class background with a transitory location within the framework of reading major Telugu Brahmin writers. I was offered food along with their family members. They had liberal views of human relations but I found that there was a lot of cultural difference between a Brahmin family and that of ours. Their food habits were different and mannerisms were different. This is where I understood that the social cohesion between agrarian or sheep and cattle rearing families and the brahminic families cannot be built unless a radical cultural transformation of the Brahmin families happens. They need to Shudhraize (or Dalitize) but we do not need to Brahmanize. Shudra or Dalit men get attracted to Brahminism in friendship with Brahmin women (as many well-placed Dalitbahujan officers and politicians did) and that relationship forces them to accept that their culture is great and superior and the productive Shudra or Dalit culture is inferior. But I always had my feet grounded in the superiority of the productive culture. My reading of Marxism made me a more authentic shepherd and I did not get uprooted from that productive base. That was not a pujari Brahmin family but liberal new life searching family. I found that the lifestyle of their family and our family was so vastly different that I suppose that if such two families were to live together in some sort of a marriage alliance such a marriage would be a big mess. A girl of such a family unless she gets into the rigorous training of agrarian-cattle rearing life would not become a revolutionary to change her childhood lifestyle and become part of a family of my background. If a woman of their

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background and a man of my background get married it does lot of damage to the creative process of productive life. My assessment was that it would be a great torturous life for both of them. Culturally I thought the productive rural communities like ours were living in inclusive and adjustable modes, whereas their culture constructed social exclusivity. If a meat-eating family is asked to eat only vegetarian food every time, even for a few months we would be able to do that. A meatarian is also a vegetarian. If a pure vegetarian family is asked to live only on meatarian foods even for a few days they prefer death but will not be able adjust to the new food culture. This is because the pure vegetarian food culture in such families builds a mental block which not only becomes a psychological problem but it also becomes a living problem. Abolition of caste, therefore, is related to abolition of pure vegetarian culture of Brahmin-Baniya type (mostly of South, North and West India). It is that kind of problem that made Gandhi feel after he ate goat meat that the goat re-lived in his body and cried. I, therefore, always felt that inter-caste marriages between two different cultural extremities fail. Both man and woman suffer in that kind of married life. However, that interaction ended there without such a thinking or understanding but for me it was a new exposure to Brahmin women’s lifestyle and I left it at that. I could not imagine a woman coming from a family like that would learn to transform like what Kulkarni underwent. It was an interaction of learning what an urban Brahmin life would be. I realized that even if a political revolution is brought about, it takes for a long time to build a socio-­ cultural cohesion between different communities in India, particularly between Brahmins and Dalitbahujans. It is not easy to transform the Brahmins into food producers and multi-culturists. In Bengal and North India they may be fisharians in food culture but never were food producers. Their book production remained, therefore, disconnected to the ground.

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My serious intellectual engagement was with my senior colleague Rama S. Melkote, who subsequently supervised my Ph.D. thesis. She was/is a radical/liberal with a very good understanding of Marxism with an exposure to European culture as she did her Ph.D. in a European university. She was a supporter of communist movements (one of her brothers was in the Naxalite movement). She came from the family of Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, the first and only Chief Minister of Telangana state before it merged with Andhra Pradesh, and she married Shankar Melkote, a Kannadiga Brahmin migrant. The Melkotes were a rich Brahmins. It was a known thing that she came from the top Brahmin family of Hyderabad. But by and large she was a de-feudalized and de-brahmanized woman teacher. Most of my rural student friends kept away from her as they thought that she was ultra-­modern and very demanding on the academic front. She was reasonably well read and anglicized. Since I was with the civil liberties movement and she was sympathetic to that movement, as some of her family members were political persons, members of the communist and the Radical Left, we had enough issues to discuss and debate. It was she who introduced me to feminist politics in a phased manner. Since those were the days wherein I was not yet around caste discourse the issues of class exploitation and patriarchal oppression were agreeable areas of mutual engagement. On the home front they were progressive and inclusive; meat and fish along with vegetarian food was served. I could walk into their house freely and be part of their dining table occasionally. Most of the Stree Shakthi member houses I know used to be like that. As I said, Veena Shatrugna and her husband were my friends and I ate with them often. Similarly Vasantha Kannabiran (K.G. Kannabiran’s wife) also would invite me for dinner occasionally. This family too is a meat and fish eating one. It combined both Feminism and human rights theories and practice. They were Tamil Brahmins. Amongst them, Susie Tharu was the most supportive feminist theoretician. She

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came from a Syrian Christian background and had had a great deal of exposure to black struggles and to global literary trends. She was very supportive of my Why I Am Not a Hindu book writing project. It was in their interactions, listening to their speeches, reading some books written from that perspective that I shaped up some understanding of modern and egalitarian man-woman relations and the need for social transformation in that course. But all these families had no productive cultural exposure. Their knowledge came from the books that they read. Most of them have an ambivalent understanding of my Why I Am Not a Hindu and other writings. My writing based on agrarian production cultural roots, perhaps made some sense to them but also made them uncomfortable. Only Kalpana Kannabiran, from the women of Brahmin background, the youngest daughter of Kannabiran, a sociologist, took a firm stand in support of my writing in her writings. She definitely stands out as a good theoretical supporter of the Dalitbahujan movement and it is on record. Another senior colleague, called A. Narsimha Rao, who happened to be an expert in Defence Studies was a ­vegetarian Brahmin and a hot chili-eater like me. He had a Dalit cook at home making Dalit hot vegetarian food, and he would manage lunch for me on occasions. His English was very good and he was a lover of English movies and I was his English-speaking junior colleague, apart from Rama. He was a rationalist and a humanist. He used to occasionally take me to the defence club for beer drinking and meat eating. Narsimha Rao would engage with any rational political being. I benefited from his friendship and it was a value-neutral academic friendship. His view was that the communists are good human beings. That went well with my understanding of communism. Osmania in the 1980s was full of feudal Reddy and conservative Brahmin professors. They tolerated leftism because the student movement was very strong and the landlords on the campus were hobnobbing with the Radical Left in order to save their lands back in their

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villages. And also the Left students had a habit of debate and discussions and the right-wing students were bulldozers and abusers of teachers. I also was carrying some goodwill because of that Left leanings. As earlier mentioned, it was Rama Melkote, who introduced me to the Stree Shakti group, which consisted of Susie Tharu. Veena Shatrugna and Vasant Kannabiran, K. Lalita, among others. It was in the long conversations with them, listening to their speeches, reading some feminist literature that I developed my understanding of Feminism. It in this period I read some articles on sexual division of labour. Later on, I also read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Maria Mies, The Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour. One common ground was as I had my sheep rearing, land tilling sites for my discourse they had their kitchen, which though is only a reproduction of food that came from the fields as raw produce. They too foregrounded labour and their own bodies as reproductive agencies. Since the discourses in that group were mostly in English, I was the beneficiary of the content and language of their discussions. Susie Tharu was the leading theoretician with considerable international exposure. I completed my Ph.D. under Rama Melkote without any hassles. We also worked as a common team in support of the Mandal Commission Report. They all supported the pro-Mandal movement with a reasonably good theoretical ownership than the upper-caste men, who were around the Left and the Radical Left. Many upper-caste men were doubting Thomases on the reservation issue. After 1985 with an incident called Karemchedu massacre of Dalits in Andhra Pradesh, the Scheduled Castes and Backward Class members in the Radical Left movement rebelled against upper-caste leadership. I took the lead along with a person called U. Sambashiva Rao from a barber family background. That was what the Bengal and Kerala SC/OBCs did not do and we could do. We could create a different thinking based on the Dalitbahujan philosophical worldview that emerged from Mahatma Phule

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and Ambedkar’s writings and that was how we theorized caste along with class. The feminist discourses along with Phule, Ambedkar and Gramsci writings helped me in that theorization. While speaking on the occasion of my retirement from Osmania University on 5 October 2012 Susie Tharu said Ilaiah is the only male sister of feminism in India. I was really thankful to her for the way she formulated my relationship with the Feminist movement of India. Inspired by her formulation I wrote an article entitled ‘On Being a Male Sister of Feminism’ which was published in Frontier (46, 18, Nov 10–16, 2013). For the sake of readers I reproduce the whole article here. On Being a Male Sister of Feminism On October 5, 2012 in a seminar on my writings, organized by the Osmania University teachers, students and activists in the context of my retirement from that university along with several scholars an internationally renowned literary theorist and feminist Susie Tharu spoke. She said, ‘Ilaiah is male sister of feminist movement in India.’ This statement from a person of Susie’s academic stature put me in place of pride and also in a historical dilemma. The feminist movement taught me many things that the communist movement could not. My association with it goes back to the 1970s and 1980s. As a writer those were my formative years. The feminist group, Stree Shakti, of Hyderabad was one of the most dynamic groups of India. It was exploring several new issues of man-woman relationship, particularly of women’s freedom. The socialist experiments in the West failed in liberating women from their household drudgery and unequal existence. The European feminist scholars were looking for new zones of politics. They launched a massive attack on sexual division of labour, women getting treated as second sex (Simone de Beauvoir’s writings played a key role in that theory) and so on. They were raising several

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new questions, and searching for new answers. The Indian communist discourse was in a transition, as Maoism has surged into a stagnant Marxist economic determinist dogma. Antonio Gramsci’s writings have been injecting a new cultural idiom to re-revolutionize Marxism. At that time the feminist discourse was introducing a notion of ‘personal is political’ and that had a huge impact on my life and thinking. I used to sit and listen to the arguments of the feminist scholars. All of them were from upper-caste and middleclass professional background. Some of them used to smoke, with an occasional drink on seminar or discussion days. Most of them had liberal and movement friendly husbands. No one had two or many husbands, as the feudal patriarchs were accusing them. But they were defending Draupadi (of Mahabharata) as against Sita and Savitri’s pativrata morality. Their experiences at work places, their parental or neighbour’s castigation of their free movements, smoking and occasional drinking used to be part of the discourses. This was when I began to reflect back on my village productive caste-cultural environment. My mother was a leaf cigarette smoker along with many other women of her age. Her everyday smoking time was when she was about to go to open air toileting around 4 a.m. I was told that even my paternal grandmother too smoked. They were playing many male roles while being female. As Raju Naik, a tribal professor from English and Foreign Language University (EFLU), said in that very seminar that his mother used to drive the plough as efficiently as his father used to do. What was uncommon to urban upper-caste male-female roles was common in our village productive castes. Many women while doing field work smoked. They used to ask the men working along with them to go away from their resting and smoking place. All the women of all castes were toddy or locally brewed liquor drinkers along with their men. The banthi (feast) drink on every festive day is common even now. However, the female smoking is dying now, though was never a taboo. In many ways that

My Experiments with Untruth village existence was primitive, unsophisticated but culturally universal in its day-to-day operational process. Many things that the French women were doing without an attached stigma our village women were also doing without any stigma attached. But the French women were demanding more through organized reading, writing and fighting, which our women were not capable of. It is this very birth of mine in that caste-community that shaped my male-feminist person or it was that cultural environment that nurtured what Susie calls male-sisterhood in me. I tried to theorize the egalitarian relationship of productive man-woman relationships showing them to be different from that of the upper caste brahminic relationships. But that understanding of mine was critiqued by many young Dalit-women scholars. In a situation of normative wife beating, girl child discriminatory practices, what kind of patriarchal democracy exists among Dalit-Bahujan castes? They were pointing out at lack of married family life in my theorizing of experience. I was, of course, theorizing based on my premise of work based relations of men and women. I am still trying to sustain that understanding of postulating several positive models of man-woman relationships from our village production relations, mapping them on to Indian nationalism as against boastful anti-imperial utterances of globe-trotting intellectuals who borrow progressive models from the West. My most important models come from the Dhobhi manwoman relationship. Indian villages still produce and reproduce the philosophy of positive indigenous egalitarian nationalism. There are more male-feminists in our villages even today than in our cosmopolitan cities, more particularly around universities. I only exported that village feminist model to the alienated universities and put it in place in written discourses. Indian feminist groups have not yet examined the grassroot positive models of man-woman relationship that exists among many caste communities and tribals. Not that they are no negative models among lower-caste

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institutions and structures. The highly casteist, backward models presenting their primitive, retrograde institutional oppression could be seen around the Khap Panchayats and their theories and practices. But these practices that drew inspiration from the Brahminic sati and child marriage must be seen in the overall influence of Brahminism. Even though the Brahmins as people have given them up, some of the lower castes want to continue them. There are sites of hope and dilemmas in Dalit democratic patriarchal models. But on the whole there are more positive models among them than negative models. My dilemma is that, for whatever reasons, I remained unmarried. At the same time I believe that marriage as a historically evolved institution has to be preserved by injecting all kinds of democratic principles into it. Many would say that since I did not experience married life which alone positions and repositions relations between man and woman my formulations about man-woman relations are not testified. Therefore my theorization of man-woman relations do not reflect the core understanding of the feminist theory: personal is political. Yes, it may be true. But then I represent a different male feminist model than Marx and Gandhi. Marx imposed his self-constructed torture (of writing communist theory and exiled life) on his wife and children. Hence he once said, if he was reborn he would re-do all that he did in life, except getting married. Gandhi imposed his own idiosyncratic theory and practice of celibacy on his wife. Sadly he never regretted that imposition.

In the post-Mandal and Post-Babri-Masjid times when I wrote Why I Am Not a Hindu, no publisher was willing to publish it. Raja Rameshwar Rao the owner of the Orient Longman (now Orient Blackswan) wrote a counter book to that manuscript and sent it to me, rejecting my manuscript. I was unknown to the publishing world. Susie Tharu sent it to Mandira Sen who published Samya as a joint imprint with Ramdas Bhatkal and Harsha Bhatkal of Popular Prakashan. They readily agreed that it must be

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published. After it became a bestseller, in the non-fiction section in 1996–1997, my confidence was really boosted. I, then, decided to write more and more. My understanding of women, whether Brahmin or Shudra, did not deceive me in my later life. Unlike my male colleagues in the civil rights movement women operating in English writing and publishing world in India responded to Why I Am Not a Hindu very positively. Susie Tharu, Sagarika Ghose, Sujata Patel, Kalpana Kannabiran wrote appreciative reviews, in the face of male uppercaste scathing attacks in their reviews. Susie’s review in Economic and Political Weekly, Sujata Patel’s review in The Hindu and Sagarika Ghose’s incisive write up in Outlook, with a photograph that her cameraman took in a boat in the Hussain Sagar lake of Hyderabad with a title ‘The Earthy Pundit’ made me stand up and defend my thesis in a confident manner. Much later Kalpana Kannabiran wrote comparing my notion of Dalitization and M.N. Srinivas’ notion of Sanskritization in EPW. She also wrote fine article in The Hindu and interviewed after the Arya Vysya attack took place. That made me feel that it was a great intellectual support at a time of attack by the enemy. Once that book reached wider circles in the face of my Left male upper caste colleagues’ silence I got invitations from the women editors of The Hindu, The Deccan Chronicle to write regular columns. After that in all mainstream media my strong supporters and sympathetic editors have pushed my writing. Many women have edited my articles with care and concern and published them. They were upper-caste, mainly Brahmin women. I know some of my supporting editors of newspapers were attacked by the right-wing forces in very filthy language. Yet they stood by me. But the main base of my literary expansion was/is the Dalitbahujan socio-political movement. More or less the writing of Why I Am Not a Hindu coincided with the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party and other OBC

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political formations like the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party in the North. The forces around the OBC political formations have no literary ambitions and taste. The Bahujan Samaj Party campaigned for the expansion of Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar thinking and in the process my formulations acquired legitimacy. However, the BSP cadres and leaders disagreed with my coinage of the concept ‘Dalitbahujan’ as they were propagating the concept ‘Bahujan’ to represent the SC/ST/OBC minorities. However, in the popular media the concept Dalitbahujan acquired legitimacy and popularity. In the Telugu region the emergence of Dalita Maha­ sabha in the 1980s and Madiga Dandora in the 1990 has also created a new identity, ideology and movements. The emergence of Madiga Dandora has given rise to using of the caste name ‘Madiga’ as an end name. By and large they owned my ideological campaign of dignity of labour. But quite tragically all these movements did not expand the English education campaign in the rural areas though they agreed with the idea of expanding the English-medium education into the government schools. However, it is now catching up. All this only goes to show that if there were no Dalitbahujan and Feminist movements my discourse would not have reached the nation as it reached today. Perhaps my style and content of writing would not have been the same. In the face of the Hindutva global campaign against my writing that it was aided and helped by Christians I must say that the only Christian in this woman team that helped me was Susie Tharu and she was never a practising Christian. She differed with many of my views. Rama Melkote disagreed with the contents of Why I Am Not a Hindu in a review meeting conducted at Hyderabad in 1997. But many upper-caste young women read my books with great interest. Dalit/OBC/Adivasis by and large owned them.

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However, on the question of the English education to the rural SC/ST/OBC students the Christian networks opened up many fronts for diversifying their educational resources. Many rural English-medium schools are coming up. This is the only agenda that will defeat Brahminism in the long run. I think a day will come where all Indians speak to each other in English language. My publisher Mandira Sen also had disagreements. Yet she published four major books of mine and this will be the fifth. My Telugu publisher Gita Ramaswami is from the Left-liberal Brahmin background. We maintained good relations till recent times. But when the question of Arya Vysyas came up she faltered. I can say on the basis of experience that if women were not to come into the public domain, particularly in the sphere of education and public discourse, my public discourse would not have taken place in this form. I had differences with many of them, of course, but that difference did not affect the intellectual engagement. The caste system has not only weakened the nation but it weakened the human essence in this country. A fight against this system is a national need. In all my relationship with women friends, supporters, some with a regular personal interaction and some with distant intellectual interaction, I have never felt a sexual provocation. I did not have to test my potential and my control capacity over my body like Gandhi did or many sadhus and sanyasis do. One does not have to be a declared saint/sanyasi or celibate to control oneself. I loved many women’s brains more than their bodies even though I know how to appreciate the beauty of a female body. Intellectually, in an Indian domain of English-speaking and writing this close interaction with excellent minds of Indian women, that too upper-caste elite women, made my work in that language possible to the best of my ability. But I discovered in the process that at that times I did not come across any Dalitbahujan woman, who acquired

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proficiency in the English language to write and speak. There are a number of them who wrote in Telugu and other regional languages. They critiqued the upper-caste feminist culture. As a teacher and writer I could not and should not remain at the level of my family, village experience or knowledge. I know that the world is bigger with multi-dimensional experiences and cultures. I knew that unless I understand this, I would not reach the universal level of thinking, speaking and writing. I did achieve that to some extent. Because of caste, the Shudras, leave alone Dalits, were made to feel and live as inferiors in the domain of knowledge, philosophical understanding and writing. This affected them and the nation in multiple ways. In the domain of religion, social living and writing of their own philosophy of their lives, even after independence, in a democratic set-up, inferior and fear-stricken people will not experiment with new ideas, even though they may have many ideas. The brahminic beings are basically material beings. All the philosophy that they produced so far is produced in order to acquire that material wealth without involving in physical labour. The Shudras also think that material wealth is more important than philosophical wealth. No doubt some of them are extremely rich financially and very powerful politically, but in writing and thinking they feel terribly inferior. From Kautilya to Jawaharlal Nehru since the Brahmins lead in the intellectual domain the Shudras could not pick up courage and confidence. Gandhi’s theory of vegetarian truth, his Jain-type non-violence practices, his varnadharmic Hindu nationalism made the Shudra/ Dalit/STs more diffident. They could never possibly live that kind of unproductive, so called non-violent life. If he were to promote, perhaps Buddhist philosophical tradition they would have followed it as it does not essentialize Jain type of vegetarian-non-violence. Most Brahmins also followed the Gandhian philosophy as it also suited their

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anti-production life style. In other words Gandhism made the Shudras more diffident. I understood this by the time I was in my M.A. days. I too suffered that inferiority for quite long time. I was doubly disadvantaged because of physical looks, economic backwardness and social conditioning within the Shudra location. Marxism was not enough to give that confidence. At a right time I turned to Gautam Buddha. I came to a conclusion that he was not actually a Kshatriya of the fourfold varna system but from a tribal chieftain family. He was later projected as Kshatriya by the Hindu writers, only with a purpose of including in the Dashavataras. If he could do what he did why could I not do something? Ambedkar added to that philosophical resolve. Many intellectuals of India argue that the Shudras and women got elevated to the intellectual level during the Bhakti movement. I never treated that movement as liberational and productive in terms of new knowledge that undercut the brahminic hegemony. It was a process of Hinduization of the Shudras without any major changes in the system. That little place for Shudras like Tukaram, Kabir and Mirabai was allowed in the face of the Shudra conscious forces embracing Islam, changing the very demographic structure of caste-based Hinduism. The Hindu priestly class allowed the Bhakti movement as necessary check to Islamization of India. In my view after Buddha a Shudra who took lead to construct place for himself in the domain of knowledge was Mahatma Phule. Though in the down South Pandithar Iyothee Thass (1845–1914) got converted to Buddhism saying that it was his original religion. Dalitbahujan thought considers Mahtama Phule as the major thinker after Gautam Buddha who constructed an alternative Shudra philosophical idea of India. Thereafter came Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and others. Subsequent to him Dr. B.R. Ambedkar established himself by throwing a serious challenge to the brahminic knowledge system of India. Before Ambedkar there was

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no systematic critique of the Vedic brahminic thought. I belong to the tradition of Phule and Ambedkar but not of the Bhakti movement of Tukaram, Kabir, and so on. The productive thought of Dalitbahujan, which is an alternative to all brahminic writings and philosophy needs to be developed by re-examining the Harappa tradition of animal economy, brick making, wood crafting and city building much before Vedic Brahminism came into existence. Vedic Brahminism is an anti-production civilizational system. Gandhi owned that civilizational system and the BJP/RSS also own it whereas we oppose that anti-­ production civilizational system. The Harappan civilization, the Buddhist civilization, the Phule Ambedkarite civilization is a continuous process of progress and production and Vedism is a negation of that progressive production process. In my view any experiment and generalization of the results of that experiment for a common use for anybody is a philosophical system. The earliest philosophical views, ideas and experiments were constructed by the Harappans in the Indus Valley civilization times. The Vedists have never recorded in their books that philosophical system of production. My writing will only reflect the progressive production systems of India from the days Harappans, Buddhists and Phule Ambedkartites. We are therefore more nationalists than Vedists, who only synthesized the philosophy of war and violence. The Shudras have decided to aspire for a higher stage of philosophical achievement in the twenty-first century. If the Shudras of India compare themselves with the African-Americans (like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., among others and so on) their philosophical stature is very weak. After Phule, Periyar and a few others, my work would take them only one step further. Not that many others have not done any positive work; many have been working on such agendas.

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However, each work has its own specific role. Mine would play its own role. Because of weak philosophical writing tradition all our writing have not yet achieved world class (for example, the theorization of African-Americans and the feminists) theorization. One of the main problems in the Shudra tradition is that they did not challenge the Brahmin spiritual philosophical tradition. They rather got subsumed in it. The Dalits, on the other hand, because of massive critique of Hindu Brahmin tradition by Ambedkar tried to work out a path for themselves. The Shudra upper castes like Patels. Jats, Kammas, Reddys, Nairs accepted the Brahmin superiority in the spiritual system and the Baniya superiority in the business. That made them very weak and uncritical. Though Indian Brahmins are a small community they have entered every profession that operate outside the production (mainly agriculture, cattle rearing, and so on). They learnt English, apart from other languages and controlled many institutions including temples (with their control of Sanskrit and Agamashastra rights). The Shudras who constitute more than 50 per cent of the population could have controlled everything. But they did not acquire such courage, confidence and capacity. This damaged the nation. In the two Telugu states after the Arya Vysyas declared their war on me the Shudra upper caste also realized that their position in the economic system is also not good. In the Telugu states, for example, from village market to urban industrial market only the Arya Vysyas are in control. After Narendra Modi and Amit Shah (two Baniyas) started ruling India with a full back up of top Baniya industrialists, and once this began to be exposed, after the Arya Vysya attack on me, they began to think that the nation is in the hands of a small minority of Brahmin-Baniyas. From the top industrialists Ambanis, Adanis, Lakshmi Mittals are under the control of these forces. The newly formed ­organization-T-MASS of which I am the Chairman at the time of this writing, mobilized massive forces to

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counter the Arya Vysya campaign. The campaign against Brahminism and Baniyaism will continue. The Hindu thinkers, for example, Gandhi, and Rabin­ dranath Tagore, who gave him the title of Mahatma, defined Truth and Untruth upside down. Mahatma Gandhi added to that upside down argument while telling the story of his experiments with truth. If the experiments are not carried out in the productive fields or in the domain of cattle rearing and in the reproductive activity India as a nation would not advance. The work of tilling land, looking after cattle, making pots, bricks and so on has its own philosophical ideas and formulations. No agriculture survives without a philosophical base. Indian Brahmin writers projected that only religious field constructs philosophy. That is absolutely wrong. Human survival was actually not based on religion; it was/is based on production and human interrelations within the domain of production. For me production is philosophy. What I constructed as truth in this story runs counter to the experiments that Mahatma Gandhi experimented during his lifetime. My experiments are mundane, Un-Hindu (non-Jain), which operated around cattle rearing to teaching, writing about Un-Hindu India. But in reality (if not in truth) the whole of India lived in these Un-Hindu truths of life. In many respects my India differs from that of Gandhi or even that of Rabindranath Tagore. In many respects it resembles that of Mahatma Phule who again was given the same title of Mahatma not by a poet, a writer, but by the masses themselves: the ShudraAti-Shudra masses whom he loved. My India in view has a better future than their India.

9 International Victory and National Defeat

I

t was August 2001. I was checking in at the Begumpet Airport at Hyderabad. It was a domestic airport and one had to go to Mumbai or Delhi to take any international flight. I was going to Mumbai and from there to Johannesburg, South Africa. I was part of a delegation that was going to attend the United Nation’s Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia. As I was going on a foreign trip for the first time, several of my relatives, particularly my sisters and some of their children, came to see me off. My brother’s family with whom I was living in Hyderabad—Kancha Kattaiah, Kancha Bharathi, their three children, Rama, Krishna Kanth and Naresh—was in full attendance at the airport. My sister’s son Mandala Surender, who studied at Hyderabad was also there. Some of them were in tears because they had their own fears about such a long distance flight. But my nephews and niece were excited because one of my nephews was already planning to travel abroad for further studies. My niece and nephews were in different stages in their college education. My niece Rama Kancha was in the Osmania University doing M.A. sociology. The boys were in different undergraduate courses. Of course, this change in the shepherd family is because of democracy and the social transformation that is taking place slowly but surely. The Radical Left in Andhra Pradesh had realized that the agrarian revolution that they initiated brought in

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huge repression against the masses. T. Nagi Reddy was for such a movement because of the strong anti-­imperialism ideology. All revolutionaries viewed foreign trips with disdain. According them only bourgeoisie forces go abroad. Though this idea was not feudal the communists carried many feudal views with them. I also believed in such feudal values for quite some time. I had been against foreign trips. Even air travel was considered to be part of a bourgeois lifestyle that a communist should never aspire to. But after I wrote Why I Am Not a Hindu I got many air travel invitations and I flew to many domestic cities. This was my first foreign trip: a black man (as per the Indian Aryans most South Indians are black people) was travelling to a black country (which was ruled by the white people for a long time) in a delegation of Dalit activists. I was the only OBC in that team. That was interesting and exciting for me. Apartheid ended in 1994 and South Africa was free from white rule. I was one of those activists who saw the release of Nelson Mandela from jail with great excitement. I watched the whole process live on the BBC. He had just retired from being the president, succeeded by his deputy Thabo Mbeki. I thought it was a great opportunity to see Africa, which I saw as my ancestral home. As per the historical accounts thousands of years ago the migrant Africans settled in the Indus region and built the city civilization of Harappa. If Harappa is a name of a man like that of Beerappa, the God of South Indian shepherds, I am a descendant of Harappa. I am sure I have no connectivity with Aryan Vedic Gods, Brahma and Indra. As I said in the first chapter our names show our ancestral heritages and our occupational histories. I had read so much about the African origin of the first humans who were black. The white racists enslaved them exactly as the Aryan Brahmins enslaved my people in India. The Aryan-Dravidian debate was quite heated during that period because we were identifying with the

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black Africans. I was going to Durban to re-connect the historical heritages of Dalitbahujans and blacks who were slaves of Euro-Americans. The Aryans not only enslaved the Indian blacks, but made them untouchable, the worst way of human enslavement. By then I had read a lot about Mahatma Gandhi and his fight against racism and also how the same Gandhi compromised with the brahminic caste system here in India. I also read a lot about how Ambedkar fought Gandhi throughout his life to fight against the Gandhian mode of casteism and racial discrimination. Gandhi was against untouchability but not against the caste system. He believed that caste system has the sanction of the Hindu Shastras; therefore he thought it should not be annihilated as Ambedkar wished. All those who were going to Durban from this country were abolitionists. On 29 August as I got into the Indian Jet Airway flight the history I read and the history I was trying to be part of was reeling in my mind. I am told that Jet Airways had a tie up with South African Airways. I landed at Mumbai by 9.15 p.m. and waited for the Dalit delegates from different parts of India to arrive. Several Dalit activists reached Mumbai from local airports and railway stations. Many of them had never even been on a local a flight. Some of them were going for the first time out of their towns. This much of mobility among the Dalits became possible because of education and reservation. There is some social change among the Dalitbahujan castes after independence. But the brahminic castes have got more from the freedom than the productive castes. A single varna out of the four (with Dalits outside this scheme) with about 5 per cent population, Brahmins, occupied every institution outside agrarian production—including cattle rearing—and also the basic industrial production. To avoid physical labour they worked in the domain of intellectual labour rather deceptively. Wherever there was involvement of physical labour they were not there. But where there was economic

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income without involving physical labour they occupied such positions. Every service sector of the nation has come under their control. The Dalits who constitute 16.6 per cent of the population are nowhere in these spheres. The brahminic intellectuals are making every theoretical proposition for this country, whether they are competent are not. For example, cow grazing activity is done by the Dalitbahujans. The brahminic forces do not do that. But the brahminic intellectuals have been constructing theories about the cow protection. They saw to it that laws are made against the interests of Dalitbahujan animal economy. The world never understood their strategies. Even the Shudras like Patels, Jats, Kammas, Reddys, Nairs have no role in the theory formulation. This is a danger that India’s productive population was/is facing. The Dalit intellectuals that emerged in the post-­ independence have understood this danger. They have decided that an international campaign against Brahminism alone will weaken it. Untouchability was still haunting Dalits. After all, internationalizing the caste question is possible only when a small educated middle class emerged from them. Out of 16.6 per cent population, if a few persons’ ­presence in the higher income institutions is shown as development of the whole community, this is conspiracy of theory itself. That is an anti-national theoretical formulation. This kind anti-national approach of the brahminic intellectuals needs to be made public in the international forums. We chose the UN Conference at Durban as the best forum to expose the brahminic intellectual lies and receptivity. The right time for such an exposure was when the Brahmin-Baniya party—the BJP—was in power. And we knew that even the so-called secular BrahminBaniya intellectuals opposed our move. But we decided to fight them all. We knew that a global level fight against Brahminism was a big task beyond our capacity because the brahminic forces were entrenched in a very international organization also. To fight them we needed to make

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alliances with other forces that were willing to align with us. We were sure that they would call it a Christian conspiracy and the BJP government campaigned that it was Christian conspiracy that was responsible for this global campaign. But it was a new opportunity for us to meet with our sympathisers. At Bombay airport, by 10 p.m., all Dalits going to Durban had arrived. We were more than 80 men and women. Apart from Dalit intellectuals there were cultural teams from different states. They brought their musical instruments. Some were carrying drums, which the Dalits make and play in every village of India. There were also dolaks, which are used for Dalit music in certain states. There were excellent singers in the team. They were all meant to sing and play drums and dolaks in the streets of South Africa and propagate the Dalit cause. The flight to Johannesburg was to leave around 1.30 a.m. We all had our dinners, brought from our homes, sitting in the airport in a row, as if it were a marriage pandal. Young people were so excited that they were going to travel abroad. Their parents did not know what a plane was. Their grandparents did not know what was a train or bus. Travelling from village to village was by walking. Their legs were their buses and trains. By then the upper castes had seen buses and trains. For them walking was a painful, unwanted activity. For the Dalits it was an inevitable activity. The emergence of some new intellectuals had brought about a change that could mobilize people who could travel to South Africa. Yes, it was a social change. But this social change is nothing compared to what the African-American slaves have achieved after the World War II. The Indian Dalits were still going through feudal slavery in the villages. Some of the Dalits were working around non-­ governmental organizations, schools, colleges and universities. The main NGO leaders who organized the team were Martin Macwan and Paul Divakar. There were also

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Henri Tiphagne, M.C. Raj and Jyothi Raj, academics like Sukhadeo Thorat and, Vimal Thorat. As there were employees who acquired English language skills, capable of writing hundreds of reports (we did not use the word ‘caste’ for the purpose of UN documentation. We described it as ‘birth-based discrimination’ as that would be understood by many intellectuals of the world). The UN would also be comfortable to tackle such discrimination that addresses several other forms of birth-based discrimination in the world. We all boarded the flight and I too was excited because I was going to the real ‘buffalo nation’, by then I already was planning to write a book with that title.1 South Africa as a nation really stood up in the world and could become a place for the UN conference within such a short period of its independence. No other nation among the third world countries was so well organized for such an event. This was because it was an area of western influence and enterprise before apartheid fell, and it fell because the West saw it as no longer viable to invest and defend directly. Even now plenty of super wealthy white people own huge estates and other forms of wealth in that country. However, the rulers by then were the South Africans themselves. They appeared to be confident enough. After the flight took off, four black beautiful women, who were tall and well built, served the drinks in the flight. All my Dalit friends had a good drink of their choice and I had my own share of red wine. The air hostesses were generous enough to give extra drink for those of us who asked for them. Then they served a very good late night dinner. Our cultural team asked for permission to sing a few songs and somehow the air hostesses and the passengers were gracious enough to allow that too. The team had excellent drum beaters, who had the heritage of many generations of musicians. They had somehow managed to get a few small but brand new drums into the flight.

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After the young fellows finished drinking and eating, they slowly took out their drums. Two boys started playing beautiful rhythmic drum music and songs. The passengers started enjoying the music and the air hostesses were also enjoying it hence they too did not object. The music of the Dalit drum has a special quality that no other musical instrument in the world has. It was perfected over centuries to play different musical tones to indicate different occurrences in the villages. When a Dalit plays the drum music the whole village even from their far off fields could make out whether it was music for marriage or for death or for public announcement. The history of the drum is the history of Indian music. Now that classical drum began to be played on a black flight and it immediately connected to the cultural heritage of Africans to Dalits of India, a connection that had got lost in the course of human evolution. Much before the Aryans sang Veda mantras the Harappans played music and sang songs. This nation’s cultural heritage in every sphere of life began there. The Dalitbahujan roots in every sphere go back to Harappa times. Some of them sang and danced. Particularly the Telugu team was very active. I thought that it was a Dalit Drink Dance Party in a black flight. It was then that I composed an English song in my diary. Caste is Race in Ancient Times, Race is Caste in Modern Times, Untouchability is an Aryan Construct. They said God has not created Untouchables. Our Ancestors fought against their Gods. We fought against caste within Yet, it remained as For Ever. The World has to Rescue us. We will take it to the UN even though the State Opposes. Dalits are as Beautiful as the Blacks. Dalits go International in a Black Flight. Buffalo Nation goes to the Black Nation. Blacks of the World Unite…Unite…Unite.

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The pure black nation was under the suzerainty of white rulers for quite some time and had a mixed population. But that nation was known as a black nation. By the time we reached there it was already a black nation with the whites taking orders from the blacks and working accordingly. The main governing structures were under the black people. Though the whites controlled certain spheres of economy the blacks seemed to be ready to take into their control very soon. But in India Aryan hegemony continues unabated. When we were going there Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a real representative of the Aryan Brahminism, was ruling the country. The new Dalit consciousness forced the Congress to make a Dalit President, K.R. Narayanan. The African-Americans were also not sure that a black person like Obama would become the President of America by then. The Hindu religion was completely under the control of Brahmins. Yet they mesmerize the OBC to follow the brahminic dictate. The control of Brahminism is unabated from the days of writing of Vedas. The democratic set up did not change that basic structure. The constitutional governance has granted political rights to the Dalits, as Ambedkar himself said. But in the social and economic spheres the Dalit status has not changed. Human equality seemed to be a distant goal by then. That was the reason why we were taking the caste and untouchability issue to the UN Conference. The race question in India was not accepted by the brahminic intellectuals working in all major political formations. We strongly argued during the whole debate that caste has race characteristics but the race relations in countries like USA have not acquired caste characteristics. Our position in the whole debate was that the caste/race relationship did not change much even after independence was achieved from the British rulers. The brahminic intellectuals argued that lot of changes took place in India after the independence. Reservations have provided avenues for Dalits for upward mobility.

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Therefore the caste question should not be taken to the Durban UN Conference. But the question that needed to be taken to the global forums was why human untouchability survives for so long for millennia only in this country? An international debate needed to be initiated and a lot of global resources need to be brought into the use to end that barbaric practice. No brahminic intellectual has shown any serious concern about abolition of untouchability, and they did not treat it as a barbaric practice. For them it was one of those ordinary social evils. That was because of criminalization of their thinking process. Unless huge international intellectual resource is drawn to problematise this issue it would not find at least theoretical solution. It was meant to de-criminalize the intellectual resources of the upper-caste Indians. That is not a small issue. Certainly the Dalitbahujan intellectual/ social/economic resources are not enough. Of course, the Vajpayee government and its official intellectuals raised the bogey of anti-nationalism, Christian propaganda, and so on. We did not bother about it. We know that the brahminic forces have no roots in production of the nation nor in the protection of the nation. They do not constitute a farming community and I am not sure how many defend the nation on the borders of the nation. Their nationalism in my view is a sham. In spite of so many universities doing social science research basically under the guidance of the uppercaste intellectuals, till few Dalit intellectuals came into the universities and took up the cause of untouchability, nobody bothered. Those intellectuals who came from the untouchable background were feeling more shameful of its survival and existence. As I was sitting in the Bombay Airport I was reminded of the famous book title of Ivan Illich De-Schooling Society. Unless there is an international intellectual collaboration, abolition of untouchability, in my view, was impossible. The Indian brahminic intellectuality was as Illich said about colonials’ ‘Irrationally

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Consistent’. All that needed to be De-Schooled. The intellectual hope in internationalizing caste and untouchability was too big. At the time of travelling to South Africa there were/are four major races in India. I know many brahmnic scholars do not agree with our understanding and we also do not agree with their understanding. They never recognized us as scholars in the university. For myself I decided that I will not recognize one who does not recognize me. That at least keeps my space for me in the intellectual realm. I have experienced their non-recognition for too long, as I said in earlier chapters. Before the Durban conference most of the western scholars tended to agree with the brahminic understanding of caste and race. It is a known fact that in social science that social location of the scholar to a large extent constructs the perceptions. In the recent debate with the Arya Vysyas who dragged my book PostHindu India to the Supreme Court (see Chapter 8), the High Court and several other local courts were arguing unanimously that the Vysyas are not at all exploiters and they are the most social-serving people. What was the service they were mentioning? They said, ‘We are giving lot of money to temples. Building Satrams [only for themselves] in the temple towns.’ The Vysya intellectuals working with Communist parties were also arguing that the Vysyas were not exploitative people. But all the Shudras were saying unanimously that such arguments are false; that Vysyas are the most exploitative community in the two Telugu states. Public opinion and the arguments differed based on their caste location. All Shudra upper caste like Kammas, Reddys, Velamas and Kapus stood against the Vysya community. Only the Brahmins were supporting the Vysya community. In social science there is no question of perception and scholarship being neutral. In India scholarship was considered caste-neutral. That was false perception. Race and caste are very conditioning institutions.

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The Indian Aryans were migrants to India as the European whites were migrants to South Africa. They remained here and made all Dravidians their slaves and constructed Brahminism and casteism. They also worked out an ideology of untouchability. For centuries they justified that system in the name of their varnadharma, divine creation. Dalit divinity was localized. The spiritual democratic cultures of Dalits were either undermined or destroyed. Their identity was localized. Their socio-­ political systems were never recognized in the brahminic texts. For example, the caste panchayats among the Dalitbahujan communities resolve many disputes justly. Among the tribals, there is no arranged marriage. This system is now breaking down. They are getting exposed to the brahminic cultures more and more. But at the same the tribals are also not receiving modern English education. Their tribal languages are glorified. Unfortunately, the brahminic texts were treated as the texts of all Indians by western intellectuals. Brahminism controlled the image as well as the organization of life of the Indians abroad. We decided to take the caste and untouchability issues to the UN and also to the rest of the world forums because the one-dimensional understanding of India should be changed. We know that the ruling elites in the western world also believe in what the upper castes of India say but not what we say. The West does not know Dr. B.R. Ambedkar but it knows Mahatma Gandhi. That itself was a huge problem. Though Gandhi was said to have influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, in India the Dalits, including Ambedkar, felt that he deceived the Dalit cause by opposing the two vote formula of Ambedkar. The present reservation system was forced on them by Gandhi’s fast unto death in Yerawada Jail, Poona) in 1932. He was for continuation of the Brahmin-Baniya hegemony even after the British leave India. To tell all these stories to the world we needed an international occasion. And by the time of the Durban UN

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conference we prepared our own propaganda material with our version of justice, knowledge and Indian-ness. We wanted to prove internationally that we were not dull headed or meritless as the Brahmin-Baniya intellectuals propagated during the Mandal debate. We knew, at least I knew, that the post-colonial intellectuality of the Indian upper castes was surviving with more quotations from the western authors’ books than constructing knowledge from the people’s lives and philosophy of India. It was western opinion that was controlling Indian knowledge even by the end of the twentieth century. We too wanted to barge into that knowledge fortress. We too wanted to impress upon the West that ‘if you are racists our Brahmin-Baniya rulers and intellectuals are both racist and casteist’. We thought that even if we make a few westerners believe our version our job was done. The truth has to be spoken from London and Washington in either case. Since the truth speakers from those two capitals were coming to Durban we too wanted to go there with all speaking weapons ready. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister at that time. His brahminic government appointed a judicial committee to give an opinion: on whether or not caste and untouchability need to be taken to the UN conference. It was called National Preparatory Committee for the UN conference headed by Justice Jagannath Mishra, former Chief Justice of India. It held meetings to gather public opinion. One such meeting was held on 4 June 2001 at Hyderabad. The media reported as follows on 5 June 2001. Several representatives of the Dalits presented their views before the committee, prominent among them were Swamy Agnivesh who pleaded that he be sent to the Durban meeting as an official Indian delegate in place of the Minister who ‘never knew what the problem of discrimination was’; Mr. John Dayal, Secretary-General of AllIndia Christian Council, who argued that ‘caste is worse than racism’; Prof. K. Ilaiah of Osmania University, the

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author of the book Why I Am Not a Hindu, and Mr. Paturu Ramaiah of CPI(M), who heads the Committee for Struggle Against Caste Discrimination (The Hindu, 5 June 2001).

It was while deposing before the Mishra preparatory committee that I discovered the legal and judicial discrimination of the buffalo, as it was a black animal as against the Indian white cow. I asked Justice Mishra, ‘Assume that a situation arises where suddenly one day a black buffalo appears before the Supreme Court Chief Justice and asks for equal protection along with cow, how does the judge react? He would first order for violent removal of the buffalo, dismiss the watch and ward staff of the court for allowing a dirty black buffalo into the sacred court. But the fact is that when he orders for coffee/tea it gets made only with buffalo milk, not cow milk, as the Indian cows do not give much milk. Having had his buffalo milk coffee he would order for cleaning of the court, as the black buffalo polluted the court, to wash with buffalo milk itself because the buffalo milk is also white and washing with white milk is treated as divinely cleaning. The Indian cow got a protection in the constitution because all the Brahmin members and also Mahatma Gandhi wanted such a protection for only the cow and its calf by name (Article 48, Directive Principles of the State Policy), because they belong to white animal race. I said Mr Justice (I do not believe in calling a judge as ‘my lord’) our position in India is that of a buffalo. Hence we need to speak about this position of Dalits, at least to the world, to the UN so that a global pressure is built to change the colour and caste discrimination of the Indian people. The Dalits are worse off than the Indian cows. They are like Indian buffaloes.’ Justice Mishra just laughed and kept quiet. But later Mr. Dilip Singh, the secretary of the committee said that the analogy of the buffalo and cow was very powerful. It was here that the concept of my Buffalo Nationalism book got shaped up. Immediately after that debate in India, travelling to South Africa gave me enormous clarity of thought.

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However, the same paper on 4 July 2001 reported. Dalit organisations in the country and their leaders have chalked out a programme to ‘unofficially’ attend the U.N.sponsored ‘World conference against racism, racial discrimination and related discriminations and intolerances’ in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 7, in a big way to complain against the caste-based discrimination in the country. The leaders are busy seeking passports or making arrangements for visas to visit Durban and raise the Dalit voice at the international forum. Speaking to The Hindu here on Tuesday, Mr. N. Paul Diwakar, national secretary, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, said they were able to get visas easily but faced problems obtaining fresh passports. About 25 leaders may attend the conference from Andhra Pradesh alone and the list includes himself, Mr. Bojja Tharakam, State Republican Party president and human rights activist, Mr. Manda Krishna Madiga of Madiga Reservation, Porata Samiti and Mr. Kancha Ilaiah, a political science professor in Osmania University and author of Why I Am Not a Hindu.

From Gujarat Martin Macwan, from Tamil Nadu Henri Teffin and others did a lot of groundwork. We travelled all over India to educate Dalits and to explain to the world that caste and untouchability are institutions of discrimination as race is. Members of the Dalit Solidarity of UK, Germany and others worked hard to mobilize European opinion in favour of the Dalits of India. All the members of the Justice Jagannath Mishra committee were brahminic by origin and also by conviction. They gave an opinion that there was no need to take the caste issue to the UN bodies; the Indian state has evolved enough tools to handle the problem of caste and untouchability. We knew who were participating in the hearing of the Judicial Committee and that they would

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make a similar recommendation. We decided to make our effort to globalize the issue, whatever could be their recommendation. On 29 June morning we landed in Johannesburg. What surprised me was the airport. Earlier, I had seen all major Indian airports. That airport was huge, with so many Duty Free shops as we were coming out. The airport from immigration to customs was entirely being managed by the black men and women. I loved their English. Since I know how the British and Americans speak English, I saw that the accent was African but their communication method was global. I found that the South Africans were as efficient as the Euro-Americans. From there we took a local flight to Durban. Even Durban airport was much bigger and more modern with better facilities than any Indian airport at that time. Now, Indian airports have been improved a lot. But in 2001 they were very small and badly maintained. In Durban on 29 and 30 June we had several meetings with global leaders and diplomats. We met the leaders of Switzerland, the Holy See State, Denmark, among others, and explained to them what the caste and untouchability were all about. Unfortunately even the black leaders of many countries do not know about the situation of the Dalits and the problem around human untouchability. Some European activists, NGOs have some idea about the caste question but they were of the opinion that Indian constitutional democracy could handle it through systems like reservation or special treatments. They had no idea that the problem was linked up to the Hindu spiritual system. Soon after came the 9/11/2001 attacks on the American World Trade Centre. The West became more worried about the radical jihadi groups emerging in Pakistan-Afghanistan borders and also in the West Asia. The Palestinian question was a more serious question for the Muslim intellectuals but not issues like caste that we wanted them to support. Several

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Palestinians came there and were lobbying for solving the Palestinian problems. As members of our cultural troop Lelle Suresh, Goreti Venkanna and others performed on the Durban streets: drum beating, singing songs, and around the Durban Conference Centre, which was the best convention centre I had ever seen. Durban as a city had its long history of settlements of immigrant Indians. The South African blacks had their own problems with African-Indians, who were known as the exploiters of the native South Africans. Some of the main local businesses were in the hands of AfricanIndians. Hence the Africans were very angry with AfricanIndian traders. The Africans have not yet begun to run businesses. There were several Africans, who were doing white collar jobs. But I could hardly see a black family running its own shop on the street; there were many Indians who owned small and big business set ups. I then realized that it were these Indian business families that invited Gandhi to South Africa to argue their cases whenever they needed legal help. I have also seen Indian upper-middleclass neighbourhoods, just besides the neighbourhoods of white Europeans. Though many Indians were with the ANC as active supporters along with Jews, they never supported the Dalit cause in India. Black dwelling places were still far away from them. This was generating a lot of anger among blacks towards whites and African-Indians. I witnessed verbal anger while talking to them. The African blacks were of the view that the whites had exploited them too long and too harshly. However, they hardly know anything about India and its caste system that has established an internal colonial system for thousands of years. While the whites established their own separate restaurants for themselves, separate schools for their children, in India, mostly in the South, the Indian Brahmins established Brahmin bhojan and coffee hotels, in which the Dalits and Shudras were not allowed to eat. The Shudras and Dalits

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were not allowed to go to school till the English, Scottish, Portuguese established schools. The African blacks were not stopped from going to school; but went to separate schools. They could go to church, though a segregated one. From the early colonial days the black pastors were trained by the white missionaries. My visit South Arica had taught me much. The Indian Dalit delegation’s main concern was that at least eight member nations should sign the memorandum so that the UN conference could table it for discussion. The International Dalit Solidarity Network UK and Europe had lobbied considerably in Europe and was confident that countries like Switzerland, Pakistan, Netherlands, the Holy See State would sign. The Indian government sent strong messages that no country should support the Indian Dalit cause. The Vajpayee government sent a government delegation under the leadership of the Janata Party’s former president, Bangaru Laxman. He had been caught in a corruption case in January 2000. This man was a Dalit and was obligated to his party as he wanted to get out of the corruption charges. He met many countries’ permanent UN representatives and convinced them that he himself came from a Dalit background and the situation was misrepresented with cooked up facts and figures about improving conditions of the Dalits. He along with other government officials urged all those nations that were thinking of supporting the Dalit cause not to do so. In the Indian Foreign Service there are a huge number of upper castes who have no sympathy to the Dalit problems. Though there were a few Dalit/OBC diplomats in different countries, the officers that were sent to Durban were only from the upper castes. The Indian brahminical forces knew how to use the same Dalits in their own service against the interests of the Dalit masses. At the final moment when the petition was supposed to be sent to the relevant UN body for the consideration of the resolution, except the Holy See state no other state

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supported it. A representative of the Swiss government told us that the Indian government threatened to withdraw the Hawala money lodged in their banks if they supported the Dalit cause in the UN conference. Though Switzerland is generally neutral on human rights’ issues and has a tough reputation with immigrants and foreign workers, it had promised the Dalit campaigners that it would support the resolution. However, they backed out at the end. A young Pakistani diplomat told us that they would have supported the resolution but for the fact that it would worsen the relations between the two countries and also they too have some degree of caste problem. She said, ‘We need to find a solution to the caste practice within Pakistan before we take a position on the Indian problem.’ That sounded logical, as we were campaigning against the caste system of South Asia. Caste and untouchability were equally huge problems in Nepal. There were also problems, though in lesser degree, in Sri Lanka. We lobbied and pleaded when the sessions were going on within the conference hall, but we could not succeed in pushing our resolution onto the UN agenda. This was an anticipated failure. However, we could internationalize the issues related to caste and untouchability by inviting several media persons to our parallel sessions and a great deal of writing appeared in the global media and also on the internet about caste, untouchability and Hindu brahminic inhumanity. At that time several articles and books were written on caste and untouchability, particularly keeping the western audience in mind. For example, Smita Nirula, ‘Broken People: Caste Violence against India’s Untouchables’ (Human Rights Watch 1999) played a key role in Euro American circles. Of course, by then several Euro Americans read Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste and also my book Why I am Not a Hindu My book Why I Am Not a Hindu was the most important text that foreigners downloaded from the internet and read to understand what the problem is all about. If Why

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I Am Not a Hindu was not in the market by then it would have been difficult to convince many Euro-Americans and other Asians about the spiritual fascist structure of Hinduism. Though Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste was a most influential book in India, I was surprised that more westerners found my book to be more useful to understand the caste system; maybe because it was written as an experiential narrative. Secondly, Annihilation of Caste examined the caste system within the framework of modernist liberal ideology. By the time we went to South Africa, postmodernism was very popular. The feminist mode of ‘personal is political’ and experience as framework of understanding social structures had acquired currency. The westerners needed a text of narration to understand the nuances of caste, untouchability and women’s exploitation by the Hindu spiritual and social system. Without Ambedkar’s book, my writing a book like Why I Am Not a Hindu would have been impossible. My presence as an author of that book made lot of difference. Many foreign journalists interviewed me at Durban. That conference opened my eyes and ears about the importance of international propaganda on caste and untouchability. Earlier I had a blind upper-caste leftist view that all of the West was imperialist. I was wrong. The British empire was useful for the lower castes, more so for Dalits, because that empire had put a constitutional framework in place. There were many liberal democrats and in the West and in other Asian countries whose cooperation the Indian Dalitbahujans needed to fight this historical menace. The Indian upper-caste diaspora had hidden the worst side of India from the eyes and ears of the rest of the world. There was no Dalitbahujan diaspora to tell the truth to the world. By 2001, many Indian upper castes mainly Brahmins, more from South India, went and settled down in the USA and Canada, and in the UK, too, though here too there was a wider mix of castes and classes from the

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subcontinent. Till Sujatha Gidla a Dalit women settled in the USA wrote Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India’ in 2017 no such story was told in a manner that could be understood by the West. The societies the Dalits went to were hierarchical too on race lines but those societies allowed such racial hierarchies to be debated in the UN forums. The Euro-American brutal racist slavery was opposed by whites also. William Wilberforce was the best example. There is no such example from the Brahmin intellectuals/leaders of India. On the contrary they went on justifying that system. Carrying caste and untouchability abroad only shows how deeply embedded it is in Indians, though they tried to hide that such an inhuman system of caste and untouchability exists in India. It is not the existence of caste but the fact that it is not acknowledged that is a major problem in the way of its abolition. This upper-caste diasporic attitude forced us to depend on the Euro-American liberals for support and good will. Subsequent to the Durban conference some new avenues were opened for some of us to take the issue of caste and untouchability to different political and state forums of Europe and America. Our friends in America and Britain and in the European Union helped us to do this. The Euro-American educated upper-class intellectuals made our going to those forums possible in order to bring pressure on Indian society to bring in meaningful change. We wished to take international institutional help to overcome poverty, illiteracy among these people, an issue on which the NRIs were not sympathetic. On the contrary, quite a few white men and women spent their resources and time to help this great cause. We realized in the course of our long years of struggle that the Indian upper castes, including those who got foreign degrees and also settled abroad, developed stony hearts. Hence a few of us by spending our own personal resources and

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with the help of some humanitarian organizations took the issue of caste and untouchability to the American Congress, the British Parliament and other European Union forums. This was a news item that appeared in one of the British news media about our international campaign against caste and untouchability and what we did in Europe: Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) hosted a delegation of activists for India’s Dalit (formerly untouchable’) people from 19–28 March 2007 to raise the issue of caste-based slavery faced by millions of Dalits, in numerous forums in London and Brussels. While in the UK, the delegation briefed MPs, Peers, Foreign Office officials and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In Brussels, they held meetings with MEPs and officials at the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. The delegation, comprising Dr Joseph D’Souza, Dr Kancha Ilaiah, Indira Athawale and Moses Parmar, also gave evidence before the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, in its first hearing on the Dalits in India. In addition, they met Lord Alton of Liverpool, prior to his asking a question in the House of Lords on the human rights situation of Dalits. As part of their visit, the delegation spoke at the West End premiere of India’s Hidden Slavery, a documentary film by Michael Lawson, in association with Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and the Dalit Freedom Network (DFN), which exposes the plight of the 250 million-strong Dalit and tribal communities in India. As the UK commemorated 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire through the passage of a bill brought by William Wilberforce, the delegation was raising the issues of caste-based discrimination, oppression and exploitation in India in terms of modern-day slavery. They called particularly for India to be strongly encouraged to properly implement laws designed to protect and support Dalits.

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual Dr Joseph D’Souza, President of the Dalit Freedom Network (DFN), said, ‘Wilberforce himself condemned the caste system in India, and its continued existence represents unfinished business for all who care about human rights and slavery. The caste system is very much alive, and it condemns millions to slavery, exploitation, dehumanisation and abject hopelessness. We are glad to have had this opportunity to raise our grave concerns in the UK, and to call for change. Mervyn Thomas, Chief Executive of CSW, said, ‘This is an enormously significant issue and one which must be brought to the attention of the world. We urge the Indian government to bring an end to the highly discriminatory practices of caste-based discrimination and the dreadful exploitation associated with the caste system.’

Britain ruled India through its own colonial administration for more than two hundred years, and by the same Britain millions of Africans were enslaved and taken to America and the West Indies. The slaves were exploited in the same manner as the Indian Dalits were exploited. But Britain has also produced a white liberator of slaves called William Wilberforce. The Indian upper castes could not produce even one such persons in the millennia history of caste slavery that they themselves constructed. However, when the Dalitbahujans produced one in the body of Ambedkar, they refused to recognize him for a long time. For all these reasons the international intervention was needed. The upper castes living abroad continued their opposition. They continued the practice of untouchability as Sujatha Gidla said in many of her interviews after she published Ants among Elephants (https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/read/vignettes-from-anunequal-world/article9999078.ece). After exposure of the situation in the foreign forums they wrote several things against us. Shamelessly practice of untouchability was treated as part of Hindu Dharma and exposing that practice as ‘antagonistic towards Hindu Dharma’.

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An article written by a Hindu fundamentalist called Sandhya Jain in Ireland Education Fair 2016, says this about me. His exchanges with DFN are relevant to show anti-Hindu bias as many of its key figures are unabashedly antagonistic towards Hindu dharma. Prof Kancha Ilaiah, who signed a DFN letter to the CDE, claims he ‘hate(s) Hinduism’ and calls it ‘a cult of worshipping certain violent figures… Hinduism is basically a spiritual fascist cult’. Prof Witzel’s exchanges with Roger Pearson, in whose journal his article was published, and certain Internet postings also establish deep prejudice.

The Hindu brahminic network did not want caste and untouchability related issues to get global attention. They were more worried about the western Christian world knowing about this system of cruel discrimination that is continuing from ancient times. The Indian diaspora, which mainly consists of English-educated upper castes, was fighting for its own rights and formed solidarity groups to oppose colour-based discrimination of Asians. They were in one form or the other supporting the political movements of the African Americans and also Latinos but not of the Indian Dalits. By 2001 the Indian-American and the Indian-European communities were very strong and they were in visible positions in those economies. But back home the very same forces were opposing the reservation struggles of Dalitbahujan as promotion of meritless mediocrity. Their position, therefore, was very ambivalent. Wherever the ‘self-serving’ issues like white versus the Asian or coloured people came up, they were talking about human right violation. But when the most brutal oppression of the Dalitbahujans came up for international discussion they invoked the key component of their ideology, caste is natural to India. The upper-castes’ core thinking was based on their communities’ well-being in India and

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their individual and group well-being within Europe and-American societies. This discovery of their duplicity pained me more. They needed to be exposed in the countries they had settled in. Now there is a second generation that has been born in these countries, which too is injected by caste-cultural relations. When I faced the Arya Vysya casteist onslaught in September, October of 2017 Arya Vysyas of the USA called and abused me in filthy language. I was really surprised because I had thought that those who call from a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) base would discuss and try to understand my position. But they were sometimes more rude than the Indian Arya Vysyas. They seem to be educating their children to live in the same caste culture in the foreign lands. They had not learnt anything from Gandhi also. Their abusive language and violent behaviour not only surprised me but also all the Telugu people. In 2001 there was a small diaspora of Dalitbahujan community in those countries and they too began to organize themselves, along with some white and black sympathizers. The Dalitbahujan diasporic forces organized seminars and conferences in Britain, Canada and America on the issues of caste and untouchability. Brahmins as diasporic intellectuals and Baniya business forces were all over the world. They managed to enter every institution of the world with the help of the English language. If they had remained confined to Sanskrit they would not have become such a global force. Though the Baniyas were never learned in Sanskrit they owned the Sanskritic tradition. By and large the Brahmin-Baniya unity within India and abroad has become the reality today. We needed to continue the global campaign against caste and untouchability. Different organizations, the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) and its activists like Paul Diwakar and Martin Macwan started working around several UN bodies. In Europe, humanitarian groups like Dalit Solidarity Network were helping

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us in informing civil society organization about the brutal system and many were responding quite sympathetically. In 2001 I toured Canada and the USA. I attended a major seminar at Vancouver on the question of ‘Caste and Untouchability’ in the light of the Durban conference. That was well attended by Dalits from different countries. I met several individuals and organizations in the USA. We organized a one-day workshop at Los Angeles in order to inform about caste and untouchability and its related brutalization of India to Hollywood producers, directors, black actors and actresses. Forest Whitaker and his wife produced films on slavery, African slaves in different countries. There were also producers and directors, who produced films on the Chinese system of exploitation. It was a very successful programme. Some of the producers and directors told us that in order to think of a Hollywood film on caste and untouchability someone should write a good novel on that culture and it should be in English. It was then I thought of writing Untouchable God. As my readers know, the last chapter compares African American culture, suffering and Dalit culture and suffering. I only hope that a good Hollywood film gets produced based on this novel. Earlier, the Dalit Freedom Network had organized a conference on the Capitol Hill on 6 October 2005 and it was followed by a hearing of the House Committee of the US Congress on Human Rights. I along with Dr. Joseph D’Souza, Indira Athwale and Udit Raj (who unfortunately later joined the most communal party, BJP) explained to the Congress committee what kind of human right violations take place around the brutal caste system and untouchability. A press release of the DFN said that On October 6, 2005, the Dalit Freedom Network will host an historic Conference entitled ‘Racism and Caste Based Discrimination in India: Implications for the US-India Relationship’ followed by a House Committee Hearing on ongoing Caste atrocities. The event marks a new awareness

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From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual among U.S. lawmakers about the struggles of lower caste people in India. DFN will host a press conference on this event on October 5 at 9 a.m. in the National Press Club’s Zenger Room.

It also said, ‘The conference will include speeches from notable Dalit advocates and leaders from India, including Dr. Joseph D’Souza, Prof. Kancha Ilaiah and, Dr. Udit Raj.’ The House Committee Hearing was reported in the Indian media quite prominently. The brahminic intellectuals of all hues got terribly disturbed because the USA had already become their second living place on the planet, and they had hidden the fact that caste and untouchability that enslaved more than half of the population existed. A global discourse definitely forces the Indian state and civil society to engage with a radical social reform within India. Abolition of caste and untouchability requires a lot of financial, social and intellectual resource to be galvanized. After all the UN is everybody’s institution, which can and should help in solving the caste and untouchability problems to be eradicated from the globe. My books were of immense importance in educating foreign intellectuals and media persons. This also led to foreign media interviews and special story coverage. Foreign media wanted to know how I related the caste issue to the race issue and the symbol of buffalo to explain that relationship. Caste and race are interrelated. That black human colour gets discriminated against white human colour is well known globally. The Euro-Americans also discriminate the black against the white. When I wrote Buffalo Nationalism many thought that it was crazy book. They did not understand its serious anti-cow nationalism’s ideological underpinnings. But over a period of time the book seriously challenged Hindutva cow nationalism and colour politics. The presence of these books on the Amazon book shelf has disturbed brahminic scholars, and with time the importance

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of the notion of buffalo nationalism will grow. Movements like ‘Black Is Beautiful’, ‘Black Life Matters’ were repositioning the black–white people’s social relations in America and Europe. When the question of untouchability issue was getting projected even the white oppression of the blacks appeared not so harsh because the colour racism did not involve human untouchability. Human untouchability was seen as the most barbaric form of oppression. The Durban conference and post-Durban activities in the global arena on the questions of caste and untouchability were definitely put on the international map. I played my own role in that that process. The Durban conference had become a platform for spreading the ideology of Ambedkar both in India and abroad. It was this campaign that led to Barack Obama, the first black president of America, referring to Ambedkar in his speech in the Indian Parliament in 2015. He said, ‘We believe that no matter who you are or where you come from, every person can fulfil their God-given potential, just as a Dalit like Dr. Ambedkar could lift himself up and pen the words of the Constitution that protects the rights of all Indians.’ No other American leader, leave alone President Obama, recognized the greatness of Ambedkar before a massive international campaign was taken up on caste and untouchability. Organizations like the Dalit Freedom Network played their own significant role in America during the post-Durban conference. Now the world knows the problems of the Indian oppressed castes and nobody can stop their liberation in years to come. Note 1. Later published as Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism (Samya, 2004).

10 What I Ate, How I Wrote and How I Lived

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y Life from birth to my sixty-fifth year, the year of completion of my story, is a saga of struggles, fears, anxieties, pleasures, failures and achievements. I had a massive attack of smallpox when I was just six months old; I had been placed near the primitive hearth, covered with a rough dupatta, on a winter’s day and received serious burns. I could have been burnt to ashes, and had a miraculous escape. Added to these misfortunes, were my mother’s and father’s deaths at an early age. After that I lived with my sisters’ help, four of them were illiterate, and a permanently sick brother, his wife, also illiterate, who has taken care of him for more than forty years and still does so. I ate my own hand cooked food of basic survival from Class 6 to B.A. My story turns into an epic one. Or it could be considered by those who do not like a story like mine as one that should not have happened in this land because it would change, in a certain sense, the course of their lives. However, I love change not the status quo. I educated myself and learnt English to a level from which I could write in English and I also wrote in Telugu, on social injustice, taking on mighty opponents anywhere. As I was just finalizing this book I had to fight against the richest Arya Vysya community, which controlled the major chunk of the business of two Telugu states. The community was on the streets threatening to kill me anytime, a very rich M.P. issuing a Fatwa. The Indian Parliament and

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Brahmin-Baniya social forces were not bothered much. But there was condemnation all over the world, including in the United States Congress. Representative Harold Trent Franks, in the US House of Representatives, raised it on 12 October 2017, associating me with Ambedkar. Why did the Arya Vysyas do so? For writing a chapter in my book Post-Hindu India called ‘Social Smugglers’. This was now available in Telugu. In 2015 the Brahmin community of two Telugu states tried to attack me but not in the manner that the Arya Vysyas did. The Arya Vysyas put half a dozen cases against the book and also me as a person in Supreme Court, in Joint High Court of the Telugu states and in many local courts. They attempted to kill me twice once on 23 September, at Parkal, Bhupalpally ­district, and another time at Korutla, on 22 November 2017, when I went to attend a court case, they themselves put against the same book. The BJP supported these attempts of the Arya Vysyas. In fact, at Korutla they were part of the team that came to attack me. The BJP government at the centre was helping these forces quite systematically and the anti-intellectual environment after the murder of Gauri Lankesh was in full display. I shall fight these forces till my death. I had to resolve to fight their threats at every stage of my life after Why I Am Not a Hindu was published in 1996. By the time I was writing this memoir, according my publisher, it has undergone 14 reprints in 21 years. Is that not remarkable? Where did my strength and confidence come from? The answer is that several people helped me at every stage. Of all the support what has mattered the most is the nutrition I received to maintain good health. I have not fallen ill seriously so far. For more than thirty-five years my sister-in-law, Kancha Bharathi, gave me the same kind of village food that I had eaten in my childhood and later. I shared the same food that she cooked for her three children and my brother in the Ramnagar house, where I wrote Why I Am Not a Hindu. My sister’s

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Figure 10.1 Author with his brother Kattaiah’s family: second from left, his niece Ramadevi; next Barbara, nephew Krishna Kanth’s Polish wife; Ramadevi’s two children, Thanvi and Samaya, next Krishna Kanth, brother Kattaiah, sister-in-law Bharathi, and nephew Naresh (author’s collection).

son Mandala Surender also lived with us for quite some time as he studied in Hyderabad. That means every day she was cooking for seven people in a small rented rail compartment-like house. Later we shifted to Taranka and still live in that area, though in a different flat. As Taranka is close to Osmania University where I taught, it became my permanent resident place. My niece and nephews live abroad now and Surender became a journalist. The families’ interaction with the village was quite lively and regular, and many food items came from there. I believe the familiar food cultural environment kept me alive to the culture of my childhood, to my village life and to my ethos that became a part of my being. More than anything it is the food culture that makes us what we are. As I said in Why I Am Not a Hindu childhood formation and food culture that cultivate the mental

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and tongue tastes that shape our being remain with us till our death. If one misses the childhood food cultural resources one would crave for that food culture most at the fag-end of one’s life. I know a number of old people who keep asking for the food items that they ate in the childhood while being on the death bed, as it becomes a death wish. In my childhood, I would not have survived without the care of my paternal grandmother, Alli Eeramma. She introduced me to the food and tastes of my culture that have supported my creativity. My sisters cooked for me and my sister-in-law too provided similar food that sustained my village identity, which created an energy that helped me write fruitfully, as I have just mentioned. The food I ate linked me to the cultural heritage I represented, kept alive by the way we lived in Hyderabad—not an urban life but the way we had lived in the village. After all, it is the family environment that has the most significant influence in making you what you are. If I had lived in an urban Brahmin family environment either by marriage or by some other means, eating their meals, interacting with their festivals or other living patterns, I would not have been able to write in the way I do. That connectivity between my childhood upbringing and my later life made me what I am. And this is how it is throughout the period of my writing. But for availability of that kind of food I would have been a failure, I believe. The soil in which I was born and the soil into which I will go back after my death would be my village. I told my relatives that my body should not be burnt to ashes. It should be put back into the earth. As Gautam Buddha said my body while living consists of soil, water, air and heat. All these four elements cease to function in a collective combination to keep me living. Each part of my body should get back into the larger elements of the universe that consists of those four elements. That is what my rebirth would be. My soul, perhaps, would remain with God, in whom Gautam

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Buddha did not believe, but I believe as a force of ­eternity. In this respect I am convinced by the teachings of Jesus. My God is God who created all human beings—men and women—equal. My God treats all food items that nourish our body equal. What I said, what I wrote and what I did will remain for others use as long as they are useful. When they are not useful everything will go into oblivion. That is what nature is and that is what human essence is. My village made me what am I, as I said the food I ate, including my mother’s milk that I drank in my childhood, have come out of that village economic and cultural setting. My mother’s food culture has gone into me through her milk and thereafter through the food items she and my relatives gave me. My food taste has nothing to do with my father. If my mother and father were to come from two different food cultures, I would imbibe only of my mother’s food culture. As I was growing when I stopped drinking my mother’s milk, then I drank buffalo, goat and sheep milk. The grass and the leaves that they ate, the water that they drank in that village surrounding became part of me. If there is any motherland to me that is my village. If there is any other mata (mother) that gave me milk, apart from my human mata, it would be buffalo mata, goat mata, sheep mata. I must be forever obliged to sheep and goat, more than other animals, as I drank their milk and ate their flesh and lived healthy. Quite a lot of my energy came from consumption of their body resource itself—apart from their labour. I became aware of this violent part of my life when I was feeding them and interacting with them on daily basis. But I realized that it was an inevitable course of nature—material or spiritual. Mahatma Gandhi committed as much violence on goats by drinking their blood in the form of milk—that too by denying that milk to just born baby goats as much as I committed. Those vegetarians who think that by not eating meat they remain totally non-violent should know that is nonsense. Drinking animal milk, which becomes

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what it is by converting its blood into milk, by denying that milk to its just born babies, and drinking it for human survival, is a violent act. Similarly eating food—vegetarian or meatarian—­without involving in any labour process that produces that food is a greater violence. Here the humans who labour are being treated as equals with animals. Even with animals, those who feed them, wash them, keep their surroundings clean for their healthy living and good life and drink their milk or eat their flesh at particular times, are less violent people than those who never feed them, care them and wash them but drink their milk. The caste-­communities that do not graze cattle ever, but drink their milk, eat curd, ghee and drink butter milk are more violent caste-­communities than that of those caste-­ communities, which do so by taking care of them. Historically the Brahmins and Baniyas treated caring cattle as neech and Chandal work. But they lived by consuming their milk, curd, ghee and butter milk. This, in my philosophical realm, is very violent, not just individual, but community life. If all communities take to such philosophical life human beings and nations cannot survive. Hence the Shudra philosophy of human-animal relationship is more socio-spiritually positive and historically survivalist. The brahminic philosophy of food culture is selfish and otherwise destructive and more violent in ethical terms. All these years—for ­millennia—they have projected what is unethical as ethical and what is ethical as unethical. We as humans depend for food on plants, animals and fish and it is spiritual and morally valid. I did so all my life. I, therefore, think that my food culture, as a shepherd family member, is less violent than that of Gandhi and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. I am writing about my food culture with that kind of positive will and historical and philosophical understanding of violence and non-­ violence. I shaped my philosophy in the course of my education while living amidst animals and nature and also in the

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educational institutions with an understanding of the contradictions that exist within me and the contradictions that operate between me and the rest of society and things outside me. I am what I am because of my childhood training. My subsequent education, the kind of life process I went through, is based on the primary foundation of childhood consciousness. This in my view and is the key to the cultural formation of a human being. Culture does not come from books. It comes from the living and working environment. From illiteracy to getting educated and writing in English, my journey has been long enough, though one could have done better. It is for others to judge whether what I did contributed for betterment of, if not of all people, at least of my people or not. In the course of the future if a few meatarians become beefarians and few vegetarians become meatarians, if English becomes the national language of India and labour receives dignity, I would be happy. Even if one vegetarian becomes a beefarian that would be great. Then people like Akhlaq (a Muslim man lynched by anti-beef eaters of the Hindutva forces in Utter Pradesh in 2015) would have been saved. If India as a nation acquired the culture of dignity of labour Brahminism would go unrecognized. If English becomes a language of all Indians, great minds that would change the whole world would come from this country. Why would only English be so enabling? Why not Telugu or Tamil or Hindi? My interaction with the masses tells me that a language must be very rich and must be understood and spoken by a large number of people throughout the world. Such a language gives people the power to command the administrative structures of India. Then the Dalitbahujan masses could get out of the mental slavery of Brahminism that controlled them for thousands of years. The only language available today is English. Though this was a colonial language, it has already become one of the Indian languages.

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But that exists only among the upper castes of India, as largely a speaking and writing language. The day when all Indians speak and write English it becomes much more richer and the world also will benefit from that richer language. If I had not learnt English I would not have written what I wrote. If I were to write in Telugu the Telugu literary networks, Telugu media would have pooh-poohed my work. All Indian languages are hegemonized by the brahminic forces. They define how one should write in those languages. They have injected an inferiority complex into the mental framework of the productive castes that they cannot write as the brahminic forces would write. Even if somebody writes and succeeds, the regional language’s reach is limited only to that region. Hence English becomes a source of liberation and also a source of expanding the knowledge base of the productive communities. The notion of a worthy life differs from our cultural history and the brahminic cultural history. In our cultural history a sansari, or householder, is great but in brahminic cultural history a sanyasi, or ascetic, is great. A sansari generates and regenerates family and society, produces food not only for his/her family but also for the whole society. A sanyasi lives for himself. He is a male, that too an unproductive male. I have always treated the Bharatiya Janata Party as party of vyapari (businessmen), pujari (priests, who are essentially Brahmins) and bekari (sanyasi, they also constitute mostly Brahmins). Hence it cannot develop a modern economy for the advancement of the nation. Nations are built by sansaris not by sanyasis. I was born, as my mother told me, in my paternal grandmother’s house, which was a small thatched house built around one wooden pole, with a cover of palm leaves. The palm leaves were changed every year to see that they would withstand the rainy season. My paternal grandmother’s family name was Chitte and my grandmother’s name was Balakomuramma. My grandfather, Chitte Kattaiah, had

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Figure 10.2 Author in front of his ancestral home (author’s collection).

died quite a long time back. In my childhood I knew my grandmother as a widow with two old silver bangles on her wrists. In my caste men were dying early and women were surviving as widows because of the nature of their work in the field and forests. If the men died at a young age then the women would be remarried. If they died after two or three children the women remained with their in-laws’ and survived with the help of other men and provided labour. In our culture every woman was a worker. The women in the productive communities do the household work, take care of the children like the Brahmin-Baniya women and also do the field work. They participate in productive and reproductive work. This family survived on the sheep and goat economy. I remember to have played with several small lambs at their home. Around the house there was an empty place that was used for lamb management. Sometimes in the rainy season, in that small patch of land they grew corn for family consumption. Since the Kancha and Chitte

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families lived near each other, we used to run here and there. However, our main living space was in my father’s house, which was bigger with a mud wall compound. Kancha Lingamma, my paternal grandmother, was a well-known widow who was a leader in that area. I vaguely remember her. But by the time I became conscious she had become blind because of some local plant medication. I remember playing around her bed. I also vaguely remember her death and visited her cremation place on the bank of our village stream. Subsequently, we used to be treated well even, by strangers, when we visited nearby villages, as we were her grandchildren. My mother inherited some of her qualities. She too became well known in that area. Kancha Linagmma was known as the village foundation stone layer, perhaps along with another man called Papaiah. We had a better house built with mud walls, wooden beams and the village potter had made tiles for the roof. That house had a long kitchen place called sayaban. In the middle there was a hall and attached to that hall was the devuni arra, room for the Goddess called Gouramma. On every Diwali day, Nomu was held where women put on a decorated patch of land all kinds of food items. Diwali is the only day we did not cook meat or chicken. I somehow do not like this festival because it has proved to be anti-environmental. Otherwise for us Panduga meant eating meat and drinking kallu. I must have drunk several litres of kallu by the time I went to school in my eighth or ninth year. So Deepawali for us was Nomula Panduga, which was entirely different from the brahminic celebration of Narkasura vadha (killing Narkasura) by Krishna and his wife Satyabhama. A new interpretation of Sri Krishna’s life by Bheenaveni Ram Shepherd, an assistant professor of sociology, Osmania University, says that he did not participate in such killings nor did his wife (http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article7679.html). Krishna basically was

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a Yadav, hence a cattle herder. He took care of buffaloes, sheep and goat along with cows. This agrarian Krishna has never accepted any Brahmin control nor accepted any Brahmin as his guru. According to this theory of Krishna, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allied organizations, do not own Krishna as they own Rama because Rama was very loyal to brahminic Guru-shishya parampara. Krishna declared himself as God in defiance of the brahminic order. Maybe this is the reason why Krishna is more popular in South India than Rama. However, in our caste life even Krishna did not exist. Our cattle God was Beerappa and Mallaiah. Our home Goddess was Gauramma, who existed in a small separate room on a slightly raised earthen platform in the form of a turmeric ball. On Deepawali day that turmeric ball would be put out from the small spiritual pot and all kinds of food items would be put around it. The whole night an oil lamp is put near the turmeric ball. That lamp should keep burning the whole night without interruption. Since it was ‘sweet buvva’ (sweet rice) festival and hence was not liked by children like us very much. Married couple were not allowed to sleep near that room. In the front part of the house there was an open veranda called arugu with a small room on the south side. In this room, vadla arra, the family preserved paddy and other food grains. This house was located on a plot of onefourth acre of land around which there was loose wooden fencing. Later on, my parents put a mud wall around the house. Our sheep and goats mostly slept outside and we worked out a way to protect the baby lambs in a place called podi or podulu in the fields, where the sheep and goats slept. The animals would be moved from field to field, as would the podulu and my father needed the help of one or two additional hands to shift them. That old house got completely burnt around 1954; there was a major fire in the village, where almost twothirds of the houses got completely burnt. My mother and father built a similar house at the same place with better

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wood and better mud walls with two more cattle sheds in front of it. My brother’s family and a sister who lived with us with her family, demolished that house only in 2009 and re-built two modern cement and brick houses about 700 sq ft each. It was in the old house that I imbibed local and familial culture and my character and ideas were formed. As children we slept on wooden cots netted with thin ropes called mancham. In the back of the house was the family well. This well water was salty, which we drank by filtering through a thick cloth. There was no other way to drink clean water in my childhood. Luckily I never became sick with any water-borne disease, which was very common in those days. As a child I ate rice or jawar, which is what we called millet, along with many kinds of mutton curries, cooked by my grandmother. Rice and jawar were our staple foods. We ate lots of fruits from trees in the forest around the village: tuniki, pariki, zinne (which are like blackberries). In every season roasting the palm fruit and eating it was a part of our lives. In our area there was no coconut crop at all. The evening drink of palm juice called thati kallu and in certain seasons eetha kallu was the best part of life. The meat certainly must have helped my memory, because for a lean frail bodied man of my size, having the memory that I have at least till my sixty-fifth year is not common. Once I read or saw anything I never forgot it. Most of my writing was done based on my memory power, with a ‘mind storage’ of facts in my investigative process. I had tremendous curiosity to learn everything new. This was the greatest gift that I have received from my childhood. The usefulness of kallu and popular fish pulusu available in and around the Telangana, tanks, wells and small rivulets, particularly during the summer season, when the water level gets dipped, were never studied by food scientists. The palm and eetha kallu available in this region seems to be good for human health, particularly consumed fresh from the tree and in limited quantity. As I

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have said, it may have helped me in strengthening my memory and health. Every day was a working day for me. I had a working healthy body along with a reflective mind. That was the beauty of my life. I never was a pessimist. Optimism is part of my being. The korramenu fish is like the hilsa fish in the Bengal region. Right now it is the costliest fish touching around `700–800 a kilo in the off season in Hyderabad. My grandmother was an expert in cooking dry fish curry or dry mutton curry using tamarind liquid mixed up with red chilli powder, salt, ginger paste, some coconut powder and ground nut oil. Later as an adult I craved for dry fish and mutton pulusu. Fortunately my sisters and sister-in-law cooked the fish, mutton or other curries ­ with the same formula. My sister-in-law says that when her mother, Dayyala Laxamma, cooked dry fish and dry meat curries; the whole village would crave to eat what she had cooked. Some of our women were great experts in cooking very tasty food. To me, the brahminic vegetarian dishes are nothing in comparison with our food tastes. The Brahmins of South India in certain respects might differ from the North India or they might differ from those of eastern India (Bengali Brahmins or Oriya Brahmins) but one thing is common. Their agreement with Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, the Gita, which are written in their interest but not in the interest of all are treated by all of them as their historical heritage. Some treat them as fallible and some treat them as infallible. Their food cultures and names might differ from region to region but blood is known as Brahmin blood. Some might eat fish some not, some might eat mutton some not but they have one common thread called upanayana (sacred) thread. In a way, a thread on the body of only some has spoiled this nation’s cohesion. Because they and Bengali Brahmins define any non-Muslim, non-Christian, non-Buddhist people as Hindu. They too wear sacred thread that other castes do not wear. And unfortunately

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they call it sacred thread and deny it to others, who are said to be Hindus but Shudra Hindus, Namashudra Hindus, and so on. There are different cultural and spiritual traits of Shudras and Brahmins across the country. The most significant common thing is social inequality between the Brahmin and Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. Their naturalization of the inequality is the most critical and most inhuman. But the Brahmins constructed that theory and Shudras accepted it. I rebelled against it more vehemently than Bali did, than Kabir did than Tukaram did. I never recognized Brahmin superiority in any field. I thought that they were/are isolationists in all spheres of life. As a child I ate a good quantity of jawar crushed and cooked in water, known as gadka. We could not afford rice every day. Eating rice three times a day was what rich people like landlords did. We could eat rice only once in a day and that was at night and twice jawar with curry or buttermilk; our ideal meal was eating meat and drinking kallu. Even while going to school our half-free Saturday and full-free Sunday were spent with cattle and roaming in the forest for collecting fruit. When the crops were growing, eating green gram from plants and plucking ground nut from the standing crop was what we did often. The whole day we played and ate something or the other that nature ­ rimary provided till we finished Class 5 in our village p school. There were caste collective festival days on which the whole caste would cook outside the home, either at the sheep sleeping place or in the nearby hillocks. It was called baiti vanta. On that day cooking of varieties of mutton items with different modes of soup formations was exciting for school-going children like us, as we played chirragoney till the food and kallu were ready. Mutton was cooked in a separate pot and the head and intestines in two separate pots. The soup made of head and intestines was great with rice. Eating well-cooked mutton cooked in the village way with hot chillies was wonderful to eat while drinking kallu.

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The morning kallu called neera gives mild intoxication and the body strength enhances. Having drunk and eaten we would play the whole day. Once the feast was ready we came and drank the kallu first along with all the male members of the caste, who were the first to eat and drink. Such baiti vanta took place in the forenoons and kallu drinking at that time was known as poddati kallu (morning kallu). Generally the morning kallu was sweet, whereas the evening kallu was sour. Children like us would enjoy morning kallu. If the mutton was available in good quantity while drinking kallu we ate just mutton curry along with the drink and of course later with rice again. On all such occasions every family cooked only rice not jawar because the notion of festival did not go well with jawar food. Even the poorest of the poor would make efforts only to cook rice. That was because jawar food was known as poor people’s food. The other food item of our family that was regularly relished was fish. My village had a tank and a river where one type or the other of fish would get caught by a village tribal community called Nayakapus. They would bring fish and exchange it in measured qualities for paddy or jawar. This was a regular source of fish for us. Every other day my family would take such fish, washing them carefully before cooking. The final washing was with unpurified salt. The villagers knew that washing fish in salt would not only clean them very well but remove the smell from the fish. Every woman knows how to cook fish and unfortunately men know only how to eat. That was the worst part of our village, caste and family patriarchal life. The most liked way of cooking was chapala pulusu. There was also fish fry but fried fish would not go well with rice as eating with rice required gravy. The fired fish would go very well with kallu or sara (local made liquor). However, I did not like liquor. In my childhood there was no foreign liquor in our villages. What was available was the brewed liquor

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made out of jaggery or mahua fruit. In the 1960s the state government started supplying its own brewed liquor, which was costlier. I did not like either; seemed harsh and unnatural. For me the best part of life was playing and eating mutton or fish. Occasionally we also caught fish in the ponds or in the drying up streams, which we enjoyed as we felt we had earned it. I always liked my contribution of fish and fruit to the food basket in my family. We hardly knew about buying food items. In that sense our village economy was self-sufficient as Marx understood it. But that self-sufficiency was primitive in many other respects. The Telangana villages were like that because of their dis-connectivity from the British ruled areas. We were governed by the Nizam’s autocracy. The Nizam’s rule was not innovative in many areas. Taxation was also abnormal in that rule, which was controlled by local feudatories. Chapala pulusu is made by first preparing a thick tamarind liquid. Then chillies, garlic paste, burnt onion paste, ginger paste and jeera and methi powder, masalas and coconut powder are mixed in the liquid and boiled. As it keeps getting thickened the fish pieces are put in the boiling pulusu pan. As soon as the fish is cooked, peppers are added at the end. Chapala pulusu was made for the dinner and mutton or chicken curries cooked in chillies with masala were eaten at lunch time. Later I ate a Bengali fish curry also. There was a basic difference in the taste and also texture of the curry. We never had a separate breakfast and tea drinking culture in my childhood and school days. The village culture has its own lifestyle, apart from the caste lifestyle. Irrespective of caste there were certain commonalities in food culture. But as I said in Why I Am Not a Hindu we never had an occasion to eat the curries cooked in Brahmin-Baniya families. Whenever fish, mutton or chicken were not available our family food time was boring. Occasionally dal and

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tamarind soup called patchipulusu was the best vegetarian resort. The worst day was when the rainy season cooking of family grown vegetables like brinjal, beerakaya or sorakaya, ladies fingers and so on took place and children would protest. It was a grumbling day for the elders. My father would hate such curries. The last and the worst option was tamarind liquid boiled with rice powder mixing in it and boiled to a point that it becomes a thick soup with garlic and onion in good quantity with necessary chilly and masalas along with a boiled egg. It is called chinthapandu pulusu. They used to make chinthapanduthokku, what is known as achar, in the North. On such occasions it was painful food consumption. When I went out with the sheep and the goats, we ate our morning food around 9 a.m., which was known as buvva yalla (all working people eat a full meal around that time). For the afternoon we carried jawar gadka mixed with buttermilk. I used to like milk and curd but that was available only occasionally. In the summer season we had a good amount of buttermilk and I would drink or eat jawar with buttermilk along with mango pickle. That was good but only now and then. My brother hated buttermilk and curd. I ate this kind of food till I finished Class 5. Maybe I was 12 by then. After that both my brother and I joined Class 6 at Gudur where we had to cook for ourselves. From Class 6 to B.A. I ate horrible food. I lost the sense of taste during that period. Once I joined M.A. and started living in the Osmania hostel I began to eat urban quality food with weekly chicken and mutton and an occasional egg. The notion of breakfast with a cup of tea came into my life only in Osmania University hostel. Quite sadly I lost my regular kallu drinking from Class 6 onwards. Alli Eearavva said while we were joining the Gudur school, ‘My children, how do you get kallu and good food there? Do not waste life on such studies.’ But the hunger for education made us leave all that. But whenever I went home I drank it, as I do so even now.

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In my food narrative there was no beef item. I ate beef for the first time in the Christian Medical College Hospital Canteen, at Vellore, only in 1979, as a sustainable item, when I had no money for my brother’s open heart surgery and hardly for good food. I then discovered a life-saving dish, beef, cheap and I ate it almost every day. If I had a brahminic brain I would not have eaten it but would have hated myself for eating beef which was never cooked in my family. In South India I cannot imagine a Brahmin eating beef unless one is expelled from the brahminic cultural realm. In western India where the Hindutva vegetarianism took a political shape, beef is an anti-national word. The question that enlightened me most was why beefarians became such great doctors who could save my brother’s life. When I was with the Left movement till the late 1990s I discussed the need for having beefarian food during our meetings. The Marxist, Leninist groups, particularly the leaders, were mostly from Shudra upper castes like Reddy and Kamma were giving more respect to the BrahminBaniya sentiment than to their own historical food culture. Food cultural superiority and inferiority relationships were established as historical norms of Indian society. Even in the communist movement there was not much debate on the food culture of India because it was again based on caste culture. Since all Brahmin-Baniya families in the Telugu region eat only vegetarian food, those who joined the movement continued to eat in the same way. The Shudras had no hesitation to offer Brahmins pure vegetarian food. Occasionally they would serve chicken or mutton but they were opposed to serving beef. For example, the main leader of one of the revolutionary groups was Devulapally Venkateswar Rao, a Brahmin, who would eat only vegetarian food. He was said to be the revolutionary theoretician. How did he theorize the working class life without respecting or even adopting their food cultural life? After all, 99 percent of the Indian working class ate meat.

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There were many communists who were said to be l­eaders and theoreticians of the communist parties and most of them were very brahminical vegetarians. They never lived in any lower-caste house even for a day because of the food culture problem. The Brahmins would not allow inter-caste marriages in India. I know many Dalitbahujan youth who married Brahmin women and they had to become vegetarian, but hardly any Brahmin woman could become a meatarian in such a situation, particularly in South India. There are exceptional elite Brahmin families like that of Rama Melkote and Vasantha Kannabiran. But my good friends Veena Shatrugna’s family was pure vegetarian. Shatrugna was a Baniya by caste. Of late, the Brahmins have transformed this kind of caste cultural food differentiation into a religious one. When the BJP was/is in power, it banned beef in India thinking that it would affect only the Muslims. But it affected the whole country’s food basket. The BJP has OBCs and Dalits in its party and they go by the Party’s brahminic understanding. They do so with a view that political power would come to them only with that compromise. Even Buddhist Dalits like Udit Raj, Ramdas Athwale and so on went into the BJP politics purely for political power and the economic power that accompanies the political power. Once in the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee I said that at the time of its annual conference of 1995 that the organization should serve beef. All the Brahmin leaders in that organization suddenly went cold and silent. But an OBC leader from Warangal called Burra Ramulu said, ‘We will serve beef at the Warangal conference’ and he did so. Not many Brahmin activists ate beef on that day. But I remember Balagopal did eat it. If the brahminic spiritual culture, food culture, are not changed the working class food culture and spiritual culture would not come to the hegemonic position. Now the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh as an organization has adopted vegetarianism. They

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enrol Dalitbahujans into that organization and convert them into vegetarianism. What attracts Dalitbahujans to them is the money power they offer. The RSS and the BJP get enormous financial resources since most Baniyas contribute funds. Earlier, the same Brahmins did not allow them to become even literates. Now the Brahmins in the RSS are converting Dalitbahujans into vegetarianism so that their brains will not grow. Dalit/OBC/Adivasis as community are huge in numbers. If meat and beef kind of food items are taken out of their food basket they not only starve but also many may die as well. No religion in the world has food restrictions like the one that Brahminism has. Even the Muslims who are against eating pork adopted several exceptional clauses in order to eat and survive. Hence the fight against brahminic food culture major task. Their vegetarianism will weaken the nation further. Converting Dalit/OBC/Adivasis to vegetarianism is a modern conspiracy. Why do the Dalitbahujans agree? They agree for the same reason for which they remained illiterate without any fight. The caste culture created a psychological framework among them that whatever the Brahmin-Baniyas do would be the inevitable thing in their living process. Ambedkar was the most successful Dalit in the whole of Indian history. Mahatma Phule tried but he was not so successful as Ambedkar was because the Shudras were more willing to be co-opted by Brahminism. The Shudras were/are more manipulated as they were not untouchables and there were graded inequalities among them. The graded inequalities were used to the advantage of the Brahmins. That is the reason why there is a need for a cultural revolution in India that involves the Shudras more and more. The brahminic forces in general and within the Sangh Parivar instigate the Dalitbahujans to attack me. They encouraged a 22-year-old Dalit, K. Nagaraju, to file an SC/ ST atrocity case at Malkajgiri Police Station of Hyderabad

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on 11 October 2017, stating that my writings have insulted his Hindu Dalithood. The Hindu intolerance and conspiratorial mechanisms that got built into the system for millennia were responsible for expansion of other religions in the Indian subcontinent like Islam and Christianity and for the emergence of new religions like Sikhism, Navayana Buddhism, Lingayat Dharma in India itself. My lifetime experiment with food culture was opposite to that of Gandhi’s food culture and the Sangh Parivar’s. Even today because of Gandhi this food culture carries more legitimacy. Mahatma Gandhi took up a massive campaign in favour of vegetarianism. He talked about its sacredness and pureness and that was enough to influence others. After his death in the areas of Gandhi ashrams, both at Sabarmati and Wardha, vegetarianism was imposed by the state itself. Hindutva Brahminism is using that Gandhian legitimacy to lynch cattle traders—­ particularly Muslims and Dalits. Even the Nehruvians, who are for the multicuisine food culture are unable to counter the Hindutva onslaught of vegetarianism. But a day will come this very vegetarianism will weaken India and China, which has multicuisine food culture, will overtake India in every respect. If there is war between these two countries China will win because of its most energetic food and Karate culture. The Hindutva vegetarianism and yoga will not see us win in any sphere of life. My experiment shows that unless the nation adopts the Dalitist food culture the nation cannot produce world class ideas, energy and strength. The younger generation needs to rebel against pure vegetarianism and experiment with food culture the way I experimented. Timidity is a cultural value of Brahminism. There are brahminical forces that think that Dalitism remained under the control of Brahminism because of its timidity and lack of creative ideas that could challenge Brahminism. These forces think that depending on reservation is nothing but timidity. The Dalitbahujans lost the battle with Brahminism because

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of lack of education. As I have said many times, if Indian English education is de-privatized and all caste and class children get English-medium common school education Brahminism will die a natural death. There will not be reservation in any sphere of life. Of course, the brahminic forces would never accept that cultural value. The brahminic system tolerated Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar as there were the British masters above them, with a sympathetic ear and eye. In the post-­independence period Brahminism has acquired complete control over the civil and political administrative structures. The only safeguard is the Indian constitution. I have tried to use that constitutional space to write. But the process I have shown in this memoir is torturous. I have refused to accept brahminic culture, history as it is un-Indian. I have never emulated them. A teacher, who does not sit with his students, a teacher, who does not touch all his/her students, a teacher who has no multiple food cultural values, was never a good teacher in my opinion. No good teacher would be intolerant. When my older brother developed a serious heart problem, discussed earlier, I was working as the organizing secretary of the Organization for the Protection of the Democratic Rights (OPDR), apart from being a lecturer. I was 32. I decided to shift my brother’s family and put their three children in the school at Hyderabad. By then the elder daughter, Rama Devi, had completed Class 6, the next boy Krishna Kanth had completed Class 4 and youngest one, Naresh, about 5, was not at school. We admitted them in different schools. Both Rama and Krishna Kanth were admitted in a small Telugu-medium school and Naresh was put in a small private English-medium school in Ramnagar area of Hyderabad. Subsequently my sister’s youngest son, Surender, and her deaf and dumb ­daughter, Bala, were also put in schools in Hyderabad, as she had wanted. After a few years the deaf and dumb girl died.

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My sister-in-law looked after all those children’s education though she is illiterate through her common sense and also her sick husband while I did my job and the civil rights work. She realized the importance of Englishmedium education. Her youngest son Naresh was just admitted in Telugu-medium Class 1 but she shifted him to English-medium without even telling me. That was because all children of his age (5 years) were going to the English-medium school, which was nearby our rented place. Her two elder children, Ramadevi and Krishna Kanth, were admitted in Class 7 and Class 5 in Telugu-medium. They completed their school education only in Telugumedium. They shifted to English-medium from Class 12 onwards (known as Intermediate first year). They had to struggle a lot to catch up with English-medium classmates of theirs. My sister-in-law seems to have realized that even maids were putting their children in the English-medium schools. The hunger for English-medium education even among the urban working class was catching up in the early 1980s. In the villages the struggle was for Telugumedium education itself. There were not enough schools even of Telugu medium with qualified teachers. As I said earlier, my brother’s family shifted to Hyderabad in 1984 for his medical treatment. The whole family life changed with that shift. From family-centred cooking methods and tastes and restaurant tastes there is basic formula change. I noticed in the village cuisine that the same item curry’s taste changes from family to family. But once I started eating university mess food every item had a routine formula taste which I liked for some time and later got bored with it. Similarly no star hotel, three star or five star hotel, restaurant food item have set formula taste that have no family touch. I still enjoy my childhood taste of fish (wet or dry) or mutton curry of home formula, which differs day-to-day. It has nothing to do with my education, the amount of travelling

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I undertake, living in high-end hotels. The tongue craves for the childhood taste. During my brother’s illness, I used to travel all over the united Andhra Pradesh for fact-finding and public meetings. By then I became a good public speaker, apart from being a good report and article writer in English and Telugu. My Brahmin friends working in the APCLC never appreciated my writing, except K.G. Kannabiran, who had a critical view of Brahminism. The OPDR with which I worked in my formatives days of my engagement with Kammas were well-exposed intellectuals. They had no abilities to write in English. They were handling democratic rights questions within the Telugu region. I had to handle both teaching work in the university and also the civil rights work, apart from my writing. The Kammas like other Shudras are a very rich community with a regional power base, but it has not produced a single thinker or philosopher who could write in English and acquire a pan Indian name. This kind of intellectual and philosophical underdevelopment of Shudras is surprising. My Kamma friends were handling democratic rights questions only within the Telugu region. Without English, this would be so. Since then I have lived with my brother’s family. All the three children now live abroad with their spouses and have children of their own. Surender became a journalist and lives in Hyderabad. Rama married Dr. Sheri Anjaneyulu, a scientist from Reddypally of Ranga Reddy district. This marriage is within the caste. Krishna Kanth married Barbara from Poland, Naresh married Lakshmi from Hyderabad. My sister-in-law had grown up in a similar illiterate family under a slightly autocratic father as its head. Both the boys’ marriages were outside the caste. The Polish girl was a non-orthodox Catholic. She speaks in English to her mother-in-law. Reasonably good communication got established between them with some words and signals.

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My sister-in-law now keeps talking in ­ungrammatical English with her five grandchildren growing in the US and UK. She also manages to communicate in broken words with her Polish daughter-in-law. However, at times she thinks that this kind of life where all children are abroad is not a good life. Most of the time she is worried about the three of us growing old (she is sixty now and my brother is seventy) and with nobody to look after us in this country. In villages in several families parents and children live a herded life and that appears meaningful to her. According my sister-in-law children should study and do government jobs within the nearby environment. Her grandchildren eat beef and pork (particularly the Polish mother’s sons) and she accepts that cultural change. According to her, if young people should live around their children the old people should live around the grandchildren. Foreign migration takes away that meaningful life. This kind of migration made life meaningless to her. However, any big cultural high jump creates a cultural crisis and trauma as I have seen through several families, including mine. The first generation like that of my sister-in-law suffers enormous trauma of cultural shift. My brother knows nothing because he lives like a child with his chronic heart ailment. The far-off foreign migration of the children and the parental cultural rooting in the Indian village system of caste and non-universal religious and food practices create a whole range of frustrations and breakdowns. Maybe because of that small cultural setting back home, which has no regular congregative life because of caste, the Indian migrants live somewhat happier than say Chinese or Pakistani (Muslim) migrants to the countries like US and Canada. In my view the 1990s and 2000s were greatest rural born, first generation educated migrations to the West that took place from South India. My brother’s family is one among many lonely old parents living between newly created pleasure and pain life of phone and face-time talking to their children and

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grandchildren living abroad. I never asked my brother’s children whether they share my views and ideas. Does one generation suffer from this kind of migrations from villages to urban locations to far-off advanced capitalist countries, which have different food, religious cultural ethos or that will also become normal over a few generations going back and forth even between nations and continents? If my experience and observation is any guide there is massive cultural conflict among the first and second generation educated families that shifted from small regional language to English, from their village-­level food culture to larger standardized restaurant food cultural tastes of urban area. My sister-in-law does not like the taste of any restaurant food. Constantly she thinks that she should send the same handmade hot spicy, more salted food items, chutneys—mango, mutton, fish, red chilly chutneys—to them when they come or by courier. She thinks that her grandchildren born in the US and UK should also eat and enjoy her handmade food items as her sons and daughter did. But there is great food cultural disconnect between her and the grandchildren. Her children also have undergone continental food cultural change. Their children have no connection to her cooking. That is a sad situation for her. My sister-in-law’s village was near Mahabubabad town called Shanigapuram, and they were more exposed to a semi-urban life than us. Her mother trained her to cook more or less the way my grandmother and mother cooked. She worked very hard, cooking for dozens of people. My organization activists, including some of the so-called underground leaders of the Nagi Reddy group, dumped themselves in my small rented house in Ramnagar. It was in this small rented house I wrote my Ph.D. thesis (‘God as Political Philosopher’) and Why I Am Not a Hindu. I also travelled a lot in the rural areas during that critical times. Yet another critical book Post-Hindu India was written in a two bedroom flat that we collectively bought

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in Taranaka. I had the habit of constantly setting up a personal book writing projecting apart from other work. I developed the habit of writing on an everyday basis. All of the Nagi Reddy group leaders were Shudras, the food culture problem was not so disturbing. What was disturbing was their male chauvinism. They had no habit of washing their own plates after eating. They expected only women to wash these. I was not in a financial position to employ a maid. There was only one Brahmin colleague of mine in the movement, K.J. Rama Rao, who used to eat everything including pork. This man was not allowed to engage with other Brahmins. He was from Vijayawada which is a Brahmin centre in Andhra. Because of Kamma rebellion against the Brahmins in the twentieth century the Brahmins sold off most of their agrahara lands and migrated to Vijayawada from villages. Rama Rao was a rebel among them. Some of these underground leaders were a lazy lot, discussing useless strategies for days and days was their main task. Bharathi cooked food for all of them. One can imagine if revolutionary communist men are so oppressive of women how would the RSS kind of men operate in the homes that offer shelter. Women are worst sufferers even in the movement of change or status quo. I preferred change, that is how one should be. If I were to somehow get into RSS kind network, perhaps I would have committed suicide. I pasted posters on the buses in the morning, then taught in the famous Nizam College in the afternoon. I used to address a press conference about violation of civil and democratic rights in the afternoon and in the evening addressed a public meeting in the same Press Club at Basheer Bagh of Hyderabad. Finally, on a so-called ideological difference, the political group expelled me, and I resigned from all their networks at once in 1986. All that happened for good but I definitely feel guilty for making my sister-in-law serve all those people for six and a half years, and she did not know what the activity was all about.

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She was not interested in knowing our political agendas. She used to cook for them and serve them because they were coming for me. She hardly understood what that revolution was; what the civil and democratic rights were. She served those unkind people because I brought her husband and children to Hyderabad to help her. I am saying ‘unkind’ because they made my brother family’s migration from village to Hyderabad, as that changed my course of becoming a full time revolutionary, an issue of expulsion. Before my brother came to Hyderabad I was planning to resign my job and take up full time revolutionary work. If I were to become a full time revolutionary even that would not have allowed me to write what I write and do what I do. By the way I am a good eater, apart from being good writer and good speaker, relishing the food cooked by my sister-in-law for all these years and earlier my grandmother and my sisters. I also ate anything that came my way. Caste never came in my way of eating. I ate in tribal houses, Dalit houses and of course in many Shudra houses and also in many Brahmin houses. I never believed in demanding what I prefer for food. That was my strength, not weakness. It was with that strength I wrote what I wrote. In Hyderabad it was a completely village-shepherd-­ cultural environment. My family celebrated their village festivals back in my village. The culture of Beerappa festival and Pochamma festival were always maintained by them, as the family was in touch with the village and though I myself did not participate, those cultural systems were alive around me. Since I had established an Englishmedium school in my village I too was in touch with the village. Hence my food, many of my habits remained as they always had been; in other words, the village was reflected in me. In India reading and writing books, articles and poetry are known as Brahmin work, apart from the ritual recitation in Sanskrit language. This has been changing somewhat

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but the hegemony of Brahminism in writing remains even today. Brahmin children are made to mug up texts, and are not really reading from their childhood. Mostly the mantra pattana takes place only by recitation but not by reading in the presence of people. In the process, however, they also acquired a reading habit, which did not happen in our case. What we were as children trained to do was to play in the wild, go along with sheep or goat or with buffaloes, cows and bulls. Later, my caste people were trained to do farming. That work had its own discipline. However, the work of reading and writing requires an altogether different discipline. We were supposed to fail in the work of reading and writing as the Brahmins were supposed to fail in shepherding or farming. The rest of the social segments can, perhaps, do both with a little bit adaptation. The only social segment that had historical roots, cattle herding, which has gone completely out of it is the Baniya segment. They are now more comfortable among the Brahmins than in any other segment or caste/ community of the society. I could certainly be counted among the few OBCs who have made a contribution to understanding why there is so little social justice in Indian society throughout the ages. I also wrote on the contemporary situation where analysis had sharpened and orthodoxy had a different name called Hindutva. That someone like me could do the research and the writing, when I have such a disadvantaged background—I was the first in my family to gain an education—does seem surprising. The odds were against me but I struggled to surmount them. It was more difficult for me to do this than Dr. Ambedkar, who received much encouragement from his Brahmin teacher, who gave him his name and, before that, from his remarkable Mahar family. His father was a soldier. They lived near towns, they were exposed to books. Dr. Ambedkar had the chance to study at Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. My main advantage perhaps was that I was not

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an untouchable like him and did not suffer that social brutality. Maybe that gave me some confidence and courage to overcome other disadvantages. Ambedkar could not even a get job after acquiring his Ph.D. at Columbia, one of the best universities in the world. My situation was different. Because of his struggle I had a stable job, though I had to go through several ups and downs in that position because of my writings. Thus I am indebted to Ambedkar in many ways. More than anything he was my model for writing, an example to emulate. However, I did not have any support and my education took place in the village school and then later at Osmania University. It has been a lonely struggle with indifference from colleagues, and a lack of encouragement and appreciation from the Left activists I worked with in the OPDR and APCLC. I was criticized for my approach and writing by the forces of the Left. The Right made several attempts to attack me physically, very regularly emotionally and ideologically not with decency. Even so, I wrote my books that made a tremendous impact on the reading public. My books, many key ones written in English, have had a major impact in supporting the cause of the Dalitbahujans struggles and life. Some have been translated into Indian languages without my knowing it; such is the demand for the truth that I wrote about the caste system and what it has done to human beings. Why I Am Not a Hindu has been partially translated into two foreign languages: French and Chinese. I have written hundreds of articles in journals. I have, in short, become a public intellectual on behalf of the Dalitbahujans through my own efforts. Writing in English has been a difficult task for me. There is a fear that people like me cannot grasp that language to bring it to a sophisticated communication level. When we were not considered to be good writers in Telugu, where is the question of hoping to write for a national or global readership in English? That was/is their doubt

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and it sounded logical also. However, my experience also proved that one can do very good writing and contribute to change of the historical course, after having come from absolutely illiterate family provided one learns a language like English, which communicates to people, who have no caste/community biases. So there is a difference between reading in English and reading the same thing in regional language in terms of perception. Though English is also known as a hierarchical language as the English people themselves said in so many ways, in India it worked as a language of power and larger communication to various states in India and also other nations. That is where its strength is. It is here that the regional languages create a barrier. Hyderabad is not known as intellectual book reading and book writing city. In India, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru are known as centres of learning and discussion. Throughout my writing life I was a loner. My university colleagues never believed what I was writing was going to make any impact. Many of them laughed at my effort and struggle. They thought I was wasting my life with a job, as I was not married and not produced children as they had. Historically Shudras like Yadava, Kurumas or other artisanal castes were supposed to produce food, work on services and serve others. They were also supposed to produce themselves, as future labour power. They were not supposed to produce new ideas that other human beings should learn from them. In my colleagues’ view, instead of producing books that had no value for them I should have tried for some power positions in the university or in the political system. The academic environment was not meant for serious intellectual writing in my university. In the view of many of my colleagues only Europeans, Americans or the Indian Brahmins can do that but not persons from Ilaiah’s background. The feudal environment also contributed to this kind of academic cultural atmosphere.

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However, they hardly realized that it was book writing that has kept the Euro-Americans where they are and the Indian Brahmins where they are. In ancient India, it was the Vedas, Arthashastra, Manudharma Shastra that established their hegemony. Later most of the writings were done by Brahmins, whatever ideological school they may have belonged to. I realized that quite early in my academic career and decided to break that glass ceiling. I had set up a timetable for reading and writing. The timetable was modelled on the historical timetable of the shepherds and tillers. Reading and writing for me were as much tasks like shepherding and tilling the land from morning to evening. In my timetable evenings were meant for entertainment or games and night was meant for sleeping. I never believed in late night reading or writing. I did those things only during the whole of day. I used to do that doggedly from my graduation days and I continue with this timetable today. I had to learn another discipline: that of getting up early, drinking a litre of water early morning and going for a walk for about an hour. I became a diabetic and hypertension-ridden person by the age of 45. I had to ­ manage my health. In the early 1990s I went to a small town called Nandyal in Kurnool district. I stayed in a young lawyer’s house and his wife told me that if you have BP or ‘sugar’ the best way to manage it is to drink a minimum of one litre water early morning and walk every day. Since then I have followed her advice. I would also eat a bellyful food by 9 a.m. Eat a light lunch and as much as possible by 1 or 1.30 p.m. and also eat a reasonably moderate dinner, with whatever curry is available. I tried to eat chapati as much as possible. I never believed in any kind of superstitious values and ritualistic order in life. After my mother’s death I never visited any religious place for a religious purpose. That does not mean I did not see temples, churches, mosques, viharas

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for understanding religions, culture and architecture and so on. I loved tourism as education. Travelling, I believe, is a great educator. While travelling, talking to poor, middle class and rich about their culture, history has also been my hobby. I learnt a lot through this method of understanding human societies and their culture. I travelled throughout India, including many villages. My in depth understanding of Telugu society through study, discussion, visiting and living in poor, middle class and rich houses, irrespective of castes has been part of my study of India. I would eat any kind of food in any religious, caste house. Talking to women about various aspects of life helped me in gaining new insights of life, culture, conflicts, friendships, and so on. I discovered that every small house is a history of India in itself. Studying such houses as part of the study of Indian history, heritage and culture is a key in my methodology. No Brahmin or Baniya anthropologist, or sociologist or historian (of any ideological school) can get into the cultural layers of Indian society because the vast majority of people’s food, house environment, drinks available in their houses, human bodies and their physicality, and so on, are not liked by them. Some brahminic sociologists with these limitations studied tribal societies, but their studies of the Dalit/OBC societies are meagre. Even those tribal studies were descriptive in nature. I felt in a country like India social scientists should take up more and more transformative studies. Human equality should be a goal of scholars, as inequality is a major problem. I have definite views about the good and the bad. I know the good and bad smells, I have preferences but as a student of Indian society, culture and history I decided to study each such culture. Several Brahmin-Baniyas who read their own sacred books do not read my books or articles, particularly men, because they have very closed minds. Even if they read they do so not change their attitude towards production

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and the productive communities but to attack me and the communities I stand for. The mainstream media does not want to engage much with the Dalitbahujan literature because it looks un-Indian other than for those brahminic forces working in it and also the owners of the media. Unless an alternate media emerges which the Dalitbahujan own and work for themselves, the change of course would run through a difficult path. I always believed that I should write and educate the Dalitbahujan in a tone that they could understand their life, history and culture as not inferior but in fact superior. I was never a heavy drinker. I never wanted to be anti-­ alcohol or a teetotaller. From kallu to high quality foreign liquor I drink in very limited quantity. I drink in a manner that it should enhance my working ability but never decrease it. At the same I am not a slave of any particular habit, except that of reading and writing. I never slept on very soft foam bed. I like sleeping on hard cot or floor. Too many luxurious things around irritate me. I hate perfume. I enjoy everything that is natural. I enjoy the beauty of the nature, colourful trees, flowers, grass, birds, animal as my childhood was spent amidst them. I weep when I see the utter poverty of people, particularly of children, helplessness of people. I hate semi-nakedness. My father lived all along semi-naked. Most of the Dalits and OBCs in my village or in the area lived like that. Any such sympathetic semi-nakedness like that of Mahatma Gandhi or that my friend Gaddar (who was known as a revolutionary write and while singing he is semi-naked) is abhorrent. Now he has given up that dress code. He started dressing a shirt with a tie to his neck. Any such dramatically put up dress code would annoy me. I hate it. Not that I do not respect the choice of persons. But that choice, for me, should be on the side of upward mobility. It is with this kind of eating, drinking, reading, writing way of life that I adopted I could overcome my physical weakness. I am troubled with constipation. I managed

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with my lifestyle. I manage my BP/sugar problem with this kind of life. My understanding of money and property is that these two things are meant for facilitating our day-to-day work. I believe that human beings should live by working not by exploiting others’ labour. I wrote, Why I Am Not a Hindu (translated into Hindi and many other languages too); Post-Hindu India, Buffalo Nationalism; God as Political Philosopher; The Weapon of the Other; Untouchable God (a novel) Dignity of Labour in Our Times. I also wrote Manatatwam (Our Philosophy), Feudalism Mallochindi (Feudalism Has Come back Again), Birth without Birthday, in Telugu. Apart from these I also wrote hundreds of articles in English and Telugu dailies and weeklies. I also wrote some important research papers in well-known journals like Economic and Political Weekly, Mainstream, Secular Democracy, Social Science Probings, and so on. However, pure academic research is limited to the academic needs. My love for writing is to change the society that I live in. During my crucial writing times I spend sleepless nights, not because I sit and write in the nights. Sometimes I begin to think while going to sleep. My thinking process continues unendingly. Usually it is during that time when I keep rolling in the bed that I cracked the best of ideas. Since I developed a method of first choosing the title of the book or the article then move on to write, it is rigorous thinking that matters. Most of my book/article titles occurred in such sleepless suffering. Most of my readers ask me how do I choose such catchy titles? It is that sleepless thinking that produces ideas of alternative thinking. I never believed in resting or in over working; I follow the methodology of shepherd. Why I Am Not a Hindu has discussed the basic problems in the Hindu religion and Post-Hindu India has shown a way out. I hope that the Indian Dalitbahujans and Adivasis in future will understand what I wrote much better in the light of the story of my life. The brahminical

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organizations, writers and Hindutva organizations, in which there are several Dalitbahujans and Adivasis, have been accusing me of being anti-national. Of course they have given this label for many they do not agree with. This is the story of my life. It tells how deep my feet are dug into the soil and culture and the economy of this land. I hope for the best for this land and people. God Bless India.

Index

ABVP, 91, 111–13, 117, 201, 202, 203 Adivasis, 127, 218 Ambedkar, B.R., x, xii, 13, 112, 124, 129, 345 Annihilation of Caste, 169, 307 black writings, 134–35 Brahmin name, 191, 344 Buddha and His Dhamma, 154, 238 as Buddhist, 236 ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’, 135 critiques, 136, 147 education, 220, 222, 232 Mandal movement and, 13 quoted, 131 Who Were the Shudras? 137 wife, 102, 104–05 Anand, Mulk Raj, 236 Andhra Jyothy, x, 186, 237 Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, 335, 340 Arya Vysyas, x–xi, 138, 244, 270, 287, 298, 312, 316–17, 337 bhadralok, 162, 171, 176, 178–79, 185, 233 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), 145, 281–282 Bhakti movement, 285

Baniya, ix, xiv, xvi, 4, 201. See also Brahmin-Baniya Bharatiya Jana Sangh, x, xvi, 230, 286, 313, 317, 334, 335 Arya Vysyas, 298, 317 Author’s view, 323 banning beef, 334 Brahmin-Baniya, 44–45, 127 against apartheid, 189 agricultural pollution, 251 as communists, 129, 131, 144. See also communists; Communist Party of India (M) as deceivers, 255 as educators, 255–57 anti-English for others, 171, 188, 269 and food, 141. See also food culture. hegemony of knowledge, 291, 344 and Kamasutra, 108, 164 and lower castes, 94, 166, 168 non-violence, Jainism, 257 as philosophers, 159–60 as priests, 254–55 and reservation. See reservation as scholars, 139–31 Shudra intellectuals, 175. See also castes and untouchability, 299

Index against UN Conference on Racism, 292. See also UN Conference on Racism writers Amartya Sen, 248–50 Gayatri Spivak, 149, 184 Justice Party, 261 Neera Chandhoke, 196 Nirad C. Chaudhuri, 241–42, 267 P.V. Kane, 261 Partha Chatterjee, 149, 173, 184 Rabindranath Tagore, 261, 288 Raja Rammohan Roy, 266 Ranajit Guha, 149 Romila Thapar, 135–36 S. Radhakrishnan, 238–39, 260, 261, 321 Brahminism, xiv, 15, 121, 125, 135, 138, 140, 188, 215, 251, 296 Buddha, 13, 104, 119, 125, 153–54, 160, 175, 285, 319 caste system, x, xii, 32, 141, 147, 148, 157, 160, 161, 103, 197, 283 brahmin support, 188, 189 castelessness, 175–77 castes and the constitution, xi, 159, 296, 303, 307, 315, 338 Dalits Chakali, 21, 26, 71, 74 Golla-Kurumas, 25, 28, 38, 44, 143, 145, 152, 172, 178 Lambadas, 27, 74, 210, 222

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Madigas, 20, 26–27, 54, 69, 74, 89, 93, 94, 148, 210, 302 Madiga Dandora, 282 Mala 143 Shudras, 157, 179 anti-Arya Vysas, 298 Brahmin hegemony of, 193, 258–59, 174–75, 192–93, 258–59, 287, 336 education, 206, 207–08 ezhavas, 112, 236 Gandhism, 284–85 intellectuals, 175 Kammas, 170, 174, 222, 233 Kapus, 27, 170 Kurmis, 145 Marathas, 145 Mudaliars, 143 and priesthood, 207 Reddy, 25, 28, 94, 97, 96, 143, 145, 145, 151 against reservation, 193, 259 and thought, 156, 167 Velama, 27, 97, 145, 151, 203, 206 Yadavs 143, 235, 345, 347 central universities academics of, 226 G. Haragopal, 190 hostile to Shudras, 175–77 and reservation, 128. See also reservation; Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah as vegetarian, 232, 282, 322 child marriage, 99–100. See also Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah, marriage

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Christianity, 188 Pandita Ramabai, 149 schools, 163, 188, 208, 219, 235 Sujatha Gidla, 149 Christian missionaries, 218 and individualism, xiv Marxism, 147 philosophical foundation, 158 production process, 121, 171, 266. See also Brahmin-Baniya; Dalitbahujans civil liberties, 119, 122, 127–20, 131. absence of support from, 194, 254, 268, 270–71 APCL, 175, 194, 264, 340 OPDR, 340, 346 Parvathipuram, 217–223 PUCL, 128, 129 class, xii, 131, 186 communists, x, 14 anti-reservation, 144, 145 on caste, 183 and Islamic culture, 14 language education, 186–87 with masses, 223–24 production, absence of, 259 The Communist Manifesto, 97, 256 Communist Party of India Marxist (CPIM) author as writer, 167–68 as bhadralok, 180, 184–85 education, exclusion of, 183–84, 185 SC/ST/OBC, 179, 183, 189 and Tripura, 180 Dalitbahujans, ix, x, xii, xiii, 112, 126, 127, 152, 282. See also castes

the constitution, xi, 315, 318 deities, 7, 17, 44, 51, 140, 245, 290, 325, 326 education, 26, 232 English, 165–69, 204 and Harappa, 295. See also Harappa as history-less, 6–7, 133 independence and, 291 intellectuals, 181–82 mourning songs, 79 rituals, 80 thought of, 26, 285, 335, 336 universities, 176, 231. See also central universities writers. See also Ambedkar, B.R.; Phule, Jotiba; Christianity Manoranjan Byapari, 150 Omprakash Valmiki, 150 Y.B. Satyanarayana, 149 education, 6, 45, 103, 220, 248 and British rule, 191, 283 and caste, 218 and dignity of labour, 14, 159, 166–67, 171, 187, 214–16, 218, 235, 282, 322 and English, 183–86, 204, 208, 219–21 Good Shepherd EnglishMedium School, 210–16 as first generation, 105 and impotency, 77, 99, 101, 213–14, 257 and village, 209 The Emergency, 118–19, 128 Feminism, 146, 275, 276, 277 festivals Beerappa, 344

Index

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Bhatkamma Panduga, 17, 20–23 Dasara, 190–21 Nomula Panduga, 325 Pochamma, 344 food culture, 142, 148, 333–35, 337. See also Hindu religion/ Hinduism brahmin, 267 inter-dining, 143 food habits, 242–43, 320 vegetarianism, as negative, 143, 205, 233, 243, 274, 320

vegetarianism, 233, 243, 274, 320 human rights, 225–25. See also civil liberties

Gandhi, M.K., xvi, 13, 102–04, 132, 250 Aakar Patel on, 242 absence of production, 243 and caste system, 291 Hind Swaraj, 168 and South Africa, 189 and Shudras’ diffidence, 285 The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 241–42, 244, 288 as Vaishnav, 242 Gramsci, A., 125 Guru, Narayana, 112

Left, radical, 114, 203, 275–76, 284 the constitution, 13 landlord children, 117 students, 201–02 left-wng, 111, 208, 257 Lingayats, 138–40

Harappa, 137, 245, 268, 286 Hindu religion/Hinduism, xii, xiii, xiv, 122, 140, 148. See also Ambedkar, B.R.; Phule, Jotiba brahmin control, 294 education, scriptures Upanishads, 146 Vedas, 133, 139, 146, 147, 245, 268, 296, 347 Shudras, 157, 170, 193, 234 no theological colleges, 171

Ilaiah, Kancha. See Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah; family Janata Dal, 145

Kamasutra, 164 Karamchedu massacre, 276 Keer, Dhananjay, ix, xiv Kulkarni, Jayant, 257–58, 269, 274

The Mahabharata, 17, 165, 190, 245, 248, 262 Mainstream, 47–48, 114, 116, 126, 152, 159 Mandal movement, 238 and civil rights, 144, 146, 170 Dalits on OBCs, 228 feminists’ support, 276 study of caste societies, 144 upper castes and, 113, 128, 132, 227, 276 Maoism, 115, 125, 129, 147. See also Naxalites Marx, Karl, 125 Marxism, 13, 125, 129, 131, 146–47, 190 Marxists, media, 231, 349 No Dalits, OBCs, 231–32 NDTV, 226–241

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Mohenjo-Daro, 268 Muslims, 47–48, 114, 116, 126, 152, 159 and Buddha, 199 and caste system, 198–99, 236 and history, 198 and universities, 178, 183, 197 West Bengal, 178–79, 182 and women, 198–99

Nalupu, 120, 124, 144, 146 names, significance of, 1, 6, 9–11, 15, 40, 93, 122, 124. See also Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah Narayana Guru, 112, 129, 191, 236 Naxalism/Naxalites, 114–15, 117, 130 Puchalapalli Sundarayya, 13, 117 T. Nagi Reddy, 115–17, 129–30, 217, 224–25, 290, 342–43 Nehru, Jawaharlal, xvi, 103, 104 Organization for the Protection of Democratic Rights (OPDR), 129, 336, 340, 346 Osmania University, 151–53, 172, 174, 240 Brahminism, 175 as feudal, 275–76 OBC colleagues, 239 Telangana Education Reform movement, 187 V.C. Vidyasagar Rao, 192 Other Backward Classes (OBCs). See also caste, Shudras; Dalitbahujans

and Arya Vysyas, 270 and autobiographies, xvi as Chief Ministers, 140 as Hindus, xiii and reservation, 227–30 leaders, 234–35 Pali, 173 People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), 128. See also civil liberties Periyar, E.V. Ramasamy, xvi, 112, 132, 139, 147, 170, 189, 206, 262, 282, 285 production-related knowledge, ix, 187 absence of information, 109, 131, 165 Brahmin-Baniyas, 167, 187, 244 Dalitbahujans, 174, 196–97 farming, 248–52 food producers, 196, 201 Gandhi, 243–44 as philosophy, 165, 288 village knowledge, 137, 202 Phule, Jotiba, ix, xvi, 107, 131, 148, 169, 222, 266 caste analysis, 112, 137, 140 Gulamgiri, 135–37, 169, 189 production process, 107, 124, 131, 148, 180, 266 Savitribai Phule, 101–02, 201, 238–39 political discourse, 159, 209. See also Ambedkar, B.R., civil liberties, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy ancient India, 154 Arthashastra, 157, 160 disconnect with village, 256 D.D. Kosambi, 161 history writing, 137, 148

Index Manu Dharmashastra, 157, 160, 161 Subaltern School, 173, 174 western thinkers, 158–59, 166, 260. See also Marx, Karl Progressive Democratic Students Union (PDSU), 10, 91, 112–15, 117

The Ramayana, 17, 165, 190, 245, 248, 262 Rashtriya Janata Dal, 282, 343 reservation, 144–45, 159, 169, 177–78, 227, 296 English medium and, 204 and foreign travel, 291 intellectuals’ unease, 186, 230 and merit, 229 Shudra upper castes, 253 upper castes, 276 Right-wing, 150, 203. See also ABVP; BJP RSS, 335 Sangh Parivar, 336 Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah, xiii, xv, 11, 112, 118 appearance, 92–93 and Arya Vysyas. See Arya Vysyas on Bengal Renaissance, 148–49 birth date, 32 books, 192, 347 Buffalo Nationalism, 4, 189–90, 301, 314 God as Political Philosopher, 109, 189, 195, 35 Post-Hindu India, ix, x, xi, 132, 139, 146, 148, 159, 174, 189, 342

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The Weapon of the Other: Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land, 205 Untouchable God, 189 Why I Am Not a Hindu, ix, x, xiii, 139, 146, 148, 167, 169, 172, 190, 264, 269, 281–82, 342 brahmin women, 272–74, 281 and central universities, 175–78. See also central universities as child, 83–84 child worker, 33–34, 38, 245–50, 253 and civil rights, 121–23. See also civil liberties and support for Dalitbahujans. See Dalitbahujans education, 2, 6, 8, 46, 72, 91, 249 college, 8–9, 11, 226. See also Osmania University Ph.D., 174–75 school, 30–38 and Rajalingam, 31, 41, 49, 253 and Saraswathi, 31, 43–45, 72, 201–02 and English, 8–9, 51–52, 93, 95–97, 109, 152, 169, 208, 267, 312–23, 346 and family, 3 brother, Kattaiah, 59, 89–90, 252–53 brother, adopted, Komuraiah, 2, 251 extended, 39, 43, 60, 61 father, Komuraiah, 2, 34, 54–55, 57, 59, 73, 100–01, 190, 246, 250, 253 grandparents, 28, 29

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mother, Kattamma, 2, 39, 84–85 death of, 53, 56, 62–64 educating sons, 31–32, 70 and Epuri Laxma Reddy, 28, 98–99 vs forest officials, 66–67, 69 friendships across caste, 70, 74, 85 funeral of, 68–69, 71–72, 74–77, 87 headship, 61, 65, 71 against Police Patel, 65–67, 69, 95 sisters, 2, 68, 71, 73, 90 sister-in-law, Bharathi, 107, 340–43 food habits, 317–18, 323–24 and games, 36–37 and geneology, 81–82, 86 and homes, 326–27 and inferiority, 8, 284 and Mandal movement, 146. See also media and marriage, absence of, 74, 76, 108, 120, 122–22, comments, 70, 77 and education of wives, 106 ‘impotency’, 99, 101, 213–14, 257 inter-caste, 106–07 meinarikam, 61, 62, 64 as old, 92 and Marxism, 12, 118. See also Maoism, Naxalites, and name, 1, 6, 9, 11, 15, 16, 124 on reservation, 196. See also reservation

on Sanskrit, 164, 171, 173, 221, 248 as social critic. See BrahminBaniyas; Gandhi M. K.; political discourse and Subaltern Studies’ scholars, 173, 174 as teacher, 155–58 and Teen Murti fellowship, 195 and Telangana, 1, 28, 91, 126, 151–52, 155, 203, 208, 239, 274, 327, 331 Vinayak Kulkarni, iv, 1, 92, 114–15, 117–19, 257–56, 269, 274 Shudras. See castes, Shudras Telugu, 96–98, 159, 246 as education medium, 185, 263 anti-labour, 215, 252 writers, 255, 260, 262 Thass, Iyothee, 112, 146, 285 UN Conference against Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, 2001, 132, 169, 189, 295 activists, 302, 312 Dalit Solidarity Network, 31–33 defeat, 304–05 Justice Jagannath Mishra Committee, 301–02 Indian diaspora, 304, 308–12 National Preparatory Committee, 300–02 western support, 308–19 West’s information on India, 307–08 village. See also Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah

Index castes, 27, 210 Dravidian vs Aryan, 137 as feudal, 28–30, 48 Epur Laxma Reddy Mahabooba Reddy, 28 Police Patel, 23–24 history writing, 137, 147, 148 knowledge source, 127, 160–61, 209 Papaiah Pet, 25–27 sexuality, 99, 102 Vemula, Rohith, 175, 178 women, xiii

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as aada biddalu, 19 Buddhist Sanga, 155 as feminists, 265, 271 as Hindu, upper caste, 200, 271–72, 282, 283 and illiteracy, 65, 66, 101, 194, 105, 107, 316, 338, 340 Leela Dube, 265 Iravati Karve, 265 man-woman relations, 275 Pandita Ramabai, 265 teachers, 152 toilet, lack of, 18–19 wife beating, 103–94, 216

About the Author

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd retired recently from being Director, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at Maulana Azad National Urdu University. He has received the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule award, 2000. He is chairman of Telangana Mass and Social Organizations (T-Mass) that works for English-medium education. Among his best-known books are Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Culture, Philosophy and Political Economy; Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism; Untouchable God; and Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution.