Oxford, UK; New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2017. xiii, 247 pp. (Table, illustrations.) US$53.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-947777-7.
The book under review examines the established narrative of nationalism in India, which remains the exclusive domain of the privileged elite. According to author Chinnaiah Jangam, mainstream writers have privileged the Hindu Brahamnical worldview regarding conceptualization and realization of the location of nationalism as the sole prerogative of caste Hindus. The aforesaid notion of nationalism does not only exist in nationalist tracts, but also in the so-called radical alternative historiography represented by subaltern studies. Hence, the book challenges a unitary construct of the notion of nation by caste Hindus and provides a radical alternative account of Dalit Nationalism.
Dalits and the Making of Modern India consists of six chapters thematically arranged into three parts: Dalits and the Colonial Conjecture; Making of the Self and Political Identity; and Dalit Imagination: An Egalitarian Ethic.
Part I is further divided into three chapters: “Mapping Dalit Consciousness,” “Education and Dalit Enlightenment,” and “Quandary of Caste Hindus.” The first chapter seeks to connect the precolonial anti-caste cultural memory with the ideological forms used by Dalits to counter the colonial Brahminical trajectory of modernity. Using historical methodology and rich archival data from Telugu newspaper reports, Jangam portrays how Dalits have tried to mobilize themselves by organizing political rallies, public meetings, and temple entry satyagraha. The most significant contribution of this chapter is that the author uses Dalit consciousness as a continuum rather than as a break between precolonial and anti-colonial struggles. This chapter also acknowledges the crucial role Dalit intellectuals played through their persuasive dialogue with caste Hindu elders and intellectuals that altered the meaning of nationhood and nationalism. Their writings and activism were responsible for an epistemic rupture that forced scholars across the discipline to rethink the production of knowledge. In the second chapter the author has recorded the role of missionaries, modern education, government policies, and the establishment of the liberal values that emerged out of colonial rule and shaped the activism and assertion of Dalits. The third chapter maps out ideas held by caste Hindus who were debating issues of caste and untouchability. Further, the chapter analyzes how conservatives and reformists did not challenge the caste system. They never wanted to reorganize the structure of the caste system to benefit the marginalized; while they treated untouchables humanely, they never treated them as equals.
Part II of the book has two chapters, the first (chapter 4) deals with the processes through which Dalits negotiate an independent self and identity with the stigma that has been attached to them since time immemorial. In the same vein Dalits rejected the view that their suffering was primarily of their own making. Away from self-reform, Dalits invoked their history as the original inhabitants of the country who had once enjoyed political power, which gave them new grounds for assertion. Chapter 5 deals with Dalits and their politics. Specifically, the author has attempted to chart the history of Dalit politics in southern India associated with the Telugu-speaking areas within the territory of the Nizam of Hyderabad and the colonial Madras Presidency. Here it is befitting to mention that the exact date of political mobilization of Dalits fixed by the author is 1906, and the leader who made all the difference was Maadari Bhagyayya, popularly known as Bhagya Reddy Verma. It was he who led the Adi Hindu Movement and became the elected president of the first Adi-Andhra Mahajana Sabha in 1917. Significant to note is that Verma’s mobilization led to the emergence of Telugu Nationalism, albeit with its own limitations. Verma’s nationalism excluded other untouchable castes.
In Part III, at the outset of the concluding chapter (chapter 6) of the book, “Whose Nation?: Dalits and the Imagination of the Nation,” the author meaningfully engages with Benedict Anderson, Ernest Renan, and Partha Chaterjee in framing the epistemology of nationhood. However, Jangam is very clear that Chaterjee has evolved his notion of nationhood by drawing on the writings and actions of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, M.K. Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru to show that there is an underlying unity of Hindu Brahmanical consciousness presented by Hindu elites as national domain. Caste Hindu elites imagined a nation founded on contradictory ideals, an unequal society with inherited caste privileges intact alongside a liberal representative democracy. In contrast to caste Hindus, the author asserts that the Dalit imagination of nationhood and nationalism significantly altered the meaning of nationhood by critically engaging with caste Hindus to make the case for founding the nation on the principles of equality, economic justice, and human dignity. It is in this context the author has used, very creatively, the writings and activities of Dalits in the Telugu public sphere to present a distinctive Dalit discourse that altered the meaning of nationhood and nationalism.
In addition to the six chapters of this book, there is an epilogue—which by the way, should be treated as part of the basic argument concerning the exclusionary nature of Indian nationalism— that can be treated as the conclusion of the text. Here, the author concludes that the onward march of Indian nationalism stems from anti-colonial nationalism to so-called upper caste Brahmanical nationalism, which has failed to deliver equality, dignity, and social justice to marginalized castes, tribes, women, Muslims, and Christians. It is against this nature of nationalism that Jangam has narrated Ambedkar’s imagined nationalism (Prabuddha Bharat) which was enlightened and inclusive. While framing the constitution he substantiated this imagination with values such as justice, equality, liberty, and fraternity. That is why the author ends on an optimistic note: that this imagined community founded on dignity, equality, and justice led by the subjugated population, is the future of the Indian nation.
To conclude, the book is a significant addition to the literature associated with Dalits because in contemporary India most writing on Dalits begins with the colonial context and ends with their participation in the parliamentary democracy. But Jangam’s work challenges this dominant narrative by recording the precolonial anti-caste egalitarian consciousness of Dalits expressed through their cultural creations as being a part of anti-cultural nationalism. In the same vein, on the basis of empirical data and critical engagement this work has successfully expanded Indian history via Dalit discourse and the public sphere.
Vivek Kumar
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India