Delhi University had recommended removal of books of Dalit writer-activist Kancha Ilaiah from its political science syllabus over the “controversial content” in the books, while also suggesting discontinuation of the use of the word ‘Dalit’ in academic discourse. Kancha Ilaiah spoke in Delhi University on the same.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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According to almost all research methodology books, research has three aims namely (1) Exploration, (2) Descriptive and (3) Explanatory[2].  Based on these aims, researcher will develop his/her research design.  If one goes by exploration as an aim, the design will be known as exploratory or formulative. If it intends to be descriptive, it will be Descriptive Research Design and to draw the cause and effect relationship by conducting experimentation(s), one usually adopts Experimental Research Design.  The very purpose of Exploratory Research is to formulate hypothesis only.  And, this design exists when no relevant literature is available.  In fact, no citation and reference is required for this kind of research process. The research questions are more imperative for it.  It is noteworthy to mind that the results or findings of exploratory design are not be generalized and those can be further verified by descriptive or experimental researches.  However, to quote Philip Kotler – Father of Management “the objective of exploratory research is to gather preliminary information that will help define problems and suggest hypotheses[3]”.

The objective of descriptive research is to describe the characteristics of various aspects of research phenomenon.  Hypotheses are essential to experimental researches.  For instance, onewanted to adopt exploratory research design, he/she suppose to start his/her research with research question(s).  For questioning, one may refer earlier works or many not but research question must be logically constructed and it should also be verifiable my other scholars.  Such research question comes from contemplation, if it is aware by oneself, it transforms into idea and explained idea is concept.  And, combination of several concepts is nothing but construct.  The construct offers statements.  In case of exploratory research design, these statements are called as research questions while those are hypotheses in terms of experimental research design. Interesting fact is that formulation of hypothesis depends on earlier research studies, hence, review of literature is must, thereby, citation and references comes into picture.

The fact is that Kancha Ilaiah has used exploratory research design for his two books namely ‘Why I am not a Hindu?’ and ‘Post-Hindu India’.  That’s what, no citation and reference does mention in them.  His Ph.D. work published with the title of ‘God as Political Philosopher’ which is having lot of citations and references and its adopted methodology comes under Descriptive Research Design.  With this connotation, one can consider that the findings of ‘Why I am not a Hindu?’ and ‘Post-Hindu India’ are just merely tentative statements.  Moreover, according to thumb rules of research methodology those are not absolute realities.  It will also inevitable that upcoming research scholars have to prove or disprove those hypotheses.  Both possibilities are there to examine the social reality but truth will ultimately exist and remain in forthcoming research works.  Two cannot be truths but the only one. Whether Ilaiah is Hindu or not and Post-Hindu India takes place or not.

Why I am not a Hindu is not merely a personal question of Ilaiah raised in 1996 and became an internationally known intellectual figure, and that book was a best-seller for that year. It was listed as a millennium book by the leading Delhi based English daily ‘The Pioneer’ and has been translated into several languages, including into French. Later, it was also chosen for London Institute of South Asia (LISA) Book Award-2008.  Ilaiah’s Why I am Not a Hindu, a religio-philosophical text that is at the same time an unusual contribution in the Indian literary ethos, has been compared with Frantz Fanon’s classic –The Wretched of the Earth.  When Ilaiah published his book, which has no footnotes or reference, his own colleagues and friends at Osmania University ridiculed him for writing it.  Unlike other critiques of Hinduism, Ilaiah has gone to the root of the problem of production, labour, and the relationship between the divine agencies that Hinduism constructed historically and socio-spiritual culture of masses.   This much attention was drawn by that book.  Now researchers can compare Ilaiah’s ‘Why I am not a Hindu?’ with Russell’s Why I am not a Christian?  In case of this classic work has not produced or referred by the universities and academic circles, how one can compare religious realities in order to advance theological epistemology and establish an egalitarian society?

For instance, Shashi Tharoor wanted to disprove and demystify Ilaiah, he wrote ‘Why I am a Hindu’ recently.  The motivation to write this book is certainly Why I am not a Hindu? Otherwise, how could Shashi Tharoor formulates the assertion of being Hindu? Those two opposite works have offered different perspectives of understanding on the issues of being Hindu.  When Tharoor’s book is published, Ilaiah responded by writing a serious critique entitled ‘Swamy Shashi’ in Caravan Magazine that “[his] the very opposite of mine, and not just in its title.  I said I am not a Hindu because of the inequality by birth of different communities within Hinduism, as enshrined in the caste system that pervades Hindu scripture, morality, ritual, social organization – really the entire Hindu worldview”.  Thereby, an academic discourse has been lunched.  As far as my knowledge goes, Shashi Tharoor never wrote a single piece of writing on Ilaiah’s works but directly came-up with book.  Since ‘Why I am not a Hindu?’ is highly polemical work to the seminal work of Tharoor’s Why I am a Hindu, Tharoor must have referred but he did not offer any citation even for negation of Ilaiah’s arguments.  The cover page of ‘Why I am not a Hindu?’ depicts a shoemaker is polishing the footwear of a spiritual elite or a capitalist in dignified suit whereas Tharoor’s cover page portrays the image of Lord Ganesha at the main door of house. Nevertheless, cover page of Tharoor is mythological, spiritually constructed, thus, it is unscientific while Ilaiah’s shoemaker image conveys production, caste hierarchy, thus, it is obliviously historical and scientific social reality.   Neera Chandhole also discredited Tharoor in her review article in Hindu “[Tharoor] begins with the Vedas, guides us through myths and popular practices, elaborates the thoughts of prominent expounders, and tells us about his own devotion.  In the second part, he chronicles the making of Hindutva. He concludes that Hindutva as politics simply does not cohere to the precepts of Hinduism.[4]”

In his Post-Hindu India, Ilaiah elaborately presented the evolution of tools and mechanisms used in production and called the productive communities with ‘historical productive rooted English titles’ viz Unknown Engineers, Unpaid Workers, Meat and Milk Economists, Subaltern Scientists, Subaltern Feminists, Productive Soldiers and so on.   This was unique contribution of his 10 years research work.  Ilaiah captured massive information related to names, structure, functioning and advancement of tools used in production owing to his ‘indianized productive methodology’.  In other words, he has seen production process as not only subsistence but as creative, highly skillful and organic.  He firmly believed that people who hail from working communities can only involve and upgrade respective professions.  The people who belong to leisure communities have right to education from the ages did not innovate or discover any tools or equipment that is useful for the production.  Besides, they hate production all over the history.  However, by modifying and Indianizing the Gramscian’s outlook of organic and traditional intellectuality to the Indian context, Ilaiah has ventured to draw a categorical line between productive communities and parasite communities.  Consequently, the discrimination and exploitation through-out the history manifested all of sudden in that book in a different perspective.  In fact, this is fairly embarrassing to non-productive communities and paves a way to suckle the chains of spiritual fascism.  Ilaiah also forecasted Post-Hindu India by describing archetypal observations on the demise of Hinduism in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  The emergence of Islam has paved a way for the gradual decline of Hinduism.  It is also a historical fact.  More of, he pointed-out unproductive brahminic spiritual fascism swallows the so-called Hinduism in due course.

The point is that there were no study on the theme of dignity of labour, production and scientific temperament of lower castes of India.  How scholars can cite earlier works and gives references? What Plato did to finish his ‘Republic’, What Aristotle did to complete his ‘Politics’, the same is being adopted by Ilaiah to explore firsthand knowledge from the lives of marginalized communities.  Plato wrote in dialogue form, often with Socrates as the leading speaker, to avoid committing himself to any conclusions or dictating ex cathedra to his readers whereas Aristotle’s philosophical methods are empirical, based on observation and analysis that are critical in nature.  Here, Ilaiah do not write in dialogue form as Mahatma Phule did in his ‘Slavery’ and collects primary data from his social activism, more particularly, from Telugu speaking regions.  After making detailed observation, he would proceed to make categorization and classification of facts that would compared with productive and unproductive communities.  This would be the basis of Ilaiah’s knowledge construction.

Adopting cent percentage of western methodology is usual practice in natural and biological sciences as no significant variation can be seen in the testing material.  In case of social science, it is very difficult to apply western methodology as it is as Indian society is highly complex in terms of culture and composition.  Hence, several modifications are colossally prerequisite to dwell deeper into the social enquiry.  In a way, it is the process of Indianizing the western methods.  This is what exactly done by Kancha Ilaiah to offer an alternative, native and nationalistic perspective of understanding.  It was not even done by Dr. BR Ambedkar as whose writings are mostly written with Indology.  The quest of Ambedkar was to examine the good and badness that exist in ancient scripts like Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Manusmruthi and so forth.  The unusual gaps in Ambedkar writings are lack of fieldwork, disappearance of production and labour and endlessly dependence on indological scripts.  Such scripts hardly recorded the lives of productive marginalized communities, how could a scholar explores the lives of labour and discriminated in them? This is the reason why, RSS forces are very much comfortable with Ambedkar’s writings.  When it comes to Ilaiah’s question of production, they have no answer.  So RSS and BJP wanted to give academic death to Ilaiah’s writings by dropping his books from university curricula.  This is akin situation as faced by Socrates in 399 BCE.  Ilaiah will not be another Socrates.  Let academia must demand for the plural ideas should be taught at all the Universities in order to deny the ‘unacademic move’.

References:
[1] Malvika Singh  (2018): DU Recommends Removal of Dalit Writer-Activist Kancha Ilaiah’s Books from Syllabus, News Click, October 25, 2018 available at: https://www.newsclick.in/du-recommends-removal-dalit-writer-activist-kancha-ilaiahs-books-syllabus retrieved on 30-10-2018
[2] Lawrance Nueman (2014): Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Pearson Education India, New Delhi
[3] Philip Kotler and Gray Armstrong (2008): Principles of Marketing, Pearson Prentice Hall Publications, New Delhi
[4] Neera Chandole (2018): Why I am a Hindu Review: The Power of Politics as Religion, The Hindu, February 17, 2018 available at: https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/why-i-am-a-hindu-review-the-power-of-politics-as-religion/article22783777.ece retrieved on 03-08-2018

Dr Bheenaveni Ram Shepherd, Chairman, Board of Studies in Sociology, Osmania University, Hyderabad-07. bheenaveni@gmail.com

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi wrote to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, expressing solidarity against the “majoritarian move” of the Delhi University’s standing committee’s recommendation to remove three of his books from the reading list of the post-graduate political science course.
 
In a letter addressed to Prof. Ilaiah dated October 26, which he received on Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi wrote that RSS’ fascism was apparent in the recommendation.
 
In the letter, Rahul Gandhi said, “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) fascism is apparent in this move. Their aggressive move to propagate a unilateral view of Hinduism is deplorable. The fact is, that your books have been a part of the university’s syllabus for over a decade, without any questions being raised on their impact on the minds of the students. Now the RSS, which cannot boast of any intellectual or academic capital, is seeking to destroy academic integrity by silencing diverse voices. This is part of their larger design to keep the Shudras and Dalits disempowered.”

 
The Congress president hoped that the university’s academic council would reject the standing committee’s recommendation. He added that students should be able to read “divergent views and form their own opinions instead of following the line of the RSS.”
 
The titles recommended for removal are Why I am not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India and God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism. Prof. Ilaiah expressed happiness over the support that he received by a national party.
 
DU’s Standing Committee on Academic Matters recommended this move on Oct 24 and said that they found the content insulting to Hinduism. The decision has to be approved by the Academic Council and a meeting will be held before November 15. It also recommended discontinuing the use of the word ‘Dalit’ in academic discourse.
 
Read Also:
DU plans removal of three books by Dalit writer Kancha Ilaiah
Members of DU’s Academic Council Protest Removal of Kancha Illaiah Shepherd’s Books

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The entire text of the letter may be read here

Prof. Yogesh K. Tyagi
Vice-Chancellor
University of Delhi
Delhi – 110007
 
October 26, 2018
 
Sub: Reg. the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs’ decision to recommend removal of Sh. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s works from the Political Science M.A. Syllabus and the decision to disallow use of the term ‘dalit’ in academic discussions, teaching and learning
 
Dear Prof. Tyagi,
We express our dismay and disappointment at the manner in which certain members of the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs have held academic exercises to ransom. On the basis of their ideological predilections, they have repeatedly resorted to censoring curricular content in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We have communicated our concerns to you on this matter previously, in relation to the Standing Committee’s arbitrary decision to recommend removal of Prof. Archana Prasad’s and Prof. Nandini Sundar’s work from the M.A. History syllabus. We are yet to receive any response from your office. We are compelled to write to you again, alerting you to the unnecessary and completely avoidable controversy that the Standing Committee has created around the use of the term ‘dalit’ and the works of the renowned Dalit thinker and political philosopher Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd that were included in the Draft M.A. syllabus of the Political Science Department.

Based on widely reported details in the media and public statements made by certain members of the Standing Committee, we have learned that Sh. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd has been branded “anti-Hindu” and that the Standing Committee has decided to recommend removal of his works Why I am Not a Hindu (1996), Buffalo Nationalism (2004) andPost-Hindu India (2009) from the M.A. Political Science syllabus. We are also alarmed to learn that the Standing Committee has decided to replace the term ‘dalit’ with ‘bahujan’ in every possible academic reference within the context of teaching-learning in University of Delhi.   

If the above-mentioned details are true, we wish to place on record to the following points of contention:

1.      The term ‘dalit’ is widely used in academic discourse. It is an acceptable coinage, as can be evidenced from the widespread use of categories like ‘Dalit Movements’, ‘Dalit assertion’, ‘Dalit Political Philosophy’, ‘Dalit Literature’, ‘Dalit Poetics’ etc. The Standing Committee has been wilfully misled into believing that the Supreme Court has proscribed the use of the term. In fact, the Supreme Court has directed public institutions to use the terms ‘Scheduled Castes’ and ‘Scheduled Tribes’ instead of the terms ‘Dalit’ and ‘Adivasi’ in official correspondence pertaining to Government Policy as the former terms are strictly juridico-legal in nature whereas the latter terms are political and cultural. To conflate juridico-legal contexts with academic discourse shows a terrifying lack of sensitivity on the part of a Standing Committee that assumes the right to advise faculties and departments on the finer points of curricula and syllabi.
 
2.      Sh. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s intellectual accomplishments need no certificate of merit from the University of Delhi. He is an internationally renowned political philosopher and his works are studied as part of course-readings and syllabi in the best universities across the world. The Standing Committee on Academic Affairs carries no brief on the privilege of determining the academic value of his works. By branding him “anti-Hindu”, it conflates the philosophical critique of Brahminical Hinduism with the abuse of faith. Abuse of faith is a recognisable offence in law and punishable under appropriate provisions of the Penal Code. To our knowledge, no criminal charge of abuse has ever been brought against his writings; nor have any of his books or articles been proscribed by law. Hence, the Standing Committee has clearly overreached itself. Additionally, in publicly representing the Standing Committee’s position against Sh. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s writings as “anti-Hindu” the named members are guilty of defaming him and making libellous remarks to demean his stature. If the University of Delhi endorses the Standing Committee’s hasty decision and the justification provided by the members to the Press, it becomes complicit in defamation and invites legal action against itself.
 
3.      The Standing Committee neither possesses the required domain-expertise nor the statutory prerogative to excise readings from a Draft Syllabus prepared by an authorised Committee of Courses comprising of subject experts. It can advise or seek clarification from the concerned department (in this case, the Political Science department) but it cannot override the academic decisions of the department and faculty. If the Standing Committee is allowed to ignore the appropriate locus of academic decisions, it becomes an instrument of tyranny.
 
4.      The Standing Committee cannot be used as an ideological platform to police or limit the spectrum of opinion that learners are entitled to. It is unfortunate that in recent times, the Standing Committee has been repeatedly used to purge all divergent ideas and formulations that are found to be critical of the dominant ideology that the ruling dispensation subscribes to.
 
We yet again urge you to intervene and ensure that fairness and objectivity is restored in the functioning of the Standing Committee and the decisions of the Academic Council. For a start, your office is urged to immediately reverse the exclusion of elected AC members of a different ideological persuasions from the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs. The recent decisions of the Standing Committee have drawn public criticism from many quarters of civil society and the international academic community. If this destructive trend remains unchecked, it will tarnish the reputation of our University as a liberal and democratic institutional space for free intellectual enquiry and exchange of ideas.

We hope that your office will consider this matter as urgent and issue appropriate caution to the Standing Committee so that the academic prerogatives of the Committees of Courses in the departments of Political Science and History are safeguarded and the erroneous decisions of the Standing Committee are set aside. We also hope that the University of Delhi will issue an official apology to Sh. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd while immediately withdrawing the slander (attributed to the Standing Committee constituted by the University of Delhi) against him that has unfortunately been put on record in the public domain.
 
Regards,
Indira Chandrasekhar (Member, Executive Council and University Court)
Deo Kumar (Member, Academic Council)
Jyoti Sabharwal (Member, Academic Council)
Mohd. Riyazuddin Khan (Member, Academic Council)
Sachin N. (Member, Academic Council)
Saikat Ghosh (Member, Academic Council)
Shashi Shekhar Prasad Singh (Member, Academic Council)
V. S. Dixit (Member, Academic Council)
 
 

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Image: TV 5

A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Deepak Mishra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud dismissed the PIL by Mr K.L.N.V. Veeranjaneyulu who appeared as party in person. He contended that the writer through his book was trying to promoting enmity among different groups in society and targeting the Vysya community with an intention to humiliate and insult them.

The bench pointed out that banning the book would amount to infringing on the freedom of expression and speech guaranteed by the Constitution. The Supreme Court said that writers have to express their opinions within the purview of the law.

Kancha Ilaiah, speaking to Sabrangindia, hailed the verdict as not just the victory of freedom of expression per se but also one that will now open the path to new perspectives in research on “accumulation and capital.” Kancha Ilaiah’s life was in danger and under threat over the past weeks as protests against the book had even turned violent.

Finally he had forced himself under ‘house arrest’ on the issue. Sabrangindia’s repeated campaigns had helped highlight the issue and finally grant him support and protection.

What is Kancha Ilaiah’s Book?
The book titled, Samajika Smugglerlu: Kommatullu, or “Social Smugglers: Kommatis.” argued that ” the “private-sector economy is a modern form of “Guptadhana” had, since mid September, generated angst and aggression from the members of the Arya Vysya community in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh began holding protests against the work of the academic and writer Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. The community, which is also referred to as Kommatis, and is understood to be an upper-caste Vaishya group, had taken grave offence to the contents of a short Telugu-language book, Samajika Smugglerlu: Kommatullu, or “Social Smugglers: Kommatis.” The Telugu book is an adapted extract from Shepherd’s book Post-Hindu India, which was published in 2009. Samijika Smugglerlu argues that the Baniya community—often referred to as Vaishya, the term from which the Arya Vysyas derive their name—has maintained a monopoly over business in India, and excluded Shudra, Dalit and Bahujan groups from the benefits of capital growth in the country.

In the introduction to Post-Hindu India, Shepherd writes that the book covers “Dalit-Bahujan cultural, scientific and economic knowledge systems, analyses their overall relationships with each other and also with the Hindu religion as a spiritual system.” In addition to the chapter on the Vaishya community, the book contains individual chapters on various communities residing in India, and, based on their traditional occupations and knowledge system, analyses the development of the Indian economic system. It theorises that the Hindu religion’s failure to reckon with the evils of caste oppression will lead to its demise. (An extract can be read here.)
 
Sabrangindia was the first to allow space for this extremely though provoking discourse,considered ‘anathema’ by the privileged. On September 14, ” What is Social Smuggling by Sahukars (Traders)? asks Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Kancha had said in Sabrangindia. He wrote, “I wrote this book to show that the real producers of the wealth of the nation are castes that range from Adivasis to all Shudras (including kapus, Kammas, Reddys, Jats, Patels, Gujjars and so on)”

“The two dwija castes—Banias and Brahmins— by my generation (with a personal experience all around) are outside the basic production controlling the business from rural grain markets to Ambani, Adani, Vedanta kind of monopoly capital. The richest among them come from the Vysya community. Caste, thus, is  a reality.  The Brahmins have a control over the Hindu spiritual system and also educational institutions and the bureaucracy.”   
     
“The Brahmins are there in all Government jobs, the software industry and higher education. They are also there in all kinds of private sector jobs. The ratio of Directors of the Companies as per a study by Prof. D. Ajith, Han Doker and Ravi Saxena ((EPW-2012), Corporate Boards in India -Blocked by Caste? August 11, 2012, Vol. XLVII, No. 31, p.41)) shows this representation, caste-wise in the industrial and financial sector: Banias 46%, Brahmins 44.6%, Kshatriyas 0.5%, OBCs (that includes all Shudra castes) 3.8%, SC/ST 3.5% and others 1.5%.  This shows an absolute control of these two castes on the industrial and financial power.  

“Everything is being linked to nationalism these days. That is, in a way, good.  When foot soldiers are fighting on the Himalayan borders facing cold and bitter winds, in overall difficult situations on the Pakistan border, why should not Indian Industry give one job to a person from one soldier’s family member within industry based on qualifications?  Why does Indian industry not create a Farmer Protection Fund from its annual profit at least to the tune of 1 percentage?  In a caste based system, they too should have a Social Responsibility towards then lower castes and Adivasi masses. This system can run through the economic system: from top industry to the grain market Shahukars in the rural sector.  Why do not the Shahukars establish humanitarian relations with farmers, at least by helping them at the time of suicide deaths by going and helping them? Today the social relations between the Bania Shahukars and the farmers are very negative.  This has to change at all levels.

“The private sector can provide one job for those constables died in bouts of internal conflict.  Anybody can see their family conditions being pathetic after such sudden deaths.  Year after year, the state’s public resources are being shifted into the private sector, by rendering that sector JOBLESS.  In the last three and half years of this ultra-nationalist regime,  so-called development has become JOBLESS.  Therefore, everybody should have a share in the private sector jobs.  

Related Articles:
1. In this Age of Nationalism, It’s Not Just Citizens but Industry that Should be Nationalist
 

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