Dalit Phil.

1. Write a detailed essay on the dalit belief systems and rituals.

Dalit belief systems and rituals:

Many of the Dalits who had been murdered while protecting the village or for defying imposed casteist norms have been eventually deified. They are represented through the symbols of formless stones, sandy mounds, tree or metal spear or statues. Such symbols are made of easily available materials mud, limestone, mortar, cement etc. By and large, these statues holding the rustic weapons are portrayed with the energetic postures and brisk expressions of wrath. Tranquil postures in deep contemplation or slumber are not part of the mainstream deities of Dalits.

The respect paid to the dead is quite profound in the Dalit world. The food consumed or the materials used by the dead ones are specially offered to the dead ones on their graveyard. Interestingly each event of remembering the dead is marked with the collective meal in memory of them. Memory and meal are the inseparables from the Dalit world. The aspect of collectively shared meal is the hallmark of the practices of animal sacrifice. The communitarian meal in memory of the dead who was killed as the martyr for having had the fellowship meal with the so-called polluted ones is also in tune with the Dalit sensibility.

The following are some of the notable features in the worship patterns of the Dalits: offering of the replica symbols (of the members of the body) made of some costly or cheap metals tonsuring of the head, moving towards the sacred spots on kneels, walking with burning candles or oil lamps in deep devotion, offer of coconut sapling, sacrificing goats whose thigh portion is offered to the deity or priests, and other portions for feeding a large number of people, offer of brooms for acquiring protection from the onslaught of epidemics, carrying bow shaped burden on the shoulders (kavadi)), carrying milk containers on the head (palkudam),  piercing of the tongue with sharp lance (alagu), pulling the sacred cart by hooks pierced into the skin of pilgrims (padukalam), the walking pilgrimage undertaken on sacred months (padayatra), and  carrying on the head the small baggage of materials required for the rituals at the shrine.

Dalit world counts the animal sacrifice to their gods as religiously significant. In the sacrificial context, the blood itself is a symbol of fertility and multiplication that the people anticipate and cherish in their life. The sacrificial blood mediates the people with their deities. It is a covenant and a performed agreement between the people and the deities. By performing a sacrifice, the people compel the deities to pledge welfare for them. The functions of sacrificial blood are multifarious as contracting covenant, atonement, expiation, reconciliation between parties involved. Both in the worlds of Dalits and the Bible, the body of the sacrificial victim divested of its blood are shared as a communitarian meal. Though burnt offerings were accepted by the Israelites as well as elite Brahminic prescriptions (yajna in which animals, cereals, ghee or sarees are sacrificed in fire), they are rejected by Dalits as the unproductive desecration and unpardonable wastage.

Shrines and pilgrimages evoke the inner world of imagination of the Dalits as sites of religious aesthetics. Mere propositions on aesthetic objects or acts especially in the religious realm do not evoke active and activated response especially from them. But performances in the body evoke a lot in terms of chain of further acts. For the body or mind to be in a position of eliciting an effect, power, or capability from any other sources (venerable object, sacred place, holy person), it must manifest itself in a particular concrete way, which then becomes the triggering point or moment. This can only be done through the appropriate aesthetic performance. It is not what the object 'says' or 'expresses' by itself is the key issue here. But what it does and what forms of action and social relations the object elicits is significant here. And hence from the point of view of aesthetic fulfillment in the religious realm, we could identify some of the internal factors which seem to determine the various levels of contentment among the Dalits.

2. What do you know about Dalit aesthetics? What are the Dalit contribution to Indian

Music and Dance?

Dalit aesthetics

Aesthetics as a science of arts is a distinct branch of philosophy. In Indian Dalit context it is more than mere the art-appreciation and art-experience. In the Indian context, it generally refers to the art-appreciation and art-experience of art forms.  Aesthetics is thus understood as an appreciation of the arts. Generally, ‘art’ is defined as the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings. Aesthetics is the philosophy dealing with the understanding the existence of beautiful things and human response to beauty. The issues arising out of artistic activities and human reaction to them and the intellectual activities connected with them are dealt in Aesthetics.  The emphasis is on the notion of beauty.

Aesthetic richness of Dalit tradition is expressed in Dalit art forms which are indigenous dance, poetic and drama forms. Combination of many art forms such as poetry, music, dance, painting and sculpture, instrument-making, pottery are founding the Dalit way of life. Dalit culture is expressed itself through art forms.  All the forms of the fine arts are present in Dalit life.  Aesthetical study of an indigenous art form of Dalits is enriching and challenging.  Indian Aesthetics is generally confined to norms of philosophical aesthetics as presented and handed down by brahmanical tradition in both oral and written forms. Aesthetics in philosophy is the study of the feelings, concepts and judgments arising from our appreciation of the arts. 

Dalit contribution to Indian music and dance

From the Dalit perspective, language, song, music and art were not developed for leisure. It is contrary to the popular notion injected by Brahmanism. Music and art are organic expressions of the process of labour and production. Dalit philosophy is that work and song, pani and pattu, are part of life. Song and dance became a part of human existence. They are meant to lighten the burden of work and to re-energize people so that they could get back to creative and productive work once again. They are cultural instruments emerged in the productive communities and are part of organic process of expression of human productivity and creativity.  A production process is not a social process, but a creative process, as it needs to discover and rediscover the instruments of production and the instruments to sharpen human skills and sensibilities in human interaction with nature.

Dappu or parai (drum), is entirely made of leather and wood.  A strip of wood is bent to form a ring, with a leather rope that holds both ends together. Holes are made in the wooden ring asnd a highly processed piece of leather is stitched onto one side. As the leather dries, it becomes taut and produces a musical sound at the slightest touch. The playing of the instrument is an artistic process as it is slung over the shoulder with a leather rope and with a very thin stick in the left hand and a big stick in the right, beaten in a rhythmic manner. The playing of the dappu is a collective process. The dappu produces a melodious sound that spreads across the vast area, making the social atmosphere very sacred and sensitized. The village environment in the company of green crops, mild breeze and bid singing, the music of the dappu produces a social collectiveness. It is used as an instrument of public announcements, dandora, and as a tool of mass communication, especially of festivities or death of someone in the village.  It calls for social participation in the individual life events.

By its music the community becomes alert and brought to its cultural orgasm. It is an instrument producing music for the excitement, pleasure and relaxation of all communities. It is at the heart of any social event, weddings, in house warming functions, in festivities of birth and lamentations of death.  Dappu becomes a social mobilizer, an instiller of the energy lost in the routine work of production and reproduction, relieving people of their physical fatigue and mental stress. It serves an enormous social purpose. In funeral processions, it reminds the mourners of the cyclical process of life. After the mourning the dead and pondering over the futility of life, all return back to life involving in production and procreation in the face of inevitability of death. The dappu music reminds people that the feeling of vairagya, detachment form everyday life and renunciation, is not to last long. Everyone is to come back to life as production and procreation are fundamental and necessary part of life. The philosophical implication of dappu music is that it brings people back from the depths of despair and restores to everydayness of life, without minimizing loss of life, reality of death and sorrow.

3. d) Briefly explain Ambedkar’s analysis of religion.

Ambedkar’s philosophical analysis of religion is an illustration of Dalit religious philosophy. His scrutiny of religion in general and of Hinduism in particular, in his classical work Philosophy of Hinduism is illustrative of Dalit Religious philosophy. He throws new light on critique of religious thought and point to a definite approach to the strengthening of Indian society based on the human values of equality, liberty and fraternity. Future of Dalit religious philosophy has such an analysis directed towards emancipation projects of the Dalits themselves.

He developed an indigenous analysis of religion to understand the nature of Hinduism and evaluate its social function, against the usual model of the Western ‘theodicy-model.’ His is a critique of religion for liberation. Dalit religious philosophy, in Ambedkar is a philosophy of emancipatory religion. Ambedkar points out that there are three important theses that form the subject matter of a philosophical analysis of religion both in natural and social theology. They are: ‘(1) The existence of God (2) God’s Providential government of the universe and (3) God’s moral government of mankind (society).’ Ambedkar’s analytical interest is to find out whether Hinduism as a religion and social order is an ideal scheme of divine governance whose aim is to make the social order a moral order. He observes that Hinduism has a written form constitution, Manu Smriti from which scheme of divine governance is easily deducible.

  

 c) Write a short essay on the pragmatic and constructive religious symbols

among the dalits.

Religious energies possess the capacity to function as a counter-symbolic factory whereby subaltern communities like Dalits reject the hegemonic symbolic universe of the dominant caste communities and construct one of their own. The act of constructing their own symbolic world-view in the face of severe domination becomes the basis of hope, not just for their resistance but, more importantly, for the working out of their own assertive power.

In response to the tyranny of the systematic and effective marginalization by the sacred tradition of the elite in the caste system, the Dalits create their pragmatic and constructive counter-symbols, in order to uphold the values of protection of life, production for livelihood and procreation of new life. These aspects of protection (drum, goddesses protecting the boundaries), production (the Mulaippari, Pongal, plough – as in Tamil Dalit tradition) and procreation (rituals related to puberty, child-birth, post-natal ceremonies) are passionately attended to even by the most wretched atleast in a small scale in simple forms.

These primordial symbols signifying protection, production and procreation are still embedded in the substratum of Dalit consciousness irrespective of the osmosis of cultural elements shared with the dominant.  For instance, in the realm of Dalit symbolic world “the drum” symbolizes the mediating and empowering presence of the divine. In spite of the process of denigration, defamation and vilification of the Dalit drum by the non-Dalits down the centuries, the very drum seems to be the foundational symbol of sustenance, nurture and empowerment of the Dalits. And the audible nature of the music of the drum is capable of piercing through the borderline of purity-pollution. While the caste elite could control the aspects of touch and sight by reducing the Dalits as untouchable and ‘unseeable,’ the audibility of the drum-beat cannot be controlled by them. And it is this audibility of the drumbeaters, that poses the challenge to those who live by Sruti (what is heard). Being deprived even of the possibility of hearing these sacred traditions being recited, the Dalits do create their own Sruti through their drum beat and continue to cheerfully dance to its tune even during the funeral processions.

4. b) What are the main features of dalit religion?

These are the main features of dalit religion:

(i)Nature as the embodiment of God’s revelation

Dalit religion discerns the divine in natural objects and the presence of supernatural in natural forces. For dalits, beneath every object, whether a growing tree or a static stone, there is life supernatural. The worship of nature resulted itself in the preservation of the nature. Thus the dalit religion is eco-friendly.

(ii)Thin space between the Divine and the Human

God takes the closest place of the human as God(dess) also undergoes the passion and emotion of  the human beings. The symbolism involved with food, thread and stick suggests they believed in God(dess) who can be hungry and thirsty, God(dess) who is industrious and God(dess) who is vulnerable.

(iii) Gender equality as the core of Dalit Religion

The rituals and ceremonies of the dalits mirror the space that women occupied in the society. Dalits had recognized the feminine dimension of the Deity and it is evident in the fact that in most cases Deity manifested Her (Him) self in the form of feminine. They worshipped Goddesses like Mariamma, Yellamma. Kaliamma, Morasamma and Matangi, Somalamma and Moosamma. There were also Gods in the dalit pantheon but they only played a secondary role.

(iv)Protest is an intrinsic element of Dalit Religion

To a dalit, protest is lifestyle. There were several ceremonies that reflect the element of protest and some of them were incorporated into the Hindu culture. It had also been a custom among dalits to clean their streets with water mixed with turmeric whenever a Brahmin happens to pass by their hamlet.

c) What do you know about the Shramana Tradition ?

“Shramana” means striving, and shramanas in the first millennium before Christ (or “before the Common Era”, if you want to be politically correct) were people who had left  their home, went wandering in the forests, wilds and cities also to search for the truth about life and the universe.  They included many groups, sects and varieties of opinion.  The most famous were the Buddhists, the Jains, and the materialist “Lokayata” followers of Charvak.  But they also included many groups who have now disappeared but were important for centuries, for instance the Ajivikas.

There was a sense of growing inequalities and oppression, a feeling that the whole world was being shaken up.  It is no wonder that the theme of one of the most famous discourses of Buddha was fire: “monks, the whole world is ablaze.”   In fact, a new class society was coming into existence, and it was perhaps an open choice as to what kind of society it would be. Extremely different models and aspirations were being put forward by the two contending traditions – the Brahmans, and the shramanas.

e) Briefly discuss the dalit understanding of evil.

The dalit understanding of evil

•           The damage of human dignity with arbitrary attribution of permanent pollution as               untouchables due to the practice of caste hierarchy.

•           The contradiction between being wanted as menial executives and unwanted as people with equal footing.

•           The inner conflicts between the personal desire for equal placement with others and the impersonal duty of being reduced to be lesser humans in the socio-political ladders.

•           Conflicting expressions of the explicit consciousness (immediate agenda of survival) and the implicit consciousness (sustaining passion for collective human identity).

•           When the achieved status is ridiculed and camouflaged by attributed inferior status.

•           When multiple forms of day-to-day socio-psychological and politico-physiological violence are trivialized by routinization, naturalization or even legitimization by the media, bureaucracy or judiciary.

•           The vicious cycle of behaviour due to depression or self-hatred resulting in fear of alienation and punishment.

•           Ever carrying the heavy burden of initiating the painful process of reconciliation, at least for the short-term political alliances, with the anti-Dalit forces which are just above in the social pyramid of caste hierarchy.

•           When Dalit ethical sensibilities are thrown overboard as eccentric claims for any regional, national or international discourse.

f) Explain Nature as the embodiment of God’s revelation?

Dalit religion discerns the divine in natural objects and the presence of supernatural in natural forces. Western writers, whose twin mission was to subjugate other cultures and to mutilate the Nature, had called this world-view as ‘animism’. For dalits, beneath every object, whether a growing tree or a static stone, there is life supernatural. As symbol of this kinship of nature and the supernatural innate they have deified objects like stones and trees. In every hut or outside every dalit hamlet a stone or a tree had been dedicated as representation of the Deity. The worship of nature resulted itself in the preservation of the nature. Thus the dalit religion is eco-friendly.

5. a) Narayan Guru

Narayana Guru was a Dalit thinker, social reformer and a sage in the modern period of India. Born as a Ezhava which was a caste considered in between the upper and lowest strata in the caste hierarchy, he and his society suffered social injustice. He revolted against casteism and reformed the society by rejecting caste divisions in the society. He was fondly called as gurudeva. The Guru’s philosophy is exemplified in his mystical writings that are truly interchanging warps and wefts of ethics, logic, aesthetics and metaphysics woven into masterpieces of silken rich poetry. The Guru’s literary works are in Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil languages, and these works are of a conceptual and aesthetic quality at par with the upanishads.

b) Dalit world-view

The world-view or the life-world does not mean the stagnant cluster of ideas and concepts. It is a process of cognition and operative foundations of human subjectivity. The latent and active complexes of values and rules of knowing embedded in the collective and individual consciousness control the whole spectrum of perception, behaviour, decision and choices. Any human community in a given living context of nature and nurture could be predominantly nomadic, agrarian, or IT in life orientations. In the globalized context of the contemporary age, the life-world of human communities, including those of Dalits, seem to be a mix-up of nomadic, agrarian and IT components. The whole complex web of oral wisdom, written discourses, movie stories or television serials from the religions, cultures or literature of the native Dalit soil is already embedded in the depths of their collective consciousness along with the impact of their historical successes and failures.

c) Subaltern philosophy

While critically analyzing the texts on God and soul, Iyothee Thass came up with a new discourse on God. The term God refers to those men and women, who through their own morally right conduct towards their fellow human beings and society have become immortalized in history and inspiration for subsequent generations. God is an ideal term and invitation to all similarly raise themselves morally to the status of the Divine. Veneration of these gods is neither out of fear nor for favor but a celebratory remembrance to strengthen one’s own resolve to become like them. A righteous life taught by Buddha is religion for him.  The three fundamental ethical teachings of Buddha are: Don’t sin (Kanma Bhaagai); Do good (Artha Bhaagai); Purify you heart (Gnana Bhaagai). These fundamental teachings are further explicated in the  four (Bhedas): Aram, Porul, Inbam, Veedu.

d) Shamanism

Religions of Indigenous origin in India like Buddhism and Jainism is called Shamanism. Buddhism began in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and it carried India through more than 1000 years of prosperity, and then gradually declined. Then in the 13th century, an Islamic government came to be in India, and Buddhism disappeared from most of the Indian Subcontinent, with pockets of Buddhist people living in the Himalayan mountainous and other regions.  The earliest known historical people to have rejected the caste system were Buddha and Mahavira. Their teachings eventually became to be known as Buddhism and Jainism which their followers converted into religions. Though they are today known as different religions, they were in fact against religion and denounced the existence of God and the belief in caste system.

f) Dalitization

An emancipatory project proposed by Kancha Ilaiah towards equal society where the high ideals of Dalit civil society ensure all peace and prosperity. Kancha Ilaiah (1952- ) is an Indian activist and passionate writer. He often writes related to contemporary Indian society, religious fundamentalism, Dalitbahujan ideology and condition. He is a very famous Indian political philosopher with much controversies attached to him. He is counted as a hardcore critic against the Hindutva movement. He advocates the "Dalitization" of Indian culture.  In his writings, especially in Why I am not a Hindu he emphatically proposes Dalitization of Indian culture.