At this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, as India commemorates 60 years of being a Republic on 26 January 2010, the focus is on Dalit writing. There shall be four sessions devoted to issues related to caste and Dalit writing. Despite the Constitution being piloted by Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit and one of the architects of modern India, Dalits seem to hardly figure in sectors where there is no affirmative action. Consequently, beyond representation in jobs in the government sector (which too is begrudged to them) and in politics, they continue to be shunned in the realms of culture, literature, academia and the arts. Dalits, who constitute 17 percent of the India’s 1.2 billion population, are subjected to everyday violence and brutalities. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in 2009: “Caste is the very negation of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. It condemns individuals from birth, and their communities, to a life of exploitation, violence, social exclusion and segregation.”

Savi Savarkar's Mariamma

It is from such a context of hidden apartheid that Dalit literature emerges. The opening panel in the Dalit focus, Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience, befittingly derives its title from Ambedkar’s anxiety over the lack of a public conscience in India when it comes to the issue of discrimination against and oppression of Dalits.

In four sessions spread over five days, Dalit writers from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Delhi and Maharashtra will share platforms with nondalits who have worked on the caste question to debate issues related to identity, literature and representation. P. Sivakami, Om Prakash Valmiki, Kancha Ilaiah, Ajay Navaria, Desraj Kali, Iqbal Udasi and Laxman Gaikwad shall be the key speakers/ performers. Christophe Jaffrelot, Nirupama Dutt, S.S. Nirupam and S. Anand shall play the role of interlocutors during these sessions.

The Dalit Focus at JLF is being coordinated by S. Anand of Navayana Publishing and Namita Gokhale, founder-director of Jaipur Literature Festival. For interviews with the writers related to the Dalit sessions and further information on the Dalit focus at JLF 2010, please contact anand@navayana.org.22 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Durbar Hall.

22 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Durbar Hall
Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience
Om Prakash Valmiki, Kancha Ilaiah, P. Sivakami and S. Anand
In a speech in 1952, Ambedkar says: “Public conscience means conscience that becomes agitated at every wrong, no matter who is the sufferer, and it means that everybody, whether he suffers that particular wrong or not, is prepared to join him in order to get him relieved… [In India] there is South Africa everywhere in the villages and yet I have very seldom found anybody belonging to the upper castes taking up the cause of the Scheduled Castes and fighting. Why? Because there is no public conscience.” This agenda-setting panel seeks to use Ambedkar’s words as a starting point to examine the “absence of public conscience”, especially among the Hindus.

23 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Baithak.
Ab Aur Nahin: An End to Suffering
Ajay Navaria and Om Prakash Valmiki in conversation with S.S. Nirupam
Introduction by Christophe Jaffrelot
This session will have readings in Hindi by Omprakash Valmiki and Ajay Navaria, with English translations. Introduced by Christophe Jaffrelot. Moderated by S.S. Nirupam.

24 Jan 2010. 2.30pm - 3.30pm. Baithak.
The Grip of Change
P. Sivakami, Laxman Gaikwad and S. Anand on caste, patriarchy and literary liberation.
When part of a literary movement that seeks to assert the humanity of the marginalized, what does it mean to be a woman, to be a ‘criminal tribe’-to be on the peripheries of the margin? Sivakami whose first novel (The Grip of Change) offers an indictment of dalit patriarchy, and Gaikwad who lays bare the anguish of being despised by the despised (Uchalya) explore the issue. Anand, anchoring the discussion, shall speak on marginality and oppression in brahmanical writings.

25 Jan 2010. 2.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. Baithak.
A Million Suns: A Celebration of Punjabi Dalit Literature
Desraj Kali, Iqbal Udasi, Nirupama Dutt
This session is presented by Nirupama Dutt, who will also read from the works of Lal Singh Dil. Iqbal Udasi will sing the songs of her late father, revolutionary Punjabi poet, Sant Ram Udasi. Des Raj Kali will read from his work and discuss the provocation for his art.

For further details also visit the Jaipur Literature Festival website. For biographical sketches of the speakers at these sessions, click here.

At the Safai Karamchair Andolan office on 4 January 2010

In his Sarai lecture, on 4 Jan 2010, Slavoj Žižek called Gandhi a ’soft fascist’ and said he was more in line with Ambedkar’s radical approach to the question of caste. In this interview to the Sunday Times of India (10 Jan 2010), he elaborates on these questions. Excerpts with links to full text.

Q: You have also been accused of glorifying political violence. Do you support violence as a means of political change?

A: Here I must be frank. For me, the 20th century communism is the biggest ethical-political catastrophe in the history of humanity, greater catastrophe than fascism. In fascism, you had bad people who said we will do bad things and they took power and they did bad things. That’s why in fascism you don’t have dissidents. But in the first years of the October Revolution, in spite of the so-called Red Terror, there was sexual liberation, literary explosion and then it turned into the nightmare. I don’t accept the right-wing critique that says it was evil from the very beginning.

Q: What’s your point?

My point is what people perceive as violence is the direct subjective violence. It’s crucial to see violence which has to be done repeatedly to keep the things the way they are. I am not just talking about structural violence, symbolic violence, violence in language, etc. In that sense Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Hitler killed millions of people. It was more reactive killing. Hitler was active all the time not to change things but to prevent change.

Q: A lot of people will find it ridiculous to even imagine that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler? Are you serious when you say that…

A: Yes he was, although Gandhi didn’t support killing. With his actions — boycott and all that — he helped the British imperialists to stay in India longer. This is something Hitler never wanted. Gandhi didn’t do anything to stop the functioning of the British empire or the way it functioned here. You have to think why was India called the jewel of the empire? That for me is a problem. Let us locate violence properly.

Q: I guess you have no respect for Gandhi who is a tall figure in this country…

A: I respect him. I don’t respect him for his peaceful ways, vegetarianism etc. I don’t care about that. But Gandhi somehow succeeded in carrying on his principled attitude with pragmatic spirit. It’s very difficult to maintain this balance. But again I feel Ambedkar was much better than Gandhi. My favourite oneliner from Ambedkar is when he said that “there is no caste without outcastes”. Ambedkar saw that the Gandhian solution for untouchables was wrong. This attitude doesn’t work. I am for Ambedkar’s radical approach.

The full text of the interview can be viewed on Times of India staffer Shobhan Saxena’s blog. The print version can be viewed here. The TimeOut and Hindustan Times interview can be found here.

To order Žižek’s latest book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce and The Sublime Object of Ideology, or Thus Spoke Ambedkar, Volume 1, and any other Navayana title online in any part of South Asia, visit Scholars Without Borders. Visit Navayana’s office and avail 25%  discount on all titles.