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DALIT INTERNATIONALISM

Mariya Sethwala 668069 SOAS University Of London Study Abroad/Exchange Student International Relations of South Asia

How have non-state actors in South Asia used international arenas to achieve their objectives? Answer with reference to any ONE example.

The world owes a duty to the Untouchables as it does to all suppressed people to break their shackles and to set them free [ CITATION BRa43 \l 1033 ]. Dalit activists in India have engaged significantly with International arenas postindependence and have endeavoured to act as a significant pressure group on the Indian government. In this essay, I’d like to argue that significant achievements have been made by non-state actors, i.e Dalit activists in the international arena with strategic involvement with several multilateral agencies. To illustrate this, the essay first conceptualises the term nonsate actor, then how the term ‘Dalit’ itself came into being, and finally, tries to understand what ‘international arena’ stands for. We then observe how the Dalit stalwart Babasaheb Ambedkar first used domestic means to rally for greater visibility and rights protection through the new Constitution. We then try to understand why Dalit activists post-Ambedkar, i.e from 1956, enhanced their cooperation with international forums. We delve into the ideology and objectives of the ‘Dalit Panthers’ founded in 1972, and their coining of the term ‘Third Dalit World’ as they drew inspiration from non-Indian radical thought. We also analyse the work of the National Campaign For Dalit Human Rights (1998) as a pressure group campaigning for added protection and increased opportunities. Finally, we examine the Durban Conference in 2001, as the demand for caste to be recognized as a form of racism emerged at an international forum and the various responses that it elicited from the Indian government to elucidate how Dalit activists have been successful is gaining recognition for caste atrocities globally. The concept of non-state actors is generally understood as including any entity that is not actually a state, often used to refer to armed groups, terrorists, civil society, religious groups, or corporations; the concept is occasionally used to encompass inter-governmental organizations.[ CITATION And09 \l 1033 ] In the specific context of Dalit internationalism the expression non-state actor is being used to refer to a range of Dalit organizations and activists that operate beyond state control. As we trace the journey of Dalit activism in India and in international arenas, it is first imperative to understand how the term Dalit came into its ownIt was the British who first used official nomenclature to address the untouchable community as ‘Depressed Classes’. However, this term was perceived as derogatory and there were demands to change it to ‘Non-Conformist Hindu’. The term ‘Scheduled Castes’ was used in the Constitution of India which refers to the castes mentioned in the Schedule of the Constitution in a state-wise fashion who were entitled to affirmative action. M.K Gandhi used the term ‘Harijan’ which meant ‘people of God’ to atone for the sin of untouchability. However, the term commonly used today by those who have suffered the stigma of untouchability is “Dalit,” which means “ground down” or “broken to pieces” in Marathi and Hindi.’[CITATION anu09 \l 1033 ]. This framing was pivotal to the legacy of the class struggle as it enabled Dalits to own their history of oppression while also being agents of change and not just as receivers or subjects

of charity/aid by the upper castes. This helped campaigning for their emancipation as a minority group that needed constitutional protection as well as affirmative action. The ‘international arena’ is defined as an area of activity that concern the public sphere’ [CITATION Oxf \l 1033 ] and is usually characterized by interactions involving or between different countries, their governments as well as non-state actors such as lobbyists, pressure groups, activists and NGO’s, usually with competing interests. In this case, the Dalit activists and the Indian government are at odds with each other on the fundamental question of whether caste atrocities should even be discussed in the international arena. Ambedkar as the Chairman of the Drafting committee had included several provisions in the new nation’s constitution that abolished untouchability and ensured positive discrimination to the nation’s Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes. (Constitution of India, 1950). By making allowance for reserving a certain percentage of seats for them in public employment, legislative bodies and education to make sure there was upward mobility within the lower castes and they were adequately represented across the public sphere. [CITATION lui16 \l 1033 ] Ambedkar even exchanged letters with the founder of the NAACP, W.E.B Dubois, and asked him to attach copies of his NAACP petition, he also added that he was a "student of the Negro problem," and that "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." Ambedkar was told by Dubois that he was familiar with his name, and that he had "every sympathy with the Untouchables of India” in a letter he wrote on July 31,1946 (Desai, 2014) He had observed while making a speech in 1930, that the League of Nations had granted a right of appeal to some marginalised communities & minorities within central and eastern European countries created after World War I. Such rights of global appeal “would be a very desirable addition to the armoury of the Depressed Classes,” he said, though he did not place any strong hope in the possibility that the League or other authorities would actually offer effective aid to those facing repression [ CITATION Car18 \l 1033 ]. However, Ambedkar in his lifetime believed that once the Constitution comes into force, significant domestic recourse and protection would be made available, and hence refrained from engaging at the UN for Dalit rights. Dalit activists post-Ambedkar have sought out international recognition and subsequent intervention to fasten the pace of reform within the Indian state and to close in on the implementation gap of their constitutionally mandated protections. The reservations have helped make the Dalits an important political vote bank, but little has been done to close the attainment gap across sectors such as education and public employment. [CITATION anu09 \l 1033 ] Dalit internationalism has extended to drawing parallels with the Black Power Movement in the U.S.A and hence drawing on non-Indian radical thought to articulate their grievances which have originated as indigenous to the Indian sub-continent. This has manifested itself in fascinating ways such as an organization called the Dalit Panthers that originated in1972. “The very name ‘Dalit Panthers’ marshalled notions of blackness and black power to present Dalit resistance as militantly unbounded by the triumphant complacency of ‘self-proclaimed’ democratic nation states” (Slate, 2012)

The Dalit Panthers’ Manifesto also makes sweeping proclamations of solidarity with oppressed peoples across the world but makes special case with African Americans with whom they share a similar ideological vantage point. The Dalit Panthers Manifesto says “Due to the hideous plot of American imperialism, the Third Dalit World, that is, oppressed nations, and Dalit people are suffering… From the Black Panthers, Black Power emerged. We claim a close relationship with this struggle.” (Panthers, 1973) Several Civil Rights leaders had discussed India’s continuous demonstrated efforts to improve the status of the ‘untouchables’. In his book ‘We can’t wait’, Martin Luther King writes about how he was called an ‘untouchable’ from America, he was very taken aback but then recalled the horrors of segregation. He also writes about how Prime Minister Nehru argued for affirmative action in the Constituent assembly and when questioned about whether it constitutes reverse discrimination he says it might be, but it was a useful way of atoning for the centuries of injustice that we have inflicted upon these people (the untouchables) [ CITATION Mar63 \l 1033 ] The Panthers also coined the term ‘Third Dalit World’ which pledged allegiances and drew common ground with oppressed nations undergoing neo-colonialism and coloured people across the world including African- Americans who American black power activists believed were themselves a part of the Third World. The Third Dalit World aimed to globalize Dalit identity and localize notions of the Third World, the idea of a ‘Third Dalit World’ mixed concepts of caste ,ideology and statehood…From the vantage point of India Black Power seems less a separation than a culmination of many decades of transnational integration of a global community of the oppressed-what the Dalit Panthers called ‘Third Dalit World’ [ CITATION Nic12 \l 1033 ] This eventually led to the creation of groups such as National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) which have lobbied for increased recognition of caste atrocities at several multilateral agencies so as to increase pressure on the Indian government to be proactive about the glacial rate of change that keeps Dalit activist at the very bottom of many social and economic indices. The NDCHR was founded in 1989 when Dalit activists gathered to discuss the failure of the criminal justice system and the lack of implementation of the Prevention of Atrocities Act. They had a three-fold agenda of (i) Raising visibility of caste atrocities (ii) Internationalizing Dalit Rights (iii) Holding the State Accountable. To name just a few, the NCHDR has been involved in events such as the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa (‘01), all World Social Forums, the first International Conference on the Human Rights of Dalit Women at The Hague (Nov ’06) The European Union (May ‘07), and the United States Congress (July ‘07) These were important events which had increased international pressure on the Government of India to address the serious violation of Dalit Rights, an issue that Dalit activists alleged they had up to now paid only lip-service to.(National Campaign on Dalit Human rights, n.d.) “..they (NCDHR) have highlighted gaps between the constitutional and legislative rights pledged to Dalits – as well as the universal human rights that India has bound itself to uphold through international law – and the actual rights protections offered to

them at police stations, in courtrooms, and on village streets.”[ CITATION lui16 \l 1033 ] The Durban Conference in 2001 was a crucial moment for Dalit activists to seek out an international platform to showcase their grievances and speak of the structural violence that caste atrocities had on their lived realities, several Dalit organizations like the International Dalit Solidarity Network and The National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights fought to get ‘caste’ acknowledged as a form of race. The Indian State fought against the participation of these NGO’s, however the EU and the UN argued for their inclusion. The government argued that Apartheid and Zionism were constitutionally supported forms of segregation against vulnerable minorities as opposed to the Indian Constitution that abolishes untouchability, allows for positive discrimination in political institutions, public employment and education, penalizes any caste atrocities and has reformed the Hindu law and thus claimed merit to its arguments that the Durban Conference was not the stage for deliberation of caste and untouchability and this debate should be relegated to the domestic sphere. [ CITATION Smi08 \l 1033 ] The activists argued that attitudinal change has still not permeated within civil societies and lynching and other attacks perpetrated ,because of lower-caste identities of the victims, were not uncommon in most parts of the country. Demonstrative actions rather than a semantic debate on whether caste-based oppression is similar to apartheid or Zionism is what is expected of the Indian state to show its political will and determination to root out this pernicious phenomenon. (The Hindu, 2001). The Indian government lashed out against the activists with numerous accusations, calling them primarily ‘anti-national’ and many local leaders also called the ‘agents of western forces’. The same charges were levied against Babasaheb Ambedkar when he was consistently outspoken against caste and when he famously proclaimed ‘Gandhiji, I have no homeland.’ These accusations received a strongly worded response from Maja Daruwala, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights initiative, who said in an interview with the Hindu “It is anti-national to continue with caste discrimination in this country... It is like saying to a woman that she is against family life because she is beaten at home, but she mustn’t speak about it outside. You don't blame the victim for making a noise.” (The Hindu, 2001) The India Govt. reacted so swiftly, as its moral high ground as leader of the non-aligned movement and champion of the oppressed peoples across the Third World was questioned due to this ‘internal problem”. Hence, several prominent politicians lashed out against activists saying that they were agents of western imperial forces and Christian missionaries, who were trying to embarrass India on an international stage. This claim draws from the historical narrative that the lower castes often allied with the British against upper caste ‘defenders’ of the land like in the Bhima Koregaon battle. The Indian government argued that caste is fundamentally different from race and also added that speaking of caste at Durban delegitimised India’s claim to a security council seat and undermined it’s regional leadership by airing it’s dirty laundry in public.[ CITATION Car18 \l 1033 ] Due to India’s strong diplomatic clout there was no specific mention of caste in resolutions or documentation produced at the Conference. Kofi Annan when prodded about it caved in and said that descent-based discrimination was condemned at the UN conference in Durban,

without explicitly mentioning caste, prompting a huge stir for using the euphemism instead. This is a coded reference to caste since its victims are the descendants of families who traditionally do ‘dirty’ jobs like slaughter men, leather workers, refuse collectors and lavatory cleaners (BBC News, 2001) Internationally the visibility has become much more extensive with debates about caste issues being initiated by labour party MP Jeremy Corbyn in the UK parliament. Dalit activists have also had significant successes at the UN. The Special Rapporteurs of the UN prepared a 3year study that says lower caste groups are being disproportionately affected and feel “formidable effects” of the neo-liberal policies of the Indian government[ CITATION Smi08 \l 1033 ]. A variety of nations, including Canada, Greece, the United Kingdom, and France, created radio and TV documentaries “sympathetic” to the Dalits; while it is notable that the Canadian narrative cited broadly from NCDHR sources[ CITATION Smi08 \l 1033 ]. This has brought issues like extension of reservations to the private sphere as well as reserving seats right from primary school and even in non-government aided schools, colleges and universities at the forefront of public discourse and eventually gave way to the passing of the Right To Education Act (2009) for Dalit and other economically disadvantaged children. Hence, we see that even though awareness about caste atrocities have not been as pervasive in the international consciousness as slavery & Zionism; Dalit activists have been successful in parading India’s poor implementation standards and attainment gaps as a 'record of disgrace', coordinated at globalizing consciousness of casteism. This has led to the Indian government satisfying national and worldwide standards of human rights. Indeed, there is a long battle to wage to rid India of its ‘casteist’ mindset. However, the many small yet significant victories that have been made along the way by engaging the international arena, revel in the long legacy of “Educate, Agitate and Organize”[ CITATION BRa43 \l 1033 ]

Bibliography Ambedkar, B. (1943). Emancipation of the Untouchables. Thacker and Co.Lted. rao, a. (2009). The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Constitution of India. (1950). Carbera, L. (2018). Ambedkar and Du Bois on Pursuing Rights Protections Globally. Public Imagination, Volume 11,Issue 1. Desai, M. (2014, april 22). South Asian American Digital Archive. Retrieved from www.saada.org: https://www.saada.org/tides/article/ambedkar-du-bois National Campaign on Dalit Human rights. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.ncdhr.org.in: https://web.archive.org/web/20110721180920/http://www.ncdhr.org.in/ncdhr2/aboutn cdhr

Carbera, l. ( 21 October 2016). Dalit cosmopolitans: Institutionally developmental global citizenship in struggles against caste discrimination. British International Studies Association 2016. Slate, N. (2012). The Dalit Panthers-Race,Caste and Black Power in India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Panthers, D. (1973). Dalit Panthers Manifesto. Mumbai. King, M. L. (1963). We Can't Wait. New York: Harper & Row. The Hindu. (2001, August 31). Retrieved from www.thehindu.com: https://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/2001/08/31/stories/05312512.htm BBC News. (2001, september 6th). Retrieved from news.bbc.co.uk: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1528181.stm...