SPECIAL ARTICLE
Ambedkar’s Lessons, Ambedkar’s Challenges
Hinduism, Hindutva and the Indian Nation
Rahul Govind
B R Ambedkar’s methodological and substantive
insights on the nature of Hinduism, caste and Indian
history anticipated much contemporary scholarship on
the subject. Even so, from his writings there is much to
learn about the energetic rigour required in the
attunement of political will and scholastic analysis. His
powerful and persuasive argument has been at variance
not only with those of figures such as Lokmanya Tilak
and S Radhakrishnan but also with what has become the
larger common sense on these issues, a common sense
that informs political as much as jurisprudential
discourse. This paper raises questions on the relationship
between conceptualisations of the constituent bases of
the nation and history in India as much as the means for
and the stakes involved in negotiating collective pasts
and collective futures.
I thank the anonymous referee for comments on the paper. I thank
Sanghamitra Misra for reading and discussing the many issues brought
up in it.
Rahul Govind (govind.rahul@gmail.com) teaches history at the
University of Delhi.
80
T
he Supreme Court in 2017 ruled by a four–three majority
that elections cannot be fought in the name of religion,
caste or community. The press as well as political parties
across the spectrum by and large hailed the ruling. However, in
light of the fact that the seven-judge constitutional bench
refused to revisit the 1995 Justice Verma “Hindutva” judgment,
the implications of the maintained ruling are not clear. It should
be remembered that the 1995 judgment “Hindutva,” Hinduism
and “the way of life of the Indian people” as one; all three were
in turn to be distinguished from “the strict practices of the Hindu
religion as faith.” It therefore appears, in view of the recent ruling,
that there is nothing wrong or illegal in demanding votes in the
name of Hindutva or a Hindu, since these terms could be under-
stood as interchangeable with India or Indian. But to ask for
votes in the name of a (particular) caste or (particular) commu-
nity would seemingly amount to contempt and interference in
the secular activity of the elections. The above distinction be-
tween Hindutva/Hindu/Indian and caste/community may flow
from the following section of the Verma judgment:
Thus, it cannot be doubted, particularly in view of the Constitution
Bench decisions of this Court that the words “Hinduism” or “Hindutva”
are not necessarily to be understood and construed narrowly, confined
only to the strict Hindu religious practices unrelated to the culture and
ethos of the people of India, depicting the way of life of the Indian
people. Unless the context of a speech indicates a contrary meaning or
use, in the abstract these terms are indicative more of a way of life of
the Indian people and are not confined merely to describe persons
practicing the Hindu religion as a faith.1
Thus, combining this with the present ruling, naming caste
is outlawed in the name of a secularisation process—notwith-
standing its recognition in constitutional provisions and gov-
ernmental measures—while Hinduism and Hindutva are not,
insofar as they represent “a way of life” of the Indian people.
Hindutva as Hinduism is sui geniris identified with the nation
and any other category—whether caste, community or perhaps
class—is tainted with the brush of divisiveness.
Ronojoy Sen made an important study of the Verma judgment,
tracing it to Yagnapurushdasji v Muldas (1966), which was based
specifically on Radhakrishnan’s arguments about Hinduism as a
“way of life” (Sen 2010: 2–29). Sen and other scholars have pointed
out the irony and fallacy involved in the conflation of Hindutva,
Hinduism and “Indianisation” in the Verma judgment which
would have been unacceptable to the text in which the term
Hindutva is first formulated and elaborated that is V D Savarkar’s
Essentials of Hindutva, which had clearly made a fundamental
distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva (Sen 2010: 2–29).
JANUARY 27, 2018 vol lIiI no 4 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

The Verma judgment was a departure from previous Supreme
Court rulings in that while earlier Hinduism was defined in expan-
sive terms as a “way of life,” it was only with Verma that this “way
of life” was identified with Hindutva that is, Hindutva, Hindu-
ism and Indian were more or less identified in Verma (1995).
I wish to emphasise a dimension that hitherto seems to have
received less—if any—attention in this regard. It must be remem-
bered that Yagnapurushdasji (1966) ruled on the right of “Hari-
jans” to temple entry in Swaminarayan temples which were in this
ruling said to be treated as subsumed within the Hindu fold. The
ruling in itself appears to index a tension in the very under-
standing of Hinduism. On the one hand, Yagnapurushdasji ex-
plicitly traced to the Constitution the message of social equality
and justice, after which, “the whole social and religious outlook
of the Hindu community has undergone a fundamental change”2
(emphasis mine). On the other hand, Yagnapurushdasji, citing
lines from the Gita and Radhakrishnan, credits Hinduism with
such tolerance as though it already contained within itself the
message of tolerance and acceptance that the Constitution for-
mulated and guaranteed.3 The pivot of the tension lies in the
relationship between caste and the making of the Hindu com-
munity that is, whether tolerance and equality was already and
always a feature of Hinduism or whether the rights mandated by
the Constitution was required precisely because of the lack of such
features in caste-ridden Hinduism. It is this tension that is dis-
solved in the Verma judgment that seamlessly identifies Hindutva,
Hindu and Indian as an a priori national and inclusive identity.
If the understanding of the Verma judgment (1995) of Hinduism
and Hindutva would be unacceptable to Savarkar’s founding
document, neither would it have been acceptable to the Chairman
of the Constitution Drafting Committee, B R Ambedkar. In the
following article I begin by focusing on the differences between
Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva and Ambedkar’s writings on the
subject and then move on to the set of issues that are at stake in
Ambedkar’s more general critique of Hinduism and Indian history.
In the course of this examination it will be shown that Ambedkar’s
methodological and substantive insights on the nature of Hin-
duism, caste and Indian history anticipated much contemporary
scholarship on the subject. Even so from his writings there is much
to learn on the energetic rigour required in the attunement of
political will and scholastic analysis. As will be detailed below,
Ambekdar’s powerful and persuasive argument has been at
variance not only with those of figures such as Lokmanya Tilak
and S Radhakrishnan but also with what has become the larger
common sense on these issues, a common sense that informs
political as much as jurisprudential discourse. This is the urgent
context in which one learns from Ambedkar. The following dis-
cussion hopes to therein raise questions on the relationship be-
tween conceptualisations of the constituent bases of the nation
and history in India as much as the means for and the stakes in-
volved in negotiating collective pasts and collective futures.
Ambedkar and Savarkar
It scarcely needs repeating, considering so much extant schol-
arship, that the Essentials of Hindutva finds its raison d’être in
the distinction between Hindutva and Hinduism—in explicit
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 27, 2018 vol lIiI no 4
SPECIAL ARTICLE
contrast to Verma (1995)—even as it identifies Hindutva with
a particular vision of being Indian, anticipating Verma. The
radically different positions in time are telling. While Savarkar
is writing in colonial India, making an argument for the identifi-
cation of Hindutva and the autochthonous Indian as opposed to
the foreigner-invader Muslim, Verma is pronouncing in the
long aftermath of partition in an India where Muslims consti-
tute a sizeable population of the Indian nation.
Savarkar announces a resonant thesis: “Hindutva is not a
word it is a history” (Savarkar 1969: 3). It is the naming of a
subject whose self-naming has been erased in history that is,
Savarkar, notwithstanding lack of evidence and logic, argues
that the residents of the subcontinent had from time immemo-
rial called themselves Hindus.4 However, almost in contradic-
tion, it is simultaneously the naming of a subject that emerges
in a specific conflict that is, the Hindutva subject, as a form of
self-consciousness, is forged in war with Muslims.
Heaven and hell making a common cause-such were the forces, over-
whelmingly furious, that took India by surprise the day Mohammad
crossed the Indus and invaded her. Day after day, decade after decade,
century after century, the ghastly conflict continued and India single-
handed kept up the fight morally and militarily. (Savarkar 1969: 44)5
And further,
In this prolonged furious conflict our people became intensely
conscious of ourselves as Hindus and were welded into a nation to an
extent unknown in our history. (Savarkar 1969: 44)6
If Hindutva refers to a history and culture it inevitably also
includes religion in that the Hindutva subject has to consider
this land his “holy land,” thereby tacitly rendering doubtful the
claims of Christians and Muslims to the land and culture. No other
distinguishing features of this “culture” are proposed. Rather,
Savarkar simply constantly asserts the unity of blood, culture
and history. Questioning the divisiveness of caste, he turns the
question around by asserting that examples of marriage across
caste in ancient texts were evidence enough of a race unified
(Savarkar 1969: 85). Rather than dwell on the violent condem-
nation of and anxiety towards varnasamskara, for Savarkar,
All that the caste system has done is to regulate its noble blood on lines
believed—and on the whole rightly believed—by our saintly and pa-
triotic law-givers and kings to contribute most to fertilize and enrich
all that was barren and poor, without famishing and debasing all that
was flourishing and nobly endowed. (1969: 86)
This whole schema of history—its immaculate intactness as
it were—is detonated in Ambedkar’s Buddhist Revolution and
Counter-revolution in Ancient India. In the first place, Ambedkar
consciously displaces the problematic from “Islamic invasions” to
what he calls the wars of the ancient period. Declaiming that he is
not happy with the history of India because “too much emphasis
has been laid on the Muslim conquest of India,” Ambedkar writes:
From the point of view of the permanent effect on the social and spiritu-
al life of the people, the Brahminic invasions of Buddhist India have
been so profound in their effect that compared to them, the effect of
Muslim invasions on Hindu India have been really superficial and
ephemeral. (Ambedkar: 107)7
The distinction between the profound and the ephemeral is
again analysed as “cultural.” That is to say, while the Islamic
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invasions after a point did allow the culture of Hinduism to
remain, the Brahminical conflict with Buddhism ended in the
complete destruction of the latter. Ambedkar diagnoses the
fundamental failure in Indian historiography to be one where
it is assumed that ancient India shared one culture. In contrast
to which he asserts that prior to the Islamic invasions there was
not one intact culture but a war, “the mortal conflict between
Brahmanism and Buddhism” (Ambedkar: 108).8
Ambedkar’s “exhumation” of Indian history extracts facts
through the sieve of norms and thereby renders them mean-
ingful. If history has to be distinguished from nature, the nar-
rative significance of events cannot but be acknowledged in
terms of norms as the operative and punctuating forces of history.
Thus Ambedkar reads the Vedic texts by arguing that howso-
ever otherworldly and fabulous their stories, they necessarily
reflected and expressed worldly concerns as much as worldly
power. Their import is best deciphered by a counter norm,
which for Ambedkar is to be found in the worldly compassion
of Buddhism. Three phases in Indian history are identified:
The “ancient regime” of the Vedic period, the revolutionary
moment of Buddhism and the Brahminical reaction or counter-
revolution.9 Ambedkar here makes two interrelated arguments
that have enormous implications in terms of how contempo-
rary Hinduism and Hindutva understand themselves in the
scholarly world as much as in popular consciousness. The first
point is that the dharma of the Vedas and the dharma of the
Buddhists have to be clearly distinguished because the latter
referred to certain norms of ethical behaviour and disposition
whereas the former was directly linked to forms of ritual activity
which in later renditions had varna as an essential content and
context.10 And the second point relates to karma, where too
the distinction between the Buddhists and the Vedic (and later
Brahminical conceptions) lay between behavioural norms
(within soteriological contexts) and ritual and sacrificial activity
which became pronouncedly caste imbued.11 “Ritual” in the period
of the “counter-revolution” inextricably linked notions of karma
and dharma within the framework of varnashrama, and can-
not to be seen as an abstraction or set of mechanical actions.
The effectivity of the norm of equality lies in its challenge to
the older Vedic social order and in the danger it poses. Buddhism is
successful, yet all too soon destroyed by the “restoration” of the
Brahminical order, through the political force of the sanghas
and the philosophical justifications of the Manusmriti and the
Bhagavad Gita. The force of Ambedkar’s own argument lies in
providing socio-historical loci for these texts that are often as-
sumed to signify timeless truths. The eternal twins that are unitary
culture and linear history are thereby unhinged. For Ambedkar,
the distinguishing features of the Gita lies in what it borrows from
Buddhism and how it nonetheless transforms these ideas so as to
justify and fortify chaturvarna in new ways (Ambedkar: 179–98).12
This social order when articulated in the Manusmriti is rendered
all the more rigid because social practice and conventions are
reaffirmed with the force of legal sanction. For the Gita, karma
remains ultimately within the ritual and the social-existential
contexts of the caste order. The “patriotic trick” of reading karma
as merely action in the general sense devoid of caste and ritual
82
was something he attributed to Tilak. This is an argument for
which Ambedkar found no textual basis (Ambekdar: 184).13
Ambedkar’s is an important historic-philosophical argument
which requires both dimensions, that is, the fact that Buddhism
predated and influenced texts such as the Manusmriti and Gita
as well as the fact that Buddhism transformed key categories of
the pre-Buddhist period such as karma and dharma. Thus, the
high tenets of Hindu religion and culture—what we popularly
take karma and dharma to stand for—are found to reveal and
conceal the hierarchical varna order and it is this which consti-
tutes the core of subcontinental history and identity. This is why
even while recognising the role of the “Muslim invasions” in the
devastation of Buddhism, Ambedkar is keen to argue that the
decline of Buddhism had to be traced to the much earlier coun-
ter-revolution of Brahminism. Islamic invasions could not de-
stroy the fundamental feature that the counter-revolution of
Brahminism had bequeathed: the institution of varna which was
indistinguishable from Hinduism.14 Invoking Savarkar one might
say of chaturvarna that it is not just a term, it is a history.
In Savarkar, Hindutva history takes the form of nature, in
the sense of the necessary. The most minuscule uncertainty, the
slightest hesitation would amount to a crushing existential crisis. A
position possessed of such fear is only defined by that which it
is not. Such a culture can never accede to the minimum de-
mands of rationality or reflection because in refusing to define
itself it renders itself invulnerable to refutation. Doubt is be-
trayal. The conflation of race and culture has no place for a
will or an end, no place for the future and what might be done,
no place for reflection; except the war with the other. This is
where Ambedkar stands furthest apart from Savarkar. For
Ambedkar, on the other hand, history is not natural in the sense
of the necessary but freedom as a lightning flash; it illuminates
as much as it strikes. His conversion into Buddhism is an event
that indicts and reveals the existing caste system as a funda-
ment of social existence in India or what he alternatively calls
Hinduism. It is a challenge to the weight of history but all the
same a determination to make one of its own that recalls the
lost call of Buddhism. The febrile notes that are Revolution and
Counter-revolution are immanent to this event of conversion.
Thus while fundamentally at odds, for both Savarkar and
Ambedkar, history is the name of a politics. Both anticipate
contemporary historical research as much as popular con-
sciousness. Savarkar’s insistence on unity empties time leaving
the shell that is history: thus genetic science always existed in
our past, in our culture, much like the fashionable purses of
Konark sculptures.15 Put paradoxically, the past has no future,
since it is eternally present and anticipates all. Whatever of
value we do, we have always done, otherwise how could we
exist? Ambedkar, by contrast, in his action—historical and
existential—brings into relief the stake of history.
Ambedkar’s Critique of Caste: Philosophy
The language of history requires the grammar of norms to be
understood. In this section key poles around which the self-
representation of our religious and cultural idiom revolve such
as karma, dharma and advaita will be put to scrutiny. Their
JANUARY 27, 2018 vol lIiI no 4 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

historical and differentiated nature will be analysed. And one
must begin with Ambedkar’s insistence on the crucial role
of Buddhism in the transformation of key concepts such as
dharma and karma, as well as its chronology, which has found
(further) justification and elaboration in the recent works from
the world of scholarship, such as those of Patrick Olivelle, Alf
Hiltebeitel and James Fitzgerald, howsoever they may differ
on other counts.16 What is important for us is to underline the
double appropriation, Buddhist appropriation of Vedic words and
terms such as dharma and karma, and the further Brahminical
appropriation of these very Buddhist concepts which are
(re)formulated through the primary axiomatic of caste. The
specifically Brahminical features of these doctrines—their for-
mulation through caste—are effaced by philosopher-thinkers
such as Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan which has become
the inheritance of popular culture as much as certain forms of
academic discourse.17 This erasure and appropriation (of Bud-
dhism) finds its way into the common self-description of con-
temporary Indian and Hindu culture. It is such a perspective
that one might find in some Supreme Court judgments.
The Ambedkarite challenge to our culture’s smug self-
perception is at once philosophical and historical. Let us isolate
and elaborate the philosophical dimension which consists in
his indictment that the Gita—which has almost become central
to Hindu self-understanding—is devoid of any ethics, if by ethics
we mean thinking through the principles and criteria for good
human action in the world. For Ambedkar, and he provides
much evidence through citation for this, the ethics of the Gita
is indissociable from caste (Ambedkar: 183, 185).18 Svadharma
is not “human” nature/duty but caste-nature/duty and there-
fore it cannot conceive of the principles of (modern) humanity,
that is, equality, liberty and fraternity. Even though, in the
Gita, Vedic sacrifice is deemed insufficient and in an ultimate
sense everyone can seek refuge in god, the social order of the
caste system, and its division into a hierarchical differentiated
social order is itself left intact. Ambedkar argues that the
important line of the Gita that allows all to take refuge in the
lord, is most likely taken from the Buddhist argument that
all caste distinctions are erased when refuge is taken in the
Buddha and the sangha (Ambedkar: 189–90). Of course a key
distinction lies in the fact that while the sangha is a “real”
social institution that is to offer concrete means of escape, the
Gita provides no such concrete means of escaping the varna
order. This coupled with other verses endorsing the varna order
establishes that the Gita does not provide a fundamental
critique of chaturvarna. Such an interpretation of the Gita is
in direct contradiction to the arguments of Radhakrishnan et al
who have argued that svadharma can be understood as
“dispositional” and “psychological,” that is, there is only a human
nature and no caste nature.19 Interpreting svadharma as
merely psychological and dispositional by subtracting varna
allows for a completely different—and questionable—rendering
of the Gita. Considering the evidence provided, it is difficult
not to agree with Ambedkar, even if he did not know Sanskrit
and thus did not have the credibility that Radhakrishnan
the philosopher had.
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However, Indologists, philosophers and literary critics, seem
to have, since Ambedkar’s death, further established his basic
contention. Wilhelm Halbfass in a deeply searching article on the
question as to whether the category of the human existed in
ancient India shows that there is no easy answer. While providing
much textual evidence to support the conception of humanity
as significantly distinct—consciousness of time and reason are
important features—he nonetheless points to the enduring
importance of varna which undermines such distinction.20
More recently, from a slightly different perspective, in ruth-
lessly rigorous fashion Bandyopadhyay shows that the contem-
porary self-understanding of Indian culture in its interpretation
of Chapter 2, Verse 47 of the Gita stands neither philosophical
nor historical scrutiny. Where we think we are most ourselves,
we are in fact sorry mimic variations of colonialist orientals,
who were the first to systematically interpret “action” in the Gita
as devoid of a ritual-caste context; and present interpretation
continues in this vain.21 Which is why we find it difficult to respond
to Hegel’s critique of Chapter 2, Verse 47. This line in itself does
not engage with the basic problematic of morality-freedom,
that is, the nature of the distinction between good and not-
good and how to distinguish one from the other in deciding on
the course of action to take.22 That is to say, the ideal of action
without desire cannot provide the justification for any specific
action, and as such can post facto justify action of any kind.23
Closely associated with the Gita, Sankara’s advaita has become
a central marker—and source of pride—for popular culture in
contemporary times not only because of the writings of
Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan. Monism is presumed to do
away with all the divisiveness and discrimination that is pres-
ent not only in caste but also the Abrahamic religions, which
distinguish between believers and heretics. However, the fact
that Sankara’s commentary, the Brahma Sutra Bhasya clearly
disqualified the Sudras from Vedic knowledge (law/morality)
and ritual while well recognised in the scholarship is not part of
this popular consciousness.24 Monism is assumed to be a critique
of caste, but this certainly was not the case with Sankara’s text.
The issue is not simply of this or that interpretation of Sankara
but the fact that his specific disqualification of Sudras was cited
as authoritative and followed in the later medieval—early modern
commentatorial tradition specifically on the question of the
rights/authority of Sudras to Vedic knowledge.25 Philosophical
traditions at a great variance with that of Sankara—whether
Madhvacharya, Ramanuja, the Nyaya or Vaisesika—converged on
the disqualification of the Sudra.26 The whole first millennium
had indeed seen the development of a system of discrimination
that was increasing in subtlety and force, to which we can also
trace the emergence and construal of the “untouchable.”27
Logic of Historical Motion
While it has been recognised for a long time that a whole genre of
text on the rights/duties of the Sudras developed in the later early
modern period, it is only now that this corpus is being taken up for
analysis.28 There is also the clear recognition that the emergence
of this seemingly new genre of texts might have to do with the fact
that the rulers of the period were “Sudras,” who all the same
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took to forms of Brahminical authentication. As Ambedkar
argued, in his instantiation of history as normative effect, the most
spectacular instance was the case of Shivaji going so far as to actu-
ally perform the upanayanam ceremony to establish his lineage
from a line of genuine Kshatriyas; even as much historical research
has established that Shivaji was not unusual in exhibiting the need
for Brahminical legitimisation. That the Sudra dharma texts
usually scrupulously tried to deny Vedic knowledge and ritual to
Sudras—notwithstanding giving other compensation in the form
of other Puranic rituals—is of direct relevance to the fact that
Shivaji claimed to be of Kshatriya lineage.29 All of this goes to show
that the logic of historical motion in India is difficult to conceive
of without a serious confrontation with varna just as it would
not do to project commonsensical understandings of monism to
the doctrinal elaborations as they were articulated in the past.
It is to state the obvious that Ambedkar found Hinduism to
be irreducibly linked with the varna principle. His near contem-
poraries, whether Vivekananda or Radhakrishnan, did not think
so and believed Hinduism, especially its scriptures, to teach a
universal morality that was superior to whatever the world had
to offer.30 On such contemporary understandings it would do
well to follow Halbfass in making a distinction between self-
consciously interpreting the past (therefore recognising that one’s
interpretation is not the past itself) and asserting that what one
is saying is the past itself. There may be value in reinterpreting
the past and with it concepts such as dharma and karma but it
is much less convincing to take contemporary conceptualisation
of such notions (without the caste/ritual dimension) as authentic
records of the past itself.31 Unfortunately, it is the latter that has
played a role in the constitution of present-day Hindu culture
as we know it leading to unthinking self-congratulation rather
than serious intellectual curiosity and labour. Such confidence
has led to a sapping of the critical spirit and therefore in today’s
world, especially today, if one were to cite certain lines of
Ambedkar about Hinduism, one might well find oneself in jail,
prosecutable on a range of charges. Even as contemporary schol-
arship has—without always acknowledging it—only lent further
credence to Ambedkars words.32 As we argued above, Ambedkar’s
critique of culture as history was as philosophical as it was his-
torical, and it is to the latter dimension that we now turn.
Ambedkar’s Critique of Caste: History
This is where Ambedkar’s historical works—whether the Origin
of Sudras or the Revolution and Counter-revolution—are pio-
neering. It is unfortunate that historians while often agreeing
with his conclusions and arguments, still appear uncomfort-
able with his methods and claims. There is a clear method-
ological issue. Ambedkar is interested in the persisting force of
the caste system as an “event,” one whose operational power
and ability to renew itself is presently palpable. This is not to
say that caste is ahistorical but that it is that within which
politico–cultural history is accessible in its intelligibility. One
might take the help of Hans Blumenberg’s distinction cum
symmetry between a “pre-history” and a “history of effects” to
understand Ambedkar’s reading of caste. There is a necessary
discrepancy as much as alignment between a “pre-history” and
84
the “history of effects” of an event such as that of caste, which
cannot be captured by conventional accounts of context, since
context presupposes as constant precisely the mutation that
has already occurred, that is, the normative frameworks of
Brahminical ideology obscure its own origin and historical
emergence to which we are still in thrall.
Ambedkar states his intent very clearly in Origin of the
Sudras: “in the case of the Sudras the centre of interest is not
the Sudras as a people but the legal system of pains and penalties
to which they are subjected” (Moon 1989: 10).33 Elsewhere he
says that the caste system was not merely notional, but penal.
The distinguishing feature was not the fact of division of class-
es, but the divine and legal sanction given so as to constitute a
principle, a principle of “graded inequality.” Not hierarchy, but
the legitimisation of hierarchy through reference to the divine.
And in his investigations, Ambedkar specifically targets a
range of people, including the Arya Samajists, who argue that
everything of value in today’s world could be traced to the
Vedas; a position that we are only all too familiar with today.
In the text marked by voluminous citation, Ambedkar argues
that the Sudras were originally a tribe; in fact they were
Kshatriyas. A conflict arose between the Sudras (as Kshatriyas)
and the Brahmins, which led to the latter denying them the
Upanayana ceremony, and consequently access to Vedic sacrifice.
This implied the loss of access to both knowledge and law (the
source of which was to lie in the Vedas) and property (which
had as its end sacrifice and gift). This is how Ambedkar makes
sense of the fact that the early Vedic sources provide evidence
for Sudras as having access to sacrifice and (Vedic) knowledge,
but from the later Vedic period into the Dharmasutras and later,
especially Manu, one witnesses an increasing degradation of
the Sudra. Such an event shows that it is a deep violence that
fractures a “prehistory” of the event from its “effect”; one that
we are still living with. R S Sharma, who has perhaps written
the most detailed study in recent times on the issue, will not
disagree with this thesis; both on the possibility of the Sudras
being a “tribe” and the decline in the position of the Sudras in
the later Vedic period and the Dharmasutras and Dharmasastras.
However, while Ambedkar wishes to uncover the logic of
discrimination coded in the power of the norm, Sharma pegs
the textual literature on the abstract schema of a division of
labour. The latter argument erases the specificity of caste, rob-
bing it of its status as an act of discrimination. Notwithstanding
his painstaking scholarship, this is a limitation in Sharma’s
work.34 This becomes clearest in his reading of Buddhist scrip-
tures which he at times sees as ultimately little different from
the Brahminical sources because both of them record the
degraded status of the Sudras and other labouring castes. The
fact that they equally record degradation cannot imply the
lack of difference between the two kinds of sources, because
unlike the Brahminical texts, the Buddhists ones specifically
critiqued the Brahminical principle of “graded inequality” and
the hereditary qualifications required for real knowledge. By
minimising the value of the intellectual and legal content to
the texts he studies and reading them for evidence through
which social reality is accessed, something is thereby lost.35
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This is where it is important to return to Ambekdar, more
particularly his fervent notes, Buddhist Revolution and Counter-
revolution. Interestingly, in this text too the primary agency is
given as much to Buddhism in its historical defeat, in its ethical
afterlife. Ambedkar argues that while Vedic society did not en-
shrine the principle of graded inequality which was the varna
system, it did not have any recognisable principle of morality.36
Thus one has a diversity of creation myths as well as direct
reference to the importance and privileges of Sudras. The
Buddha’s emphasis on conduct and universal compassion invited
the wrath of the Brahmins who now in their turn, through
texts like the Manusmriti, transformed the original (Vedic)
division of classes into a divinely sanctioned normative-legal
principle (Moon 1989: 117–57). The specific Purusha sukta
hymn—out of all creation myths found in the Vedic sources—
is given specific importance and the Vedas themselves are now
seen as the source of all dharma (law/morality). It is in such a
context that the Vedas acquire the status of the divine word, a
schema that continues until the modern—including colonial
and postcolonial—period. The Vedic texts do not proclaim to
be divine knowledge in the ways that the Dharmasastras and
later the Mimamsa tradition claimed it to be. If one takes the
lead of Olivelle one would have to say that this notion of divine
scripture was itself to be traced to Buddhist notions.
Notwithstanding the difference between his historical works,37
for Ambedkar the discriminatory rationale of the caste system is
itself a specific historical logic of naming and not a priori schema
that is to be found universally across human societies as a func-
tion of material factors; such naming requires investigation be-
cause of its persistent and present vitality. In such a naming
and excavation of historical principles Ambedkar’s view of his-
tory is explicitly to be distinguished from that of Savarkar’s, as
well as many European thinkers. More specifically, Ambedkar’s
view argues that the history of India and Hinduism cannot be rid
of the caste system because it encodes the social institution
with a religious rationale that is best exemplified in the Purusha
sukta—an originary division of labour disallowing a principle
of humanity—in its persistent reiterations. Thus, rather than
dismiss the Vedic and Dharmashastra texts as “normative” in
the weak sense of having no historical hold, Ambedkar’s forceful
analysis of the one case of Shivaji brings to a crystallised form the
discriminatory force and enduring persistence of chaturvarna
across “Hindu” history. It is the Brahminical norm reverberat-
ing across centuries howsoever one might have the record of
caste mobility as much as proliferation. In this argument,
much of the recent detailed work on legitimacy follows in
Ambedkar’s path, by underlining the power of normative
frameworks and their ability to stage historical change.38
Ambedkar’s Buddhism: Revolution?
Fundamental to much history writing is the invalidation cum
contextualisation of revolution and it is little wonder that his-
torians have been particularly critical of Ambedkar’s stance
that Buddhism was in a real sense a break with the past.39 Did
Buddhism in its initial inauguration of the ethical and subsequent
challenge to varna indeed mount a revolutionary challenge in
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the name of humanity? Again this would require a careful ex-
amination of the sources so as to understand them in terms of a
discourse having a unity they self-consciously create. In this con-
text, the recent detailed work of Eltschinger underlines a re-
lentless critique of varna discrimination in the Buddhist cor-
pus which is surely remarkable; a critique that often shaded off
into “strictly philosophical” issues such as universality and
perception (Eltschinger 2012).
Eltschinger argues that one can discern a pattern in Buddhist
texts that systematically argued against caste which was diag-
nosed as a “reification” of social relations. The question of varna
initially hinged on the question of humanity, picking up from
Halbfass’s query, and is directed towards asking whether human
beings could be rigorously “categorised” that is, divided into jatis.
So a range of arguments were mobilised against the Brahminical
argument that Brahmins constituted a different species with
differentiating properties. One set focused on the inability to
differentiate Brahmins physically from others and the fact
that inter-mixture did not produce sterility. Others used
Brahminical sources to prove that even by Brahminical stan-
dards of hereditary purity, there were many examples in their
scriptures of inter-mixtures. Furthermore, this was linked to the
arguments of karma as sacrament, since certain Brahminical
texts argued that birth was impure and sacraments were needed
to achieve purity and if certain acts were not performed this
purity was lost. The Buddhists retorted that if one could “lose”
purity, and the case was the performance of certain sacraments,
did this not contradict arguments regarding birth/heredity as
a marker of caste? There is the interesting related argument
about mantras, and the fact that Sudras were disqualified from
uttering sacred mantras. Here too, not unlike the argument
about karma, the Buddhists asked whether the power of the
mantra lay in that of its utterance (grounded in his status as a
Brahmin) or in the mantra itself (which should not be affected
by the “nature” of the person who utters it).
This debate moved from more commonsensical arguments
to extremely subtle and complex questions such as whether
conceptualisation involved perception.40 However, even here
the trigger and guiding thread was the question about whether
there was such an identifiable property such as Brahminhood.
Thus the nature of such a long-standing debate is surely evidence
not only of the importance of the varna principle, but of the
fact that among all traditions, the Buddhists alone appear to
have carried out a sustained philosophical critique of caste.41
What complicates matters is that the Buddhist critique appears
to have influenced—although it is no doubt very difficult if
not impossible to prove such things—a range of Brahminical
sources. One can indeed find in the latter many instances of
hereditary birth not being seen as an essential qualification for
spiritual knowledge.42 However, they turn out to be nugatory,
in the sense that there is no sustained critique like that which
may be found in the Buddhist sources. It is only in this vague
sense that one may say “influence”; since while there is a sys-
tematic anti-caste discourse in Buddhism, within Brahminical
discourse, even if one were to include the epics, such a position
was not systematically pursued.
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It is often commented that while the Buddhist corpus was
indeed critical of the varna order, there was no argument for
social transformation envisioned in it. This indeed cannot be
denied because while the sangha was seen as a place where
hereditary birth did not matter this did not translate into any
attempt to transform the world outside the sangha.43 However,
such an argument need not diminish Ambedkar’s argument that
Buddhism was revolutionary. Buddhist texts argued that what
appeared as sacred ultimately was a means to the unwarranted
privilege of a class (Brahmins). By doing so it (re)constituted
the fundamental concepts such as dharma and karma denuding
them of the ritual and caste privilege within which they were
articulated and rearticulated. To argue against a specific class
operating with power in the world which all the same guarded
itself with reference to the divine, meant in fact opening up its
claim to critical scrutiny. It also thereby outlined a theory of
humanity thereby enshrining compassion as a fundamental
value. Surely this set of arguments could be interpreted as revo-
lutionary. This leads us to a more controversial and speculative
domain. The question about whether the Buddhist critique
resulted in the persecution of Buddhists and the “class war”
that Ambedkar spoke about in his notes.
In many Brahminical sources—whether Manusmriti or the
Arthashastra—there is a clear denunciation of Buddhists who
might have been the purported referents of terms that are
otherwise translated as “heretics” or “unbelievers.”44 This
critique continued into the Puranic period. According to Gail
Omvedt, the argument that Buddhists were in fact actually
persecuted and that the decline of Buddhism would be directly
linked to a revived Brahminical polity cannot be dismissed as it
once was.45 No doubt much more needs to be done to make this
fully persuasive, but the fact that there is no explanation or
even analysis of the demise of Buddhism from India makes it
imperative that one at least attempts to answer the question.
Even if one does not take it literally, the war between the Brahmins
and the Buddhists may be taken figuratively as a contest over
fundamental issues of ethics and politics. This in itself is surely
an important enough claim to merit serious attention. After all,
the whole ideological force of modernity is the claim of Western
civilisation to have bequeathed to the world the norms of
human liberty from which irradiates its various histories; not-
withstanding the delicious irony in the dehumanisation involved
in the spreading of such ideals and norms that are recorded in
the imperial and colonial histories of our times.
In the face of the overwhelming evidence provided it seems
impossible not to recognise with Ambedkar that the unifying
feature of the history of the subcontinent and its intellectual
traditions is intimately linked with the violence of caste
discrimination. Especially if along with Ambedkar we realise
that the force of caste discrimination was driven by the denial
of a nucleus in which law, property and education were inex-
tricably intertwined. The emphasis on the upanayana and its
relationship to dharma as a source of law—normative as well
as penal—is therefore of crucial significance in understanding
history and culture. The inheritance of this discrimination today
is undeniable in its force.46 If such awareness is sharpened
86
only can it become change. Here in interpreting Buddhism too
in his own way, Ambedkar is emphatic that reasoning and
freedom cannot distinguished from each other. While Bud-
dhism’s rigorous critique of varna appears uncontroversial, the
fact that the sangha as a community depended in very real
ways on the larger society whose transformation it did not call
for, would have appeared inadequate to Ambedkar. And so
Ambedkar’s stunning and consistent interpretation of Bud-
dhism that went against the grain of his contemporaries.47
Here perhaps can be reactivated a much more ancient critique
of Buddhism even when mired in the discriminatory codes of
varna that is ascetic dispositions by their very nature cannot
cultivate the virtues of hospitality or justice in the world.
Present History and Salvaging a Future
Ambedkar’s indictment of Hindu history as much as popular
culture as caste infected, could evoke many responses. For the
position that erases the history of caste violence is only as main-
stream in today’s world as the histories and presents of Europe
and America that elide the constitutive imperial violence that
lies at the heart of their contemporary.48 Ambedkar’s history of
caste will always singe in its relevance as long as caste discrimi-
nation exists; as long as concepts which have historically legiti-
mated discrimination continue to flourish in our environment.
Much of this is obfuscated by a refusal to confront the centrality
of caste in historical, jurisprudential as much as popular dis-
course. It is cause for even greater despondence when it is be-
lieved that caste violence is but an aberration of a future and
past joined by technocracy. At once the ethical struggle with our
inheritance and the task of imagining a future are voided.
We are thus at a strange conjuncture today where the cul-
tural question is closed; there is to be no self-reflexivity when
it comes to renewing or rethinking key categories of our intel-
lectual and cultural inheritance. Culture as mere assertion
devoid of reflexivity converges in its characteristics with a
technocratic agenda. And so studying, interpreting, working
through and enjoying the Khandana or the Samtanantaradusana
pales in front of the many joys of the selfie stick and the redemp-
tive potential of Big Data. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, if
reports are to be believed, has said that an online platform for
commercial transactions, the BHIM Application, is comparable
to our Constitution; which would involve Ambedkar’s immense
toil towards it (Express News Service 2014). There is a double
misrecognition involved in accepting a particular framing of
the contemporary—technocratic science and economic devel-
opment of a sort—as ineluctable results. The ineluctable is the
identification of this contingent ideological frame with our
history (“culture”) as much as our destiny (“development”).
Ambedkar’s history forced the need to think of the future as
freedom as much as freedom in terms of a future.
And this is why when judges pronounce on our culture and/or
religion—adopting and taking for granted a particular framing
of history—they tread on treacherous ground. The brutality of
caste violence today embodies a caste-consciousness that claims
a specific historical legacy. Anand Teltumbde’s fine work on caste
violence very convincingly points to the very contemporary
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rationale that might drive caste violence.49 But one cannot all
the same deny that at the core of this consciousness lies a con-
ception of a natural hierarchy, and the just violence to be meted
out to he who violates this. If the bestiality of caste violence is at
all explicable it is only in terms of the bestialisation of those
perceived lower. Teltumbde’s searing description of Khairlanji,
shows us what such caste makes of “democracy”—for if democ-
racy is rule by numbers what happened in Khairlanji is exem-
plary in directly and actively involving the entire village except
for the victim family. This reminds us of M Aktor’s perceptive
description of the logic of exclusion of the untouchable.50 It is
not merely an exclusion, but rather a repression of those forms
of impurity that cannot be done away with in our everyday
lives; that are perceived as the dirt germane to the human con-
dition and so a perpetual threat. For the traditional varna order,
the untouchable is not the excluded but the cipher in which the
act of exclusion takes place, an insistent and undeniable presence:
the bhangi cleaner stands for the dirt that is cleaned, purity is
itself defined in enacting the exclusion.
Binding the Normative and Historical
Ambedkar’s critique of Hindu scriptural texts, tradition and
history is precisely to show the labour of interpretation. This is
where Ambedkar will find support in one of his most important
interlocutors, Gandhi, for whom the Gita was not a historical
document that determined us but a poem demanding a reading.
Gandhi did not subscribe to a ready history, where all glory
was to be found in the past, but arrogated to himself the freedom
to preserve and discard what he believed—and argued through
in life and text—to be essential.51 As Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
perceptively argues, Gandhi’s reading of the Gita was tacitly a
means to contest the interpretation of 2.47 as put forth by the
Swadeshi movement.52 And yet, unlike Gandhi, Ambedkar
binds the normative and the historical by treating the Gita as a
sign and site of power, appropriation and violence.
If we do not reduce the question of inheritance to mechanical
or biological causality we might begin by recognising the need,
freedom and pleasures in intellectual labour since it is impossible
to merely present the past. That this kind of work has to constantly
battle against Europeanist—practically racist—prejudices
about the European nature of the philosophical and intellectual
enterprise, would but be another example of the fact that forms
of discrimination exist across the board.53 The conceptual power
of categories such as karma and dharma will have to be measured
by the manner in which they can diagnose and critique con-
temporary forms of violence. Important questions such as the
following have been raised, and need to be raised again: Could
humanity be defined as that which can consciously deprive
itself rather than be defined in terms of the contemporary
dogmas of self-interest? Might we think of action as a collective
responsibility and inheritance as opposed to contemporary
valorisations of individualism that occlude the structural asym-
metries on which they are built? Ought the need to develop the
virtues of hospitality and compassion be derived from an under-
standing of essential human finitude rather than be reduced to
a philanthropy that codes charity as a personal allocation of a
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
surplus that has rightfully been achieved.54 If sealed in the
dogmas of an eternal “now,” such characteristics are also sealed
from questioning contemporary injunctions to mass consum-
erism and authoritarian dictate. None of these questions will
appear relevant to those votaries of our past which has value
only in its anticipation of the present. Cultural pride is to
exclusively lie in the—easily refuted—theories of our epics
having the knowledge of atomic physics and genetic science.
Ambedkar’s acute diagnosis of the present day caste dis-
crimination allowed him to accurately decipher its genealogy.
It is certainly cause for wonder that very specific and current
forms of behaviour—such as using earthen mud vessels to pre-
vent and avoid “pollution” 55—echo almost to the letter millen-
nium old prohibitions. Manu had said that
if a sudra mentions the names and castes of the twice born with contu-
mely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red hot into his mouth.
If he arrogantly teaches Brahmins their duties the king shall cause hot
oil to be put in his mouth and into his ears. (Sharma 1980: 211)56
There is much reportage on such forms of caste atrocities
prevalent today; even if caste atrocities are not the preserve
of the traditionally upper castes.57 The very fact that present
practices are intelligible with reference to ancient and medie-
val scriptural texts is evidence of the overwhelming presence
of our past. Delineated therein is a not a seamless history of an
eternal present buoyant with pride but one of subtle appropri-
ations and violent prohibitions.
Extant scholarship has established Ambedkar’s puncturing of
the seamless folding of present and past in an eternal value;
something that we see in Savarkar as well as the ideologues of
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The eternal present
also unfortunately codes another eternal antinomy between the
Hindu and the Muslim, where all faults of the Hindus including
varna discrimination are attributed to “Muslim” invasions. Such
an antinomy flies in the face of the most minimal perusal of the
“facts”: The Mughals had as their generals Rajputs who fought
against Maratha rulers like Shivaji and varna discrimination well
predates the Turkish invasions.58 The dogged insistence in speak-
ing with such neat binaries of the autochthonous and the invaders
and their implicit correlates in terms of religious communities in
the face of all scholarly evidence to the contrary reveal that rather
than referring to the historical record what is at play is the will
to bring about precisely such a warring binary. That varna and
untouchability have also much older and organic links within
the history of the subcontinent have also been established from
Ambedkar onwards. Unfortunately, the current government
which is influenced by the RSS and Savarkar’s writings has only
appointed people with no credentials in the world of scholarship
to the most prestigious social science institutions. Creating a
“Marxist bogey” they have in fact gone against the consensus
and research established over decades across various methodo-
logical orientations and continents without a shred of evidence.59
As opposed to such blatantly false readings of history as an
eternal present and an eternal struggle, Ambedkar’s reading
of history as the reverberation of norms and the need to conceive
of a conceptual and ethical world view afresh has acquired an
acute urgency now as never before. One is reminded of Walter
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Benjamin’s warning that fascism promises expression and
identity without touching the asymmetric material conditions
in which they may be found. The tension articulated in
Yagnapurushdasji (1966) about whether the Constitution was a
major effort at the new or a pale reiteration of the age-old is
still palpable. What to make of the recent valorisation of
Dronacharya and Parashurama with scarce cognisance of the
treatment meted out to Ekalavya or the unknown untouchable
woman whose head was cut off to replace that of Renuka’s?60
In the continuing controversy over Ayodhya and Ram Rajya,
can one dare name Shambuka?61 The government of the day
that clearly and self-consciously follows the intellectual agen-
da of the RSS will have to take a stand on whether it is Ambed-
kar’s Constitution or the Manusmriti that they regard as the
axis of our polity. In 1949, the RSS made it clear that they
chose the latter.62 Has anything changed?

notes
1 See, Dr Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo v Shri Prabha-
kar Kashinath Kunte & ... on 11 December 1995 ...
in https://indiankanoon.org/doc/925631/.
2 See, Sastri Yagnapurushadji And ... v Muldas
Brudardas Vaishya And ... on 14 January 1966
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/145565/.
3 See footnote 2.
4 Recently, S Palshikar offers a good summation of
the positions of the extant scholarship on the
historical record of the use of the term “Hindu.”
He writes, “The dates of the earliest reference to
‘Hindu’ (and ‘Turks’) can be pushed back even
further if we take as authentic the Asiatic Society
of Bengal version of the late 12th century text
Prithviraj Raso. There is one reference in it to
the two religions (‘din’)—‘Hindus’ and ‘Turks’—
‘having drawn their curved swords.’ However it
was by no means a commonly used term going
by the record and surfaces in specific contexts such
as Kabir’s poetry and that of the Gaudiya vaish-
nava hagiographic literature in Bengal.” See Evil
and the Philosophy of Retribution, pp 21–22. Even
here when speaking of “Hindu” as a religious
community one must be aware that positing
such a community would disallow treating it as
a community in the way we understand the word
today, that is, where equality is a rough presup-
position. On a related register Halbfass, follow-
ing P V Kane, has noted that classical jurispru-
dential literature often used the category of
“sudra” to incorporate “foreigners” and “aborigi-
nes” (sometimes identified as dasyus or mleccha)
into the varna scheme; See Halbfass, India and
Europe, p 180. There thus did not seem to be the
articulation of a homogeneous group of people.
5 Many scholars have noted the change in Savarkar’s
position on a range of connected issues from
the relationship between Hindus and Muslims
to the nature of the British Raj from his time as
a revolutionary to his time after he came out of
prison. See, for instance, Ashis Nandy (2009).
6 This understanding of continuous war and its
being the crucial cause in the imagining the race/
nation can be seen in strands of arguments
during 17th century England and 18th century
France. Such an understanding of race and
nation continued well into the 20th century and
remains an important—even if hidden—com-
ponent of contemporary assertions about the
nature of the nation state. For a historical anal-
ysis of the imagination of race wars and nation-
building, see H Arendt’s The Origins of Totali-
tarianism (Book II) and M Foucault’s, Society
Must be Defended. Ashis Nandy has made one of
the most powerful and convincing arguments
linking Savarkar’s vision to that of a specifical-
ly European understanding of nationalism.
7 It is thus unclear why Omvedt writes that
Ambedkar attributes the decline of Buddhism
almost exclusively to Islam in Buddhism in India:
Challenging Brahmanism and Caste, p 175. It
must be noted that Ambedkar did write that the
Islamic conquests was destructive of Buddhism.
See Buddhist Revolution and Counter-revolution,
pp 72–73. While Ambedkar recognised that
“Muslims” were not a monolithic category
(they were “Tartars, Afghans and Mongols”)
and there were several motivations, one was
“to destroy the Hindu faith”; See V Moon (ed),
Writings and Speeches, Vol 8, pp 54–65. While
contemporary historians have drawn attention to
the fact that sources do not speak transparently,
the broader issue brought forth by Ambedkar
that even if something historically inaccurate,
if accepted and believed by later generations,
acquires a historical meaning and force of its
own. That is to say even if it were untrue that
acts of violence were committed in the name of
Islam previously, if (contemporary) Muslims
claim this heritage, such a claim itself has a
historical force and has to be confronted.
8 Savarkar writes that “Hindutva is not a word but
a history.” Yet the history as narrated in his book
is unconvincing both from the perspective of
evidence as well as logic. While, as stated above,
the “Islamic invasions” are given a constituting
role in the formation of the Hindutva nation, he
also uses an incident mentioned in the Puranas,
“half symbolic and half actual,” to tell us that,
“The records tells us in a mythological strain how a
big battle was fought on the banks of the river
Haha, how the Buddhistic forces made China
the base of their operations, how they were rein-
forced by contingents from many Buddhistic
nations: [There appeared for battle a hundred
thousand soldiers from Shymadesh as also from
Japdesh, and millions from China] and how af-
ter a tough fight the Buddhists lost it and paid
heavily for their defeat. They had formally to re-
nounce all ulterior national aims against India
and give a pledge that they would never again
enter India with any political end in view.” See
Essentials of Hindutva, pp 26–27.
9 The argument about the conflict between
Buddhism and Brahminism can at least be traced
to the work of Holtzmann. V Adluri and J Bagchee
in The Nay Science, have provided a detailed
summation as well as forceful critique of the
methodological premises of German Indology.
However, as we will see Ambedkar’s critique of
Brahminism cannot be confused with that of
Holtzmann, for whom Buddhism was located
within the theory of an original martial epic;
Adluri and Bagchee convincingly point to a
range of confusions in Holtzmann’s theory of
the Mahabharata as a “composite text,” includ-
ing the difficulties in reconciling Buddhism with
the allegedly original martial bardic story. While
Holtzmann’s method is fundamentally histori-
cal—he is uninterested in the content or effects
of norms—Ambedkar’s is clearly about the his-
torical effects of norms. Here recent scholar-
ship, from Biardeau to Fitzgerald have in dif-
ferent ways recognised that many Brahminical
texts were composed so as to refute Buddhism.
10 There has been much recent work on the shift-
ing meaning of dharma, perhaps most promi-
nently in the studies undertaken by Patrick
Olivelle and Alf Hiltebeitel. While the litera-
ture is vast, there appears to be a consensus
that dharma was not a key term or category in
the Vedic corpus, and it is with the Buddhist
corpus—as well as the Ashokan inscriptions—
that it acquires fundamental importance as well as
ethical, religious and theological significance.
Olivelle writes, “If this hypothesis is correct,
then it was within early Buddhism that dharma
changed from being a peripheral concept to be-
coming a central and key theological concept
defining the Buddhist religion. Within this trans-
formation, there must have been a semantic
development; dharma becomes increasingly
ethicised within the primarily ethical religion
of Buddhism. It came to define the good and
righteous life and the truth (satya) the Buddha
discovered which made such a life possible.”
Olivelle also mentions the extensive use of
Dharma in this specifically Buddhist sense in the
Ashokan inscriptions, and thus “the emergence
of the Dharmasastric literature, first in the
form of the prose sutras and then in metrical
treatises beginning with Manu, was a direct con-
sequence of Buddhist and Ashokan reforms”
(Patrick Olivelle (ed), Dharma, pp 82–83). Impor-
tantly in many of these arguments dharma is
related to royal rituals and increasing privilege
to Brahmins. Hiltebeitel speaks about dharma in
the Upanishads also being exclusively concerned
with Brahmins, their duties, options and privi-
leges; examples of which include the implicit
hierarchising to be found in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad. Furthermore he argues that “there
is a growing consensus around the work of
Olivelle that the earliest dharmasutras entail a
response to Buddhist and other heteropraxies”
(p 151). See Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma for the above
references. On the other hand, Hiltebeitel argues
that M Biardeau, is the first to read the Mahab-
harata as a “riposte” to Buddhism, in “You have
to read the whole thing,” Journée 2011 du Centre
d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, p 3.
11 For a recent argument about the radical inno-
vation of karma though Buddhism that linked
karma with intention thereby eliding ritual-
social hierarchies, see Richard Gombrich’s
Thervada Buddhism, p 68.
12 Ambedkar makes this argument in the course
of a critique of Telang and Tilak. While it is
always difficult to precisely delineate “influence,”
in this case there is no doubt that the composition
of the Gita post-dated many of the Buddhist
scriptures. See Buddhist Revolution and Counter-
revolution, pp 188–90.
13 Ambedkar puts it succinctly, “That the Gita in
speaking of Karma is not speaking of activity or
inactivity, quieticism or energism, in general
terms but religious acts and observances cannot
be denied by anyone who has read the Bhagavad
Gita.” Ambedkar’s reading, including the specific
his specific critique of Tilak, finds elaboration in
two recent nuanced studies of the Gita and its
reception; Sibaji Bandyopadhyay’s Three Essays
on the Mahabharata and Suhas Palshikar’s Evil
and the Philosophy of Retribution. In Palshikar’s
careful parsing of Tilak’s commentary he points
to different ways in which Tilak’s reading of the
Gita unjustifiably divorces categories such as
karma and lokasamagra from “traditional set-
tings” which had varnashrama as a critical con-
stituent. For instance lokasamagra would refer
traditionally—as evidenced by premodern com-
mentaries of the Gita as its text—to varna and
not a secularised “public welfare,” as Tilak would
have it. However, it is important to note, as
Palshikar points out, that Tilak himself did

88 JANUARY 27, 2018 vol lIiI no 4 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

believe in the varna scheme. This reading of Tilak,
along with Gandhi and Aurobindo, is located
within a larger argument about ways in which
modern commentators disavow the traditional
frameworks (importantly varnashrama) even
when looking to tradition for authority.
14 On Buddhism, Savarkar had offered a very dif-
ferent interpretation. While praising the universal
brotherhood preached by the Buddha, Savarkar
argued that the invasions from the north-west
meant that Indians could not be content with the
“mumbos and jumbos of [Buddhist] universal
brotherhood.” See Essentials of Hindutva, p 23.
There was thus required a back-to-the-Vedas
attitude. Furthermore he also argues that Indians
needed to unify against the designs of the Chinese
Buddhist rulers who could well rely on a fourth
column present in India; basing his narrative on
a 19th century source. It is to this situation that
the decline of Buddhism is attributed. Savarkar
was also very critical of Ashoka and praised
Pushyamitra of the Sunga dynasty, in direct
contrast to Ambedkar for whom Pushyamitra
led the “counter-revolution.”
15 On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks on
the presence of genetic science in early Indian
history as evidenced in the Mahabharata, see
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-
others/pm-takes-leaf-from-batra-book-mahab-
harat-genetics-lord-ganesha-surgery/. On his
remarks on Konark see http://indiatoday.into-
day.in/story/pm-narendra-modi-us-skirt-indi-
an-culture-heritage/1/687164.html.
16 See note 10 above. Ambedkar’s use of “counter-
revolution” is perhaps taken from Jayaswal’s,
Yagnavalkya and Manu. This might itself bear a
superficial resemblance to Holtzman’s “counter-
reformation,” though there are obvious funda-
mental differences relating to method (textual-
historical vs conceptual/discourse) and substance
(analysis of the conceptual-juridical distinctions
between Buddhism and Brahminical ideology).
17 For a recent example of a historical work that in
effect is nothing less than an erasure of caste as
much as Ambedkar in the understanding of
ancient history see Upinder Singh’s Political
Violence in Ancient India. Towards the end of her
work Singh remarks, “But the amnesia toward
the context of intense social and political conflict
and violence in which these thinkers [Mahavira,
Buddha and Ashoka] emerged and with which
they engaged often reduces them to simplified
stereotypes, invoked from time to time for
self-congratulatory rhetoric or political gain.
Ambedkar simplified and idealized Buddhism,
molding it to suit the needs of a program of
social equity”; Political Violence in Ancient India,
p 482. Earlier with reference to the Manusmriti,
Singh had argued, “Like the Arthashashtra, the
Manusmriti also enjoys a certain notoriety. It is
often seen as an upholder of the oppression of
lower classes and women, but it is actually a
complex text that defies simplistic characteriza-
tion” (Political Violence in Ancient India, p 125).
That Singh does not see Ambedkar as interpret-
ing Buddhism in the context of violence in Indian
history is ironical if not surprising since nowhere
does she study Ambedkar’s historical writings or
assessment of Buddhism in the book (the only
work of Ambedkar in the bibliography is the
essay “Marx or Buddha”) nor does she ever show
how the Manusmriti “defied” the “simplistic char-
acterization” of being a work that was an
“upholder of the oppression of women and the
lower classes.” Hiltebeitel has argued, echoing
much of the scholarly literature, that women and
sudras are (ill)treated as “overlapping conceptual
categories” in the Manusmriti and the dharma-
sutrakaras; Dharma, p 225. Purportedly a history
of ideas and how ancient Indian political thought
reflected on the question of violence, Singh erases
the foundational importance of varna for the
“political” thought that she takes as a subject
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 27, 2018
by merely making perfunctionary references to
it. For example, when citing the Mahabharata on
the dharma of the king encompassing other
dharmas (Political Violence in Ancient India, p 68),
and its importance for maintaining order, Singh
does not acknowledge the fact that the very
passage which she refers to is cited and discussed
by Fitzgerald to show and make the point that
the King’s duty is to specifically ensure a varna
order (not merely order in a general sense as
Singh suggests) where Brahmins are given
their privileged place (Fitzgerald, Mahabharata
Book 11, 108–09); varna is indeed central in these
passages on the “political.” Similarly a page later
when citing a passage on the importance for the
King to have self-control, Singh simply erases the
hierarchical varna context of the passage, where
Bhishma speaks of the absolute centrality of the
varna order. This cited passage too has been noted
by the secondary literature before but not ac-
knowledged or reflected upon by Singh; see
Hiltebeitel’s detailing of the qualities of the King
in his Ritual of Battle, p 216. Far from shedding
new light on a specific problem or bringing
new historical material to light, little justice is
done to the issues as articulated in the secondary
literature, from R S Sharma to Fitzgerald, which
recognise the foundational relationship between
varna and rajadharma.
18 Ambedkar is provides voluminous citations to
establish his case. On the argument that the
Gita upholds varna he cites III 26 (where pre-
scribed duties are to be followed), and then
XVIII, 41–48 where we have perhaps the clearest
arguments for varna, where Krishna speaks of
the inborn qualities of the four varnas, with the
Sudra having the quality merely to serve the
other three castes. From both text and context
it is difficult to interpret “inborn qualities” as
dispositions that could be cultivated, and this
certainly falls apart when it comes to the Sudra
whose only quality is to serve the other three
castes. Furthermore Ambedkar also says that
notwithstanding the arguments that appear to
diminish the importance of Vedas or Shastras (as
opposed to the “pure” action of karma) he cites
the following to underline the continuing impor-
tance of the Vedas and Shastras: XVI, 23, 24:
XVII, II, 13, 24). Against the idea that Yagnas are
diminished in importance he cites, III, 9–15.
19 Paul Hacker had traced Radhakrishnan’s argu-
ment to Bankim. He however argues that this
has no basis in the traditional understanding—
including the Gita—wherein svadharma is
certainly related to the varna scheme. See
Halbfass (ed), Confrontation and Philology,
pp 257–73. Hiltebeitel has a detailed discussion
of svadharma, citing Olivelle to the effect that
the compound svadharma appears as a compound
in the context of ritual and specific details
specific to each rite, following from which, not-
withstanding changes, in the Dharmasutras and
the Gita, the term can only be understood within
the varna scheme. He also points to the simila-
rity in the verses about it being better to carry
out one’s own svadharma than another’s, that
one finds in Manu and the Gita; see his Dharma,
pp 183, 527. Halbfass regarding the Gita writes,
“Of course, the Bhagavad Gita is distinguished
by its avoidance of categorical and exclusive
statements and its general tendency towards rec-
onciliation, synthesis and ambivalence. For this
reason, we should not expect it to explicitly play
off the various meanings or aspects of the varna
concept or claim exclusive validity for one mean-
ing or one aspect. At the same time, it is clear that
the fundamental hereditary meaning of caste
membership remains unquestioned, and is in fact
defended in a subtle conciliatory and very accom-
modating manner against the ethicizing meaning
represented by Buddhism; in the opening chap-
ters the mixing of castes is repeatedly referred
to as a threatening phenomena.” Pointing to
vol lIiI no 4
SPECIAL ARTICLE
the difficulties in relating the gunas to the four
varnas, Halbfass cites even Radhakrishnan to the
effect that heredity ultimately did play an im-
portant role in the absence of a heuristic to
determine individual aptitude. Here he finds
the traditional pundits, such as Dirgaprasad
Dviveda, as more consistent in arguing that
gunas were merely specifying “what by defini-
tion is implied in the hereditary membership
of caste.” See his Tradition and Reflection, p 363.
More recently Sibaji Bandyopadhyay in Three
Essays on the Mahabharata, pp 80–81, has also
traced to Bankim the newer “Indian” turn to
the interpretation of the Gita, which explicitly
did away with the traditional commentaries,
and seemed to derive, in their orientation, from
a European reception to the text.
20 Among other persistent and persisting narra-
tives, the Purusha Sukta implies both an origi-
nary source for the “human” which is simulta-
neously originarily divided. In Halbfass’s read-
ing—and in this he follows Paul Hacker—the
svadharma of the Gita certainly could not be
disassociated from varna. In fact, not unlike
Ambedkar, he argues that the Gita introduces
ethical dimensions which however cannot be
taken as a critique of caste: thus the Shudra too
can be ethical, but only if he does the kind of
work sanctioned by his hereditary caste. See
Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection, pp 265–91, 360.
It is this deep structural importance of the varna
order in the ancient traditions that is recognised
even by more recent scholarship. For instance,
more recently Bowles has shown that when
Yudhisthtira asks Bhishma about satya, the
first part of Bhishma’s answer speaks about the
importance of maintaining the varna order and
then the discussion moves to sadharana dharma;
the “universality” of the latter operates within
the framework of the former (Dharma, Disorder
and the Political in Ancient India, p 350). Heilte-
beitel also critiques Kane for not recognising
this embededness of sadharana dharma within
the varna order (Dharma, pp 219–20).
21 While premodern commentaries interpreted
Karma through the threefold schema of nitya,
naimittik and kamya, presupposing a norma-
tive framework that would include varna, the
European commentators, and many Indian
commentators following them, simply excluded
the discursive context of caste and ritual. See
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, in Three Essays on the
Mahabharata, p 87.
22 Thus even recent scholarship on the Gita sees the
great difficulty in understanding how one who is
non-attached can decide on acting. In this con-
text it has to be mentioned that Amartya Sen’s
contribution has been more obfuscating than
illuminating. Initially in his essay, “Consequential
Evaluation and Practical Reason” (2000) he see’s
Krishna’s argument as “highly deontological”
and Arjuna’s argument as “consequentionalist,”
while in his more recent Idea of Justice (2009:
208–17), he sees this binary as misleading;
though it is unclear who else but he has used
such a binary. More important is his use of the
phrase “just cause,” in Idea of Justice, to charac-
terise the “deontological argument” of Krishna
without giving any citation. Just Cause in the
European tradition operated within a theological
argument of “natural right” and “natural law,”
whereas Krishna’s arguments for Arjuna to fight
range across multiple registers but never ap-
proaches something like a “just cause” argument
whether in its Christian theological sense or in the
sense of modern everyday language use which
operates with a robust theory of humanity. Other
than the metaphysical arguments about the
nature of the soul, his argument refers to Arjuna’s
caste/Kshatriya duties (cited by Ambedkar above
note 18) just as Arjuna’s arguments against the
war use these very same varna specific arguments
(the “corruption” of women and the mixture of
89
SPECIAL ARTICLE
castes). By eliding these arguments Sen’s read-
ing of the Gita becomes wholly dubious as does
the manner of assimilating the positions in the
text to contemporary theory. J N Mohanty has
a much clearer interpretation of the Gita when he
argues that unlike Kant’s universality maxim, the
Gita does not provide a rule by which duty or
obligation might be specified. See his “Dharma,
Imperatives and Tradition” in Billimoria et al
(ed), Indian Ethics.
23 One might extend this argument to contest the
contemporary interpretation of svadharma as
dispositional/psychological which implies that
caste can be changed according to disposition.
Since if this were to be the case why did not
Arjuna just “become” a Brahmin and/or sannyasin
and leave the world? Krishna does not invoke
past injustice which anyway would not apply in
the face of a theory of desireless action.
24 This was noted by Ambedkar, and he certainly
was not the first one to do so. For a discussion
of this and concomitant notions of adhikara,
see Halbfass’s Tradition and Reflection and M
Aktor (2002).
25 Halbfass discusses Sankara’s commentary on
Brahmasutra, as well as the fact that non-dual-
ism in its traditional form in its acceptance and
defence of the varna order cannot be made to
square with the arguments that Vivekananda,
Radhakrishnan et al, make. See Tradition and
Reflection, pp 377–86. Sankara also cites various
passages from the sruti and smriti including
the one from Gautama’s Dharmasastra which
“states that a sudra who illegitimately listens to
Vedic texts should have his ears filled with
molten tin or varnish.” Also discussed is Sankara’s
reasoning—found convoluted by most recent
commentators from Ambedkar to Halbfass—
about the case of Janasruti in the Chandogaya
Upanishad. For a recent study of the continuing
importance of Sankara’s arguments regarding
the disqualification of Sudras in the early medi-
eval period and the increase in texts devoted to
Sudra dharma see A Vajpeyi “The Sudra in History:
From Scripture to Segregation” in L McCrea
and W Cox (eds), South Asian Texts in History:
Critical Engagements with Sheldon Pollock.
Halbfass interestingly points out that Ramanuja,
who accepted Sankara’s position on the admit-
tance to Vedic study, “questions the legitimacy of
a metaphysics [Sankara’s] that appears to be
a priori incapable of providing a basis for the
varna system and which poses a potential danger
to the dharama.” See his Tradition and Reflection,
p 381. Yet in view of the twofold nature of truth,
there are also many texts which suggest that
caste differences are ultimately of no significance,
even if this has nothing to say about interpersonal
relations in society. Thus Halbfass concludes his
learned essay by saying that “In summary we
may say that in ‘orthodox’ Advaita Vedanta, the
assumption of the absolute unity in liberation
remains linked to an uncompromising adher-
ence to an unequal and caste bound access to it.”
On Naya and the defence of varna see Bruce
M Perry in E Franco and K Preisendanz (ed),
Beyond Orientalism, pp 449–71. Like Ramanuja
Vedanka Desika also critiqued the advaitin
ideal because of the possibility of its subversion
of the varna-asrama obligations. On this see
S Palshikar’s Evil and the Philosophy of Retribu-
tion, p 120; Palshikar also has a sustained discus-
sion of the jivanmukti ideal in premodern India
and its articulation in Aurobindo, pp 58–93.
26 Interestingly the more orthodox Mimamsa tra-
dition in their distinguishing between “worldly”
(laukika) and Vedic, was willing to give lower
castes authority in the former and not the latter.
However Sankara’s advaita in no making the dis-
tinction, enforced a much stricter prohibition.
See Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection, pp 51–87.
27 The work of Mikael Aktor, beginning with his
entry on “untouchability” in the Brill Encyclopedia
on Hinduism, which supplements the works of
90
R S Sharma and V Jha in arguing about the
slow elaboration on rules of untouchability,
that had a very early origin. As Aktor argues in
his entry, “The earliest texts that prescribe
clear rules of untouchability are the Dharmas-
utras, dated about the 3rd–1st century BCE.
These texts codified existing norms of good
conduct among the upper layers of society at
that time, and we may therefore assume that
the practice had existed for some time. For in-
stance, a Chandala woman is mentioned as an
example of a ‘foul womb,’ together with dogs
and pigs in Chandogyopanisad 5.10.7.”
28 Although noted earlier by P V Kane and
R S Sharma, detailed analysis of the Sudra dharma
texts has been undertaken only recently, in the
form of the doctoral dissertations. See Ananya
Vajpeyi’s University of Chicago dissertation,
“Politics of Complicity, Poetics of Contempt: A
History of the Sudra in Maharashtra, 1650–950
CE,” 2004) and T Benke’s University of Penn-
sylvania dissertation, “The Sudracarasiromani
of Krsna Sesa: A 16th Century Manual of Dhar-
ma for Sudras” (2010). A portion Vajpeyi’s dis-
sertation has been subsequently become the
basis of her published article, “From Scripture
to Segregation” in L McCrea and W Cox (eds),
South Asian Texts in History: Critical Engage-
ments with Sheldon Pollock.
29 Ambdekar had made this point very forcefully
in his Who Were the Shudras, pp 156–86.
30 The most controversial and sustained critique
of such positions is Hacker; See Halbfass (ed),
Philology and Confrontation. Halbfass makes the
interesting argument that certain notions of
“tolerance” in the sense of characterising the
other’s position as simply an inferior/inade-
quate version of one’s own can be seen in
Kumarila Bhatta’s critique of the Buddhists.
Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan while speaking
of the great tolerance of the Vedantic tradition
are simultaneously clear that the Vedantic po-
sition is the most superior one; of course unlike
traditional Mimamsa varna is not validated here.
31 In this context it might well do to underline the
important critique that Halbfass makes of
Hacker in arguing that the latter’s argument
that the metaphysical theory of cosmic identity
cannot have ethical implications is questionable,
even if current arguments that treat this impli-
cation as one found in the tradition may be
questionable in their own way. See E Franco and
K Preisendanz (eds), Beyond Orientalism, p 588.
32 There has been the important, interesting and
suggestive argument by Indrajit Bandhopad-
hyay that Hiltebeitel owed much more to
Ambedkar than he ever cared to admit. See
http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Conte
nt&sd=Articles&ArticleID=15184.
33 In the context of current scholarship Pollock has
perhaps articulated this Ambedkarite proble-
matic, without necessarily recognising it as
Ambedkarite, most pointedly in “Deep Orientalism
Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj,”
Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament,
Van De Veer and Breckenridge (eds). Pollock
writes about the difficulties in writing about pre-
colonial India, arguing that “An adequate his-
torical analysis of ideology as accessible to us in
one important and paradigmatic sector of tradi-
tional India. One suggestion is that what we may
find to be central in this morphology is some-
thing close to the problem we encounter in the
analysis of orientalism, above all the problem of
knowledge and domination: Here it is not just
the instrumental use of Knowledge (indeed, of
veda) in the essentialisation and dichotomisation
of the social order, the very control of knowledge
that constitutes one of its elementary forms.
The monopolisation of “access to authoritative
resources” the most authoritative of all resources,
Sanskrit (vaidika) learning becomes itself a
basic component in the construction and repro-
duction of the idea of inequality and thus in
JANUARY 27, 2018
what, again, can be viewed as a process analo-
gous to colonization in precolonial India.” Later
even more forcefully Pollock argues, restrictions
on access to high-culture literacy, along with
other juridical structures of inequality in the or-
thodox Sanskrit tradition particularly differenti-
ation in (judicial) punishment and in (religious)
penance, which seems to constitute almost an
indigenous economy of human worth are among
the components of a programme of domination
whose true spirit we might begin to conjure with
other comparable programmes, such as the
Arierparagraphen of the NS state.” Even for those
offended with that final comparison, we should
not confuse Arierparagraphen with the genocide,
and it might do well to remember that racist legis-
lation of such a sort was prevalent throughout
the Western world in the early 20th century.
James Q Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model: The
United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law,
has documented the ways in which the Nazis
learned from the Jim Crow laws, and students of
colonial history in India do not need to be told of
the vicious forms of racism—in institutional and
everyday forms—that existed in colonial India.
It is also true that we do not have documentary
proof for institutional actions of such a sort in
precolonial India in the way we have in the case
of Nazi Germany or other imperial powers such
as Britain and France.
34 Such might be the result of a more mechanistic
application of material principles and departs
from Marx’s own much more subtle and complex
schema. Marx’s critique of Feurbach was precisely
so as so salvage the active and “subjectivist”
dimension, and the following lines from the
Grundrisse demonstrate the complex relation-
ship between past and present: “The so-called
historical presentation of development is founded,
as a rule, on the fact that the latest form regards
the previous ones as steps leading up to itself,
and, since it is only rarely and only under quite
specific conditions able to criticizes itself—leav-
ing aside of course the historical periods which
appear to themselves as times of decadence—it
always conceives them one-sidedly,” p 106.
35 See R Sharma’s Sudras in Ancient India, and in
this he is followed by Vivekananda Jha, “Stages in
the History of the Untouchables” and “Candala
and the Origin of Untouchability” in terms of
broad methodological orientation; while both
recognise the importance of the Buddhist critique
of caste they do not make much of it. Uma
Chakrabarti, in Social Dimensions of Early Bud-
dhism, in this context makes the argument that
“it is important to point out that the system of
stratification as portrayed by the Pali canon
depicts a social phenomenon or existential reality,
without religious sanction unlike the Brahmanical
conception of hierarchy.” On the “real” implica-
tions and contexts of normative textual theories,
M Aktor has argued about the specific ways in
which genealogies were “composed” in the con-
text of concrete circumstances, “As such varna-
samkara genealogies functioned not as myth of
speculative theories about certain people but
rather as a set of legal definitions that could be
applied in the process of controlling occupa-
tional interaction with respect to existing
groups—and perhaps—even with respect to
individuals who descended from inter-varna
relations” (p 279). See M Aktor’s contribution
in Daud Ali (ed), Invoking the Past. Aktor also
cites Derret’s work to show that there have
been instances where Pandits were actually
consulted on matters of social relations.
36 See Chapters 1–3 of Ambedkar’s Buddhist Revo-
lution and Counter Revolution.
37 Ambedkar’s Who Were the Sudras and Revolution
and Counter-revolution are not seamless in
their historical and philosophical explanation
of the caste system. In the earlier text, the histori-
cal and historiographic point is how a particular
instance of confl ict (between the Brahmins
vol lIiI no 4 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

and the “tribe” of Sudras) and its resolution in a
discriminatory code (where Shudras are degrad-
ed into the fourth varna by denying them access
to ritual) generates and is generalised in history.
In the second, Buddhism is the first event that
speaks of a universal moral ethic, which is in turn
critiqued by the politico-philosophical Brahmini-
cal system, with the latter having as its legacy the
caste-system as we know it.
38 See the works of R S Sharma and Suvira Jaiswal,
Caste, among others on the nature of legitima-
tion through the claims of Kshatriya status.
Ambedkar had already underlined this tendency
in his study of Shivaji in Who Where the Sudras.
It must be noted that other than textual sources
historians have also pointed out to inscriptions
in their formulation of the normative valuation
of varnashrama dharma.
39 In the works of R S Sharma and Vivekananda
Jha among others, largely one might say that
such arguments, minimise the import of intellec-
tual discourse, and place too high a bar on what
would constitute genuine change. For instance
that Buddhism did not appear to fundamentally
change society is supposed disallow it the status
of being revolutionary. The nature of such evalu-
ation take place on difficult conceptual terrain
because there is recent so-called revisionist work
on what are usually taken to be “revolutions”—
whether the English, French or the Russian—
which have disputed such a characterisation.
Therefore, what it takes to be a “revolution” is
not self evident and cannot be confined to a par-
ticular temporal context. Coming back to the
importance of Buddhism, many other scholars—
Sanskritists who do historical work—have been
much more willing to accept the crucial signifi-
cance of Buddhism. Recently Pollock has argued
that the Buddhist thinkers did produce an “axial
moment” and a “conceptual revolution,” empha-
sising, among other things, a semantic appropri-
ation and a focalisation of human agency and
history. He has argued that the Buddhist critique
of social conventions (such as caste) required a
Brahminical orthodoxy to develop ever more so-
phisticated methods to re-entrench, re-naturalise
as it were, varna and associated institutions and
discourse. See his contribution to S N Eisenstadt
and B Wittrock Axial Civilizations and World
History. This would be compatible, at this level of
generality, with the work of Olivelle, Hiltebeitel,
Biradiau and Fitzgerald among others.
40 See Taber’s introduction in A Hindu Critique of
Buddhist Epistemology, for an subtle and so-
phisticated examination and evaluation of the
philosophical issues involved. In such a context
perhaps the bracketing of the social varna
problematic is acceptable because the endeavour
is clearly and overtly a philosophical inquiry in
itself rather than a record of the past.
41 We are only able to say this because there does
not seem to exist as consistent and systematic
critique over so long in the other “heterodox” tra-
ditions; this might well because of sources.
42 Many episodes in the Mahabharata, for instance,
question the hereditary nature of Brahminhood.
Among other places the following come to mind:
(1) Yudhisthira’s answer to the Yaksha/Yama,
(2) Yudhisthira’s answers to Nahusha, (3) The
story of Kaushika; although here the enlightened
butcher is born in such a state because of his mis-
behaviour with Brahmins. However, as Matilal
argues in his examination of the Yudhisthira–
Nahusa episode, this formed an “internal critique”;
the standard morality was still varnashrama
dharma as indicated by the normative values (as
opposed to the “descriptively” recorded instances
of mixed marriages) enshrined in the text. The
natural-biological character emerges irrespec-
tive of socialisation, whether we take the exam-
ples of Valmiki or Karna. Taking a cue from
Ambedkar, one might say, all the same, that
speaking of the Brahmin as defined by behaviour
and actions was a Buddhist trope which
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 27, 2018
subterraneously influenced the Mahabharata.
In the normative literature there is the alluded
position of Sabara (presented as a purvapaksha)
who was to have argued that one cannot know
whether one is a Brahmin or non-Brahmin.
Kumarila Bhatta’s work takes great pains to re-
fute this. In the same way Sankara’s disciple
Suresvara “emphasised the identity of the “viewer”
(drastr) that is the absolute subject, in Brahama
(as well as in the Brahmin) and in the candela”;
See Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection, p 382. But
once again this did not appear to be a real refu-
tation of socially existing codes of discrimina-
tion. There was no empirical site—such as the
sangha—to turn to. While there were points where
one could read an “internal critique” of the varna
scheme which privileged behaviour this cannot
blind us to the basic normative structure as re-
vealed by the jurisprudential, philosophic and
epic literature of the Brahminical corpus.
43 In this context it must be remembered that there is
inscriptional evidence that Buddhist kings too
speak of the importance of varnashrama dharma.
44 The words are pasanda and nastika. For
Buddhists as the possible targets as “heretics”
and “unbelievers,” see Wendy Donigger’s On
Hinduism, pp 36–70. See also Alf Hiltebeitel,
Dharma, 194, 224, 274. Andrew Nicholson has
a good discussion of the astika and nastika cat-
egories, arguing interestingly that even among
certain Buddhist philosophers the “nastika”
was a term of approbation. See A Nicholson,
Unifying Hinduism, pp 166–85.
45 See Gail Omvedt, Buddhism in India : Challeng-
ing Brahmanism and Caste.
46 See A Teltumbde searing analysis and account
of Khairlanji in Persistence of Caste.
47 See his interpretation of Buddhist doctrine in
his Buddha and His Dhamma where renuncia-
tion is prompted by Siddhartha’s principled po-
sition against war and against the majority of
his clan who had decided to go to war with the
Koliyas over disputed over water sharing. It is
the concrete problem of conflict that necessitates
a deeper reflection on the human condition.
48 The work of historians such as Foucault, Arendt,
Agamben and Schmitt, have argued for this,
from a variety of perspectives. On Christianity,
prior to modern times, matters of belief could
very well be coerced; see P Zagorin, How the
Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West.
In what particular sense this changed with
modern times is open to question.
49 See A Teltumbde, Persistence of Caste.
50 See Aktar (2002). One see’s this logic of inclu-
sive exclusion even in moments of the Epic
such as the replacement of the Pandavas with
five “outcastes” in the lac house episode; See
Mahasweta Devi’s brilliant subversive retelling
of the episode in After Kurukshetra. Another epi-
sode is the unknown untouchable whose head
replaced that of Renuka, Parashurama’s mother.
See footnote 59 below. It is often in literature that
one is to find a tacit critique cum renewal of the
epic traditions.
51 See Simona Sawhney, The Modernity of Sanskrit,
pp 86–125 for a discussion of the hermeneutic
principles adopted by Gandhi. See also the ex-
aminations of Gandhi’s readings of the Gita by
S Bandyopadhyay’s Three Essays on the Mahab-
harata and S Palshikar’s Evil and the Philosophy
of Retribution.
52 Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Three Essays on the
Mahabharata, p 141. Bandyopadhyay also notes
that while Aurobindo cited the Gita and even
did so as he left Kolkata to finally find refuge in
Pondicherry, on the other hand “the three
martyrs, Khudiram Bose—Kanailal Dutta—
Satyendranath Basu, were far from being
believers. They, especially Kanailal, detested
with great vehemence the Yogic practices or
the reading of the Gita made compulsory by the
Swadeshi Spiritual Guide,” pp 109–10. The ver-
satile use of the Gita for revolutionary activity
vol lIiI no 4
SPECIAL ARTICLE
and spiritual seclusion speaks to both its popu-
larity but also its ultimate opacity in orienting
action. Bandyopadhyay discusses how confound-
ing such a “randomization” can be and gives
three pertinent and paradigmatic examples:
the student, voter and labourer. See pp 157–59.
53 See among many others the work of B K Matilal,
J N Mohanty, P Billimoria, A Chakrabarti. All
these thinkers throughout their work have in-
sisted on the importance of both philological as
well as philosophical sensitivity when dealing
with many of the traditions in the subconti-
nent. In their critique of the philological prac-
tice of certain German Indologists and their
argument for a more philosophically nuanced
approach to canonical texts, it is surprising
that Adluri and Bagchee, in The Nay Science,
make no reference to the above literature. On
the other hand, even in the history of science,
there has been much neglect of the historical
value of forms of scientific inquiry in India. See
for instance, Arun Bala’s important study, The
Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern
Science. Perhaps, the most interesting and pro-
vocative thesis in this regard is C K Raju’s Cul-
tural Foundations of Mathematics. Raju’s treat-
ment of Christianity is problematic in the sense
that his work does not attend to the complexi-
ties of the relationship between Christian the-
ology and its role in the development of modern
scientific inquiry studied by a range of scholars
from H Blumenburg to E Grant to A Funkenstein.
However, his thesis itself—simultaneously con-
ceptual and historical—involves the argument
that not only were forms of calculus developed
in India (and then “taken” to Europe via Jesuit
missionaries) but that these forms are more
rigorous and effective today since they are un-
burden by the theological presuppositions that
according to Raju still haunt present-day math-
ematic practice. While it is beyond this writers
technical competence to fully evaluate this
thesis it all the same needs to be said that it
is unfortunate that Raju’s thesis has not been
disseminated and discussed more widely.
54 See Charles Malamoud for relating the theory
of humanity to work, sacrifice and an originary
debt (as opposed to modern self-interest) in
Cooking the World. See B K Matilal’s Moral
Dilemmas in the Mahabharata. See also his
“Dharma and Rationality” as well as P Bilimoria’s
“Karma’s Suffering,” on questions of collective
responsibility and action, in P Billimoria et al
(eds), Indian Ethics. See also A Chakrabarti’s
“On Debts, Duties, and Dialogue: The Vedas and
Levinas on the Ethical Metaphysics of Hospitality”
on debt and the virtues of hospitality in
L Kalmanson et al, Levinas and Asian Thought.
55 See M Aktor, “Rules of Untouchability in Ancient
and Medieval Law Books.”
56 Earlier Sharma had written with the requisite
documentation that “Manu lays down that the
brahmana can confidently seize the goods of
his sudra slave, for he is not allowed to own any
property,” p 203. The injunction that the Sudra
who illegitimately listens to Vedic texts should
have his ears filled with molten tin or varnish is
also to be found in the older Gautama’s Dhar-
masastra; See Halfbas Tradition and Reflection,
p 380. In a much cited and widely read essay,
“Is there an Indian way of thinking,” Ramanujan
makes the distinction between context sensitive
(India) and context free cultures (the “West”).
The argument regarding India makes reference
to jurisprudential texts with variations; however
it is unclear whether such normative texts make
room for caste inversion or caste destruction
and when caste intermixture is spoken about it is
spoken about as an exception and/or condemn-
able. It is unclear whether something like a
“context sensitive” culture is even intelligible
since how can it be ascribed any identity if “it”
varies with every “context.” Much like the rela-
tivist argument it is self-destructive.
91
SPECIAL ARTICLE
57 See https://kafila.online/2017/04/01/caste-bas
ed-feudal-oppression-in-the-feudal-badlands-
of-bihar/for a recent report on caste atrocity,
and the importance of the “word” as it were. As
Teltumbe, has argued in Persistence of Caste,
among others, perhaps the majority of caste
atrocities are now committed by caste groups
that were otherwise seen as lower in terms of
the “traditional” caste hierarchy. The point is
not that historically mobility would not have
taken place, but mobility accorded with the
specific norms of a “graded inequality.”
58 A Wink points out that the letters during the reign
of Shahuji till the battle of Panipat often referred
to the Mughal emperor as sarvabhaum, “the lord
of all the land” or “Universal emperor.” This con-
tinued with Nana Fadnis, and the Third Battle of
Panipat was fought in the service of the Mughal
ruler. Such explicit avowals of subordination
were found in official treaties and agreements.
See Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty, pp 40–41.
In the face of the evidence and analysis gathered
over many decades it is unfortunate to hear the
present chief minister of the state of Uttar
Pradesh call the Mughals “invaders.” See http://
www.firstpost.com/india/yogi-adityanath-calls-
akbar-babar-aurangzeb-invaders-praises-maha-
rana-pratap-3434672.html. What would be the
attitude to all those Rajput and Rajput dynasties
who fought on the side of the Mughals—will they
all be called traitors and quislings? And what of
the more uncomfortable and awkward questions
regarding those who fought on the side of the
British against others in the subcontinent?
59 For instance, neither of the Chairpersons of the
ICHR or the ICSSR are recognised in their re-
spective fields ie have published in journals that
have academic credence nationally and interna-
tionally. Unfortunately the absence of the RSS in
the national movement for independence is only
to be matched by their absence in the world of
credible scholarship. For B B Kumar, the newly
appointed ICSSR head’s unsubstantiated views,
such as that untouchability being attributable to
“Islamic” invasions, see http://indianexpress.
com/article/india/new-icssr-chief-caste-because-
of-invasions-modi-is-best-pm-4647015/. Such a
position is easily refuted by the scholarship
across the Marxist and non-Marxist divide, from
R S Sharma to M Aktor.
60 In recent time the Haryana government has
sought to direct reference to Dronacharya and
Parashurama. Leaving aside for the moment
the implications of a state government directly
invoking figures from one particular religious
tradition we are more concerned with the ethi-
cal implications of not engaging with the story
as told by—and conceived—by this very tradi-
tion and the explicit valorisation of varna in-
volved. The story of Ekalavya, who was later
killed by Krishna is too well to be known to re-
quire recapitulation. For a literary re-capitulation
of the Ekalavya story, see S Anand’s Vyasa and
Vigneshwara. It is to literature one often has to
turn to subversively re-image episodes of the
epics; unfortunately such reimaging does not
reach a wide enough audience. For a recent brief
retelling of the Parashurama story, see http://
www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/
tp-fridayreview/hybrid-deities-offshoots-of-
crimes/article18433618.ece.
61 Shambuka violated the varna order by practis-
ing penance as a Shudra. For this violation he
was killed by Rama in the Valmiki Ramayana.
The current controversy over the existence of a
temple and its alleged destruction for the
building of a mosque pays little attention to the
historicity of temples and the nature of caste.
Even if a temple did exist, it does not seem at all
evident that such temples were open to all castes
(or there was something like a homogeneous
Hindu faith), or indeed that it played the
same role historically as it does today. This
92
problematic has to be taken into account prior
to the question of what the destruction of temples
might have meant in the precolonial period.
62 See Govindacharaya’s claim that the Constitu-
tion will be rewritten to reflect Bharatiya:
https://thewire.in/43846/rss-ideologue-govin-
dacharya-we-will-rewrite-the-constitution-to-
reflect-bharatiyata/. It is not untypical that Go-
vindacharaya is not precise about what he
means by Bharatiya or how Bharatiya—if under-
stood as a pristine historical record—is indeed
capable of upholding the fundamental rights
given and guaranteed by the Constitution. While
I can only call it a happy coincidence that recently
Jignesh Mevani has also asked that one should
choose between the Manusmriti and the Consti-
tution, it can be no more than that since my pa-
per was submitted to the EPW in mid-2017.
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vol lIiI no 4 EPW Economic & Political Weekly