Debrahmanising History

Egalitarianism is neither alien to India nor the gift of the West. Marginalised people everywhere have always aspired to build an inclusive world. Espousing the perspective of the commoners, this revised edition of Debrahmanising History brings out the beauty and resilience of a counter-tradition by visiting some of the major sites of resistance and creativity from below. Ranged against caste and brahmanism, this liberating tradition is to be found in the egalitarians of diverse inclinations, particularly in the strands of shramanism, Buddhism, the movements of subaltern sant-poets, Sufism, and Sikhism. This counter-tradition was carried forward in modern India by, more than anybody else, Jotiba Phule, Iyothee Thass, Narayana Guru, Periyar, and Ambedkar. Recognising the power of culture in the politics of transformation, they had emancipatory visions that embraced the whole of Indian experience, and stand firmly as an alternative to Tilak-Savarkarite, Gandhian, and Nehruvian visions. Their determined but diverse and 'resourceless' struggles, fought in the teeth of opposition from the caste elites, could not arrest the neo-brahmanism which under colonial complicity and the archaeology of knowledge derived from Orientalism went on to reincarnate - and nationalise - itself into octopus-like Hinduism and 'Indian culture'.