Contesting 'Good' Governance: Crosscultural Perspectives on Representation, Accountability and Public Space by Eva Poluha & Mona Rosendahl

Author:Eva Poluha & Mona Rosendahl [Poluha, Eva & Rosendahl, Mona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Reference, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136125461
Google: LVCa-zW8cO4C
Goodreads: 17534140
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

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In Touch with Politics: Three Individuals in the Midst of the Dalit Movement

Eva-Maria Hardtmann

The Dalit1 movement in India is a contemporary protest movement against the caste system and Hinduism, among those who were traditionally called ‘Untouchables’, regarded as ‘unclean’ and placed at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. The networks of the movement are widespread, reaching all corners of India. Activists are also to be found among the Indian diaspora in Britain, Germany, Canada and the USA, to mention just a few places. They have always been regarded as Hindus among the public and also in the state census, but according to them they never had access to Hindu temples, were not allowed to read the Hindu scriptures and accordingly were not a part of the Hindu system. Now they are writing their own history and challenging the history written by others, and there are, to use a concept from Slater (1998), ‘wars of interpretation’ going on in India between the Dalit activists and those who want to include them among the Hindus.

The messages as well as the strategies differ within the movement, and there are Buddhist, Christian, rationalistic, party political and more revolutionary networks, among others. According to some activists, the Dalits were the original inhabitants of India with their own religion. They were conquered by the Aryans. Others give the history of a people who were originally Buddhists. There are many different histories, but most of them agree on the point that the Dalits are not Hindus and never were. An identity-forming process is taking place and a Dalit identity is something which is also being negotiated within the movement.

The Dalit movement has many similarities with the so-called ‘new’ social movements.2 It is not class-based like the ‘traditional’ movements and it is more socio-cultural than socio-political, i.e. the conflicts are to a great extent about cultural patterns. There is also a world consciousness, a consciousness about the connections between local and global events and about connections in the world economy. In their rhetoric the activists often refer to oppression in different parts of the world, and compare themselves with people in similar circumstances, in for example South Africa (Blacks) and Australia (Aboriginals). There is also a reflexivity among the activists regarding their own identity and their own way of working which is often mentioned as a significant feature of such movements.3

Some aspects of the activists’ behaviour also run counter to these characteristics. In particular, Dalit activists have recently come to take a greater interest in the state and the parliamentary system. In the 1980s prominent scholars such as Alberto Melucci (1985, 1988, 1989) and Jürgen Habermas (1989) claimed in general terms that there was no interest in party politics among the activists in ‘new’ social movements, and they set the agenda for the discussion. However, Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar (1998) are some of those who have shown more recently how cultural struggles over meanings can be deeply entangled with struggles for economic and political-institutional power in these movements.

My intention in this essay is to show, in the vein of Alvarez et al.

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