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Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics

Mukul Sharma

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001

Title Pages

Mukul Sharma

(p.i) Caste and Nature (p.ii)

(p.iii) Caste and Nature

(p.iv)

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries.

Published in India by Oxford University Press

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Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics

Mukul Sharma

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001

Dedication

Mukul Sharma (p.v) To my friends and their organizations:

Vijay Pratap, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

Ashok Bharti, National Confederation of Dalit Organisations

Deepak Bharti, Lok Shakti Sangathan (p.vi)

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Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics

Mukul Sharma

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001

(p.ix) Acknowledgements

Mukul Sharma

In early 2000, I came in close contact with several Dalit organizations, activists, intellectuals, and writers from India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, mainly through my involvement in the World Social Forum. I met Paul Divakar of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) in Hyderabad and New Delhi, India, in 2002–3, and we planned a joint programme at the Asia Social Forum, Hyderabad, in January 2003. In some of our discussions on democracy, development, exclusion, and human rights, we had exchanges on Indian environmental movements. Other than Paul, another prominent activist of NCDHR, Vincent Manoharan, was always engaging and thoughtful, and it was with him that I shared my preliminary thoughts on the complex relationship between Dalits and environment for the first time. Later, on my request, Vincent also elaborated his ideas in a small note, which further spurred my thinking. I lost his note, but I remember him and his thoughts, and extend my warm thanks to him.

From 2001 to 2010, I worked very closely with the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), New Delhi, India, and the World Dignity Forum, India. Dalit leader Ashok Bharti, an engineer by profession, a tireless activist by choice, and the founder of NACDOR, became a key person in my life, and in many ways has driven me to work on this subject. We travelled, discussed, planned, and organized many things and events together for many years, and I think all my Dalit-related research, including this one, has some of its roots there. Ashok and NACDOR became a major school for me to learn about, reflect, and write on the Dalit cause and the socio-political issues around the rallying cry of ‘dignity’. With, and through, them, I met and interacted with a large number of Dalit organizations, activists, and thinkers across (p.x) the length and breadth of the country, who enriched my thinking on the subject. I particularly

wish to acknowledge the contribution of Bhagwan Das, A. Padmanaban, Ramanath Nayak, Rakesh Bahadur, Durga, Harbhajan Lal, Nitin Chowdhary, Mansukh Rathod, Rajni Tilak, Pushpa Vivek, Rahul Manav, Pushpa Bharti, Tabassum, Achhutan, and Arshad Kureshi.

In the World Dignity Forum, we aligned with a large number of organizations and individuals. In particular, Ashok Chowdhary and his National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, Ali Anwar Ansari and his All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, and Deepak Bharti and his Lok Shakti Sanghatan immensely enriched my knowledge and understanding of Dalit perspectives on livelihood, forest, food, water, space, and environment.

In the academic world, Pradip Kumar Datta (PK) has been thought provoking and very generous in providing much-needed direction and depth to my research through his comments and suggestions on each chapter, as well as an overall feedback on the entire work. I remember and thank him with great respect and admiration—for being a wonderful human being, a supportive teacher, and a serious intellectual and historian. Ujjwal Kumar Singh has been encouraging and forthcoming since the beginning of my research work and has played an integral supportive role in the fruition of this book. Mahesh Rangarajan, Deepak Kumar, and Aditya Nigam gave thoughtful comments that further improved my arguments. S. Anand of Navayana Publishing House and Rohan D’Souza of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, were the first ones to comment critically but positively on my article and research proposal. Ramachandra Guha provided some pertinent references to begin this work, and later on too he had some wise words. Gopal Guru read some chapters closely, and I am grateful for his feedback.

This research has been enriched through several interactions, workshops, seminars and conferences. I am thankful to E. Somanathan, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India; Gunnel Cederlöf, Uppsala University, Sweden; Bengt G. Karlsson, Stockholm University, Sweden; Professor Prasenjit Duara, Duke Kunshan University, China; and Professor Navnita C. Behera, Delhi University, India, for the same.

Fieldwork in different parts of the country was made possible by several people. Ashok Kumar Anj, Tushar Vyas, Chandresh, and Subhash Gatade offered their time, contacts, and every possible resource at short (p.xi) notice. Language, literature, and translation have their own challenges, and I requested support from Nivedita Menon, Sohail Hashmi, Sana Das, and Sheeba Mathew in this regard. They took time out to find and connect me with some people who could help with translations. Hima S., Kapilash, Mehul Mangubahen, and Madhu Dar carried out meticulous translations from Malayalam, Odiya, Gujarati, and Hindi.

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I have also gained a lot—knowledge, reflection, facilitation, encouragement, material, and improvement in research—from Jeremy Seabrook, Anand Teltumbde, Ishaan Sharma, Assem Shrivastava, Ashish Kothari, Gangesh Gunjan, Itishree Kanungo, Madhushree B.N., Sanjay Kumar, Anand Pradhan, Vidhya Raveendranathan, and Aseem Prakash. To merely say thanks to them is not enough; still I mention them here with a lot of warmth.

My friend Anand V. Swamy has had an overarching presence and contribution in my life for several decades. More so in the pursuit of this research, as I heavily relied on his resources to access crucial books and research papers from overseas. He never got tired of meeting my constant requests for relevant materials. Anand’s unconditional affection and belief in me has always taken me forward, and it is very true here as well.

Charu Gupta is, in fact, the initiator of this research, as in the case of most of my other serious works. Her role has been manifold—objectively intellectual and deeply personal, reader and commentator, discussant and critic, and much more —and it cannot be recognized in plain words. Her recent work, The Gender of Caste, also coincided with the development of my research and I was lucky and privileged to have access to her fresh knowledge and thoughts on Dalits. Her love and support seems lifelong, and is embedded in every page of this research. (p.xii)

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Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics

Mukul Sharma

Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780199477562

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2018

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199477562.001.0001

(p.xiii) Introduction

Mukul Sharma

O black girl

You reap the paddy field

You reap everything with your sickle

Come along! O come along with the wrath of Kali!

O black cubs

You shade the black soil

You cubs of lions and panthers

Take the staff of the Vela

And the rope of the Kaala

Come along striding like demons!

You became the manure in the soil

The colour of the river

You were pushed down alive

Under the mud as slush

As many Pulaya heads were chopped

And the blood drained into the fields and farmlands.

—K.K.S. Das, a Malayali Dalit writer1

My eyes opened and I saw a broken piece of sky, agitated, caught in the square of the window. A big, inky black cloud had grabbed the feeble sun and squeezed it, breaking the sun’s legs.

—Ajay Navaria, a Hindi Dalit writer2

Brahmanas recited ved mantras and poured offerings

And, then, arrived the time for the final sacrifice

And, then, Maya’s head was served and offered

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Blood splurged, so did the water in the well Was it just water? (p.xiv)

No, it was the blessing of gods. It was the salvation of untouchables

Whose blood had turned into water

In that water bathed shavati, bathed the Brahmins, Bathed the ruler, bathed the subjects

He, who saved the people from misery, Was declared the saint of twelfth century

Maha Saptami invoked

But never was he honoured.3

—A Gujarati Dalit folk song, ‘Mayavel’, describing the sacrifice of Maya, a Dalit, for bringing water in a cursed, dry pond

Caste and nature are intimately and inextricably interwoven in India; and yet their interconnectedness has rarely been a subject of examination. However, Dalit experiences and narratives constantly underline their everyday ecological burdens in a marked hierarchal order. Images of land animate caste anxieties around labour, blood, and bondage. In dry regions, Dalits must often sacrifice their lives to recharge ponds and water resources. From village to city and temple to school, caste metaphors of pollution, impurity, and dirt dominate places and spaces through imaginaries of dangers posed by the presence of Dalits. Forests can be heaven or hell for Dalits. A river is some place to dispose of your body. Nature, entwined with fear and violence, horror and hardship, bloodbath and war, makes environmental experiences of Dalits distinctive and different. Dalit landless agricultural labourers in Kerala have, for example, such memories of forest, animal, wood, and weather in their songs:

Collecting wood in the forest

Wild animals accost us

The weather is against us!4

At the same time, Dalit eco-experiences have their own vibrancy and dynamism. Living with nature, they are constantly negotiating with, and challenging, caste domination, while simultaneously articulating their environmental imagination. Dalit thinkers and contemporary excavations of Dalit memory create varied and alternative spatial and social metaphors around environment. This book traces Dalits’ quest for their place in nature by taking in different voices—songs and narratives of early bonded labourers; writings by leading Dalit ideologues, leaders, and (p.xv) writers; myths, memories, and metaphors of Dalits around nature; their movements, labour, and footsteps—which together highlight Dalits’ attempts at defining themselves in casteized nature through heterogeneous means. The book deploys the term ‘Dalit’ in a wider, inclusive, encompassing sense—sometimes including boatmen and fisherfolk—as the ecological casteand-nature paradox creates a larger pattern, which impacts the body, self,

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presence, and position of the oppressed.5 This intertwining of caste and nature presents a critical challenge to Indian environmentalism, which has hitherto marginalized such linkages. On the one hand, this work attempts to fill this lacuna by highlighting what environmentalists have largely missed and on the other it demonstrates how by studying Dalits’ complex relationship with nature we can bring forth new dimensions of both environment and Dalits. The work hinges on three broad themes through which I attempt to see Dalit and caste conceptions of environment. The first is the apologist and recuperative Brahminism and a stream of environmentalism in modern India. The second is Dalit environmental thought—mythological, anecdotal, theoretical, and rational. The third is Dalit activism, with its certain embedded conceptions such as the new commons. These are interconnected windows through which I look at different aspects of Dalit environmentalism as a comprehensive terrain of ecological contestation and appropriation, and conceptualization and activism. They represent how Dalit meanings of environment have counterposed themselves to ideas and practices of neo-Brahmanism and to certain mainstreams of environmental thought. They underline that with all its ambiguities and mulitiplicities, Dalit thought represents an attempt to produce a new conception of environment as spatial equity and build a case of environmentalism free from burdens of caste. Rather than looking for a single united Dalit thread and a coherent understanding of ecology, the study explores diverse and rich Dalit intellectual resources that give nature a social, political, and cultural underpinning.

Nature and Caste

Nature and caste are rarely seen together in academic and environmental discourses. Nature is considered as natural, common, and inherent; caste is understood as a constructed and distinct historical and social entity unique to India, and based on a system of stratification and (p.xvi) division of Hindu society. However, the two are deeply intertwined in the country. Hierarchical social structures—and similarly nature—are often believed by many caste Hindus to be organic, intrinsic, and natural, originating together with and at the same moment of the creation of the universe by and out of a sacrifice of the body of Purusha, the ‘Cosmic Man’. However, scholars have pointed out that not only caste, but even land, forest, and water are complex historical and social products. Actions of humans and non-humans have been constantly inscribed upon most of the so-called natural world.6 Vast forms of nature—land use, vegetation, rivers, mountains, even climate—bear the marks of human influence, including caste exclusion. From the times of the Rig Veda7—‘naturalizing’ an unequal social order—to the recent intellectual debates on caste, dimensions and determinants of human behaviours and nature have often met through diverse paths, times, and spheres. The interrelationship between caste and nature affirms and reaffirms particular kinds of cultural representations; legitimizes and delegitimizes spaces, places, and people; creates and reproduces

Page 3 of 22

social hierarchies; ignites conflicts and violence; and offers creative arenas for challenging domination. There is a specificity of casteized nature, different from the universal question of accessing nature in relationship to nature. Village, occupation, agriculture, food, water, land, and irrigation have been important sites for imposition of hierarchies of caste, and caste economy thrives on the use and abuse of natural resources. We need to ask how caste hierarchies are reproduced by uses of nature. What is the role of purity and pollution? What are the structuring principles of access and exclusion? Is it a question of touchability or hierarchy in general? Are other principles of caste hierarchy, besides touchability, also in operation here? What is the caste of water? How do caste relations structure irrigation networks in a village? Why should Dalits feel and work for conservation and promotion of traditional water bodies and waterharvesting systems when these leave aside issues of ownership and when they are not even allowed to take water from these ponds, tanks, and wells?8 Why and how do caste and its culture determine pure and impure food, what we eat, and what we prefer to eat? How is the use of animals declared legitimate or illegitimate through caste? Why should Dalits fight for restoration of traditional community-based occupations when it is precisely these that support their ghettoization and do not empower them or improve (p.xvii) their situation in civil society and the market? How does a specific environmental and occupational set-up play a role in the making and unmaking of the collective entry or exit of a caste in environmental politics? How do certain other environmental arenas, for example, the tank irrigation technologies and practices in south India, explicate caste and Dalit intersections at the site of environment? How do physical and social environments, characterized by ghettos (known by different names like Chamar tola in the north, Cheri and Hulgeri in the south, and Wadas in the west of India) and untouchability (pollution, filth, stigma, and isolation), act as a material context for Dalit environment subject formation?

History underlines the intertwining of casteism and naturalism. Different ages and times have scripted the characters of this coupling. According to the Rig Veda, pervading earth and all its creatures, eternal life, air, and animals filled up with the sacrifice of Purusha. The world was formed and the Brahman was Purusha’s head and the Kshatriya his arms. The thighs became the Vaishya, and the Shudra was produced from his feet. The universe—moon and sun, sky and ocean, people, and their existence—naturalized the varnashrama or chaturvarnya system, in which people were believed to be born with natural characteristics and inclinations towards a particular occupation. Later, some environmental discourses provided a defence of the caste system. Aligned with Brahmanical thinking, these discourses shared a passion for caste and developed a vocabulary of nature that eclipsed Dalits and their everyday environmental lives.9 More recently, ‘casteized’ nature has become a contested space, where caste domination of natural resources has led to several cultural representations

Page 4 of 22

and conflicts, emphasizing ecological exclusions of Dalits. Thus, from the description of nature to designing it, caste has appeared and reappeared in different historical moments and offered diverse political visions.

The diversity, multiplicity, durability, and elasticity in meaning of nature and environment and the historicity, complexity, peculiarity, and disparity in theory and practice of caste in India are also bound together by the power and authority they have had in shaping human destiny. Power, traditional and modern, often works through nature. Caste becomes an important constitutive element in creating and consolidating the ‘natural’ and social power structure. Human history of valuing the natural world is long and intricate and has several threads, (p.xviii) including ethical, moral, romantic, and spiritual. The natural world has often provided a rich, colourful, permanent, and universal compass to inform and inspire human actions, as well as to forge environmental and national identities. Nature is also an exercise in power in the hands of the powerful, and is entangled in the politics of belonging and alienation, exclusion and inclusion. From an environmental ‘othering’ through taboos of social pollution to the creation of a social ecology by making dirt and filth an existential companion of certain communities; from flowing water to common spaces, nature can become a medium and message of the expression of power. Here power flows through an overlapping of caste and nature. It creates, appropriates, dominates, and subjugates spaces, places, and identities in different ways across the length and breadth of the country. Power acquired on the basis of nature and caste is exceedingly repressive. At the same time, it creates a ground from where questions against power are also raised. In the process, power is often revisited and reconstructed in the sphere of nature, caste, and culture. Here, studies on power relations and contestations between gender and caste, and gender and nature can provide us some rich material to understand the same in the context of Dalits.10

There are new avatars of caste in the march of modernity. Quite different from framing caste as a contemporary question in the domain of democracy and politics, a number of scholars have appreciated caste as a driver of development, a form of social capital, deeply embedded in our culture and acumen.11

This ‘new casteism’12 has two strands mainly: (a) championing the glory of caste-based occupations and its conservation, and (b) using and appropriating caste and its network for the benefit of capital and market.13 ‘New casteism’ often rests on ‘neo-naturalism’, where nature is used and abused to provide a body of knowledge and bonds, location and landscapes for naturalizing social identities and relationships in a new political and economic environment. At the same time, the natural milieu is an object to be used, governed, and transformed, not only for economic development, but also for ‘broken’, ‘backward’, and poor people. Thus, ‘neo-naturalism’ also provides a normative and regulative system by which nature and natives have to be controlled and

Page 5 of 22

managed for the nation. They both have to be represented and ruled by higher expert and knowledgeable bodies. They both have to be sanitized and changed by erasing their traces and memories. Even when the (p.xix) interlocking of caste and nature changes its colour and complexion across regions and cultures in Indian society, it continues to be a close companion of the modernity project.

Ecology of Caste

India’s environmental history has vividly described how colonial circuits entered natural resources and people’s lives, and established a centralized, bureaucratic, scientific, and modern system of management, which also created a current for various discontents and struggles. Political ecologists have amply emphasized vital issues of ownership, access, and availability of natural resources and the role of state, market, and community. Environmental academicians and activists have focused on increasing alienation and displacement of the poor from their resources and the unequal burdens imposed on them for the development and modernization of the country. Feminists and anthropologists have raised critical questions about ‘naturalness’ of the natural order, and pointed out how layers of power work within gender, caste, and nature.14 However, nature and its social history have rarely been seen from a caste angle. The politics of caste in India in the realm of nature, and its implications and meanings for Dalits, have been a blind spot.

However, the interrelationship between environment and caste—what I call ‘ecocasteism’—has a long trajectory in India, which is closely connected to the nature and history of Brahmanical Hinduism. The history of caste has shaped the history of environment in India in some prominent ways. First, caste created a concept of natural and social order where people, place, occupation, and knowledge are characterized by pollution and ritual cleanliness; where bodies, behaviours, situations, and actions are isolated, ‘out of place’, and ‘untouched’, because of deep-down hierarchical boundaries. Says Gopal Guru:

Social ecology makes dirt and filth an existential companion of Dalits who are at the receiving end of condescending descriptions of the former across time and space…. In the social construction of ecology Dalits become dirt and dirt is them.15

Second, caste shaped environmental attitudes and values of both Brahmins and non-Brahmins. Third, caste made it possible for Brahmins to appropriate and exploit natural resources by segregating and subordinating certain sections of the population. Fourth, low (p.xx) castes, especially ‘untouchables’, developed their own understandings of environment and its resources, which were cohabitations of love and sorrow, pain and joy, and alienation and attachment.

D.R. Nagaraj remarked:

Page 6 of 22

Deconstructing the self-definitions of Hindu conservatism and Brahmanism is quite central to the task of building the historical identities of DalitBahujans.16

The research in this volume thus tries to map some of the terrain of this ecocasteism. Contemporary eco-casteism represents a distinctive form of Indian environmentalism, which is often grounded in a justification of the caste system and a simultaneous opposition to modernity and enlightenment. Under an overarching, broad rubric of ‘social-ecological’ system, caste, division of labour, and traditional occupation are sometimes seen as ‘progenitor[s] of the concept of sustainable development’. It has thus been argued by some that caste system signified ‘conservation from below’, a ‘remarkable system of ecological adaptation’, and ‘high level of specialization’, where caste groups ‘in a web of mutually supportive relationships’ helped resource conservation.17

Besides a functional justification of the caste system, eco-casteists have offered some fragmented and messy ecological arguments to explain the relationship between nature and caste culture. In some such arguments, natural environment determines the structure of society, and skill, knowledge, and culture are decided more by nature than by evolution, history, social institutions, and individual endeavours. As a result of centuries of complex development of nature, and the corresponding interaction with humans and environment, the caste system became more nuanced, multilayered, and stable in Indian society. It is thus concluded that the varna structure is ‘essentially ecological in its logic’.18 There are other versions of eco-casteism. For example, it has been claimed that agro-climate zones such as the Gangetic plains because of their rich natural resources could mould the eco-system, life, and ways of living and working, which in turn gave shape to certain sections of labour as repositories of traditional knowledge systems.19 Some, including the leading Marxist E.M.S. Namboodiripad, argued in a reverse swing that the relationship between people and land led to certain castes acquiring knowledge, creativity, and rich culture, and thus the creation of ‘high culture’ was a contribution of the division of labour: (p.xxi)

If these two arrangements [caste and the landlord system] had not existed, the Nambudiris would have been unable to engage in cultural activities and develop the science and literature and the Nairs could not have improved agricultural practices and developed their martial and physical prowess.20

Such meanings of caste, accompanied by views on relationships between humans and nature, intersect with other sub-themes, which I call ‘ecoorganicism’ and ‘eco-naturalism’, and have critical bearings on eco-casteism. Eco-organicism is an ‘Indian’ approach to nature, where environment is understood as divine, cosmic, and intrinsic, conforming to the laws of nature.

Page 7 of 22

Society is viewed as natural, based on ‘natural principles’, whereas modernity, industry, science, and technology are described as Western, materialist, and consumerist, and thus ‘unnatural’ and ‘uncultured’. In such understandings, Indian environment is believed to be under threat from outside forces. Therefore, protection of environment is synonymous with protection of Indian culture, tradition, and nation. Indian culture here consists comprehensively of our family, rites, customs, faiths, rituals, ceremonies, social systems, values, and ethics. It is crucial to recognize the richness of Indian life, and its manifestations in nature, for an understanding of the overall organic Indian entity. The binary of ‘Indian’ and ‘Western’ offers a wealth of environmental literature in which Indianism, Brahmanism, and Hinduism are enmeshed to offer straightforward solutions:

The global ecological crisis is due to the quest for superfluous worldly goods. It is the result of a materialist worldview.… If technological and material development overlooks the needs of the spirit, is this really advancement? ... It is unfortunate that we have traded a good life for a goods life. It is foolish to think that merely by multiplying one’s wants, one is achieving happiness. The more our desires are satisfied, the greater our desires grow. The Manusmrti (4.2) declares: ‘Happiness is rooted in contentment; its opposite is rooted in misery’.21

Eco-naturalism is the coupling of environmental protection with the protection of life in its natural order. According to this view, humans have wrongly considered themselves as above nature, whereas they should be viewed as in nature, which is rich, permanent, and cultural, and often provides national values to guide human actions. There can be several versions of eco-naturalism: nature is above all, and to which humans must submit; nature and its teachings provide a model to govern politics and economy; an ecological society is run by (p.xxii) nature’s rule and cycle; there are ecological communities and societies based on certain traditions, cultures, religions, and nationalities; and we must return to nature. Eco-naturalism uses nature to affirm the supremacy of ‘natural order’ in major spheres of life—food, animal, livelihood—which is many a time synonymous with a conservative Hindu Brahmanical belief. For example, here food is a part of the ultimate reality, Brahman. It is culturally ‘given’, along with the designated social–ritual phases (varnashrama dharma), according to which multiple schemes of food classification establish rules about appropriate eating and feeding.22 Within this framework:

The bull represents dharma, moral principles, and the cow represents the earth…. It is a tragedy that modern society does not appreciate the significance of caring for cows and bulls, and prefers instead to kill them and eat them…. However, Manu Smriti, the basic law-book of Hinduism, considers the animal killer to be a murderer. It says that all involved in the

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act—the slaughterer, the butcher, the cook and the one who eats the meat —are liable to nature’s punishment.23

Purity and pollution of our body, touch, taste, space, place, and people are key markers of caste, creating essential qualities and differences within and outside the naturescapes. Nature itself cannot determine the identity of a place, but caste creates a natural essence and ambiance to establish power relations and social order. Thus, we have vast landscapes of purity and pollution in India that maintain strict lines for caste identity, dominance, and exclusion. From sacred groves to natural water bodies, from village to city, these demarcations between cultured and uncultured, holy and unholy, natural and unnatural are alive and active through natural and social dispositions. The caste of a place is naturalized in different ways—boundaries of village are indentified with caste; areas of ponds, wells, and rivers are marked by caste; and landfill sites have caste. There is thus a ‘spatial delineation of issues of power, hierarchy and inequality’.24 The fear of pollution is not only about the outer nature, but also about the inner nature, experienced with body and minds. However, in a caste society, purity and pollution can give negative as well as positive stimulus to bind or separate, unite or divide people spatially. Thus, spaces are also created on the basis of caste solidarity, and at times, such space demarcations or transgressions are political acts, enacted by design or by force. ‘Pure’ and ‘polluted’ spaces have thus become sites of struggle in the country. It has been remarked: (p.xxiii)

Nature objects cannot speak of their own accord: they require a mediator —a proxy, a speaker, and an active subject—to draw them into articulation.25

Eco-casteism is a representation, and more specifically an upper-caste Brahmanical representation, of nature and environment. Caste frameworks simultaneously dominate and delete sounds and narratives of Dalit environmentalism. Environment historians and intellectuals, civil society organizations, and social movements and struggles have been consciously–unconsciously complacent and complicit in this homogenous and dominant politics of eco-casteism. Examples of domination and deletion abound where Dalit perspectives have been elided and upper-caste religious perspectives highlighted. A cursory glance at Indian environment literature—academic, scientific, political, poetic, economic, emotive, mythical, moral, and ethical— reveals that religious texts like the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Vedas, Dharma Shastras and Smritis; Hindu gods and heroes such as Ram, Krishna, and Arjuna; rivers such as Ganga and Yamuna; festivals such as Durga Puja and Devi puja; and symbols from India’s invented past, tradition, and culture have been its dominant and typical motifs. Simultaneously, there are anxieties regarding the West, materialism, and modernity, as they are perceived as contaminating Indian

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environment and culture. Increasing environmental destruction has led to greater emphasis on preservation of Brahmanical traditions:

The Hindu and Buddhist traditions can help us to see that our life is inextricably bound up with the natural world and the life of animals. Whether we believe in reincarnation or not, it illustrates an attitude which is important.26

As I will demonstrate in the next section, frequent references to Hindu traditions, often Brahmanical in nature, as an essence of environmentalism are based on exclusion and inferiorization of Dalits and lower castes. Eco-casteism may not always be violent in nature. Rather, it is most effective at meta-social and political levels, influencing our beliefs, norms, and discourses around Indian environmental culture.

Environment and Dalits

Dalit intellectual thought has historically been a touchstone for Indian politics and civil rights. However, as my research reveals, it also has much (p.xxiv) to say on our relationship with nature. The entanglements between Dalits and nature have never been fixed; they have shifted over space and time, and in the context of natural and social conditions. Moreover, the category of Dalit itself does not mean a singular identity, or a united-homogenous voice and practice. Dalits and their several sub-castes have had multiple, varied, complex, and creative narratives of nature and ecological argumentations. However, in spite of the fragmented thought and action on nature and natural resources, embedded in different Dalit communities, we find some overlapping common threads running among them. My case studies from north, central, and west India suggest that Dalits’ relationship with nature and natural resources do produce a common Dalit identity. Further, in the contested terrain of nature and resources, struggles between Brahmins and Shudras, between upper castes and Dalits, and between Shudras and ‘untouchables’ are not always necessarily neatly divided. Ecology, nature, and communities carry amidst them complex and contradictory loads, evolved through different and diverse ways of working and struggling.

My research does not wish to claim in a linear fashion that Dalit attitudes to environment are somehow ‘better’, nor does it seek to valorize the Dalit standpoint. Rather, I wish to see environment through a Dalit lens, and in the process hope to provide a vignette for both environment and Dalit studies. Some Dalit intellectuals have argued that since Dalits have been closer to nature, they have more cultural and ecological vitality and creativity. Dalits’ ‘original’ environmental, technological, scientific, and productive knowledge has been invoked to claim their role and contribution in all spheres of life in a ‘post-Hindu India’,27 and to make sense of their relationship to nature in an increasingly hyper era of national progress and development. However, Dalit naturalism or romanticism can also be associated with a kind of eco-casteism and caste-

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essentialism. It is not surprising that Dalits themselves at times take pride in caste consciousness and their identity by claiming to be natural and/or close to nature. Stretching the boundaries of environment history and capturing the depth and breadth of Dalit encounters with nature should not be taken as an exercise in creating a ‘myth of the golden Dalit past’,28 where either as the ruler or the ruled they were living in perfect harmony with nature.

The interrelationship between Dalit and environment is complex and conflictridden. Anthropocentric or biocentric views of (p.xxv) environment are primarily based on human experiences. However, the experiences of an ‘untouchable’ or an outcaste or a bonded labourer—often considered as less than a human being—are not compatible with binaries of human/nature. They challenge us to understand the meanings and implications of nature for those living on the margins of human existence. Further, for the past few decades, ‘varieties of environmentalism’29 have successfully portrayed a collective identity of the poor in environmental movements of the north and the south. Yet, it is also being recognized time and again that these movements have long excluded ‘untouchables’ and Dalits, and have either ignored their disproportionate environmental losses and risks, or have included them in the broad rubric of the poor. Environmental thinking and activism in India has tried to address the underlying elitism of environmentalism by addressing concerns, values, and expressions of people on the margins. However, there is a language of commonality and universality, which has continued to capture the eco-scene. More importantly, in the realm of civil society and activism, we have witnessed ‘the mutated upper caste modern Indian Self, in perpetual denial of caste’.30 Dalit thinkers have criticized even the brightest environmental movements, for example the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), terming it as Patidar Land Bachao Andolan (PLBA), which are concerned mainly about the landowners and often glorify the ‘cruel past’ and ‘oppressive local institutions’ in rural areas.31 Some rare fieldwork and research by academicians have also pointed out how NBA occluded and erased issues of Dalits and caste domination in the anti-dam struggle.32

Dalits have a rich and diverse environmental history and sensibility. Their relationship to the environment manifests through regular collaboration and conflict with Brahmin-dominated eco-space, as well as in creation of their autonomous space. They have a distinct environmental memory and language. It is also true that Dalits have generally articulated this under the rubric of ‘social’, as opposed to explicitly ‘environmental’. It may at times be expressed more from the margin than the mainstream, from the local than the national, and be raw rather than refined. For example, when Chamars of north India launched the nara-maveshi movement in the mid-1950s to shed polluting caste-based occupations,33 they had concerns of labour, livelihood, animal, and environment. The emergence of land issues in the 1960s and 1970s was aimed at revisiting its origin, access, distribution, (p.xxvi) conservation, continuity, and memory. Such

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sensibility and knowledge has been evident historically in anti-caste thinking and activism. One of the key principles of B.R. Ambedkar, Jotirao Phule, and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy was how to deal with village, land, agriculture, water, and forest. Dalit voices enlarge and enrich our environmental imagination. There is a wealth of Dalit eco-literature—poems, paintings, stories, music, and folklore—coming from diverse regions and communities. Dalit myths and legends of Mayabel and Jasma, Deena and Bhadri underline their dreams and desires for ecological belongings, against their suffering, sacrifice, and alienation. They have their gods and goddesses, pujas, and festivals—for example, Kattamaisamma (discoverer of the tank system and goddess of water), Potaraju (protector of soil and fields), Yandi (marvel of technological knowledge), Nuakhai, Dalkhai, Duma, and Maati Devi—to celebrate and highlight their ecological capacity and connectivity to natural elements against all odds. Dalits are active ecological agents in their own right, and their understandings of nature and ethics, and planning and management of resources, labour, and environment are intertwined with narratives of social justice.

My research attempts to uncover Dalit environment traditions by exploring their thoughts and practices in different regions. I draw on Dalit narratives and writings, and theoretical works produced by advocates of caste annihilation and equality. My aim is to understand how Dalits experience and express human relationships with the natural world, which flow out of their social, economic, political, and ecological contexts. My work combines snapshots and vignettes from different historical periods and geographical regions with Dalit ecological insights, in which the themes of labour, land, water, agriculture, place, myth, music, and social justice come out prominently. Attempts at universalization of space in historical, mythical, and contemporary terms represent a major trend in Dalit activism and thought on environment. The notion of the new commons and its representation as an accessible universal spatiality is crucial for Dalits in nature. For example, spatial relations in the politics of environment and the environment of politics provide a ground to search for new commons by the mythical Mayabel, by the Ganga Mukti Andolan (GMA)—a mass movement of fisherfolk—and by the contemporary individual Manjhi. However, uses and meanings of new commons are not limited to its accessible spatial quality. They have social, political, economic, and symbolic (p.xxvii) value, promoting collective reimaginings of environment, people, and society. Revisualizing and reworking of mountains, rivers, and ponds by Dalits, through a criss-cross of social confrontation and divergent political vision, can become important realms for the production and articulation of an egalitarian environmental thought, culture, and society. These arenas serve as lighthouses to locate diverse aspects of the relationship between caste, nature, and Dalit.

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Themes and Chapters

The chapters that follow examine in detail what has just been highlighted. The first chapter, ‘Eco-casteism’, examines the main themes and features of casteecology. It explains in greater detail what I mean by eco-casteism and its related concepts of eco-organicism and eco-naturalism, underlining the recuperative Brahmanism of modern India. It particularly focuses on social discourses, sanitation, and development programmes of a prominent organization to show how environmentalism often has strains of Brahmanism, which while deploying a language of sympathy for ‘untouchables’, often reinvents Hinduism’s past, tradition, and culture, combining it with technological applications. Sulabh International’s long-standing work on scavengers, sanitation, environmental pollution, non-conventional energy, health, hygiene, rural development, innovation, and promotion of inexpensive and affordable indigenous technology implicitly captures the key points underlying such environmentalism and its perspectives on untouchability, dirt, and pollution. Manual scavenging and scavengers are a stark reality in Indian society. Their condition is entrenched in the caste system and any solutions are difficult to achieve. For many, including Sulabh and its leading light, Bindeshwar Pathak, Hinduism, and more particularly Brahmanism, has had significant defining features and ‘positive’ sides in the past, which have shaped the labour and loyalty of people. However, Westernization, modernity, and development have led to pollution, both external and internal, and have diverted us from the natural and rooted order. Since the caste system is a curse for scavengers, and has lost its traditional relevance in contemporary society, the challenge is how to offer technological solutions to scavengers by emphasizing the necessity of law, policy, implementation, and social action, which in turn can be integrated with a zealous pursuit (p.xxviii) of reform and return to basic Hindu values. For Sulabh, Hinduism is allembracing, and the term ‘Dalit’ an anathema. ‘Caste-neutral’ is the catchword, as even while engaging with scavengers, caste questions are virtually prohibited. For all its concern for scavengers, such embracing of Hinduism and Brahaminism flows from a belief that our society is intrinsically natural rather than one constructed of caste-driven individuals or communities. The ‘natural’ has a given right to determine social, cultural, and religious values in a unified and closed ecosystem. The liberation of scavengers is understood as happening primarily within the ecosystem/religion/caste, not without it. Cleanliness of natural and social environment is dependent upon restoring the natural ecological balance, which encompasses the preservation of pure and unique characteristics of the Hindu system. The liberated scavengers in the schemes of Sulabh must understand and imbibe the values and rituals of ‘true’ and old Hindu scriptures, such as the Manusmriti, and ceremonies, which include Chhath, Mahashivratri, and Kumbh snan. 34 In this scheme of things, the ecoregime is not only casteist, but also shapes the norms and behaviours of ‘untouchables’.

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My next chapter, ‘Dalit Environmental Visions’, focuses on various environmental traditions and their expressions in the everyday lives of Dalits. I draw from a rich corpus of Dalit literature, folklore, mythology, music, songs, festivals, and celebrations. Dalit narratives may not be explicitly environmental per se, but they are filled with ecological symbols of water, river, sea, and forest. They deal with nature in creative, heterogeneous ways, which can enrich and enlarge environment literature. However, Indian nature writing has hardly taken note of these expressions. Through their historical, social, and cultural journeys, Dalits tell us that earth, land, water, agriculture, and forest are not just spaces or places; they are also bound by structures of inclusion and exclusion based on touch, feel, and food. Dalit narratives do not offer any single or simple answer about their relationship to environment as it is a source of misery and joy, and victimhood and celebration. For some, the earth is alive and powerful, imbibing the origin and meaning of life; for others, it is an ancient god who has nurtured them for ages; but for many, it is a wretched place that reminds them of slavery, bondage, and loss of life. After offering a broad survey of the works of several Dalit intellectuals and writers of diverse backgrounds, I concentrate in this chapter on three relatively lesser-known Dalit writers and (p.xxix) artists—C.J. Kuttappan from Kerala, Basudev Sunani from Odisha, and Dalpatbhai Shrimali from Gujarat. In different and creative ways they explore the multi-textured relationship between land and labour, water and wounds, and place and culture. Dalit labour is ingrained in land, water, cultivation, and agriculture, and nature is worked and reworked in their narratives through this relationship. While labour is their own, it is marked by powers of caste and nature. Nature and social order have diversely sculptured their body and work as ‘hard’, ‘strong’, ‘toiling’, ‘inferior’, and ‘slow’. In some Dalit narratives, cultivation becomes a metaphor for celebration, as even if there is no land, there is an element of pride in crops. Agriculture becomes a treasure representing a living nature. Soil, seed, cultivation, plant, grain, water, rain, animal, and spirit take on multiple cultural, social, and moral meanings, sowed along with caste histories. I draw attention in this section on how Dalit labour celebrates nature, while building inner and outer capacities to carry on with caste and cross its boundaries. Dalits further characterize animals, wildlife, food, and taste in their distinct way, and establish environmental links with their ancestors. This chapter also draws attention to some of the writings of leading anti-caste ideologues, namely Jotirao Phule and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, who have left an environmental legacy, interwoven with critiques of slavery and exclusion. They engage with questions of control over natural resources and agrarian reforms, imbibing them with distinct ‘human features’, which help us make better sense of our environment.

Chapter 3, ‘Ambedkar and Environmental Thought’, concentrates on Ambedkar, one of India’s most important thinkers and political leaders. Ambedkar’s political ideas and accomplishments have attracted wide attention. However, he has been neglected in the environment field, even though he has written and spoken

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extensively on nature, village, land, agriculture, water, community, industry, technology, science, development, and modernization. One would have expected that Ambedkar’s rise to importance in the political and academic community would have been accompanied by some delineation of his work from an environmental perspective. However, one is disappointed on this account. While Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and even Indira Gandhi have drawn the attention of environment historians and academicians, Ambedkar has been marginalized. Ambedkar had a comprehensive critique of Indian society, and his (p.xxx) case for a new republic was made by espousing social, political, historical, economic, and moral visions that were more fundamentally also an exploration of aspects of nature. Thus, he wrote on naturalism and Hindu social order, external, universal, and social nature, living nature and its socialization, development and nature, and village and community. When woven together, these can help construct Ambedkar’s agrarian vision. It represented deep-rooted aspirations of Dalits for land ownership and land reforms; similar independence and equality as enjoyed by high-caste farmers; freeing water from the clutches of masters’ control; and establishing Dalits’ control over the ‘natural’ world from a position of individual independence and political and social equality. Ambedkar’s thoughtful interventions and efforts to abolish the oppressive Watandar Mahar system in Maharashtra, challenging the land tenure system of khoti, 35 his ideas on land consolidation and conservation, proposals for forest land, Mahad satyagraha and the burning of Manusmriti, and prominent role in the planning of water resources and irrigation post-Independence reveal that values of ecology, economics, polity, culture, justice, and morality were deeply intertwined in his vision. Ambedkar’s views on modernity and development have to be placed in a broader historical, social, and political context as well, which scripted his texts. The immediate context was provided by the independence movement, and the march towards freedom, democracy, and development. His modernist imaginations included two interconnected trends: a positive one, linked with scientific and technological possibilities of satisfying people’s material and spiritual needs, and a negative one, whose realization led to intensification in the exploitation of nature. Ambedkar could not foresee the shaping of these two trends together while conceptualizing the relationship between society and nature. Subsequent economic and social development not only witnessed a deepening of ecological crisis, but also growing antagonism between Dalits and the environment.

My next chapter, ‘Dalit Memories and Water Rights’, sheds light on how Dalits see and experience water, often in stark contrast to high castes. Not only do Dalits face caste barriers in accessing water, which the high castes take for granted, they also have different memories, myths, and methods of remembering and claiming water. Water has been a source of several conflicts in India. It has also been deeply (p.xxxi) coloured with caste, resulting in a tense relationship between water, dominant Hindu discourses, and Dalits. Environmental

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celebrations of traditional knowledge of water management have completely overlooked the embedded inequality and injustice in such systems. As the voices of women and Dalits have gained momentum, along with linkages of water to usage, ownership, equitable share of benefits, livelihoods, and social movements, a ‘water box’ (a variety of issues contained in closed storages) has literally opened up. Environmentalists have taken note of the intricate connections between gender and water, leading to a widening and deepening of their vision. Alongside gender, some of the academic work in the recent past has also taken cognizance of ecological narratives of caste and Dalits in relation to water. Many Dalit autobiographies have gruelling and painful accounts on this. A social world of water is revealed where dual experiences of cultural conceptualization and societal exploitation pin down the lower castes and Dalits. Besides this, water experiences of Dalits have laid the foundations for their own eco-initiatives. The chapter takes up two case studies from two different regions of Bihar, where Dalits have used water to represent their own ecological vision in a collective manner, drawing from a rich repertoire of their religious–cultural and social resources. Cultural symbols and myths of Deena-Bhadri and Ekalavya are ingeniously assembled by Dalits as a community toolbox to demand river and fishing rights and to attach themselves to pasts, places, and resources. Dalit myths and symbols are also forms of ecological imaginations and promises, which not only unearth their pasts, but also provide critiques of caste practices and dominant Hindu mythologies. They are simultaneously negative and positive idioms, with both destructive and constructive functions. It seems that water memories and myths have the potential to initiate much more environmental agency in Dalit lives than anything else. Here mythical figures and ancestors are transformed from obedience to defiance, enslavement to ecological agency. They are beholden to, and in love with, their people and resources, so much so that they sacrifice their lives. They greatly contribute in building a collective narrative of Dalit resource rights.

Finally, the last chapter, ‘The Dalit Mountain Man and New Commons’, looks at the ‘commons’ through the persona and labour of the indomitable Dashrath Manjhi, the exceptional ‘mountain man’ of Bihar, who independently and singlehandedly brought down a (p.xxxii) 360-foot long, 25-foot high hill, and created a 16-foot wide pass in place of an almost impenetrable common, natural, hilly space. Manjhi was an environmental delight, though always outside the ambit of mainstream ‘environmentalism’. Living in self-made tarpaulin shelters, frequently wearing repurposed tractor tyres as footwear, jackets made of recycled jute bags, collecting leaf lamps, and using local herbs as medicines, he often expressed himself through ecological idioms of water, sea, mountain, bird, and rain as he felt intricately bound with them. However, more than his unique personal traits, Manjhi, alienated from the village ‘commons’ and faced with hostile environments, successfully created an alternative spatial metaphor to develop a new positive symbol of ‘commons’ for his personal and social identity.

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A wide pass, a road in the heart of the mountain, became not a symbol of development but an image of transformation of a space. Passage into this new space is not only a few steps forward to the city, market, and work, but also a search, discovery, and achievement of the Dalit self, society, and environment. In the discourse of much of our environmentalism, commons are to be conserved and cherished for their ecological distinctiveness. As long as the commons are caste-dominated and do not also belong to Dalits, their connection to a ‘common’ identity is uncertain. In the realm of Dalits and commons, universal environmentalism—our sense of belonging—loses its appeal. The sovereignty of the commons makes sense only if it is also derived from Dalit sovereignty. Located on the edges of environmental, social, and political concerns, I explore how the idea of commons in leading environmental discourses intersects with dominant caste ideas in society and economy. I juxtapose this to Dalits’ ways of seeing and defining the commons, and how these have different environmental and social meanings. The chapter also draws its inspiration from some of the radical African-American environmental writings on common and public spaces, to highlight the connections between caste, commons, and environment.

Nature is life-essential, but naturalism of several kinds is questionable. Nature and caste are both historical and social creations. By locating a dialectical relationship between caste, Dalits, and environment, one can revisit nature on the basis of caste and cultural carriers. Even while being part of nature, the effect that humans have on nature is huge. As nature is constructed in India, it can equally be cast in caste. Caste has historically been naturalized through nature. Rather than (p.xxxiii) adopting caste-blind visions, a consciousness about caste in nature can help create a new political space for environment struggles. When we make an effort to look at Indian environmental politics through the eyes and actions of Dalits and their various movements in different parts of the country, we may also be able to glean a new ecological universe, a visible Dalit environmental public space, which is often outside the dominant discursive frame but is nonetheless embedded in Dalit ecological understandings. Dalit environmentalism is not a finished or a refined project. However, its relative invisibility is also a sign of the upper-caste habitués operating in the sphere of secular modernity and citizenship. By exploring differential subject formations in relation to environment, as well as by opening the public secrets of secular environment-hood, we can bring the readings and understandings of caste, Dalits, and environmentalism together. At different times and locations, explorations of interrelationships between gender and nature, race and nature, ethnicity and culture, gender and caste, and class and power have opened up new political possibilities. This research is a small attempt to contribute to such efforts.

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Notes

Notes:

(1.) K.K.S. Das, Karumaadi Nritham (The Black Dance), trans. Ajay Sekher, in M. Dasan, V. Pratibha, Pradeepan Pampirikunn, and C.S. Chandrika, eds, The Oxford India Anthology of Malayalam Dalit Writing (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 15–16.

(2.) Ajay Navaria, ‘Upmahadvip’, trans. Laura R. Brueck, in Laura R. Brueck, Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 134.

(3.) ‘Mayavel’, trans. Mehul Mangubahen (Gujarati to Hindi) and Madhu Dar (Hindi to English). The folk song is included in Dalpatbhai Shrimali, Harijan Sant and Lok Sahitya: Legend to Record—A Research-Work about Saint and Folkliterature of Backward Class (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Granthratna Karyala, 1988), pp. 22–38.

(4.) The songs of Dalit Pulaya agricultural labourers widely express such experiences. For details, see Dona Baby and Kalyani Suresh, ‘Voices of the “People of the Field”: Reflections about Oppression in the Pulaya Agrarian Folk Songs of Kerala, India’, Communicator 48, no. 1 (January–December 2013): 39.

(5.) While Dalits and adivasis are two political subjectivities that centrally mark our twentieth-century history—and there are overlaps regarding their concerns on environment—they do not signify an easy pairing. There are (p.xxxiv) analytical differences and distinctions between them. This research explicitly focuses on Dalits and caste politics in relation to ecology.

(6.) Kathleen D. Morrison’s work on northern Karnataka explores ways in which humans have helped shape the land. See Kathleen D. Morrison, ‘The Human Face of the Land: Why the Past Matters for India’s Environmental Future’, public lecture at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi, 11 February 2013.

(7.) For English translations of Vedic hymns in the Rig Veda, see Ralph T.H. Griffith, The Complete Rig Veda, Classic Century Works (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2012).

(8.) Mukul Sharma, ‘Where Are Dalits in Indian Environmentalism?’, National Seminar on Dalit Studies and Higher Education: Exploring Content Material for a New Discipline, New Delhi, 28 February 2004.

(9.) For example, Kailash Malhotra, quoted in The State of India’s Environment 1984–85: The Second Citizen’s Report (New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1985), p. 162.

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(10.) There is rich literature on gender and caste and gender and nature. Some are Anupama Rao, ed., Gender and Caste (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003); Sharmila Rege, Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Reading Dalit Women’s Testimonies (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006); Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens (Calcutta: Stree, 2003); Charu Gupta, The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2016); Bina Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Bina Agarwal, Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Women’s Presence within and beyond Community Forestry (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010); Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988).

(11.) There are a number of writers and intellectuals like S. Gurumurthy, Gurcharan Das, R. Vaidyanathan, and Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, who have looked at caste as a safety net or a shock absorber, as a source of knowledge and capital, as a social glue enabling cohesive communities to pull together, and as having a positive role in development. See Gurcharan Das, India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Transformation Age (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2002), p. 150; Swaminathan A. Aiyar, ‘Harness the Caste System’, The Times of India, 4 June 2000, available at http://swaminomics.org/ harness-the-caste-system/, accessed on 12 October 2015; R. Vaidyanathan, ‘India Growth: The Untold Story Caste as Social Capital’, India Behind the Lens (IBTL), 19 October 2012, available at http://www.ibtl.in/column/1309/india-growth-theuntold-story-caste-as-social-capital/, accessed on 13 October 2015.

(12.) The term ‘new casteism’ was used in 1992 by T.M. Yesudasan, a Dalit author and editor from Kerala. According to him, this term refers to the (p.xxxv) phenomenon or tendency of denying or delaying justice to the traditionally oppressed social groups by adopting measures and positions which are ostensibly radical and progressive. An example is the land reforms in Kerala, which gave farming land only to tenants, all of whom were upper castes. See T.M. Yesudasan, ‘Towards a Prologue to Dalit Studies’, in K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu, eds, No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), pp. 615–17.

(13.) Several studies reveal that the ideology of the market has done little to break down India’s caste-based social order and in some ways has even reinforced it. See Barbara Harriss-White, with Elisabetta Basile, Anita Dixit, Pinaki Joddar, Aseem Prakash, and Kaushal Vidyarthee, Dalits and Adivasis in India’s Business Economy: Three Essays and an Atlas (Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective, 2014); Aseem Prakash, Dalit Capital: State, Markets and Civil Society in Urban India (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2015); Ashwini Deshpande, The

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Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011).

(14.) Some such studies are David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha, eds, Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); Gunnel Cederlof and K. Sivaramakrishnan, eds, Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005); Vasant Saberwal and Mahesh Rangarajan, eds, Battles over Nature: Science and the Politics of Conservation (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003); Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1995).

(15.) Gopal Guru, ‘Freedom of Expression and the Life of the Dalit Mind’, Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 10 (9 March 2003): 41.

(16.) D.R. Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet and Other Essays: The Dalit Movement in India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010), pp. 176–7.

(17.) Madhav Gadgil and Ramchandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 91–110.

(18.) Purnendu S. Kavoori, ‘The Varna Trophic System: An Ecological Theory of Caste Formation’, Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 12 (23–9 March 2002): 1156–64.

(19.) Ashok Das Gupta, ‘Is Caste System a Kind of Indigenous Knowledge System?’, Antrocom Online Journal of Anthrology 8, no. 1 (2012): 63.

(20.) E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Keralam Malayalikalude Mathrubhumi (‘Kerala, the Motherland of the Malayalis’) (Trichur: Deshabhimani Publications, 1965), p. 105, quoted in Dilip M. Menon, The Blindness of Insight: Essays on Caste in Modern India (Pondicherry: Navayana, 2006): 59

(21.) K.L. Seshagiri Rao, ‘The Five Great Elements (Pancamahabhuta): An Ecological Perspective’, in Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker, (p.xxxvi) eds, Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 36.

(22.) R.S. Khare, ed., The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992).

(23.) Ranchor Prime, Vedic Ecology: Practical Wisdom for Surviving the 21st Century (California: Mandala Publishing, 2002), p. 139.

(24.) Menon, Blindness of Insight, p. 59

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