Urbanisation, no liberating force for Dalits

Urbanisation, no liberating force for Dalits

The Indian city has failed the aspirations and expectations that the Dalit liberation movement had placed in urbanisation

 Ambedkar and Dalits 

Despite such failings, B.R. Ambedkar rejected village life and encouraged Dalits to move to the city. 

Ambedkar said that an Indian village is “the working plant of the Hindu social order” and argued that it is the ideal place to understand caste. 

Gandhi and Indian Village

Gandhi, however, saw the Indian village as a self-reliant, equitable and a just non-violent order, and argued for the decentralisation of power to the villages through Gram Swaraj. 

In strong opposition, Ambedkar believed that the idealisation of Indian village life emerged either from the colonial romanticisation of the rural population or from the desire of Hindus to retain caste domination.

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Urbanisation and Ambedkar’s belief

In urbanisation, Ambedkar saw an opportunity for Dalit liberation

He believed that the systems of caste oppression that thrive in Indian villages become weaker in cities.

 These included segregation of Dalits into ghettos, restrictions on economic activities, and denial of land ownership. 

Jyotirao Phule and city for Dalits 

He had also admired city life for being liberal and enabling him to earn a living.

 At the core of the liberating power of cities, for Ambedkar and Phule, was the opportunity to become anonymous. 

क्या परिवर्तन आएगा शहर में ?

1 Cities, in principle, offer an opportunity to become a stranger among a sea of strangers and transition from a caste-based order to a class-based order. One defined not by genealogy but by accumulation of resources or capital.

2 . In Waiting for a Visa, Ambedkar reflects on his struggle to find a house in Baroda.

3 But 

 modern urbanisation was fuelled by a 

🍁skill-based transition to economy, 

🍁i.e., industrialisation,

🍁 the dominance of caste over skill 

had also become clear to Ambedkar when even skilled Dalits were not allowed to enter the weaving sections of textile mills. 

4 Despite these experiences, Ambedkar saw urbanisation as a liberating force. However, after a century of Ambedkar’s struggles with renting a house in Baroda. 

Language of ‘purity-pollution’

1 Rent house and demand

. A consumer survey in 2021 revealed that eating non-vegetarian food is the biggest deal-breaker in finding rental housing in India. 

2 ghetto and language as a symbol

Gopal Guru 

Writing about segregation policies under the Peshwas in the Maratha kingdom, Gopal Guru explains this phenomenon.

 Guru says that the ghetto गरीबों  की बस्ती is not merely a space but also forms the constitution of the body of the ghetto dweller.

3  The language -  that identifies the savarna space as ‘pure’ and one that can be polluted by the Dalit body, extends to the logic of the city. 

4 Here, the ghetto dweller carries the ghetto on their body when they goes into the city.

5  ghetto — characterised by filth and dirt — becomes mutually reinforcing on the body of the Dalit — characterised by meat-eating and other “unacceptable” traits.

Gov Brahminical regulations and meat eaters dalits and other 

In March 2017, the Uttar Pradesh government, for example, issued regulations for meat shops that included, for example, a ban on selling meat near religious places and black paint or curtains in the facade of the shop to hide the sight of meat from pedestrians. 

In 2021, several municipal corporations in Gujarat banned the sale of meat-based street food on the city’s main roads citing “religious sentiments”.

 Through these Brahminical regulations, the State has characterised meat as the impurity that could pollute a public space — both secular and religious — or even a pedestrian’s sight.

A crippling segregation

Urban governance policies and housing crises have caste-based segregation

Scholars such as Raphael Susewind, Sheba Tejani and Christophe Jaffrelot have shown that Muslims and Dalits face the most crippling segregation in Indian cities.

clean drinking water are the worst in Dalit and Muslim ghettos 

A large-scale study also found that public services and access to municipal infrastructure such as clean drinking water are the worst in Dalit and Muslim ghettos.

severe environmental pollution such as landfills — shows that such areas are overwhelmingly inhabited by Dalits and Muslims.

 A recent report by the Housing and Land Rights Network on forced evictions in India also shows that Dalits and Muslims are the most impacted by slum demolition drives.

we can see that the Indian city has failed the aspirations and expectations that the Dalit liberation movement had placed in urbanisation.

 While transition to city life might have weakened some structures of caste oppression, they have morphed through language, state sanction and policy, and have evolved to allow caste to thrive in Indian cities. 

The Indian city has fallen short of the potential and promise that Ambedkar saw in urbanisation. Even after a century of urban development, Dalits remain, to use Ambedkar’s words, “the children of India’s ghettos”.

Source the hindu