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November 21st, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Introduction:
The Hindutva school has been in power since 2014. It wants to rule India forever. Actually it was never out of power in another sense of the concept, power. As an organization–the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)– that came into existence in 1925 was controlling many nerve centers of India’s socio-spiritual structures of the Hindu system. Ideological browbeating of Muslims and Christians is only one part of their agenda. They have been controlling the Shudra mass muscle power–if not of Dalits and Adivasis– for a long time in many forms. The Dalit/ Adivasis were slowly moving away from their control with a spiritual alternative. A constant attack against such spiritual alternatives is a regular phenomenon. Ghar Wapsi programme, violence around that programme, are part of that attack. Such programmes were/are being managed through the Shudra muscle power by the Hindutva Dwija forces, no doubt. This project of using the Shudras as muscle power is an historical one. It just did not start in 2014 or in 1925. The Dwija forces forced the Shudras to be slave muscle power to do all kinds of productive labour for millennia. This process did not start with the formation of the RSS. It started with writing of Rigveda and the other Sanathan Dharma books–including Ramayana, Mahabharata–part of which is Bhagavad Gita.
The Hindu spiritual or sacred books mention that Shudras were/are of the fourth varna and among the God-heads that they promoted there is no single Shudra God head. The mythological Hindu God heads are either Brahmins (for example Brahma and Parusha Rama or Ksatriyas (Vishnu and Sri Rama). The RSS has no agenda to change the spiritual status of the Shudras in Hinduism, though both RSS/BJP are political and spiritual organizations unlike other political formations like the Indian National Congress or the Communist Party of India. Many regional parties, except a Muslim party like All India Majlis–E Itehadul Muslimeen AIMIM, are also not religious parties. The present ruling BJP is known as a Hindu religious party hence it is its responsibility to make Hinduism a spiritual democracy where everyone is equal in every respect. Abolition of caste in the temple, wherein a Dalit or Shudra, not just a Brahmin, should become the priest. But the BJP is run by the RSS which believes in varna dharma, as the writings of its gurus show with emphasis.
SOUL AND BODY
The Hindutva network’s soul, Brahminism, was in power for a long time in Indian history. After 1947 though India was ruled by the Indian National Congress, the Hindutva ideological forces were dictating the Indian state and civil society as a representative of the Sanatan Dharma with a socio-spiritual control over the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses who were/are under the spell of Varna Dharma. The social mass that could have transformed the Indian socio-spiritual and civilizational track in postcolonial India was the Shudras. They constituted 52 per cent of population as per 1931 census and now they are fighting for caste enumeration, as annihilation of caste is not in sight. But they were not allowed to evolve into a socio-spiritual force by rejecting the firm grip of Brahminism on their day today life–spiritual, social, economic and political. The socio-spiritual, political and economic personality of the Shudras/Dalits was never allowed to grow to its full.
Their soul and body were systematically separated. The body was put to work in the fields; deployed in the physical fight against the minorities, mainly Muslims and the soul was made to starve of awakening and enlightenment. They were not allowed to understand their self worth. We do not have to go into books written by the Brahminic authors starting with Rigveda. It is enough to see their present status in Hindu religion itself. Ever since they formed RSS and Hindu Mahasabha they have not started schools that train Hindu priests that include all castes that work in those organizations at least. They have not established temples that have God images whose caste names are not known. The temple of Rama that they organized Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses to fight Muslims comes from Ksatriya dynasty. A Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi has no right to become a priest there. Nor are they trying to discard those caste tags of the divine figures and allow every Hindu to train their youth to conduct all kinds of spiritual affairs. The Brahmins have all rights without any hindrance but other Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi Hindus are treated meritless. The language of meritlessness is a contribution of the Dwija intellectuals in the universities and colleges. They have been insulting all the Indian productive masses as meritless people. When historically any community is denied the right to priesthood and lead the spiritual philosophy that community is bound to remain backward. The RSS/BJP wants to allow that backwardness to remain among them and allow the Brahmins and other Dwijas to control everything.
THE RSS AND SPIRITUAL EQUALITY
The RSS did not even initiate a debate about the Hindu equality within the religion, temple and school. If the temple is the soul of the spiritual organization the school that trains that religious people to run that temple is a soul maker. The RSS did not work a way to the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis working in their network to be equally part of that soul. It trained them to be the mere body–a physical entity–of that Hindu organization. Its theory of ‘one culture’ directly refers to one religious culture. That is Hindu culture. But it does not want the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis with in the fold of that organization to be part of that one culture. It does not allow them to live as spiritually, socially and culturally equal to one another without looking at the caste background even while standing worshiping before that God that the RSS believes, say Sri Rama. The God that they project is the nation’s primary God. A Brahmin is assigned a higher culture of becoming anything in ‘one nation’ by allowing the practice of caste in all temples. A Brahmin can be a Prime Minister, business man, university professor, temple priest, a cinema hero, a sports man, an RSS head and so on. If they want they can take to tilling of land, harvesting crops and grazing cattle. But these things they never did in their history after writing Rigveda and other books. Their books made them what they are. This is an unusual spiritual system.
The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis working in the Hindutva network silently suffered that spiritual and self alienation. If one is said to be part of a religion without the right to become a priest, however strong ‘Will’ one has to become a priest in that religion and engage with that God in close proximity in a dialogue with God in a language that is said to be God’s language, the spiritual alienation is as total as one does not belong to any religion at all. Religions came into existence in order to engender a spiritually integrated life. The Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis whom the RSS defined as Hindu and made them to work for that Hindu cause remained alienated. While classical Hinduism kept them suppressed and oppressed spiritually, socially and economically as it did not allow them to educate themselves. They were used by Brahminism as food producing slaves. In independent India though there is education to the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis the opium of anti-Muslim agenda did not allow their rational spirit to grow. They still remain to be human bodies working in the service of Hindutva Brahminism and their souls have not acquired liberation and enlightenment.
DO SHUDRAS EXIST IN THE NEW CURRICULUM?
The Hindutva school is clamping a syllabus at all level of education texts from their ancient books. As a matter of fact in no book of theirs anything is written about the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis. Those books mainly talk about Brahmins and Ksatriyas as rishis, gods, goddesses, heroes and heroines. Ramayana and Mahabharata mainly center around only both Brahmins and Ksatriyas. How and why should the Shudras/Dalit/Adivasis believe that those books are their own too? Do Shudras assume that when these books were written only these two castes were there in India? Do they think that no other castes existed in India at that time? When the Shudras constituted 52 per cent of the Indian population in our times were there no Shudras in ancient India? What was the nature of the economy then? Who were producing food? Obviously when kings were Ksatriyas and rishis were Brahmins there would be Shudras and Vaisyas doing other things around production and business. This is what their first book Rigveda asked them to do. Their books were never no-caste or casteless books. Books written by Brahmins in ancient and medieval times talked about Brahmin and Ksatriya hegemony. Some of their intellectuals now argue that caste was created by the British colonialists. Is there a greater lie than this? Were Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata and other puranas written by the Britishers?
Was there no single worthy man or woman from among the Shudra and Vaisyas to be written about in such massive books of ancient times as divine figures or as commoners? When the Skatriya kings were ruling those great kingdoms like Kosala or Kurukshetra with a Ramrajya or Dharmarajya (as Dharma Raja was supposed to have ruled it) kind of administration who were producing food and developing cattle economy? How did those so-called prosperous kingdoms survive without a whole range of productive activities? Whatever that could be, without Shudras producing food through agriculture or procuring animal food resources how did the kingdoms survive? Why do the writers of Ramayana and Mahabharata avoid talking about the majority people who were the source of human survival in India? How and why do their Gods/Goddesses make the majority people of this very nation, as there were no Muslims and Christians then, working for the welfare of the whole nation, invisible? How could such a large number of people without God/Goddess’ philosophical support survive? When the spiritual philosophy was so central to human life how did they without that spiritual philosophy? If they were not controlled through a coercive apparatus created by the Brahmins and Ksatriyas why did they live such suppressed life?
When religious ideology makes people believe that it is God that creates all human beings and it is God that keeps on working for people’s survival, where is the place of Shudras in that creation now and also in those times when they wrote their ancient books? The secular and liberal Dwija intellectuals avoided this discourse under the cover of secularism, liberalism and socialism. They said religion was a private affair. The Congress, left and liberal Dwija leaders and intellectuals lead a deceptive life. But the RSS/BJP cannot continue that deception as it conducts politics, economic and social affairs in order to create an enemy image Muslim and Christian. Should Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi intellectuals remain mere muscle power for centuries to go?
The Brahmin pundits seem to have thought that they alone were created by the Hindu God/Goddess. Are the Brahmins working in the RSS think in the same way or do they think that there is a scope for human equality in the spiritual domain in Hinduism?
The Shudra mass accepted this theory of Brahmins in ancient times and remained oppressed and invisible. Do they accept it now too? If they do not think about these questions now a big nation like India will be in a psychological blankness. This will be the greatest tragedy of this nation. It is a tragedy constructed through spiritual fascism by people in whose interests the Shudra masses worked for. In modern times through this organization called the RSS they are making the Shudra masses to remain invisible in spiritual and intellectual domains quite decisively . They are claiming ownership of Sardar Vallabai Patel, a tallest Shudras leader of the Congress Party, who became what he is in the Indian National Congress (INC) as theirs. It is true that the Congress made him invisible but should the Shudras be happy with his tallest statue?
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE INC AND RSS
A bit of rewinding of the history of the Indian National Congress and the RSS is very useful to understand their handling of the Shudra farming forces by the RSS/BJP forces. The difference could be better understood by looking at the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in which what a Hindutva Brahmin did on October 3, 2021.
A Union minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra who was the prime accused in the case crushed four farmers — protesting against the three farm laws passed by the Bharatiya Janata Party government — to death by driving his four wheeler over them.
Every major BJP functionary’s behavior and motives come from the RSS training. Ajay Mishra and his son are part of that organisational structure. They were trained as Brahmins within the broad Brahminic networks of the RSS. Neither Mohan Bhagwat, the sarsanchalak nor Dattatreya Hosabale, the general secretary of the RSS condemned the crushing. This raises a fundamental question on the character and outlook of the organisation vis a vis the productive masses of India while they were ruling the nation. They also know that the farmers and artisans who mainly constitute the Shudras and Dalits. The question, therefore, is whether human rights, democracy and the Constitution of India are safe under the thumb of this organisation? If the present constitution is changed in any way the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi survival will be put in crisis.
The fundamental differences between the Indian National Congress, the party that led India to freedom and kept democracy surviving, and the RSS, in the context of their respective outlook towards farmers and other productive masses of India.
The Indian National Congress was formed by both Indian and Scottish anti-colonial freedom lovers in 1885. Dadabhai Naoroji, Allan Octavian Hume, Dinshaw Edulji Wacha were among the first founders of the INC.
While Dadabhai Naoroji and Dinshah Edulji Wacha were Parsis, Hume was a Scottish libertarian. There was no Indian Brahmin or Bania leader in the beginning. The lamentation of Wacha, a famous cotton businessman himself, who had many things to loose in confronting the British rulers, was “how many figures, such as Pherozeshah Mehta, who would have made capable leaders, eschewed total alliance with the Congress for fear of damage to their private careers”. Despite this lack of support from Indian leaders, Wacha did acknowledge “the vital role that the Scotsman, Allan Hume, played in maintaining the Congress in between sessions. Wacha had said: “He is the man to give us steam.” Pherozeshah Mehta was another Parsi leader who was working for the Congress. He was a lawyer turned politician for the sake of freedom.
By that time, there were many Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas and Khatris in India who got educated in England and were practising law. Most of the English educated Dwijas were working with the colonial government as officers even when the British administration was running in Persian language, and after it shifted to English in 1835. Dwijas were eschewing an alliance with the Congress, keeping their careers in mind. Of course, they joined the party once it gained momentum and became its leaders.
But for Shudra farmers, English education remained inaccessible. The first English educated Shudra farmer, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, was born in 1827 and he was educated only up to 7th grade. In government service and courts, only the English educated Dwija youth were working and making money. The Shudras were mostly involved in farming and artisanal tasks. Yet, the peasant revolts against British taxation took place in several parts of India, even before 1885 — Bardoli and Champaran being the most well-known.
The first Shudra-British educated farmer who became a lawyer and joined the Congress was Vallabhbhai Patel in 1917. He had shown a way to the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi on how to organise the farmers. Patel, a good lawyer with a good practice, led several peasant movements in Gujarat, including in Kheda and Bardoli. It was he who made inroads into the villages and into the minds of the farmers as an organic intellectual, though he took a Right-wing path within the party in an era of socialist peasant revolutions. But it was not until 1931 that he became the president of the Congress. After becoming the first president of the INC with a farming background at the Lahore conference, he said: “You have called a simple farmer to the highest office to which any Indian can aspire”. Historian Ramchandra Guha writes that “In 1931, the Congress had been in existence for more than four decades. Yet in this time, it had never before elected a person born in a peasant household to head the organization, this despite Mahatma Gandhi’s own claim – and exhortation – that “India lives in her villages.” ( (Ramchandra Guha Scroll 10 October, 2021)
The RSS was established in 1925 by Maharashtra Brahmins with no Parsi or Sikh or Buddhist on board — leave alone a Muslim. It never said anything positive about the farmers and artisans in any of their ideological documents. They never participated in any of Sardar Patel’s farmer movements. Even after Independence, they never organised any farmer agitation. How and why the farmers and artisans, broadly known as Shudras, trusted them, once the RSS came up with the Ram temple issue, is a mystery. Now they are seeing the real face.
The RSS, which came with the slogan of ‘one nation, one culture and one ancient heritage’, has never allowed a farmer’s son to head the organisation in its 96 years of existence. The farmers, to them, do not seem to be part of the nation or its ancient heritage. This is the difference between the INC and RSS. The INC was part of many farmers’ struggles in its living history, not the RSS. They are drawn only as a muscle power force to fight against the minorities.
The farmers’ agitation—on issues that affect their survival—have been treated by the Right wing as anti-national, as if India belongs to a small section of Hindutva Dwija forces who have nothing to do with farming. Their cultural nationalism does not consider agriculture as part of nationalism and it is limited to Hindu temples where the children of the farmers have no right to head and lead. Their nationalism exists in ancient Sanskrit books that do not talk about agriculture and Shudra/Dalit masses.
Ashish Mishra’s confidence that he can drive his vehicle over sitting food producers of the nation, as if they are less worthy than dogs on the roads, came from this heritage of the RSS, one that is based on caste, culture and organisational support lent to arrogance. The farmers’ heritage includes food production by Shudras, for the whole nation. But they have so far not understood this difference.
RSS as an organisation came into existence without farmers being part of it. Its cultural nationalist agendas have no love for farmers and farming. Yet they are ruling the nation with the same farmers’ vote. This is a paradox.
THE ROLE OF SHUDRA SCHOLARS
The Shudra scholars will have to raise the question of spiritual and social equality. They were not allowed to educate themselves by the Brahmins till the British started schools in English. Allowing education to them would have meant allowing all other spiritual, social economic and political rights. They made Sanskrit the exclusive divine language and the Shudras were strictly disallowed entry into the Sanskrit schools. If the Shudras were to become literates from ancient times, they would have written about themselves and about the nation as they saw it. They would have discovered their pan Indian and global spiritual and social spaces. But they were not allowed to read and write by the Brahmin teachers by not admitting them into schools. They were denied admission into the Brahmin schools–Gurukulas– with a strong spiritual belief that Shudras were not meant to be educated, as part of their divine dictum.
As I said earlier all their gods and goddesses are either Brahmin or Ksatriya. There are no Shudra Gods and Goddesses in their spiritual books, though they are present around Indian villages when they were writing them. Nor were their Gods casteless universal beings. The Brahmin spiritual or social writers did not recognize those agrarian Shudra God/Goddesses at all. But once the Brahmins adopted a policy that Shudra individuals who had shown bravery should be allowed to become kings and be given the Skatriya status, in such kingdoms the brahminic mythological divine deities were promoted in a big way. But in those kingdoms the Shudra agrarian and artisanal masses had no entry into such temples. The present form of templ entry to Shudras is only a consequence Muslim rule and bhakti movement. The Shudra spiritual life operated around their own agrarian divine deities. Only after Muslims became rulers in eleventh and twelth centuries with a view to stop the Shudra exodus into Islam the temple entry was allowed to Shudras. After the Shudra Bhakti movement started their temple entry became normal. But temple entry was prohibited for Dalits thereafter also. The RSS has not expanded the spiritual fruits of Bhakti movement by giving them the right to priesthood and gurukula spiritual education in Sanskrit language. Instead it has diverted the Shudra attention from spiritual equality to Muslim question.
They know very well that Rigveda–the first book of theirs talks about the Varna (Caste) system by mentioning four of them–Shudra, Vaisya. Ksatriya and Brahmin in an upside down order. The writers of Rigveda made the Shudras slaves, who had to serve by investing their physical labour at the command of the three other varnas/castes. The whole society’s survival whether in Rigveda times or the present Hindutva times depended on the labour power of Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis. That is the fundamental link between the Rigvedic, Ramayana and Mahabharata society and the present Hindutva society. That means that category of Shudra in ancient times, i.e around 1500 BCE consisted of the present day Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis. Those Brahmins remain as Brahmins today, Ksatriyas remain as Skatriyas and Vaisyas remain as Vaisyas. Only the Shudras were/are further divided in the present three categories –Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis. They all were/are further divided into thousands of castes. But their puranas tell about the stories of only Brahmins, Ksatriyas and occasionally about Vaisyas. But there is nothing about Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis and their productive work. Why? The reason is simple. Those books were written to manipulate the consciousness of the historical Shudras. They used the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi labour power and denied them the right to religion itself. Their souls were destroyed forever and they were made to live as physical entities.
THE GOD AND LABOUR
No brahminic book tells how societies were surviving without production, as there is no discussion about the Shudras whom they enchained as the fourth varna in Rigveda and in all other spiritual books thereafter. Any spiritual book that constructs God as anti-production does not reflect the spiritual imagination of God. God ordained humans to work and live by the sweat of their brow. The meats, fruits and grain foods (including vegetables) are though known as part of God’s creation, they come to the human living process only through human labour. God did not construct the human body to not to work in the production fields and live with book reading or reciting a mantra. That work is a side step of God’s imagined world. God’s world is made of his own labour for six days with one day rest in life so that it gets regenerated week after week. The Shudra and Dalits were forced to work all seven days without any rest whereas the brahminic forces do not work and rest and consume food for seven days with occasional fasting in the name of God. This spiritual imagination created the human world upside down. Whether one is a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist he/she must relate to labour as divine essential function of life. The Shudras and Dalits were made to undivine in the Hindu spiritual-cultural world as they actually do what God created them to do. What the Dwijas of India were doing was what God did not want them to do. Working in the fields, grazing cattle, making pots or carpenting, or fruit gathering or fishing or working around leather and making instruments of production whether of leather, stone, iron, bronze or wood is part of the God’s ordained human life. Nothing is pollution in the realm of existence. Purity and pollution are not of hand work related spiritual notions; they are heart related spiritual ideas. Whether one loves the fellow human being or not is a critical purity and impurity question. One who loves others–whether they are ones neighbours or far away living people, one essentially needs to love other humans. That is a function of a pure person whatever one’s religion is. Whether ones religion is Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or Buddhism that is God’s direction. Or whatever could be one nation that should have the spiritual principle. The RSS’s religious and nationalist ideology is based on hating somebody and loving the Dwijahood. India as a nation cannot survive guided by this ideology.
SHUDRA PHILOSOPHY AND DALIT LIBERATION
The Shudras have to put forth their philosophical proposition as people who built this nation with not only their labour power but also with their own spiritual, social and economic philosophy. Their philosophy exists outside the framework of the Brahmin books. Unless the Shudras get liberated from the bondage of Brahminism the Dalit liberation from caste and untouchability will be impossible. Ambedkar’s idea of Annihilation of caste is not an isolated agenda of Dalits. The notions of identity and liberation are two different things. To move towards liberation, construction of an identity is inevitable. But the construction of identity itself is not reaching the goal of liberation. Of course, one argument that the Dalit thinkers outside the fold of the RSS put forth is that they have already an independent spiritual system–Buddhism. They, therefore, do not have to quarrel with Brahminism and also Hindutva. This independent spiritual domain of Buddhism was constructed in a Dalit image by Ambedkar, called Navayana Buddhism. But Buddhism in general and Navayana Buddhism in particular is seen as part of Hindu-Brahminism and also part of RSS Brahminism. Leave alone the RSS Brahminic expressions about Buddhism being part of Hinduism, but the recent book on Ediwin Arnold’s poem The Light of Asia by a Congress Brahmin Jairam Ramesh shows how Arnold a British colonial poet constructed Buddha as Hindu mode of divine figure exactly on the lines of Ashwa Ghosha’s Buddha Charita. (see Jairam Ramesh, The Light of Asia–A Poem that Defined Buddha, Penguin, 2021). That was the only reason why that poem inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Vivekananda and so on.
For a long time the discourse of secularism, which too was controlled by the Dwija scholars, politicians and other networks, could sweep the Hindu spiritual inequality under the carpet. They never allowed a meaningful discourse about the relationship between production and the spiritual system. Thereby they never allowed a discourse around the role of the Brahmins and other Dwijas, Ksatriya, Kayastha, Khatri and Baniyas. No religion and no nation accepts social groups that do not produce by participating in physical labour and accumulating wealth with false unethical and immoral spiritual theories that food production is pollution and produces unequal untouchables. The Brahmins brought such inhuman and un-divine theory into operation and controlled the vast majority of Indians as slaves and semi-slaves. But the RSS/BJP forces can’t do that. Since they are in power with a Hindutva religious agenda the issue needs to be brought up with all the force that it requires. That way what they call the Hindu India cannot continue the historical injustice any longer. The problem of caste and untouchability are problems of religion and it will have to find a permanent solution in religion only. .
THE MYTH OF MAJORITARIANISM
The secular, liberal and left intellectuals mostly coming from the Brahmin, Baniya, Kayastha, Khatri and Ksatriya (Dwija ) background coined a deceptive concept, majoritarianism, for the Hinduva school. The concept seems to appeal to the Muslims and Christians of India, who are facing challenging times. The Muslim and Christian minority question of India is of global importance in the background of the partition of India on the Hindu-Muslim lines in 1947, and also because later tragic migrations and riots. The secular, liberal and left writers get global attention for standing by the suffering minorities. But they have never raised the issue of caste and untouchability related to historical control and exploitation of the Dwija forces. The intellectual domain which has close association with the Brahminic priesthood power from Sanatan Dharma days, was always with them. Ever since a written textual religious discourse and praxis started after writing of the Rigveda they acquired hegemony over the Sanskrit literature and religion. That control continues till date and with the emergence of the Hindutva school that control becomes worse. The pre-Muslim ancient India was completely under the control of Brahminism where caste and untouchability was thoroughly institutionalized. The Muslim medieval and feudal rule periods the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces did not get any ilberative cushion from the Muslims kings and scholars and poets of that religion. The British colonial period did not change the Dwija control over the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses. It continued without changes. Major intellectual, social and administrative languages like Sanskrit, Persian and English were/are under the Dwija control. The grip of the Dwija castes over English now shows that colonial rule benefited them by teaching them a global language while economically exploiting the productive Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses. They have not benefited in many ways. The sheer number of Dwija foreign educated who, with a control over English language, and also over national higher educational institutions and spread in the world employment market tells only the story of their aggrandizement. Their attack on colonialism in most of their writings and their discourse about the post-colonial reconstruction so far has not changed the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi historical status. This very skillful colonial and post colonial discourse mainly focusing around the colonial exploitation by the Dwija intellectual did not allow any space for anti-caste mobilization. Of course, the discourse around and modernism and post-modernism has only hidden internal hegemony and unending exploitation of Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi productive masses by the Dwijas. Writing of Shudra history from their own perspective is an important agenda for the Shudra intellectuals. The majoritarian discourse does not help to resolve caste based inequality and exploitation.
There are huge number of similar English foreign and Indian educated intellectual writers and thinkers who assert the Hindutva nationalism being inclusive and try to hide the fact that this school is intellectually controlling and misleading the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces by constantly constructing the Muslim-Christian enemy image. The majoritarian and Hindutva discourse is completely controlled by Dwija forces only. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivsis are intellectually do not know what these schools are but became an army of swords and three-shuls in their hands against the minorities. This book wants to shift the discourse to the Shudra ideological battle hereafter. They have seen the secular phase of Indian democracy and now are witnessing the Hindutva phase of Indian democracy. They are nowhere now nor were they in earlier.
The majoritarian discourse is also deceptive because it includes 52 per cent of Shudras, 16.5 percent and 7 per cent Adiavsis in the Dwija Hindutva camp. In other words 65.5 percent of Indians who have no share in the formulation of Hindutva ideology and organizational structures starting from 1925 when the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the Hindu Maha Sabha were formed. Most of the secular, liberal and left intellectuals know this historical fact. Even in the normal Hindu religion their place is unequal. The question of Dalits and Adivasis is being discussed in some depth even in the brahminic media. But the Shudra/OBC question is not at all present in Indian literature. Hence it needs more serious attention. This book takes the Shudra discourse further. Two ideological books that so far exist are Who Were the Shudras by Dr.B.R Ambedkar and the Shudras-Vision for a New Path edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Kuruppusamy. This book examines many other dimensions of the Shudra question. The Shudra question is a historical and civilizational question which needs to be studied from multi-dimensions.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political thinker, social activist , author and socio-spiritual reformer. His books Why I am Not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India, Buffalo Nationalism, God As Political Philosopher–Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism, From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual and The Shudras–Vision For a New Path co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy are meant for the socio-spiritual change
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