Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remark calling for the eradication of Sanatan Dharma has thrown open the deepest fissure in modern Indian identity. To understand the stakes, it might be worth beginning with a recent Udhayanidhi starrer, Maamannan. The film centres on the plight of a Dalit MLA in Tamil Nadu with a heart-breaking dignity about him. This MLA, Maamannan (Vadivelu), is subject to the indignities of caste. A local political rival, Rathnavelu (Fahadh Faasil), is the embodiment of upper-caste political privilege. But the centre of the film is Athiveeran, Maamannan’s son (played by Stalin) traumatised by caste thrice over: A childhood witness to a traumatic caste atrocity, a daily encounter with his father’s humiliation, and then Rathnavelu’s attempts to destroy the one thing that allows Dalits social mobility — a coaching centre. The film centres on Athiveeran’s revolt and his refusal to be pacified in the face of a society that wants to put him in his place.
The practice of the Indian caste system is vile and oppressive. We can debate its theological complexities, the periodic revolts against it and its transformation during modernity. There is still a remarkable invisibility to the depth of its persistence. One surest sign of this is the following. Many votaries of “Sanatan Dharma” claim it to be eternal, encompassing and ecumenical. But a basic empathy escapes them when it comes to caste. How does the Indian tradition look to those who have been its most persistent victims? After such knowledge, what identification with this tradition?
There is a diagnosis in modern times beginning with Ambedkar, who concluded that caste is an ideological system, sanctioned by religion, and the emancipation of India from caste required its emancipation from Hinduism. Contrary to what the BJP claims, there is nothing in this line of thinking that promotes genocide. Dalit politics has, arguably, been the most constitutional practised by any group. The affront in Stalin’s remark is not that he called Sanatan Dharma a virus that promotes inequality. It is more our horror at the prospect that once Dalits are in an empowered position, they might choose to reject the abstract pieties of dominant Sanatan Dharma altogether. This fragile compromise of empowerment within the confines of Hinduism may not survive the genuine achievement of voice. Like Athiveeran, they will refuse to accept what even an MLA has to stand. A confident tradition knows it can survive the demands for justice. Only a resentful, insecure caricature of Sanatan Dharma that the BJP has created can worry about the possibility that their dharma might not survive justice.
There is a response to Udhayanidhi Stalin’s position. It might go something like this. You might imagine someone saying, “We understand the full vileness of caste, not just as an abstract gesture or as a strategic accommodation to ward off conversion. We stand on your side and commit every fibre of our being and institutional practice to instituting equality.” Modern India can have only one dharma: Treating people as free and equal individuals. Let us build that together. But this kind of response requires an exemplariness and credibility that a Narayana Guru or a Gandhi might have carried — even Gandhi’s stock now runs low. So the substitute for exemplarity is the mendacious abstraction called Sanatan Dharma. In this particular case, we cannot look at real victims in the eye. And so to avert their haunting moral gaze, we invert another contrived victimhood.
One could even say more as a critique of Stalin’s remark. For one thing, the larger politics of social reform requires both combativeness and coalition building. A form of articulation that needlessly puts off many possible fellow travellers on Stalin’s journey, by putting their identity on the line as a matter of psychology, may not be the wisest thing for a politician. It let the BJP occupy the only ground it knows how to occupy — divisiveness and discord. But this is a matter of political judgement.
More could be said about the eradication of Sanatan Dharma as a sociological strategy. For all the impressive achievements of the Dravidian movement, the dispiriting fact is how deeply caste is still entrenched in Tamil Nadu. This is a contestable observation. In North India, caste violence can be horrendous. But often there is a crude instrumentality and amorality about it. By all accounts, there is still something more ominously sincere, entrenched and ritually oppressive about caste identities in Tamil Nadu, even amongst groups as far away from Sanatan Dharma. Ironically, after the release of Maamannan, another film director Pa Ranjith, criticised the DMK for shielding casteism. This begs the question: Does merely attacking, merely changing the ideological valence – from Sanatan Dharma to Buddhism or Rationalism – actually dismantle caste? Does it turn out to be the case that the “metaphysics” in which caste is embedded is now less consequential than we think, and we need to attend more seriously to other structures of power?
Are there other models that have allowed societies to transcend their traditions without making those traditions despicable? Should the Ambedkarite call be seen as ultimately more a cri de coeur? No country can move forward without confronting the oppression at the heart of it, and there is oppression at the heart of various versions of Sanatan Dharma. Equally, it is often self-defeating, to not be able to rescue a culture’s genuine possibilities from the oppressions that disfigure it. Destroying its best possibilities does not lead to the utopia of justice; it leads to an arid wasteland of meaning, filled by forces even more reactionary and mediocre.
In modern times, Sanatan Dharma has been used both for reform and extreme reaction. Aurobindo once equated Sanatan Dharma with nationalism, only to correct his mistake and move it towards an authentic and direct communion with the Divine. But these debates are beside the point. Stalin and Priyank Kharge were asking a question: What will promote moral equality? Their answer may not be wholly convincing. But the BJP’s response proved their point. Their Sanatan Dharma is so demonic that the only, perhaps drearily eternal, answer it has to every problem is more discord. The reason Stalin’s remark got the attention it did, is not because it is new. It is because he hauntingly drew attention to the moral wreckage of Indian traditions. Any genuine defender of that tradition would work towards a politics of moral exemplarity, not act like a thuggish crybaby. It is a pity no so-called Sanatani has the moral courage to make this obvious point.
The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express
