The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B. R. Ambedkar

Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns

Cosimo Zene

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138578661
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134494088
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Bridging two generations of scholarship on social inequality and modern political forms, this book examines the political philosophies of inclusion of subalterns/Dalits in Gramsci and Ambedkar's political philosophies. It highlights the full range of Gramsci's 'philosophy of praxis' and presents a more critical appreciation of his thought in the study of South Asian societies. Equally, Ambedkar's thought and philosophy is put to the forefront and acquires a prominence in the international context.

Overcoming geographical, cultural and disciplinary boundaries, the book gives relevance to the subalterns. Following the lead of Gramsci and Ambedkar, the contributors are committed, apart from underscoring the historical roots of subalternity, to uncovering the subalterns' presence in social, economic, cultural, educational, literary, legal and religious grounds. The book offers a renewed critical approach to Gramsci and Ambedkar and expands on their findings in order to offer a present-day political focus into one of the most crucial themes of contemporary society.

This book is of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, including political theory, post-colonial studies, subaltern studies, comparative political philosophy, Dalit studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies and the study of religions.

1 Subalterns and Dalits in Gramsci and Ambedkar

A prologue to a ‘posthumous’ dialogue

Cosimo Zene

Introduction

This introductory chapter sets out the rationale for the ensuing chapters and their division into different parts. It also provides an overall and comprehensive prologue to the Gramsci-Ambedkar encounter. Indeed, ‘parallels are strong and very striking for two thinkers who are otherwise so different – in political experience, philosophical background, and ideas of effective strategy’ (Jon Soske, personal communication). Nevertheless, the moral fabric of their human and political commitment to Dalits/subalterns brings them very close, particularly in the upholding of Gramsci's ‘intellectual and moral reform’ and Ambedkar's ‘social and moral consciousness of society’.

Gramsci and Ambedkar were contemporaries – both born in 1891 – and although operating in very different environments, the similarities of their strategies and political philosophy to empower subalterns/Dalits are indeed striking. Their activity as leaders, always combined with solid theoretical refection, springs out of their own and others' lived experience of subalternity. Both found inspiration in Marxism, both were critical of religion, but considered religion culturally and politically relevant; both assessed the presence of subalterns through social, cultural and historical critical analysis, and sought to negotiate a rightful place within the state, society and history/historiography for these ‘excluded’ individuals. For both of them, the solution would come from the effort of the subalterns themselves, as active protagonists of their own destiny, to achieve ‘consciousness’, and ‘collective will’ aided by the role of leaders/intellectuals. Their ‘holistic’ approach – which is a global critique to culture and to the structures of subalternity – enlightens the present-day ‘Dalit Question’ as a challenge posited not simply to Dalits and concerned scholars, but to societies/ states and to the international community. Gramscian studies are currently fourishing in Italy and elsewhere. Although ‘Ambedkar has never really been taken seriously as a thinker in India’ (Omvedt 2006: 438), recent studies invite us to reflect on his fundamental intuition of the Untouchable subject becoming a Dalit (Guru 2009; Omvedt 2003; Rao 2009; Zelliot 2004).

In this chapter, following a summary of Gramsci's reception in South Asia, I briefy discuss both Gramsci's demise and Ambedkar's silencing, to then reaffirm the relevance of their being discussed in conjunction with each other. In conclusion, I offer a refection proposing an introductory presentation of the articles offered in this volume.¹

Gramsci in India: in dialogue with Ambedkar?

Recently it has been speculated that Ranajit Guha and Enrico Berlinguer probably met in 1949 in Budapest, on the occasion of the Second World Festival of Youth and Students. Apparently at that time Berlinguer gave Gramsci's booklet Il Risorgimento to Guha. This, containing almost the entire Notebook 25 of the Quaderni del carcere, entitled ‘On the margins of history (the history of subaltern social groups)’, was seemingly to motivate Guha's future commitment with the Subaltern Studies Collective. However, the author of this literary ploy concludes that ‘Perhaps it didn't really happen that way’ (Filippini 2011: 99–101). Indeed, the ‘arrival’ of Gramsci in India came about in other ways, as Guha himself experienced as a student at Presidency College in Calcutta, under the guidance of Susobhan Sarkar (1900–82):

Sarkar, to whom Guha dedicated his first book, A Rule of Property for Bengal, provided the first comprehensive reception to Gramsci's writings in India. During the late 1950s, at a time when most Marxists in the West were un familiar with Gramsci, Sarkar began discussing Gramsci with his students …

(Chaturvedi 2000a: viii)

No doubt that the ‘reception of Gramsci in India’ happened at a time when there was an intense confluence of many other academic and scholarly pursuits – especially in social, economic and political history – including the diverse reception of Gramsci's thought in Britain, represented by scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, Perry Anderson (New Left Review), Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall. Of particular relevance for the Subaltern Studies Collective was the initial influence of E.P. Thompson (see Chandavankar 2000) and other British Marxist historians writing ‘histories from below’. In India, the period of Maoist peasant insurgency of Naxalbari, together with the ‘Emergency’ years (1975–7) under Indira Gandhi, provided a closer background to mediate and rearticulate ‘these intellectual influences stemming from Britain’ (Chaturvedi 2000a: x).

According to commentators, Gramsci's influence on Subaltern Studies soon faded away – perhaps just lingering in the background – giving space to Foucault, post-structuralism, postcolonial theory, Derrida, textual and discourse analysis, all resulting in ‘the construction of a critical theory of subalternity’ (Chaturvedi 2000a: xiii). Although Guha rightly recognized that ‘The historiography of peasant insurgency in colonial India is as old as colonialism itself ’ (Guha 1999: 1), one of the main criticisms levelled at the collective was that ‘Subaltern Studies launched itself with an act of rejection, denying South Asia's “history from below” ’ (Ludden 2002a: 15). At the same time, almost suggesting a double paradox, Gramsci seemed to have lost appeal, because ‘the project made itself original by divorcing itself from Gramsci to invent a distinctively Indian subalternity’ (ibid., emphasis in the original). In a sense, the rejection of ‘history from below’ and Gramsci's loss of influence coincided as part of one and the same choice which, though fully legitimate, cannot justify invoking Gramsci as guarantor of a particular interpretation of subalternity.

If we look back at the trajectory of Gramsci's presence in South Asia, apart from the limited impact due to a lack of translation of primary sources, it has often been applied in a sketchy way, almost to provide a veneer of ‘respectability’ to an otherwise vanishing Marxism. In the case of the Subaltern Studies Collective it provided also an opposing stance to mainstream Marxism. Given this premise, we should not be surprised that Gramsci himself gradually vanished from the Subaltern Studies project, despite affirmations to the contrary. The early comment made by Ludden (2002a: 15) on the invention of ‘a distinctively Indian subaltern’, is matched by a recent remark by Young: ‘In a sense, it was Spivak, not Gramsci, who invented “the subaltern” ’ (2012: 31). Young maintains that by stressing ‘the subaltern’ as individual, ‘Spivak definitely introduces the singular figure of the subaltern woman’ (see Spivak 1988), to then conclude that ‘This contemporary emphasis [Spivak's] on the subaltern has nevertheless come a long way from Gramsci himself, who remains firmly anchored to the political possibilities offered by the construction of hegemony through the articulation of the subaltern classes’ (Young 2012: 32). Notwithstanding the difficulty, if not impossibility, of recovering individual subjectivity from a deconstructionist – and at time Lacanian – perspective, Young seems first to fail to recognize the difference between the concepts class/individual within Gramscian heterodox Marxism, particularly when applied to ‘subaltern groups’ (Q3 and especially Q25), and second to appreciate Gramsci's original discussion of concepts like individual, individualism, etc.² Most recently, The Postcolonial Gramsci (Srivastava and Bhattacharya 2012) includes, but is not limited to, papers on South Asia but does not really address the earlier criticism of the ‘Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies’ (Sarkar 2000). In an early critique to Chatterjee's The Nation and Its Fragments, Sumit Sarkar lamented that

There is not much interest in how women struggled with a patriarchal domination that was, after all, overwhelmingly indigenous in its structures. Even more surprisingly, the book tells the reader nothing about the powerful anticaste movements associated with Phule, Periyar or Ambedkar …

(Sarkar 2000: 310)

Although these critiques need to be elaborated further and with further evidence, it seems apparent that, ‘as the Subaltern Studies project became increasingly influential, its relationship to the heterodox Gramscian Marxism which had informed its founding theoretical charter became increasingly distant’ (Chaturvedi 2000a: vii). Moreover, if we look at the interventions of the two major contributors belonging to the Subaltern Studies Collective to The Postcolonial Gramsci, Chatterjee and Spivak, this mood seems to persist, given that Gramsci still plays a marginal and limited role.³ On the contrary, the article by Sunder Rajan (2012) in that same volume, not only finds major inspiration in Gramscian theory – even in the light of the ‘historical defeat of the untouchable intellectual’ and the ‘profound pessimism about organised resistance’ (2012: 186) – but it does so precisely by reflecting on the Dalits as subalterns and bringing together Gramsci and Ambedkar, while analysing Anantha Murthy's novel Bharathipura. For instance, when discussing the political significance of the temple entry movement, Sunder Rajan comments: ‘It is interesting and surely significant that in Bharathipura, Anantha Murthy combines a Gramscian – Ambedkarite interest in the strategic aspects of subaltern mobilisation of this kind, with more specific ethical issues surrounding subaltern representation’ (Sunder Rajan 2012: 176, emphasis in the original).

Despite efforts of a late recovery, Gramsci's demise from the subaltern and to some extent postcolonial studies in South Asia coincides, not surprisingly, with a major absence during this period: Ambedkar and the Dalits. In a very recent critical edition of Ambedkar's The Buddha and his Dhamma (Ambedkar 2011), the editors dedicate their whole Introduction (Singh Rathore and Verma 2011) to a discussion of Ambedkar's exclusion from academic Buddhist discourse in India, on the grounds that his writings deliver a ‘political message’ (‘theologising his own political view and politicizing Buddha's views’ – p. xi), thus assuming that ‘religion’ is inherently apolitical. The authors denounce the sarcasm of some – who derisively label Ambedkar's The Buddha and his Dhamma a ‘liberation theology’ (Shourie 1997)⁴ – and condemn others for their silence:

Here, the ‘subtle’ strategy is silence. It would be nice to be in a position to cite references regarding the justification for excluding Ambedkar's work from the academic canon, but the whole point is that there are no examples to cite …

(Singh Rathore and Verma 2011: x, note 2)

Ambedkar's silencing here has far-reaching implications when this is extended to the ‘silenced Dalits/subalterns’.⁵

A very significant, almost singular trait in Ambedkar's work is underlined by Singh Rathore and Verma: with ‘a great number of scholars who resist reducing the scope of Ambedkar's mission to one specific community’, since ‘Ambedkar worked simultaneously for the downtrodden, for Indians in general, and with the larger mission of serving humanity as a whole’ (2011: xiv–xv).⁶ They continue: ‘Indeed, even the liberation of the Dalits was meant as a contribution to humanity as such, and not simply an expression of “class interest” ’ (ibid.: xv).⁷

While the major thrust of The Postcolonial Gramsci is to show the relevance of Gramsci's work within postcolonial studies at a global level, the present collection has a more specific objective which becomes also – in the word of an anonymous reviewer – an ‘engagement with substantive focus specifically on topics raised by bringing together scholarship on Gramsci and the crucial author Ambedkar’. My argument is that for both Gramsci and Ambedkar the ‘inclusion of the excluded’ in civil, democratic society is not an appendix to political engagement but belongs at its very core, if our continuous effort for ‘being human’ (see Rao 2009) is the task that humanity sets itself. For as long as some members of the human race remain excluded from belonging to humanity – for whatever reason, at diverse levels, in any part of the world – this humanity is incomplete and the political struggle must continue. Hence, the significance of the Gramsci-Ambedkar encounter goes far beyond the ‘Southern Question’ or Dalit emancipation, and indeed far beyond Italy and South Asia.

However, the globality of the task does not diminish the relevance of localized experience and history. Indeed, this full scholarly double-engagement with these localities becomes the real strength behind the ever challenging and thought-provoking political philosophies of Gramsci and Ambedkar. Moreover, given that our two authors have reached their conclusion independently of each other, it would be out of place to invoke Gramsci simply to validate Ambedkar's work or to offer an external (western) platform to an otherwise supposedly deficient (South Asian) political philosophy. In my eyes, the collection aims at returning his voice to a ‘silenced’ Ambedkar as much as to reaffirm Gramsci's valuable contribution to the caste-question in South Asia. In this sense, the scholarly contributions to the volume are directed to both sets of readers who would otherwise be interested in either Gramsci or Ambedkar. According to this rationale, Gramsci and Ambedkar must be read and re-interpreted together, above all taking into account the historical circumstances in which their political thought developed: i.e. the interwar period and the crisis in Europe. Rather than archaeological history, this exercise sheds light on how we address fundamental questions regarding ‘humanity’ at present. As I try to show below, there is a continuity between the ‘Jewish Question’, the ‘Southern Question’ and the ‘Caste-Dalit Question’ which, above and beyond their specific milieus, are questions related by the substantive (even ontological) question of ‘recognition’ as a task for global ethics and philosophy. It is my conviction that Gramsci and Ambedkar offer us an excellent path to reflect seriously on this.

There is a further common trait which unites Gramsci and Ambedkar to their shared ‘reduced relevance’ by certain groups within academia: their joint view of ‘modernity’ and humanism derived from a particular understanding of ‘enlightenment’ (as Aufklärung), as a result of the French Revolution and the civic achievements of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. Commenting on the ‘ambivalent’ use of enlightenment made by Ambedkar, Singh Rathore and Verma affirm: ‘Ironically, Ambedkar's modernist-rationalist inclinations had made him inassimilable to radical left (anti-enlightenment) postcolonial political theory for decades’ (2011: xxiii). Having lamented Ambedkar's exclusion from Buddhist studies owing to his unorthodox interpretation of Buddhism, ‘as if to add injury to insult’ – Singh Rathore and Verma conclude – ‘the trope of Ambedkar's “enlightenment” also led to his exclusion by postcolonial scholars, incapable of countenancing his ostensibly Eurocentric leanings in their attempt to liberate India from the “colonisation of the mind” ’ (cf. Thiong'o 1986) (2011: xxiii). More recently, Chatterjee's effort (2004) to dedicate a chapter to Ambedkar has been described by Singh Rathore and Verma as ‘likely motivated by Sarkar's critique of the absence of Dalits as a “fragment” of India’ (ibid.).

Prior to highlighting some thematic concepts which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters, I wish to point out a relevant and, to some extent, common environment within which Gramsci and Ambedkar operated at the peak of their activity as leaders and thinkers: the interwar period, a time of deep unrest, turmoil and crisis which marked the end of the First World War and the start of the Second World War. Both leaders were fully aware that, if they wished to put forward a successful solution to the situation of subalterns and Dalits, they needed to overcome a restricted, limited view, in favour of operating at a higher political level. In other words, ‘The Southern Question’, dealt with by Gramsci during this period and still being discussed at the time of his imprisonment (1926), were to become a constant reminder, during the years that followed, of the need for a holistic solution. Indeed, ‘Gramsci's larger political aim mapped out in “The Southern Question” forms the testimony of a man who envisaged the intellectuals, proletariat and peasantry working together to bring about a fundamental political emancipation for the country as a whole’ (Young 2012: 30–1). As already pointed out, Ambedkar operated with a similar mindset when proposing a solution for ex-Untouchables, since ‘liberation of the Dalits was meant as a contribution to humanity as such’ (Singh Rathore and Verma 2011: xv). While this very standpoint reaffirms both Gramsci's and Ambedkar's commitment to operate with Enlightenment values in mind, we should at least appreciate their efforts to not subscribe blindly to a vision of Modernity, but, while challenging Modernity itself, to seek to address those questions that Modernity had left unanswered. We should bear in mind that the universalism sought by the Enlightenment transcribes the universalism present in the political-religious demands of the subalterns – such as democracy, fraternity, equality, etc. – into the ‘superior culture’. This motivates Gramsci's reflections on the nexus between modern utopias...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Editorial note
• 1 Subalterns and Dalits in Gramsci and Ambedkar A prologue to a ‘posthumous' dialogue
• Part I The emergence of subaltern/Dalit subjectivity and historical agency
• Part II The function of intellectuals
• Part III Subalternity and common sense
• Part IV Dalit literature, subalternity and consciousness
• Part V The religion of the subalterns/Dalits
• References
• Index