The 1857 Revolt in Dalit Perspective

 In fact the 1857 revolt has been completed more than 160 years but Dalit participation is not recognised till today. In fact then Dalit point of view was not being taken very seriously. It could be very easily labeled as pro-colonial and different from mainstream and ignored as an individualistic point of view. However feeble opposition it might have been but it is true that after 1859 there has been a long standing Shudra point of view which refused to accept 1857 as a national freedom struggle and have rejoiced that it was quelled and resulted in the continuous presence of the British in India. “History will, we conceive, take a very different view of the facts of the great Indian revolt of 1857 what the contemporaries have taken of them”.

In it, the first and important voice was that of Jotirao Phule who had felicitated those Mahar soldiers who had helped the British in quelling the revolt. He had written a letter to the then Viceroy and expressed happiness that the British stayed in India. And did not leave the millions of the Shudras and the Dalits to the mercy of the Brahmins. He said, “God was merciful enough to the Shudras to have crushed the revolt led by Brahmin Nana Phandvis. He was aware that the British were there today and would be gone tomorrow, hence the need for the Shudras to hurry”. Dhananjay Keer has commented; “Jotirao was happy to see that British had brought education, science and justice for all.” 

Dalit tradition after Jotirao Phule also expressed similar sentiments about British rule from time to time which very clearly project their bias in favor of the British). If given a choice between British slavery which for the first time opened to them the doors of education, army and civil services, equality before law and freedom from such laws which established a state based on the Shastras and the Samrities, the obvious choice would have been British slavery. This slavery had given them a right to live as human beings for the first time. Arun Shourie has referred to, sometimes rightly and sometimes out of context, such views of Dr. Ambedkar in trying to prove him to be a stooge of the British.

The followers of Dr. Ambedkar did not have the courage to face Shourie on the plane of principles. Sometimes they tried to smear his face black ad some times quoted Ambedkar to prove that he was patriotic in the same sense as the caste Hindu leaders like Tilk, Shardanand and Gandhi were. But now Dalit discourse has matured to search for their space in this declared First War of Independence and now non-Dalit discourse cannot afford to ignore it as it was done in 1907 and 1957. It is necessary to understand various myths about 1857. Some accepted notions are as follows:

*    It was a national freedom struggle of local rulers and soldiers which was backed by insurmountable desire of freedom from the British slavery.

*    1857 should be viewed as a period of Indian New Awakening especially that of Hindi belt.

These notions need to be judged from Dalit point of view in order to form a rational discourse. Firstly, let us see to what extent this revolt was national? To understand it, it is essential to know whether in 1857 India was a nation? Here nation does not mean a nation state or a national state. Today the area which is said to be from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and which in 1947 also included the parts today known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, the beginning was really made by the British to make it into a single political unit as a nation, although there might have been expansionist and exploitation interest behind it. The modern view of a nation state and resultant national feelings developed during industrial revolution of 17th and 18th century Europe and the search for new colonies to sell products developed and flourished out of this struggle. No such Industrial Revolution took place in India necessitating sale of surplus products abroad.

At the time of arrival of East India Company and till the outbreak of revolt against them in 1857, the area which today we call India was a conglomeration of numerous small and big independent sovereign states. Their rulers fought among themselves and not only did not help each other against external aggression but also extended help to external aggressors depending upon their own need and self-interest. They had their own currency, flags and tax system. It is not such that there was dearth of such factors in this vast land which could make it a nation state. This land surrounded by sea and mountains facilitated their mixing among themselves more than the rest of the World.

The geographical boundary helped the residents to develop a loose religion which the outsiders called by the name of Hinduism. This religion was free from compulsions of a religious prophet and a revealed religious book. This Hindu nomenclature covered monotheist, pantheist, worshippers of trees and stones, atheists and skeptics. Its devotional centers were spread all over the area which changed into a nation state by 1947. Religious and trade fairs and common caste memories had the capacity to form a nation state even without the British help. But they could not make it as such. Never before the British there was a situation when this vast land could become a nation state under a central power having a central army and a monetary system.

M.S. Golvarkar defining the Indian Nation has said, “Aryans had settled in India at the dawn of the history and a nation took birth which is inherent in Hindus only.” At another place he wrote,” In Hindustan, Hindus are a nation themselves”. Gollvarkar had forgotten that a nation is not a piece of geographical land. A nation is formed by common dreams, common memories and common past and future of millions and millions of people inhabiting it. He also forgot that a nation can be formed based on religion but inherent contradictions of Hinduism can prevent it from performing this necessary role.

It is possible that people with different dresses, eating habits and religious traditions can join together to form a nation and there are such examples in the world. But the people with a life philosophy in which a power controlling minority treats the majority worse than animals and this subhuman majority has no stake, cannot become a nation. Dr. Ambedkar has also remarked during his speech in the Constituent Assembly on November, 1949: “I am of the opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realize that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us” .

The 1857 revolt cannot said to be a new awakening in Hindi land for the reason that it was not a struggle for the liberation of whole population. Had it succeeded, Varna system which was badly shaken during Bhakti Movement would have reemerged more strengthened. The Dalits would have lost whatever little they had gained and the same Dark Age would have descended which had overshadowed this continent after the fall of Buddhism. Many serious scholars of Indian society presume that if the British were not there, the cycle of progress would have taken the same course and similar freedom struggle stories would have been written here also like other parts of the world. The only difference would have been that of motivating force. We have no objection to it. It is true that India would not have remained untouched by the forces of History and the pernicious system of Varna Ashram would have certainly perished with time but it would have taken how much time. It is possible that we would have been fighting it till today.
Before the arrival of the British, India was a society mainly based on agriculture and craftsmanship. Karl Marx had written in 1853 about this society, that it was an unchallenging society. Along with this it was self-sufficient to good extent. A village was in itself a unit. It produced the needed cloth, food grains, small implements and goods of daily use. The result was that it had very little communication with other villages and towns. That was the reason that any change at the level of technology was much delayed or took place at a very slow pace. Challenging this utopia of rural self-sufficiency Marx labeled it as an inert or a stagnant society. Later Dr. Ambedkar also said challenging the Gandhian dream of Gram Swaraj (village self-rule): “What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?
To understand Dalit perspective of 1857, we have to accept that this distrust should be kept in mind. Here I am reminded of a sentence of one Dalit writer in which he has said that the British came to India late and left early. I am of the view that they did not leave early. When they left the objective realities had become such that they could not stay more even if they wanted. They had played their historical role in the destruction of Varna system. If they had come early, the pernicious Varna system would have been destroyed more speedily.