Gender Narratives of Dalit Martyrs

The recent debate around 1857 have invoked heated debates regarding the position and participation of Dalits in the revolt. There are two main lines of argument. On the one hand, there is deep condemnation of 1857 from a Dalit perspective, and on the other, there is an assertion and commemoration of the Dalit contribution, particularly that of Dalit viranganas, to the revolt. Both these viewpoints, however, need to be placed in a larger context. Various scholars have effectively argued that subaltern political actions and consciousness revealed a great degree of autonomy from mainstream nationalism. Scholars working on Dalits in colonial India particularly state that Dalits have had an ambivalent relationship with both Indian nationalism and colonialism, often contradictory with the views of dominant Hindu communities. A Dalit intellectual argues that the British liberated the Dalit masses from the oppress- ions of Hindu society by abolishing the laws of Manu and by providing Dalits with the most important tool of liberation, which is access to education. Thus, British rule was good for the Dalits.

In Uttar Pradesh, the British government had set up forty-one schools especially for the depressed classes. Dalit activists, thinkers and intellectuals have thus often held positions at odds with those of mainstream caste Hindu historians, scholars and political leaders. These positions and mentalities have had a basis in their material and social realities.

The events of 1857 too cannot be isolated from the differing positions of caste Hindu intellectuals. The upper-caste modes of thought and anti-Dalit biases of 1857 are well documented. Thus, proclaimed Birjis Qadr, who was raised to the throne of Awadh by the rebels on 5 July 1857, under the regency of his mother Hazrat Mahal: All Hindus and Mussalmans know that four things are held dear by every human being: (1) religion and faith; (2) honour and esteem; (3) life of self and relation; (4) property. These four were protected under the rule of the Indians, under whose government no one interfered with religion; everyone followed his own faith and everyone’s honour was protected in accordance with their position. No lower caste person could claim equality with them…. But the English are the enemies of these four things…. They have brought the honour of the high classes on a level with that of the lower people. These derogatory statements reflect deep contempt for the Dalits in 1857 and also symbolise the authoritarianism of precolonial caste formations. These nostalgic yearnings for pre-British pasts have obviously not found any favour among the Dalits.

Conventional and standardised histories of the revolt stress its upper-caste character. According to nationalist historians like S.B. Chaudhuri, Tara Chand and R.C. Mazumdar, the social composition of 1857 consisted of the ruling class and the traditional elite of society, who were the ‘natural leaders’ of the revolt. The elitist disposition of the revolt is highlighted by referring to it as a general movement of the Muslims and the Hindus princes, landholders, soldiers, scholars and theologians. Marxist scholars broadly fall within the same paradigm, where they see the revolt as a last attempt of the elite medieval order to halt the process of its dissolution and recover its lost status. Thomas R. Metcalf too emphasises that it was not merely a mutiny, nor it was a war of independence. For him, 1857 was ‘a traditionalist movement in which those who had the most to lose in the new sought the restoration of the old pre-British order’.

In fact, eminent scholars have reflected on the overwhelmingly upper-caste composition and character of the Bengal Army to underscore the internal caste contradictions within Indian society. These upper-caste soldiers were largely recruited from Awadh and Bihar, and carried with them their caste sentiments and prejudices, upholding divisions of caste in food, clothing and housing. However the Awadh Police Force had a large component of Pasis, Bhungis, Chamars and Dhanuks, who participated in the suppression of the revolt. It thus appears that Dalits did not have much to gain and only something to lose by being active allies in the revolt. The purity/pollution ties of the upper castes and classes, linked with the crossing of seas or biting of the flesh of the cow or the pig, did not affect the Dalits in the same way. It is not surprising that Jyotiba Phule congratulated the Mahars for aiding the British in suppressing the 1857 Revolt. In fact, from Phule to Ambedkar, a significant part of Dalit tradition has repeatedly celebrated the victory of the British in 1857, which, according to some Dalit intellectuals, was an antithesis of modernity and was retrogressive and narcissistically upper caste.