telangana: a movement without a social agenda 3

kancha ilaiah in why i am not a hindu:

What further separated a Hindu from us was the nature of the consciousness of the other world, the divine and the spiritual. For children from our castes, Jeja (the concept of God) is introduced in the form of the moon. As children grow up, they also get acquainted with Pochamma, Polimeramma, Kattamaisamma, Kaatamaraju, Potaraju and other deities. Among Dalitbahujans, there is no concept of a temple in a definite place or form. Goddesses and Gods live in all shapes and in different places.

i'd written nearly an year ago:

madigas, and over fifty other dalit castes in andhra pradesh have been agitating over the last fifteen years for dividing the scheduled castes into categories (as it is done in the case of obcs) to ensure that, according to their view, not all the fruits of reservations are cornered by a couple of castes. there have also been barely covered reports of similar movements across the country. now this demand needs to be debated seriously across a wide range of fora because it involves not just madigas and other castes in andhra pradesh, but dalits, primarily, and all other classes of people across the country. from 300 million to one billion people.

no debate happened anywhere outside andhra pradesh, and in andhra pradesh too the debate on categorisation of dalits, which had been allowed to degenerate into an endless internecine war along the mala-madiga divide among the dalits (watched, egged on many times, eagerly by upper caste political bosses and various assorted kind-hearted liberals among the brahminized classes) got drowned in the debate over another synthetic divide, telangana. while the debaters took to the streets and the courts and nothing got resolved, they took the battle into their homes and their hearts. and to their divided neighbourhoods in the villages, outside the villages. the political bosses never took it to parliament, which in the supreme court's opinion is the right forum to debate the issue, and powerful parliamentarians, of course, never notice an issue that happens outside delhi on their own unless....say, a famous cricketer or film star is involved. but what would parliament have done?

it'd have taken an easy way out, like a very frustrated and tired manda krishna madiga, perhaps. he, along with his organization mrps ('madiga reservation porata samiti'), joined the telangana movement formally on the day kcr started his fast, a couple of months ago. as recently as that. does that mean the dalits of telangana actively support a movement that has been almost entirely led by upper caste political leaders for the past nine years? it means they're frustrated and tired running around every kind of constitutional institution looking for just, constitutional solutions to their problems but now have given up and feel geography might help. does it mean the dalits of telangana have suddenly discovered they share a common culture with their erstwhile feudal masters? that they were never separated from the hindus, culturally, as ilaiah says? when krishna madiga shares a platform with assorted reddy, velama, kamma, kapu political leaders from the congress, bjp, various communist and other parties it doesn't mean caste barriers have suddenly crumbled to dust, it only means they've grown so strong that even dalits can't recognize each other as equals.

so, the madigas of telangana think a separated telangana would help them gain better access to reserved seats and jobs because they form the majority (among dalits) in telangana. how about the other smaller castes who would then be elbowed out of the race for reserved seats and jobs by the dominant caste among dalits, the madigas? what'd parliament do to resolve that issue? divide every region, district and village in the country into separate states so that no dalit caste would dominate another?

the telangana movement is not a dalit movement, in fact it's a movement designed to paralyse any concerted efforts by the dalits in andhra pradesh to overcome caste, to fight caste together.