no phule, no ambedkar..

..no ayyankali, narayana guru, periyar or even lohia either. and definitely no kanshi ram. no mayawati. or annadurai or even devraj urs or laloo yadav. one notices the glaring absence of a long, sustained anti-caste, mass movement in the political history of colonial and post-colonial andhra pradesh.

in the last two centuries, the telugus have produced many thinkers, writers and political activists who had risen against many kinds of oppression -- against feudal rule in telangana, against colonial rule and against zamindaries in coastal andhra and rayalaseema, against exploitation of adivasis in telangana and coastal andhra.

but there has never been a large, sustained, mass movement against caste and brahminism in recent history.

caste wasn't the primary focus of either the telangana peasants struggle, the biggest militant movement of its kind in 20th century indian history, or of the four decades old naxalite movement, both of which produced thousands of dalitbahujan martyrs.

there have been many movements, agitations against caste based oppression but none challenged caste like the movements led by all the visionaries i named earlier. now some dalitbahujan supporters of telangana think that a sociopolitical transformation will happen in a separate state because the population of the obcs in telangana is a few percentage points higher than in a united state. add to this irrational belief in the 'magical solution' of telangana the conviction that upper caste brahmin, velama and reddy politicians and intellectuals will help produce not only the 'magical' solution but also perhaps the social transformation later: is there anything illogical in the srikrishna committee report's dismissal of the idea?   

raising mass consciousness, even at the political level, against caste is a long, tough job. ask dr.ambedkar. if you can't go so far back in the past, ask kanshi ram who walked, cycled around a much larger state than telangana and andhra pradesh for nearly two decades before he got anywhere close to his objective.

and while dalitbahujan youth participate in large numbers in the agitation, nursing their beliefs, hapless dalits are being hunted down as witches in villages close to even the state capital. adivasi girls are being killed or being sold.

will the upper caste politicians or intellectuals/activists leading the movement exhibit the same spirit of brotherhood towards the 'impure' classes if the dalitbahujan youth started asking questions about the upper caste hunters of witches and sorcerers in choutuppal and elsewhere?

dr.ambedkar didn't wait for independence or political 'freedom' to press his demands for the protection of the depressed classes.

but these bands of dalitbahujan supporters will wait for the 'magical solution' that'd first empower the obcs, supposedly, and then the dalits. has the empowerment of a few obc communities, as in u.p., tamil nadu or karnataka ever ensured better progress in the war against caste? political empowerment of a few obc communities has never meant broad political empowerment even of all the obcs, leave alone the dalits. and substantial social transformation is still a long way off in all those states. and the valuable lesson we've learnt from all those states is that it is the empowerment of the dalits that should be the primary goal of any sociopolitical  movement that challenges caste: because any anti-caste political movement that is led by a few obc communities (like the yadavs, kurmis, mudaliars, gounders, vanniars, vokkaligas etc) shall ultimately result in only reinforcing caste, by only slightly altering the hierarchy.

i hope they'll revisit kanshi ram.