By Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
The Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have opened another front of attack on the future of the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis. This front has nothing to do with Muslims. In a certain sense, though it appears anti-Christian, it does not affect the future of Christian population of India, which is very small in number. This front is English education. Though their attack appears to be on colonialism and Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, it is fundamentally against the English education of the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis, who are slowly getting English education and hoping to compete with the upper castes in all states and at the national level. English is also enabling them to enter into global markets. This language came into their life through Mahatma Phule, Savitribai Phule and Dr. B.R Ambedkar, not through Macaulay.
It was Ambedkar who gave them the confidence with unparalleled command over English in India during the freedom struggle and in writing books and the constitution. He had shown the oppressed castes that this language can become a tool of their liberation from their historical slavery. Sanskrit was used as a tool to enslave the Dalit/Shudra forces with a design for millennia. English became a counter weapon in the hands of the oppressed and exploited castes.
Now the RSS/BJP, is systematically using an OBC Narendra Modi, as the prime minister, to deny English to these castes. I, as a first generation writer in English from a Shudra shepherd community, know the power of English as a liberative language. For us it is not a Macaulay language but an Ambedkar language. It is an Indian and Dalit-bahujan liberation language.
Why it is not a Christian language
The Telangana social, economic, educational, employment, political and caste survey has shown that though the Christian population is very small in terms of numbers, its English education level is as higher as that of Brahmins, Reddys and Kammas. Perhaps that is because the church system established English medium schools along with churches in several places. However, for them it was a language of job either in India or abroad or of prayer.
No Christian scholar of India used it as a liberative tool as Ambedkar, who was not a Christian. For him it was a language that could change the life of the oppressed and exploited people in future.
It is also a fact that not many Shudra/OBCs have become Christians and hardly send their children to Christian English medium schools. Some upper castes, particularly Brahmins have become Christian and most Hindu upper castes sent their children to learn that language in Christian schools. Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Kshatriyas are the most English educated elite in contemporary India. They have also not used that language as a tool of liberation from caste oppression.
Of late, the Shudra-OBCs are realising that Ambedkar’s English writings have helped them to gain the reservation benefits and also the importance of learning the English language.
The Telangana caste survey has shown that the most backward in the English education parameter are Adivasis/Dalits and OBCs in that order.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
