Reply to a comrade who thinks Dalit Marxism is reactionery

There are many things true in your post. We can identify a single or a combination of more than one mode of production as ‘dominant’ in any given system at any given time. Such mode of production is either in decline or being ascendant. And, Marxists are supposed to locate this thing and form their strategy most suitable to it. All of it is perfectly alright. Dalit Marxism doesn’t say or imply or find any difficulty in making the best of this point — one of the most fundamental political insights of Marx.
As you know, this point is as political as economic, though, strictly speaking, such distinction is meaningless beyond a point in Dalit Marxist analysis just as in any Marxist analysis. I am not clear what do you mean by “specificity or uniformity of labor form or labor process,” There has never been a uniformity of labor form or even labor processes either in pre-capitalist or capitalist or even in the post-capitalist economies.
In fact, one of the principle attractions Marx had for the communist ideal is its ability to free human beings from the monotony or unlovable nature of labor performed under conditions of exploitation or compulsions external or internal and retain or elevate it to what he thought it surely was: an expression of the essence of humans. Marx imagined a world, and argued that such a thing was possible, in which you write poetry in the evening and fish in the afternoon and repair machinery in the night and do all of it out of your own free will and a sense of responsibility for the society. Some of the principle evils in the capitalist economy and society Marx locates, and also of course, in other forms of society, is the division of labor of a kind that fragments the vision of the worker.
But there is something common to all forms of labor, which he called abstract labor. Not that there could be any labor whatsoever which could be ‘abstract.’ But at one level it is a simple analytical devise we need to use to grasp the commonalities of all forms of labor, the products of which could be exchanged. But at a much fundamental level the very process of exchange is what makes this bizarre process of abstraction not just mental but something that happens in the objective reality. Well, you know how difficult it is to talk about this ‘objective process of abstraction’ the inexorable exchange advanced levels of capitalism involves. But, the point is, at no point, labor is abstract in any simple sense.
And, as you should know, one fundamental feature of Hindu society is, it doesn’t allow for any straight forward exchange between the products of labor of different kinds. For example, it insists that certain forms of labor, like manual scavenging, is open only to dalits. Very often, it says not only that only dalits can do it but also that dalits have to do it.
If one bothers to look up from their study of debates among the European and U.S. Marxists about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and bother to see what is happening to Dalits, I think s/he may accept that after all capitalism is not uniform, nor are its forms of labor. Probably, the ‘nuance’ you have in mind doesn’t allow for any such negligible distinctions between the labor of, say, an employee of Treasury and a manual scavenger on contract for the last 15 years or an MPhil student back home in summer holidays who was forced to carry the dead animal from the backyard of a small peasant.
If this MPhil student fails to appreciate the essential commonality of all labor from the postal workers of Deutsche Post and Satyam Employees threatened with cut down on perks and his own work to clear the corpses of his upper-caste village mates, we might still blame him for being a ‘subjective empiricist’ (whose knowledge is derived solely from his own experience) missing the larger picture. But, can we say anything against him if insists that there is no UNIFORMITY of different forms of labor and there is no possibility of exchange in the first place if there is such a state of affairs. He has every right to further mock us that except God, who supposed to have created everything and run all of them and provides customer care without even any pretence of multi-tasking, nobody could imagine the ‘uniformity of labor.’
Unfortunately, you description of Marxism as something which tells us that there is only one kind of working class is simply not true. If you are tribal in Africa or India, it is most likely that you will be raped routinely and lucky if you are not killed and you are either driven out of your land first to be able to be robbed of your land or first be relieved of your land and then driven out of it and then further exploited when you go and seek work somewhere else. I did not read much of Das Capital, but one chapter from it, on ‘Primitive Accumulation,’ describes similar process in the making of Capitalism, rubbishing the myth which said frugality and hard work of the capitalists provided them with capital. Probably, Marx was being deviant here from the Party line( though I suspect he was the only lucky Marxist to have escaped it while not formulating it) or failed to foresee the dangers of noting such variations that could divide proletarian unity and let himself to be played into the hands of business class.
“Dalit does not embody any uniform labor process in India.” “Dalits may represent a subjugated labour but…” I am not sure what could these assertions possibly mean. If you mean to say that all Dalits don’t belong to a single class, you are absolutely right. They don’t. It is no news to anybody that caste and class, despite all their overlapping, intersecting and resembling each other, are in some crucial ways, simply, different things.
While an individual can move upwards of his class of origin or fall out of one, such is not possible for any Individual from her caste. Some castes as collectivities could move upwards or downwards over longer periods of time but individually it is not possible. Here, you are introducing this Hindu principle of caste into understanding class and class struggle. If you and me, definitely no longer belong to working class, could join working class struggles, why can’t the dalits from other classes join the struggle of working class(which includes those denied work) for emancipation? If you say that intellectuals can transcend their class by studying Marxism and ‘declassifying’ themselves, why do you think that the very small section among the dalits who are no longer in the working class can’t do so?
 It is also surprising that you think the labor of dalits MAY REPRESENT subjugated labor (or, did you mean Dalits as a subjugated labor force?). Marxism, for all I know, shows all labor, including the one for which workers struggle to get, is subjugated without exception. You are unwilling even to give that status to the labor of Dalits. What prevents you from acknowledging the labor of dalits to be subjugated? At a different level, one is surprised that you think Dalits should embody a uniform labor process in India. You seem to think the fault with the category of Dalit, if not the Dalits themselves, is its incapacity to embody uniform labor process. It is like blaming your mail for its inability to give me a single cigarette when I read it. How can, and why should, a political category embody a ‘labor process’? Isn’t it somewhat similar to the joke about the inability of a poetry anthology to make a set of boot laces?
Since you are a comrade from Mars, let me introduce this peculiarity in one of the planetary systems far away from your abode: we have here something called Earth revolving around sun on which is a country called India which houses nearly twenty percent of humanity of which more than twenty percent are Dalits. Most of us have no option to choose which work we can do. Not just individually but also as a collective. Moreover, many of us, like rest of the non-dalits, cannot hope to get any work at all.
“By introducing such sweeping category like 'Dalit' which does not embody the uniform labour form or labour process in India and also has no legitimate reference to the theoretical nuances of Marxism, you ultimately intend to distort Marxism and in the process pay to the interest of corporate class in India.”
Now, you relent and give some promotion to the category of dalit. It is now “sweeping.” A moment ago it was divisive and distorting the essential unity of this entity called the working class. But, each and every category is much bigger than any of its constituent elements or particularities whose abstraction it is. And, naturally, it is more specific and concrete than even bigger category. “Dalit journalists” is a bigger category than “Dalit Women Journalists” while being smaller than “Dalit professionals” which in turn is smaller than “Dalit employees.” The point is, if a category is both inclusive and exclusive enough to serve the concrete task for action or analysis, frequently for the both. I want you to throw some light on that aspect.
Comrade, there are many more things. I shall respond to them later. Meanwhile, waiting for your response, so that we can sharpen our formulations further, and naturally, together.

Women on march in support of Chitralekha in Payyanur

Thanks CK Vishwanath for sending this. From: bharadwaj reshma

To: rekhaethamma@gmail.com; feminists kerala ; green youth

Sent: Mon, 8 March, 2010 12:10:38 AM

Subject: [GreenYouth] Vahana pracharana jadha





Hi Friends

On March 9th and 10th, two day 'vahana pracharana jadha' by women supporting Chitralekha will go around Payyanur and nearby areas. We hope to open up dialogue with local people about the politics of this incident and gather support for Chitralekha's resistance.



jadha will highlight slogans:

Stop slander campaign against Chitralekha

Ensure a job atmoshphere where she can engage in her job with dignity and without fear

Accept women's right to choose their job.



Rekha Raj (Panchami Dalit Women's Collective), K.Ajitha (Anweshi), Ammini (Adivasi Vikasa Samithi), Praveena(Panchami Dalit Women's Collective), Jaseela, Beena Appu (Sahayatrika), Deepa V.N (Sahayatrika), V.P Suhara (Nisa), Sulochana(Kerala Sthreevedi), Reshma Bharadwaj(Sahayatrika), Amala (Kerala Sthreevedi) - will be participating in the jadha. I am listing jadha route below.

Cheers, come to any(if not all of these) points and join us. And if you know any others at these places please inform them.

Reshma





Sthree vahana jadha



Route and time



9/03/2010



09.30 AM: Karivalloor



10.15 AM: Onakkunnu Junction



11.00 AM: Samimukku



11.45 AM: Mathil



12.20 PM: Chooral



01.10 PM: Aravanchal



2.30 PM: Peringom



3.30 PM: Kankol



4.15 PM: Kothaimukku



5 PM: Perumba (near KSRTC)



6 PM: Edattu



10/03/2010



9.30 AM: Ezhilode



10.15 AM: Pilathara



11 AM: Pariyaram (in front of medical college)



12 PM: Pazhayangadi



12.45 PM: Mandooru



1.30 PM: Kunjimangalam



2.45 PM: Kunnaru



3.30 PM: Ramanthali



4.15 PM: Kotti railway gate



6 PM: Payyanoor (old bus stand)

ZIZEK ON Avatar, Naxalism and Fantacy

http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2010/03/avatar-reality-love-couple-sex


James Cameron's Avatar tells the story of a disabled ex-marine, sent from earth to infiltrate a race of blue-skinned aboriginal people on a distant planet and persuade them to let his employer mine their homeland for natural resources. Through a complex biological manipulation, the hero's mind gains control of his "avatar", in the body of a young aborigine.




These aborigines are deeply spiritual and live in harmony with nature (they can plug a cable that sticks out of their body into horses and trees to communicate with them). Predictably, the marine falls in love with a beautiful aboriginal princess and joins the aborigines in battle, helping them to throw out the human invaders and saving their planet. At the film's end, the hero transposes his soul from his damaged human body to his aboriginal avatar, thus becoming one of them.



Given the 3-D hyperreality of the film, with its combination of real actors and animated digital corrections, Avatar should be compared to films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) or The Matrix (1999). In each, the hero is caught between our ordinary reality and an imagined universe - of cartoons in Roger Rabbit, of digital reality in The Matrix, or of the digitally enhanced everyday reality of the planet in Avatar. What one should thus bear in mind is that, although Avatar's narrative is supposed to take place in one and the same "real" reality, we are dealing - at the level of the underlying symbolic economy - with two realities: the ordinary world of imperialist colonialism on the one hand, and a fantasy world, populated by aborigines who live in an incestuous link with nature, on the other. (The latter should not be confused with the miserable reality of actual exploited peoples.) The end of the film should be read as the hero fully migrating from reality into the fantasy world - as if, in The Matrix, Neo were to decide to immerse himself again fully in the matrix.



This does not mean, however, that we should reject Avatar on behalf of a more "authentic" acceptance of the real world. If we subtract fantasy from reality, then reality itself loses its consistency and disintegrates. To choose between "either accepting reality or choosing fantasy" is wrong: if we really want to change or escape our social reality, the first thing to do is change our fantasies that make us fit this reality. Because the hero of Avatar doesn't do this, his subjective position is what Jacques Lacan, with regard to de Sade, called le dupe de son fantasme.



This is why it is interesting to imagine a sequel to Avatar in which, after a couple of years (or, rather, months) of bliss, the hero starts to feel a weird discontent and to miss the corrupted human universe. The source of this discontent is not only that every reality, no matter how perfect it is, sooner or later disappoints us. Such a perfect fantasy disappoints us precisely because of its perfection: what this perfection signals is that it holds no place for us, the subjects who imagine it.



The utopia imagined in Avatar follows the Hollywood formula for producing a couple - the long tradition of a resigned white hero who has to go among the savages to find a proper sexual partner (just recall Dances With Wolves). In a typical Hollywood product, everything, from the fate of the Knights of the Round Table to asteroids hitting the earth, is transposed into an Oedipal narrative. The ridiculous climax of this procedure of staging great historical events as the background to the formation of a couple is Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), in which Hollywood found a way to rehabilitate the October Revolution, arguably the most traumatic historical event of the 20th century. In Reds, the couple of John Reed and Louise Bryant are in deep emotional crisis; their love is reignited when Louise watches John deliver an impassioned revolutionary speech.



What follows is the couple's lovemaking, intersected with archetypal scenes from the revolution, some of which reverberate in an all too obvious way with the sex; say, when John penetrates Louise, the camera cuts to a street where a dark crowd of demonstrators envelops and stops a penetrating "phallic" tram - all this against the background of the singing of "The Internationale". When, at the orgasmic climax, Lenin himself appears, addressing a packed hall of delegates, he is more a wise teacher overseeing the couple's love-initiation than a cold revolutionary leader. Even the October Revolution is OK, according to Hollywood, if it serves the reconstitution of a couple.



In a similar way, is Cameron's previous blockbuster, Titanic, really about the catastrophe of the ship hitting the iceberg? One should be

attentive to the precise moment of the catastrophe: it takes place when the young lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), immediately after consummating their relationship, return to the ship's deck. Even more crucial is that, on deck, Winslet tells her lover that when the ship reaches New York the next morning, she will leave with him, preferring a life of poverty with her true love to a false, corrupted life among the rich.



At this moment the ship hits the iceberg, in order to prevent what would undoubtedly have been the true catastrophe, namely the couple's life in New York. One can safely guess that soon the misery of everyday life would have destroyed their love. The catastrophe thus occurs in order to save their love, to sustain the illusion that, if it had not happened, they would have lived "happily ever after". A further clue is provided by DiCaprio's final moments. He is freezing in the cold water, dying, while Winslet is safely floating on a large piece of wood. Aware that she is losing him, she cries "I'll never let you go!" - and as she says this, she pushes him away with her hands.



Why? Because he has done his job. Beneath the story of a love affair, Titanic tells another story, that of a spoiled high-society girl with an identity crisis: she is confused, doesn't know what to do with herself, and DiCaprio, much more than just her love partner, is a kind of "vanishing mediator" whose function is to restore her sense of identity and purpose in life. His last words before he disappears into the freezing North Atlantic are not the words of a departing lover, but the message of a preacher, telling her to be honest and faithful to herself.



Cameron's superficial Hollywood Marxism (his crude privileging of the lower classes and caricatural depiction of the cruel egotism of the rich) should not deceive us. Beneath this sympathy for the poor lies a reactionary myth, first fully deployed by Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous. It concerns a young rich person in crisis who gets his (or her) vitality estored through brief intimate contact with the full-blooded life of the poor. What lurks behind the compassion for the poor is their vampiric exploitation.



But today, Hollywood increasingly seems to have abandoned this formula. The film of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons must surely be the first case of a Hollywood adaptation of a popular novel in which there is sex between the hero and the heroine in the book, but not in its film version - in clear contrast to the old tradition of adding a sex scene to a film based on a novel in which there is none. There is nothing liberating about this absence of sex; we are rather dealing with yet more proof of the phenomenon described by Alain Badiou in his Éloge de l'amour - today, in our pragmatic-narcissistic era, the very notion of falling in love, of a passionate attachment to a sexual partner, is considered obsolete and dangerous.



Avatar's fidelity to the old formula of creating a couple, its full trust in fantasy, and its story of a white man marrying the aboriginal princess and becoming king, make it ideologically a rather conservative, old-fashioned film. Its technical brilliance serves to cover up this basic conservatism. It is easy to discover, beneath the politically correct themes (an honest white guy siding with ecologically sound aborigines against the "military-industrial complex" of the imperialist invaders), an array of brutal racist motifs: a paraplegic outcast from earth is good enough to get the hand of abeautiful local princess, and to help the natives win the decisive battle. The film teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or to be destroyed by them. In other words, they can choose either to be the victim of imperialist reality, or to play their allotted role in the white man's fantasy.



At the same time as Avatar is making money all around the world (it generated $1bn after less than three weeks of release), something that strangely resembles its plot is taking place. The southern hills of the Indian state of Orissa, inhabited by the Dongria Kondh people, were sold to mining companies that plan to exploit their immense reserves of bauxite (the deposits are considered to be worth at least $4trn). In reaction to this project, a Maoist (Naxalite) armed rebellion exploded.



Arundhati Roy, in Outlook India magazine, writes that the Maoist guerrilla army



is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called independence, have not had access to education, health care or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadres who have lived and worked and fought by their sides for decades. If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have - their land . . . They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated . . . their ragged, malnutritioned army, the bulk of whose soldiers have never seen a train or a bus or even a small town, are fighting only for survival.



The Indian prime minister characterised this rebellion as the "single largest internal security threat"; the big media, which present it as extremist resistance to progress, are full of stories about "red terrorism", replacing stories about "Islamist terrorism". No wonder the Indian state is responding with a big military operation against "Maoist strongholds" in the jungles of central India. And it is true that both sides are resorting to great violence in this brutal war, that the "people's justice" of the Maoists is harsh. However, no matter how unpalatable this violence is to our liberal taste, we have no right to condemn it. Why? Because their situation is precisely that of Hegel's rabble: the Naxalite rebels in India are starving tribal people, to whom the minimum of a dignified life is denied.



So where is Cameron's film here? Nowhere: in Orissa, there are no noble princesses waiting for white heroes to seduce them and help their people, just the Maoists organising the starving farmers. The film enables us to practise a typical ideological division: sympathising with the idealised aborigines while rejecting their actual struggle. The same people who enjoy the film and admire its aboriginal rebels would in all probability turn away in horror from the Naxalites, dismissing them as murderous terrorists. The true avatar is thus Avatar itself - the film substituting for reality.



Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and critic

Response to Shankar

Dear Shankar,

Same here, I too got excited when I first read this document. It is not very flashy and very down-to-earth but thoroughly sensible. Your question "why should we follow the traditions of Jesus and Mohammad?," is slightly misplaced. Actually, a considerable portion 'us' are already followers of them. The idea is to retain and even reinforce whichever good is in those traditions. For example, the idea of ‘all human beings are equal’ is in Islam and Christianity, while Hinduism's defining feature is fundamental inequality of humans.

I don't think anybody in this world is a genuine believer. There may be some. I have not come across a single person who actually believes in God. It is a different matter that they follow rituals, abide by many of the religious prohibitions, if not always in practice but at least in principle.

Atheists like you and me can and should reject all religions. Let me remind you what our Old Gramsci once wrote: "I don't go to church. I am not a believer. We must be aware of the fact that those who believe are the majority. If we keep on having cordial relations with atheists alone we shall always be minority."

Balijan Cultural Movement recognises the need to work with the existing traditions. It does so at two levels. Firstly, it traces and connects our emancipatory ideals from our own history and traditions. Secondly, it also seeks to provide a reinterpretation, reformulations of the traditions that oppress us.
In this way, it avoids the oft committed mistake of parochialism. It is much easy to locate and own up our own traditions and go ahead on our own. But, not every time we could afford to be so sectarian. We have to have a common cultural project with the others, particularly with those who oppress us. We have to work through the symbols and sensibilities that humiliate and alienate us. Making them historical, finding and showing how, many of our traditions and symbols and ideas have been appropriated and twisted, we can have a wider project of engaging with what is 'mainstream,' hegemonic and mass mediatised brand of brahmanical Hinduism.

To historicize is to subvert anything more fundamentally than the mere rejection can achieve. Through historicizing we can retain whatever is good and productive in the religious while stripping it of the aura and mystic and authority the timelessness or very ‘ancientness’  gives it.

Sanghis cannot yet completely silence any criticism of essential inhumanity and stupidity of Hinduism. Particularly because there is no such single thing on the one hand and the Parivar is not yet that powerful. They say, ‘Okay, you can criticise if there is anything wrong with our religion, but don’t do it by being in the company of Christians and Muslims. They have no right to criticise our religion. We can criticise them, of course, because it is our country and our religion is majority here. This argument we need to strongly reject. Even a religion has a right to criticise another religion. In fact, the religions like Islam and Christianity with their principle of equality of humans before God should attack Hinduism strongly.

What is our problem with Christians and Muslims who are not dalits in this country? They don’t criticise Hinduism enough. They compromised with it. To appease Hinduism, they violated their own religious creed and started following untouchability and other Hindu practices. We should reject this logic of ‘my religion and your religion.’ Once we accept it, we are not far away from further succumbing to the Hindu fascist argument that ‘right or wrong, other religions cannot criticise our religion.’ This is again a variation of the standard Hindu theme. It is not the nature of the actions but stature of the person which determines its value. Rama killed Shambuka, why? Not for committing any crime. He was just educating himself and leading a decent life. Because Shambuka was a Dalit he could not lead a decent life.

We reject this line of brahmanical thinking and say that it is the content of the criticism not the beliefs of the critic which matters. We should further pressurise the people of universal religions like Islam and Christianity that they should mount more criticism of Hinduism. One must not be disqualified to use her reason just because of birth or belief.

And, what is this idea of MY religion? Hinduism is my religion just as polio is MY affliction. I don’t have to love it, I must do everything in my capacity to get rid of it. It is my moral responsibility to prevent it to happen to anybody else. We should treat Hinduism as OURS, just as we treat our deseases.

One good thing about the document is that it doesn’t simply argue for rejecting the Hinduism. I don’t think Hinduism is capable of internal reform the way Islam or Christianity are. Hinduism is incompatible with the age of democracy. The authors of the document wisely provide us a way out from this deadlock of either isolating ourselves by simply rejecting Hinduism or falling into the trap of avoiding the question altogether until the revolution comes (communist formula). Bahujan Cultural Movement opens up a way out by urging us to work through Hinduism. Reformulating it by reclaiming whatever was appropriated from our traditions and distorted or made subservient. In doing this, the document is clear-sighted enough not to fall into the trap of making it an internal affair of Hinduism but everybody’s right and responsibility to destroy this scourge of humanity. 

On Balijan Cultural Movement

I received this in 2009 September. I don't know what happened to this Manifesto or the movement it supposed to start. In humanhorizons yahoo group there seemed to be a short-lived discussion on this. 
I consider this to be the most important document of our times on the most important transformatory task of all progressive politics. It is unfortunate that it doesn't seem to attract much attention from any of the constituencies it appeals to. 
I nevertheless agree with most of it and abide by the spirit of it. I hope to offer critical commentary on it in the coming days. 
I don't know what has happened after the issuance of this document. I remember somebody once telling me that there was some meeting in Osmania University releasing this document. 










For the Press:

It has been decided to launch a national-level cultural movement known as the “Balijan cultural movement.”  The following is a statement of aims and objectives of the movement.

Balijan Cultural Movement

We are men and women from various suppressed and exploited castes, adivasi communities and religious communities coming together in the Balijan Cultural Movement in order to develop the cultural foundations of the fight against Brahmanism, casteism, and Hindu fundamentalism which support the social, religious, political, and economic exploitation in India.

            Following the lead of the great social revolutionary Jotiba Phule, we take the name of “Balijan” to commemorate our roots in ancient traditions of the great and good ruler sacrificed to the greed of Brahmanism.  Just as peasant women and men still say, “Let troubles and sorrows go and the realm of Bali come!” so we aim to build a society of freedom, equality and prosperity for all.

            We also follow the traditions of Buddha, Thirumavalavar, Jesus, Mohammad and the Sufis and Bhakti saints such as Kabir, Ravidas, Tukoba, Nanak and Basava.  Jotiba and Savitribai Phule, Tarabai Shinde, Karl Marx, Iyothee Thass, Periyar, Babasaheb Ambedkar and many others are our heroes and icons.

           We aim to promote and develop the self-respect, dignity, creativity, and truth seeking centered around the productive culture of the Balijan communities.  Just as Brahmanism and caste are taking new forms in the globalized society in the modern imperialist era, so we also need to develop new alternative development models, new understanding, new creativity.

            We also take note of the complexity of caste.  Within the caste system, there is a major antagonistic contradiction between the oppressing and oppressed castes.  Among the oppressed castes, there are important and rampant non-antagonistic contradictions.  These have to be overcome with those oppressed castes higher in the hierarchy taking a lead in reconciliation; out of the unity developed from this will come a strong movement for caste annihilation.

            The Balijan Cultural Movement will take action in the following fields:

·       Women’s Liberation: The earliest society of Balijans was matrilineal, and like Bali, Nirruti is a symbol of this original equalitarian society.  Balijan culture and religions, though affected by patriarchy, carries the seeds of this true gender equality.  The end of all inequality is impossible without ending gender inequality.  We will strive to bring liberation from gender oppression in all our activities and work for this in the cultural field.

·       Education: we will work towards debrahmanising education and building an educational system in which the Balijan peoples’ contribution to culture, science and language is brought forward.  We oppose the two-stream educational system in which an elite gets quality education in English and the masses are bound in badly taught vernacular medium schools.  We fight for the establishment of the common access of all children between the ages of 3 and 18 to quality education in English as well as their regional (recognized and unrecognized) languages.  We support a 60-40 scheme where 40% of the curriculum is decided by local needs, 60% by common national standards.  Sanskrit universities should be transformed into peoples’ universities and there should be at least one central university using the regional language in each state.

·       Festivals: we will promote the celebration of Balijan cultural festivals, including historical festivals related to the productive lives of the people (e.g. Nagpanchami, Mahasankrant, Pongal, Balipratipada, Ghatochav) and will remove their vestiges of brahmanic domination.  We will also commemorate the birth and death anniversaries of Buddha, Jesus, Ambedkar, Phule and others and the historic dates of balijan tradition, such as the burning of the Manusmriti (December 25), the battle of Koregaon (January 1), 3 January (the birthday anniversary of Savitribai Phule) as teachers’ day and 1 June (founding of the Satyashodhak Samaj) as global anti-slavery day.

·       Symbols: We will ensure the removal of all symbols of violence, religious and otherwise, from public places and media, and have them replaced by symbols of the productive culture of the people.  In national awards, the Brahmanic names used for sports and other awards (e.g. the names of Dronacharya) will be replaced by awards in the name of Balijan heroes such as Ekalavya.

·       Census: We will agitate for the inclusion of caste in the 2011 Census.

·       Marriage: We will promote intercaste and interreligious marriages among Balijans and provide protection for those who make such marriages.

·       History: Liberating Balijan history from its distortion by brahmanic thinking and reconstructing the true history of the people will be a major task.

·       Language: we will work towards desanskritizing, in vocabulary and spelling, the existing languages of India and develop these as true peoples’ languages.

·       Spirituality: We endorse and seek to strengthen and develop the spirituality of truth-seeking monotheism, humanism and rationalism.

·        Ecology: The culture of production was environmentally enriching and maintaining ecological balance.  Now there is an environmental crisis at a global level. Enriching the environment and sustainability can only take place on the basis of the productive culture of Balijans.  We will strive to develop and widely promote this Balijan productive culture.

·       Diversity: The main social groups among the Balijans should be represented in all social, political, religious and economic institutions in proportion to their number in the population.

The Balijan Cultural Movement will organize people’s movements on their cultural demands and on the basis of these we will pressurize the state and its administration to concede these demands.  Beyond this we will work for social transformation and the building of a new, prosperous and ecological society without cultural, economic, political and religious exploitation.

Organizational Structure

President: Kancha Ilaiah

Acting President: Gail Omvedt

Convener: Sunil Sardar

General Secretary: Braj Ranjan Mani

Treasurer: Dinesh Kumar

Steering Committee Members:

Bharat Patankar

R.K. Nayak

Rama Panchal

Dilip Ghawade

Than Singh Josh

Nagesh Chaudhuri

Sudhakar Gaydhani

S.P. Singh

John Dayal

V.B . rawat

Shamim Ahmad

Hukum Singh Deshrajan

Waharu Sonavane

Cynthia Stephen

Raj Kumar

Neela Lodhi

Ram Singh

Lalita Vijay Dhone

Bal Krishna Renke

Jayram Singh Jay

Motilal Shastri

Vimalkirti

Subhash Savarkar

Ram Avadhesh Singh

Chandrabhan Boyar

Committee on Caste: Hukum Singh Deshrajan

Committee on Gender: Waharu Sonavane

Committee on Language: Nagesh Chaudhuri

Committee on Religion: Bharat Patankar, Sukhvinder Singh siddhu

Committee on Fundraising; Dinesh Kumar

Committee on Arts and Media; Ivan Kostka, Sagar

Committee on Research and publication: Braj Mani, Gail Omvedt

Committee on Youth: V.B. Rawat, Viduy Roy Malaviya, Avinash Nimkar, Pramod Mool 

Dalit unity is undermined’ Karthik interveiws Gorringe

D. KARTHIKEYAN



Interview with Hugo Gorringe, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh.







In the recent past, there has been a lot of debate on the emergence of Dalit parties in Tamil Nadu’s political sphere on the basis of Dalit identity. A larger identity constructed by the Dravidian movement has not only failed to transcend caste identities but has also suppressed the Dalit question through its hegemony. In this interview to Frontline, Hugo Gorringe, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh and author of Untouchable Citizens: Dalit Movements and Democratisation in Tamil Nadu (Sage 2005), talks about the emergence of Dalit movements, Dravidian hegemony and the future of Dalit politics in Tamil Nadu.



Gorringe has written several articles on caste, violence, protest and policing. He was in Madurai recently. Excerpts:



How did the idea of doing research on a Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu evolve?



My father worked in the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary (TTS) in Madurai, so I grew up in Tamil Nadu between the ages of 4 and 11. During these years, I was able to make good friends. After we left, I had the opportunity to visit Madurai once every three or four years to keep up the connection with my friends, maintain my Tamil and meet people. The TTS is a place where Dalit theology is very important and I was exposed to dialogues between Gandhi and Ambedkar on untouchability as well as the social inequalities prevalent here. For my bachelor’s degree, I wrote a 10,000-word project about my experience with Dalits in India. I thought that the project was easy to do and also would give me opportunities to meet my friends.



During that project, though, I met more people and learned more about persistent caste inequalities. Following up on that experience, and realising that not much work had been done about Dalits and their movements in English, I thought of filling that gap. That was how my PhD project came about. Scholars like Michael Moffat (An Untouchable Community in India: Structure and Consensus; Princeton University Press, 1979) had argued that caste was based on structural consensus and that groups at the lower order replicated the forms and relationships of those at the upper strata.



Others argue that the lower caste groups in fact fight against caste. The situation has changed dramatically since Moffat’s work was published, and Dalit movements have mobilised across the State. I wanted to understand these contemporary caste relations and chart the challenges to caste hierarchy.



How important was your PhD in developing your understanding of caste and exploitation that continue to frame the lives of Dalits?



My PhD introduced me to the everyday life of Dalits. Once I got to know members of the movement, my PhD research took me into villages and urban slums that I had not visited before and opened my eyes to the subtle manifestations and the everyday practical difficulties of Dalits and how they are discriminated against both in civil as well as political society.



One of the significant features of your work was the concept of production of space and reclamation of rights to public space. How important is this concept in the case of Dalits?



The notion of space is the central social idiom of the Dalit struggle. At least superficially, the transformation of Puthiya Tamizhagam (PT) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) as political movements has enabled them to claim space within urban areas on par with other parties as can be seen in wall posters, flagpoles and murals. Likewise, few towns and villages in the urban periphery remain untouched by the symbols of Dalit politics. Given the immense struggles and battles that ensued to gain acceptance for these symbols, the fact that they are now commonplace in itself is extremely significant. On a more concrete level, Dalits in urban areas continue to live predominantly in slums or particular enclaves. Urban space in that sense is still marked by caste; people seeking homes for rent are often asked about their caste or are asked to get references from upper caste people before being offered a place. In rural areas, Dalits still reside in cheris outside the village and must struggle for access to roads and common resources.



Even in the case of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government’s Samathuvapuram project, [a residential area] where people of different castes live side by side, lack of engagement between them in common cases and spaces indicate the continuing resilience of caste sentiment.



How important do you think is the emergence of Dalit parties such as the VCK and the PT in Tamil Nadu’s political sphere?



The rise of parties like the VCK and the PT is precisely about compelling the Dravidian parties to accept Dalits as political players. In the case of the VCK, so far they seem to have achieved that but the accusations that they levelled against other Dalit politicians – as being non-representative and out of touch with the realities of untouchability – are now being levelled against the VCK. Dalits I have spoken to felt that there are so many pressing issues that need to be addressed, but the VCK leaders have failed to address them in their pursuit of larger issues like the Sri Lankan conflict.



Whilst it is a real sign of progress that a ‘Dalit Party’ can speak out on wider issues, the failure to engage with the concerns of their core constituents can foster disillusionment.



Dravidian hegemony, achieved through the Dravidian parties’ investment in symbolic capital such as social honour and trust and creation of symbols, idioms of glorious past, was one of the major reasons for the suppression of the Dalit question. How far do you think the Dalit parties are able to challenge the hegemony?



The Dalit parties’ failure to challenge Dravidian hegemony is one of action rather than analysis. If one listens to [VCK leader] Thirumavalavan in Dalit circles or reads his work or that of D. Ravikumar [Member of the Legislative Assembly representing the VCK], they offer an insightful analysis of brahminism and of the influence of Dravidian movement and they explain how Dalits buy into that rhetoric. Despite this, the VCK has allied itself with both main Dravidian parties rather than attempting to consolidate a Third Front. The pertinent question is whether the decision to ally with Dravidian parties is pragmatic or principled.



Initially it was a pragmatic move to escape persecution and establish the VCK as a political player, but increasingly they seem to be buying into the system. Yes, they have gained some concessions and have given a voice to marginalised people to some extent, but when leaders of resistance movements fall at the feet of Dravidian leaders, you see the transformation of figures of liberation to establishment figures.



There is an accusation that the inclusive rhetoric of the Dravidian movement bypassed Dalits only to empower the regionally dominant middle castes who oppress Dalits and commit atrocities against them? How far is this true?



The Dravidian movement was always anti-Brahmin but was never systematically anti-brahminical as a philosophy and never has campaigned for that. In fact they never challenged the structural hierarchy except in symbolic ways, meaning that we still have caste oppression both at village and urban areas by dominant castes who have supplanted the Brahmins as power holders but follow brahminical policies. Brahminism continues to hold sway.



The egalitarian ideology of Periyar has not come into fruition. Even Vanniyars and Thevars had to struggle for inclusion into Tamil politics. Indeed, the history of Tamil politics has been one of successive struggles by marginalised sections in society. The failure of Dravidian parties is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that political contestation is still articulated and carried out on caste lines.



Still the struggle continues?



Yes, after Vanniyars and Thevars, it was Pallars (Devendrars) and Paraiyars (Adi Dravidars) and now it is Arunthathiyars who are struggling for political inclusion. This happens precisely because caste continues to have symbolic and material substance and remains an important category of practice. This is not to say that social relations have been static. By and large, there is a widespread decline of dependency among Dalits. But the advancement of marginalised communities is largely incidental to, rather than a product of, Dravidian policies.



Even Dalit movements are mobilising on caste issues, and it is a paradox to see that anti-caste movements are reinforcing the social structures they want to eradicate. There are a number of reasons for that; firstly, Dravidian hegemony is so strong that whatever the leaders say and think, Dalits cling to a Tamilian identity. The failure of parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Communist Party of India and the CPI(M) testify to that.



Secondly, it reflects a lack of democracy among Dalit movements. The focus on big leaders, which reflects the dominant form of Tamil politics, itself leads to division and status competition. Thirdly, movements have tended to be particularly sensitive to atrocities, which is important in itself, but perhaps also entails a failure to work systematically against caste divisions. Even as the VCK recruits members from the backward castes, thus, they struggle to gain a foothold amongst Pallars and Arunthathiyars. The result is that now each caste has its own heroes and mass figures that are inimical to Dalit unity.



Talking about “heroes”, Dalit movements of late have been involved in reinventing their own caste histories and glorifying “heroes” from the past. Could this be seen as discourses of empowerment?





Dalit movements started off as autonomous political forces but have succumbed to Dravidian hegemony in the belief that they cannot stand alone.

Caste histories can well be seen as discourses of empowerment and we shouldn’t belittle their importance because they provide at least symbolic forms of capital and have been instrumental in altering the aspirations and self-perceptions of the subaltern groups.



But do you not think that there is a danger of this form of symbolic capital not turning into social action?



Yes, there is a double-edged character for this as they detract the movements from any sense of common struggle and they can lead to status competition among Dalits as in the case of Devendra Kula Vellalars. From that perspective, campaign strategies which are formed on common issues such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1999, World Conference Against Racism facilitate cross caste mobilisation.



Perhaps, the best example of such awareness and mobilisation is Ambedkar’s Birth Centenary, which made him a leader of pan-Indian stature and took him to the remotest corners as champion of the oppressed. If Dalit movements can build on such platforms, or those of land rights, there is more hope for Dalit liberation than the advancement of particular communities.



Most Dalit scholars believe that the idea of resistance politics identified with the VCK has become a casualty after its entry into electoral politics.



The compulsions of electoral politics, which engender compromise and hinder spontaneity, are the reasons for that. Thirumavalavan could rush to villages during the 1990s and interact with people; now it’s not happening and he cannot do that. Many are disillusioned with this professionalisation and bureaucratisation and the focus on Tamil nationalism. The seeming desire to become a general party rather than focussing on issues largely affecting Dalits is rather depressing for some cadres though others revel in the party’s strength. But having said this, all the movements suffer from this malaise.



We have to ask whether the Dalit struggle can be advanced by espousing Tamil nationalism. The VCK has been able to gain some concessions and goodwill from its political partners through this strategy, but we must ask at what cost these gains have been won. The VCK mobilisation in Karnataka, for instance, is resented by other Dalit parties who see them as primarily a Tamil party. Dalit unity is thus undermined.



What are the significant areas where the VCK still wields a lot of influence?



In some key areas, the VCK continues to inspire people to follow them, and some shades of women’s empowerment are also taking place. One notable thing is that in Madurai, R. Pandiammal – whom I mentioned in my book – has risen to become the district secretary from being a grass-roots worker. This move needs to be applauded as not many parties have elevated active women to positions of responsibility.



Secondly, they continue to carve out spaces in terms of book launches, art festivals and conferences. One VCK member told me that Thirumavalavan talks about Dalit issues in these platforms in a way that is no longer possible on political platforms. Finally, there is a suggestion by many people that the VCK is now engaged in the murkier forms of politics like katta panchayats (kangaroo courts). On the one hand this heralds the party’s arrival as a significant political player – either because rumours are spread about them or because they are powerful enough to engage in such activities. On the other it raises questions about the party’s ultimate objectives. If the aim is a share of political power then this is a step in the right direction, but if the aim is to transform politics and challenge caste hierarchies, then this is a retrograde step.



Your view on the question of compartmental reservation…



Dalits feel that there are so many pressing issues that need to be addressed, but the VCK leaders have failed to address them in their pursuit of larger issues like the Sri Lankan conflict.



I am deeply sceptical about the Arunthathiyar reservation. For a start, if the State filled the 18 per cent available [to the Scheduled Castes] fully and properly there would be no need for compartmental reservation. Although it is true that the Arunthathiyars are the weakest of the main Dalit castes, this move can be seen as a form of ‘divide and rule’ that channels Dalit mobilisation into caste-based struggles rather than anti-caste struggles.



Furthermore, the issue of reservation is particularly important because the persistence of caste in contemporary Tamil Nadu, for me at least, rests less on ‘purity and pollution’ and more on the question of identity, honour and caste pride. Compartmental reservation feeds into this dynamic and fuels the logic of identity-based politics. It does not help to overcome the dialectic between honour and humiliation, whereas general schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme at least have the potential to transcend caste boundaries.



Is there any scope for Dalit parties to become politically self-autonomous?



Dalit movements here started off as autonomous political forces but have succumbed to Dravidian hegemony in the belief that they cannot stand alone. The Third Front in 1999 and actor Vijaykant’s limited success signals that there is scope for non-Dravidian politics, but there have been no sustained attempts to build up such a campaign. This indicates that Dalit parties are caught up in the workings of everyday Tamil politics, with the result that the options open to them are limited to Tamil nationalism, idolisation of Periyar at a rhetorical level and the symbolic occupation of space. Only if Dalit movements stand apart from the Dravidian parties will we get a sense of their autonomy.



What are your current projects?



I am currently reading a lot of literature to think more theoretically about the underpinnings of caste and caste conflicts, thinking through workings of social power and the way in which everyday interactions form the basis of caste structures.



Such a bottom-up perspective offers an insight into why caste continues to inform everyday life even 60 years after Independence. I am also considering the possibility of carrying out a follow-up study on Dalit politics in Tamil Nadu that would chart the changes in Dalit mobilisation over the past decade. The vibrant Dalit movements that I studied in 1999 are now established political parties and I am keen to tease out the implications of this shift.

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

This is one of the greatest articles ever written on writing. Not that even in my dreams I could aspire to conform to great Orwell's well-argued rules, but nevertheless I consider this piece is inspiring and revealing. 

Suddu has come to a point where he should give up his arcane academic prose and settle for less frightening but more communicative forms of writing. I advised him- I don't have the superstitious belief that you have to follow the things you preach to others - to read and follow this article. He, in his Emperor-like way, asked me to send it to him. I am posting it here.  

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

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Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that i can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)
2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder .
Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa)
3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?
Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
Communist pamphlet
5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!
Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more ofphrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:
Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning withouth those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.
Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.
Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.* The jargon peculiar to

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*An interesting illustration of this is the way in which English flower names were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, Snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning away from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.

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Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.† Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in

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† Example: Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness . . .Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bittersweet of resignation." (Poetry Quarterly)

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the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like "objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip -- alien for akin -- making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.