Paper short abstract:

Through the reminiscences of the ex-students of Abhedananda Boy's Home, West Bengal, this paper explores the comparative role played by state-sponsored secular training and socio-cultural reform movements in inculcating ideas of citizenship amongst orphan refugee boys.

Paper long abstract:

The National Discipline Scheme, incorporating physical and mental training, organisation and cultural development was developed by the Ministry of Rehabilitation, with the stated goals of instilling patriotism and a desire to serve the country disinterestedly amongst the refugee students of camps and colonies. It was launched in 1954 as an experimental measure at the refugee school of Kasturba Niketan in Delhi. It's 'success' led to its introduction in all refugee institutions by 1957 and eventual extension to non-refugee schools. Focusing on one particular refugee institution, the Abhedananda Boy's Home in West Bengal, which catered to orphan refugee boys, this paper attempts to understand the implications of this advertised success. It explores how this centralised project of turning refugees into ideal citizens through 'physical and mental training' was refracted through local socio-cultural beliefs and traditions. The home was run by the Ramkrishna Vedanta Math, which brought into the education of young boys its Hindu reformist ideals of proper conduct, service and religiosity. Through an analysis of the reminiscences of erstwhile residents and a teacher of this home, this paper will explore what impact these twin discourses of disciplining, one promoted by the state and the other by a socio-religious reform movement, had on the social identity and political sensibility developed by orphan refugee boys. Through this case study, this paper attempts to evaluate the comparative impact of secularised state-sponsored discourses and the efforts of more localised socio-religious organisations in the production and inculcation of ideals of citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

I propose divine kinship as a central vernacular idiom through which to analyse the complex interplay between citizenship, popular sovereignty and Indian 'patronage democracy'.

Paper long abstract:

Using the political ethnography of the 2009 National Assembly elections in Mathura town in the state of Uttar Pradesh (Northern India), the paper focuses on the implications of being ruled (and patronised) by 'ordinary people' and the ways in which 'ordinary people' are transformed into 'extraordinary people' with royal/divine/democratic qualities. I propose divine kinship as a central vernacular idiom through which to analyse the complex interplay between citizenship, popular sovereignty and Indian 'patronage democracy'. In Uttar Pradesh re-worked caste dharmas and patron caste/community deities are legitimising local ideas of sovereignty which are linked to particular 'castes'/clans'/families' and not to the entire 'Bahujan' (the common folk). Kinship, blood, past glories, and divine heroes and protectors are part of everyday rhetoric invoked by politicians, voters, opponents, and followers to refashion caste-based ideas of distributive justice, distribute material resources, and win elections.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that political subjectivities are fostered by institutional as well as extra-institutional forces. In turn, these subjectivies shape how institutions are imagined and constructed.

Paper long abstract:

If politics represents the struggle over the construction of the subject, the attempts by India's dalits to contest existing identities and foster new ones represent a highly political project. In my paper, I explore the multiple ways through which these identities are sought to be fostered, and claims and counter-claims around these processes are asserted. In particular, I draw attention to how the 'dissenting subject' is forged through 'middle-ground activism' of poor households of the Musahar castes, making claims on organizations in civil society as well as the state. The focus of the paper is on the processes through which such subjectivities are forged outside of, and sometimes autonomous of, formal organizations. The gamut of such subjectivizations is made up by the experience of solidarity forged through struggle, of changing social norms and economic dynamics, and of differential experiences with institutional mechanisms of governance.

In addition, I also examine institutional aspects of the subjectivization process. I do examine the role of the state (which has recently, in the State of Bihar, where this study is based, categorized the Musahar caste as 'mahadalit- the dalits among the dalits), of political parties such as the CPI(ML) (which counts several Musahar villagers in its ranks) and of so-called cultural organizations such as the Musahar Sevak Sangh (which seeks to provide an organizational basis for Musahar collective action as well as provide leadership to other 'mahadalit' castes).

The paper is based on the qualitative analysis of ethnographic data from villages in north-eastern Bihar, India.

Paper short abstract:

This study of the organization of a Dalit ("sweeper") community in the two decades after independence, discusses the manner in which the paternalistic notion of the "Harijan" subject was questioned critically and contested practically, as a claim to political agency and universal citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the manners in which ideas and practices of citizenship were appropriated and self taught by the "sweeper" community of Kanpur in the two decades following Indian Independence. While the Constitution promoted notions of equal citizenship, social welfare policies took paternalistic overtones with the officialization (inspite of being unconstitutional) of the Gandhian terminology ("Harijan"). Whatever little was done by the Congress government to advertize notions of equal citizenship and Dalit rights, was attributed to Gandhian and Hindu reformist organizations, who interpreted this task in terms of "Untouchable uplift", meaning in practice benevolent caste patronage.

The formation of the Harijan Bal Videarthy Sangh, a local organization of the sweeper community of Kanpur, shows that notwithstanding these official lacunas, these young enthusiasts redefined the meaning of "Harijan" in a manner that challenged the upper caste monopoly on social work. Their appropriation of the task of "Untouchable uplift" thus reformulated established notions that could seem acceptable to the local Congress authorities, while building their own internal authority and doing away with patronage. While "Harijan" depicted Dalits as the meek and problematic beneficiaries of national charity, they contested this definition practically by portraying themselves as the responsible upholders of national ideals of popular progress inside their community. Before adopting a more radical anti-caste discourse in the 1960s, the "Harijan" meaning was thus stretched from the start in a way that fitted a popular claim to universal citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will address how caste-class perspectives challenged ideas of liberal democracy in late colonial and postcolonial Bombay.

Paper long abstract:

My contribution to this panel draws in particular on the autobiography of Dalit Communist, R. B. More (1903-1972), and more generally on the cultural and political culture of late colonial and and early post-Independence Bombay, when Dalit communities found themselves addressed by two distinctive, if overlapping ideologies of emancipation, that of caste and class, each of which shaped their political subjectivities in important ways. By exploring the manner in which Bombay's distinctive urbanity shaped and enabled distinctive reworkings of caste and class, and by asking how these were experienced as politically salient forms of identity, the paper explores how subaltern neighborhoods (and the political geography of the city more broadly) shaped political subject-formation. In this way, the paper addresses the manner in which alternative political imaginaries of an emancipated collectivity challenged liberal notions of the politics and the political subject.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore how its turn toward transnational advocacy networks, commencing in preparation of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, affected political dialectics within the Dalit struggle and in particular the form of its engagement with the nature of citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

While the nature of citizenship in India today is rapidly changing as the country follows a ("shining") path of increasingly unrestrained capitalist development, people's ability to claim rights is at the same time still heavily influenced by their position in the ever-changing but persistent relational logic of caste. In reaction, the Dalit struggle in its contemporary phase has aimed to make the latent caste-based gradation of citizenship in India visible and push the state to address the problem of caste discrimination in the everyday realities of claiming citizenship rights. In doing so, the Dalit movement often wavers between an anti-caste stance and the assertion of caste identity. This paper seeks to explore how its turn toward transnational advocacy networks, commencing in preparation of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, affected political dialectics within the Dalit struggle. In particular, it discusses how in the decade after Durban, the conceptual (re)framing and the organizational networking that were part of the globalization of the Dalit struggle influenced the pendulum between caste assertion and caste elimination characterizing its engagement with the nature of citizenship in India.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the limitations of various concepts of citizenship deployed in explanations of the spread of the Maoist insurgency in India, and critically analyses the relationship between the individual and the state underpinning Maoist tactics.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, liberal concepts of citizenship have been appropriated in the Indian subcontinent by various sections of the urban bourgeoisie, in particular, left-leaning intellectuals and activists, to make claims off the Indian state on behalf of their poorer rural (sometimes urban) counterparts. In the context of the struggle between the Indian government and the Maoist revolution, citizenship has provided a convenient means for civil liberties groups to articulate a notion of 'the people' as set apart from both the actions and practices of the Indian government as well as the Maoist revolution, while at the same time promoting the reach of the Indian state. Life in Maoist areas, however, reveals the blurred boundaries between the villagers and the Maoists, the historic alienation of the state from people's lives, and as such the limits of liberal notions of citizenship, as evoked by the citizen's rights activists, to analyse the potential of people's relation with the polity. The paper argues that this liberal concept of citizenship ultimately obliterates the spaces for a more radical left politics. As proponents of this extreme left politics, the paper also critically focuses on Maoist tactics in showing up the state and its responsibilities to its citizens, reflecting on the implications of these tactics for their Marxian utopia and the future relationship between the individual and the state in a communist society.