The ‘Political publics’ manifest different notions of ‘publics’. There are two main theoretical propositions emanating from the problematization of the same. First, is it a distinct domain of political activity and engagement that has a direct bearing on the ‘political’, or in other words is it also a complex arena of subtle yet nondescript collective engagement that manifest collectivities against hegemony. Second, the notion of the political publics characterized by certain values, for example, the idea of an equal person as an engaged citizen in dialogue with each other. If each equal person is perceived as an ‘Individual’, what then is the scope and possibilities of serious engagement in a society fundamentally grounded around structures of graded inequality. Habermas has a view on this, arguing of the process of a rationally motivated consensus. Is the Habermasian concept of rationally motivated consensus applicable to the Indian context in the sphere of public life. These two theoretical propositions are important to clarify and unravel in order to deepen engagement in the political public within the Indian context. Furthermore, we need to contextualize the political public from a Dalit standpoint. This perspective remains unexplored especially in the domain of  the epistemology of the social, cultural and economic. From the methodological point of view, two processes needs epistemological attention. One, how do we talk about any concepts or idea. Should it be in many usages of these terms across different contexts for different people. Second, Is there a distinction between the narrativizing events of the subject and the categories that are used to represent reality in different modes of description. This paper is an engagement with these complex issues. It attempts to problematise the notion of the ‘political public’, contextualize the same to the Indian social reality, rationally reconstruct Habermas’s idea of the rationally motivated consensus and finally make propositions about the said domain from a Dalit standpoint.

Introduction: 

The notion of the Political public is very contested issues historically and epistemologically. Many political theorist and philosophers has  drawn an attention on idea of ‘public’ in the European context. In Habermas’s structural transformation of public sphere he talks about the conception of ‘common good’. According to him the normative notion of Publicness or public sphere solidify around common good i.e physical space for individual freedom association. All these abstract notion of theoretical public sphere has been criticized for example Nancy Fraser’s idea of multiple publics rather than focusing on universal aspects of common notion of public. Even in the Fraser’s understanding of public she hardly dealt with the issues of hierarchy and humiliation within the context of South Asian Countries. The idea of public in west and in eastern countries are contextually and historically are very much different on the ground of epistemologically. In India caste is the backbone of Indian society it created a distinction between touchable and untouchable. This distinction further deepen into graded inequality in socio-economic and cultural life of society. It is pertinent to note that one has to understand the distinction between margin and mainstream political publics within the historical and theoretical context. To put it differently notion of political publics has to contextualize within Indian socio-economic and cultural reality. Furthermore, narrating and articulating the Publicness or Political publics from Dalit epistemological standpoint becomes a crucial in order to understand or unravel the grass root democracy.

Broadly speaking, the Dalit socio-cultural and political movements are the products of tensions released by structural differentiation (Oomen 2010:20). The problematization of political public as a methodological issue is the main attempt to study the ‘Dalit standpoint subject in the context of public sphere in order to engage in a critical exploration. It is widely acknowledged that Dalit political public has challenges the existing primordial school of thought or theory which is highly influence by the Upper caste domain of knowledge. However, the established literature on Dalit social movement has largely neglected the following aspect: a) negation of mobilization and subsequent institutionalization, b) purposive collective mobilization, c) instrumental and symbolic goal of Dalit women (Oomen 2010). It is essentially to argue that caste was never an active category for the analysing of Dalits question. For example, the domain of knowledge in the existing Dalit women literature essentially claim on homogeneous womenhood (Rekha Raj 2013). Domain of public sphere is considered to be an important marker where political subjects emerge and acquired the space which enable the subject to exercise participant in a movement.

In the domain of social and political theory, subjectivity is the crucial aspect to grapple the issues of agency and autonomy of Individual in the public sphere. Similarly, in a social movement especially in a Dalit-bahujan movement the idea of independent political subjectivity is missing in the existing literature. Most of the social and political theorist neglected the aspects of mobilization and institutionalization of Dalit social movement. In the larger context of social and political theory of subjectivity is a contested idea. For example, there is a radical departure of subjectivity from unified to multiple subjectivity. The issues of political subjectivity have been largely deconstructed by the post-structuralist.

Insofar, Dalit public occupy a position on the periphery of society, they are humiliated in the public domain. In this sense, political public and its subjectivity are the mechanisms through which Dalit attempts to move from periphery of a society to its mainstream centre. That is, egalitarian social movement are the conscious effort to secure the justice, equality and liberty. Every social movement occurs in a public sphere and it is primarily determined by socio-cultural political factor. Once a social movement develops a commitment to ideology and organization, political subjectivity emerges. Thus, political subjectivity specified a set of goals for purposive collective action. Therefore, crucial aspect of political subjectivity are mobilization and institutionalization.

The purpose of the political public and subjectivity manifest in at least two respects: the fundamental role of the power structure and its meaning in the society and constitutive role of the ‘subject’ in the development of what we contemplate human subjectivity. In both the cases, however, the idea starts with the very notion of ‘systems of structure’.  There are number of theories about and conceptualizing a structure, a systematic process that shapes our ideas, positions and discipline our behaviour unknown to ourselves. Firstly, there is Freud’s psychoanalysis unconscious mind that governs the behaviour of people to a greater degree. Another one is Weber’s notion of understanding social change and human action, then Durkheim’s sociological understanding of collective conscience. Then there are the Marxist ideas of class structures as formative of human consciousness, complete with the idea of ideology and false consciousness, or the Hegelian idea of the spirit. There is also the post-structuralist idea of multiple subjectivity. There are many more ideas that theorizes the human subjectivity and behaviour in terms of implicit structure. In fact, the idea of some invisible structure are at work, fully unknown to us how human subjects are shape and direct our thought and behaviour deserve to recognized in social science academia.

Narrating and articulating the Dalit experience by exposing the biasness of history by which their social, political and cultural movement deliberately erased by the mainstreams debates and tracing the agency and autonomy of their struggle by which these women held against the social and political suppression become crucial in contemporary in Dalit socio-political struggle in India. In this paper, I will be attempting to address the following questions that has been changing and evolving over a period of time namely, how to understand the specificities of Dalit public and its experience in the context of social and political movements, secondly there are many social and political tensions in which Dalit are facing in a public life, in order to show how Dalit public life, differ from ‘other’ according to the location. Thirdly, the political process of Dalit in a public sphere have not been unearth in a mainstream political debates and it has also neglected the mobilisation and institutionalisation of Dalit women’s movement in a public sphere.

The political process of Dalit, however, dramatically widen the scope of political ‘subjectivity’ to understand the ‘subject’ itself as a political event. Many theorists on social and political movement have not taken the narratives and perspectives of Dalits into their theoretical and empirical work.  For instance, Dalit women have three categories of narratives i.e personal, political and social, these categories of narratives during 1950’s to 70’s were absent in academia and universities, it was 1980’s and 90’s where political process of Dalit mobilization took place in the various part of country like Uttar Pradesh and Panjab (due to BSP and BANCEF). The Left narratives of Women’s movement have completely ignored the ‘voices’ of Dalit women, their engagement with women’s movement was not based on ‘caste’ and its experience in a public domain. Left revolutionaries focus was on economic and land not on the issues of Brahminism and its hegemony. The shifting experience of women’s movement towards the specificities of Dalit women into the ‘political field’ has given a dynamic movement in the power relations. According to the Eva-Marian Hardtmann ‘the flow of meaning produced by the Dalit activist has historically been constrained by the broader network, which they were part of or were related to but where they were silent or muted such as those in Indian civil society’

Language and Narratives of Dalits

Now, the language and narratives play two important categories of Dalit into the Public domain. The question is what is the language of Dalit and how it has narrativised in the Dalit movement. Within Dalit movement there are two languages one is ‘negative’ and another one is ‘emancipatory’. The negative language ‘claims’ a certain kind of ‘humiliation’ on body as well as on mind. These negatives language developed through the caste or untouchability in the Hindu social order. The language is the critical point in a power relation, in this regard let me cite the predicament of a Dalit Women in Gwalior (This was my field survey during MA). This woman was a school teacher but was treated almost as ‘carcass’ by Upper caste, she then decided to give up the job and take up more decent looking job somewhere else but she couldn’t get a job. She was denied the right to appear differently in different sphere of opportunities. The closed reading of the language shows that Dalit women speaks about inhuman treatment. Therefore, theorising the experience in a different narratives and language is very imperative for Dalit women because it provides the authenticity to lived experience.

Secondly, on the other side Dalit struggles have emancipatory language, the meaning of emancipation is different to different people. The context of emancipatory identity does not derive from mere salvation or moksha but it derives from democratic upsurge or enlightenment revolution. The emancipatory identity is the first virtue of democratic revolution. What does emancipation actually mean? Does it mean transformation of individual personality or does it mean transformation of collective personality. Historical analysis of emancipatory identity can be drawn from clash between two sects, one who wants to uphold the status quo of social order and another one who wants to discontinue the social order. In the post-colonial India emergence of emancipatory identity grow due to very nature of working society. Theoretical and empirical knowledge of emancipation emerge with the emergence of ostracized group. According, to the Brian Fay emancipation involve an intervention in the affair of this world in order to alter the ‘natural course’ of thing to mark them more amenable to human satisfaction (Critical of Social Science: Liberation and its Limits 1987). The humanist-variant of emancipation reject the idea of traditionalism (here traditionalism means illusory devil which reject the scientific temperament of human idea). Humanism holds central idea of emancipation. In order to understand the social arrangement of society not in terms of sacrosanct but in terms of human lives then the social relation must be fixed in emancipation.

If we look at the emancipatory project of Dalit women in Ambedkarite movement their idea of India differs from mainstream Gandhian and Left Nationalism and this has been traced by the Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon in ‘We also Made History: Women in Ambedkarite Movement’.

If one follows the emergence of Ambedkarite consciousness one can see that their purposive collective mobilization and Institutionalization of movement began with the production of literature by the community in order to awaken the mass.

Dalit public sphere debates in India

During 1980’s and 90’s Dalit politics in India taken a central stage in Indian politics. Dalit political process acquires a greater dynamic not only in political field but also in public institution through reservation and Mandal commission. During 1990’s large number of both Dalit women and men started entering into the academic institution as well as in other institution to claim equal power sharing and their representative character develops a dynamic move in respect of dignity. The political process of Dalit started focusing on recognition and distribution of fair power. This was also a period of emergence of Ambedkar’s literature in the academic institutions. But the fact is that still the narratives of Dalit experiences are still missing in the academic discourse and in policy making. Dalits experience didn’t acquire the position in social and political domain. The close observation of Annie Namala in the context of Dalit Women ‘the practice has been to club Dalit women issues under the caption of women’s issue and discuss them in a general term. While analysis the situation of women, factors such as education, income, employment, resource distribution came into socio-economic discourse but the practice of caste and untouchability was never a separate, independent and active category in analyzing the Dalit women’s questions.

The end of the 1990’s emerge a paradigm shift in the debates on Dalits questions. The epistemological position of Dalit comes from their personal and political self-experience of humiliation in the power structure. Dalit writings produces much criticism of caste and untouchability and taking direct stand on left liberal on denial of caste as an active category. Most of social historian on social movement in Indian neglected the ‘position of Dalits’ in a Hindu Society. For example, it was Dr. Ambedkar’s in his famous essay on ‘rise and fall of the Hindu women’ he writes ‘who was responsible for fall of women it was Manu a Law giver who codified the Hindu books. A wife was reduced by Manu to a level of a slave in the matter of property, knowledge and subject to corporal punishment’. Such an epistemological position of Dalit writings challenges the social and political history written by elite and upper caste historians.

The history plays an important role in defining the social status of a specific group or community. As Rekha raj puts ‘politics of difference was the essence of Dalit women’s criticism’.  Sumedha Bodh, General Secretary, Rashtriya Dalit Mahila Andolan said ‘there has been a strong realization among Dalit women about the need to have separate platforms to speak and act’

Dalit literature writing especially their memoir has reproduced the Dalit studies on the structures of knowledge formation. The discourse on social science practice in India as put forth by Guru ‘divided into two cultural hierarchy i.e theoretical Brahmins who considered themselves a theoretical pundit with reflective capacity which makes them intellectually superior and empirical shudra an inferior mass whose lived experience on caste and untouchability has been completely ignored by the Brahmins in their writings’.

Mobilisation and Institutionalisation

According to T.K Oommen, ‘social movement in society are conditioned by three factor a) Its core institutional order; b) The principal enemy as perceived by the deprived; c) The primary goal pursued by the society’ (Oommen 2010). Putting the context of Dalit standpoint in the political subjectivity, however, dramatically widen the scope of ‘political field’ to understand the subject its meaning and symbol. How do we understand social movement? Do we understand in the context of protest or do we see social movement just a pressure group or an interest group demanding something which is historically been denied to them? Social movement emerge where there is a complete disagreement between citizen and the state or community or group wants a structural change in a society it can be both symbolic and instrumental. In any social movement consistency and stability is vital. Seasonal movement does not bring any kind of dynamic or fundamental changes in a society. The most important thing about social movement is consciousness of mobilisation and subsequently institutionalization of that consciousness. In fact, the social movement brings variety of human subjectivity into the context of ‘politics’ as well as ‘justice’.

Dalits mobilisation and institutionalisation enables to rediscover the struggle for self-discovery. The struggle for self-discovery or self-definition not just articulate about experience, but it also challenges the Brahminic social order. Emphasising on Dalit experiences within socially constructed and focused on caste based experience is very important from epistemological point of view. It is obvious that agency and autonomy of Dalit takes a different stand on other upper caste people. Therefore, this politics of difference is the essence and fundamental stand of Dalits criticism of elite nationalist history. The beauty of Indian Constitution is that it recognise the ‘Individual being’ without examine his or her social status. The structural composition of India is still an endogamous and the position of Dalits has been reduced to untouchable. The Seyla Benhabib expressed that ‘to understand and to combat of oppression it is no longer sufficient to demand women’s political and economic emancipation alone it is necessary to question those psychosexual relations in the domestic and private sphere within which women’s live unfold and through which gendered identity is reproduced’.

The recent ‘epistemological shift’ in Dalits writing emphasis on the questioning the category of ‘universality’. As Bell Hook point out ‘this is a direct appeal to the women in the audience to recognize Black woman in the crusade for women’s rights’.

Conclusion

To conclude, Dalit socio-political movement created a counter public sphere not just in the domain of literature but also in political sphere. Articulating and narrating the experience gain a momentum to create a counter social and political history which was denied by the mainstream social and political historians. The production of knowledge that emerged through Dalit writings has persuasively critique the mainstream upper caste hegemony. How does Dalit institutionalised their writing into the philosophical space? One answer could be through the ‘self-discovery’ and ‘empirical understanding’ of lived experience of caste and untouchability. The radical departure from ‘being victimhood’ to ‘being enlightenment’ draws an inspiration from Buddha, Jyotiba Phule, Savitri Bai Phule and Ambedkar.