Technologies of Non-Violence: Bayard Rustin in India

After Proposition 8 passed in California last year, there was much discussion about the "black vote" and how it had damaged the cause of gay rights. Here was a sad case of two kinds of minority politics clashing with each other amidst a dizzying variety of overdetermined oppositions (black v. white, urban v. suburban/rural, middle class v. working class, religion v. secularism).

The figure of Bayard Rustin, civil rights leader and organiser of the 1963 March on Washington, as a black, gay, and labour activist all in one, is occasionally brought up as a hopeful reminder that we can live outside these binaries. Rustin is often quoted in the service of "coalition building," particularly this 1986 speech: "The new 'niggers' are gays. … It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. … The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people."

But Rustin's life is exemplary in one more sense, demonstrating how certain organisational methods for social movements, particularly techniques of non-violent protest, circulate across borders. We are told that the civil rights movement was "inspired by" Gandhi's efforts against the British. But how did this transfer actually happen, and what tensions did the process reveal? Rustin's trip to India in 1948 provides a sketch of the painstaking ways in which the transfer of ideas happens "on the ground."

Rustin's visit must be placed in the context of a decades-long relationship between African-Americans and India, cultivated by prominent figures like W.E.B. DuBois, and of international pacifist networks in which Rustin participated. He was there for the precise purpose of drawing some lessons from the Indian experience with a view to applying them to the U.S. In other words, Rustin did not come as a wayward traveler: he had a definite agenda and mission, and he was immediately critical toward nationalism and militarism in India as he saw them. John d'Emilio's book Lost Prophet reveals how Rustin was severely disappointed that the Gandhian cause had ultimately served nationalism, and concluded that it was "non-violent in its means, but essentially violent in its ends." At the same time, Rustin tried during his stay to influence Nehru to move in a more pacifist direction (this is, we must remember, the high point of the nation-state's birth, the time of Kashmir and Telangana).

Where should these technologies of non-violence be situated? Did they happen "in India" and were then "brought over" to the United States? Were they located instead in the insitutional workings of international pacifist organisations, or in the very minds of individuals like Rustin, in their ideologies and convictions? We should be aware of the conditions that give rise to certain openings for communication, to exchanges of people and ideas that can be traced, to use that ugly term, "transnationally." The many possibilities of the postwar moment to forge such links, whether in the service of anti-colonialism, anti-racism or anti-nationalism, can serve as examples and warnings for the fractured resistances of today.

On Mayawati II: The Axis of Caste

A few months ago, just after returning from India, I wrote that "Mayawati,while easily hailed by leftist historians as a hero (a Dalit woman in charge of India's most populous state), is considered by urban liberals to be a corrupt gangster." But also, that "it's nearly impossible to take on caste without a radical challenge to the establishment - which may involve the rise of Mayawatis and Lalus in the bargain."
I would like to revise some of these thoughts in light of a recent talk on the BSP in 2009 I heard at Harvard given by Christophe Jaffrelot, research fellow at Sciences Po in Paris.

Jaffrelot's most remarkable claim, in addressing why and how the rise of the BSP (especially as a governing party in U.P.) had been "emancipatory," was that it changed the way people thought about caste itself. He also gave Mayawati high marks, with all the necessary qualifiers and caveats, for enforcing laws aimed at preventing crimes against Dalits and attempting to extend reservations into the private sector. But it was the psychological, or rather psycho-social, aspects of her rule that have had the greatest effect. Voter mobilisation of different caste groups by the BSP has resulted, according to Jaffrelot, in Dalits no longer viewing themselves as parts of a vertical hierarchy (and thus subject to Sanskritisation), but as horizontally competing interest groups fighting for spoils. Dalits can now be "proud of who they are," and the presence of one of their own at the top makes all the difference.

One particularly biting challenge to Jaffrelot's view came from a questioner who insisted that the BSP was not "good for U.P.," and that the selective targeting of villages for development under the Ambedkar Village Scheme contrasts unfavourably with the more inclusive approach in states like Tamil Nadu, which as a result perform better in terms of human development indices for lower castes. There was also an "internal critique" by another (sympathetic) questioner about the infamous statues. What this shows, critically, is that for all the sophisticated approach of charts, graphs, and poli-sci bonhomie of Jaffrelot's presentation, the debate at the end of the day is a more visceral, and indeed a political rather than scholarly, one. The sense of deep ambivalence about low-caste governance that I captured in my slipshod June post holds up to scrutiny. This is partly to be explained by an historical conjuncture: the poorest and most backward states in India, Bihar and U.P., are also the most caste-ridden and prone to aggressive Dalit assertion. But their very backwardness begins to reflect badly on the Dalit politicians who rule them, as progress is understandably slow.

Jaffrelot softened some of my earlier truisms. Criticising Dalits in Lucknow as hopelessly corrupt stooges has a whiff of the old attacks on "Reconstruction rule" in the post-Civil War U.S. South. The emancipation of a category of people subjected to systematic oppression for centuries may have to proceed on a bumpy road. And while it is, no doubt, incredibly venal, having giant expensive statues of Ambedkar and other lower-caste leaders in the centre of Lucknow is a kind of symbolic righting of history. But the challenge of good governance, issued nowadays more as a political weapon against Mayawati, still remains. If Jaffrelot is to be believed, Mayawati has made the lives of many Dalits slightly better. For the BSP to succeed, as a Dalit party or otherwise, it must strive to reverse those damning indices (in education, health care, etc.), and quite literally keep the lights on in U.P. Mayawati as a revolutionary figure has been written into the history books. But, if the experience of the CPI(M) in West Bengal is any indication, that is never enough.