Dalit-Subaltern Emergence In Religio-Cultural Subjectivity

Extracts from “Iyothee Thassar & Emancipatory Buddhism”

“What was the specific socio-historical context in which the dalit-subalterns made their historic bid to emerge as a subject in the religio-cultural sphehre? The sub-continent entered modernity while labouring under a particular vicious and collusive form of colonialism; it was vicious as well as collusive because, here colonialism was constituted of a compact between the Imperial British on the one hand and the locally dominant, to be specific, Brahmins, the Brahminical and the Brahminised castes known generally as the savarnas or twice born on the other (R Robinson, 1972)…..The revenue-hungry British both in logic and reality struck an unwritten deal of mutual interests with these social groups. In return for regular payment of revenue the former assured the latter of ‘non-inteference’ and in effect turned a blind eye to the consequent comprehensive Brahminical aggrendisemant, sectarian reconstruction of the socio-cultural scenario and the legitimation of the same as ‘custom and tradition’ (D Washbrook, 1993).”