Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

‘Caste is Race in Ancient Times, Race is Caste in Modern Times, Untouchability is an Aryan Construct. They said God has not created Untouchables.’ Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd goes on to say, ‘Many people from the Brahmin–Baniya castes have written about their own greatness in their autobiographies, in English and in the regional languages. But I have not seen even a single autobiography of a person born and brought up in the shepherd community’. He adds that it is in writing about themselves that people gain a sense of self-respect. Shepherd’s evocative memoirs reveal the struggle for education and dignity that a great majority of Indians undergo. As a little boy herding sheep and goats, he and his brother were the first to go to school. The author writes of his long and often interrupted journey to becoming a writer and an intellectual, without support and having to overcome adversities.

My Memoirs

From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual

Karthik Raja Karuppusamy

The Shudras echoes Dr Ambedkar's question in Who Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946. More than 70 years later, Kancha Ilaiah and his team of authors revisit this issue to give Shudras a voice again' -CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT The Shudras: Vision for a New Path weaves together multiple dimensions of the predicament of India's productive castes-in the spiritual, social, political, economic, philosophical and historical spheres. It reformulates their current position as well as future pathways. It strives to provoke Shudras-including regional political party leaders-all over India to realize their unique historical role in fighting unequal caste structures. And it gives a call to resist Hindutva, in which they have no liberated, equal space with the Dwija castes. At a juncture when the Shudra castes are regionalized and the Dwijas have become 'national', the fifth volume of the Rethinking India series, in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, seeks to bring home the real picture of their marginalized status in all key structures of the nation. It posits that the emancipation and progress of the Shudras are vital to sustain Ambedkar's constitutional democracy and move towards socio-spiritual equality.

Vision for a New Path

The Shudra

‘O Mother Lachumamma, your blouse is torn, Your hair is soiled, your sari in rags . . . Even in that condition what have you done? You planted saplings, walking backwards like a bull, In order to produce food from the mud.’ Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd translates these words of the Telugu poet, singer, activist Gaddar to emphasize the productivity of the ordinary people, the Dalit-Bahujans of India, who receive so little in return. Arguing forcefully against spiritual fascism, which refuses equality or freedom to the majority, he commends the buffalo as a productive animal that epitomizes the qualities of the Dalit-Bahujans. This book contains a selection from Ilaiah Shepherd’s columns in The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Deccan Chronicle, Hindustan Times among others, and journals such as Mainstream and Economic and Political Weekly. Of particular interest is the new Afterword that discusses his political and social programme for the Sudras of India, presenting his vision of a more just society.

A Critique of Spiritual Fascism

Buffalo Nationalism

‘The most gratifying thing for me [is] that [this book] was listed as a millennium book [by The Pioneer] along with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste. Moreover, it has been translated into several Indian languages. In a way it has become a weapon in the hands of Dalitbahujan activists’ (from the Afterword to the second edition). Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd writes with passionate anger, laced with sarcasm, on the caste system and Indian society. He looks at the socioeconomic and cultural differences between the Dalitbahujans and Hindus in the contexts of childhood, family life, market relations, power relations, Gods and Goddesses, death and, not the least, Hindutva. Synthesizing many of the ideas of Bahujans, he presents their vision of a more just society. In this second edition, Ilaiah Shepherd presents an Afterword that discusses the history of this book, often seen as the manifesto of the downtrodden Dalitbahujans. He talks of its reviews as well as of the abuse he has received from its detractors. He reminds us of the need for an ongoing dialogue. As he says, he wrote the book ‘for all who have open minds. My request to Brahmin, Baniya and neo-Kshatriyas [upper class Sudras] is this: You learnt only what to teach others—the Dalitbahujans. Now in your own interest and in the interest of this great country, you must learn to listen and to read what we have to say.’

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

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