The descent of Man

The Shudra: A Philosophical Narrative of Indian Superhumanism

Author: Jalalul Haq

Publisher: Navayana

Price: Rs 399

This book, The Shudra: A Philosophical Narrative of Indian Superhumanism, is a revised and updated version of the 1997 book The Shudra: An Extraction of the Human by Jalalul Haq, previously professor of philosophy at Aligarh Muslim University.

Like its predecessor, this confirms the status of the book as a seminal work, for it studies the construction of the caste-class divide in Indian society through several philosophical underpinnings in three detailed chapters, which can also be read as a brief history of Indian belief systems, folklores, and myth-histories that have been contextualised for readers.

Though Dr Haq invokes multiple philosophical standpoints to “extract” the “human” in the God-demon binary, this review outlines three principal arguments (not necessarily in this order and structure in the book) that he makes.

First, Dr Haq deconstructs the system of knowledge distribution, which is inherently linked to the creation of value systems — the governing levers of Indian society. Who creates them? Who must disseminate this knowledge? Of course, it’s an “Indian ascetic-priest” — not your ordinary teacher! They’re “all-powerful and could make or break the fortunes of the common folk.” How? Take the story of Ekalavya from the Hindu epic Mahabharata for example.

Because Nishadas (a forest tribe) were bereft of access to knowledge, the warrior Ekalavya created a bust of Guru Dronacharya and learned the art of archery. But the guru, to safeguard the interests of his disciple Arjuna as an undisputed warrior prince, asked Ekalavya for his thumb in guru dakshina. This incident cannot be considered a minor case, as is often argued, because the social gradation and sustenance of hierarchies were not incidental.

Dr Haq invokes the Purusha Sukta to prove this — his second argument. He writes, “The verse itself may be a matter-of-fact description of the division of work that any society would inevitably require and the consequent social gradation that such division would entail. But in the form of its institutionalised praxis, it meant that all rights were enjoyed by the few at the cost of total deprivation for the rest of the masses. What is more, it was also a source of the complete spiritual and existential mutilation of the people.”

And it’s no surprise that during the various everyday cultural, material and spiritual negotiations, such ascetic-priests (equivalent to modern-day Brahmins and pundits) acted as “mediators”. But they didn’t do just that, they “imposed their own will upon man, by calling it the will of gods”. This not only helped “upper-caste” people maintain their socio-politico-economic power but also led to the realisation of their eventual goal: To create punitive hierarchies that helped them strengthen the divide and further benefit from it.

This leads us to Dr Haq’s third argument. Early in the book, he establishes that the Indian ascetic-priest was always regarded as a “real being” and that “[a]s an eschatological-sociological category, he is the counter-image of the Shudra, who is the non-being, who is present only in his absence”. How? Dr Haq notes how Gods’ self-sacrifice in several religions — think Jesus or Vishnu incarnates — helped these ascetic-priests grab an opportunity to create a “subhuman” category. Dr Haq writes, “When God was thus killed, and man along with him, caste was born. With the death of man, the “caste-man” is born, who is not man at all. The caste-man is either higher, superior or lower, inferior. There are some who are superhumans: Who are gods or priests or Brahmans. And there are those who are subhumans, the commoners … the Shudra.”

Dr Haq also shatters several myths in this book. The first is that the Buddha and Mahavira were champions of equality. Dr Haq duly acknowledges that “neither the Buddha nor Mahavira was a believer in caste segregation, at least not in its extreme iteration, as in the theory and practices of later Hinduism. But it is still doubtful that they disapproved of class differentiation as such.”

The second is Hindu’s beloved text, the Gita’s glorified principle: Actionism. Mr Haq writes, “While on the surface, this seems like a socially wholesome approach, it worked in an altogether different way for the Brahmans. They escaped the consequences of their immoral activities precisely by justifying their actions and their life of involvement through these principles.”

All these arguments shouldn’t leave doubt in anyone’s mind as to how select people disenfranchised others, depriving them of even human dignity.

The upper-castes continue to demand all the privileges with which they were born as their birthright, and that is because forgoing them would leave them disadvantaged. To sustain this socio-politico-economic gap, they created self-beneficiary systems, which were formed on the good-bad, God-demon binaries. “And between this dichotomy of gods and demons, of Brahman and Shudra,” Dr Haq concludes, “there is a missing category, a fundamental omission — man.”

The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. Instagram/Twitter: @writerly_life