Home

sSc  SOCIAL STUDY CIRCLE   di

(ESTD 1982)

dalitindia

www.dalitindia.com                                           ssc@dalitindia.com

***********************************************************************

       Black is Beautiful!                                                                   Dalit s are Dignified!!

DELHI CENTRE

 

 

Loaded on 21-04-2009 FN

 

DEVELOPMENT ROUTES TAKEN BY SC&ST DALITS 

 

 

 

SC&ST Dalits are the Natives of the Indian Sub-Continent.  They are the Children of this Land – being the Sons of the Soil, and Daughters of this Earth.  They are the Indigenous People of this Country.  Basically, historically and traditionally SC&ST Dalits have been Agriculturalists, Hunters, Food Gatherers in Forests, Hunters, Fishermen, Miners, Craftsmen and Builders.  They have thus been Primary Producers, and Creative Working Classes.

 

The SC&ST Dalits are the founders creators and builders of Indus Valley and surrounding Harappan Civilisations.  They were excellent Town Planners, and highly Specialised Engineers.  They had a beautiful Language, Script and Literature.  All these were destroyed by the invading cruel crude and barbaric aryans.  But, they still have useful highly informative and extensive Folk Arts, Music and Tales, that are very rich extensive and deep.  The brahmins, as the direct descendants and successors of the destructive aryans, have continued with their cruelties and exploitations, to the utmost lengths and unimaginable depths.  They had turned the exploitations of SC&ST Dalits into an extremely powerful inescapable system, where they need not directly come into contact with the poor SC&ST Dalits.  Through a hierarchic graded society, fractured into complex isolated watertight layers, with differential rights and privileges at one end, and oppression and exploitation at the other end, flowing in opposite directions, the brahmins have been controlling the Society in a very sophisticated manner, with invisible remote controls, and multiple channels of suppression and subversion.  Life of SC&ST Dalits had therefore been, too oppressive to be recounted or explained.  It is too severe and bad to be tolerated and lived with.  Hence, at the slightest opportunity, SC&ST Dalits, had always been trying to escape and run away from the deadly grips and cancerous clutches of the evil brahmins, and their oppressive and cruel brahmanic system.

 

The Options SC&ST Dalits often took to escape the brahmins, brahmanic system and their Oppressions and Cruelties were –

 

1.         Running Away and Receding to Escape from the aryan-brahmins, right from the Indus valley Times, around 1500 BC

2.         Emigration to other Lands

3.         Taking to radically New Jobs

4.         Serving New Migrants, Conquerors and Rulers as –

a)      Guides

b)      Attendants

c)      Personal Attendants

d)      Domestic Helps like Ayahs, Orderlies, Peons, Messengers

e)      Horsemen, Coach Drivers, Drivers

f)        Guards, Watchmen, Body-Guards

g)      Watch & Ward, Foot Soldiers etc

5.         Conversions to the Faiths and Religions of Conquerors and new Rulers

6.         Education of the new Rulers – from the Islamic Madrasas to Modern Western system of formal organised disciplined Liberal Universal Education

7.         Professional Trainings

8.         Employment in –

a.                        Coffee and Rubber Plantations

b.                       Tea Gardens and Textile Mills

c.                        Office Boys

d.                       Factory Workers

e.                        Clinics, Dispensaries, Hospitals etc on any job right from Attendants to taking up work as Ward Boys, Ayahs, Assistants, Lab-Attendants,  

              Maternity Ward Attendants, Maternity Assistants etc 

f.                         Teachers – mostly Trained Teachers of Lower Grade and Higher Grade basically in Village Schools; some Graduate Teachers, few Post-

              Graduate Teachers, generally in the Panchayat Govt and Missionary Schools in Rural Areas; Municipal Corporation Govt and Primary Schools

g.                        Lecturers in Colleges, and in rare Cases in Universities, with rarer few Assistant Associate and Professors, and negligible cases of Principles 

h.                        Nurses

i.                          Few Doctors, especially in the Villages and Rural Areas; in Municipal and Corporation Dispensaries, Primary Health Centres; and in some

              cases in Missionary and also few in Govt Hospitals

j.                         Some as Graduate Engineers, and many others in the lower levels of Subordinate Engineering Services, as Draughtsmen etc in the Drawing

              Offices, Survey Departments, PWD, MES etc  

k.                       Railways, Posts and Telegraph, Police and Army

 

With all the shortcomings, Conversions to Christianity, and to some extent Islam appear to be the lasting and impressive Method of Development of SC&ST Dalits.  For, Conversions had ensured, growing lasting and holistically sustained Development.  The Development due to and after Conversions, had not been in most cases individualistic, but covering whole Families, Groups, and in some cases whole Villages, Communities and Entire Regions or Belts.  The Converted might not have Developed Financially and in hierarchic Ranks Officially or Socially.  But in awareness organisation solidarity and also intellectually educationally and socially the Converted stand heads and shoulders above all other SC&ST Dalit Communities.  And they have become Socially Conscious, and gained the most important Dignity.  That is more important.  That is why after leading many Struggles, Baba Saheb opted for Conversions.

 

Most of the grassroot Developments as Teachers Nurses Attendants on a widespread large scale could be seen amongst the Converts.  Look at the Ansaris, Querishis etc in Islam, and individual Cases like Amritraj Brothers in Tennis; Peter, Manual etc in Hockey, Gopu from Karnataka and East Bengal in the late Fifties in Football.. We should always be proud to say that they are all from SC&ST Dalit Communities.  One can still see the effect of Conversions vividly and very clearly in the North-East, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and almost all Coastal Areas in both East and West.

 

In view of all the above, the real big burden and Responsibility of all and every section of the growing Middle Classes amongst We SC&ST Dalits is this – Go in always for Group Development, Collective Development, Mass Conversions on the lines of Baba Saheb, and not for Individual Changes or exclusive Personal Development.  How we can achieve this, in the badly divided and differentially dragged and pulled SC&ST Dalit Communities, is definitely our headache and problem now.  If we are to really qualify ourselves, as many of us tend to claim, to be Intellectuals, Leaders, Pioneers etc, let us stop grinding our own Axes, promoting our own odd pet strange Ideas, private Goals, but find ways and means, methods and strategies for holistic Development of whole SC&ST Dalit Communities.

 

*****************************************