l Abhinav
Anand Teltumbde
has announced his judgement about us (http://sanhati.com/articles/6366/). He
has called us "self-obsessed Marxists" with "frozen mind".
What can we say? As he himself admits, his stay was of a few hours and in that
short time span he was able to evaluate us conclusively and then declare his
judgement. However, during that same short stay, we too, were able to make some
impressions about Mr. Teltumbde. We shall start with some examples and then we
shall proceed to a parawise reply of
Mr. Teltumbde's article.
Of Self-obsession and Similar Diseases...
1. In his first statement during
the Chandigarh seminar, Mr. Teltumbde spoke for almost 1 hour. In that long
speech, he mentioned his own name at least 3 or 4 times. He began with
claiming, "Ambedkarites say that
Anand Teltumbde is a Marxist and Marxists say that Anand Teltumbde is an
Ambedkarite"! At one point, he says, "I don't like people who immediately agree with me"; at
another, "I saw a problem of
mathematics pertaining to surplus solved by Marx using algebra, but I found
that it was a problem of differential equation and then I thought why Marx has
solved it using algebra...then I solved it using differential equation and sent
it to an international journal and that was my first article (giggles)
published in an international journal...many years later when I was in IIT I found
that a Japanese scientist used my method in his research." Again, "I became a Marxist at the age of 7 and
I don't think anyone present here became a Marxist at that age." I can
give several such examples. However, above examples suffice to show what is the
real meaning of self-obsession. I think, Mr. Teltumbde is perfectly honest when
he says that he curses himself for having gone to Chandigarh. However, the
reasons that he is giving for this ostensible self-bashing, do not seem convincing
to us. We have a different explanation for this self-bashing, to which we will
come later. For this moment, we would like to argue that Mr. Teltumbde should
tell what does he mean by "self-obsession". If he is going by the
dictionary meaning, then definitely he needs to ponder over his own attitude.
He claims that
we were not open to free and frank discussions and were not encouraging
participation from outsiders to enrich our approach paper. However, he does not
give any reason for this particular charge. For example, had we not been open
to free and frank discussions on our approach paper, we would not have brought
Mr. Teltumbde from Jalandhar (he had already said that if we want him to
participate in the seminar even for a few hours, we will have to bring him from
Jalandhar to Chandigarh and then drive him back to Jalandhar, the same day, in
the evening) and then driven him back to Jalandhar. In our statement too, we
said that we are completely open to listen to him and learn from him. We had
(and still have) very high respect for him. In his stay of a few hours, he
spoke for at least one and a half hour and we listened without any interruption
and in the end too we offered him to stay and speak more. Had we not been open to debate and discussion on everything, we would
not have gone to that extent to ensure his participation in our seminar. However,
we must our high expectations about him crumbled like a cookie during his first
statement; we got to hear many things to which we could not find ourselves in
agreement, and so we also presented our criticism. However, I guess, Mr.
Teltumbde is not used to criticism and he had problems taking this criticism.
He did not say a word of disagreement in his second statement and everything
that he said was to express his agreement with what had been argued by myself
and Sukhvinder and also with what was written in our approach paper. I
completely disagree with this charge of Mr. Teltumbde that we were obsessed
with being proven correct. After his second statement also, he did not utter a single
word of reservation about the way in which the seminar was being conducted. In
fact, we (Mr. Teltumbde and myself) in person exchanged our phone numbers and
he agreed to come to Delhi for a longer discussion. However, Mr. Teltumbde is
completely silent about this in his article. We are surprised.
Parawise reply to Mr. Teltumbde's article
We have already responded
to the first paragraph above. So I will start with the second paragraph of his
article.
2. Anand Teltumbde charges us of mischief in
throwing the "raw records of the seminar open for public discussion".
He believes that public is not at the same stage of understanding as that of
the delegates of the seminar (so they cannot participate in the discussion!).
This is a ridiculous line of argument. All over the world, the statements of
participants in seminars organized by revolutionary groups or even academic
institutions are recorded and put online. There is nothing "raw"
about it. Had we edited the videos of seminar before putting them online, we
would have faced the charge of fabrication of statements. Moreover, why Mr.
Teltumbde is afraid of the "common" public? I do not think that
common public is not in a position to listen to and understand what Mr.
Teltumbde and other speakers said during the debate. We would urge Mr.
Teltumbde to see the video again and tell us, what the ignorant
"common" public would not understand. And how does this show that we
do not understand the reality of caste? I mean, how does providing access to
seminar debates to public is linked with our inability to understand caste?
That is why, we said in the beginning that this is a ridiculous line of
argument that does not lead us anywhere. We believe that not only providing
common and general access to seminar debates by us, but the very participation
of Mr Teltumbde in the seminar was traumatic for him, and that too, not for the
reasons that he is mentioning, because he cannot support even a single charge
against us with facts and details. So we would urge him to rethink his line of
argument.
3. In the third para, first Mr.
Teltumbde again puts the responsibility of "leaking" of his statement
to the media on us and asks "can he (Abhinav) be absolved of this
responsibility?" We would urge Mr. Teltumbde to learn to take the
responsibility for whatever he says. He himself admits that he did say and in
fact, he actually believes that all of Ambedkar's experiments ended in a
failure. Then what is the problem if a Hindi newspaper quotes it? And how does we become responsible for it? In all
seminars, media is invited. It was not a closed door discussion of a Party and
Mr. Teltumbde knew it. Once he had said what he said, he should not shy away
from taking the responsibility rather than passing it on to somebody else.
Secondly, Mr. Teltumbde puts forwards a plea to understand the context in which
he "stood and spoke" there so that one can understand what he did in
his second statement. However, we would urge him to make us understand that
context. In his long speech, there was nothing to be deciphered or
deconstructed. He said in the beginning of his speech that he found difficulty
in reading the approach paper as it was in Hindi, but he managed to read the entire paper. He said that the paper was
written with a brahmanical mindset and it smacks of casteism. Now he is saying
that there was "only a thin line that differentiated it from casteist and
brahmanist approaches". Now, tell us Mr. Teltumbde, isn't that a
volte-face? Moreover, in his first statement, Mr. Teltumbde said that we are
dogmatist Marxist. But in his second statement he said, "you said that
Marxism is not a dogma, I also say that, so be it." Isn't that a
volte-face, Mr. Teltumbde? Mr. Teltumbde said that we are trashing Ambedkar and
Phule. We responded that we are not trashing them and we already acknowledged
their contribution in the approach paper as well as our statements. However,
that does not and should not stop us from presenting a critique of the
philosophy, politics and economics of Ambedkar. There is no place of
apologetics in the arena of criticism. We must call a spade a spade. To this,
Mr. Teltumbde agreed and said that he too does not agree with Ambedkar's
politics and philosophy. However, in his first statement he claimed that many
people do not know that Ambedkar followed the thinking of John Dewey, who was a
progressive pragmatism; he argued further that Deweyan method is very akin to
scientific method which tests every hypothesis (or set of postulates) on the
basis of experimentation and then constructs a more advanced hypothesis (or set
of postulates). He says that though he does not believe entirely in Deweyan
method but it is very much akin to natural science. Then Mr. Teltumbde said
that he comes from natural science background not social sciences where
theories can be constructed. His statement is a de facto justification, or at
least admiration for the pragmatism and instrumentalism of John Dewey. I
criticized this approach of Mr. Teltumbde and argued that the Deweyan method claims
to be scientific, but it is not. Because even science needs an a priori
approach and world view. Then we presented a detailed critique of Deweyan
method of Ambedkar. Mr. Teltumbde was nowhere critical of Deweyan method.
Anyone who listens Mr. Teltumbde can understand that he is in fact admiring the
Deweyan skepticism for all theory and its fetish for methodology, which is
always "self-corrective". In his second statement, Mr. Teltumbde
withdrew his admiration of Deweyan pragmatism and agreed that he was one of the
major pillars of American liberalism. Now, Mr. Teltumbde is saying that he only
concentrated on one paragraph of the approach paper which allegedly distorted
his views. Now, isn't that a volte-face, Mr. Teltumbde?
4., 5., 6., and 7. In these four
paragraphs, Mr. Teltumbde embarks upon the task of exposing our ignorance! Let
us see how. He quotes our paper to show that we have put the charge of
amalgamating Marxism with Ambedkarism on him, which in fact is baseless,
because he has never used the word "samanvaya" (amalgamation). Mr.
Teltumbde is not being fair here because since he has seen the video again (as
is apparant from this article of Mr. Teltumbde), we had already responded to
this argument of Mr. Teltumbde in the seminar itself. I said in my first
statement that it does not really matter what you call yourself. The mechanism of naming things is always
external to the things that we are talking about. It will always be the people
in general who will give you names, not you yourself. I argued in my first
statement that when you say that Ambedkar's 'Annihilation of Caste' is to caste
India what Communist Manifesto was for the working class, then you are giving a
value judgement. Mr. Teltumbde said that he was using the term 'Manifesto' here
as a generic term and he did not mean to equate 'Annihilation of Caste' with
'Communist Manifesto'. However, I responded in my statement that even if you
were using the term 'Manifesto' in a generic way, this metaphor was wrong and
obviously had ulterior motives. Because if you were using it as a generic term,
you could have given the example of any other manifesto like 'Rights of Man',
or 'Declaration of Rights of Women', etc. But you chose 'Communist Manifesto'!
I argued that this whole metaphorization is value-loaded and whoever reads this
statement of Mr. Teltumbde in the entire context knows that Mr. Teltumbde is
not using the term 'Manifesto' in a generic way, rather, he is equating the
importance of 'Annihilation of Caste' and 'Communist Manifesto', to which we, I
think rightly, objected. Mr. Teltumbde's defence (that he used 'Manifesto' as a
generic term) was a really lame excuse. That is why Mr. Teltumbde did not utter
a single word about our criticism of this analogy in his second statement.
Besides, Mr.
Teltumbde accuses us of equating the division of castes to other divisions
along the order of places in the production system (such as division between
mental and manual labour, skilled and unskilled, etc and British and Irish
workers, black and white workers). However, if you read the lines in the
approach paper, we simply argued that everywhere the division of labour
engenders some kind of division of labourers and Ambedkar was wrong in claiming
that caste is not a division of labour but a division of labourers. Recent
historiaography and evidences has now demonstrated beyond doubt that
varna/caste system (a term preferred by Suvira Jaiswal, rather than simply
using varna system or caste system) has its origins in the labour division
which got ritualistically ossified and became a rigid division of labourers. In
other places, the division of labour did engender a division of labourers but
since elsewhere this division of labour did not get ritualistically ossified,
it did not engender a rigid division of labourers based on birth. So the
division of labourers in the case of Black/white, British/Irish is not rigid
like the caste system. We have clarified this point while dealing with
historiography of caste in the Approach Paper, as well as in the separate paper
on the Historiography of Caste presented during the Seminar by me. But, Mr.
Teltumbde has quoted us out of context to prove his point, a charge that, to
our surprise, he puts on us! Mr. Teltumbde again accuses us of trashing all
non-Marxist currents in the caste movements. However, we have clarified in the
paper as well as in the statements that we had put forward in the seminar that
it is not the question of trashing or completely adopting something. The real question is what can be learnt
from Ambedkar and other currents in the caste movement and what should be
criticized. Mr. Teltumbde, like always, has circumvented this real
question. We have argued in our paper that the contribution of Ambedkar in
establishing the Dalit identity and the sense of dignity should be
acknowledged. However, we cannot adopt anything from his program of dalit
emancipation, neither political program nor social or economic programs. And
Mr. Teltumbde agrees on this point. So we end up wondering, what does he really
object to! Because we have always particularized what we are criticizing, in
all the papers that we presented in the seminar. Instead of putting a
counter-critique on each and every point, Mr. Teltumbde has taken the
convenient way of putting a vague charge on us, that is, we are in a
rejectionist mode as regards the other currents in the caste movements. We say
again and again that we are not rejecting, we are trying to establish a
critical relation with everything, that is, we are trying to ascertain what can
we learn from Ambedkar and what must be criticized in Ambedkar. Instead of arguing
particularly about things, Mr. Teltumbde conducts a summary trial and announces
his judgement on us. Now, is that an
attitude of open and free debate and discussion, Mr. Teltumbde?
8. In the eighth para, Mr.
Teltumbde raises the question of comparison of the 'Communist Manifesto' and
'Annihilation of Castes' about which we have already explained our position.
However, he says an interesting thing to which we would like to draw your
attention. He says that he is opposed to "hierarchize ideologies"
which according to him is a "brahmanical tendency". So what do we
have here? According to Mr. Teltumbde ideologies or philosophies should not be
hierarchized; in other words, they should be put at par! First of all, we were
not hierarchizing theories. He can not produce a single sentence from the
approach paper or the statements that we had presented which hierarchizes
philosophies. What we presented was a critique of Ambedkar's politics and
philosophy from a Marxist standpoint. Mr. Teltumbde is at his Deweyan pragmatist
best here, as he can imagine only two positions: one, of hierarchizing
philosophies and two, of putting them at par, or not hierarchizing them. So
where does Mr. Teltumbde stand? What is the ideological and political quality
of Mr. Teltumbde's stand? Marxist? or Ambedkarite? or something else? That is what we criticized Mr. Teltumbde
for in the Seminar: this fetish for method, the method of hard science, to
borrow from Dewey! And then test all theories and philosophies from the
sans-theory sans-philosophy scientific method! Mr. Teltumbde forgets the
basic teaching of science: you can't escape theory; even those who claim to be
purged of all theories are, in fact, putting forward a theory. In natural
(hard) science too, one needs to take an a priori theoretical position, namely,
the dialectical approach, otherwise they are obliged to fall in the pit of
determinism or agnosticism, because at any given point, science cannot give
answers for all questions. That was the tragedy of debate between the Copenhagen
School (Hiesenberg and Bohr) and Einstein; a fetish for science always leads to
this 'dysjunctive synthesis' of determinism and agnosticism. Mr. Teltumbde has
actually justified our criticism of his hidden Deweyanism in his new article.
So, supposedly, Mr. Teltumbde is not concerned about the "correctness or
otherwise of these manifestos". However, this supposition itself hides in
itself the justification of a trans-theoretical and trans-historical
super-method, as one can see. We on our part can say that everybody has a
position, irrespective of his/her will and they criticize or admire anything
from that position only. We criticized the theory and politics of Ambedkar from
a Marxist perspective, because we believe that claiming to have a position over
and above theory, in congruence with the scientifc super-method is a hollow
claim. Mr. Teltumbde should clearly put forward his ideological position,
because any ambiguity in this matter leads to traumatic results, as has been
the case till now.
9. In the ninth para, Mr.
Teltumbde, while criticizing his Ambedkarite critics, has tried to make the
Deweyan thought more tolerable to Marxism and Science. Deweyan thought never
aims to enrich any theory as Mr. Teltumbde thinks. It is consciously anti-theory. Dewey was skeptical of all theories
all his life. For him, what matters is the pure
and pristine method of the "hard sciences"; the so-called social
sciences create theories, rather construct them out of nothing and so Dewey has
a disdain for all social sciences. Now, this is a completely different matter
altogether that Dewey himself was following a theory, the theory of pragmatism
and instrumentalism which biologizes everything. For instance, for Dewey every
organism lives in a context and it has to adapt and readapt constantly to
survive. For Dewey, in nature the process of development does not have ruptures
or breaks; it is a smooth progression in which the organism adapts and
re-adapts itself according to the context. So, for Dewey, in society too, the
pattern of development should not include ruptures (revolutions/revolts); the
human beings should make a good use of intelligence. The state is the best
mechanism to represent this good use of intelligence and reason. Violence is
waste. We cannot go here in a detailed critique of Dewey. However, it seems
that either Mr. Teltumbde needs to have a serious relook on the works of Dewey,
or he is trying to misappropriate Dewey to make him tolerable! We questioned
Mr. Teltumbde's argument that scientists follow the same method in the
laboratories. This is the method of the instrumentalists in Quantum theory who
raise the slogan of "shut up and calculate"; in fact, that is
precisely the slogan of cybernetics also, with which Mr. Teltumbde seems to be
fascinated. In these schools, we are told to follow a trans-theoretical, pure and pristine scientific method to test and
calculate without any "theoretical prejudice", and this is precisely
what Mr. Teltumbde does again and again in his latest article: and eternal
disdain for theory and an incorrigible fetish for method. However, we know
now that this itself is a prejudice and there is another school within the
so-called "hard" sciences to which people like Sakata, Gould, Yukawa, etc. belong, which believes in having an a priori dialectical position, even
before entering the laboratory. So, Mr. Teltumbde's claim that neither is he in
support of anything, nor does he oppose anything, is an unscientific claim.
Irrespective of your wish and will, you always do that as soon as you make a
political statement or value judgement. Such theoretical indifference or
non-partisan attitude is a myth.
Moreover, we
never said that Mr. Teltumbde was trashing Marx or talking about his failure.
It was in fact said by the self-proclaimed well-wishers of Mr. Teltumbde, that
is, the five comrades of Republican Panthers who attended the seminar, who did
not utter a word during the seminar, but immediately issued a statement against
us and in supposed support of Mr. Teltumbde! Besides, we are curious regarding
why Mr. Teltumbde is always in the teacher-preacher mode? He claims that he was
trying to sensitize (!?) people
present in the seminar who were intoxicated by this or that '-ism'! Again, Mr.
Teltumbde is at his Deweyan best. He is avert to call himself an Ambedkarite or
a Marxist, or any '-ist' for that matter. He is in a trans-theoretical
methodological position or pulpit, from where he is supposed to sensitize us,
and we are supposed to hear his sermons! Is
that not a self-obsessed attitude on part of Mr. Teltumbde? We also know
and do not need Mr. Teltumbde to make us realize that Revolutions happen in
reality; neither in the paper nor in our statements, did we show any dogmatic
or closed-ended approach to Marxism. Even, Mr. Teltumbde corrected himself in
his second statement and said that he did not call us dogmatist (though he really did!) and he was referring only to
the paragraphs of the approach paper that mentioned his name. But if you listen to the first statement of Mr. Teltumbde,
you will find that he had not been referring to those paragraphs only; he was
commenting on the paper in general, and that too, without reading it properly. What should we call this, if not a U-turn,
a volte-face?
10. In the tenth para, Mr.
Teltumbde argues that the distrust of Ambedkar towards Marx stemmed from Marx's
claim to a 'grand theory'. (Such a claim was ascribed to Marxism by the
postmodernists. Marx himself never claimed that he is creator of a 'grand
theory'. We will come back to this point later.) However, in the Seminar, he
himself admitted that Ambedkar had not read Marxism properly and his list of
books that he studied shows that he had a very supreficial understanding of
Marxism and he had never read Marxist classics. Clearly, Ambedkar's skepticism to Marxism had nothing to do with his
dislike for 'grand theories' (Marx never made such a claim; he only
claimed, together with Engels, to be the creator of the dialectial and
historical materialist science of history and society). Ambedkar's skepticism stemmed from two sources: one, his own class
position and two, his academic training in the US where he became a Deweyan
instrumentalist and pragmatist and in London School of Economics, where he was
influenced by the Austrian school of economics, of Carl Menger. These intellectual
sources are bitterly critical of Marxism. This in itself was enough for
Ambedkar to become diametrically opposed to Marxism. Whenever, he strove to
form an alliance with Communists, his prime mover was never the politics of the
working class, but the same good old pragmatism of Dewey. Secondly, the account
of Ambedkar's political history that Mr. Teltumbde himself gives in the tenth
para, bears a testimony to the throughout compromising, non-radical,
non-massline and surrenderist approach of Ambedkar. We do not need to
deconstruct the text of Mr. Teltumbde's article here to show this, because it
is self-evident. Mr. Teltumbde's narrative itself shows that the Congress was
always willing to co-opt Ambedkar in its political scheme. Does not this fact
itself tell a lot about the politics of Ambedkar? Mr. Teltumbde seems to be in
the awe of Ambedkar's plan for so-called 'state-socialism' which has nothing to
do with socialism! Socialism does not mean state ownership of means of
production. The defining characteristic of Socialism is the class character of
the state itself. As Engels had already shown in the 19th century, State
capitalism (one can read socialism as well) is nothing, but capitalism pushed
to extreme. Ambedkar's economic program was a paraphrasing of Deweyan economic
program, for which state is the most rational actor and therefore it should
have the monopoly over economic activities and planning. We expect Mr.
Teltumbde at least to be aware of this much. However, he is much too eager to
perform a Marxist appropriation of Ambedkar, though in a clandestine fashion,
while claiming that there is no meeting point between the ideas of Ambedkar and
Marxism.
11. The eleventh para is probably
is most interesting para in Mr. Teltumbde's article. It claims that Mr.
Teltumbde follows Marxist methodology (note: not Marxist
theory/ideology/philosophy! The same old Deweyan skepticism for theory and
fetish for method), but he would not call himself a Marxist because a lot of
Marxists are dogmatic! However, Mr.
Teltumbde does not mention that I criticized this position in my response in
the Seminar, to which he did not say a word in his latest article. One calls himself a Marxist, or a liberal,
or a post-structuralist, not because what the alleged followers of these
ideologies do! Such a logic will lead us to non-sensical conclusions. One calls
himself a Marxist because he/she believes in the approach and method of what
he/she believes to be the Marxist approach and method. If majority of
people have become indifferent to pain, tragedy, etc and have become inhuman,
would you stop calling yourself a human being? No! Then why do not you call
yourself a Marxist, if you believe in Marxism? However, we know the answer to
this question already! Again,
identifying with a theory and ideology always scares a Deweyan away!
Secondly, never in the paper did we say that Marxism is a dogma and it cannot
be developed. On the contrary, the major
part of our paper is not a critique of Ambedkar and Ambedkarites, but of the
Communist movement of India, which failed to understand the problem of caste
and apply Marxism creatively in the Indian conditions. But, apparently Mr.
Teltumbde had launched an attack on our paper without reading it properly.
Moreover, the
iconoclasm, radicalism, etc of Ambedkar might be the personal views of Mr.
Teltumbde and we might or might not differ in this regard. But our concern in
the paper as well as in the entire seminar was not to analyze how deeply and
passionately Ambedkar felt about the problem of caste, but what program does
Ambedkar have for the solution of the problem and it is in this context that
the criticism of Ambedkar put forward by our approach paper should be seen and
understood.
Also, it does
not matter at what age did Mr. Teltumbde become a Marxist! It does not affect
the merits or lacunae of his arguments today and in any case it does not give
any advantage to his logic. Kautsky was a much older Marxist that Lenin was. Does
that influence the way in which Kautsky went haywire in his theorizations about
Imperialism?
12. In the twelfth para, Mr.
Teltumbde shows how everything that Ambedkar did for the emancipation of dalits
failed miserably and goes to the extent of exclaiming, "The less said of
Ambedkarite politics, the better it is." However, he does not trace the origin of these mistakes, that is, the
incorrigibly bourgeious liberal, pragmatist, instrumentalist, regressive
thoughts of Ambedkar. He did not believe in the revolutionary energy of the
masses, but believed in the power of heroes and specifically, the state. The
reason for Ambedkar's failure lies in his philosophy and politics and that is
what we have subjected to criticism in our paper, not the intent of Ambedkar. Theoretical discourse never takes the issue of
intent into consideration because this issue is a highly subjective issue. What
is at stake in any political discussion is the scientific and philosophical
character of a theory and its historical role. What the carriers of a theory
might have felt at different moments does not matter in history, as Mr. Teltumbde
himself claimed in his first statement, "individuals don't matter in
revolutions". The conspicuous
absence of a serious political and philosophical criticism of Ambedkar in any
of the statements put forward by Mr. Teltumbde is troubling. He stops at
mentioning a fact, that is, all of Ambedkar's experiments ended in a grand
failure. But he never asks the question "why?" Why does Mr.
Teltumbde forget his celebrated scientific method here? This is a curious
emission, as we can see.
13., 14., 15., 16. and 17. In
these paragraphs, again, Mr. Teltumbde once again, is in his Deweyan glory. He
talks about the failure of almost all great men in history. However, we would
like to remind him that the task of the approach paper (and other papers as
well) was not to assess the failure of
men and their particular experiments. The
real question is the assessment of the theory and methodology given by these
men. Men fail and succeed. That does not matter much in history. The basic
question is whether Marx was able to give a science of history? Whether he was
able to give an approach and a method which is scientific? Obviously, Marxism
is not an aggregation of the statements of Marx. Marxism is name of the
approach (worldview) and the method that Marx gave. Marx might himself have
failed to use this dialectical materialist method at a number of instances, for
example, his theory of Asiatic mode of production, or his assessment of the
British rule in India, etc. However, that does not make any difference as far
as Marxist approach and method are concerned. A number of his expectations,
judgements and statements were proven wrong by history. That might be called,
in a limited sense, the failure of some of speculative judgements of Marx, the
individual. But Marx could not be right in all his judgements (wouldn't it be non-dialectical to expect
such infallibility!?). The point
here is to understand the difference between different statements of a person
and his approach and method. Marx himself believed that dialectical materialism
will develop with the changing world, because the basic premise of this science
is to study the world in its motion. So, the theory of imperialism was
developed by Lenin, not Marx, because finance monopoly capitalism came into
proper existence only during the lifetime of Lenin. However, again the basic
point to note here is that Lenin followed the
same approach and method to study the world, that Marx had followed. So, to
talk about the "failures of great men" at such a length and then
claim that the failure of Marx was more catastrophic than that of Ambedkar does
not make any sense. It is like the history of men, in the 17th century style,
that does not tell anything about anything! Mr. Teltumbde argues that Marxism
needs to be developed constantly in such a way, as if he is the first person to
say so, or, as if we have said something different in the paper. Neither in the
paper, nor in our statements did we say that what Marx said was the last word!
We would not have felt the need to organize a 5-day Seminar to discuss any
question at all, had we believed so. We have written in our approach paper
about the mistakes committed in analyzing the problem of caste by Marxists and
Communists. Then why Mr. Teltumbde is erecting an imaginary Marxist figure and
then raining it with his bows and bayonets?
Besides, Marxism never says that
revolutions are inevitable. That would amount to economism. Therefore, to
try to prove the "catastrophic failure of Marx" by arguing that
Socialist experiments fell down, or, revolutions did not take place, is utterly
useless! The economic crises of capitalism themselves never lead automatically
to revolution. Every crisis presents
dual possibilities: the revolutionary possibility (if the revolutionary
vanguard is in a position to lead the masses to revolution) or the reactionary
possibility (Fascism). There is always a possibility of counter-revolution
and all the great Marxist thinkers were aware of it, including Marx, Engels,
and Lenin. So, the fact that sustainable revolutions did not take place in the
twentieth century, does not show in anyway, the failure of the alleged 'grand
theory' of Marx. Marxism gives the tool to analyze the failure of revolutions
too, and a number of Marxists have subjected the Soviet and Chinese experiments
of socialism to Marxist criticism and through such analyses only, that more
advanced socialist experiments can be conducted. This is what Walter Benjamin called 'redemptive activity' of theory. Every
science develops through such redemptive activity and Marxism, that is, the
science of society is no exception. In such a historical movement, the failures
of individuals do not matter. What matters is the approach and method given by
them. Marxists have not reacted in the vein of Ambedkarites, who have been
targeting Mr. Teltumbde without any substantial reason and in this respect, we
completely empathize with the agony and anger of Mr. Teltumbde. However, Mr. Teltumbde himself is to blame
for this ironic situation. Taking a position above ideology and theory always
leads to such a mess.
Moreover, what
Mr. Teltumbde claims to have said in regard of the new developments which
cannot be explained from classical Marxist position was this: Mr. Teltumbde
argued that Marx talked about labour-saving devices, but in contemporary
capitalism, we cannot talk about labour-saving devices but labour-displacing
devices. Now, everyone who has read the
elementary Marxist political economy knows that every labour-saving device
becomes a labour-displacing device under capitalism. Mr. Teltumbde is immensely
overjoyed in his discovery; but sadly, this discovery has already been made,
and even more sadly Mr. Teltumbde is 150 years late! There is not real
difference between labour-saving and labour-displacing devices. Mr. Teltumbde
was seriously concerned about the scenario where it would become possible to
run a factory with one worker! This very fear has led a number of intellectuals
to conclude that working class is vanishing from the scene of history. Such a
conclusion only shows that the person in question does not understand Marxist
political economy. Such a situation will only create even larger army of the
unemployed which Marx had called 'grave diggers of capitalism'. Working class
is not vanishing; on the contrary it would be pushed towards revolts. Needless
to say, such revolts would not transform into revolution without a
revolutionary theory and a vanguard armed with such a theory. Obviously, there
are new developments in the modus-operandi of Imperialism after the Second
World War which need to be analyzed and understood from Marxist perspective.
However, these very ever new developments have been the prime mover in the
development of Marxism as the science of history and society; just like the
so-called "hard sciences" of Mr. Teltumbde! What is so stupefying
about this? In a nutshell, Mr. Teltumbde
needs to differentiate between assessment of men and assessment of approaches
and methods. From that standpoint, it can be asked whether Marxism or Ambedkar
provide the correct approach and method to understand everything that exists
around us. Mr. Teltumbde believes that Ambedkar had no theory and he was a
pragmatist who kept experimenting with newer things. However, this itself was
his theory, which Mr. Teltumbde admits, he liked! And this very theory was
subjected to criticism during the Seminar. What is wrong in that? Does that
amount to trashing or rejecting Ambedkar? We don't think so.
In the
seventeenth para, Mr. Teltumbde traces the ideological origins of Ambedkar. However,
again, he is trying to misappropriate Ambedkar. Ambedkar's dislike for Marxism did not only stem from his experience of
Indian Communists, but his class position and his academic training. Secondly,
he never used Marxism as a benchmark, as Mr. Teltumbde wants us to believe; he
had called Marxism "pigs' philosophy" which shows his clear attitude.
We have criticized this attitude of Ambedkar without using the derogatory
terminology used by Ambedkar. We do not find anything wrong in it.
18. In this para, Mr. Teltumbde
is again in his teacher-preacher mode. He rightly points out that Ambedkar has
a huge contribution in putting the question of caste on the national agenda. He
is also right about the contribution of communists in this, who empirically fought
militantly against caste oppression. Indian communists as well as Ambedkar
failed to devise a program for the annihilation of caste. In the beginning of his article, Mr. Teltumbde says that hierarchizing
is a brahmanical attitude. However, he adopts this brahmanical attitude
according to his convenience. Here, he says that the contribution of Ambedkar
was much greater that Communists in democratization! He does not feel it
necessary to back his statements with logic and reason. So he performs another
intellectual somersault and adds that he says so rhetorically because he wants communists to think about the
opportunities that they have lost! Again, Mr. Teltumbde is quite obsessed with
his teaching capabilities. Nobody denies the fact that there is a need to
analyze the mistakes of Communist movement on the question of caste and that is
what we have done in our paper, apart from a brief critique of Ambedkar. But this hierarchizing of Mr. Teltumbde is
surprising and we do not agree to the hierarchy of contributions proposed by
Mr. Teltumbde. At least, he should stay consistent in his approach and should
not shift positions so rapidly, following Ambedkar.
19. and 20. In the nineteenth
para again, Mr. Teltumbde argues in a way as if we cling to the metaphor of
'base and superstructure' mechanically and goes on to claim that all dalit
Marxists (we're not sure what does that mean!) have abandoned it and there has been
a debate in international Marxism about this metaphor. We believe, and we have
made it clear in the paper, that the metaphor of base and superstructure is an
analytical tool to study any social formation and it cannot be used in a
mechanical and instrumentalist fashion, as Indian communists have often done,
specially while studying caste. We have particularly criticized certain
communists of Indian communist movement who believed that caste belongs to
superstructure. On the contrary, we have argued in the paper that caste belongs
to the base as well as the superstructure. However, we can not go in detail
about it; those who are interested can download the approach paper from the
website of Arvind Memorial Trust and read our position. But here again, Mr.
Teltumbde is erecting an imaginery Marxist figure for the purpose of bashing.
Moreover, the
criticism that Indian communists failed to understand the question of caste and
class was put forward by Mr. Teltumbde. We ourselves have criticized the Indian
communist movement for this failure. But Mr. Teltumbde presented the matter in
a way, as if Indian communists did not take up the question of caste and called
it their biggest sin. We objected to this because it is factually wrong.
Sukhvinder responded to this criticism of Mr. Teltumbde and criticized him for
impeaching communists for what they are not guilty of. He argues in his latest article, "Surprisingly, there is no
admission ever from the Marxists (regarding this mistake)". Again, Mr.
Teltumbde is distorting the facts. Our paper itself bears testimony to a
bitterly critical approach towards the mistakes of the communists in
understading the question of caste. In fact, a larger share of the paper is
dedicated to the criticism of communist movement, rather that Ambedkar and
Phule. As far as, the question of base
and superstructure is concerned, one can refer to the approach paper. Our
understanding is completely different from what Mr. Teltumbde is portraying it
to be.
21. In this para, Mr. Teltumbde
continues in the tone of teaching-preaching. He claims that it was he, who has been saying all along that
castes basically seek hierarchy and cannot survive in non-hierarchical waters;
under external pressure they contract together, but without external pressure
they start splitting. He again claims that all caste movements have failed to
note this core characteristics of caste. This
again is a hollow claim. Historians like Suvira Jaiswal and R.S. Sharma have
already drawn our attention to precisely these characteristics. However,
like always Mr. Teltumbde is stupefied at his own "inventions" and
"discoveries" and as always these inventions and discoveries have
already been made and Mr. Teltumbde is sadly late! Mr. Teltumbde argues that
the dalits and lower castes have to understand that its not caste identity but
class identity which has the emancipatory potential and he also advises the
communists to show to the dalits that they have changed. We believe that the
communists can show this only through struggles and a proper understanding of
the question of caste. We also believe that (and we have said this in the paper)
without the participation of dalits there can be no revolution and without a
revolution there can be no dalit emancipation. However, Mr. Teltumbde does not
even mention that. Secondly, he again shows his skepticism for theory and
ideology when he argues that there should be a convergence between the dalit
and communist movements, not '-isms' and such a convergence will quickly
fructify into Indian Revolution. Revolution
is first of all a matter of science; without a proper scientific and
revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement, to borrow from
Lenin. Mr. Teltumbde invokes the authority of Lenin according to his
convenience. Lenin was very particular about the theory which guides the
movement. Mr. Teltumbde's Deweyan deviation is apparent once again.
22. and 23. In these paragraphs,
Mr. Teltumbde presents his own alternative concept of reservation, which should
be limited to the SCs only, who face exclusion at the hands of the society. The
state should deploy other methods, according to him, to do away with the
backwardness of the BCs and tribals. The reservation policy should not only include
the public sector but the entire social sphere, which includes public as well
as private. According to Mr. Teltumbde such a policy would have been free from
the malaise of the present policy of reservation that has become the most
potent weapon of the ruling class in dividing the people at will. Then, Mr.
Teltumbde adds several more conditions to his alternative policy of
reservation. He believes that in such a scheme the burden of annihilation of
caste would have fallen on the society and the latter would have been obliged
to do away with caste discrimination. Though, we would like to know more about
his alternative vision of reservation policy, it seems to us that, first, even if the policy of reservation is
extended to entire societal sphere, the dalits would not be destigmatized; on
the contrary, as far as we can visualize, dalits would be stigmatized even
more. But the ways in which stigma is attached to them, would become more
subtle, rather than being crude and 'in-the-face'. second, this would not in anyway, make it the burden of the society to
do away with caste. Caste cannot be annihilated without the withering away
of class, state, the interpersonal disparities of mental and manual labour,
town and country and industry and agriculture. Even after revolution, several
cultural revolutions would be required to annihilate caste. However, we are
open to know more about the 'intricate' model of reservation suggested by Mr.
Teltumbde. Anyway, that is not the point here. We would still suggest that had
Mr. Teltumbde been this diligent and meticulous in adopting a more sound
theoretical position, there would have been less problems. The basic question
in our opinion today is that the problem is not with any particular model of
reservation policy, but the policy of reservation itself. It might have been a
democratic right till a certain time after independence; however, any model of
reservation would only create an illusion today. Our demand should be free and
equal education for all and employment for all. Only such a demand can push the
system to its point of impossibility and in struggle for such a demand the
caste boundaries could be weakened.
Mr. Teltumbde's thinking is too much
dependent on the role of the state, and what else can we expect from a true
Deweyan! He thinks that if state implements his model of reservation, the
society would be obliged to do away with caste. This is like a fool's
paradise. State can never oblige a society to think or act in a particular way.
It is the concrete political, social and economic struggles that shape the ways
in which the society acts, in which the state is sustained or destroyed, in
which a new state is established. State through any possible kind of
'affirmative action' cannot oblige the society to think, say or do anything.
Mr. Teltumbde did not explain even this "alternative" Deweyan
understanding of reservation policy in the semiar, and now he is rebuking us
for our closed-ended approach. Is that fair?!
24. In this para, Mr. Teltumbde
wants to prove at any cost that our paper does not offer anything new as far as
the solution part is concerned. He argues that such propositions can be found
in any communist document on caste and that even Ambedkar's proposals were more
radical than that of the approach paper presented by us. First of all, unlike Mr. Teltumbde, we do not have any particular
fascination with the claim to novelty. What is right, is right, irrespective of
the fact that a number of people have already said it. Secondly, he only mentions the propositions which are common to any
radical charter on the caste question. We have two parts in the section
pertaining to our proposed program on caste question. The first deals with long
term tasks and the solution of caste question by a socialist society and the
other with short term tasks that must be performed immediately. We would urge
Mr. Teltumbde to go through the entire section of the approach paper again to
understand the particularity of our position. Our stand on reservation is not shared by any of the Left
organizations. Our stand on new type of anti-caste organizations also is not
shared by the majority of the communist groups. It would be useless to mention each and every
proposition here. We would request interested readers to visit the website of
Arvind Memorial Trust (arvindtrust.org) and download the pdf file of the
approach paper and read it. Mr. Teltumbde should compare proposal by proposal
to prove that Ambedkar's proposals were more radical, though according to Mr.
Teltumbde, such a hierarchizing approach smacks of brahmanism, yet he becomes
brahmanical according to his whims and fancies! We do not think in terms of
"more" or "less" radical. It is question of standpoint. Anyone who reads our paper, would
understand that ours is an alternative communist program of annihilation of
caste, which is not dogmatic and open-ended. We never claim that our program is
final and best; on the contrary, we believe that many things could be added
into it or even subtracted from it. It is a humble proposal open for debate. We
mentioned this in the seminar too. But Mr. Teltumbde is much too eager to
prove that we have reproduced the old communist program! So we definitely
cannot convince him.
25. In this para, once again the
self-obsession of Mr. Anand Teltumbde is best apparent. Mr. Teltumbde argues
that he has devised a practical blue print for the annihilation of caste in his
book 'Anti-Imperialism and Annihilation of Caste'. Now look at his findings, which he claims to be new and unprecedented.
He says that he found that since the capitalist onslaught from the colonial
period through the 1960s, the ritual castes are weakened and to speak about
castes in a classical hierarchy is fruitless. Now, any student/academician/activist familiar with the modern
historiography of caste knows that this finding of Mr. Teltumbde has nothing
new in it. Irfan Habib in his famous article 'Caste in Indian History' makes
the same argument. Historians like Suvira Jaiswal, R.S.Sharma, Vivekanand Jha
had shown this way before Mr. Teltumbde wrote his book. So Mr. Teltumbde claim
to novelty in this respect is at best hollow and at worst, a false one. The
relation of caste system with rural bourgeoisie and rural proletariat also has
long been established. Mr. Teltumbde is again making a false claim of novelty.
Even documents of various communist groups in mention this facet of the caste
system in the rural areas. How the economic interests of the kulaks and farmers
express themselves in caste terms also is a known fact for a long time now. The
same could be said about his "findings" about the nexus between the
state and the class of the rural bourgeoisie. The fourth point of Mr. Teltumbde
regarding the role of the advanced elements of society in educating the people
against the evil of caste through political economy, also is an old one and has
been put forward by many people including Ambedkar. However, we are skeptic
about this hope of Mr. Teltumbde. Lastly, the Left is given the role of dealing
"physically" with the elements who are incorrigible and participate
in caste atrocities! Amazing! (The role of the Left is reduced to dealing
"physically" with the perpetrators of caste atrocities while the role
of teaching/preaching/sermonizing is secured for Mr. Teltumbde, because in his
view, it it Mr. Teltumbde who has provided a blue-print for annihilation of
caste!) To make his argument somewhat more tolerable, he says that through this
role the Left can win the confidence of dalits, which will strengthen the
forces of revolution and annihilation of castes. Then, Mr. Teltumbde gives his
final teaching, "Do this much, and
you will find yourself close to Annihilation of Castes." To render his propositions more
credibility, Mr. Teltumbde tells us that his model his supported by his own
research in cybernetics! We can see Mr. Teltumbde going back, again, to his
Deweyan "scientific" determinism. Whatever Mr. Teltumbde says, this
much is clear: his claims to novelty are baseless and he has nothing new to
offer as far as annihilation of caste is concerned.
26. In this para, Mr. Teltumbde
claims that he did not retract his statements. He said that what I (Abhinav) strove
to refute in my statement (the Deweyanism of Ambedkar and of Mr. Teltumbde in a
different way) was not shared by Mr. Teltumbde. However, he himself admits that
he liked the Deweyan method and found it akin to the method of science. This is what I refuted! I argued that
Deweyan method projects itself to be the scientific method, but it is not. I
have already shown in this response how Mr. Teltumbde is a true Deweyan. His
whole line of argument is Deweyan in nature. Now Mr. Teltumbde is trying to
show that he has no liking for Deweyan pragmatism and instrumentalism!
Secondly, he did say that he agrees with what had been said by me. He said, "many good things have been said here
and I agree with them." Now, he is saying that he was referring to the
paper. This is stupefying! And even if he was referring to the paper, he
actually did reject the entire paper as being casteist and brahmanical
in his first statement. (One can see all this in the video, the link of which
is given below). Then he retracted his charge in the second statement. Mr.
Teltumbde makes an amusing statement here. He
says that he spoke something uncomfortably to get out of there, which cannot be
construed as agreement with us! Now we leave the task of judging this bizarre
statement to the readers. We would ask the readers as well as Mr. Teltumbde
to see the video again. His tone in the
first statement was like that of a preacher/teacher who came there to educate
the ignorant Marxists. In the second statement, he "uncomfortably"
expressed his agreement with "much of what had been said there" (in
the paper or in my critique of Mr. Teltumbde, it does not matter, because there
is no contradiction in the stand put forward in the paper and what I said).
I would say the change is apparent between the tone of the first statement and
the tone of the second statement itself, and it is so apparent that anyone can
see it. He quotes me ("aisa mujhe
dhwanit hua ki aapka comment pure paper par tha"). However, anyone who
sees the video can understand that I was saying in a humble way that "yes,
Mr. Teltumbde, you actually did reject our paper as casteist and
brahmanical". However, my tone could only be humble, because, as Mr.
Teltumbde himself says, he is a "senior activist"! Now he can call it
hallucination, or whatever he likes. But the video of the debate speaks for
itself. This is very lame defence of his shifting positions by Mr. Teltumbde,
to say the least.
27. In the last
para, Mr. Teltumbde has bitterly rebuked the Ambedkarites who have been
attacking him since his participation in the Chandigarh Seminar. However, here
too it is not clear what he is defending in Ambedkar: the individual or his
ideas. Because as far as thoughts are concerned, we do not know what can we
learn from Deweyan pragmatism in our task of annihilation of caste. In fact, at
several other places, Mr. Teltumbde himself says that Ambedkar never had a
program for annihilation of caste. Then
which ideas/thoughts of Ambedkar should be defended? Then again, Mr. Teltumbde
shows his self-obsession and his baseless belief in the "innocence of
dalits". Let us have a look at some statements made in this para: "It is not I but you who have insulted
Babasaheb Ambedkar in the process by exploiting the sentiments of his innocent
people against someone (that is Mr. Teltumbde himself!) who has worked
singularly for them keeping away from the camp of the ruling classes.";
"I am the one who has never
shown any iota of bhakti to Babasaheb Ambedkar ulike your tribe but sincerely
followed his role model in excelling in whatever I did, in standing firm on the
side of the oppressed masses, securing capability of analyzing the world around
us on their behalf..." Now one can see, to what extent Mr. Teltumbde
is a sad victim of political Narcissism and self-obsession. He thinks of
himself as the self-proclaimed hero of the dalit cause. And curiously enough,
he has charged us of self-obsession!
In the end, we can only say that everyone
should watch the video of our debate with Mr. Anand Teltumbde again and see the
change in everything: the tone, the content, and the form. Watching the
video itself is sufficient to understand the hollow claims made by Mr.
Teltumbde in this article. We have given a parawise reply so that there is no
possibility of confusion and all comrades can understand our refutation of Mr.
Teltumbde clearly. We are again giving the link of the video for everyone's
convenience.
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