It was at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) that Rahul Sonpimple saw first-hand the diverse icons that people across the country associated with a legacy invisible in the mainstream. At a hostel dance, friends from Punjab introduced him to Amar Singh Chamkila, one of India’s greatest folk music performers on whom the latest Imtiaz Ali movie is based. Those from Uttar Pradesh spoke of Maharaja Bijli Pasi, the Dalit king who ruled parts of that populous state. Shailendra, the famous Scheduled Caste lyricist who was a staple in Raj Kapoor movies, was an icon among students from Bihar.
Sonpimple’s influences from Maharashtra, where he grew up, included heroes such as social reformer Gadge Maharaj, educationist Jai Bai Chaudhary, Vitthal Umap, who died singing about Ambedkar at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur and, of course, Savitribai Phule. “Though she was always an icon on the ground, back then Savitribai was not that well known in popular culture. There was no Google doodle of her,” he said.
Sonpimple, 35, who founded the national grassroots movement All India Independent Scheduled Castes Association (AIISCA) last year, is seen as one of the most original political commentators today. “The question of representation has become the counterpoint of anti-caste discourse, but that is a false discourse,” he said. “Caste is not simply a behavioural problem, touch or un-touch, caste works largely as a political economy. It has become part of modern institutions.
Going backward
Some questions he asked — and answered — in the course of our conversation: why did the makers of Dahaad, the series that told the story of real-life serial killer Cyanide Mohan, the son of daily-wage workers in Karnataka, change the murderer’s caste? Why do so many Dalit authors write similar-sounding memoirs? Why did more “leftie” friends in Delhi know about the Mughals than about the Bhil or Pasi empires?
Untouchability may be a crime according to the Constitution but Sonpimple believes that India ignores the everyday reality of caste. “The government has campaigns to end polio and control the spread of HIV,” he said. “But tell me one campaign to end the caste system? There’s a deliberate postcolonial upper caste-cultivated collective consciousness that’s not simply about denial but that says invisibilise it, and in such a way that it is a conscious act of denial.”
Sonpimple said things have gone backward for the community in the past decade. “The SC community has returned to the same situation we were in 50-60 years ago. It’s worsened because the government has privatised so much and the state has declared that there will be no welfare policies or measures,” he said. “The only thing we will give you is 5 kg rice to survive.” He pointed to the absence of government intervention that once aided in the creation of a generation of Dalit officers and engineers.
Formative influences
Sonpimple, the middle son of five whose father was a rickshaw puller and mother, a construction worker, grew up in a Dalit Buddhist slum in north Nagpur. Some of his friends from that time lost their lives to violence, liquor, suicide. After a paralytic attack, his father, a rationalist who named his sons after characters in Buddhist literature, was bedridden but read his son stories of Ravidas, Kabir and the Buddha in Hindi and Marathi. “He would also help with my homework, I don’t know how much he studied, my parents have no school certificates, but he could read and understand very well,” he said.
Sonpimple’s home city Nagpur has strong links to Ambedkar. He grew up in an alternate culture where festivals such as Buddha Jayanti were robustly celebrated, a world where young men were pushed to pursue science, and where merit lists, even today, often feature Scheduled Caste students. Like others around him, he studied at the Ram Manohar Lohia public library for competitive exams until a friend told him about the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). That’s where he got his master’s degree in Dalit and Tribal Social Work and also where he met and fell in love with a kindred spirit, Prachi. They had an intercaste marriage a few years later.
Love played a role in changing the course of his life. If it weren’t for Prachi, Sonpimple would have continued at the Institute for Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat, where he worked for three years after graduating from TISS. He would likely have ended up in the cooperative sector or as an employee in the CSR department of a company.
But long-distance relationships are stressful and Sonpimple decided to move to JNU to complete his Ph.D and be with Prachi. That was in 2015. In February 2016, the Delhi police arrested JNU students Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid for sedition. That was also the year Sonpimple stood as the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association (BAPSA) candidate against a now united left front and a candidate from the right. He was popular but the united left won. Campus politics had changed, and so had Sonpimple.
The author is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
