Can the Subalterns Public-ise? A Critical Subaltern Interrogation of ‘Public’

Patta, Raj Bharat

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-23898-7_5

Raj Bharat Patta²

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Abstract

This chapter engages in critically assessing the understandings of public from a subaltern perspective. This chapter engages in a theoretical interrogation of public from subaltern point of view, for this discussion provides an accompaniment in constructing a subaltern public theology for India. The aim of this chapter is to interrogate public from subaltern perspectives, in a way trying to problematise public from subaltern viewpoints and trying to bring out various issues involved in understanding public. This chapter consists of three parts, where the first part provides a discussion on genealogies and typologies of public sphere in India. Here I have discussed that public in India have multiple historical meanings, where translation is the key hermeneutic in understanding of public. Part II discusses subaltern concerns, considerations and conundrums on public sphere in India, engaging with Habermas’ bourgeois public and Nancy Fraser’s counter-public discussing the divided publics on the basis of caste, gender and language in India. Then there is a major section on engaging with Ambedkar’s understanding of public, for this section forms the fulcrum of subaltern perceptions of public. For Ambedkar, public is an anti-caste and anti-hierarchical space, where caste is completely annihilated. His understanding of touchables in the village and untouchables in the ghettos and his idea of nation as an excluded one provide directions in the understanding of public from subaltern perspectives. On analysing these discussions, it is presented that public from the perspectives of subalterns is counter-hegemonic space, an experiential epistemic site with a hermeneutic of polyvalence and with a language of social mobility.

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Notes

1.
B. Sandria Freitag, “‘The Public’ and Its Meanings in Colonial South Asia,” Journal of South Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (1991). P.7.
2.
Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.”
3.
Judith. K De Jong, New SubUrbanisms (London: Routledge, 20114). P.89.
4.
Diana Ambrozas, “The University as Public Sphere,” Canadian Journal of Communication 23, no. 1 (1998): 73–86.
5.
Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.” P.361.
6.
Ibid. P.360.
7.
Anastasia Piliavsky, “Where Is the Public Sphere? Political Communications and the Morality of Disclosure in Rural Rajasthan.Pdf,” Cambridge Anthropology 31, no. 2 (2013): 104–122, https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2013.310207. P. 106–107. Piliavsky explains, ‘pablik’ as a noun does not refer to any communicative sphere, but rather an authoritative, all knowledgeable sphere.
8.
Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.” P.362–363.
9.
V.V. Thomas, “Chriatians and the National Movement: A Response,” in Nationalism and Hindutva: A Christian Response, ed. Mark.T.B. Liang (New Delhi: CMS/UBS/ISPCK, 2005). P.107.
10.
Amir Ali, “Evolution of Public Sphere in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 26 (2001): 2419–2425.
11.
Ibid. P.2420.
12.
Ibid. P.2419.
13.
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1989). P.56.
14.
C.A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). P.271.
15.
Hugo Gorringe, “Out of the Cheris,” Space and Culture 19, no. 2 (2016): 164–176, https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331215623216.
16.
Ibid. P.165.
17.
Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere : A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993). P.122–123.
18.
Shakuntala Banaji, “Vigilante Publics: Orientalism, Modernity and Hindutva Fascism in India,” Javnost—The Public, 2018, 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1463349.
19.
V. Bhandari, “Civil Society and the Predicament of Multiple Publics,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 26, no. 1 (2006): 36–50, https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2005-004. P.48.
20.
Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere : A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” P.117.
21.
Gorringe, “Out of the Cheris.” P. 170.
22.
Badri Narayan Tiwari, The Making of the Dalit Public in North India: Uttar Pradesh, 1950–Present (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). P. 114.
23.
Refer to 4.3.2. on the discussion of subalternity as a site of counter-symbolic factory.
24.
For further discussion on the importance of Dalit symbolic politics read Nicolas Jaoul, “Learning the Use of Symbolic Means: Dalits, Ambedkar Statues and the State in Uttar Pradesh,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 40, no. 2 (2006): 175–207, https://doi.org/10.1177/006996670604000202.
25.
Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere : A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” P. 120.
26.
Ibid. P.123.
27.
Ibid. P.123–124.
28.
Ibid. P.133.
29.
Sarbeswar Sahoo, “Civil Soceity, Citizenship and Subaltern Counter Publics in Post-Colonial India,” in Sociological Perspectives on Globalization, ed. K. Ajaya Sahoo (Delhi: Kalpaz Publication, 2006). P.59.
30.
Gopal Guru, “Dalit Vision of India: From Bahishkrut to Inclusive Bharat,” Futures 36, no. 6–7 (2004): 757–763, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2003.12.004. P. 758.
31.
Sambaiah Gundimeda, “Democratisation of the Public Sphere: The Beef Stall Case in Hyderabad’s Sukoon Festival,” South Asia Research 29, no. 2 (2009): 127–149, https://doi.org/10.1177/026272800902900202. P. 144.
32.
Gopal Guru, “Citizenship in Exile: A Dalit Case,” in Civil Soceity, Public Sphere and Citizenship: Dialogues and Perspectives, ed. Helmut Bharga, Rajeev, Reifeld (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005). P.267 cited by Sahoo, “Civil Soceity, Citizenship and Subaltern Counter Publics in Post-Colonial India.” P.61.
33.
My own experience of visiting a Hindu temple as explained in 1.1 serves as a case in point here.
34.
Catherine Marshall and Gary L. Anderson, “Rethinking the Public and Private Spheres: Feminist and Cultural Studies Perspectives on the Politics of Education,” Journal of Education Policy 9, no. 5 (1994): 169–182, https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093940090514. P.174.
35.
Sahoo, “Civil Soceity, Citizenship and Subaltern Counter Publics in Post-Colonial India.” P.61.
36.
Surekha Nelavala, “Luther’s Sutra: An Indian, Subaltern (Dalit) Perspective,” Intersections 2017, no. 46 (2017): 29–33, https://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1430&context=intersections. P.31.
37.
Zizi Papacharissi, “The Virtual Sphere,” New Media & Society 4, no. 1 (2002): 9–27, https://doi.org/10.1177/14614440222226244.
38.
Guru, “Dalit Vision of India: From Bahishkrut to Inclusive Bharat.” P. 760.
39.
Shriram Venkatraman, “Conclusion : Social Media and Its Continuing Complexities,” in Social Media in South India (London: UCL Press, 2017). P. 198.
40.
Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.” P.364.
41.
Ibid. P.364–365.
42.
Sundar Sarukkai, “Experience and Theory: From Habermas to Gopal Guru,” in The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012). P.44.
43.
Ibid. P.45.
44.
Refer 4.3.2.1 of this thesis.
45.
B.R Ambedkar, “What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables,” in DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Volume 9, ed. Vasant Moon, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), http://drambedkarwritings.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/Volume_09.pdf.
46.
Ibid. P.xi.
47.
Ajay Skaria, “Ambedkar, Marx and the Buddhist Question,” Journal of South Asian Studies 38, no. 3 (2015): 450–465, https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2015.1049726.
48.
Jesus Francisco Chairez-Garza, “Touching Space: Ambedkar on the Spatial Features of Untouchability,” Contemporary South Asia 22, no. 1 (2014): 37–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2013.870978.
49.
Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.” P. 369.
50.
John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, ed. L. Melvin Rogers (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvanian University Press, 2012). P.48.
51.
Ibid.
52.
BR Ambedkar, “Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi,” in DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Volume 1, ed. Vasant Moon, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), http://drambedkarwritings.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/Volume_01.pdf.
53.
BR Ambedkar, “Kalaram Temple Entry Satyagraha, Nasik and Temple Entry Movement,” in DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR: WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Volume 17, ed. Ashok Narake, Hari, Kamble, N.G, Kasare, M.L, Godghate, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_17_01.pdf.
54.
Ibid. P.198–200.
55.
Ibid. P.201.
56.
Ambedkar, “Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi.”
57.
The letters of correspondence between Ambedkar and the Mandal committee members, which are printed as a prologue in the earlier editions, explain the reasons for the denial of its publication. To summarise the reasons, it was because some parts of the address were hurting the caste Hindus, the majoritarian public, and was critiquing the religious views of Hinduism on caste. In 2015 when this address was again re-printed, Arundati Roy a higher caste person had written an introduction, which left several Dalit scholars to respond to this encroachment of the Dalit-Bahujan space and an appropriation of Ambedkar’s Annihilation of caste. In response an Ambedkar Age Collective, Hatred in the Belly: Politics behind the Appropriation of Dr Ambedkar’s Writings (Hyderabad: The Shared Mirror Publications, 2015) was published addressing this appropriation as a counter public narrative.
58.
Ambedkar, “Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi.” P.56.
59.
BR Ambedkar, “Philisophy of Hinduism,” in DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Volume 3, ed. Hari Narake, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_03.pdf. P.67.
60.
Ambedkar finds the very principles of French Revolution (1789) that counters the graded Hindu social order based on caste divisions.
61.
Ambedkar, “Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi.” P.57–58.
62.
Ibid.
63.
Ibid.
64.
P.Mohan Larbeer, Ambedkar on Religion (New Delhi: ISPCK, 2003). P.157.
65.
BR Ambedkar, “Untouchables or the Children of Indian Ghettos,” in DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Volume 5, ed. Vasant Moon, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_05.pdf.
66.
Ibid. P.19–22.
67.
Chairez-Garza, “Touching Space: Ambedkar on the Spatial Features of Untouchability.” P.42.
68.
Ambedkar, “Untouchables or the Children of Indian Ghettos.” P.25.
69.
Ibid. P.26.
70.
Chairez-Garza, “Touching Space: Ambedkar on the Spatial Features of Untouchability.” P.43.
71.
Gopal Guru, “Experience, Space and Social Justice,” in The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory, ed. Sundar Guru, Gopal, Sarukkai (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012). P.102.
72.
Ibid.
73.
B.R Ambedkar, “Adoption of Constitution,” in DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Volume 13, ed. Vasant Moon, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), http://drambedkarwritings.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/Volume_13.pdf. P.1217.
74.
Ibid.
75.
Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.” P.367.
76.
Bartle Frere, “On the Means of Ascertaining Public Opinion in Ndia,” Journal of the East India Association 5, no. 4 (1871). P.102–104 as cited by Scott, J. Barton, Ingram, “What Is a Public? Notes from South Asia.” P.365.

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Raj Bharat Patta

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Patta, R.B. (2023). Can the Subalterns Public-ise? A Critical Subaltern Interrogation of ‘Public’. In: Subaltern Public Theology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23898-7_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23898-7_5
Published: 23 February 2023
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-23897-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-23898-7
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