Navigating identities for human liberation

Every movement is contextual. The social revolutions arise in response to a particular social and cultural situation. The human right movement cannot be universalised for the same reason that a particular situation needs a particular response. This is not to deny the utility of solidarity between similar groups or the importance of learning from other movements, both are necessary and important. There are no laws like physical laws that govern the movement. There is no universal recipe for all the social movements.

These aspects are important to build a particular social movement. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx encouraged all the working classes all over the world to unite. Noble goal indeed, but how will that operate among the " working classes" divided into ethnic and other identities. There will be always the problem of division, as the individual treats other individual as an object, and object should be either likeable or dislikeable, so is the objectification of social groups, religious groups, and so on.

Therefore it is important to find that common marker which makes one particular group a group. Something that makes the unite, what is otherwise known as an identity therefore becomes the rallying point for social mobilisation, which is the first step towards social revolution. As Dewey taught, an individual is an abstract concept, the human being lives in the society and is perhaps part of several groups, some intersecting and some disjointed groups.

But surely we are the part of group, perhaps several groups. The group in which we are born informs one worldview. This gives us a particular way to know the world or interact with the world around us. This is not to say that we can't escape identities. We can for identities are social in nature and new identities can be created. New connects can be formed. Identities can be treated as plastic and malleable. But we must begin with some identity as a precursor of social mobilisation. This is unique to the situation. 

In case of Scheduled Castes in India, already many identities are being discussed, attached to, and fought among. Firstly, there are caste related identities. And we cannot just throw them away. We have to mobilise the individual caste, not individuals in the caste. Secondly, there are regional caste identities. Thirdly, there are " exploited castes" identities. How to resolve these circles of identities?

For this we may have to look at Babasaheb Ambedkar for guidance. He wrote three important tracts, in my opinion, to resolve this: Who were the Mahars? Who were the untouchables? Who were the Shudras? These are not just the sociological tracts, but deeply they are tools for mobilisation. It is for sure that every caste among the untouchables has a history and history can be a tool to understand and deconstruct. We need new history authored by our people with their data and most importantly our own experiences.

The history of individual Castes will be important to mobilise them within. Who were the Chamars? Who were the Madiga? Who were the pariah? Now, these all castes among the Scheduled Caste suffered the practice of untouchability. How these all castes were forced to become untouchables? What is the common marker among all of them?

The next level of discussion is are they part of exploitation due to some larger religious structural framework? Are there other exploited groups by that structure? This series of contextual questions all the way upto the question of celebration and universalisation of human person is a working method for social mobilisation and eventual social revolution born out of it.

While there are hidden dangers in social mobilisation based on individual caste mobilisation, if the mobilisation is done not sequentially, but parallely those dangers can be taken care of. This brings us to one important conclusion, there cannot be a singular movement. The movement by nature is a superset of many movements.

The ocean of the movement is fed by many rivers of movements. Without caste movements, the scheduled castes movement cannot be consolidated, and without scheduled caste movement, backward castes movement cannot be consolidated, and without these movements the democratic revolution cannot take place.

All the contradictions can be removed if we have all these movements going parallely and feeding into each other the energies released by the consolidation of movements at different levels.

So who we really are? Human beings? Asians? Indian? Religious group? linguistic group? Caste group?. ...The answer will depend on the context or the situation proving to us that identities are not absolute or concrete. The most important issue is: Can we do and practice the dance of identities allowing many identities join in for a social consolidation towards social emancipation of all?