Inner Life, Politics, and the Secular: Is There a “Spirituality” of Subalterns and Dalits? Notes on Gramsci and Ambedkar

Abstract

When discussing the plight of subaltern groups, scholars often underline the economic and material troubles suffered by “the poor” through the perpetration of unjust exploitation, unequal distribution of wealth, and more generally, their being subjected to abuse and violence. This narrative frequently includes the means put in place by subalterns to regain a share of power, but the idea of “inner life” or “spirituality” has hardly been considered as part of the process through which subalterns express their agency so as to attain recognition of their “full humanity.” A closer analysis of Gramsci’s Notebook 11 and other works, however, highlights the relevance of an innovative, transforming, and immanent “spirituality” that necessarily reflects the historical experience of subaltern groups. This is further emphasized by the writings and activity of the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar.

Key Words:

• B. R. Ambedkar
• Dalits
• Antonio Gramsci
• Spirituality
• Subalterns

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Serap A. Kayatekin, Anjan Chakrabarti, Marcus Green, Joseph Buttigieg, Kate Crehan, Peter Thomas, Arun Patnaik, Fabio Frosini, and Anne Showstack Sassoon for their stimulating reflections on early versions of this paper.

Notes

1 Findley was here referring to Patočka's manuscript “The Spiritual Person and the Intellectual,” which Findley himself had translated.

2 The remaining three subjects are: (1) a study of comparative linguistics, (2) a study of Pirandello's theatre and the transformation of Italian theatrical taste, and (3) an essay on the serial novel and popular tastes in literature.

3 I adopt here the translation of “spirito popolare creativo” given by R. Rosenthal (see Gramsci 1994, 80).

4 As Frank Rosengarten has rightly pointed out, “disinterested” here does not mean the achievement of a “serene and ‘olympian’ detachment from immediate concerns” but a “more comprehensive … frame of reference for his studies than his early political and journalistic writing could have afforded” (see Gramsci 1994, 85–6n3).

5 See “Socialismo e Cultura,” Il Grido del Popolo, 29 January 1916. Gramsci signed this article “Alfa Gamma.” I would like to thank Marcus Green for reminding me about this relevant short article.

6 “Vico maintains that in this dictum Solon wished to admonish the plebeians, who believed themselves to be of bestial origin and the nobility to be of divine origin, to reflect on themselves and see that they had the same human nature as the nobles and hence should claim to be their equals in civil law. Vico then points to this consciousness of human equality between plebeians and nobles as the basis and historical reason for the rise of the democratic republics of antiquity” (Gramsci 2000, 56).

7 I am using here the translation found in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971) but use text markers to refer to the original critical edition of the Quaderni (Gramsci 1975).

8 If we expand the role of language, common sense, religion, and “the whole system of beliefs,” including also folklore, all of these become different languages through which people—the masses—express themselves. Gramsci's (Q11§13, 1975, 1396; 1971, 323) effort here is to understand and explain the place of these languages in relation to philosophy and in particular to the “philosophy of praxis,” given that common sense is the “philosophy of non-philosophers” and as such “is the ‘folklore’ of philosophy, and like folklore presents itself in many shapes and forms.”

9 “The starting-point of critical elaboration, the historicity of this process, which is ‘the consciousness of what one really is,’ and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. Such an inventory must therefore be made at the outset” (Q11§12, Gramsci 1975, 1376; 1971, 324).

10 “Note the problem of religion taken not in the confessional sense but in the secular sense of a unity of faith between a conception of the world and a corresponding norm of conduct. But why call this unity of faith ‘religion’ and not ‘ideology’, or even ‘politics’?” (Q11§12, Gramsci 1975, 1378; 1971, 326).

11 Gramsci is here referring mainly to the Italian experience. In this respect, his reflection on the role of the Jesuits in establishing a connection between “intellectuals and the simple” still seems pertinent today, given the presence of a very active “Jesuit pope” (see Q11§12, Gramsci 1975, 1381; 1971, 329).

12 Undoubtedly Gramsci would have welcomed and assessed the role of such movements as Latin American liberation theology, which was initially promoted by local intellectuals but soon became widespread among the “faithful” and “the mass of the simple,” taking the illustrative name of “Ecclesial (Christian) Base Communities.”

13 Pizza’s (2013) article “Gramsci e de Martino: Appunti per una riflessione” has been reprinted and expanded in Il tarantismo oggi: Antropologia, politica, cultura (Pizza 2015).

14 This group, known all over Bengal and Bangladesh as Muchi-Rishi, are by tradition leatherworkers, cobblers, and musicians.

15 “Untouchable” is the equivalent of the Sanskrit asprsya (acchut in Hindi). Another term, popularized by Gandhi, is Harijan (child of Hari/Vishnu). This was refused by Ambedkar, who preferred instead the name Dalit (crushed, oppressed).

16 These excerpts are from a speech by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, 2 March 1930, given at the Kala Ram Mandir in Nashik (Maharashtra) in the presence of fifteen thousand Dalits.

17 While Gandhi adopted satyagraha to fight British rule in India, he did not, according to Ambedkar, extend satyagraha to oppose the violence suffered by untouchables at the hands of caste Hindus. Hence Ambedkar's appeal for a “true satyagraha.”

18 When invited by the anticaste group Jat-Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore to deliver a speech, Ambedkar (2014) wrote The Annihilation of Caste, but the text was found “offensive” because it criticized the Vedas and other Hindu texts, and the event was cancelled. Ambedkar, however, printed and distributed around fifteen hundred copies of the text.

19 “This oath I made earlier, yesterday I proved it true” (Ambedkar 2016b).

20 “The Chaturvarṇa system was not created haphazardly. It is not just a popular custom. It is religion” (Ambedkar 2016b; emphasis added).

21 “There is no place for God and soul in the Buddhist religion” (Ambedkar 2016b).

22 “If you at all decide in favour of conversion, then you will have to promise me organised and en-masse conversion” (Ambedkar 2016a).

23 See Arundhati Roy's introduction “The Doctor and the Saint” in Ambedkar (2014).

24 Arun Patnaik (personal communication).

25 Gramsci (Q13§1, Gramsci 1975, 1555–61) compares the utopian characteristics of Machiavelli's The Prince to the concept of the myth-ideology applied by Sorel to trade unionism. The utopian myth here becomes a necessary incentive for the people (“dispersed and annihilated”) so as to “arouse and organise their collective will.”

26 Personal communication of Anjan Chakrabarti.