The idea of the citizenship is an attempt to create a sense
of belonging to a community, which is, as Benedict Anderson would say,
essentially imagined. It is inherently an inclusive attempt, however, it might not
get realized on the ground due to the class, gender, social and other inequalities,
differences and injustices. But essentially it requires a sense of inclusion
and equality. But in India it has been always a sphere of contention. What we
call an India society, is basically a structure of exclusions, which Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar, the radical democrat and chief architect of Indian constitution, used
to call a society of ‘compulsory segregation’. Here one starts with the
exclusion, punitive norms and identities and this saturates the notions of
citizenship in India.
This is the background, against which Dr. Ambedkar started
his political work of reforming the society, and after his first few
experiments, he understood that while remaining within the caste fold, there
cannot be real reform and this failure of the reform will bury the aspirations
of any real democratic revolution in the society. He emphasized that Hinduism
is incompatible with the democracy. Thus he concluded that first the ‘Untouchable’
(now known as Dalits, the depressed which is the lower social strata of Indian
society) need to denounce the Hinduism, and get converted into another religion
to usher a social reform which would become base for the political revolution.
This, as a method, remarkably resembles with the V-effect
which German dramaturge Bertolt Brecht formulated for his own theatre. Through
my research project, I am trying to see models of V-effect in both Ambedkar and
Brecht.
Here is the speech where Ambedkar denounces the Hinduism.
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