“Shashi Tharoor does not know Indian life at all. (He knows) only the Indian Brahmin Banya life,” Dalit ideologue Kancha Iliah Shepherd lashed out at the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram.
Prof. Iliah, who had authored Why Iam not a Hindu , way back in 1995, came down heavily on Mr. Tharoor for his book Why I am a Hindu .
“Mr. Tharoor does not make any mention of the Sudra way of life. Instead he has strongly supported the Brahminical tradition,” Prof. Iliah said during a conversation on ‘Being a Dalit in India’ on the second day of the Kerala literature Festival here on Friday.
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“Being a Dalit in India is like being a buffalo in this country,” he said “The buffalo gives all the milk, but it is not a sacred animal. It is the cow that is sacred.”
On Hindutva
Speaking on Hindutva and its political designs, he said: “they fear that Dalits were going to change the composition of Hinduism, because they don’t come into the Brahminical tradition without questioning, unlike the OBCs and the Sudras”.
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He said that the new-age Dalit writers were capable of theorising their life experiences. Prof. Iliah said he was working on an alliance between the Ambedkarites and the Left to take on the forces of Hindutva.
“If the Communists join forces with the Dalits they will be able to mobilise 20% votes,” he said.
Praising the Kerala model of development as against the Gujarat model, Prof. Iliah called upon the Dalit intellectuals of Kerala to compare the State’s land reforms with that of Gujarat or even Bengal. Kerala has been able to give a Dalit President to the country because of its strong tradition in social integration and education.
“Give up your fixation with land, go in for English education. Do you know that 50% of Brahmins are working abroad. Let the Brahmins study Sanskrit. We will Learn English,“ he said.