Identity. Lost And Found

Identity, as one’s sense of self and its persistence, shaped through ascriptive and subjective processes, is natural to humans as social beings. Identity politics, however, is not natural.

- Anand Teltumbde

It is articulated through a persistent sense of discrimination and oppression, either innate or induced, along the axis of ‘defining’ one identity from among many. Identity politics thus necessarily veer towards becoming essentialist. Consequently, rather than understanding oneself as having heterogeneous and multiple identities, people are provoked to support the politics based on a particular identity.

There has been considerable scholarly interest in identity politics, highlighting its egalitarian and preservationist dimensions. The protagonists tend to see it in positive light because of its democratising potential. It may, however, be noted that the specific dimensions of identity politics come forth, not as its generic attribute but in the specific context of a particular identity. The focus of this essay being annihilation of caste, it deals with politics based on caste identity, particularly by Dalits, who being the worst victims of the caste system and sans any stake in it, were expected to be the torch-bearers in the struggle for annihilation of caste.

In India, caste mobilization for political purposes had followed two inherent strategies: one, to assimilate many castes under the same identity and stake a claim for a larger part of the pie, and two, to cordon themselves off from being usurped by others in this process in order to preserve their own share for themselves. While the former strategy was adopted by the upper castes, the latter came to be adopted by the maturing Dalit movement under Babasaheb Ambedkar.