Fight for social justice needs a new language

German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote that ‘“the” word is not just the individual word. Nor is it just the singular of “the words,” or of the group of words that constitute the discourse. Rather, this expression is linked to a usage according to which “the word” has a collective meaning and implies a social relationship’.

Words, when used carefully within institutional confines as well as larger societal confines, irrespective of their formality and informality, represent the ideological understanding of the users. They narrate the location of individuals who use them, and those on whom they are employed. Sometimes, it necessitates making the distinction between the use of the same words by different communities in a social structure.

It acquires a much deeper sensibility to comprehend this usage in situations where conflict due to inequality and exploitation is heightened, such as seen in India. Even government figures point to higher crime against women leave aside acts that are not recognised as crimes by society or the State. Gender and caste determine the payment of wages in India. Married women reportedly get rejected for jobs in institutions that are symbols of modern technology. ‘Brilliant minds’ are deeply embedded in the caste-driven ideology, and a reflection is found in the IITs where students from oppressed castes face problems, and where faculty from oppressed groups are scant. An exploited and discriminated individual asking the caste to understand how the media is dominated by the savarnas and, therefore, represents a particular worldview and an elite, privileged savarna asking a student or a possible employment candidate their caste are two different situations and cannot be equated. This situation requires us to make distinction between the use of the same words. The inequality and the ability to be unjust are so ingrained in the psyche that temples are washed after visits by OBC leaders, and politicians ask for the caste identity of fellow parliamentarians.

Recently, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told a woman MLA Rekha Paswan that she would not comprehend the ongoing discussion in the Assembly. He wanted her to listen to him as if he was the repository of all knowledge and being a woman she had to listen to the higher intelligence quotient of men. I have witnessed elite retired administrators getting angry at tribals in a seminar hall because their way of presenting their plight was not as methodical and succinct as those trained in the best of higher education institutions. Kumar was implying that women don’t understand complex things such as reservation and policy making. He was merely voicing how men in our society think. It did not stop at Kumar’s derogatory remarks. A Union minister followed him and remarked on how could former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi understand complicated things like the Union Budget. The idea that knowledge and the ability to understand complexities rests with the privileged gender, caste, communities, and class drives these notions among these political elites who once were desperate to be recognised as torchbearers of social justice.

Injustices based on social identities and class are perpetuated by institutions that are created by the ruling elites. The notion of caste inequality or that women are inferior to men becomes common sense transmitted from one generation to the other. It is like Pierre Bourdieu’s doxa, which is so embedded in the human self that it ‘does not even need to be asserted in the form of an explicit, self-conscious dogma’. This embeddedness is ensured through and reproduced via institutions of different kinds. What MPs, chief ministers, and common masses are expressing are nothing but reflections of this continued reproduction of the doxa.

Given this, the fight to ensure social justice must happen through the discovery of a new language, a new consciousness, and a new beginning for those who are in the decision-making bodies of society and polity. The rupture in the social reproduction of violence against the Dalits and women will happen when the idea of social justice is internalised as a new ‘doxa’ comes into existence — one which assumes equality and justice as natural and pre-given, when violence becomes pathological, and a remark against women of the kind we see now is considered unreasonable. This is what Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire called conscientisation — which ‘refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality’.

What we encounter through the words of politicians and bureaucrats is the superficiality of policy making not leading to conscientisation. A top-down approach cannot ensure universalisation of the ideas of social justice. A horizontal, dialogic endeavour, which is essentially a praxis — a combination of ‘action and reflection’ in the Freirian sense — would allow the minimisation and a gradual rejection of political ideas and actions which target women and the Dalits, and gradually enter the realm of redistributive politics and policy-making organically. The consistent behaviour of parliamentarians targeting religious minorities, women or the Dalits demonstrates that a lot more needs to be done than mere announcements of policies.

It has been amply proven how misogynistic our politics is and there are efforts to overcome this tendency as it cannot be changed merely by allowing women to hold a few positions within a political party. It involves a complete overhauling of the consciousness of politicians, thereby changing the way they understand gender, and participate consciously in everyday gendered relationships to transform the basic elements of behaviour, language, and conflict. Parliaments and assemblies can become mere facilitators of policy making, but the actual battle for social justice has to be fought on the ground, to bring rupture within the dominant forms of power relations, when legislators become like common masses and also dismantle the patriarchal, elitist, and domineering role within their families and societies.

(Ravi Kumar is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, South Asian University.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.