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Kancha Ilaiah Quotes (1952-)
Author, Writer, Activist
About Kancha Ilaiah
Kancha Ilaiah (born 5 October 1952) is the chairman of the political science department at Osmania University, a social activist and author. He is a Buddhist and a major figure in the ideological movement against the Indian caste system. His position is often called anti-Hindu, as noted by his critics. His field of work is in Dalit-Bahujan (Scheduled Caste and Backward Caste) movement. He is a prolific writer in English and Telugu.
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βThe fight for rights and assertion is almost over. Now the fight is for intellectual equality, and that is where everything becomes controversial or problematic for upper castes.β
βHow do you change ancient prejudices in any society? You do it through repositioning caste at childhood. If young children are taught respect over a bedtime story or in class, that could help enormouslyβ
βThe opposition to the habits of those who eat beef is cultural fascism. Certain sections of the elite are still not ready to accept the food habits of the vast majority of Dalits and other socially oppressedβ
βThe practice of untouchability brutalises human self beyond repair. The nationβs energies are being destroyed by this practice, which has spiritual, moral, ethical and ideological sanction of the Hindu religion.β
βIf the God believed by a person doesnβt have democratic values, where will this person get those democratic values from? In fact, shouldnβt they explain why they create such Gods who are violent, undemocratic and anti-women?β
βA careful reading of the Gita would show anyone that it fully supports the enslavement of Shudras and OBCs, a process initiated by the Rig Veda itself. Rig Veda formulated the caste structure in Purusha Suktha and the Gita upheld it.β
βJust as the Brahmins are shouting Hinduise India, we should shout Dalitise India. Shout that we hate Hinduism, we hate Brahmanism. Capture the Hindu temples by expelling the Brahmins from them. β¦ The hated must hate. They must become powerful and organised. I want to create anger.β
βThe dalit's main agenda is not reservations. My way of equality is English education. Even if 10% of our children got English education, the intellectual field would have changed. This country would have changed. My hope is education, not reservation β and I emphasize, English educationβ
βReform your texts, reform your history. Say leather is not untouchable to God, the barber's knife is not untouchable to God. Take a Dalit priest and a Brahmin priest to celebrations. Do these symbolic things. Let them (high-caste Hindus) come and sit with Dalits in their huts and eat with themβ
βAll parasites suffer from a constant fear of individualism. . . . The Brahmins as a community shared the animal instinct of not being able to produce anything from the earth. This human caste differs from all the other social communities ever since human beings evolved out of the apes. . . . This unusual instinct of parasitism forced the Brahmans to construct a social process of spiritual fascism that became the fortress of this parasitism.β
βLarge number of tribes, Dalits and Backward Castes have a historical food culture of beef. The anti-beef agenda has been in the Brahmanical fold. It began with the South Indian Brahmins and then spread to the North and became part of the Gandhian movement. My question is, how can the state impose a certain food culture on people? The state has nothing to do with food. They can give certain food to people depending on the market, but cannot impose that you can or cannot eat certain food items. If beef eating is bad for Brahmins or Baniyas or certain upper castes, then the state is imposing that on the rest of the society. So the state is actually becoming a theocratic state.β
βYes, I hate Hinduism. Hinduism is not ours, it is against us. If we have to become Hindus, the Brahmins will have to change the entire religious texts, our food habits, our gods and goddesses and images. I am angry at the Hindu gods.
Look at the images of Hindu gods. They wield weapons. We read that Hindu gods killed our own ancestors. How can I worship the killers as divine? What kind of a religion is it? There are three major religions β Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These major religions were constructed by prophets who sacrificed and struggled in life for people's liberation. All these three religions never said that the larger sections of their people were born from the feet of God.β
Look at the images of Hindu gods. They wield weapons. We read that Hindu gods killed our own ancestors. How can I worship the killers as divine? What kind of a religion is it? There are three major religions β Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These major religions were constructed by prophets who sacrificed and struggled in life for people's liberation. All these three religions never said that the larger sections of their people were born from the feet of God.β
βHinduism has destroyed all positive elements that normally exist in a human being. During the post-colonial period their energies were diverted to manipulate education, employment, production and development subtly. Their minds are poisoned with the notion that productive work is mean and that productive castes are inferior. No ruling class in the world is as dehumanized as the Indian brahminical castes. They can be rehumanized only by pushing them into productive work and by completely diverting their attention from the temple, the office, power-seeking, and so on.β
βI have a feeling that if a Dalitist state gets established it will be a far better Socialist model for the world than the other models which were already established because Dalitbahujan society was never so religiously fundamentalist, there is no such constructed religion like that, it has been much more spontaneous, and they have lived for such a long time with that kind of a thinking. So from that to a kind of conscious educated Dalitist socialist system, I think that the productive forces would get released a thousand times, and equality will come much better but it should be under Dalit leadership. Now if under Dalit women leadership if a Dalitist state and society is established I think we will see a very bright future for the whole country.β
βHinduism is a religion of violence. All Hindu gods killed their enemies and became heroic images. This is the only religion in the world where the killer becomes god. Whom did they kill? From Brahma to Krishna, those who were killed were Dalitbahujans. Now these images and the stories and narratives and everything is out there in the civil society. Now, because of this, the consciousness of worshipping the killer or worshipping violence did not give any space for human rights. So my question is the human rights discourse must start with an anti-warrior position.β
βHinduism always used violence as creed. For Hinduism, for Hindu dharma, resolving of a conflict is only by killing. There is no other discourse. Debate is not there. You have to kill the enemy. Whereas Buddha believed in discourse and resolving the conflict. So in a system where you have the two streams of thought, debate and discourse, human rights and anti-human rights, even the left has to take that historical tradition and examine its potential and use it for its propaganda systems. It is in this context that I have been saying that there is no use if you simply borrow concepts from the West. Christianity has a different ethic; it was an ethic of sacrifice. Christ's crucifixion is a symbol of sacrifice, it is not a killing symbol. The lamb is a productive symbol.β
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Kancha Ilaiah on Irreligion in India
βWe reject the Hinduization programme in toto for two reasons. One, Hinduism has never been a humane philosophy. It is the most brutal religious school that the history of religions has witnessed. The Dalitbhujan castes of India are the living evidence of its brutality. Second, even if Hinduization expressed a desire to humanize itself in future, there is no scope for this to happen, since the history of religion itself is coming to an end.β
Kancha Ilaiah on Productive forces
βI have a feeling that if a Dalitist state gets established it will be a far better Socialist model for the world than the other models which were already established because Dalitbahujan society was never so religiously fundamentalist, there is no such constructed religion like that, it has been much more spontaneous, and they have lived for such a long time with that kind of a thinking. So from that to a kind of conscious educated Dalitist socialist system, I think that the productive forces would get released a thousand times, and equality will come much better but it should be under Dalit leadership. Now if under Dalit women leadership if a Dalitist state and society is established I think we will see a very bright future for the whole country.β
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βThese anti-Hindu forces are exploiting the Aryan Invasion Theory to the hilt, infusing crank racism in vast doses into Indiaβs body politic. Read, e.g. Kancha Ilaiahβs book Why I Am Not a Hindu (Calcutta, 1996), sponsored by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, with its anti-Brahmin cartoons: move the hairlocks of the Brahmin villains from the back of the head to just in front of their ears, and you get exact replicas of the anti-Semitic cartoons from the Nazi paper, Der StΓΌrmerβ
About Kancha Ilaiah
Kancha Ilaiah (born 5 October 1952) is the chairman of the political science department at Osmania University, a social activist and author. He is a Buddhist and a major figure in the ideological movement against the Indian caste system. His position is often called anti-Hindu, as noted by his critics. His field of work is in Dalit-Bahujan (Scheduled Caste and Backward Caste) movement. He is a prolific writer in English and Telugu.