Retelling of Folk Narratives in Creating a Dalit Public Sphere: Swami Achhutanand’s Ramrajya Nyaya

Abstract

The Adi Hindu movement was founded by Swami Achhutanand as an anti-caste non-Brahmin movement in the 1920s. The movement created a public discursive space that challenged the dominant Brahmanical Hindi public sphere and helped shape the colonial government’s policy vis-a-vis the Dalits.

Swami Achhutanand’s writings are situated in the transformational period in the social and political history of India that saw the emergence of Hindi Dalit Writing. Drawing from the oral folk narratives of Ramayana, his Ramrajya Nyaya and Mayanand Balidan, are a subaltern reading of the popular Hindu myths. For instance, in Ramrajya Nyaya he not only questions Ram’s blind obedience to the varnashram dharma in the killing of Shambuka, the dalit ascetic, but also demystifies and debunks the ramrajya that Gandhi was propagating as the ideal society. His use of the performative aspect of theatre in disseminating the Adi-Hindu ideology is an essential part of what contributes to the making of the dalit public sphere. Through poems that he recited in public gatherings, songs that were sung during satsangs, and theatre performances, Swami Achhutanand created a Dalit discourse that became part of a larger Dalit counter-public.

The article will examine how Swami Achhutanand drew on the popular Brahmanic folklore of Ramrajya in contrast to other subaltern intellectuals who drew on non-Brahmanic traditions to envision an earthly utopia in such works as Ravidas’s Begumpura, Tukaram’s Pandharpur, Kabir’s Amrapur and Premnagar, Periyar’s Dravidasthan, Phule’s Bali Rajya, and Ambedkar’s Navayana Buddhism. This dalit public sphere was in constant conflict with the dominant Brahmanic public sphere and presented alternate and oppositional ideas about its own identity, interests and needs.