Rohan D’Souza
A couple of articles[i] written on Indian Cultural Forum interrogating casteism in Krishnamurti schools and the responses[ii][iii] to them, got me thinking. As I have personally been influenced by Krishnamurti’s teachings and have taught in Krishnamurti influenced schools, I have tried to reflect on this through my own personal experiences and journey. That has led me to try and understand how one can access and internalise the teachings and thoughts of both Dr. B R Ambedkar and J Krishnamurti and make sense of caste and how it plays out in India. What follows is me trying to take this process forward along with how I experience or perceive caste and its potential transcendence through the lens of these two prominent thinkers.
J Krishnamurti and his teachings have been a major influence in my life for over a decade and a half. Listening to one of his talks, ‘Be the light onto yourself’ on audio cassette in 2004 sparked something in me. He appealed to me at a very visceral level and after that I dived into his teachings, getting my hands on his books, articles, talks and dialogues. The intensity of this experienced dimmed a little, but the flame continued burning and later in 2011, I got the opportunity to work in a Krishnamurti influenced school. This allowed me to see how his teachings got translated not just in pedagogy but also in how an educational institution could be run in a non authoritarian manner. My experience there and in other Krishnamurti schools I worked in later, gave an insight into practical application of his teachings.
Under all of this was a simmering interest in social justice and issues of caste and class which I could understand better in stints with an educational NGO. Caste and its manifestations were revealed through my interactions with others, understanding people’s experiences through conversations and talks. At one stage my interest in Krishnamurti’s teachings and issues of social justice such as caste seemed to be at odds with each other. This led me to explore the works and thoughts of Dr. Ambedkar and some other thinkers of social justice and caste such as Bama, Anand Teltumbde, Prof. G. Alosyius, Gael Omvedt and others.
Dr. Ambedkar’s searing and informed critique of caste and religion, especially his seminal works such as Annihilation of Caste, Riddles in Hinduism, Untouchables – Who they were and how they Became Untouchables, opened me up to a structural as well as personal critique of caste that was done with much clarity and academic rigour. This gave me, a man from a relatively privileged background, a good grasp of the structure and operation of caste. The existence of caste within the religion I was born into, Christianity, did not seem apparent earlier but was clear now. But what it didn’t do was give me tools at a psychological level to unravel the casteism inherent in me by virtue of my social location.
This is where I realised that one can understand and empathise with people from lesser privileged backgrounds but cannot hope to replace knowledge or empathy with an action that comes from a lived experience. One can at best be an ally to those lesser privileged. Part of being an ally seemed to me to include intense interrogation and reflection of myself and my patterns of behaviour, which at some level help to perpetuate systems such as caste and patriarchy. This realisation helped me to a large extent to relax my manufactured, unlived angst towards the caste system and those who I imagined as its sole perpetrators.
And this is where I return to Krishnamurti and his teachings and its possibility in helping me to be a self reflective ally. Krishnamurti has not specifically focused exclusively on caste for which he has also been criticised. To respond to that is outside the scope of this piece. Krishnamurti’s teaching method or the way in which he opened up his teachings was a measured and definite unravelling of the psychological. There were no theories or concepts to be understood but just an intense opening up of the psychological realm and its contents; thought, emotion and the self or the psychological identity that these create. Through this process he tried to lay bare the operation of thought and its creation of an identity of selfhood at an individual level and emanating from that, social structures. In his words, “You are the world and your interaction with others is society.”
However, one has to be careful to not apply this as a readymade formula or solution especially in a caste ridden society such as India, where those who are at the lower rungs of the caste system have no role in constructing this particular structure. Dr. Ambedkar’s creative reinterpretation of the Buddha’s conceptualisation of dukkha or suffering arising from craving is illuminative. He formulated dukkha as being personal suffering, social suffering, and suffering that arises due to the nature of existence[iv]. Social suffering experienced by groups of people would include those caused by structures such as caste. This is where one’s social location especially caste, can influence or not influence the nature of the structure.
So what can one who is located in the higher or middle rungs of caste do if s/he wishes to not perpetuate it as an ally? This is where Krishnamurti’s understanding and unravelling of tradition offers an insight. In his view tradition arises out of fear and is rooted in the past, never alive in the present moment. It is worth quoting him verbatim from a chapter in the book, Awakening of Intelligence (On Tradition and the Sacred, page 224), “I do not know if you have experimented with yourself. Take a piece of stick, put it on the mantelpiece and every day put a flower in front of it- give it a flower- put in front of it a flower and repeat some words- “Coca-cola”, “Amen”, “Om”, it doesn’t matter what word- any word you like .. listen, don’t laugh it off .. do it and you will find out. If you do it, after a month you will see how holy it has become. You have identified yourself with that stick, with that piece of idea and you have made it into something sacred, holy. But it is not. You have given it a sense of holiness out of your fear, out of constant habit of this tradition, giving yourself over, surrendering yourself to something, which you consider holy. The image in the temple is no more holy than a piece of rock by the roadside. So it is very important to find out what is really sacred, what is really holy, if there is such a thing at all.”
Thus tradition to him is something which one identifies strongly with based on an eventually empty assumption of sacredness. And to add to that I would say that this notion of supposed sacredness leads to one feeling superior or inferior based on tradition and connected practices of purity and pollution. This is where a system such as caste draws its power from. How can one then observe the movement of the mind which creates such systems? He suggested an intense observation and reflection of the processes of thought and emotion either individually or through open dialogue processes. This is what then according to him could bring about a revolution in the human mind which could then transform society and not necessarily just a revolution in society which ends up just replacing one system with another.
How does all of this apply to education? If one truly understands Krishnamurti’s negation of tradition through a revolution in the mind, then one can take it forward through educating young minds. When one works with children from a predominantly Savarna middle class background, I would use the same processes that worked for me; Dr. Ambedkar’s rigorous analysis of social structures, especially caste, to frame social realities along with Krishnamurti’s intense exploration of the mind and the processes of thought that creates identities and social structures. Thus the root of persistent, unjust and unequal structures such as caste can be arrived at and be dismantled.
And thus I continue my tryst with Krishnaji’s and Babasaheb’s teachings and hope to continue taking them to more young minds.
[i] https://indianculturalforum.in/2021/07/06/the-casteist-underbelly-of-krishnamurti-schools-part-one-prerna-s/
[ii] https://indianculturalforum.in/2021/07/10/in-response-to-the-casteist-underbelly-of-krishnamurti-schools/
[iii] https://indianculturalforum.in/2021/07/15/in-response-to-the-casteist-underbelly-of-krishnamurti-schools-2/
[iv] https://velivada.com/2017/06/28/reflections-dukkha-taking-refuge-buddha-dhamma-sangha/
Reflections..... 