Editorial, p. 1

"The Medieval State and Caste," Shireen Moosvi, p. 3

"The Making of Adi Dravida Politics," Raj Sekhar Basu, p. 9

"Silpis in Ancient India," R N Misra, p. 43

"The Adivasi Peasantry of Chotanagpur," P K Shukla, p. 55

"Oslo Accords," Shamir Hassan, p. 65

Review articles
p. 73 R Uma Maheshwari's review article titled Chronicling Calcutta's Left Trajectory, and Muzaffar Ahmad Within of Suchetana Chattopadhyay, An Early Communist: Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta 1913-1929, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2011, HB, xiv+306 pages, Rs 600
p. 81-85. Indrani Sanyal's review article of Uma Chattopadhyay, Dishonoured by Philosophers: Upamana in Indian Epistemology, D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, 2009, HB, 255 pages, Rs 580

Editorial

The eminent historian Irfan Habib said at a recent academic event in New Delhi that the real upholders and beneficiaries of the caste-system in India were not so much the Brahmins as the ruling classes, which is why the exclusively anti-Brahmin orientation of the contemporary dalit movement was so inapposite. Shireen Moosvi's lead article in the current issue of Social Scientist substantiates this point, by highlighting how even the Muslim rulers in early medieval India adjusted themselves, and lent support, to the caste system. This may appear strange at first sight, given the egalitarian thrust of Islam. But this egalitarianism never came in the way of the unequal treatment meted out to the slaves, enrolled from among the conquered people, by Muslim rulers everywhere in the world. And treating the oppressed castes in the same manner as slaves was but an easy transition for the medieval Indian rulers. Where there were exceptions, such as with Muhammad Tughluq, under whose reign many from lower castes were able to climb up to occupy important positions, the reason had to do with the exigencies of the situation rather than any conviction that caste divisions deserved to be set aside

The limitations of anti-Brahminism alone as the ideological cement for holding together a socio-political movement were exposed by the post-first world war experience in the Madras Presidency, which is recounted in Raj Sekhar Basu's paper. The formation of an anti-Brahmin front which brought the Justice Party to power in the elections held as a consequence of the Montague-Chelmsford reforms, soon gave way to a fracturing of this front and accusations by the Adi Dravidas, consisting of the so-called "untouchable castes", that the Justice Party administration had ignored their needs and aspirations. As distinct from the Brahmin-dominated Congress and the non-Brahmin upper-caste-dominated Justice Party, the Adi-Dravidas in the early 1920s increasingly began to express their own separate identity through their own organizations. This separate stream that emerged tended to see colonialism as an egalitarian force against the institutionalized inequalities of the pre-existing system; hence it emphasized socio-political empowerment of the so-called

Social Scientist, p. 2

"untouchable castes" even to the exclusion of the anti-colonial struggle, i.e. within the existing order; and it even came in the way of joint struggles of workers of all castes, as in the case of the strike at the Buckingham Carnatic Mills.

There were powerful reasons of course for the assertion of this separate identity among workers, since the workers from the so-called "untouchable castes" were steeped in even more acute penury than their colleagues from other castes; but the beneficiary from this lack of unity among workers was British capital. This form of what would nowadays be called "identity politics" flourished in the twenties in the Madras Presidency and elsewhere because the anti-colonial struggle was still trapped within a problematic that allowed it to do so; it was only in the 1930s, especially after the Karachi Congress which laid down, in a manner of speaking, the outlines of a "social contract" that could constitute the basis for the formation of a free India, that the problematic itself began to change.

P.K.Shukla's paper which covers the struggles of the adivasi peasantry over a somewhat longer period brings to the fore the contradiction between the same two tendencies among the adivasis, as came to exist among the so-called "untouchable castes": one was the tendency of struggle against colonialism and the other was a tendency of keeping out of the anti-colonial struggle and trying to carve out a separate identity, and making demands on the basis of it, within the existing order. The former concerned itself with class issues and wanted to make common cause with other social forces; the latter concerned itself with "identity politics", emphasized exclusivism and pushed class issues to the background.

While the possibility of breaking out of one's assigned position within the caste hierarchy was denied to most castes, one group that did manage to do so according to the paper by R.N. Mishra was the silpis or artists. Assigned to a low caste status by the Dharmashastra, they managed over the centuries, through the acquisition of skills and knowledge, to obtain wealth and privileges that would not have normally come their way. Some even rose to become chieftains with titles like ranaka, thakkura, and samanta.

This issue has three additional pieces: one by Shamir Hassan is on the Oslo accord on Palestine; it explores both the background of the accord and its limitations, which, as anticipated by 'many including Edward Said, produced renewed conflict rather than any lasting peace. The second piece is a review article by Uma Maheshari on Suchetana Chattopadhyay's recently published biographical work on Muzaffar Ahmad, which explores both the personal journey of Muzaffar Ahmad and the ambience of Calcutta at the time, and; the third piece is a r eview article by Indrani Sanyal.