Summary
Contents
This book is entirely different from books that have been written on Indian civil societal relations, spiritual character, political economy, philosophical foundations, scientific roots, cultural essence, and historicity. It takes a journey from tribals upwards and looks at the pyramid of the communities in an inverse order.
In this book each community that was/is historically treated as unclean by Hindu Spiritual Fascism emerges as not only more clean than the Brahmin self, but also more nationalistic than that self. It draws the battle lines between spiritual fascism and spiritual democracy and predicts the possible course of an inevitable civil war between the hegemonized and the hegemonizer in the realms of spiritual life, social life and political life. It holds the hegemonic forces responsible for the ensuing war of weapons. It puts altogether unknown weapons in the hands of Dalitbahujans to seize power in all fields from the forces that made the nation surrender before external forces. Each chapter in this book shows how we did not know the historical strength of castes that was seen to be unworthy of study and how such castes have the potential to re-position the very self of the nation. At the same time the author critiques the intellectual imagination of the dominant communities from an altogether new point of view.
This book is an excise in new methodology, pedagogy, analysis, and synthesization of knowledge. Every chapter in this book reads like a new innovation in Indian social anthropology. It draws a different map for the future of this nation and its intellectual history.
Social Doctors
Social Doctors
The Mangalis (barbers) and the Chakalis (washerfolk) live as neighbours in the Telugu country; perhaps they live like that in all states. The Mangalis, though numerically small, constitute an essential social force in the Telugu civil society. They are not an untouchable community like the Madigas or Malas. They shave heads and other parts of the human body as part of their work. They touch all men except those who live in Brahmanical seclusion. Brahmanism labelled the Mangalis as a polluted community, just as they did in the case of the Chakalis, Malas and the Madigas. Brahmanism knows how to brand people; seclude them layer by layer.
Social Doctors
In reality, the Mangalis were social doctors, who possessed knowledge of the human anatomy and ...