Over the centuries, the Nepali state has treated Dalits as a sort of an ‘enemy within’ and excessively abused and deprived them into submission. The politics of the deprivation of Dalits, as it may be called, has occurred in at least two forms: Physically limiting their access to their basic needs, including food, water and clothing, and then denying them education, thus crushing their intellect.

Gone are the days when Dalits were severely tortured for reading and writing and even for listening to the chants of sacred Vedic verses by the Brahmins. However, intellectual deprivation has persisted, rendering even highly educated Dalits quite incapable of independent thinking.

Dalit politics relies on the thoughts and ideologies of upper-caste politicians and intellectuals. Dalits themselves haven’t been able to develop their own ideologies and philosophies. This intellectual deficit in the Dalit movement results from what Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak famously called “epistemic violence”.

Physical deprivation

Until recently, the traditional patron-client system was in full force nationwide. One can understand the damaging impact of this highly exploitative economic and cultural system by reading American Professor Mary Cameron’s monograph, On the Edge of the Auspicious, published in 1998.

Under this system, Dalits were required to serve upper-caste clients for generations for very little returns, mostly in kind. Dalits barely survived on little grains and old clothes handed to them by their clients in exchange for their relentless service as tailors, blacksmiths, shoemakers, drummers, entertainers, street and toilet cleaners, and so on.

That extreme form of physical deprivation in the form of the patron-client system ensured that Dalits remained subjugated for their survival. The supply of limited and poor-quality food and water also contributed to their physical and mental underdevelopment.

The patron-client system is losing ground, and the contemporary Dalit community is much less dependent on the upper caste financially. This newfound economic independence has allowed many Dalits, especially those living in urban areas, to gather wealth and get educated. The Dalit middle class is evidently on the rise.

In their 2016 research article “Dalit identity in urban Pokhara, Nepal”, published in the reputed international journal Geoforum, Bishnu Pariyar and Jon Lovett demonstrate an impressive upward social mobility amongst Dalits in the town of Pokhara (even as economic progress has not eroded the basic principles of untouchability). Some other studies and our observations also reveal the same trend.

Many scholars worldwide have argued that the middle class's growth is a key driver of social reform movements. Strangely, however, the impressive rise of the Dalit middle class in urban Nepal has not translated into a robust and powerful Dalit liberation movement.

On the contrary, Dalit freedom struggles have lost steam over the years. Many factors contribute to the Dalit movement's fall, one of them being intellectual deficit.

Intellectual deprivation

In a recent study, British Professor Michael Hutt found that Dalits have been highly unrepresented in the overall Nepali literature and that the genre of ‘Dalit sahitya’ only started in the early 1990s. Still, works of fiction and non-fiction that focus on Dalit history, culture, livelihood and human and civil rights rights are limited.

Western academic researchers have also largely ignored Dalit issues. Oxford University scholars Professor David Gellner and Krishna Adhikari stress the need for more studies on Nepali Dalits in their 2024 book Nepal’s Dalits in Transition.

A few Dalit non-governmental organisations have worked for what they call “Dalit knowledge creation”. With the assistance of foreign donors, they seek to promote the works of Dalit intellectuals and writers. Consequently, there has been a gradual progress in the production of Dalit intellectual works over the years.

The sad fact, however, is that Dalit intelligentsia haven’t intellectually grasped the current realities and forged new strategies and ideologies. Most newspaper articles, research papers and even books written by Dalits fail to develop new pathways to freedom.

Most Dalit intellectuals and academics still hold on to the philosophies and ideologies propagated by upper-caste leaders in their erstwhile struggle against the Hindu state. However, the country’s political landscape has changed dramatically after the termination of the monarchy, so old strategies and philosophies aren’t going to work.

Communism is an example of the above. Even as its chief proponents, like Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai, have more or less given up communist ideologies and adopted a multiparty democratic system, a significant segment of Dalits still believes in the communist utopia and dreams of reviving the violent revolution and building a supposedly classless society.

The ideological question of whether Dalit issues are a class or caste problem has confounded many Dalits. A majority of Dalits have been heavily indoctrinated by high-caste communist politicians in the past and made to believe that their problems are mainly about class.

Many Dalits tend to see capitalism as their nemesis, but history says otherwise: We were subjugated, exploited and segregated using Hindu principles long before the capitalist economy entered our societies.

Further, to a degree, the capitalist economy has kept us out of the traditional patron-client system. Many urban Dalits, like goldsmiths and tailors, have become conspicuously wealthy by commercialising their traditional trades.

Yet, the mainstream Dalit movement still doesn’t problematise issues of religious and cultural beliefs and practices. This is because the upper-caste intelligentsia never taught them these things and diverted their attention to other less critical issues, such as class and the lack of access to education and employment.

Even Dalits who no longer cling to extreme communism and support the ideologies of the major parties they once worked for seem lost, as there is no intellectual anchoring. We are yet to develop our own, perhaps more realistic philosophies and ideologies to match our current realities.

Our own Ambedkar

It’s been difficult to undo the wrongful teachings of the upper-caste elites and promote intellectual freedom. It’s about time the members of the Dalit intelligentsia try and think more creatively and independently to stop believing in the so-called ultimate truth that their political leaders and intellectuals have spoon-fed them.

One of the major factors for the relatively better Dalit struggles in India is the extraordinarily learned, novel and independent thoughts and ideas of Dr BR Ambedkar. To date, Ambedkarism has remained a Dalit intellectual watershed, one that keeps them out of the knowledge arena of the Brahmins. We should strive to find or develop our own Ambedkar. Therein lies the key to our success in fighting caste hierarchy.