Dalit Social Hermeneutics

S. Lourdunathan
Facets of Hermeneutics applied to Dalit Social Reality

Department of Philosophy, Loyola College,

Satya Nilayam, Chennai
 Part- I

FACETS OF HERMENEUTICS

1.0. Introduction
1.1. The paper attempts to (i) trace the different facets of hermeneutics in its
development as a science of interpretation and (ii) proceeds to engage the
possibility of applying hermeneutics as a theory and practice of
interpretation to Dalit social reality.
1.2. Accordingly the first part of the discussion clarifies the developmental
stages and aspects of hermeneutics and the second part of the paper
elucidates the facets of Dalit social hermeneutics by way of applying
certain themes of hermeneutics to be applied to Dalit social reality.
1.3. In the end, the paper points out possible limitations of hermeneutics as an
applied social theory and practice, conversely to be applied to Dalit social
reality.

2.0. Defining hermeneutics

2.1. Hermeneutics is about the theory and practice of interpretation, about the
bringing of understanding into language. Hermeneutics is a path-breaking
movement1, ‘a movement from vagueness to clarity’ whose simplest
meaning is to render explicit of what is implicit in our understanding
through the mode of interpretation. However, the perceived relevance of
hermeneutics grew to include the interpretation of any meaningful social
phenomenon, including complex (multi-texted) social phenomena like
historical traditions or, one might add, (scientific) research traditions. 2
2.2. Hermeneutics as a science of interpretation has evolved from biblical
(textual) through grammatical, psychological, linguistic, and historical to
contextual (social) typologies of hermeneutics. Each facets reveal
significant aspect of interpretation that constitutes human understanding
of itself and its understanding of the social world. I shall briefly attempt
to trace these different facets of hermeneutics below.

3.0. Facets of Hermeneutics: Biblical or Scriptural or Textual Hermeneutics

3.1. Hermeneutics was originally conceptualized as a practice for
understanding written texts namely the Bible as the Textual basis for
understanding and interpreting social world, the reality of world. It is the
study of the principles and methods of interpreting biblical texts, known

1
Some famous exponents of hermeneutics in contemporary thought might include Friedrich
Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer.
2
See Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique
(London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1980); and Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, eds., The
Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990).

1
 as exegesis (Greek word) meaning that biblical text calls for understanding
by engaging interpretation of it.
3.2. Textual or biblical hermeneutics developed from literal interpretation to
the issues such as literary genres, grammatical and syntactical features,
semantical, historical, text-contextual (text in relation to other texts),
textual criticism and contextual interpretations. These developments were
used to biblical interpretation as hermeneutics has been developed of its
various aspects in its historical-philosophical development of it. 3
3.3. What biblical hermeneutics perhaps not engaged is the positivistic
dimension of hermeneutics that is to render scientific testability of the
scriptural texts. But this is debatable.
3.4. ‘The purpose of biblical hermeneutics, according to the believer’s
standpoint is to protect from misapplying Scripture or allowing bias to
color our understanding of truth of the revelation of God.’ 4 (Refer Antony
Flew and R. M. Hare for Believers’ position)

4.0. Derivations: Shifts in Hermeneutics

4.1. Hermeneutics as a science of interpretation has gone through different
stages of its development. One may identify three important phases of the
development of hermeneutics. They are namely:
4.1.1. Biblical or Scriptural hermeneutics
4.1.2. Textual hermeneutics (Grammatical and Psychological and legal
interpretation)
4.1.3. Scientific hermeneutics and the social-scientific hermeneutics
4.1.4. Structural or social hermeneutics: Historical, linguistic and cultural
4.1.5. Philosophical hermeneutics
4.1.6. Going beyond hermeneutics: the post-structural hermeneutics etc.
4.2. Thus, Hermeneutics is originally employed as method of biblical/textual
interpretation, and later during the modern period came to be used as a
method of interpreting of literary and legal studies. With advancement of
natural science, hermeneutics took a positivistic turn. Science or scientific
community engaged hermeneutics as empirical objective interpretation of
social reality. As method modeled after the natural sciences, social
sciences employed scientific hermeneutics or scientific interpretation as
the best possible way of interpreting the social world. It claimed that
accurate knowledge is possible by empirical objective knowledge about
3
For details it is useful refer to:
(i) Elwell, Walter A. (1984).  Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book
House. ISBN 0-8010-3413-2.
(ii) The Biblical Commission's Document "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church" Text and
Commentary; ed. Joseph A. Fitzmyer; Subsidia Biblica 18; Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto
Bibllico, 1995. See esp. p. 26, "The historical-critical method is the indispensable method for
the scientific study of the meaning of ancient texts."
(iii) Soulen, Richard N.; Soulen, R. Kendall (2001). Handbook of biblical criticism (3rd ed., rev. and
expanded. ed.). Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. p. 78.  ISBN  0-664-22314-1.
4
https://www.gotquestions.org/Biblical-hermeneutics.html

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 the social world. Scientific hermeneutic or the positivistic method of
interpreting the reality stayed away from any subjective, normative and
ethical interpretations of the social world.
4.3. At the end of modern period, hermeneutics regarded that scientific
interpretation is not the only way of interpreting or understanding the
world, however it is important, but certain aspects namely the social,
cultural, linguistic and political and psychological realties cannot be
interpreted solely by scientific interpretation. ‘While acknowledging the
importance of a scientific understanding of some aspects of the social
world, hermeneutics rejects the methodological privilege that positivism
ascribes to the natural sciences.’
4.4. This paved way of structural (social) hermeneutics meaning that the
reality of the social-world can be best understood in its structural
relationship amongst its other social structures like language, politics,
culture and economics etc. Structural or social hermeneutists argue that
understanding of social life is possible in the exploration of the layers of
meaning attributed to social/political and cultural actors.
4.5. Social hermeneutics assumed that social behaviors are the text or text-
analogues that implicitly contain a social meaning to be interpreted or
understood. Social world is not only an object of scientific and
technological exploration, but it calls for an exploration of its in-depth
structural meaning. Social reality unlike empirical world is complex and it
calls for a hermeneutical rendering of its meaning-layers. Once the
scientific hermeneutics shifted its attention to social hermeneutics, the
proponents of it argue that understanding of social reality implies a moral
or normative dimension to it.
4.6. Philosophical hermeneutics is yet another shift from social hermeneutics
and it holds humans by their nature are fundamentally interpretative and
hence interpretation is not additional act but it is the very mode of human
existence and human existence is accounted on the basis of ethics of
human existence. From the foregoing discussion, we may infer that
hermeneutics as a science of interpretation can be characterized into
hermeneutics of recovery, hermeneutics of suspicion, hermeneutics of
language, culture and social structures and philosophical hermeneutics.

DALIT SOCIAL HERMENEUTICS

5.0. Crux of Dalit Hermeneutics

5.1. Dalit hermeneutics is an interpretative understanding of Dalit social
world in relation to and in its discontent with caste cultural society.
5.2. It is a theory and practice of hermeneutics in the liberative interests of:
5.2.1. All those who suffer discrimination due to casteism and
5.2.2. All those who are subordinated to the governance casteism as
social cultural order.

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 5.2.3. Since caste-social system is antithetical to social relations in terms
of equality and justice, Dalit hermeneutics aims at the interpretative
exposition of the textual, metaphorical, narrative, ideological and
structural (cultural and political) problems of casteism and it
alternatively engage a serious sense emancipatory hermeneutics
away from the cultural burden of casteism. This is done on the
basis of an ethics of freedom and justice and solidarity.
5.2.4. Dalit hermeneutics is both a critical application of social theories
guided by its liberative interests. In this sense Dalit hermeneutics
engages a continuous critical dialogue with those social
developmental theories/practices say like (traditionalism,
modernism and post-colonialism or postmodernism etc.) but
necessitated and guided by its liberative interests.

6.0. We operate on the assumption that (i) Dalit experience has significance for the
study of hermeneutics (ii) and hermeneutics as the science of interpretation be
employed understand Dalit reality.

7.0. Multidimensional Realms of Dalit Hermeneutics (Fusion of horizons)

7.1. Dalit hermeneutics is engaged from multidimensional perspectives.
7.2. A philosophical perspective of Dalit hermeneutics would attempt to
unveil the problem of caste-based dominant ideologue veiled in
philosophical texts and ideological contexts. It exposes the metaphysics,
epistemology and moral sensibilities of exclusion as a philosophical
category which in turn construe and legitimize outcasteness in human
society.
7.3. A religious perspective of Dalit hermeneutics would attempt to disclose
the dubious spirituality patterned through caste-based-hierarchy as to
provision emancipatory religiosity.
7.4. Development perspectives of Dalit hermeneutics attempts to expose the
lopsided forms of development that affect the progress of the
discriminated and vulnerable sections of people thereby promoting
development proper.
7.5. Legal perspectives of Dalit hermeneutics engage the realm of inactivism of
legalism in rendering justice to Dalits and the subaltern people.
7.6. Ecological perspectives of Dalit hermeneutics perceives the inalienable
relation of subaltern people/Dalits with natural environment and
augments sustainable social ecology.
7.7. Political perspectives of Dalit hermeneutics elicit the non-favorable
conditions/forces of democratic representative politics simultaneously
sets itself to the promotion of justifiable conditions for an authentic
democratic politics.
7.8. Sociological perspectives of Dalit hermeneutics engages a sociological
scientific-empirical analysis that construe casteism as form of social

4
 relations, social interactions and culture in order to advance critical social
theory and practice that guarantee social relations in terms of social
justice.
7.9. From the perspectives of Arts, Dalit hermeneutics is an aesthetic
elucidation that portrays the inhumanity of casteism and projects
aesthetics of emancipation in terms of hope.
7.10. From literary and communication perspectives (major contribution is
available) Dalit hermeneutics critically re-reads the quantum of literature
that construe casteism, expose their immorality and alternatively engage
in liberative forms of literature.
7.11. Performative arts and social media of Dalit hermeneutics creatively stage
the demolition of the practice of casteism in the social fabrics of Indian
society and invite the participants to critical and liberative consciousness.
7.12. From the perspective of intersectional and international relations studies,
Dalit hermeneutics pitches against the problem of discrimination and
deprivation of the different sections of people and attempts to build a
network of relations amongst them to combat the problem of social
discrimination collectively in solidarity.
7.13. From the perspective of psychology and consciousness studies, Dalit
hermeneutics explores the psychological problem of alienation
(depression, stress, coping skills etc.) and the ways human consciousness
is culturally but erroneously embedded and correlated in the conscious
acts prejudiced as a caste-conscious behavior and alternatively attempts to
explore the ways of reconstructing a healthy human consciousness and
behavioral patterns. The subjectivity of caste self as socially engaged-self
is its research.
7.14. Thus the scope, theoretical and practical discourse of Dalit hermeneutics
and research contributions is ever widening, interactively multi-
interdisciplinary comprising of diverse fields of social sciences. Dalit
hermeneutics is not a finished school of thought but an ever unfolding
field(s) of inquiry.

8.0. Hermeneutic Circle

8.1. Hermeneutic circle refers to the idea that the whole cannot be understood
devoid of its parts and parts cannot be understood devoid of its whole.
The parts presuppose the whole and the whole presuppose the parts for
any understanding. The whole is presupposed by the part and the part is
inclusively presupposed by the whole. There is no escape from this
vicious circularity. There is no such thing as an understanding without
presuppositions. All understanding proceeds from a presupposed
understanding. We always understand or interpret out of some
presuppositions. Our understanding is always a prior-understanding. It is
the essential anticipatory structure (Vorstruktur) for Heidegger; For
Gadamer, the anticipatory structure of understanding, is the prejudices

5
 that are productive of meaning(s) or misleading(s) and knowledge-
guiding interests. This is the hermeneutical fore-ground that needs
clarification in our understanding of the very understanding-self. The past
colors the present and the present are prejudiced by the past.
8.2. It is difficult to decide How one does deal with the fore-structure-
understanding. But what is needed is not an escape of the circulatory but a
direct encounter of the circularity in order to expose its illogical
construction. One may choose to escape this circularity by evading it or
replacing it by a set of traditional metaphysics that are conducive to retain
metaphysical foregrounds. Some may treat tradition as an apriori guide to
understanding and unquestionably get themselves enveloped unto its
‘prevailing chatter (Gerede) and structure their understanding as a fore-
grounded understanding and thereby obstruct the process of the
flowering of understanding. This obstructs afresh understanding because
it is always an understanding from/of the past (tradition) and hence
blocks any authentic understanding. ‘But Hermeneutical thinkers like
Heidegger, Bultmann, Ricoeur and Gadamer view the hermeneutical
circle more favorably since it constitutes for them an inescapable and
positive element of understanding: as finite and historical beings, we
understand because we are guided by anticipations, expectations and
questions. For them, the key is not to escape the hermeneutical circle, but,
following Heidegger’s famous phrase, to enter into it in the right way.
Heidegger’s life-long destruction of the history of Western thought in the
hope of unfolding a more original understanding of Being can indeed be
seen as his way of entering into the hermeneutical circle of the
understanding of Being.
8.3. Gadamer and Derrida in the recent times, inspired by Heidegger’s view
not to escape from the hermeneutical circle but get into it right away in to
it, in order to expose its logical incoherency. The prejudiced
understanding, (let us say caste-mind-set) is the pre-understanding out of
which casteness must be eradicated before one claims an objective
eradication of casteism in the social practice. Gadamer would say that the
prejudiced nature of our understanding should be recognized as that
which makes understanding possible in the first place. This is what
Gadamer calls the Ontological and positive aspect of the hermeneutical
circle. An awareness of the presuppositions (an apriori-understanding) is
a logical presupposition to combats it objectively. The ontological
structure or the foreground of understanding that presupposes
understanding must be understood first in order that its reality or falsity is
exposed. No science or inquiry is presuppositionless. By becoming aware
of presuppositions and inquirer sets free from any presuppositions from
his/her fields of knowledge-interests. So First, we must become conscious
of our pre-understanding as a way of/towards understanding. This is the
ontological aspect of the Hermeneutical circle. Second, that we can sort

6
 them out through the self-understanding of understanding, Gadamer calls
this process of understanding as elucidation or interpretation (Auslegung)
and third, that we should dismiss the pre-supposed false- anticipations
which are imposed upon in order to replace them by more authentic
propositions. This hermeneutical foreground determines and determined
by culture, history, language and education. But a hermeneutics of
liberation (for example Dalit hermeneutics) views the foreground with
suspicion and critical outlook and strives to eliminate them subjectively
and objectively in case of its misleadingly false understandings.’ 5

9.0. Dalit Hermeneutic Circle

9.1. The problem of casteism like hermeneutic circle is a vicious circularity.
The entirety of caste structure produces caste-cultural-mindset and the
caste-cultural-mindset in turn reproductively consolidates casteism. The
individual within casteism is not individual but cognizably a caste-
collective consciousness. The whole becomes the particular and the
particular turns out to be the whole of casteism. Casteness is both a
cultural and mental property of the caste-in-individual. The concept of
individual in western modernistic enlightenment ethics does not (cannot)
apply to the individual of caste-in-society. S/he is simultaneously
individual and caste-collective. The individual loses his/her individuality
in the collective caste consciousness and the collective caste consciousness
in turn gets itself strongly reflected as individual consciousness. It is both
the whole and the particular at the same time in the same manner. Dalit
hermeneutics does not escape the circularity of the problem of casteism,
rather it encounters it, exposes its illegitimacy. In this sense Dalit
hermeneutics is the task of both the so-called non-Dalit and the Dalit
provided both are committed to the common goal of eradication of
casteism in general and the Dalit untouchable social condition in
particular.
9.2. As the central focus is the promotion and proclamation of a social-ethical
construct of society against casteism, both the Dalit and the non-Dalit are
to be in a position of shedding away any caste-dispositions, or prejudices
that conditions their understanding. But this is not as easy as it is said or
claimed as it involves a vicious circularity of the pre-presence of caste
mind-set from the part of the Dalits and the non-Dalits. The problem with
Dalit hermeneutic circle is this. While the Dalit hermeneutics address the
problem of casteism as whole in the sense eradication of casteism in its
entirety and originating from Dalit perspectives against casteism, the
whole and the particular is predetermined by an apriori caste-based
prejudices. The non-Dalit attempt to Dalit hermeneutics is also pre-

5
Refer the article on what is the hermeneutical circle? By Jean Grondin and the Revised version (2017) of
an essay published in N. Keane and C. Lawn (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics
(Oxford, Blackwell, 2016), 299-305

7
 conditioned by caste-prejudices and the Dalit is who resists casteism is as
well conditioned by the same. The camouflage of casteism both as a
mind-set and cultural construct would act as afore-understanding which
in turn block authentic sense of a hermeneutic of Dalit liberation.
9.3. The ontology of casteism must continuously be made aware in the process
of engaging a hermeneutic of liberation or Dalit hermeneutics. To this, the
attribution ‘Dalit’ must be redefined, recast as anti-casteism and the
attribution of non-Dalit must be redefined as anti-discriminatory of the
Dalits in casteism. such a process of hermeneutics (understanding) for
Gadamer is the process of elucidation by way of dismissing the pre-
dispositions in favour of authenticity. Both the Dalit and the non-Dalit
should engage a hermeneutic of suspicion of their own allegiance to
casteism, failing which Dalit hermeneutics may be viewed by the caste-
other as casteistic and the non-Dalit involvement in Dalit hermeneutics as
interest-bound. By way of suspecting the caste configurations ingrained in
the everydayness of social life, the Dalit and non-Dalits moves away from
their caste-constructs both subjectively and realistically.

10.0. Exploring the Facets of Dalit Hermeneutics

10.1. Dalit hermeneutics primarily and foundationally aims at the erosion of
casteism by way of exposing its illegitimacy as a worthwhile social
system. The exposition of the illegitimacy of casteism is exercised both
theoretically and practically with reference to diverse fields of social
sciences.
10.2. The Dalit historical experience serves as the content and method for
hermeneutics. That is the “situation” out of which, through which in
which correct understanding of social reality is possible. Within the Indian
society, truth is caste-construed. If truth is construed of social context, say
casteism, then there is no truth that is non-caste-construed. All truth
regarding social life is attributed of caste-mind-world. A truth that is
disclosed by casteism must be confronted truth that is disclosed by anti-
casteism. Dalitism is one such best possibility to counter-act illegitimacy of
caste-claims. Dalit hermeneutics treats Dalit experience as the starting
point of exposing illegitimate truth-constructions in the society. Dalit
hermeneutics is the way of telling how we as caste-individuals are
‘enclosed’ to a system that annihilates its own people. Casteism is system
that thrives by other-negation and self-negation simultaneously. For
hermeneutics to be negation of the langue of domination, it must reflect
upon what it means to be Caste-other and Dalit-other. Dalit hermeneutics
must uncover the structures and forms of caste-culture, because the
category of interpretation of reality is soaked from its thought-forms and
Dalit hermeneutics by way of reflecting its Dalit experience as anti-
casteism must tell the story of how to get rid of caste-thought-cultural
patterns.

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10.3. Dalit hermeneutics employs the diverse sensibilities of hermeneutics such
as hermeneutics of remembrance and recovery, suspicion and suspension,
critique and emancipation simultaneously.

10.4. Hermeneutics of remembrance and recovery in Dalit Hermeneutics reclaims

the historical suffering of Dalits and of all those who are subjugated
through enslavement, exile, and persecution, and recognizes them to be
"dangerous memories" subversive to the status quo. Such memories are
subversive because even in the midst of crises, Dalits found a historical
sensibility of hope to annihilate the oppressive caste structures. It attempts
to suspect the social structure of casteism suspends its moralistic and
structural dispositions and continuously engages a critique for reasons of
emancipation based on the ethics reclaiming the whole from the point of
view of the Dalit-Particular.

10.5. Dalit hermeneutics is not necessarily a perspective from below as

popularly conceived; it is but a liberative hermeneutics of the whole but
cognized from the particular. The whole here refers to the entirety of
casteism as a form of discriminatory social system that includes all the
individuals within the immoral caste society and it is cognized from the
particular in the sense that the Dalit-particular is the most affected and
dethroned category of people whose perspectives against casteism is not
only a social and ethical imperative but a logical necessity. The caste-
patterned enslavement of human society as a whole, in its entirety is
called into question by a rationale of emancipation, cognized from the
particular perspective namely the burden of casteism laid heavily onto the
shoulders of Dalit community.
10.6. Annihilation of casteism is a critical encumbrance on the part of Dalit
hermeneutics because (i) casteism is antithesis and block against human
solidarity (to the becoming of human as a social whole) and (ii) its
dehumanizing tentacles dehumanize the Dalits by way of alienating from
becoming social. Thus the burden of the caste-beast is both whole and
particular and to alleviate it forms a crucial burden on the part of the Dalit
hermeneutics. Metaphorically situated, the beast that is the whole of
casteism affects the whole of society and in particular it heavily works
against the Dalits to be included as a social whole. Therefore Dalit
hermeneutics is not a hermeneutics of liberation of the Dalits but
inclusively it fosters the liberation of/from the whole of caste burden that
devalues Indian sociality as humanly social.
10.7. Metaphorically put it, the cross signifying the sinfulness of the whole of
society is countered by an individual called Jesus, by his crucifixion and
alternatively of the possibility of the signification of resurrection, the
Jesus-particular is the Dalit-particular that is unjustly crucified at the cross

9
 of casteism stands to liberate itself and the other-selves away from caste-
sinfulness.
10.8. Explained from the Advaita non-dualistic narrative, a philosophy of non-
dualism as unity of all existence is (if at all) possible only by an encounter
between Sankara and an outcaste person, a sweeper, wherein the
untouchable-sweeper radically questions the duality of self of that of
Sankara. The narrative when hermeneutically rendered ends up by
elevating the outcaste-person as a Guru to Sankara. The scriptural
textuality beyond or inclusive of its claim to the liberation of whole
indicates the burden of casteism carried both by Sankara and the outcaste
is finally questioned and cleared from the perspective of the untouchable
Dalit. The first verse of the Manishapanchakam narrative reads as follows:
If a person has attained the firm knowledge that he is not an
object of perception, but is that pure consciousness which
shines clearly in the states of waking, dream and deep sleep,
and which, as the witness of the whole universe, dwells in
all bodies from that of the Creator Brahma to that of the ant,
then he is my Guru, irrespective of whether he is an outcaste
or a Brahmana. This is my conviction.”6
10.9. Factually explained, it, Dalit hermeneutics by becoming aware of the
caste-mindset ingrained by caste cultural world, wages ethical cum
political discontent of it in order to set holistic liberation of the Indian
society as a whole.
10.10. Dalit hermeneutical problem is not only a matter of textual hermeneutics
but deep down it is contextual in the sense of interpreting the illegitimacy
of casteism engraved in Indian society. Thus it is a theory and practice of
hermeneutics, a hermeneutic that aims at liberation of the whole society
originating from the particular, namely the Dalit reality or Dalit
experience of discrimination.
10.11. The problem of Dalit discrimination is not only a problem of an economic,
political social discrimination. Its discriminatory practice is culturally
construed as the substratum of the caste-society. Its discrimination against
Dalits is actualized by modes of killings, raping, and negation of
livelihood. Take for example, ‘The Newspapers on Friday, February 23,
2018 registers this Villupuram incidents of a caste based brutal killing and
rapping of a mother and a girl child of Dalit community.’7
6
https://sanskritdocuments.org/sites/snsastri/Manishapanchakam.pdf
7
Refer: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/villupuram-horror-8-year-old-boy-killed-mother-
assaulted-and-sister-allegedly-raped-76923, It reads: ‘14-year-old Latha's face was smashed beyond
recognition. She lay unconscious in a state of partial undress, her pants missing, at her home in
Vellamputhur village of Villupuram district. Though there were bloodstains around her fragile frame,
Latha survived. Her eight-year-old brother, who lay next to her, his eyes staring at the ceiling
unseeingly, did not make it. But the horror didn't end there. Next to the brother's corpse lay her
mother, unmoving, her face similarly damaged. The 45-year-old widow was barely breathing. This is
the scene that the Arakandanallur police witnessed on Thursday morning when they were alerted of a
brutal crime in a Dalit settlement. The bloody scene was discovered by villagers after someone went to

10
10.12. Dalit hermeneutics is passionate response against such inhumanity
invested in/through casteism. The construction of caste needs to be
suspended, eroded, in order that the whole of Indian society reclaims
itself as a social whole and the starting point is to address the problem of
caste based discrimination against the Dalits. To this, Frist Dalit
hermeneutics is self-conscious of its limits in the sense that it operates
against casteism but involved in the discourse of casteism, (which is but
the afore-structure) does not either evade the issue of casteism but
engages into it in the right way by way of sorting out its self-understanding
and the understanding by others (as an outcaste) by the textuality
casteism. It attempts elucidate and expose the falsity ingrained into it as a
form of false/imposed presupposition through tradition; it suspects and
exposes its vicious circularity and dehumanizing factuality of it; it
attempts to dismiss the pre-supposed, superimposed pretentious facets of
understanding and alternatively engages an exploration of an
hermeneutics of liberation of the whole and the particular simultaneously,
enlightened by its-own self-other of casteism.
10.13. Dalits are the people who suffer most the yoke of caste discrimination as
they are relegated either as the lowest strata or as an outcaste within the
worldview of casteism. Dalit hermeneutics attempts to address a wide
range of interknitted issues that construe the consolidation of casteism
and the subordination of Dalits as embedded in the Indian cultural and
social world. The social world here refers to the social structures

enquire the family's whereabouts when they failed to come fetch water at 6.30 am. And since then,
neighbors and activists allege, massive efforts are being made to play down the brutal crime against
the Dalit family. "The teenage girl was found in a state of partial undress and has been raped. In fact,
doctors at the JIPMER Hospital at Puducherry, where she was taken, had to put two stiches on her
uterus to stop the bleeding. They have been attacked with a large chatti (stone vessel) mercilessly,"
says Pandian, the Director of Social Awareness Society for Youth (SASY), who was part of the fact-
finding team sent to the village.  "This particular village has only 65 Dalit families. Next to it is the
village of Sevallur, which is dominated by a large number of Vanniyar families. Cases of violence
against Dalits, especially their women, are on the rise here, but they have been too afraid to complain,"
he adds.  The hospital failed to independently respond to queries on the matter. When TNM contacted
the police, they denied that it was a case of sexual assault or even a caste crime.   "It is true that the girl
did not have a bottom on and it could have been an attempt to molest her, but we don’t have medical
reports to confirm this. We have filed an FIR for murder," says Inspector Jayavel, who is investigating
the case. "We think that somebody from the same area could be responsible for this. Members of the
upper caste have no motive to commit this crime.”  The fact-finding team constituted by SASY,
however, alleges that the family had an ongoing dispute over a property in the area with some
members of the upper caste community. “They had given 14 cents of land in return for 4 cents of land
and cash, but they never received the full amount," says Pandian. "The matter was even taken to the
civil court. Last month, a huge fight had erupted between both parties over the issue. The police are
purposely trying to subdue this issue before the Prime Minister's arrival in the state." Even the
Villupuram Collector, L Subramanian, cited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's impending arrival in
Puducherry, which is an hour away from the district, as a reason for his lack of involvement in the
case. "We have been having continuous meetings because of the PM's visit. But I have told the station
to thoroughly investigate the matter," says the Collector. Meanwhile, contrasting claims emerge with
regard to the status of the victims. While the police say their condition is improving, activists allege
that the mother is in critical condition while the daughter continues to suffer from excessive bleeding. 

11
 enveloped in culture, religion, social relations, politics and economic
structures casteism and reduces the Dalit reality to subordinated
conditions of life. Dalit experience (of being discriminated and engaging
resistance to it) constitutes the content for the hermeneutic process of
understanding Dalit reality and provision the potential of liberation-
communication.
10.14. Dalit hermeneutics (From philosophical perspective,) is an intellectual
process of engaging critical de-construction of the caste-construed
textualities and its alleged meanings (embedded in social structures,
communications, texts, social political contexts and relations) that
perpetuate discrimination of people on the basis of caste gradation. Where
texts are concerned, Dalit hermeneutics, like most forms of contemporary
hermeneutics, holds that the meaning perceived in a text depends on the
social setting in which it was produced as well as the social setting in
which it is received and handed on. This "double hermeneutic" is evident
in the strategies of interpretation employed by Dalit intelligentsia. Dalit
hermeneutics challenges caste-configurations embedded in world-views
and social practices. Dalit hermeneutics consolidates the Dalit experiences
of the struggle against caste-based-discriminations.

11.0. Dalit hermeneutics of suspicion

11.1. The strategy is engaging the method of hermeneutics of suspicion, 8 of
remembrance, recalling, recasting and resisting and reinventing. A Dalit
hermeneutics of suspicion is first and foremost a consciousness-raising
activity that requires one to take into account the influence of culturally
determined caste based roles and attitudes on whatever is being
examined. It is concerned with bringing to consciousness the effects of
caste bias and ideology on understandings of the wider whole of meaning.
A Dalit hermeneutics of suspicion is concerned not only with critical
engagement about what is said about Dalits that may diminish their full
human dignity, but also with the silences that presume Dalits
discriminatory status by ignoring humanity.
11.2. In the case of Dalits hermeneutical philosophy, the primary application of
a Dalit hermeneutics of suspicion has been focused on the philosophical and
cultural texts, ideological underpinnings, mindful that they are largely
shaped and produced by caste-based-perspectives. For example, when a
philosophical text (for example, Bhagavad Gita) is interpreted, the
underlying idea is that, the text was/is affected by a mode of caste-based
interpretations by the community for whom it was intended, written and
structured. The exploratory questions include: by whom and to whom the
text is intended to be written, (ii) To whom the text is beneficial? How it is

8
A phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx,
Freud, and Nietzsche

12
 beneficial? And (iii) Does it favor the dominant people by casteism? If so
how...etc.
11.3. Attention to the effects of caste structures on philosophical (scriptural
texts) reveals that texts are not ‘self-revelatory’ but it explicitly written in
human fashion to the prevailing human situation. Hence it is possible to
claim that if a text is structured to emanate caste world view, then it is
bound to promote the same and it will affect the mind-set of the people to
whom it is interpreted. It would construct neglect and negation of the
Dalit people as the ontological condition to be ‘textual’.
11.4. Dalit “hermeneutics of suspicion” does not end up with suspicion alone; it
proceeds to doubt dubious ideologies; engages as process of
methodological suspension of them; and the hermeneutics of suspicion is
turned in to a critique of them, a critique of theoretical and practical
modes of the prevalence (metaphysical and physical presence) of casteism.
11.5. Dalit hermeneutics is thus, a critique; it is to unmask the illusions of
consciousness procured by ideologies. But this is not enough. Dalit
hermeneutics seeks a critique of what has led to suspicion. A critique
demands intellectual rigor, a kind of intransigent opposition to the status
quo. Critique retains the adversarial force of a suspicious hermeneutics,
while purifying it of affective associations by treating negativity as an
essentially philosophical or political matter. To engage in critique is to
grapple with the oversights, omissions, contradictions, insufficiencies, or
evasions in the object one is analyzing. Dalit hermeneutics is a Critique
characterized by its “againstness,” by its desire to take annihilates the
annihilations embedded through caste configurations. It is theoretical and
practical way of announcing negation to the negativity informed by
casteism. Like that of radical feminists’ hermeneutics, 9
11.6. Dalit hermeneutics is a vigilant skepticism of the fetishism ingrained in
caste superstitious cultural moorings. It is but a ‘deconstructive practice of
enquiry that denaturalizes and demystifies linguistic – cultural practices of
domination ….. It has the task of disentangling the ideological functions of
kyriocentric text and commentary. (Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical
Interpretation.’10 The caste-fetish must be defetishised by stripping off its
subdued layers of dominant presence as cultural mode or way of life.
Dalit hermeneutics of suspicion prepares the way for a Dalit hermeneutics
of remembrance that reconstructs historical texts from Dalit’s
perspectives, restoring the collective caste-individuals and the Dalits from
the shackles of caste enslavement and subordination.

12.0. Vagaries of Dalit Hermeneutics: Secular and Unsecular

9
Refer, Rita Felski on Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion at http://journal.media-
culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/431
10
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/feminist-
hermeneutics

13
12.1. Broadly speaking the Dalit hermeneutics may be classified as secular
hermeneutics and unsecular hermeneutics and accordingly there are
secular hermeneuticians and unsecular hermeneuticians however there
can be an intersectional possibility as well.
12.1.1. Most unsecular hermeneuticians fore-ground their interpretation of
Dalit reality enlivened from their scriptural traditions (say for
example, bible) engage into interpretations of narratives,
metaphors, texts from scriptures in the spirit of alienating caste
alienations and applicably the caste alienations meted out to Dalits.
12.1.2. The secular hermeneuticians mostly emerge from social sciences
whereas the unsecular hermeneuticians come from the scriptural,
religious and theological realms. However or whatever the
difference there may be the converging ground of both is rejection
of casteism as a social system and in particular the rejection of the
discriminatory practices of casteism of the Dalit community.
12.1.3. The secular or social science hermeneutic discourse engages its
critique of casteism irrespective of any religious or scriptural
orientations, inspired by the contributions of both modernist and
late-modernist social thinkers like Ambedkar, Gandhi, Karl Marx,
Periyar, Nietzsche, Habermas, Althusser, Saussure, Lyotard,
Derrida, Foucault, Fredric Jameson et al. The list is exhaustive and
it varies depending upon the social science s/he hails from. Though
the commonality amongst them is eradication of casteism and its
concurrence namely the problem of social discrimination against
Dalits, there is wide range of differences in the way these thinkers
are engaged to combat casteism and the question of discrimination
by caste. The differences themselves are a separate field of study
and exposition for furthering Dalit hermeneutics.

12.2. Problems of Secular and Unsecular Dalit Hermeneutics

12.2.1. The broader problematic of the unsecular Dalit hermeneutics is that
it recognizes the caste-problematic as Dalit problematic within the
frontiers of selected versions (narratives, metaphors and morals)
from scriptural traditions and buries the caste problematic within
the boundaries of scriptural/textual tradition inadvertently to
certain social conditions of casteism. The difficulty with the
scriptural interpretation with reference to Dalit hermeneutics is that
the same-scripture can be interpretatively used for mystifying the
very problem it desires to confront within the psychic-spiritual
realm of religious discourse. The scripture is as well can be turned
or twisted in whatever way or direction the interpreted chooses to
interpret. Like a metaphor or a narrative the scriptural text can
serve both mystification of the problem and demystification of it
and this is paradoxical danger in scriptural hermeneutics. Say for

14
 instance in the last two or three decades Biblical hermeneutics,
biblical exegesis was employed with reference women, black, Dalit
and environmental concerns. Narratives such as exodus episodes,
creation metaphors, sermon on the mount etc. were massively
employed to address the problem of discrimination, nevertheless
these hermeneutics however rich hailing from classical biblical
tradition, with reference to caste or Dalit question, such
interpretative rendering by and large imbibed a sophistication of
liberation rather than social liberation as a whole of the catholic
church which is parallel patterned by caste social order of
hierarchy.
12.2.2. The point is that the experience of a Dalit and the experience of
discrimination by casteism should not be subordinated solely to the
preponderance of scriptural interpretation. The scriptural
interpretation should lead to or subordinated to the judgment of
the Dalit who experiences caste-based discrimination, the extent of
its workability towards liberation. Moreover the exodus experience
of the Israelites depicted biblically is not necessarily the cultural
experience of caste-based discrimination of the Dalits. The cultural
cum experiential differentia could not be abridged between the
scripture and the culturally different social reality. Dalit experience
cannot be interpreted solely by scriptural interpretations for
scriptural interpretation is guided by a series of apriori afore
structured understandings/interpretations. Uncritical of its
presuppositions or afore structure and merely by interpreting a text
to a caste-context is not necessarily fruitful. The presupposed
understanding of the biblical texts is not always an interpretation
against caste-context. The pre-existent interpretations can hinder
hermeneutics of liberation and so what is needed is the liberation
from the predominant interpretations first, before it is intended to
encourage Dalit hermeneutics. The traditional interpretations of the
scriptures can themselves become a block to any liberative potential
hermeneutics. In the process, what the scripture is really saying
becomes obscured or lost. Moreover, the structural Indian church
soaked by its politics of hierarchy and by caste ethos can
conveniently remain dualistic in its scriptural exigency and
extravagancy and there by mystify the theory and practice of a
hermeneutic of liberation from caste-enslavement.
12.2.3. The modernist anti-colonial claim of equality and justice cannot be
contained merely letting the scripture to speak a language of
liberation while the church and its scriptural ethos still remain
colonial and pre-colonial. The principle of equality eschewed as a
rejection of casteism, is not the same as the spirit of freedom
eschewed and sermonized through biblical narratives. There are

15
 sharp cultural, contextual and political variations of caste slavery
and liberation and biblical narratives of slavery and redemption.
Given to their age-old already existing scriptural interpretations,
the scriptures themselves need to be liberated before it pretends to
enforce society liberation of that of casteism. What is to be
hermeneutically suspended when employing scriptural
interpretations to question discrimination by casteism is matter of
great debate? Dalit hermeneutics attempts to grapple with the
‘human’ element that scriptures are endowed with in its passage
though traditions and cultures. Thus the credibility of scriptural
interpretations is a problematic that Dalit hermeneutics or anti-
caste hermeneutics needs to dwell in it.
12.2.4. The problematic with secular Dalit hermeneutics is that it is
engaged from a diversified ideological underpinnings perhaps
bound to address the problem of discrimination squarely on the
basis of casteism. Say for instance a Marxian reading of casteism is
prone to commit the fallacy of class categorization (I call it category
mistake) by which the in-depth dimensions of caste discrimination
historically and socially structured against the Dalits is missed at
the altar of class category. Ambedkar for example would question
such perspective and argue that caste stratification includes class
stratification. Nevertheless, whatever hermeneutical tool the one
employs it must yield emancipation from caste discrimination of
that of the whole and the particular-Dalit reality. What is needed is
exposition of the politics of casteism to its illegitimacy and embarks
upon an ethics of liberation of the people who suffer casteism.

13.0. Dalit hermeneutics as liberating potential

13.1. Postcolonialism as a critical theory of modern society, focuses colonial
experience from the colonised society’s point view. Postcolonialism
semantically means something that has concern only with the national
culture after the departure of imperial power.
13.2. But in actual practice it has to be understood only in reference to
colonialism, myth and history, language and landscape, self and other are
all very important ingredients of postcolonial studies.
13.3. Engaging postcolonial reading within the purview of Dalit hermeneutics
is a study of the colonial continuity of the issue of marginalization that
affect the Dalit particular as vulnerable people either to be co-opted or
excluded category. The realistic experience as people of untouchable
communities within the caste-ridden Indian society is an historical
continuity of an experience of domination and subordination. It is a
cultural experience of continuous denials and deprivations. It marks a
host of ideological and cultural episodes/narratives of cunningness to
execute the supremacy of casteism and its intent of subordination of the

16
 untouchable people.
13.4. Postcolonial Dalit hermeneutics is as well marks the efforts of resistance to
it however trivial it is. Postcolonial Dalit discourse attempts to redefine
reformulate and reconstruct the colonized self and how the colonized self-
perpetuate politics of power in further excluding the Dalit-self from the
main stream political and power sharing.

14.0. Criticism of Hermeneutics

14.1. Hermeneutics as psychological interpretation but it does not exhaust the
range of behavior that is of interest to social science. Hermeneutics is not a
criterion of verification rather way of rendering to clarity therefore
insufficiently scientific.
14.2. Jürgen Habermas in his debate with Gadamer argues that despite its
(hermeneutics) importance for social inquiry, the hermeneutic emphasis
on tradition, prejudices, and internal standards of rationality limits its
critical leverage on prevailing ideologies that mask the social reality and
specifically the exercise of power. Critical theorists maintain that this
reflects an inherent, politically conservative bias.
14.3. Michel Foucault (1926-1984), argues that hermeneutic/ interpretive theory
is still committed to conventional conceptions of truth and the self that are
constituted by dominant discursive practices of the self and politics.
These, in turn, deploy categories and practices of identity and difference
that privilege some forms of human beings and understanding and
marginalize or disqualify others. Hermeneutics fails to acknowledge the
extent to which it is implicated in prevailing notions of the self and
politics.
14.4. Interpretive theorists have responded to each of these criticisms. To the
first they point out that the emphasis on language and its relation to social
practice requires explanation that goes beyond empathic/psychological
understanding. It involves the investigator in what the anthropologist
Clifford Geertz (1987) calls depth-interpretation. Gadamer and Taylor
acknowledge the limitations of hermeneutics. Consequently, each argues
that no historical prejudgments can be allowed to go unchallenged and
that one needs to be aware of the ways that prevailing practices of politics
and the self-influence the possibilities of social explanation.
14.5. What is perhaps most important, however, is to engage hermeneutical
dialogue with emerging social theories (pluralism) and social actors
without losing sight of the emancipation of the whole of casteism
spearheaded from the emancipation of the most vulnerable people namely
Dalits.
14.6. Some Reflections abut Indian Christian Church engaging Dalit
Hermeneutics:
14.6.1. Mostly the church employs textural or biblical hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics as textual re-interpretation is insufficient to address

17
 social reconstruction. For example, Liberation
philosophies/theologies (Dalit Theology) attempted this; but
unfortunately it had a short span due to the fact that proper
liberation philosophy did not emerge from Dalit experience as a
form of anti-casteism. It came to be viewed as another form sub-
caste-language, and the predominant caste-language-culture closed
its eyes to this. Indian church failed to see the ‘dalitness’ in Christ.
The high-caste mind does want its Christ to relegated Dalit,
because Dalit is derogatory and deforming Christ the King. It fails
to see the presence of a suffering Christ in the suffering of the
people of God, the human experience of God, thereby the
incarnation of God in human experience is continuously denied in
the portals of caste-patterned and ritualistic church.
14.6.2. What is the God-language that we speak and spoken of in Indian
Christian church? The God that is spoken by the caste-hierarchy is
an idol that is guarded to protect its supremacy and perpetuate
submissiveness; an idol that is used to perpetuate caste oppression.
It is a false God, a false God-language, and Dalit hermeneutics
discloses its falsity. “God-talk, therefore, in order to truly be
Christian, talk about God must be related directly to the liberation
of the oppressed. It follows that the oppressed themselves must
define the structure and scope of that reality.”11
14.6.3. Beware of the hermeneutic of language: Language is instrumental
and institutional. It can instrument attitude to life either positively
or negatively. It can instrument and institutionalize passivity and
critical awareness of human reality. Language can be submissive
and liberative. It can be mystical, mystifying the real. Language can
construe a culture either of subordination or justice.
14.6.4. The cultural language with in the caste-world is a language of
domination and subordination simultaneously. Those who are
ascribed to the so-deemed high-casteness engage a language of
domination; mystification and those who are relegated to the lower
strata of society are instrumentalised to a language of
subordination.
14.6.5. Hermeneutic demands that we need to foster a Language that
invites us to a critique of both religious and non-religious language
that dominates consciousness of societies. We need a language of
radical departure from those ideologies that sanction domination
and submission construed in cultural (religious) traditions. We
need a hermeneutical language that reflects the Dalit experience as
a source of understanding social reality. We need to consciously go

11
Dianal. Hayes, James cone’s hermeneutic of language and black theology, theological studies, 61
(2000), p.614-15

18
 beyond hermeneutical circle in the sense not to be conditioned by
the caste-preconditions towards a hermeneutics of relationship.
14.6.6. The God of Indian Caste-Christianity is symbolized,
metamorphosed, narrated and testimonised as a personal-God,
who is washed away of his potential to resist systemic evils (caste)
of Indian society. By way of personating God as personal, the caste-
mind deemed him as a dominant God on the side of the dominant
culture. Dehumanizing experience of the Dalit is not paralleled to
the dehumanizing experience of Christ. What has been symbolized
as the personal suffering in terms of sickness, poverty and the need
for healthy/wealthy life. The structural dimension of injustice is
sacrificed at the personal-alter of personating God to intimacy of
individual’s life. This symbol of God needs to be resurrected. Dalit
hermeneutics of language reads of a God of freedom from
discriminations; it reads of a God who set a people, an
encumbered/enslaved people to move away from the evils of
casteism to a culture of freedom and justice.
14.6.7. Can Christ be Dalit?: To claim Christ is Dalit and Dalit is Christ is
metaphorical. Metaphorical language is predicative of something
that did not formerly exist. The use of a metaphor involves a
“twist,” a shift of meaning from one level to another making it
accessible as subversive language, language that turns reality
upside down. A metaphor both creates and reveals meaning. This
is a calculated metaphor that discloses hitherto unnoticed meaning
of life, a life permeated by the discriminatory experience. The
incompatibility of God becoming human is made-compatible in
bringing together God as Dalit, the being of God with the being of
Dalit humanity. God as Dalit is an intended metaphor in which “a
new extension of the meaning of the words answers a novel
discordance in the sentence.” New meaning is created—a meaning
which “shatters and increases our language . . . for the sake of
redescribing reality.”12 The claim “God/Christ is Dalit,” is can
evoke mixed feelings, of a shock, disapproval, and discontent. It is
meant to call the attention of not only of the plight of the Dalit
people but also to that of the dominant/oppression people. “The
metaphorical meaning institutes ‘proximity’ between significations
which were hitherto distant. . . . It is from this proximity that a new
vision of reality springs up, one which is resisted by ordinary
vision tied to the ordinary use of words.”13
14.6.8. Dalit hermeneutics cannot and should not emerge from those who
occupy the hierarchy of caste-power-relations of how Dalit should
feel or act. Truth must be spoken to the people and by the people of
12
Paul Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” Semeia 13 (1975) 29–148
13
Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics” 84.

19
 God, Dalits because truth is inseparable from the struggle of the
people. It is inseparable from their hopes and their dreams that
arise from the agonies and defeats of that struggle. “Truth is that
transcendent reality, disclosed in the people’s historical struggle for
liberation, which enables them to know that their fight for freedom
is not futile.”14 To speak the truth from the Dalit perspective is to
return to the sources of Dalit experience as expressed and
witnessed in the history and culture of an oppressed but
undefeated people as an antidote to casteism.
14.6.9. Indian Christianity is inclusive of the caste cultural texts. While
Christian ideological and structural roots are western-Roman, its
practical life-world is simultaneously grounded on the hierarchical
structures of Casteism. It’s cultural- text has a double-layered
identity. The structure of the church is value-hierarchical, as the
structure of Casteism is value-hierarchical. The power-attribution
goes in hand with the distribution of power/authority as per the
hierarchical order of Casteism. The personals who have occupied
positions in the Indian Church hierarchy ‘happen’ to be mostly
high caste and upper middle class/caste Christians and less
number of low caste people. Accordingly church authority is
unequivocally distributed synchronized as the order of Casteism.
Contesting these theoretical and practical seems to be operative
from the point of view of social hermeneutics of liberation. Indian
Christianity it has to go beyond its empathetic hermeneutics
towards liberative hermeneutics of its people by engaging serious
cognitive-contextual hermeneutics.

15.0. Engaging Dalit Hermeneutics:

o Engage Scriptural Texts – how they employ either submissive or liberative
language construct
o Engaged incidents of violence against Dalits, read the intersecting connect-
ties of social-structural political aspects of domination’
o Read theoretical/practical attempts to address casteism and check their
dubiousness and legitimacy as well.
o Engage Ambedkar’s text on Annihilation of Caste, as the best possible Dalit
hermeneutical engagement.

14
Ibid 85

20
 0o0o0

Caste as Social Text/world – 1: Movement from Biblical exegesis to Dalit historical Experience
The village of Eraiyur is situated west of Ulundurpet on the state high way between Elavanasurkottai and Thirukoilur
of Villupuram District of Tamilnadu (Please refer the enclosed map). With a population of about 12,000 it is perhaps
the largest parish in the archdiocese of Pondicherry-Cuddalore. The parish is 111 years old. More than 30 priests and
55 sisters hail from this parish (majority from Vanniars) working in the archdiocese and elsewhere. Of the 12,000
about 9000 are Christians belonging to Vanniar community and the Dalit Christians number about 2000. The rest are
Hindu Dalits. Agriculture is the chief occupation of the people. Most of the land is owned by Vanniars and the most
of the Dalits are landless agricultural labourers depending upon the Vanniars for their livelihood.
16th February 1999: Mrs. Jeyaseeliammal, mother of Fr AC Irudayanathan died on February 15 and many priests,
sisters and lay people, many of them from Mugaiyur where Fr AC Irudayanathan is the parish priest, had come for
the funeral on February 16. A few days prior to the death of his mother Fr AC seemed to have made known his
intention to take the body to the church along the main route. Seeing the large crowd, and suspecting that something
would happen the Vanniars rang the church bell and announced in the church public address system that there is a
fight between the village and the harijan colony and requested men and women come with weapons. When the
headmen of Vanniars asked Fr. A. C. which way he was going to take funeral procession, he gave the answer that
they were intending to take the main route. At about 7.00a.m. a crowd of Vanniars came to the Dalit street with
homemade weapons and threw stones at the houses in the colony. In fact the shamiana erected in front of Fr A.C.
Irudayanathan's house collapsed under the impact of the stones thrown by them. This created fear and panic among
the Dalits. At about 9.00 a.m. the parish priest visited the house of Fr Irudayanathan and assured that the procession
could go along the main street. But the Vanniar crowd started abusing with filthy and derogatory caste remarks and
unloaded a tractor load of stones inside the church compound. They also chased away those who had come for the
funeral using filthy language and threatening them with dire consequence if they stayed for the funeral. In the attack
that followed more than a hundred people were injured. Even a Rev. Sister from Mugaiyur was not spared in this
mad melee.As the crowd was getting out of control the DSP and the inspectors of police requested the Dalits to give
up their demand and take the customary route for the procession. Archbishop Michael Augustine came there at
about 5.15 p.m. The Vanniar crowd sat on the main street and blocked him from going to the church. They started
abusing the archbishop and the Dalits using filthy and unprintable words. "How could he (the archbishop) come for
the funeral of a pariah? Let us see if he would come for the Confirmation. Caste is more important for us than
religion. Even if it is for only an hour we will live and die as Gounders." The police requested the archbishop to
persuade the Dalits to take the customary route. They expressed their inability to control the crowd that was getting
wilder. If the archbishop insisted on taking the main route, the police argued, there would be a law and order
problem and they may be forced to issue orders for shooting and that the police should not be held responsible for
the consequences. Unable to go to the church the archbishop proceeded to the house where the body was kept and
the crowd closed the gate of the church thus making it impossible to go to the church even through the lane which is
the customary route. So the body was taken straight to the Dalit cemetery. Things necessary for Mass were brought
stealthily and the archbishop said mass in the dim light of the home made torches. After the funeral, the archbishop
held a meeting in the convent. The archbishop declared that he would never again step into the parish church until
amicable settlement is reached. After heated discussion it was decided to close the parish. The parish priest who did
not join the funeral was asked to come to the convent. He was told to pack up and go to the archbishop's house at
Pondicherry. As the parish priest was also the headmaster of the higher secondary school objected that the school
would suffer. He also said that if the archbishop insisted, he was ready to obey but he should not be asked to come
back to the school again. The next day being Ash Wednesday the Archbishop said mass in the premises of Assisi
Hospital run by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Pondy Blues) for the Dalit Christians and the Parish
priest said mass for others in the parish church. The days after: Fr. Ratchagar of Cuddalore took responsibility for a
peace meeting on 20th February. But it took place only on 23rd February. The Vanniars seemed to have said that they
would ask pardon for what happened on 16th but would never allow the Dalit procession along the main street. A

21
meeting headed by Fr P Antonisamy on 3rd March also ended in failure. Meanwhile as a fall out of the incident at
Eraiyur, the Assistant Parish Priest of Mugaiyur (who belongs to Vanniar community) was asked by the people of
Mugaiyur to leave the parish. Two other teachers in the school also went away. On 25 th February, DCLM organized a
public meeting and condemned the Eraiyur incident. A lot of notices condemning the incident started coming from
various Dalit movements and support groups. On 15 th March, nine Dalit priests staged a sit in strike in the
archbishop's house at Pondicherry. The archbishop promised some definite decision on this issue by 26th of March.
There were also peace meetings at Ulundurpet, the third of the meeting, held on 22"d March was attended by the
archbishop. But then, these meetings made no headway.15

15
Reported by Secretary, TNBC Commission for SC/ST/BC

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