Sudrafic(a)tion
Essay-Text-Fictionongoing since 2021
Cultural artifacts like that of narrativity and image are found at work in anchoring the projection of caste in the Real. Without the effectivity of these fantastical constructs, ideology becomes nothing but fiction, behind which appears a shift of meaning— When the workers were caste-segregated as sudras [which means: unknowledgeable, menial and insignificant], what was actually sudra-fied was not people but a ‘cultural’ notion of intelligence and Knowledge, which is why, no actuality of culturalisation is possible without annhilation of caste.
Excerpt:
To understand the role of broadcast aesthetics in manufacturing Sudra-subjects, we have to look back at the Post-Vedic Epic-Age. What we know of Hinduism or Sanatan Dharma (eternal religion) was manufactured in the Epic Age— The hegemonic Vedics appropriated the fables and symbols of their non-vedic subjects, via vedic-source anchors, to create the illusion of an all encompassing ‘eternal’ religion, with the key motivation to captivate the non-vedic folks in the folds of the Later-Vedic Caste system, against the emergent threat of Anti-Caste Shramanic (spiritual labourer) religions like Buddhism. The hegemony propositioned productive subjects as non-knowledgeable and menial Sudras via narrative and artistic methods. The erasure of productive knowledge cultures was achieved by a ‘broadening’ of religious inclusion, but in the graded inequality of Caste. The epic-puranic broadcast continues to captivate the Sudra-majority even today, as pawns in a propaganda which oppresses them. Ramayana, Mahabharata, Manusmriti, and all other Sanatan texts that symbolise Hindu Sanskriti were written in this age, to manufacture the Sudras— In that sense, what we call Sanskritisation is actually Sudrafication. While we can simply boycott Sanatani texts, a more difficult challenge remains, to understand our notions of narrative, image, aesthetics and art that share history with this idea of Sanskriti or Culture, which is but a hushed erasure of material-intellectual productivity.
To understand the role of broadcast aesthetics in manufacturing Sudra-subjects, we have to look back at the Post-Vedic Epic-Age. What we know of Hinduism or Sanatan Dharma (eternal religion) was manufactured in the Epic Age— The hegemonic Vedics appropriated the fables and symbols of their non-vedic subjects, via vedic-source anchors, to create the illusion of an all encompassing ‘eternal’ religion, with the key motivation to captivate the non-vedic folks in the folds of the Later-Vedic Caste system, against the emergent threat of Anti-Caste Shramanic (spiritual labourer) religions like Buddhism. The hegemony propositioned productive subjects as non-knowledgeable and menial Sudras via narrative and artistic methods. The erasure of productive knowledge cultures was achieved by a ‘broadening’ of religious inclusion, but in the graded inequality of Caste. The epic-puranic broadcast continues to captivate the Sudra-majority even today, as pawns in a propaganda which oppresses them. Ramayana, Mahabharata, Manusmriti, and all other Sanatan texts that symbolise Hindu Sanskriti were written in this age, to manufacture the Sudras— In that sense, what we call Sanskritisation is actually Sudrafication. While we can simply boycott Sanatani texts, a more difficult challenge remains, to understand our notions of narrative, image, aesthetics and art that share history with this idea of Sanskriti or Culture, which is but a hushed erasure of material-intellectual productivity.