The Phenomenology of Silent Blindness: Understanding Caste in India, Part I

Abstract

This article is on the ‘caste question’ in India and how an ‘alternative revolution’ has to be charted for the Indian revolution. The leitmotiv is that caste only appears as a form of commodity to be produced and distributed in the Indian political market, while the real political economy and culture emanating thereon remains concealed. There is both a silence and blindness in this act of concealment. The Established Left in India has been brought up in a form of Marxism that is devoid of Marx’s insights in his Ethnological Notebooks. This has led to a forgetfulness of the caste question and the programme for the annihilation of caste. I call this an act of forgetfulness and an act that comprises both silence and blindness. I christen this ‘silent blindness’.