The Brahmin face of Social Justice

Long before the Congress endorsed the demands for a caste Census and a quota within the quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies a Rajya Sabha MP would roar in favour of the country walking down the path of Social Justice than that of Hindutva His name Professor Manoj Kumar Jha a Brahmin from Bihar who belongs to the Rashtriya Janata Dal the party of Lalu Prasad Yadav and increasingly now Tejashwi YadavIn January 2019 he mounted a challenge to the 10 per cent reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections wondering why the data on caste collected in 2011 had not been released yet Last week he was back to taunting the government during the debate on the womenrsquos reservation bill ldquoThere is nothing in a name But there is perhaps everything in a surnamerdquo Jha explainedHe said his own surname is a signifier of the privileges he has had Those with surnames like his would be awakened to the oppressed lives once they turned their gaze on surnames not associated with privileges It is the lattermdashthe Scheduled Castes the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classesmdashwho need to enter the legislative bodies to inject into them the united colours of India so to speak Refer the bill to a select committee he pleaded to work out a quota for the oppressed social groups within the quota for womenHow did Jha transcend his caste identity to become the Brahmin face of Social Justice He narrated to me the story of a Dalit classmate of his in the school he attended in Saharsa Bihar The Dalit boy was among the top rankers in the class but began to fall behind in Class IX ultimately dropping out in Class X Jha forgot about the boy until on shifting to Ranchi for Plus Two he happened to read Rahi Masoom Razarsquos Topi Shukla and Adha Gaon the latter providing him a peep into the social reality outside the uppercaste cocoon in which he livedThis acquired knowledge prompted Jha to find out the reason why the Dalit classmate had dropped out of schoolmdashhis father a sanitation worker fell ill compelling the boy to work at a teastall to earn an income for the family ldquoBy contrast I didnrsquot do well in Plus Two but my parents both professors were there to hold my hand They sent me to Patna Collegerdquo Jha recalledIn Patna he gravitated to the Indian Peoplersquos Front the earlier incarnate of the Communist Party of India MarxistLeninist His engagement with the Left politics turned him into a voracious reader He did his MA from Delhi University after which he enrolled for PhD even as he was appointed as an assistant professor at Jamia Millia Islamia His PhD thesis required him to go to Bhagalpur to study the riots that had occurred there in 1989 sparked by the Bharatiya Janata Partyrsquos campaign against the Babri Masjid in AyodhyaHe joined the Delhi School of Social Work in 2002 the year in which the Gujarat riots broke out Jharsquos studies on communal violence told him that perpetrators of riots often suffered from guilt and even expiated But Gujarat was an exception It celebrated the killing of Muslims thereby justifying their slaughter A little later two ladies one Hindu and the other Muslim told him on a flight to Delhi ldquoWhatrsquos the point of writing in journals You should be in politicsrdquoIt was only in 2010 though that Jha met Lalu Prasad Yadav to seek his guidance on how an academic like him could help strengthen the idea of Social Justice Jharsquos timing was good for it is said Yadav was then on the lookout for a bilingual person who could articulate the RJDrsquos views in Delhi Yadav checked on the professor for months even listening it is said to a speech he delivered at a book launch He was appointed the RJDrsquos national spokesperson and was sent to the Rajya Sabha in 2018Yadav elicits Jharsquos view on just about every issue of significance ldquoAfter listening to me he often suggests to me to think along a line I hadnrsquot thought on my ownrdquo Jha said marvelling at Yadavrsquos enviable capacity to simplify complex academic ideas A Bihari Brahmin admiring Yadav is an astonishing rarity explaining why his own community does not think he belongs to them Its animus against Yadav likely reflects its insecurities against subaltern assertion I profferedBrahmins failed to decaste themselves he said preferring to live in the ldquoimagined world of past privileges which Hindutva has convinced them shall not only continue but should also be continuedrdquo Or perhaps the tendency of othering communities had always existed subterraneanly among the Brahminsmdashand Hindutva built upon it just as Hitler did on antiSemitic feelings that existed among Germans long before his ascendancy Jha suggestedAs I took his leave I asked Jha Did he ever get in touch with the Dalit classmate of his ldquoYes but he avoids meeting me for he knows he could well have been merdquo Jha saidmdashif he only did not have a Dalit surname if he only had a surname trumpeting uppercaste privilegesThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper