Why I Am Not a Hindu Quotes

“The brahminic Hindus treat even the books written by Dalitbahujans as untouchable. Historically, not only the Dalit body but also books written by Dalit and OBC scholars remained untouchable. That was the reason why untouchability has been imposed on Ambedkar’s theoretical writings for a long time in India. Intellectual untouchability was/is more dangerous than physical untouchability.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“The power relations between Communist and non-Communist brahminical forces appeared to be antagonistic but the social relations remained non-antagonistic.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu

“The Brahmin-Baniyas think that their non-productive ritualistic life is great and the Dalitbahujan non-ritualistic working life is mean.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“The questions that I am concerned with in this book are about the very survival of Indian society. How Hinduism failed in constructing the dignity of labour; how it repeatedly attacked the productive values and energies of Dalitbahujan masses; and thereby how it attacked the productive culture itself. How it constructed violence as its social and spiritual essence.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“The concept ‘Brahmin’ in my diction does not mean knowledge. It means consumption of the socio-economic resources of the nation without investing any amount of labour power in it. It means consumption and destruction of national resources without any understanding and effort for rebuilding such resources. The concept ‘Sudra’ does not mean a particular people who are stupid with an un-cultured existence. It means the construction of the knowledge of production, of innovation of agrarian and artisan technology. The concept ‘Chandala’ does not mean unworthy of being a human being and leading an impure life in a spiritual sense. It means making the villages, the towns and the nation pollution free. The Chandalas are the builders of a culture that kept the living environment clean. It implies the transforming of skin into leather, into commodities. The notion ‘Brahmin’ in essence, on the other hand, represents unclean ugliness. The concept ‘Dalitbahujan’ now in essence means constructing the science of leather technology, building up the scientific use of manure, constructing the tools of production which not only improved our production but also kept our environment green and clean. Brahminism is the opposite of all this. It is the other name for consumption of natural resources without regenerating them. While Dalitism is positive, Brahminism is negative. India as a nation, thus, needs to undergo a revolution of reformulating knowledge and language.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“experience”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“For those who have been denied the right to write a text, writing a text of their own history and that of the Other is also a process of their socio-political movement. Though the movement of writing has its own limitations, it breaks the shackles of those who were denied writing. Writing becomes a weapon of the weak. In a casteist society, the brahminic forces who prevented this writing by the Dalitbahujans had made the physical struggles of millions of Dalitbahujans invisible. When a historical struggle becomes invisible, it does not kindle the fire of liberation. The process of writing in the face of bitter opposition is a torturous course. Yet this process has to go on without end.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“Just as they are shouting from their rooftops (and they have very big houses) ‘Hinduize India’, we must shout from our toddy palms, from the fields, from treetops and from Dalitbahujan waadas, ‘Dalitize India’. We must shout ‘we hate Hinduism, we hate Brahminism, we love our culture and more than anything, we love ourselves’. It is through loving ourselves and taking pride in our culture that we can live a better life the future.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“Dalitbahujan structures, though they encompass a far larger number of people, indeed the whole working mass of India, is treated by brahminical literary, political and legal texts as nonexistent. As a result, even historians and social scientists from other parts of the world constructed Indian culture and history either in conformity with brahminical theocracy or critiqued it in its own terms without comparing it with the secular and democratic social systems of the Dalitbahujans. If only that had been done, every observer (if not from India, at least from abroad) could have realized that India has always been divided into two cultures and two civilizations: the Dalitbahujan and the brahminical. But this fact has been systematically glossed over.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“One, Hinduism has never been a humane philosophy. It is the most brutal religious school that the history of religions has witnessed. The Dalitbahujan castes of India are the living evidence of its brutality. Second, even if Hinduization expresses a desire to humanize itself in future, there is no scope for this to happen, since the history of religion itself is coming to an end.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

“If the Brahmins, the Baniyas, the Kshatriyas and the neo-Kshatriyas of this country want unity among diversity, they should join us and look to Dalitization, not Hinduization.”
― Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy