Krishna Swamy Dara: Reflecting on Global Inequality Through my Experience of Inequality in India

⬤ What is your background and how did you become interested in global inequality?

I was born in a town called Guntur in the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh, South India, in the year 1974. My family belonged to the lower-middle-class Dalit group. Dalits are untouchables, a hugely marginalized section of India’s population which was and is inflicted with various forms of social violence by the rest of society. My childhood was mostly growing up in the evangelist spirit of my maternal grandparents. They lived in a slum which was mostly composed of poor Dalit families living under extremely unhygienic and humiliating circumstances. Daily life was highly insecure and ridden with violence for women in particular. Most families suffered from the alcoholism of men and intra-group violence with extreme masculinist ethos. This pain and suffering is etched in my memory even to this day.

My father was one of the lucky ones who managed to educate himself with the support of other educated relatives and managed to secure a government job. After this, my predicament changed. I dwelled in two different worlds: my regular days spent in a middle-class colony, where things were more respectable and tidier, and on weekends with my grandparents. As a very young boy, I preferred the world of my grandparents to my middle-class neighborhood. Kindness, care, and concern were values inculcated by them in me, and I think they are still the dominant values in the large sections of Dalits from this region. Christianity meant this to them.    

These two worlds got contrasted as my father moved to the city (Hyderabad). Like most kids in those times, I spent a month or more with my grandparents in the summer holidays. In the city of Hyderabad, I changed schools many times until I landed in a Hindu philosophy-oriented school and finished my schooling in this particular school. The values at home and the values at school contrasted drastically. The school environment which was largely dominated by upper castes (both classmates and teachers) aimed to promote a kind of perfectionism and elitism that tend to see others as inferiors, including oneself when one does not match these meritocratic goals. Stereotyping and stigmatizing others was common practice particularly against women, lower castes and Muslims. Jokes about these groups are common among school students and sometimes triggered by the teachers of the classes too. Cultures that justify and naturalize inequality exist and have a long history.

⬤ What is global inequality?

Social and economic inequality is a global phenomenon. We come to realize this when we understand more and more about other societies and countries apart from our own. In other words, societies that claim to be egalitarian and just (particularly western countries) are ridden with high levels of poverty, inequities and injustice. Comparing the poorer nations with the rich also shows huge discrepancies in terms of social and economic wellbeing. The concern about global inequality has a long history since Marx’s Capital and criticisms about imperialism and colonialism now have a considerable history. As I come from a deeply (and unlike any other) hierarchal society, which also witnessed colonial exploitation and domination, the issues of global inequality are part of our history. It is inculcated in our education early on. Most Indian history textbooks in schools talk of colonialism and the struggle against it. It is also called nationalist history.

By global inequality, I mean the huge difference that exists between populations all over the planet in terms of economic wealth. Although resources are distributed throughout the planet the benefits from these resources are unfairly unequal. Those with an economic surplus can exploit and enjoy these resources exclusively. With these economic surpluses they can also exploit other humans both physically and their talent. The effect is an exploitative environment that is deeply inhuman and horrific for the exploited. Apart from Marx, I am also deeply influenced by the political thought of John Rawls and his theory of Justice. I find the application of his theories at the global level in the name of Global Justice very promising. The work of Thomas Pogge is also very promising in this regard.[1] The global justice and global inequality debates are related because inequality is understood as an unjust predicament in which we are.

My experience at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) (1997-2006) was very enriching and also deeply disturbing. This university in India is one of the top universities for the study of humanities. I studied political science as a subject, and it is the most relevant for understanding the politics of society and for bringing change for the better. The campus was one of the most overtly political, and appeared progressive in my initial period. It also had students who counted as some of the best from India. The professors, although professing egalitarian and democratic values in the classroom, practiced an extreme form of class/caste elitism informally. They promoted inequality and competition amongst students in the name of merit and hard work. Recommendation letters, personal interaction and encouragement and other networking opportunities are offered to their perceived favorites. Similarly, they are denied to those students who are disliked mostly coming from lower class and caste backgrounds, a typical strategy to promote opportunity hoarding.[2]

This forced me to think about the politics of this duplicity and the future of social justice. The campus also had a vibrant protest culture that encouraged free thinking and debate. It helped young students like me to know various dimensions of politics and the problems of society. As a left-leaning student, my intellectual concerns were opposed to western domination. This was coupled with lectures on dependency theory and the concepts of center (core) and the periphery. Along with the works of Marx and Lenin (On Imperialism), the work of Samir Amin was influential in my understanding of global inequality.

I also participated in protests against the domination of the United States and its allies in meddling with the politics and political economy of the Middle East. The American invasion of Iraq, with the duplicitous intention of opposing dictatorship and bringing democracy, was a way to exploit the natural resources of the region. I still hold on to such a view but with many reservations. The policies of the World Bank, the IMF and other international organizations are responsible for creating economic dependency. Control and monopolizing trade by the rich nations are direct causes of impoverishment of the resource rich countries of Africa, Asia and Southern America.

⬤ What are the main historical causes of global inequality?

As a social scientist, I tend to see the problem of global inequality in interdisciplinary and intersectional terms. Global inequality, or any inequality in human society, is a product of human thought and should therefore be seen in historical and ideological terms. Without going into the debates between materialists and idealists, we can safely say a la Hegel that material reality is an interpretation of the human mind which is itself historical, hence material too.

Historically, colonialism most importantly with its ideology of racial and national superiority has produced this inequality where mostly the colonies end up being dependent on the colonizer to a large extent for economic and cultural support. The international trade mechanisms and its institutions like the IMF and the World Bank developed from these unjust exploitations and continue to perpetuate these inequities although the erstwhile colonies are now independent politically. The economic systems in my view are largely unjust and exploitive towards the poorer nations.

Although we have a high-flown rhetoric for democracy and human rights in practice they work as a façade for perpetuating deeper disparities and discriminations like American interventions both militarily and economically in poor countries in the name of democracy. Here, I want to bring to your attention how the global elite largely located in the so-called western world have managed to accommodate third world elites (both economic and cultural). This accommodation mutually helps the continued dominance by the western elite globally and local domination by the third world elite. Indian elites are thus part of this rotten compromise. The ideologies of capitalism, racism, sexism, patriarchy and casteism are supported by subtle, seemingly innocuous ideologies of meritocracy, ableism, perfectionism and legalism.[3] One of the sources of inequality is religion, which tends to promote fatalism and inaction in terms of tackling inequality (I am aware of various forms of liberation theologies, but they largely tend to fail to change common sense notions). Justifications for retaining privilege and advantages as God-given (part of god’s plan) or one’s karma (work of moral effort in a previous life) play a role in society's acceptance of social and economic inequality. This is particularly so in the Third World.

⬤ What are the most pressing contemporary challenges concerning global inequality and how do we deal with them?

My work on Gandhi on the relationship between religion and politics is to test the secular thesis in practice. Although, I do not agree with him on every count, some of his arguments like “there is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed” makes perfect sense.[4] For Gandhi, colonialism was an expression of human greed and its impulse to promote human consumption. Even capitalism is another form of human greed (this time of profit) that exploits both international labor and domestic labor, and it is the main source of inequality at a global level. Gandhian politics of minimalism for daily sustenance, although environmentally friendly, can produce a culture of celebrating poverty. The culture of poverty has deep roots in Indian philosophical traditions which had a deleterious effect on the Indian psyche. This brought me to the politics and work of Dr. B.R Ambedkar.  

I did my Ph.D. on the political philosophy of Dr. B.R Ambedkar. He was a highly educated and trained intellectual. His works touch upon many fields like sociology, history, economics, finance, and politics. My work focused on the rights of minorities in a democracy in his political thought. As a professor of political economy, his early Ph.D. based book on political economy is significant.  He dealt with the problem of currency standard in this thesis. The work was published in the year 1923 with the title “The Problem of The Rupee: its origin and its solution.”[5] In this work, he argued that the Indian economy was advanced and flourishing before the advent of British colonialism. Overall, Ambedkar in his writing argued that rich India was impoverished by the British colonial policies. Apart from colonial exploitation and imperialism, Ambedkar’s work also deals with class exploitation in socio-economic terms. He argues that just as the rule of one nation over another is immoral and unacceptable, so is the rule of one class over another class. One of his main suggestions for dealing with all kinds of injustices including global inequality, is not just to see inequality in purely economic terms, but (a la Gramsci) to see them as cultural hegemonies without ignoring the economic or material aspect. There is an urgent need to introduce and see democracy as a way of life a la John Dewey, to question the vulgar aspects of modernity and capitalism, to deal with greed a la Gandhi, and create compassion for fellow creatures (including humans) a la Buddha.

References

To cite this source, kindly cite as follows:

Krishna Swamy Dara, “Reflecting on Global Inequality Through my Experience of Inequality in India,” in Key Questions on Global Inequality, edited by Christian Olaf Christiansen, Mélanie Lindbjerg Guichon, Oliver Bugge Hunt & Priyanka Jha, online version December 11th 2020, http://global-inequality.com/interview-series-krishna-dara/

⬤ What is global inequality?

Social and economic inequality is a global phenomenon. We come to realize this when we understand more and more about other societies and countries apart from our own. In other words, societies that claim to be egalitarian and just (particularly western countries) are ridden with high levels of poverty, inequities and injustice. Comparing the poorer nations with the rich also shows huge discrepancies in terms of social and economic wellbeing. The concern about global inequality has a long history since Marx’s Capital and criticisms about imperialism and colonialism now have a considerable history. As I come from a deeply (and unlike any other) hierarchal society, which also witnessed colonial exploitation and domination, the issues of global inequality are part of our history. It is inculcated in our education early on. Most Indian history textbooks in schools talk of colonialism and the struggle against it. It is also called nationalist history.

By global inequality, I mean the huge difference that exists between populations all over the planet in terms of economic wealth. Although resources are distributed throughout the planet the benefits from these resources are unfairly unequal. Those with an economic surplus can exploit and enjoy these resources exclusively. With these economic surpluses they can also exploit other humans both physically and their talent. The effect is an exploitative environment that is deeply inhuman and horrific for the exploited. Apart from Marx, I am also deeply influenced by the political thought of John Rawls and his theory of Justice. I find the application of his theories at the global level in the name of Global Justice very promising. The work of Thomas Pogge is also very promising in this regard.[1] The global justice and global inequality debates are related because inequality is understood as an unjust predicament in which we are.

My experience at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) (1997-2006) was very enriching and also deeply disturbing. This university in India is one of the top universities for the study of humanities. I studied political science as a subject, and it is the most relevant for understanding the politics of society and for bringing change for the better. The campus was one of the most overtly political, and appeared progressive in my initial period. It also had students who counted as some of the best from India. The professors, although professing egalitarian and democratic values in the classroom, practiced an extreme form of class/caste elitism informally. They promoted inequality and competition amongst students in the name of merit and hard work. Recommendation letters, personal interaction and encouragement and other networking opportunities are offered to their perceived favorites. Similarly, they are denied to those students who are disliked mostly coming from lower class and caste backgrounds, a typical strategy to promote opportunity hoarding.[2]

This forced me to think about the politics of this duplicity and the future of social justice. The campus also had a vibrant protest culture that encouraged free thinking and debate. It helped young students like me to know various dimensions of politics and the problems of society. As a left-leaning student, my intellectual concerns were opposed to western domination. This was coupled with lectures on dependency theory and the concepts of center (core) and the periphery. Along with the works of Marx and Lenin (On Imperialism), the work of Samir Amin was influential in my understanding of global inequality.

I also participated in protests against the domination of the United States and its allies in meddling with the politics and political economy of the Middle East. The American invasion of Iraq, with the duplicitous intention of opposing dictatorship and bringing democracy, was a way to exploit the natural resources of the region. I still hold on to such a view but with many reservations. The policies of the World Bank, the IMF and other international organizations are responsible for creating economic dependency. Control and monopolizing trade by the rich nations are direct causes of impoverishment of the resource rich countries of Africa, Asia and Southern America.

⬤ What are the main historical causes of global inequality?

⬤ What are the most pressing contemporary challenges concerning global inequality and how do we deal with them?

My work on Gandhi on the relationship between religion and politics is to test the secular thesis in practice. Although, I do not agree with him on every count, some of his arguments like “there is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed” makes perfect sense.[4] For Gandhi, colonialism was an expression of human greed and its impulse to promote human consumption. Even capitalism is another form of human greed (this time of profit) that exploits both international labor and domestic labor, and it is the main source of inequality at a global level. Gandhian politics of minimalism for daily sustenance, although environmentally friendly, can produce a culture of celebrating poverty. The culture of poverty has deep roots in Indian philosophical traditions which had a deleterious effect on the Indian psyche. This brought me to the politics and work of Dr. B.R Ambedkar.  

I did my Ph.D. on the political philosophy of Dr. B.R Ambedkar. He was a highly educated and trained intellectual. His works touch upon many fields like sociology, history, economics, finance, and politics. My work focused on the rights of minorities in a democracy in his political thought. As a professor of political economy, his early Ph.D. based book on political economy is significant.  He dealt with the problem of currency standard in this thesis. The work was published in the year 1923 with the title “The Problem of The Rupee: its origin and its solution.”[5] In this work, he argued that the Indian economy was advanced and flourishing before the advent of British colonialism. Overall, Ambedkar in his writing argued that rich India was impoverished by the British colonial policies. Apart from colonial exploitation and imperialism, Ambedkar’s work also deals with class exploitation in socio-economic terms. He argues that just as the rule of one nation over another is immoral and unacceptable, so is the rule of one class over another class. One of his main suggestions for dealing with all kinds of injustices including global inequality, is not just to see inequality in purely economic terms, but (a la Gramsci) to see them as cultural hegemonies without ignoring the economic or material aspect. There is an urgent need to introduce and see democracy as a way of life a la John Dewey, to question the vulgar aspects of modernity and capitalism, to deal with greed a la Gandhi, and create compassion for fellow creatures (including humans) a la Buddha.