THE SATANIC VERSES

Source: The Black Scholar, Vol. 20, No. 2, BLACK CULTURE (MARCH/APRIL 1989), pp. 17-18

THE SATANIC VERSES AND DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS
Edward W· Said

In 1984, Salman Rushdie published a superb essay in Granta entitled Outside the Whale," in which he showed that today's writer could not be inside the whale, insulated from history and politics. "The modern world," Rushdie writes, "lacks not only hiding places, but certainties." These words have an ominously prophetic applicability to Rushdie's situation today, not only because he has to be in hiding in order to save his life, but because he wrote a book that made "a very devil of a racket" in challenging certainties and provoking anger and amazement.

“OUTSIDE THE WHALE"

An Outside the Whale" Rushdie says: If writers leave the business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one of history's great and most abject abdications. Outside the whale is the unceasing storm, the continual quarrel, the dialectic of history. Out- side the whale there is a genuine need for political fiction, for books that draw new and better maps of reality, and make new languages with which we can understand the world. Outside the whale we see that we are all irradiated by history, we are radioactive with history and politics; we see that it can be as false to create a politics free fictional universe as to create one in which nobody needs to work or eat or hate or love or sleep. Outside the whale it becomes necessary, and even exhilarating, to grapple with the special problems created by the incorporation of political material because politics is by turns farce and tragedy, sometimes... both at once. Outside the whale the writer is obliged to accept that he (or she) is part of the crowd, part of the ocean, part of the storm....

INVENTIVE WORK OF FICTION

Satanic Verses is an astonishing and prodigiously inventive work of fiction. Yet it is, like its author, in history, the world, the crowd and the storm. It is, in all sorts of ways, a deliberately transgressive work. It parallels and mimics the central Islamic narratives with bold, nose-thumbing, post-modern daring. In so doing, it demonstrates another side of its author's unbroken engagement with the politics and history of the contemporary scene. Rushdie is the same distinguished writer and intellectual who has spoken out for immigrant, black and Palestinian rights, against imperialism, racism and censorship. He has always unhesitatingly expressed willingness to take active political positions whenever his voice has been needed. What shocks Moslems is Satanic Verses' knowing intimacy with the religious and cultural material with which it so comically and resourcefully plays. There is also the further shock of seeing Islam portrayed irreverently and - although as a secularist I have difficulty in using this word - blasphemously by a Moslem who writes both in and for the West. The cultural context is horrifically and even ludicrously inhospitable to such transgressions.

INDIFFERENCE TOWARD ISLAM

Moslems think of the current situation between their umma and Western civilization in singularly unhappy terms. How many Islamic writers, Moslems say, from Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan or Senegal are published, much less known or read in the West? Why is that ignorance there, if not for the disregard, indifference and fear with which things Islamic are considered here? Israel bans hundreds of books in occupied Palestinian territories, and Palestinian writers are jailed without trial. Where are the protesting voices of Western writers and intellectuals?

Islam has been reduced to terrorism and fundamentalism and now is seen to be acting accordingly, in the ghastly violence pre- scribed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. The fury increases as do the pieties and the vindictive righteousness. Above all, people from the Islamic world ask: Why must a Moslem, who could be de- fending and sympathetically interpreting us, now represent us so roughly, so expertly and so disrespectfully to an audience already primed to excoriate our traditions, reality, history, religious language and origins? Why must a member of our culture join the legions of Orientalists in Orientalizing Islam so radically and unfairly?

SERIOUSNESS OF QUESTIONS

 To try to answer these questions is by no means to deny the anguish and serious- ness of the questions. But it is, as a beginning, to say that although it contains many spheres, the contemporary world of men and women is one world. Human history has many divisions, many particularities, but it too is one. In this world, Rushdie, from the community of Islam, has written for the West about Is- lam. The Satanic Verses thus is a self- representation. But everyone should be able to read the novel, interpret, understand, accept or finally reject it. More to the point, it should be possible both to accept the brilliance of Rushdie's work and also to note its transgressive apostasy. If this peculiar paradox is also an emblem of the fate of hybrids and immigrants, that fate too is part of this contemporary world. For the point is that there is no pure, unsullied, unmixed essence to which some of us can return, whether that essence is pure Is- lam, pure Christianity, pure Judaism or Easternism, Americanism or Westernism. Rushdie's work is not just about the mixture; it is that mixture itself.

COMPLICATED MIXTURES

To stir Islamic narratives into a stream of heterogeneous narratives about actors, tricksters, prophets, devils, whores, heroes and heroines is therefore inevitable. Most of us are still unprepared to deal with such complicated mixtures, but as Rushdie says in Outside the Whale": "In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss." What those of us from the Moslem part of this world need to add is that we cannot accept the notion that democratic freedoms should be abrogated to protect Islam. No world culture or religion is really about such violence or such curtailments of fundamental rights. If we have accepted Rushdie's help in the past, we should now be ensuring his safety and his right to say what he has to say. To dispute with him, to engage with his work does not, cannot, be the same thing as banning it or threatening Rushdie with violence and physical punishment.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/18/books/newly-translated-still-kafkaesque-a-comic-style-emerges-in-the-castle.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Newly Translated, Still Kafkaesque:
 A Comic Style Emerges in 'The Castle'

DINITIA SMITH, March 18, 1998

By the winter of 1922, Franz Kafka was a figure pitiful in his suffering. He had tuberculosis, boils, hemorrhoids and headaches. But there was also something distinctly modern about this writer's pain, in the neurotic way it emanated from his unquiet spirit. His circumstances were for the most part comfortable. He was from an assimilated middle-class Jewish family in Prague. He had a law degree. But so great was his inner turmoil that he could not bear loud voices or to eat in front of others. And it was because of his own hesitations that his love relationships, with Felice Bauer, with Julie Wohryzek, with Milena Jesenska-Polak, had failed.

''Impossible to sleep, impossible to stay awake, impossible to endure life,'' Kafka wrote in his diary on Jan. 16. Hoping for respite, he went to a ski resort in Spindelmuhle, near the Polish border. ''My situation in this world would seem to be a dreadful one, alone here,'' he wrote on Jan. 29, ''on a forsaken road, moreover, without an earthly goal.''

It was there he began to write what would be his last novel, ''The Castle,'' set in a snowy landscape reminiscent of Spindelmuhle. K., a surveyor, arrives one night at a village at the foot of a hilltop castle, thinking he has been hired by the count who inhabits it. But no orders have been given, and K. spends the novel trying to see the count, encountering a series of phantasmagoric nonevents that end in his failure to see him.

In 1924, Kafka died at the age of 40, with instructions to his friend Max Brod to burn his writings. But Brod saved them and assembled them for publication. Brod's compilation provided the matrix for translations into English by Edwin and Willa Muir. But the text and the translations have long been the subject of disagreement among scholars.

This month, Schocken Books will bring out a new translation of ''The Castle,'' by Mark Harman. It is the first volume in a vast retranslation of Kafka's novels, diaries (including previously expurgated sections) and correspondence. The new work is based on a fresh compilation of the manuscripts by Sir Malcolm Pasley, a scholar at Oxford University. And it shows a modernist Kafka, a precursor of Beckett, colloquial, even playful. For Mr. Harman, the work is also an expression of Kafka's increasing preoccupation with his Jewishness.

''This is the authentic Kafka,'' said Arthur Samuelson, the editorial director of Schocken, ''It will undo all of what Max Brod did.''

The second volume in the series, ''The Trial,'' translated by Breon Mitchell, is expected in September. And a series of related events and panel discussions is under way this month.

Kafka was born in 1883, a German-speaking Jew, in Prague. His father, Hermann, was a driven man, given to vulgarisms, constantly critical of his only son, a shy boy with sad, dark eyes who was terrified of him. Later, in his accusing work, ''Letter to His Father,'' Kafka encapsulated his feelings about his father: ''One night I kept constantly whimpering for water,'' Kafka wrote. ''When repeated and emphatic threats failed to work, you snatched me out of my bed, carried me out onto the balcony and left me there alone for a while in my nightgown, with the door locked.''

For years after, Kafka wrote, ''I kept being haunted by fantasies of this giant of a man, my father, the ultimate judge, coming to get me in the middle of the night,'' making him feel, like absolutely Nothing.''

Kafka attended an elite German-speaking school, earned a law degree at the German University in Prague and eventually went to work in the Statistical and Claims Department of the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia.

In 1912, he was forced to take over the family asbestos factory. By then, so taxed was he by the drudgery of his work, and his symbiotic relationship with his parents, with whom he lived for most of his adult life, that he contemplated suicide.

But all through this, in order to save himself from going mad, Kafka worked on his writing. There was ''Metamorphosis,'' his tale of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a giant insect, ''A Country Doctor,'' ''Amerika,'' ''The Trial,'' ''In the Penal Colony,'' ''A Hunger Artist.''

In 1923, Kafka met Dora Diamant and moved with her to Berlin. Together they dreamed of opening a restaurant in Palestine. Dora would be the cook, Kafka the waiter. He died of tuberculosis the next year.

Words Removed, Punctuation Added

In assembling the text for ''The Castle,'' Max Brod broke up Kafka's long paragraphs into smaller sections -- added standard High German punctuation, inserting semicolons, breaking up sentences -- and changed Kafka's demarcation of the chapters. Originally, Kafka had ended his novel in the middle of a sentence. But Brod created a new ending at the close of Chapter 20, omitting a fifth of Kafka's original text, so that the novel ended with a conversation between K. and his landlady. The omitted material was added as an appendix to a later edition.

Eventually, Brod gave the rights to Kafka's work to the publishing house Schocken Verlag, which was founded in 1931, by a Jewish department store magnate, Salman Schocken. During the Nazi period, Schocken was given the sole right to publish works by Jewish writers, on condition that they be sold only to Jews. Still, even as Nazism took hold throughout Europe, Kafka's odd vision of the world was still being disseminated to readers, until 1939, when Schocken was shut down.

Schocken reopened in New York, and Hannah Arendt and Nahum Glazer became its chief editors. In the 1970's, a group of scholars led by Sir Malcolm Pasley began reassembling the German text, and it was from this new text that Mark Harman, a critic of German and Irish literature, has done his translation.

The translation of ''The Castle'' shows a more comic Kafka. K. refers to his predicament as ''this comedy,'' for instance. Mr. Harman has also made it more faithful to Kafka's dreamlike style.

Gone is the High German punctuation of previous editions, with its semicolons. Mr. Harman has restored Kafka's original punctuation, in which he sometimes used only commas to break up sentences. Mr. Harman has also restored the original ending to the novel, at the moment when Kafka ceased working on the book, in the middle of a sentence.

Over the years, there have been many interpretations of ''The Castle.'' The Muirs' translation made the novel into an allegory about the search for divine grace, with K. a figure resembling Christian in Bunyan's 17th-century work ''Pilgrim's Progress.'' Other critics, like Simone de Beauvoir, saw the work as an existential allegory of 20th-century man caught in a nightmare maze of meaningless work and bureaucracy.

But Mr. Harman has a different interpretation. By the time he wrote ''The Castle,'' Kafka had become fascinated by Prague's Yiddish theater and had befriended Yiddish actors. All around him the Jews of Prague were arguing about Zionism and whether Jews should write in German.

Kafka's father, represented for him the ultimate assimilated Jew, a man who had turned away from the spiritual life in his quest for material goods. At the time Kafka wrote ''The Castle,'' he had begun to debate within himself the costs of assimilation and to explore aspects of Jewishness that were scorned by his father as reminders of ghetto life.

''For many years, Kafka's Jewishness was downplayed in mainstream scholarship,'' said Mr. Harman. ''But the relationship with Milena Jesenska-Polak, who was Christian, caused him to probe deeply into his relationship to the Jewish tradition.''

''I am as far as I know the most typical Western Jew,'' Kafka wrote in a letter to Milena. ''Nothing is granted me, everything has to be earned, not only the present and the future, but the past too.''

''By Western Jews,'' Mr. Harman said, ''he means Jews who have lost touch with vital, Jewish traditions. The Yiddish players with whom he had contact in Prague were the real Jews, but he had been assimilated.

''In 'The Castle,' there is no mention of the word Jew. But the Jewishness is under the surface, implicitly there.'' For example, in the name that Kafka gives to the unseen count, Count West-West, invoking Kafka's own description of himself as a Western Jew.

Creating 'A New Cabala'

In his diary entry of Jan. 16, 1922, Kafka says of his writing, ''All such writing is an assault on the frontiers; if Zionism had not intervened, it might easily have developed into a new secret doctrine, a cabala.''

Mr. Harman said, ''It was as if in his writing, he was trying to create a new cabala,'' a distinctly Jewish text.

And, despite the novel's rank despair, Mr. Harman sees a change in tone at the end, a lightening of the spirit that he said comes through more clearly in the new translation than in the Muirs' translation. ''K. seems to be saying that maybe he should not be so obsessed with 'The Castle,' '' said Mr. Harman.

In the new, restored ending, K. finds a kind of refuge with a coachman, Gerstacker: ''K. laughed, took Gerstacker's arm, and let himself be led through the darkness,'' Kafka writes. At Gerstacker's cottage, K. finds a fire going, and an old woman, Gerstacker's mother. ''She held out her trembling hand to K.,'' Kafka writes. ''And had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty, and it was difficult to understand her, but what she said'' And there, without even a punctuation mark, Kafka broke off.

Along with the new translation, a series of related events has been scheduled, including an exhibition, ''Franz Kafka and the Prague Circle'' now at the Leo Baeck Institute. On March 24, the Czech Center is sponsoring a panel on the relationship between Kafka and Czech literature, with an exhibition of illustrations from various works by Kafka, and a showing, not scheduled yet, of ''Amerika,'' a 1994 Czech film of Kafka's first novel, directed by Vladimir Michalek.

On March 26, the PEN American Center will sponsor a panel discussion at Town Hall, with Susan Sontag, E. L. Doctorow, Aharon Appelfeld, Christopher Plummer and Cynthia Ozick scheduled to be among the participants. On March 31, there will be a screening of the film ''The Castle,'' directed by Michael Haneke at the Anthology Film Archives.

Anti-Semitism as an Issue in the Trial of Kafka's Joseph K.

Anti-Semitism as an Issue in the Trial of Kafka's Joseph K.

By: Joseph J. Waldmeir

Published: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 1961

The critical interpreters of Franz Kafka's allegorical examinations of a chaotic modern world have identified and proposed three distinct, occasionally even antagonistic, interpretations: the metaphysical-religious-mystical, the Freudian, and the generally social-cultural. A few of them, including Max Brod and W. H. Auden, have taken a turn toward a somewhat different interpretation on the evidence that Kafka was a Jew, and that his notebooks and letters betrayed great concern with the anachronistic problem of the Jew in modern society. But none of his critics has followed through with an overall investigation and exegesis of Kafka's fiction in terms of this concern.

The present paper is the result of a close exegetical examination of The Trial (London. Penguin Books. 1953) from this point of view. Such an interpretation can contribute valuably to a clarification of Kafka's world view, for if Joseph K. is a Jew then the Kafka hero is not so much a sensitive individual out of tune with his God, with his psyche, or with society in general as he is a member of a group actively opposed by a specific external agency, anti-Semitism. He is trying unsuccessfully to find his place in an antagonistic society while maintaining his dignity and worth as a human being. More than this, futile though they may be, his actions are not wholly self-conscious and negative, but are assertive and positive as well.

The tone of the novel and the nature of the problem are apparent in the first episode of the first chapter. Society, in the person of the two Warders and the Inspector, confronts K. with the accusation that he is a Jew, and waits for K. to acknowledge the accusation. There is no talk of punishment, no talk of incarceration. Society merely informs him of a fact. But the fact implies an anti-Semitic judgment, and it is this which K. fights here and throughout the novel. He refuses to acknowledge the accusation, refuses to confirm or deny his Jewishness, refuses even to laugh the whole business off, as he is aware he could easily do. Stubbornly, he challenges the legal right of his accusers to arrest him for a social crime. Here, for the first time, K. re-sorts to the argumentative device he is to use throughout the book. He attempts to force society back to its major premise. But since society reaches its conclusions more often emotionally than rationally, and rea-sons, if at all, not syllogistically but enthememically, K. succeeds only in erecting an impossible barrier to communication.

 Society cannot understand why, if he is not a Jew, K. does not say it, prove it, and be done with it; or if he is a Jew, why he does not simply admit it and go on about his business. From society's point of view, it is K. who acts irrationally. The whole af-fair is extremely simple; there is nothing to argue about or even to discuss. When K. produces identification, the Warders reject it as being of no consequence in the matter at hand. When K. protests his innocence by asserting that the Law governing his crime exists only in the Warders' minds, one Warder answers: "He admits that he doesn't know the Law and yet he claims he's innocent." When he challenges the authority of the arresting officers, he is advised by the Inspector to "think less about us and of what is going to happen to you, think more about yourself instead." When he offers to consider that the accusation has not been made, the Inspector declines, then departs, leaving K. in the frustrating position of being unable to deny his guilt, and really forced to admit it in order to argue from the untenable position that his guilt should not be considered guilt.

 And the frustration takes the form of a bitter choice between blind acquiescence to society's wishes or hopeless struggle against them in the Fraulein Biirstner episode of the chapter. Fraulein Biirstner's role in the novel is extremely important though she is actively present only in the first chapter. She represents K.'s desire to be a part of society in spite of its unworthiness. Imperfect, tainted, cowardly though she may be, she is a goal for K. In her own frightened interview with him as well as in K.'s interview with her Friend, it is apparent that he shall never attain her as long as he struggles against society's Judgment. But the judgment is stupid. It is impossible for K. to yield, to admit his guilt; but it is equally im-possible for him to reject his desires. In fact, simply because Fraulein Biirstner is denied him, his desire for her is almost desperate.

Motivated by this desire, K. attends the First Interrogation. The Chamber is located in the back room of an old house; the meeting is informal, is somehow clandestine. Angered by the feeling that he is expected to debase himself in such dismal surroundings, K. insists that he be accepted by society on his own terms. He protests so volubly against the accusation itself - avoiding any admission or denial of it - that he convinces his hearers of his guilt.

But guilt or innocence is not the issue and, dissatisfied with his inability to con-vince the interrogators that not the question of his Jewishness but why Jewishness is bad should be debated, K. returns to the chambers a week later. It is empty, but K. finds evidence that convinces him both that all argument is useless and that yielding is, for him, out of the question. He examines the Law books left behind by the Examining Magistrate and finds them filled with obscene, pornographic stories and pictures. While he is present, the Magistrate, a vicious lecher, sends a Law student to kidnap the Court Attendant's wife (she has been the student's unwilling mistress) for his own use. Following them K. learns that the Offices of the Law are located in the attic of the same old house that contains the Interrogation Chamber. K. enters, and is almost suffocated by the stale, strangling air. When a skylight is opened to alleviate the situation, clouds of soot fall through it. K., growing ill, is assisted out of the Offices by two attendants who grow equally ill as they catch a breath of fresh air at the exit.

Neither argument with nor acquiescence to such a Court is possible for a self-respecting man. The Court, if not the Law itself, is capricious, obscene, foul, disgusting, and rapacious. It has no legal sanction: witness its relegation to the attic of an old house (later K. learns that its branches are present in most of the old houses of the city) . It can certainly have no moral sanction. More firmly convinced than ever that he is right and the anti-Semite is wrong, K. must decide on some sort of action. "While he stayed quietly at home," he thinks, "and went about his ordinary vocations he remained superior to all these people and could clear any of them out of his path with a hearty kick." But it is as impossible for K. to remain quietly at home as it is impossible for him to dignify his opponents by disregarding them.

As K. realizes the growing insecurity of his position the necessity to strike back becomes stronger. After his visit to the Court Offices he finds that he is to be cut off permanently from Fraulein Burstner, and his frustrated desire takes the form of the Whipper revenge daydream. K. is extremely ashamed of the dream but he cannot rid himself of it. All that the Warders had done was to accuse him of the truth, for K. is a Jew. The Warders are not responsible for any of the implications in the accusation; to punish them is senseless. Yet, faced with a Law and a Court and Officials such as those he has already dealt with, what alternative had he? Ashamed of the vengeance day-dream or not, like his desire for Fraulein Biirstner, this is something that K. cannot resist or abolish.

 At this, his most discouraging moment so far, his Uncle enters the scene, and K.'s hope and confidence are partially restored. The Uncle has two suggestions: K. can leave the environment as the Uncle had done twenty years before, thus avoiding the problem, or he can avail himself of certain legal weapons at his disposal to fight the case. K. refuses to retreat to the ghetto, and hopefully chooses what appears to be energetic action. It turns out to be action in a vacuum; K.'s hope is false, his confidence misplaced.

Almost immediately K. suspects that the sickly and weak Advocate to whom his Uncle introduces him will prove ineffectual. When he discovers that the Clerk of the Court has been lurking in the shadows of the Advocate's room, signifying that the Advocate is in intimate contact with the Court in charge of K.'s case and is therefore anti-Semitic, K.'s suspicions become certainties and he abruptly leaves the room. Leni, the Advocate's nurse-housekeeper-mistress, attempts to seduce K. into yielding to the wishes of the Court. "You can't put up a resistance to this Court," she says; "you must admit your fault. Make your confession at the first chance you get. Until you do that, there's no possibility of get-ting out of their clutches, none at all." These sentiments are echoed later by the Advocate who explains to K. that "The only sensible thing was to adapt oneself to the existing conditions. ... Anything but draw attention to oneself from above! One must be low, no matter how much it went against the grain." To try to alter things was to in-vite destruction, since the organization would not really change, "unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, more severe. . ." K.'s affair with Leni signifies his desire to yield; in fact, Leni interprets the affair in those terms. But in his more sober mo-ments K. reaffirms his stubborn non-capitu-lation. "Above all," he thinks, "if he were to achieve anything, it was essential that he should eliminate from his mind the idea of possible guilt. There was no such guilt."

Still, his stubbornness has seriously far-reaching ramifications. His position at the bank has been placed in jeopardy, leading the Manufacturer, one of his erstwhile clients, to suggest that he attempt to get the artist Titorelli to intercede for him. The presence of his Uncle has reminded K. that his family is somehow involved in the case, too, that though he fights alone he may not win or lose alone. This latter responsibility is far more terrible than his responsibility to himself, and K. is not permitted to for-get it. He is motivated to go to Titorelli by the weakening of his authority at the bank, out the torments he suffers at the hands of the little crippled girls attached to Titorelli's boarding house are haunting reminders that his actions may be responsible for the fate of the whole family of Jews.

Titorelli is the artist who in a sense has created the Examining Magistrates of the Court by falsifying their stature, their dignified mien, and their judicial surroundings in his portraits of them. While K. waits, Titorelli elaborates on a portrait of Justice until she is changed into a likeness of the Goddess of the Hunt in full cry. In spite of this warning by the master dissembler, and in spite of the warning implicit in the Furies' pursuit of him up the stairs to Titorelli's studio, K.'s hopes rise when the artist accepts his assertions of innocence.

Titorelli points out and defines three pos-sible solutions to the case of an innocent man: Definite Acquittal, which is theoretically possible but actually impossible, though legends indicate that such acquittals may have taken place in the ancient past (a probable reference to the vindication of the Jews as Chosen People in the Old Testament) ; Ostensible Acquittal in which the charge is lifted for a short time or until a new arrest is made (a reference to the possibility that the Jew may win over part of society but never all of it) ; and Indefinite Postponement in which the accused may go on with his life in a probable conviction that his case will never come to a conclusion (a reference to the apparent acceptance of the Jew into society as a Jew) .

Throughout Titorelli's exposition the Furies clamor outside the door and the studio becomes stiflingly, disgustingly hot and air-less. In spite of a tremendous lethargy which settles on K., in spite of an over-whelming desire to yield, K. has the cour-\age and wit to see through the two possible proposals." 'Both methods have this in common/ " says Titorelli, " 'that they save the accused from coming up for sentence.' 'But they also prevent an actual acquittal,' said K. in a low voice, as if embarrassed by his own perspicacity. 'You have grasped the kernel of the matter,' said the painter quickly."

With Titorelli's admission, K. manages to rouse himself sufficiently to leave the studio. But first he buys three of Titorelli's paintings, all exactly the same, as all three suggested solutions have been exactly the same. To escape the Furies, K. leaves by a different door, and finds himself in another branch of the Law Court Offices to which Titorelli's studio is actually an adjunct. The musty, sickening air becomes more nauseating, and K. dashes through and out of the Offices closely pursued by the Furies who have managed somehow to reach him.

Bewildered, misled by his Uncle, by the Advocate, by the painter, K. resolves to con-tinue his struggle without help. He meets Block, the Commercial Traveler, in the Advocate's home and learns that at least part of his trouble is founded on superstition. Block tells him of the general belief that one's guilt is betrayed by a certain facial characteristic, not the size and shape of his nose, but the set of his lips. K. also learns from Block that his case is being tried before a Low Court, and that the function of the Low Court appears to be to work unceasing-ly to prevent the accused, like Block and K., from carrying his case to the High Court; that society actively prevents final judgment, the examination of the major premise, in the case of the recalcitrant Jew. And finally, witnessing Block's debasement by the advocate, K. learns that "the Advocate's methods, to which K. fortunately had not long enough been exposed, amounted to this : that the client finally forgot the whole world and lived only in the hope of toiling along this false path until the end of his case should come in sight." His new knowledge only serves to entrench K.'s stubbornness, to make more adamant his refusal to yield. He unequivocally dismisses the Advocate.

Betrayed, trapped, once again alone in his trial, K. is assigned the responsibility of guide for an Italian official whom he can-not understand well enough to converse with. The Italian, clearly a representative of historical Christianity, suggests that they meet at the Cathedral to begin their tour. K. arrives first, and while waiting, decides to evaluate the paintings in the Cathedral. The first and only one which he examines, and that dimly, in the flickering light of his pocket torch, is of Christ being laid in the sepulchre while an armored knight stands guard.

The painting is a revelation. Implicit in it is the major premise for which K. has sought so eagerly throughout the trial: the Law is the curse of the Christian God upon the Christ-killer Jew. Society effectively enforces the curse simply by guarding the tomb, that is, by being Christian. There is no need for K., the Jew, to examine the other paintings in the Cathedral; there is no need to wait longer for the Italian official. But K. hesitates. The argument of the painting seems to him not absolute and irrevocable. He is disturbed by society's role as unreasoning enforcer of the curse, and by serious doubts as to the validity of the premise. Thus he is summoned to the pulpit to have his questions answered.

His case is progressing badly, the priest tells him." 'You are held to be guilty. Your case will perhaps never get beyond a lower court. Your guilt is supposed, for the pres-ent at least, to have been proved.' 'But I am not guilty/ K. answers. 'It's a misunderstanding. And if it comes to that, how can any man be called guilty? We are all simply men here, one as much as the other.* 'That is true/ said the priest, 'but that is how all guilty men talk.'

"No argument is possible, as none had been possible at the beginning of the trial. The Court's decision is a foregone conclusion either with or without the premise; but granting the premise, the case is even more hopeless and struggle is useless. Neither K.'s legal nor extra-legal, formal nor informal machinations can serve to resolve the chaos resulting from his stubbornness and society's prejudice. The Jew must simply accept his place on the perimeter of society, even though accepting it gains him nothing but the absence of struggle. The priest points out that K. has hurt his cause specifically by seeking outside help, particularly the help of women. K.'s reply, that the natures of the Court and of the lecherous examining magistrate are such that the inter-cession of women might conceivably aid his cause, betrays a misunderstanding of society's function and motivation, betrays a con-fusion of the Law with the Court.

 "Can't you see anything at all?" the priest shrieks.

He then attempts to explain to K. the complex relationship among the Law, society, and the Jew by reciting to him the parable of the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper is society, or the Low Court, authorized by the High Court to stand between the Jew and the Law. He does not know why he stands there. He has not, nor ever can have, any direct knowledge of the Law. But he does have the Law's authorization, and this is a sufficient justification for his actions, irrational though they may appear to be. The Law exists above and beyond and regardless of society; the doorkeeper is distinct from the Law even though he serves it. This is the most deadly point of all. In the parable the Jew cannot achieve even a minimum converse with the doorkeeper, let alone the Law, either by pleading, arguing, or gift-giving. But even if the door-keeper were to change in his attitude, even if K. were to be accepted unqualifiedly into society, there would follow no ultimate change in the Law. The Jew, as the priest puts it, is not really barred by the doorkeeper; he is merely not admitted.

 The Law is vulnerable; it has to be. A major premise so intimately connected with irrationality cannot stand firm against the attack of reason. K. strikes at its weakest point: he asserts that the doorkeeper is either simple-minded or a swindler. The priest answers that to doubt the doorkeeper is to doubt the Law, since the doorkeeper serves the Law. K., not yet ready to denounce the Law, denies only that it is a proper justification: "'I don't agree with that point of view,' "he says;" 'for if one accepts it, one must accept as true every-thing the doorkeeper says.' 'No, said the priest, 'it is not necessary to accept every-thing as true, one must only accept it as necessary. "

Cornered now, K. realizes that he cannot defeat the Law, vulnerable though it may be, since it exists so potently simply by virtue of its vulnerability. The Court, society, is separate from the Law, can never under-stand the premise justifying its acts, could accomplish nothing even by understanding it or by acting differently- yet to disavow society is to disavow the Law and to invite destruction. K. does not hesitate. With desperate courage he answers the priest. "A melancholy conclusion," he says. "It turns lying into a universal principle."

Society must destroy any man, but especially the Jew, who forces it back to the basic premises upon which it rests its prejudices and actions, and who then flatly dismisses the premises as lies. K's brave denunciation of the Law has sealed his fate.

 But K.'s courage gives way briefly to depression. As he is being led to his execution in the final chapter he catches a fleeting glimpse of Fraulein Biirstner, hurrying away from him, still unattainable, and he "suddenly realized the futility of resistance." But just as suddenly the depression is re-placed by a reborn courage; This is the first time he has seen Fraulein Biirstner since early in the trial, and though she is moving away from him she is no longer cut off from him by her Friend or Captain Lance. He has refused to yield, to admit his guilt even in the vain hope that he could thereby achieve his goal. The goal has been removed farther and farther from him because of his stubbornness, but now suddenly it is there before him, not clearly perceptible, hurrying away, still unattainable- but there nonetheless, as if his very stubbornness itself had forced it to appear.

 His courage and defiance renewed, K. asks himself: "Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions? Are people to say of me after I am gone that at the beginning of my case I wanted it to finish, and at the end of it I wanted it to begin again? I don't want that to be said." He must be destroyed, but if he meets his fate bravely, defiantly, protesting-ly, placing the onus of it on society, then his death shall not have been in vain, for his dignity and manhood will be restored. He refuses to place the knife in his own throat, and as society drives it home, he dies "Like a dog!" pointing a prophetic finger at society, crying out the words "as if he meant the shame of [them] to outlive him."

The interpretation of The Trial offered in this paper is, in spite of its singularity, perfectly consistent with the three standard interpretations as they are in fact perfectly consistent with one another. The various episodes and incidents cited in support of the argument here have been justly used to support the other arguments as well. Thus for example the Cathedral episode is climactic on all levels. It contains not only the symbolic justification for society's tyrannical anti-Semitism, but it also justifies symbolically the tyranny of conformity under which not only the Jew, but modern man in general lives. And it is at the same time the House of Kierkegaard's tyrant God, and of Freud's tyrant Father.

 Too many Kafka critics, in their enthusiasm for their own interpretations, have occasionally forgotten that his work is allegory, and that it is in the nature of allegory to be ambiguous. The allegorist examines metaphorically the causes and consequences of a human condition, in Kafka's case, the chaotic condition of the modern world. The metaphors become levels of meaning, and the allegory owes its artistry to the consciously intricate mingling and meshing of the levels. The allegory is ultimately clear only in terms of the metaphors; the critic must treat its ambiguity with respect. When he submits the work, as I have The Trial, to a close and careful exegetical examination from the point of view of one of its levels, he must constantly be aware that the other levels exist, or he in effect destroys the allegory.

The object of this paper has not been to add to and enrich Kafka criticism, but to clarify his allegorical argument and conclusions by emphasizing the richness in the texture of his work. Reading The Trial, or The Castle, or America, or many of the short stories as considerations and condemnations of society's vicious persecution of the Jew does not weaken their artistry but strengthens it. The chaos is not resolved here. But simply hearing in the work, how-ever faintly, a note of protest, a defiant cry, a hopeless prophecy is to discover a new, more optimistic dimension in Kafka's world view, and a greater depth of meaning in his allegory. Michigan State University 

FRANZ KAFKA (Courtesy Austrian Information Service, N. Y.) (see page 10)

The Mahar Movement's Military Component

Article from South Asia Graduate Research Journal

The Mahar Movement's Military Component

Richard B. White

In the Bombay Army, `the Brahmin stands shoulder to shoulder in the ranks, nay sleeps in the same tent with his Parwari [Mahar] soldier, and dreams not of any objection to the arrangement.' --Rigadier John Jacob, Views and Opinions, 1858.

Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, is famous for being "the most highly educated Untouchable in India." His education,[109] encouraged and financed largely by the Gaikwad of Baroda, led to his role as the Untouchable's chief spokesman, the founder of a political party for Untouchables, and the moving spirit behind organizations, schools, and colleges established for their uplift. One of  Ambedkar's final acts was the initiation of a Buddhist conversion movement that ultimately attracted more than 3 million Untouchable adherents. This part of Ambedkar's story is well-known. However, his family's military service in the British Raj is not widely acknowledged for creating an environment that laid the foundation for his later success. Eleanor Zelliot, an expert on Dr. Ambedkar and the Mahar movement, maintains, "[T]he hundred year period of Mahar recruitment into British armies may well have been the single most important factor, aside from economic reasons, in producing the Mahar movement." This article examines the importance of military service in improving the social status of Ambedkar's caste, the Mahars of Maharashtra. The focus is on their relationship with the British.

The Mahars benefited from their participation in the British Army in a number of ways. First, military service became "a significant part of caste élan and mythology." The first section provides the historical evidence they use to  establish their credentials as a caste with martial traditions. The paper's second section details the advantages, especially education, that accrued from military service and discusses their access to the government that otherwise was unavailable to Untouchables. The final section discusses the British decision to recruit only "martial races," in which the Mahars were not included, for the British Indian Army and the Mahars' efforts to gain reinstatement in the Army. The article does not focus exclusively on Dr. Ambedkar, but uses him as a point of reference for many of the examples given. 

Early Military Participation
Eleanor Zelliot explains that the British gave Mahars the opportunity to seek different occupations from their traditional role as a village servant. She explains that before the arrival of the British, Mahars had no special skill or craft, but performed necessary duties for the village as watchmen, wall-menders, street-sweepers, removers of cattle carcasses, caretakers of the burning ground, servants of any passing governmental official.... Mahar service was essential for the village; his status was low, his work menial, but his place was secure. With the coming of the British and the spread of new ways of administration and communication, the Mahar place in the village grew less important. Military service provided Mahars with the opportunity to move beyond their traditional social position in the village. In fact, the Mahar tradition of being in armies precedes the British Raj.

The recorded history of the Mahars' military achievements dates back to Shivaji's Army in the 1600s.[114] Cynthia Enloe, a noted sociologist who has written extensively on ethnic-military relationships, states, "The best of all militaries in the eyes of a state elite is one in which the most competent soldiers are also the most politically reliable, because they have the greatest stake in the continuation of the current system." The Mahars met this condition according to descriptions of their loyalty. Colonel V. Longer, author of Forefront Forever: The History of the Mahar Regiment, states: There were a number of useful functions which the Mahars performed. Their Argus eye; their daring tenacity and determination; their faithfulness, loyalty and honesty; their courage and candour, were inestimable qualities which were always held in respect and were for ever utilized to advantage by the village .... In course of time, their voice carried great weight when there were disputes over property as their evidence was considered most accurate, intimate, and trustworthy.

This sense of loyalty and trustworthiness led Shivaji to include Mahars as a vital component of his army. Shivaji, leader of the Maratha nation, fought for a Hindu empire, but using Untouchables did not bother him. He "found the Mahars useful, for the wily Maratha chief realized that the best way of obtaining the maximum results was to mix up various castes in his garrison forces." He used the Mahars "to watch the jungles at the foot of the hill forts, act as scouts and [they] kept the forts supplied with wood and fodder."[118] This was the first exposure of the Mahars to an organized army that provided its soldiers with steady pay and benefits. After Shivaji's death, Mahar units continued to serve his descendants throughout the 1700s. Their experience with Shivaji and others encouraged them to seek similar employment as sepoys of the British East India Company. Ardythe Basham, in her detailed examination of the Mahars and the military, found the perceived early martial history to be an important part of Mahar identity. She concludes, "Whether or not these incidents are historically true, they are widely accepted by the Mahars as part of their tradition, and now form part of the official history of [today's] Mahar Regiment." The Mahars have often used this martial identity, rooted in the 1600s, to legitimate their continued presence in the military.

Mahars began their service with the British in the 1750s. Stephen P. Cohen, an expert on the Indian Army, discusses the importance of Mahars in the Bombay Army in his seminal work, The Indian Army: Contribution to the Development of a Nation. He writes that Mahars were a sizeable portion of the armies of the Mahratta chieftain Shivaji, served as hereditary local policeman, and were thus a "natural" martial class. Heavily recruited in the premutiny years, the Mahars constituted a fifth to a quarter of the entire Bombay Army. In addition to the size of the Mahar contingent, they were also praised for their conduct as soldiers. The Mahars rewarded the British with the same loyalty that Shivaji had enjoyed. The Bombay Army fought in several battles, and in most, the Mahars were recognized for their skills. Longer proclaims:

Much praise was showered on the Mahar Sepoys of the Bombay Army who endured the rigours of difficult marches when rations were low and disease was high among men and animals. Whether they were charging ahead or were besieged or taken prisoner-of-war, whether they were storming fortresses or making tactical withdrawals, they always stood steadfast by their officers and comrades, never letting down the honour of their Regiments.

The recorded history of their exploits, especially prior to the mutiny of 1857, supports this effusive adoration. Basham located evidence of Mahar participation in the Second and "Third Anglo-Maratha War, the Second Anglo-Sikh War and the Second Afghan War." The Mahars' exploits in these conflicts form an important part of their military lore.

The Mahar participation in the battle of Koregaon on 1 January 1818 is the most famous, and also the best documented, action involving Mahar soldiers. This battle gave the British the advantage in the Third Anglo-Maratha War. The successful defense of Koregaon by a small force of 500 men ... under the command of Capt. F. F. Staunton [who] fought without rest or respite, food or water continuously for twelve hours against a large force of 20,000 Horse and 8,000 Infantry of [Maratha Leader] Peshwa Baji Rao II who was threatening the British garrisons at Kirkee and Poona. Mahars dominated Staunton's unit. The Peshwa's troops inexplicably withdrew that evening, despite their overwhelming numbers, giving the British an important victory. The men of the 2/1st Regiment Bombay Native Infantry, including many Mahars, who fought in this battle, were honored for their bravery. The official report to the British Resident at Poona recalls the "heroic valour and enduring fortitude" of the soldiers, the "disciplined intrepidity" and "devoted courage and admirable consistency" of their actions.[124] Further, the action is commemorated by a monument, with the names of twenty-two Mahars killed there, erected at the site of the battle and by a medal issued in 1851. Today, the monument still "serves as a focal point of Mahar heroism." Similar anecdotes are recorded in the written histories of the Mahar Regiment and Bombay Army. All demonstrate that most Mahars soldiers were dedicated and courageous.

In addition to Army units on land, the Mahars formed a vital component of the Bombay Army's Marine Battalion. This unit's history is well documented and provides numerous examples of Mahar actions,[126] including several acts of bravery by Mahars in the battalion. In September 1810, during the Second Maratha War, several Mahars proved their loyalty when captured by the French Navy. The French tried to induce their prisoners to enter their own service, a practice which enjoyed some success with Irish, Madrassi and Bengali troops. On this occasion, the Bombay sepoys [soldiers] were shown the captured Bengal and Madras Sepoys dressed in French uniforms and enjoying considerable privileges and luxuries, whereupon the Bombay Detachment started abusing them as being dead to all shame that they could forget the oath and desert their colours. The upshot was that they were very roughly treated and some were severely wounded. To the seventeen survivors who reached Bombay a special medal was given and of this number twelve were Mahars.

This is just one of many cases where Mahars distinguished themselves as a part of the Marine Battalion and is another part of the martial history that the Mahars used to legitimize their important role in the British Indian Army. But, in the wake of the 1857 mutiny and threats from Russia, the British reexamined their recruitment policies. The Mahars were a casualty of this new thinking. 

The Mahars Delistment 
Despite the Mahars' long martial history, the British ceased recruiting them in 1893. The Bombay and the other Presidency Armies were reevaluated following the 1857 mutiny. The Peel Commission  first examined class composition of the armies in 1858. One report to the Commission "emphasized that `we cannot practically ignore it (the caste system), so long as the natives socially maintain it.'" This led to the discrimination against the Mahars and other low-caste groups as well as some Brahman castes which were considered unreliable.

General Lord Roberts, while not originating the concept of martial races, was instrumental in implementing a strategy of building "class regiments." Recruiting policies were rewritten, and the Bombay Army "was notified that the Mahars, together with a number of other classes of the Bombay Army, would no longer be recruited to the Army." Lord Roberts recorded his rational in his autobiography, Forty-One Years in India. He writes:

I have no doubt whatever of the fighting powers of our best Indian troops; I have a thorough belief in, and admiration for, Gurkhas, Sikhs, Dogras, Rajputs, Jats and, selected Mahomadans; I thoroughly appreciate their soldierly qualities; brigaded with British troops, I would be proud to lead them against any European enemy.

Roberts thought that the first step to making the Indian Army was "to substitute men of the more warlike and hardy races for the Hindustani sepoys of Bengal, the Tamils and Telagus [sic] of Madras, and the so-called Mahrattas [sic] of Bombay." He was convinced that In the British Army the superiority of one regiment over another is mainly a matter of training; the same courage and military instinct are inherent in English, Scotch, and Irish alike, but no comparison can be made between the martial value of a regiment recruited amongst the Gurkhas of Nepal or the warlike races of Northern India, and of one recruited from the effeminate peoples of the south.

The Mahars believed that their martial history demonstrated their abilities as warriors, but the British had made their decision. Mahars could only enlist asbandsmen or clerks. This would not provide the same opportunities for promotion, and allow little change in their social status. As expected, the Mahars felt the British had betrayed them after over 100 years of loyal service to the British Raj.  Throughout India, there was controversy about which groups should remain in the Army. The Mahars had support from some British soldiers, including three commanders who recommended their continued service. The commander of the 2nd Grenadiers argued that 'the Parwari [Mahar] is of far better fighting material than the Deccani Mussulman," and suggested that the Marine Battalion might be made a class regiment of Parwaries. The commanding officer of the 9th Bombay Infantry thought that a regiment of Parwaries, especially from the Deccan, would "give a very good account of itself."

The Commanding officer of the 19th Bombay Infantry stated that: "They are possessed of as much soldierly quality as many castes of whom much higher opinions are entertained." However, their assistance was not enough to overcome the sentiments of Lord Roberts and other senior officers of the British Indian Army. Longer provides an excellent commentary on the impact of the decision on the Mahars. He writes:

The excellent system with its cosmopolitan composition, which had worked out over the years, was dismantled and destroyed. The Mahars, who had proudly carried the Colours of various Regiments of the Bombay Army, were crestfallen and heartbroken. For years they had provided abundant evidence of their courage, resolution, perseverance, constancy, and fidelity. When they bade farewell to arms there were eight Subedar-Majors, 62 Subedars, 34 Jemadars, and a host of Non-Commissioned Officers and Sepoys of the Mahar community who had served with distinction in the Bombay Army.

The Mahars would continue to fight for the right to re-enlist in the Indian Army. They were loath to lose the benefits that the military provided. Furthermore, the education provided to the soldiers had created an educated cadre that would transfer their skills into political action. However, there were few Mahars left in the Army by the beginning of World War I. 

Benefits Of Military Service 
Eleanor Zelliot notes that the "emergence of Mahar leaders and a new spirit of militancy in the 19th century was due in large measure to the influence of education acquired in the military." The result was that [d]uring the 19th and 20th centuries, a substantial number of Mahars removed themselves from their traditional village servant role. The establishment of British rule in Bombay Presidency provided Mahars with the opportunity for service in the army, employment in cotton mills, ammunition factories, railroads, dockyards, construction work, and as servants in British homes. The 1921 Census records that only 13.5 percent of the Mahar working force of nearly 300,000 were employed in their traditional occupation even though most Mahars maintained strong ties with their ancestorial village.

The Mahars' ability to work among the British exposed them to Western ways, and helped them to realize that their status as Untouchables did not keep them from working in successful and satisfying occupations. They aggressively used the advantages provided by their relationship with the British. Military service provided important benefits to its soldiers. The benefits include "pay and pensions, access to education and/or specialized training, preferential access to employment, enhanced social status, and personal satisfaction." For the Mahars, the access to education and increased social status was the most important benefits. The best example of their results was Dr. Ambedkar. Zelliot writes that Ambedkar's experiences were "[f]ree from the traditional village role, his early life was spent among educated ex-army men, imbued with the pride of soldiers and acquainted with a more sophisticated Hinduism than that found in the village." In fact, Ambedkar extends much of the credit for the start of the movement to improve the Untouchables' place in society to contact with the British Army. He maintained:

Until the advent of the British, the Untouchables were content to remain Untouchables .... In the army of the East India Company there prevailed the system of compulsory education for Indian soldiers and their children, both male and female. The education received by the Untouchables in the army ... gave them a new vision and a new value. They became conscious that the low esteem in which they had been held was not an inescapable destiny but was a stigma imposed on their personality by the cunning contrivances of the priest. They felt the shame of it as they ever did before and were determined to get rid of it.

It is indisputable that this access to education was helpful to Ambedkar, and therefore, to all of India's Untouchable communities.

Ambedkar's family had extensive links to the military. Additionally, his mother's "father and her six uncles were all Subedar Majors in the Army,"[139] the highest rank that Indians could hold. Ambedkar's father also was a Subhedar Major and a full-fledged teacher trained at the Normal School then established by Government for turning out teachers to impart education that was then compulsory for the children as well as both male and female  relations of the military servants. For fourteen years Ramji Sakpal served as Headmaster in the military school. Undoubtedly, the accomplishments of this family were exceptional. Nonetheless, the availability of education had a positive effect on all members of Mahars in themilitary, including women. Consequently, Basham concludes, "The loss of this education option with the loss of their right of enlistment was therefore a real blow, not merely the loss of a theoretical benefit which few actually received."

The quality of life for soldiers and their families suffered because of the loss of educational opportunities available through participation in the military. Mahars joined the military with the intent of improving their social status. They were successful in this regard. As Basham explains:

Within the closed circle of the regiment, caste prejudice was, if not actually absent, at least officially discouraged. According to army regulations no distinction was made between soldiers on the basis of their caste or community .... Mahar officers were able to command men of other castes apparently without difficulty.

After growing up in this environment of equality it was a shock for the Untouchables to travel and live in situations away from the military cantonments. Ambedkar's biographer, Dhananjay Keer, writes of young Ambedkar's shock the first time he travelled outside the military environment while he was in school. He and his brother were travelling to meet his father in a distant village. At the railway station, they hired a bullock cart to take them to the village, but [h]ardly had the cart gone a few yards when the god-fearing touchable Hindu cartman, to his wrath, came to know that the welldressed boys in his cart were the accursed Untouchables! In a fit of rage he threw them out on the road as one overturns the dust bins; for he felt they had polluted his wooden cart and destroyed the purity of his domestic animals!

This was Ambedkar's first experience that forced him to confront his status as an Untouchable. Life in the military cantonment had sheltered him from the prejudice and discrimination for the early part of his life. After retirement, there was a period of adjustment for Mahars who lived outside the cantonment. Basham concludes:

As nearly as can be deduced from rather limited information, it would seem that while actually in the army, or after retired or taking other employment, while in contact with British employers and officials, the Mahar soldier was not treated in any way differently from a soldier of higher caste. Once retired and living in his native village, a Mahar soldier, although he might have a relatively high status among the Mahar community and even among caste Hindus, would nevertheless once again have to accept his untouchable status.

The important point is, even after retirement, Mahars with a military background still had access to the British government. The retired military officers were an effective lobby for Mahar rights.

Retired officers also created a group of political leaders with access to the Indian government. This was especially true near military cantonments in Poona, Satara and Ahmednagar.[146] Basham relates an incident where Mahar children were not being offered equal educational opportunities. Local caste Hindus and low-level British education officials refused the Mahar demands for Mahar boys to be integrated into classes with caste-Hindu boys. The dispute was resolved in favor of the Mahars. Basham argues that this demonstrates they were seeking not just education for their sons, although this was obviously important, but also an improvement in their social status. The fact that many of these parents were retired officers, and therefore could legitimately make a claim on the attention to government officials, indicates the value of military service in this respect.

Clearly, the type of access available to the soldiers, active or retired, was unavailable to most Untouchables All the benefits the Mahars received were the result of their ability to develop a link with the British. This helped them overcome the obstacles erected by the Hindu social system. Zelliot observes:

[I]t was their entry into the British army which proved significant for the subsequent history of the Mahar movement. It is important to gauge this significance. It consists not in any automatic elevation in the social hierarchy through military service, which indeed is ruled out in a hierarchical system governed by considerations of ascriptive status and ritual purity. It rather consists in the fact that military service at such an early date exposed them to British institutions much before the dissemination of western culture took place on a large scale. Such an exposure socialized them sufficiently early to the new political order so that when new opportunities and alternatives became available, they were found prepared to use them more effectively than those groups which did not have this opportunity.

Following the delistment of 1893, the Mahars would need all the access and knowledge they had gained to overcome the impact of being refused service in the Army.

The Fight For Re-enlistment

The Mahars did not give up their positions in the Army easily. The British decision of Mahar "[d]elistment in 1893 had been a severe blow to them as a community, not only threatening their economic status, but also (in their view) giving official sanction to caste Hindu discrimination against them." Overcoming both of these threats was the focus of two different efforts to petition the Government of India to reconsider its decision between 1894 and the start of the first World War. The Mahars used two different strategies to influence the government; with both they tried to regain enlistment privileges in the army and an improved social status. Zelliot maintains that these efforts "illustrate the importance of army service to the Mahars. This was clearly the beginning of their efforts to induce government to intervene on their behalf, and their questioning of their traditional inferior status." In both instances, the movement was led by educated, former military officers.

The first organized attempt was in April 1895. Some of the details of the petition drive presented by Zelliot and Basham are speculative. Basham, who has completed the most recent study, states it was originally presented to the Viceroy, but was later returned for resubmission through the Bombay Government.  It appears that the petition was submitted by Gopal Baba Walangkar, a retired military officer, on behalf of the Anarya Doshpariharak Mandali, the non- Aryan committee for the rightings of wrongs, an Untouchable organization. Dr. Ambedkar, following the death of his father, found a copy of the petition in his papers. Ambedkar "believed that his father had obtained the assistance of Justice M. B. Ranade in preparing the petition." The petition compares Mahar actions to those of the higher castes and requests reinstatement in the military.

The petition's pleas were simple. The Mahars believed that, in 1859, the Government had declared that the castes who fought loyally for the British were to be given due preference for military enlistment. Therefore, they demanded:

In view of that promise, Government should employ in civil, military and police department without any discrimination these faithful and honest persons. They should also be given education and proper opportunity for suitable posts in the department.

The case they presented for reinstatement was more complicated than their demands. Much of their argument attempts to demonstrate that their identification as Untouchables was a mistake.

The 1895 petition argues that the Mahars as a group who are actually of the Kshatriya caste. This represents the Mahars attempt to change their position in the caste structure by "Sanskritization." The petition states:  Our ancestors were Kshatriya. In about the year 1396 there was a great famine for about 12 years which was called Durhavedi famine. That time our ancestors survived by eating whatever they could find. Therefore, they were considered low case under the Peshwa rule. It continues by attacking the legitimacy of the higher castes. It claims, "The so called high caste and pure people's ancestors were as degraded as our people and were used [sic] to eat flesh of cow and beef. They wrote their own religious scriptures." Finally, the petition provides a "creation myth" about the high castes.  It maintains:

The high caste people of the South are progeny of Australian Semitic Anaryas and African Negroes whereas the high caste people from North are mixture of several castes .... Several castes of foreign origin became high caste Hindus by giving up beef-eating. The Chitpavan Brahmins of Konkan came from the Jewish race. They fled from Africa for fear of their lives by the invaders and their ship was wrecked nearby Malabar coast. Their children and women drown and died in the sea. Those men who survived, married the native low caste women.... [W]hen they became rulers, they called themselves Brahmins.

The document's tenor shows the importance of military service to the Mahars and the use of Sanskritization tactics to show they were at least equal to the alleged high castes.

This campaign was unsuccessful. The Mahars were unaware of the debate "over recruitment policy or the acceptance of Lord Roberts views on martial races" which was the prime component in the British decision. However, Basham shows "the government of India took the petition seriously enough to request information about the Koregaon monument from the government of Bombay (presumably to verify the petitioners' claims). Eighteen months after the initial submission of the petition, the Indian government replied that it was "unable to rescind the orders which have been issued regarding the castes to be admitted to the Bombay Army." Shortly after the turn of the century, a second attempt was organized. The second major petition was submitted to the government three times between 1904 and 1910. The document's "signatories included forty-two military pensioners" including Dr. Ambedkar's father. Basham's research found that " [s]everal of the signatories had also written letters to newspapers or had signed at least one other petition, suggesting a long-term commitment and a willingness to agitate for change."[158] This petition had a broader base of support than the one in 1895.

This campaign was more sophisticated than the first. The spokesman, Shivram Janba Kamble, spoke English (Walangkar could not). More importantly, the petition's "appeal for consideration was not on the basis of the Mahars' having been demoted from Kshatriyahood, but on the grounds of former service, English justice and human worth." This pragmatic approach attracted greater support than the earlier petition, and used arguments that were later refined by Dr. Ambedkar. In fact, Ambedkar took over leadership of the Mahars from Kamble. The 1910 petition was more polite and less argumentative than the 1895 petition. The document states, "We do not aspire to high political privileges and positions, since we are not educationally qualified for them, but humbly seek employment in the lowest grades of the Public Service, in the ranks of Police Sepoys and of soldiers in the Indian Army." It continued:

We are making no new demands; we do not claim employment in services in which we have not been engaged before. Indeed, some few of our people do still hold positions in the Police Force, and have acquitted themselves most honourably. So also have our people been employed in the Indian Army from the very commencement of the British Raj in our country, and they have risen to the highest positions by their valour and good conduct.

Despite the reasoned arguments, this petition demands, like the first, were denied. The manpower demands of World War I had a greater effect, and beginning in 1914 Mahars, again, were recruited into the Army and given their own Regiment, the 111 Mahars. The Regiment's three battalions "were formed the toward the end of the war, but they did not see action and their martial qualities were untested." Shortly after the war, the Regiment was disbanded by the British "on the excuse of the economy.”

More important, however, is that the petition drives provided an organization for Dr. Ambedkar to use after the war to improve the social status of Untouchables. Basham correctly concludes:

Military service had been a significant factor for the Mahars in two respects. Education and skills acquired through military service created a class of community leaders, and the wish to retain the social and economic benefits derived from military service was a powerful incentive to organize behind these leaders and work for a common goal. A high level of organization and political activity in the Mahar community by the 1940s was therefore at least in part a consequence of their military past.

The long association with the military gave Mahars an issue to organize around and the movement then worked to achieve more substantial achievements than just military service.

Conclusion

The 120 years of service in the British military gave the Mahars excellent skills. Basham concludes:

Mahar soldiers were able to establish a link with the most powerful institution in India--the British Raj--and in some instances to use that link to bypass local authorities. Military service was also a way to sever the ties of village customary law which maintained the inferior status of the Mahars. Other forms of employment could take the Mahar out of the village, but none offered long-term financial security in the form of pensions.

This case study shows how military service has assisted the Mahars to fight the stigma of untouchability. Their positive experiences fighting with Shivaji encouraged them to seek similar opportunities from the British. It is clear, that in their service they received their most tangible benefits. Before delistment, Mahars in the Bombay Army received a steady wage, housing, and education. With this, many were able to retire with a pension, which, often, eliminated the need to return to the traditional Mahar occupations following their military service. These obvious benefits were eliminated following the 1893 decision.  However, military service still influenced Mahar life following delistment. As Basham argues:

If the army system of education had produced no effects for the Mahars other than to provide an appropriate environment for Ambedkar's early life (since his father took a very strong interest in encouraging his sons' education) this in itself would be a significant impact on the Mahar community.

Furthermore, the petition drives provided political organizations to press for overcoming the stigma of Untouchability. There were other benefits that were accrued, even if their requests for reinstatement were refused until the beginning of the war. Kamble's work in Poona that formed the base for Ambedkar's later political movements is the best example of this. Therefore, even after military service was taken away from the Mahars, the traditions and accrued benefits continued to be an advantage to this Untouchable community.

Epilogue

A Mahar Regiment was reformed in 1945 and has existed ever since. The ceremonial Colonel of the Regiment is K. V. Krishna Rao, former Chief-of-Staff of the Indian Army and current Governor of Jammu-Kashmir. The preface of the Regimental History states:

Militarily, the Mahars faced the vicissitudes of fortune, but once the Mahar Regiment was reborn in 1945, it came into its own after India became free .... A three-battalion [one class] Regiment blossomed into a eighteen-battalion Regiment with men from all classes and communities of the country fused together to form a rich and radiant amalgam.

The Regiment has taken part in all of India's major military operations since 1947. Just as the Mahars have survived and prospered, so has the Mahars' military legacy.

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------. "Learning the Use of Political Means: The Mahars of Maharashtra." In Caste in Indian Politics, ed. Rajni Kothari, 29-69. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1970.