Caste and Commensality: On Violence Against Dalit Christians in Telangana

On 7 July, poet and historian Afsar Mohammad wrote a story for the Telugu newspaper Andhra Jyothy’s Sunday magazine titled ‘Dear Mary.’ It depicts the growing commensal relations between Mary and a Brahmin boy Sreekar, and a mob attack on a Christian Church. The author narrates the many worlds explored by Sreekar in the company of Mary—transporting him from the confined realm of his home and vicinity, nestled amidst the picturesque Telangana scenery characterised by Dabha houses with terraced rooftops, the ever-dominant Neem tree looming overhead, and tranquil evenings spent contemplating the stars in serene comfort. 

As seen in the story, Mohammad made a clear connection between Brahmanical anxieties over relaxed commensality, and political violence against the church and its members. It sparked extensive discussion on social media, eliciting harsh criticism who objected to the author's depiction of Brahmins as central to the violence, and for depicting ethical and social implications of denial of commensality as a major fault line in Hindu political identity.

Nexus of Sub-regionalism and Hindu Nationalism in Historical Context

While this literary short story highlighted the contemporary landscape of violence against Dalit Christians, the phenomenon is not new in Hyderabad. It dates back to the princely state where landed elites attacked converts' right to religious liberty from the late nineteenth century to the early 1940s. Conversion to Christianity affected the ability of landlords to ideologically control Dalits. It removed barriers to social spaces, improved commensality, and raised the social status of converts from oppressed caste backgrounds

From 1920 to 1940, the dominant caste Deshmukhs (zamindars) and Patels found a congenial ally in Hindu revivalist and nationalist organisations in their attempt to block Dalit conversion. Various provincial organisations championing linguistic identities, such as Maharashtra Parishad, Andhra Mahasabha, and Karnataka Parishad, aligned with these organisations to counter caste and religious minorities.

Abdul Salam, an observer of that period and an official of the Nizam government, highlighted that provincial organisations like the Maharashtra Parishad exhibited communal tendencies, suggesting that provincialism served as the conduit for communalism in the princely state of Hyderabad. Madapati Hanumantha Rao, celebrated as the 'Andhrapithamaha' or father of Telugu nationalism in Telangana, and president of the Andhra Mahasabha, concurrently held membership with the Hindu nationalist Hindu Mahasabha.

Intellectuals and civil society movements in Telangana expressed concerns that the creation of the Telangana state based on a sub-regional movement would reactivate this older political landscape. The spate of attacks on Dalit Christians by Hindu nationalist organisations demonstrates how sub-nationalist sentiments provided a pathway to resurrect the religio-material milieu for a politically motivated attack based on religion.

The liberal hope that provincial power brokers would counter such Hindu nationalism is contradicted by historical and contemporary evidence of the behaviour of dominant castes, who are the gatekeepers of linguistic and sub-national movements. The expansion of the BJP in southern India belies the hope that linguistic nationalism could halt the monopolising drive of Hindutva. 

The creation of the Telangana state was rooted in the immense ideological energies of the Dalits in Telangana's civil society. Their pivotal role and the need to ground the sub-regional project in a wider ideological basis led the Telangana movement's protagonist and former Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao to remark that he would appoint a Dalit as Chief Minister after the state's formation. However, KCR's monopolistic grip on power during his ten-year tenure provided a powerful justification for dominant caste rule.

This created an environment wherein Hindu nationalist organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad thrived. The confluence of provincialism and communalism paved the way for rising atrocities against Dalits in the newly formed state, prompting Prakash Ambedkar, the President of Vanchit Bahujan Aagadi (VBA) to comment adversely on this issue in November 2023. One had expected a respite after a Congress government was sworn in December 2023, but this was wishful thinking given the substantial continuities between the dominant Velama caste-based landed power base of the BRS and the Reddy power base of the Congress party. 

Attacks on Dalit Christians

According to a report by The News Minute, Dalit Christians in Janwada village, Rangareddy district, were attacked by OBC groups of Mudiraj and Yadav belonging to the Bajrang Dal, an outfit of the Sangh Parivar in February 2024. Dalit Christians attributed the hostility of these OBC groups to their salaried IT sector jobs and inter-caste marriages with OBCs.

Similarly, the caste-based killing of Dalit Christian Pranay Perumalla in 2018 by the father of his spouse from the Telugu merchant caste of Komati, and the subsequent legitimisation of this act through a film by director Ram Gopal Varma, who belongs to the dominant Kamma caste, followed a similar trajectory.

The entry of Dalits into modern occupations and educational institutions potentially opens up the route to inter-caste marriages between Dalits and other caste groups. The violations of commensality that result from interactions in modern educational institutions and workspaces, and their potential to lead to inter-caste marriages, often trigger Brahmanical anxiety.

This anxiety was exemplified in the attacks on Dalits in Janwada, the murder of Pranay, and the story written by Mohammad, portraying violations of commensality as a basis for political violence against religious minorities.

Jessy K Philip's ethnographic study shows that Dalits in coastal Andhra converted to Christianity to protest the commensality denial imposed by Kamma landlords and Kapu allies, who enforced separate dining for Dalits at weddings and used their new religious identity to boycott the landlords' wedding rituals and feasts.

Dalit assertion through conversion to Christianity poses a counter-paradigm of equality to the exclusionary culture fostered by Brahmanism. In Afsar Mohammad's story, the Brahmin protagonist, Narendra, the uncle of Shikar, expresses concern that allowing Mary and Shikar to continue interacting could lead to the establishment of churches and mosques in their locality. This statement reflects that relaxations in commensality foster a new public culture that counters the cultures sanctioned by Brahmanical elites.

It is this threat that conversion poses to the inegalitarian Hindu social order, which rankles Hindu nationalists and underscores the importance of political power in resetting any relaxation in commensality to a situation of non-interaction as a sign of caste privilege. 

(Dr Venna Abhilash is a historian and an independent researcher. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)