Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Contributing Editor at the Indian Express. He has been vice-chancellor of Ashoka University and president, Centre Policy Research, New Delhi, one of India's top think tanks. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU. He has written extensively on intellectual history, political theory, law, India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize.
Whose faith will be privileged in the public sphere?
To attribute the Ravidas movement merely to a jostling for space in Dalit politics would be a mistake. The depth and reach of the movement across large swathes of north India has always been impressive and deeply felt.
The massive and significant protests over the demolition of a temple dedicated to Saint Ravidas in Delhi is a window to India’s knotted social and political fissures. But the protest is also, despite being occasioned by the demolition of a temple, a testament to the impossibility of a genuine religious sensibility in modern India. Even religions promising liberation are sequestered in bondage by dominant groups; even religions abolishing caste are a daily reminder of caste. It is a condition that Ravidas, with his wry sensibility, would have understood perfectly well.
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