Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anticaste Intellectuals (A Navayana Everblue 20th anniversary edition)

The bhakti radical Ravidas (C 145-152), calling himself a ‘Tanner now set free’, was the first to envision an Indian utopia in his song “Begumpura”-a modern casteless, classless, tax-free city without sorrow. This was in contrast to the dystopia of the brahmanic Kaliyuga. Rejecting Orientalist, nationalist and Hindu TV a impulses to ‘reinvent’ India, gail Omvedt threads together the world views of subaltern visionaries spanning five centuries-Chokhamela, Janabai, Kabir, Ravidas, Tukaram, the Kartabhajas, Phule, Iyothee Thass, Pandita Ramabai, Periyar, and Ambedkar. These are contrasted with Gandhi’s village utopia of Ram Rajan, Nehru’s hindutva-laced brahmanic socialism and Savarkar’s territorialist Hindu Rashtra. Reason and ecstasy- dnyan and bhakti-pave the road that leads to the promised land.