Book Reveiw: Y. T. Vinaya Raj. Re-imagining Dalit Theology - Postmodern Readings. Tiruvalla:Christava Sahitya Samithi. [2008].

Even though the book is only less than 100 pages, it is rich and solid in its contents. The attempt of the author is to construct an Indian Christian theology based on Dalit experiences along postmodern lines. Vinaya Raj views caste as an epistemological problem. He reexamines the classical Indian Christian theology which has heavily been biased towards Brahministic ideology. Vinaya Raj narrate the stories of Kerala Dalit leaders like Habel (Daivathan), the first Christian convert in Central Travancore, Poikayil Kumara Gurudevan (Yohannan) who declined his church membership to start his own Dalit movement, Pratyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha(Church of God of the Realized Salvation). He developed alternate liturgical traditions against the casteist liturgies of the traditional Christian communities. Vinaya Raj finally engages in a Dalit hermeneutics which would foster an "embodied spirituality" against the prevailing spirituality which neglected the significance of the body in human spirituality.

Dr. Sanal Mohan, Profesor at the School of social Sciences of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, wrote a Forward and Rev. Sunny George has contributed an introductory study note. Both of them place the book in the context of Postmodernism. Sanal Mohan in his forward wrote that the use of postmodern theories have enabled the author "to identify the liberatory aspects of Dalit 'histories or narratives of life worlds'." The category, Dalit, is interpreted as epistemological, political and plurivocal discourses. Sanal Mohan highlights the contribution of Vinaya Raj in rejecting the essentialist notions of identity and his attempts towards constructing a new identity through discursive formation of a new Dalit subjectivity. This new subjectivity transforms itself to create a "new social body" (pp9-10).The discursive formation of the new Dalit subjectivity through the open ended historical , social economic process can construct new languages, meaning systems and social and cultural capitals. By differently conceiving the Dalit body the new subjectivity places itself "in a position to transgress th restrictions imposed" on it by creating some space for itself through the deconstuction of culture, history and traditions.

There are some striking observations Vinaya Raj makes. "Dalit" he says, is not a caste category: "It is a category through which Dalits reject the notions of caste and its formation of casteist subjectivity. It is a category by which Dalits envision a renewed social status and social space" (p.25). "Dalit" is a contested knowledge category which rejects the dominant Brahminic epistemology that conceives knowledge as "situated in the soul and disseminated through ritualistic practices"(27). The dominant epistemology ignores the role of body in the knowledge system. Dalits, Vinaya Raj argues, constitutes a social agency and social space and as a political discourse it provides for the Dalits the "possibility of determining themselves" (28).

Vinaya Raj is very critical of the traditional Indian Christian theology which is built upon the modern colonial frame work. He challenges the Dalit theologians to go beyond the modernist paradigm and carve out a new identity, not in terms of the binary "other," but as "contested knowledge" (Steven Seidman); or in terms of what Michel Foucault calls the subjugated "low ranking knowledges." Caste as an episteme, positions Dalits in a "subordinate" social status and renders them as "lesser human beings."

Vinay Raj is not very sympathetic to the Marxist categories which are modernsit and essentialist which makes people the object of the social process. Rather he conceives, following Anthony Giddens, Dalits as a social agency establishing a discursive consciousness through the life process. He is very much indebted to Derrida's deconstructionist model in developing his Dalit biblical hermeneutics. Dalit reading of the Bible is not simply reading of the text, but reading of themselves. Derrida's theory of deconstruction helps him to discern the power play behind the construction of meanings and to discover body as the hermeneutical tool of Dalit theology. Only the reconstructed Dalit body can transform Indian social body by shedding its casteist constrictions. Dalits can serve as the platform for a dialogical pluriform social existence in India.