The Naked Declivity: Reading “Non-Being” in philosophies of Ambedkar, Frantz Fanon and Ali Shariati

Imagine a classroom of oppressed persons. They are black and untouchables. They exist in a zone of nonbeing. They are deprived of their being and left into nothingness. Two books: Annihilation of Caste and Black Skin White Masks are placed before them. Teachers are not from distant identities but rather their brothers; Ambedkar and Fanon. The Wretched, sitting in the classroom have asked for bread but refused by the teachers themselves. Not due to cruelty. But something else is more important than the instant hunger. They are asked to identify the causes behind their hunger and nonbeing, that is, racial oppression and caste oppression. After the recognition, the further step is to grasp the “becoming” – liberation. Ambedkar and Fanon were no prisoners of history. They lived in the specific socio-economic conditions marked by time and space. Yet they both sought to liberate the Wretched of the Earth. From rejection of the traditional humanism to the endless struggle towards the future, from liberation of a man from his color to the liberation of an untouchable from his caste identity, liberation of a decayed being to the new independent consciousness, all are central and unconditional features in the revolutionary praxis of both these thinkers. Their lives are dynamic. Fanon has explored and dealt with the themes such as psychoanalysis, consciousness, colonialism, racism and Marxism. Ambedkar, on the contrary, wrote extensively on the graded inequality, Hinduism, constitutionalism and liberalism. The purpose, therefore, is not to simply carve out a comparative essay but to share the revolutionary praxis of these two thinkers in order to seek answers to the present neoliberal onslaught and neofascist escalation. It is an attempt to confront the contradictions of contemporary decaying capitalism.

Frantz Fanon was a Martinique-born Algerian revolutionary and psychiatrist. He was highly influenced by the great revolutionary poet Aime Cesaire. Aime Cesaire was his teacher and mentor. But Fanon differed with Aime Cesaire lately. Much of Fanon's education was done in France. There, he was exposed to existential Philosophy, hegelian dialectics and revolutionary consciousness. Fanon initially served in the French army. But he ended up struggling for the Algiers independence while being an essential part of the FLN. Since he was a psychiatrist, Fanon used to regularly observe the psychological consequences of colonial racism. He observed the colonial violence closely. In 1952, Fanon wrote his first book, Black Skin white masks. He weaponised Freudian psychoanalysis, Hegelian master-slave dialectic with some differences and existentialism (Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger) to unmask the white masks internalised or rather epidermalized by the people of the color. Fanon during his years in the French education system saw how enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were betrayed by the colonial French regime. Fanon theorized the gaze of the other and objectification of colonial subjectivity. The colonized black people were left with the two choices, assimilate themselves to become white in relation to the white gaze or remain in the “zone of nonbeing” or subhuman. The white is a symbol of reason, humanity, value and beauty. On the contrary, Black is a symbol of pollution, impurity, inferiority, ugliness and non-being. Frantz Fanon strictly argues that the black is not a man. It is an ontological catastrophe. The colonized internalises the value, culture and language of the colonial regime. The Black man becomes an object with no history, being and existence. He is alienated from his subjectivity. The black person begins to hate himself. The colonizer is a mirror for a colonized black person. Fanon saw something brutal about the colonial violence. The colonial violence was as much physical as psychological. It wounded the psyche of the people of color. The colonised psyche internalises the myth that whiteness is the standard of humanity. The destination for black men is to be white. Therefore, for Fanon, a world that teaches you to hate yourself is a world to be changed. Fanon while treating psychic orders and existential despair of the black man realized colonialism doesn't just exploit bodies, it colonizes souls. In response to the colonial violence, Fanon calls for the violent rupture, he calls for the new humanism. In its immediate essence, the task is to reject the mask. The process of decolonisation is to restore the alienated being. Not White. But Humans. Fanon knew that liberation is not assimilation but transformation. The destiny for the colonised Black persons is freedom.

In his Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon describes the condition of the colonized Black person as a zone of nonbeing. It is an ontological exile, an ontological catastrophe. This existential catastrophe is a psychic space where an oppressed person falls into. This sterile and extraordinary arid region, is also the space of return and liberation. The black man is overdetermined from the outside under colonial racism. The body is fixed and determined by the white gaze. The zone of nonbeing is a zone of non consciousness. The black object is enslaved by inferiority. This is where he lives. Similarly, Ambedkar, the iconoclast and the champion of the rights and liberties of the oppressed wrote extensively on the void experienced by the untouchables. The void of untouchability. Ambedkar in his initial years, called them as Depressed classes. Dalits, politically known to be outside the caste hierarchy. Their social location was outside the public space of the other superior castes. They were historically unfree to have any sort of capital. Their subjugation was solidified by the ritual purity of Brahmanism. At the bottom of the Hindu social order, there is a zone of nonbeing preserved for the untouchables. Everything is already determined about them. Ambedkar knew the foundations of this ontological exile. In his Annihilation of Caste (1936), Ambedkar identified several causes behind the graded inequality. He called for the abolition of endogamy and the rejection of the smritis, vedas, and shastras. The untouchables were deprived of Manuski. Against their own existential self, Dalits were asked to perform to believe in the hindu deities, culture and traditions. And yet, they were never socially accepted by the caste hindus. It was a social death. An existential suicide of the untouchables, who were made to accept and follow the alien humanism of the superior beings; caste hindus. Caste as Ambedkar understood is a state of mind. It is the mask imposed against the Dalits. The void was real. The catastrophe of nothing and non-human existed for years until constitutional reforms were implemented such as Article 17 (Abolition of Untouchability). Ambedkar was concerned how he could liberate the millions of untouchables living in this zone of nonbeing. During the Yeola conference, he famously stated that he would break the mask: the marks of Hinduism. The liberation as Fanon pursued, lied in the new humanism beyond the white parameters of reason and rationality. For Ambedkar, Manuski was grounded in the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Though the context was different, Fanon had colonial violence before him, Ambedkar had to liberate the minds colonized by Brahmanism and replace it with Buddhism.

Furthermore, as Fanon argued, an upheaval can be born out of this naked declivity and zone of nonbeing. There is a possibility of “returns”. His comrade, and revolutionary philosopher, Ali Shariati, widely known as the philosopher of the Iranian revolution gave seditious lectures on the insurrectionary violence at the Hossenyein Ershad Institute in Tehran. Ali Shariati, in his influential lecture Where Shall We Begin attempted to break the passive interpretation of Shia Islam against the regime of the Shah Pahalvi. Shariati reinterpreted Shia Islam to combat imperialism. This return was not conservative, but scientific. A return to the self. He reinvented the meaning of Imam Husayn and his martyrdom. He argued that Husayn was a martyr. A symbol of truth, this is where the Iranians had to return. The concepts Bazghast be khistan (return to the self) and Shahdat (martyrdom) were central to the Shariati’s revolutionary philosophy. For Fanon, it was colonised Algeria before him, and for Ali Shariati, it was the regime of Shah Pahalvi before him. It was an authentic self to return while being present in the present. The existential void had to be filled with the authentic self. Revolutionary Violence is central to both these revolutionary philosophers: Fanon and Ali shariati shaped by their specific socio-economic contexts. Ethics and morals were central to Ambedkar's Buddhism. Shariati shared the concept of the enlightened souls: Roshanfekr, ones who transform the consciousness of the oppressed. Ambedkar argued Dalits to be “enlightened” Prabuddha.

German revolutionary and playwright, Bertolt Brecht, famously said, “Hungry man, reach for the book, it is a weapon”. This article began with a refusal to bread, not out of cruelty but of insistence to resistance. The oppressed might have taken the bread and simply left but they are made to recognise that the hunger is not because of calories but because of the lack of being. Breads are the charities to cover the contradictions created by the neoliberal imperialist system. This is a fundamental insight that finds Ambedkar and Fanon on the same ground. The colonial and caste system not merely exploits materially but they annihilate the being from the “objects”. The oppressed are the objects in the gaze of white and caste hindus. The zone of being conditions the oppressed classes to merely absences. To survive, one needs to wear a mask. This is an epidermalization of the inferiority in the fanonian words. And in the Ambedkarian language, it is the social death. Despite the distances of geography and history, their concerns over the void remains the profound struggle of being and nonbeing. Having anger about exploitative systems is not enough. The contradictions shall be read in order to annihilate the system itself. The journey begins with the diagnosis and ends with the liberation; towards a new humanism, towards a new humanity. Despite the tragedies of the zone of nonbeing, one must remember, it is also the ground where authentic upheaval can be born. Wretched of the Earth became a manual to the liberation movements globally. During the Mahad revolt, Ambedkar marched towards the Chavdar tank with thousands of untouchables to not simply drink the water from the public tank, but to set up the norm of equality. It was a collective call by untouchables that they too were human. It was the restoration of being.The years after the Mahad revolt were the years of self identification for Ambedkar. It was a realization of nothingness. Realising this nothingness was a political act for Ambedkar. He further burnt the systems of oppression. The public burning of Manusmriti led millions of Dalits towards Buddhism. It was an authentic Self determined and founded by Ambedkar and his comrades. The Manuski condition of being fully human, was a fundamental deal for Ambedkar. The deal was grounded in human dignity. The void had to be filled with Navayana Buddhism. For Ali shariati, it was a return to the self, Bazghast be khistan. Not one of those Mullahs, but of that revolutionary spirit of Karbala. Martyrdom was a necessity for shariati. The void had to be filled with the Shahdat. Ambedkar differed and chose not to reform Hinduism, and rather struggled for its annihilation. Today, the neoliberal breads have to be refused again. The zone of nonbeing is the creation of humans. The catastrophic ontological exile is not eternal. Therefore, one doesn't negotiate with the decaying structure.The hungry who eat without knowing why they are hungry will be hungry again tomorrow. Instead he seeks the rupture. The point lies in the immediate realisation that Fanon burnt the white masks and Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti for the birth of new humanism. A universal advance.