The real battle: Equal Opportunity

July 7, 2010 at 6:49 am (Caste and Religion, Justice)

Caste obsessions must go
by B.G. Verghese

The Tribune,

Chandigarh, July 1, 2010

IT is a thousand pities that 62 years after Independence, India is still talking of and suffering from caste obsessions. Read “gotra” as an extension of caste and we have “honour killings”, acts of medieval barbarism at the behest of khap panchayats, being defended and debated. The motive for the most part is no longer religion or ritual even in some degree, as it once may have been, but crudely political, through vote-banking, a scramble for preferment by reservation in an economy of shortages, and a claim to superior social status in an upwardly mobile society that has traditionally been based on hierarchy, not merit.

The current debate has been triggered by the suggestion that caste enumeration be made part of the 2011 census after it was discontinued post-1931. The proffered rationale is that an accurate caste enumeration will enable the government better to target affirmative action programmes in its social welfare and other efforts to ensure inclusive growth. This is a fallacy. Such numbers and classifications are and can be made available— and perhaps more accurately — through the National Social Sample and similar data collection exercises.

The Constitution abolishes untouchability and only mentions caste in the specific context of the Scheduled Castes. Contrary to popular belief, it does not refer to “backward castes” but only to “socially and economically backward classes” (and to “weaker sections”) in respect of whom a commission may be appointed from time to time to investigate and make recommendations for ameliorating their condition. Hence the Backward Classes Commissions under Kaka Kalelkar and B.P. Mandal.

Nor does the Constitution refer to a casteless society per se but speaks of “equality of status and opportunity”, “fraternity” and a uniform civil code, all of which obviously rule out caste as a defining societal principle. We are not there by any means. So, why reverse gear half way through the journey and give a fillip to caste through the Census?

All parties have elaborate caste and community breakdowns of the electorate for every constituency and woo them assiduously, the Left as much as any other. Policies and appointments are made with an eye on winning the support of these groups for electoral advantage. The talk of targeting welfare schemes through more nuanced caste enumeration is just so much humbug. Indeed reservation, and reservations within reservations, have become a crutch. There has been strong resistance to any exit policy, and creamy layers have become a new privileged and exploiting class, determined to prevent the less fortunate among their community to rise and proper.

Everybody, it seem, wants to be declared “backward” in order to move forward” on crutches. The process of sanskritisation or movement up the caste ladder is being reversed and retribalisation is taking place. This spells ill for the nation and can only breed mediocrity. One antidote would be to declare the entire populace backward so that none is more equal than others! The real answer, however, lies in affirmative action in favour of the poor and the disadvantaged and to waste out the constitutional provision for SC/ST reservation over the next decade or so on the basis of a rational exit policy, universalisation of education and other rights-based measures.

Caste must be seen not in isolation but holistically as part of other behavioural attitudes such as gender or minority status. Majority and minority in terms of social behaviour are not numerical as much as attitudinal categories. Parsees do not behave as “minorities”; Hindutvadis do. Likewise, the majority Sinhala in Sri Lanka suffer from a minority complex. Gender relations (including dowry) are to a large extent guided deep down by property and property-derived status considerations. Hence the ugly and murderous phenomenon of female foeticide. One supreme example of attitudinal resistance to social reform is the blindly perverse opposition to legislating a uniform civil code on the totally false premise that this can only be done by abrogating personal codes. With reference to the UCC, many perfervid secularists are truly diehard communists, allied in a common conspiracy to protect male property rights and slot people into castes, sub-castes and communities. They are truly enemies of equality and fraternity.

Those who oppose caste enumeration must, therefore, take up the cudgels against “minorityism” and gender discrimination as part of broadbased social reform. The goal must be to strive for equal opportunity (not more and more reservation), a fundamental constitutional promise. Equal opportunity legislation has been pending for a year but is being opposed. Why is no one agitated? It is because we have been so busy tilting at windmills that the true enemy is often not discerned. It is the battle for equal opportunity that must be fought and won.

Social reform too must be pursued not just by the state but by communities and individuals. There is so much social rot around that we tolerate in the belief that it will just go away. Where are the contemporary versions of latter day social reformers? The Church seeks the scheduling of scheduled caste converts, indirectly perpetuating caste and mocking its own faith. Others are no better. Jagmohan, the former civil servant and minister, has written of reforming and reawakening Hinduism in a new book just published. Maybe, one of the reforms we should consider is the restoration of religious instruction in schools so that children know about the country’s many faiths and can imbibe their high moral values. This would be perfectly in keeping with true secularism and attune young minds to essential values of equality and brotherhood.

 

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Modi Spews Caste Venom

June 9, 2010 at 9:48 am (Caste and Religion)

by Anand Teltumbade

EPW : VOL 45 No. 23

Caste venom is embedded in the body politic of this country. The BJP occasionally spews it; the Congress successfully conceals it.

 

On 25 April, while releasing his book Samajik Samrasata, Naren­dra Modi is reported to have observed that dalits were like mentally retarded children. The remark created uproar in Congress circles. Praveen Rash­trapal of the Congress sought to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha, but having been denied permission by the deputy chair­man K Rahman Khan, Congress members trooped into the well of the Rajya Sabha and caused a ruckus, forcing its adjourn­ment. Earlier, Modi had said that the Valmiki community was involved in manual scavenging for a “spiritual experience”. Activist circles were stirred with indigna­tion and began discussing whether Modi could be booked under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Preven­tion of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (the Atrocities Act). Legal luminaries may decide whether this is feasible or not given the fact that he would certainly invoke the spirit in which he said it, which may obviate the applica­tion of the act. Posturing as a great spastic patron, Modi may plead that he said it to ensure special care of dalits as we do of the mentally retarded children.

In some way this Modi speak represents the thinking of most upper caste people. Not many people realise that this display of magnanimity is basically the worst expression of casteism rooted in the ideology of brahmanism and, as such, deserves allround condemnation.

 

Stink of Brahmanism

The basic premise of brahmanism is that people are created unequal by god in accordance with their merit in the previous birth. They should reconcile with this divine order and only practise their dharma to earn merit points in order to get a better birth the next time around. The paternalis­tic attitude of the upper castes towards these fallen people is basically informed by this ideology. It assumes that dalits are lesser beings and they are superior; being noble born, it is their duty to have pity on dalits, help them perform their dharma to ameliorate their destiny. This attitude is displayed so casually in a self congratulatory manner that they do not even have an ink­ling that it is most humiliating to dalits. It is worse than insulting them with their caste names, which may be considered as a cognisable crime as per the Atrocities Act.

It is precisely for this reason that Ambedkar had denounced Gandhi’s harijan and dismissed the Congress attempts at wooing dalits through Harijan Sevak Sangh as the “Congress plan to kill untouchables by kindness”. Not only Gandhi, who was anyway propelled by political considera­tions, Ambedkar did not take kindly even to the bhakti saints’ selfpity or tame criti­cism of the caste system because they did not question the basic ideology behind it. His repeated denouncement of the then Mahar attempts to claim descent and or derive inspiration from the bhakti poet of the 14th century, Chokhamela, under­scores the same logic. He saw the act of the bhakti saints as an act of subservience to the will of god, and as conformist and antirevolutionary. Anything that even faintly smells of this obnoxious ideology becomes thus insulting to dalits. Modi’s statement stinks.

 

Spastic Minds, Sick Society

Modi is unduly presumptuous about his intelligence in regarding dalits as men­tally retarded. First, the creed he swears by fundamentally treats him, a member of shudra, as dumb. As such, he may not be particularly in a position to pontificate on others’ retardation. Second, if he is truly intelligent, he must know that the disability, mental retardation or whatever is not of dalits but of society. It is Hindu society which is sick not dalits. Dalits have defi­nitely been infected by this sickness, inso­far as they too have emulated this sick sys­tem among themselves. They are surely infected because, despite Ambedkar’s clarion call for annihilation of castes, many of them foolishly cling to the idiom of caste. But that is another matter. The important thing is to see the society as sick because it is incapable of treating its own people on the basis of equality. It is also mentally retarded as it could not learn from its long history of slavery, which is directly attributed to its myopic notion of caste division of society. Modi had better learn to be a statesman and think of how to cure this society of its debilitating sickness.

This is a serious point which is totally missed in reservation discourse. To think of dalits as disabled is pure brahmanism. Dalits needed reservation not because they lacked merit or skills, but because the societal prejudice will never let them get their due. With imposed backwardness over two millennia they did look weak to start with, which created an erroneous impression that reservation was a kind of helping hand. It has done a great damage. If reservation had been conceived as the countervailing measure to force society to behave, it would have been contingent upon the society overcoming its disability. The onus to do that would be upon soci­ety. Today it is on none, making reserva­tions appear perpetual and hence a cause of eternal conflict. Worse, with this “help­ing hand” notion, it has become a game to be played by unscrupulous politicians.Modi’s Slippery SamarasataWhat Modi spoke is basically the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) samarasata solution to castes. It aims at strengthening the Hindu identity for its communal agenda. It believes in the greatness of Hindus, their religion, culture and every­thing and wants to regain it. Naturally, it does not see anything wrong with the varna or caste system, the defining compo­nents of the “Hindu”. In justifying it, its protagonists indulge in all kinds of ideo­logical acrobatics to confuse the public. A typical gem of wisdom on castes in its rep­ertoire is taken from Golwalkar who gave a slogan – sab jaati mahaan, sab jaati samaan (all castes are great and all castes are equal), which seems to inform the samar­asta project. Actually, in this lofty declara­tion, Golwalkar has not made any depar­ture from the orthodox brahmanical posi­tion which argues that all the varnas (and castes) were parts of same virat purush and hence equal. What it truly means is that all the castes should perform their assigned tasks as their dharma. Valmikis should con­tinue to scavenge and Modis should rule!

Actually samarasata is the expedient political strategy of the Sangh parivar, inaugurated in Pune in April 1983. Until then, the RSS did not feel a particular necessity to woo dalits in a conscious manner. What prompted this realisation was the increasing competition in electoral politics in the impending coalition era in which dalit votes could make a big dif­ference. The decline of the dalit move­ment and degeneration of dalit politics provided fertile ground to seed such a strategy. After the fall of the Janata Dal government, the old Bharatiya Jan Sangh dissolved itself and formed a new party – Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, which needed to try out new strategies. An important component, the samarasata manch, the platform created for the pur­pose, undertook to saffronise Ambedkar and paint the RSS gurus in radical colours. It worked with some half-baked dalit intel­lectuals but did not make much headway with people.

Samarasata means social harmony. Like Dengist China replaced the Maoist lingo of class struggle with social harmony, samarasata means that various castes should coexist without conflict. How could castes in exploitative relations with each other coexist in harmony except by inter­nalising Manu’s ideology? It is here we can get the import of Modi’s statement about Valmiki’s “spiritual experience” in carry­ing upper caste shit on their heads. It is a shame that such a grave atrocity as remov­ing human excreta manually, officially banned way back in 1993 by the govern­ment of India, is eulogised as “spiritual experience”. No dalit ever cared for the “spiritual”; her/his concern has been solely material. If Modi values this “spirit­ual experience”, as he seems to be, anyone of the 14 lakh scavengers in the country will gladly handover his/her shovel and bucket to him. He must know as the chief minister of the state that Safai Karmach­ari Andolan has given a call for abolition of this atrocity by the end of 2010.Congress’ Fake ConcernIt is curious to see Congress agitated over the issue. Actually, Modi in a way voiced his concern for dalits in the grand Gujarati tradition embodied in the word “harijan” or in the idea of trusteeship that the rich people could go on enriching themselves but hold their wealth in trust for the weak in the society. Both incidentally came from Mahatma Gandhi, the patron saint of the Congress. Gandhi has been perhaps the pioneer in creating ascriptive and patron­ising labels for dalits in modern times. While he always claimed to identify with and represent the untouchables, he has also used the term like “uncultured” and “dumb” for them, highlighting his distance and difference from the masses. Look at this advice from Gandhi to the caste Hindu workers for the harijan cause: “Workers in the Harijan cause…must come in closest touch with utterly unsophisticated, inno­cent, ignorant men and women who might be likened to children in intelligence” (Harijan, 7 November 1936). Is there any difference in this and Modi’s calling dalits retarded?

Of course, Modi as a committed func­tionary of the RSS would openly uphold the tenets of Manusmriti that takes dalits as inherently inferior. The Congress would never do so. It is thrilled when the BJP is condemned as communal and casteist by progressive elements in the country. But as the vanguard of the ruling classes, has it been any different? Its track record in communalism is at best suspect. Its deal­ing with dalit issues has been muddy. Right from the days of the Poona Pact that robbed dalits of their political autonomy to the unscrupulous co-optation phase of dalit politics, its role has been antithetical to its own projection as a friend of dalits. The only difference between it and the BJP perhaps is in the intricacy of its strategy.

Interestingly, some years ago (around 2005), the Gujarat Congress had formu­lated a training programme for Congress workers at the instance of Sonia Gandhi. A course booklet was prepared for the pur­pose by one leader of the Gujarat Congress Seva Dal. This book extolled India’s ancient culture and social order, based on Manu’s code and articulated the objective for the Congress as to bring back this social order. Can one still see any differ­ence between the Congress and BJP with regard to their anti-dalit Hindu vision?

Caste venom is embedded in the body politic of this country. The BJP occasion­ally spews it; the Congress successfully conceals it.

 

Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.

 

 

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Why caste should be counted in

May 17, 2010 at 5:46 am (Caste and Religion, Policy)

Yogendra Yadav

Enumeration of the OBCs as part of the Census will help evidence-based formulation and monitoring of policies of social justice. It should have been done in 2001 itself.

The United Progressive Alliance government has a knack of arriving at the right decisions for the wrong reasons. The latest announcement on counting caste in the Census is a case in point. In this instance, as in the case of Telangana, a policy measure that was long overdue has been made to look like a hasty decision. As in the case of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the government needed some arm-twisting to act in the larger national interest, and its own. The decision to count the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the coming Census is, and should have been, presented as a forward-looking and overdue policy announcement that would help evidence-based formulation and monitoring of policies of social justice. Instead, by presenting it as a reluctant concession to retrograde forces, the government has left itself open to needless and ill-informed criticism from the usual quarters.

The government’s silence on what exactly the decision is, has only added to the confusion. Media headlines and parliamentary discussions have spoken of a “Caste Census.” This gives the impression that the government has decided to resume the colonial practice of enumeration, and often ranking, of all castes and sub-castes among Hindus. But Pranab Mukherjee’s statement to the media indicates that the government proposes to do something more limited — to extend the current practice of recording the SCs and the STs to include the OBCs. In other words, the enumerators will ask everyone if they belong to an SC or an ST or an OBC (enumerators already do so in the case of the SCs and the STs), and if the respondents do, the enumerators will record the exact caste name. Others will not be asked about their caste name. This appears to be the most reasonable interpretation of the demand for a “caste-based census” in the present context.

There are some good arguments for a full caste-based Census, as those advanced by Professor Satish Deshpande. But we may not be ready for it at this stage of the current census operations and national deliberations. If we take ‘caste-based census’ to mean OBC enumeration, as I do here, this will not be a dramatic reversal of an 80-year-old policy, but only a logical culmination of many earlier attempts. Over the years, partial attempts have been made by several States — Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh — to collect this information with the help of specially appointed commissions. Karnataka is the pioneer and exemplar. The Mandal Commission used a sample survey to gather this information at the national level. But in the absence of its inclusion in the Census process, these kinds of evidence have remained partial and unverified.

Vital information

What do we get from such an enumeration? Quite a lot, if we care about putting policies of affirmative action on a sound, empirical footing and putting at rest endless disputes about the size and backwardness of various communities. An enumeration of the OBCs will not only settle disputes about their numbers but also yield vital information about the socio-educational and economic conditions of the communities. Specifically, the Census will now give us robust information about the numbers, demographics (sex ratio, mortality, life expectancy), educational data (literacy, ratio of school-going population, number of graduates and so on) and economic conditions (assets, working population and so on) of the OBC castes. The data will be available for each State and district, and for each caste and community within an OBC. These will become the basis for fine-tuning reservations and other schemes and for adjudicating politically sensitive disputes regarding inclusion or exclusion. It may not be sufficient to design policies of affirmative action – the Census does not record the upper end of salaried jobs as an occupational category — but it will still be a giant leap forward.

Enumeration of the OBCs is not an optional policy. No modern state has the option of not counting the social groups that it recognises in its law and policy. Thus, the policy of reservations for the OBCs in government jobs and educational institutions, besides a host of other schemes for the benefit of backward classes, mandates that this group be enumerated. The judiciary has repeatedly asked for robust empirical evidence for the formulation of any affirmative action policy. OBC enumeration should have begun in 2001, in the first Census after OBC reservations came into effect. Indeed, the then Registrar General had proposed it. It was shot down by the Home Ministry in the National Democratic Alliance government.

Question of timing

Is it feasible to undertake the exercise at this stage, now that Census operations have begun? No doubt this decision should ideally have come earlier, and it is perhaps too late for a full enumeration of all castes. But enumeration of the OBCs is not impossible even at this stage. The National Commission for Backward Classes has already prepared a list of “Socially and Educationally Backward Classes” — legal nomenclature for the OBCs. This can be the basis of identification of these communities across the country. This can be supplemented by the list of all caste-communities in each State, compiled by the Anthropological Survey of India under the ‘People of India’ project. Listing of castes at the district level will, of course, pose some challenges. But that is no different in terms of either scale or complexity from similar problems encountered with other census categories, notably occupation and language. Objections on practical grounds are clearly misplaced, if not mischievous.

What about objections on grounds of principles? There is an understandable unease about giving caste primacy in public life. But it is unclear how counting of the OBCs is in this respect qualitatively different from counting the SCs and the STs. We have done this for more than half a century. It is true that official enumeration of any category tends to solidify its boundaries a little more than would be the case otherwise. But this subtle and long-term cost has to be weighed against the most evident and short and long term cost of official non-recognition of categories that everyone operates with. If the enumeration of religious communities has not led to the breakdown of secular order in India, and if enumeration of race in the U.S. has not made U.S. politics racist, it is unlikely that the enumeration of one more caste group would push the country into the prison of caste.

In any case, the way to transcend caste is not to close our eyes to it, but to look at it very closely, identify and neutralise its relationship with disadvantage and discrimination, and to discover how caste relates to other social divisions such as gender and class. That is what necessitates a caste-based census.

( The author is Senior Fellow with the CSDS, Delhi. He is currently at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.)
 

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This woman wages a lone battle against khaps

May 17, 2010 at 5:40 am (Atrocities, Caste and Religion, Struggle)

Sukhbir Siwach,

Times of India, May 15, 2010

CHANDIGARH: Top politicians kowtow to them. The police watch from a distance when they hold their mahapanchayats. Lovers shiver at their mention. But, if the dreaded khap panchayats in Haryana’s badlands fear anyone, it’s a 50-year-old woman — a former international volleyball player — who is contemptuous of their diktats.
 
Three decades ago, when three girls from rural Haryana could not join Jagmati Sangwan to represent India in volleyball for Asiad because they were married off by their parents, it marked a turning point in her career: the beginning of a long struggle against oppression of women.
 
It pained her when India returned with a bronze as she believed the three girls would have got the country gold. What rankled her more was the fate of numerous girls in Haryana whose cause she then took up with a gusto.
 
It was in 2002 that Sangwan won a major battle when she barged into a mahakhap panchayat at Sir Chhotu Ram Park in Rohtak. Khaps do not allow women into their meetings. But, Sangwan, made of sterner stuff, couldn’t be pushed around. None dared ask her to leave.
 
Jagmati’s voice against khap fatwa is so strong that she has become an eyesore for these Taliban-type courts. Irritated by her, khaps have termed her a “gang leader”.
 
“They try to defame me but I continue my fight for the rights of women and the weaker sections. The khaps are anti-women and anti-Dalit,” said Sangwan, director of Women’s Study Centre, Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak.
 
Sangwan has a force of over 1,000 women activists, being state president of the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). When the powerful panchayat in Karora village of Jind district was adamant on social boycott of the family of Manoj after the infamous honour killing in which he and his wife Babli were murdered for marrying “despite belonging to the same gotra”, Sangwan was the first to support their families.

“It would have been difficult for us even to survive without the support of Jagmati,” said Chanderpati, the mother of Manoj. Not only this, when police did not arrest influential khap leader Ganga Raj in the honour killing, Sangwan called for a statewide protest, forcing the leader to surrender.
 
Sangwan began raising her voice against the khaps in 1988, when a girl was raped for revenge after her brother eloped with a girl from the same village in Jind. “We forced the police to lodge an FIR against the rapists and kept the victim with us for six months to ensure her safety,” said Sangwan.
 

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Why Caste Counts

May 17, 2010 at 5:31 am (Caste and Religion, Policy)

Enumeration by caste will provide useful data for policy-making

– Raja Sekhar Vundru

 

Sixty years on as a republic and six censuses later, India is again grappling with that vexing issue—the listing of castes in the 2011 census. This is being done now to enumerate the backward castes, whose numbers, it seems, are still an unresolved issue for many. That said, a census update on castes will throw up more than just numbers. It will lay bare this caste-riven country, bringing out data on not just migration patterns and societal faultlines but also unsavoury nuggets such as how specific castes behave like republics of their own (for example, the Jat khaps), and how others selectively abort foetuses.

The last full-fledged data available on ‘Caste, Tribe and Race’ was in the 1931 census. Census commissioner M.W.M. Yeats mentions that till February 1940, the British were undecided whether to have a census at all in 1941. World War II had had an impact on the funding, of course, so there was only a certain degree of caste sorting in that census. After independence, the 1951 census retained only the SCs and ST categories, for delimitation of constituencies.

One prime feature of the 1931 census was the data on the sex ratio of each caste group, which clearly indicated which groups were killing their newborn daughters (since they didn’t have pre-natal sex determination techniques then). The worst sex ratio was among the Jats, who had only 806 females for every 1,000 males. (Any wonder that the khaps rule the roost even today in Haryana?) I

t was the upper castes that accounted for the worst sex ratios in the 1931 data. This might have been due to certain castes like the Rajputs and Banias considering the female child a liability. The Rajputs had only 860 females for every 1,000 males and the Banias only 886. The Brahmins had only 899 and the Kayasthas 889 females per 1,000 males.

This brings us to some of the lower castes, which were found to have the best sex ratios (since they never looked at the female child as a liability). The Mala caste of Andhra had 1,028 females per 1,000 males; the untouchable Mahars of Maharashtra, Holeyas of Karnataka and Pulayas of Kerala together had 1,002. The Dushaads of eastern India had 1,026 females per 1,000 males. The tribes had the best sex ratios.

But it was not always caste that determined the sex ratio. The Chamars of north India had only 960 females per 1,000 males, the Churas even worse—just 827. Contrary to the north Indian upper castes, the matrilineal Nairs of Kerala revealed a robust 1,049 females per 1,000 males, the Marathas 963 and even better, the Kshatriyas of Andhra, the Raju caste, had 1,009. Isn’t that reason enough for a North-South divide on the intransigency of patrilineal systems?

Among the backward castes, the Gujjars had only 836 females per 1,000 males, the Yadavs 940 and the Malis 939. Supposedly progressive castes like the Aroras were found to have only 869 females per 1,000 males, while the Bishnois, who have unique beliefs and practices, had only 887. Would it not be useful to see which castes today are the prime movers in female foeticide? The data will also help in policy-making and in delineating groups that are not clearly defined or show degrees of overlap with other groups.

Punjab and Haryana are the worst when it comes to female foeticide despite their great strides in economic development. Whereas the world average is 990 females per 1,000 males, Punjab’s was a dismal 874 in 2001, falling from 882 in the 1991 census. Haryana stayed at 861 in 2001 despite the best efforts of the government.

Development planners in government have always worked with data from the nsso, National Health Survey and other such, which do use caste as a variable. The Arjun Sengupta commission report on ‘Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector’ of 2007, for example, is an eye-opener. It showed that the upper castes formed the richest strata in the country, with 45 per cent falling in the ‘middle to high income’ category, whereas only 12-20 per cent of SCs, STs, obcs and Muslims fell in that category. The report deemed 88 per cent of Dalits and adivasis ‘poor and vulnerable’ in terms of income; 80 per cent of people belonging to the obcs, 84 per cent of Muslims and 55 per cent of the upper castes were also found ‘poor and vulnerable’. This shows caste is still a factor in the marginalisation of people. Even so, we need authentic and current data to know where we stand.

The country certainly needs at least a one-time caste enumeration, for this will provide essential data for our plans to take focused development to three-fourths of the people of the nation. Why, then, should the country deny itself an opportunity to conduct caste enumeration? The British did it for administrative purposes and to understand caste nuances. We can use it to take the nation to new levels of development and to create a better and equitable society.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265451

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A blinkered vision

May 13, 2010 at 6:35 am (Caste and Religion, Debate)

Sagarika Ghose May 11, 2010

The headlines scream almost every day: ‘Girl allegedly murdered because of inter-caste romance’, ‘Couple killed by relatives because of caste honour’. The matrimonials are unabashed: ‘Match sought for fair khatri girl’ or ‘Brahmin boy seeks Brahmin partner.’ A Delhi mother whispers that her daughter’s choice of husband is not “our kind of person,” but stops short of admitting that the prospective groom is not from the same caste. Characters in Bollywood films bear surnames that are drawn from the very narrow social pool of Sharma, Mehta and Roy. Indians may be holidaying in Phuket, shopping at Mango and devouring Sex and the City. But one social reality just refuses to go away. And that reality is caste.

Should caste matter to a modern Indian? Of course it shouldn’t. Yet, whether we like it or not, caste is still a defining category. Excluding a narrow westernised elite band, Indians marry according to caste, socialise within similar castes, education is determined by caste and caste, by and large, corresponds to class when it comes to backwardness. Twenty years ago when then Prime Minister V.P. Singh implemented the Mandal recommendations reserving 27 per cent government jobs for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), many caste Hindus heard the word OBC for the first time. Today there are similar feelings of dread that the government has decided to include caste in the 2011 census. But it’s time that the elite and middle class came to terms with caste, debated it openly and exorcised caste demons.

When Parliament pushed for a caste census there was near panic about an impending caste war. It was argued that counting OBCs would only add further muscle power to the caste chieftains to once again lobby for that terrible ‘Q’ word: quotas. But will counting OBCs make caste loyalties deeper or will it, on the other hand, provide, for the first time, hard reliable information on how many OBC castes are there and what their numerical strength is? Confronted by real numbers, it may be more difficult for the quota warriors to argue for reservations. The Constitution makers aimed to progressively abolish caste discrimination, not abolish caste as an identity. Unless we all understand and study caste, we will never be able to fight it or develop a genuinely anti-caste mindset.

Political scientists Yogendra Yadav and Satish Deshpande say that a colonial caste-based census where all castes, including the Hindu ‘upper castes’ , are counted and ranked is neither feasible nor desirable. What we need is to count OBCs in the same manner as we count SCs and STs. We need to count Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) in order to get an accurate picture of their actual number. We are, thus, not counting all castes, but only backward communities. When reservations for OBCs have been provided for at the Union and state levels, surely a census is essential to find out what the hard numbers are and whether the quotas are accurate.

So how does caste operate nowadays? There is the robust argument that caste is irrelevant in contemporary India. What matters is quality health and education for all irrespective of caste. Increasingly, elections are showing that caste is no longer the sole criterion for voting preferences: voters are voting for bijli, sadak, pani, padhai and hardworking candidates and not for Gujjars, Reddys and Ezhavas. But while caste may be irrelevant for a minority, it is highly relevant — indeed saliently — for others.

When it comes to social and economic progress, certain castes have done better than others and the advantages of the English language and a modern education are distributed along caste lines. Generalisations are risky, and rural Brahmins can be impoverished and backward too. Yet, access to English and to quality education has traditionally been the monopoly of upper castes. Class and caste are still by and large coterminous, and there is every likelihood that an upper class person in India is also ‘upper caste’ and a ‘lower class’ person is also ‘lower caste’. Secure amid our Krishnamurthys, Sens and Vermas, we never stop to think about how we got so secure in the first place.

The English-speaking elite is overwhelmingly ‘upper caste’ that is comprising the forward levels of the Hindu varna system. The Bengali ‘bhadralok’ class, or the genteel class, which was supposed to be the only non-caste class in India, is also a caste-based category, as the bhadralok are restricted to the upper caste even though they may not be exclusively Brahmin. A Bengali Dalit bhadralok is still unheard of. In 1996, when B.N. Uniyal undertook a survey of national newspapers, he found that among 686 journalists accredited to the government, 454 were upper caste, the remaining 232 did not carry their caste names and in a random sample of 47, not a single one was a Dalit. In a survey of matrimonial advertising carried out in 2000, ad agency McCann Erickson noted that caste remains as important in the new century as it was four decades ago. In 2002, Virginius Xaxa found that only six of Delhi University’s 311 professors are Dalits.

Thus, a caste census should not be seen as simply a political instrument designed to secure quotas. The fight against caste is best fought when we know the enemy. Caste is an immutable, invisible and overwhelming reality in our daily lives. If we continue to act as if caste does not exist, or deny its existence, we would be failing to do battle with one of the most urgent social inequalities of our time.

Sagarika Ghose is Senior Editor, CNN-IBN

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Caste in the stone age

May 12, 2010 at 4:44 am (Atrocities, Caste and Religion, critique)

TOI Crest,

Ever heard of a body that can not only annul a marriage but also convert husband and wife into brother and sister? Well, an extra-constitutional authority called khap panchayat has been traditionally allowed to exercise such extraordinary powers, destroying families and claiming the lives of innocent couples. And, thanks to the cowardice of the political class, khap panchayats — medieval caste institutions found mostly in Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan — are now also beginning to look like super legislatures.

For, in deference to the numerical strength of khap panchayats, politicians did not dare protest any violation of the freedom to marry a person of one’s choice. If anything, former chief minister of Haryana, Om Prakash Chautala, supported their demand to amend the Hindu Marriage Act providing a statutory backing to their traditional ban on marriages within the same gotra and within the same village.

The contention of these retrograde elements is that any marriage that takes place in violation of their restrictions should be deemed to be between brother and sister. Their anxiety to prevent incest is however gratuitous as the law already deals with it adequately through the concept of ‘sapinda’ (third generation in the line of ascent through mother and fifth in the line of ascent through father). The khap panchayat notion of extending prohibited relationships to the whole gotra and the whole village creates a category of people running into thousands or even lakhs.

Though khap panchayats have traditionally engaged in honour killings in the course of their vigilantism, the judiciary got the full measure of this crime for the first time only on March 30, when it imposed death sentence on five perpetrators and life sentence on one khap member for the double murder in 2007 of Manoj and Babli, a newly married couple belonging to the same gotra in Kaithal. The couple was murdered even after being provided security by the court. If the pattern of impunity in honour killings ended with this one, it is thanks to the exceptional courage displayed by Manoj’s mother Chanderpati and the trial judge Vani Gopal Sharma. Thanks to the clout wielded by khap panchayats, Sharma was subsequently forced to seek a transfer fearing for her life.

Besides breaking marriages, khap panchayats have a record of instigating caste atrocities against Dalits. One such case came to light last month in a Haryana village called Mirchpur where Jats, jealous of the growing prosperity of Dalits, especially Valmikis, allegedly engineered an arson attack in which 18 houses of the targeted community were destroyed and, worse, a man and his polio-stricken daughter were burnt alive.

Mercifully, this incident provoked an unusually angry reaction from the political establishment. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi sent a stinker to Haryana chief minister B S Hooda saying it was a “matter of shame and horror” that such an incident occurred at all, that too in the presence of the police. “This cannot be allowed to pass without firm and severe action against those responsible for the crime,” Sonia thundered. Equally significant, her intervention was followed by a visit to Mirchpur by Rahul Gandhi. It is just as well that the first family of the Congress responded to the Mirchpur tragedy as the 20-year-old atrocities law, which is a legacy of Rajiv Gandhi, has been subverted across the nation by local authorities through errors of omission and commission.

 

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Arrested Social Transformation

April 26, 2010 at 8:01 am (Caste and Religion, critique, Debate)

  

Khap Panchayats Asserting Caste-Gender Hierarchy

by Ram Puniyani

April 3, 2010

 

Khap Panchayats, the age old upholders of caste norms have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. While these Panchayats (assembly) had some role in settling the community disputes, these exclusively male bodies, dominated by village elite have been asserting the values of past, gone by era and stand in the way of the values of Indian Constitution, the values of Liberty Equality and Fraternity. These are very active in Harayana region in particular, the same place where incidents of anti dalit brutalities against Dalits, and the incident where dalits were killed on the pretext that they are killing cows.

It is no coincidence that in the nearby Jhajjhar also similar incident had taken place just a few years ago. The recent (April 2010) developments in the aftermath of brutal killing Manoj and Babli are very disturbing and also reflective of the social situation prevailing in large parts of the region in the country. Manoj and Babli, belonging to same Gotra, got married and due to fear of the panchayat, fearing the threat to their lives, sought legal protection. While returning from court with police escort they were caught hold of and taken in a jeep, while police men and others were witnessing the act. The couple was killed mercilessly. The killers were from same village, belonging to the family and close relatives. The abettor was the panchayat chief. The Judge in a forthright judgment gave death punishment to five of them and life imprisonment to one and seven year jail term to anther.

The Khap panchayat rather than feeling the guilt and shame of the incident went on offensive and started saying that those youth going on the path of Manoj and Babli will be given similar treatment. Incidentally before this ghastly incident nearly hundred young couples have been done to death or punished in various ways by these Panchayats. After the judgment they called a bigger meeting and demanded that Hindu marriage law be amended to ensure that people from same Gotra (Sub caste) cannot marry. They are deciding to intensify their agitation.

There are parallel examples of many Muslim families killing their defiant youth, who preferred to get married on their own choice, transcending the boundaries laid by social customs. These killings are many a times called ‘Honor Killing’. Meaning the choice of girl and boy of their life partner has to conform to the norms of the community-family else killing those defying these norms is an “honor” for the family, caste. It is the make believe honor of the family which is carried forward by close relatives like brothers, uncles etc. One witnesses similar cases coming from Pakistan also as the social rigidities are probably much stronger in parts of the feudal dominated Pakistan society.

These incidents reflect the deepening of the process of caste rigidification during last few decades. Varna and jati system has been the norm of Hindu society, legitimized by various Holy Scriptures. The same caste system also affected partly the Muslims and Christians, whose scriptures don’t permit this but surely social practices are not merely guided by the Holy books.

The processes of caste and gender transformations always run parallel. These transformations began slowly during British rule, parallel with the growth of freedom struggle. The National movement and more particularly the process of education for dalits and women, initiated the social reformers resulted in the beginning of this transformation. The evil practices existing during that time were opposed and many a social reformers Jotiba Phule, Savitiribai Phule, Dr. Ambedkar, Ram Mohan Roy and Mahatma Gandhi fought against these practices. Ram Mohan Roy’s main focus was on the evil of Sati, burning of bride on the funeral pyre of her husband. Gandhi’s major concern was against untouchability, the custom most abominable and deeply reflective of the caste system and the place of Shudras in the social system. While Phule-Ambedkar were demanding and agitating against these practices in a strong and radical way other reformers also chipped in and took the reform process far and wide.

These reform processes logically should have been accompanied by land reforms and relegation of the role of clergy to the private realms of social life. National movement did succeed to some extent in bringing forth these issues to social attention. Indian Constitution forthrightly puts forward these provisions. The process of industrialization and education gradually started loosening the grip of caste and gender hierarchy, and the retrograde norms during the first three decades of the republic though the speed of this transformation was slow. Women started entering social arena and dalits came up in good measure in social sphere during this time.

From the decade of 1980 the process seems to have been arrested and the economic policies, the adverse effects of globalization, cultural movement accompanying them, the global rise of fundamentalism and the ascendance of politics in the name of religion and Ram Temple agitation in India were the multiple factors due to which the process of transformation faced obstacles. These processes changed the cultural terrain of society and rather then rational progressive thoughts and practices, traditional conservatism started getting stronger. During this time the atrocities against dalits and women went up, samples of which were Roop Kanwar Sati in Deorala and Bhavri Devi case. The atmosphere of cultural terror got intensified. The major focus was on controlling the weaker sections of society in the name of ‘glorious traditions’. This did intimidate the dalits and women. Minorities also faced increasing violence against them during this time, resulting in their ghettoization and strengthening of orthodox elements within the community.

When Dr. Ambedkar introduced Hindu code bill, and made efforts to give equality and freedom to women, the bill was diluted before implementing itself. The conservatives in the society stood to oppose the same. Pundit Nehru went on to say that our constitution is progressive but society is in the grip of orthodox traditions. The hope was that these orthodox traditions will weaken with time, and as a matter of fact they actually started weakening during initial decades of the republic when the rational norms and practices started getting respectability.

Currently we seem to be seeing an arrest of this process of transformation in the progressive direction. The major causative factor does seem to be the cultural accompaniments of politics in the name of religion. This politics externally targets the minorities but its deeper agenda is that of opposing the equality of dalits and women. What these Khap Panchayats are doing is to put a control on the freedom of adults to choose their life partners and their style of living. Simultaneously they are attempting to control the lives of women, the core of patriarchal politics, a politics which is presented as nationalism and glorious tradition, by those doing politics in the name of religious identity.

Ram Puniyani is a social activists and loud against the fundamentalism.

One can reach him on ram.puniyani@gmail.com

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3,000 years on, we can’t cast aside Manusmriti

April 10, 2010 at 3:15 pm (Caste and Religion)

Aakar Patel

Mint, April 10, 2010

 

We want to think of people as individuals, but the Indian conforms to his caste. Outsiders won’t notice that nurses in our hospitals are Christian girls from Kerala. Bollywood reveals their identity through use of the convent word “sister”. They are among the best nurses in the world, and the reason Europeans see India as an attractive place for cheap operations. Underpaid and cheerful, their caring comes to them through Christianity’s view of suffering.

Target: Riots reflect the logic of collective punishment. PTI

Hindus have a horror of bodily pollution and it would be embarrassing to see a census of upper caste Hindus in nursing. There’s no question of Muslims letting their women work with undressed patients.

The murder and abortion of female foetuses is not a generic problem in India. It is concentrated in peasant castes, above all Haryana’s Jat and Gujarat’s Patel. Their average is one daughter killed for every three born. The peasant works with his hands and not his head, and so women are useless to him, presenting only an expense at puberty.

The Patel has butchered his daughters so efficiently that now other castes must supply brides. There is evidence he is marrying eastern Gujarat’s tribals, bringing them into Hindu culture. This is an instance of the Gujarati becoming inclusive through violence. The Patel is the sword-arm of Gujarat’s Hindutva movement (Pravin Togadia is Patel). Like all peasants, he is intellectually primitive and easily roused by symbols. He’s also familiar with violence because he handles cattle.

But unlike the Jat, the Patel does not do honour killings. Why not? Because Gujarat’s culture is dominated by the Baniya, both Jain and Hindu. Gujaratis say Vaniya ni mooch neechi (the Baniya turns his moustache downward). Baniya instinct means always picking benefit over honour. Since honour has no premium in Gujarati society, it is not reposed in the woman’s body.

If Europeans understood the Bengali contempt for Marwaris, would they still adore Satyajit Ray? Unlikely. The Marwari in Ray’s movies is represented by Maganlal Meghraj, a dreadful stereotype, like Shylock. The villain of Mahapurush, a superb film about a cheating holy man, isn’t the swamiji. Ray etches his rogue lovingly, giving him knowledge of Latin, and letting him escape with his loot. Ray’s wrath is reserved for swamiji’s vulgar followers, like the Marwari seth who is given three brief scenes, but is nailed in them. Why does the Bengali revile Marwaris?

Bengalis have no trading castes. The Marwari occupies that space profitably in Kolkata, and so is hated. The Bengali’s inability to build his state’s economy is explained away as the incompetence of Communists, but it is a problem of caste.

In PNB’s Krishi Card advertisement, shown daily on Krishi Darshan, the sahukar (Baniya) is a shifty man the peasant must avoid. But the state cannot underwrite 30 million farmers who lack collateral, and whom the Baniya services.

Communal violence disturbs us, but it is quite easy to understand. Because the Indian’s identity comes not from the individual but his community, we are comfortable with collective punishment. Muslims are punished for doing Godhra, and Sikhs are punished for killing Indira.

Gujaratis are irritated when scolded for their behaviour in 2002, because “Muslims started it”. The Indian riot is marked by two things: participation of civil society, and retreat of the state. Because his identity is also collective, India’s policeman and magistrate feel the anger of rioters. The state permits settling of scores by relaxing its monopoly over violence, breaking Weber’s rule. The British administrator was able to stop Indians going berserk because he didn’t feel the anger of community, and his interest was served by peace. Our leaders easily reveal their caste. Manmohan Singh is Khatri. The word is derived from Kshatriya, but the great Punjabi Khatri community of Guru Nanak is mercantile. This explains Manmohan’s sobriety. Manmohan’s favourite Montek Ahluwalia is also from the trading Kshatriyas. Gujarat’s Khatris are also mercantile. They are an egalitarian community where women drink with men, and these aren’t cocktail parties.

Chidambaram is Chettiar (trading communities are identifiable by their “st” names: Seth, Sheth, Shetty, Chettiar, and Muslim Sait). He is what all Indian leaders should be like. Lalu and Mulayam are peasant Yadavs, and that’s unsurprising. Muslims are separate by both caste and religion. Sunni is quite different from Shia. Shias await the return of their beloved Imam Mahdi, who is in occultation. Shias often have haunting names, like Muntazar (Iran’s Ayatollah Montazeri), which means “the awaited”, from the root intezar. Disinterested in the present world, Shias are quietist.

The great scholar Kalbe Sadiq of the Muslim personal law board, who says there’s no problem with Vande Mataram, is Shia. Shias are more willing to compromise with Hindus: The BJP’s Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi is Shia. So is Asif Zardari, and he is good for Pakistan, with his inclination to make peace with India. The Sunni intellectual, like the brilliant Arif Mohammed Khan, is also drawn to compromise, but Indians have no use for intellectuals. Sunnis should be attracted to trading since Prophet Muhammad was a trader. But India’s Sunni isn’t converted from trading castes, so he is tradesman instead: carpenter, butcher, weaver or mechanic.

Let us see how caste touches Muslims. Draw up a list of India’s Muslim businessmen, and you notice something strange: They are Sevener Shia, and Gujarati. Wockhardt’s Khorakiwala is Vohra, Wipro’s Premji is Khoja, Cipla’s Hamied is Kutchi and Zodiac’s Noorani is also Gujarati. Their community is less than 500,000 people, but India’s other 150 million Muslims can’t compete because they’re converted from non-mercantile castes.

The greatest trader in India is the Jain from the Gujarati village of Palanpur (population 100,000). He dominates the global diamond business, and is the only man with the talent to compete with that other superb trader, the Ashkenazi Jew. The diamond bourses of Tel Aviv and Antwerp are full of these two communities. Palanpur’s Jain is understated and the rare flamboyant specimen is unpopular in the community, like film-maker Bharat Shah.

Lakshmi Mittal’s son Aditya interned at Credit Suisse First Boston. In his early 20s, Aditya was a star, working on mergers and astonishing his bosses with his fluid understanding of balance sheets. This comes to him from his Baniya training, superior to business school.

India has the world’s fifth largest foreign exchange reserves. Unlike China, Russia, Japan and Taiwan, however, our reserve hasn’t been built on trade surplus but on capital inflows. These are vulnerable and must be protected. From being 18.6% of inflows, foreign portfolio investment collapsed after Pokhran and turned negative (-0.8%). Growth was affected for over a year and investment left India because of the BJP’s act. Why? Capital is a coward and flees uncertainty, especially that brought about by such mindless acts of bravery as playing with the atom bomb. The BJP’s monkeying around with India’s poor, who suffer when growth dips, would be unpardonable in a civilized nation. Advani is from the Luhana caste that Azim Premji and Jinnah are also from. But his exile has imbalanced him, as his autobiography shows. He wants to hit back at Pakistan, but the militant instinct is misplaced because it hurts his country.

Manusmriti is wrong in this sense: Nations are best ruled by traders and not warriors. It shouldn’t worry Indians that someone wrote a book about caste rules 3,000 years ago. What should terrify us is our inability to break out of the book’s stereotypes.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

http://www.livemint.com/2010/04/08192013/3000-years-on-we-can8217t.html?d=1

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A temple where Upper Castes bow to Dalits

March 26, 2010 at 5:35 am (Caste and Religion, Discrimination, Untouchability)

 

THE TIMES OF INDIA,

IANS, Mar 25, 2010

LUCKNOW: Stories of socially marginalised people not being allowed into places of worship are common in India. In such a scenario, a Dalit family presiding over an Uttar Pradesh temple for ages is nothing short of exemplary.
 
It’s only Dalits who have been priests of the Kali Mata temple, dedicated to goddess Durga, in Lakhna town in Etawah, some 300 km from Lucknow, ever since the shrine came up around 200 years ago.
 
“Caste divisions and discrimination may not have given Dalits a place of respectability in society, but here as priests they are revered,” Ram Dular Rajbhar, who owns a grocery store in the town, said on phone.
 
“Be it Brahmins, Thakurs or people from any of the other higher castes, after coming inside the temple, all have to bow before the Dalit priests and touch their feet. For others it may be surprising, but it has become a custom for us,” he added.
 
Situated along the banks of the Yamuna river, the temple is sought after by the residents of Lakhna town for holding marriages, ‘mundan’ (tonsure ceremony of Hindu children) or other rituals particularly performed by Brahmins or members of the upper caste.
 
“It’s not just a temple. It’s a place that is an example of social equality,” said Umesh Dixit, who owns several garment shops in Lakhna town.
 
“People in Lakhna also approach the priests to name their babies as it is believed that names given by Dalit priests would bring good luck and prosperity to the children and their families,” he added.
 
According to locals, there’s a story behind the custom of Dalit priests. They say King Jaipal Singh, who got the temple constructed, made it mandatory that the priest of the temple would only be a Dalit.
 
“While the construction of the temple was under way, Jaipal Singh noticed a Dalit labourer, Chhotelal, was being assaulted by a group of upper caste people for touching the idol that was to be placed inside the temple,” said another resident Ram Raksha Pandey, who owns an eating joint in Lakhna.
 
“Jaipalji soon intervened in the matter and said only Chhotelal and his family would be taking care of the temple after its construction. Since then, the practice has been alive,” he added.
 
At present two brothers, Ashok Kumar, 43, and Akhilesh Kumar, 45, who are fourth generation descendants of Chhotelal are the priests at the temple.

 

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