Whenever the caste issue is raised, it is alleged that it is a nefarious design to divide an otherwise united Hindu community, and a problem that is internal to it. How is it a ‘Hindu problem’ when Islam, Christianity and Sikhism in India are equally bedevilled by it?
What then did you expect when you unbound the gag
that had muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?
Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed
down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their
eyes?
Jean-Paul Sartre
Naran
and Kuttan (not real names) were my childhood playmates. While I went
on to study in a university, they struggled to complete school
education, and became a daily wage labourer and a Class IV government
employee respectively. Their parents and grandparents were landless
agricultural labourers. Their great-grandparents were bought by friends
of my forefathers, and then relocated to our family. Yes, bought.
When
agrestic slavery was prevalent in Kerala until the late 19th century,
you could buy and sell human beings like cattle, flog them like cattle
to work your fields, and keep them as property along with the land you
owned. And even as slavery was formally abolished, the violations of
their bodies and lives continued for many more decades. But we do have
to qualify human beings here — the slaves were overwhelmingly Dalits.
Quietude around caste
It
is another election season, and we have the explosion of caste analysis
in the media. Everything is about caste permutation and combination,
caste vote banks, etc. Many “progressive-minded” Indians think that
caste politics is the bane of India. If it were not for the politicians
who are stoking the fire of caste, India would be tearing ahead to be a
part of the developed world, à la China.
Sample the
speculation before the release of the Congress Party manifesto that it
would have reservation for the oppressed castes in the private sector.
From the fearful prognosis, it seemed that a tsunami of soul-numbing
“quotas” was going to be unleashed which would gobble up an otherwise
meritorious India, and which would leave nothing but an economic Stone
Age in its wake!
But what is farcical and dangerous
in this analysis is the failure to recognise the biggest elephant in the
room: caste, possibly one of the most abhorrent mechanisms devised by
human beings to oppress other human beings. The greatest tragedy of
India is the shocking silence about caste. Caste in India is like air,
it is what you breathe but yet you cannot “see” it — an oppressive
system that is not even recognised as generating oppression.
Whenever
the issue of caste is raised, it is alleged that it is a nefarious
design to divide an otherwise united Hindu community, and a problem that
is internal to it. But this argument is itself a key tool in producing
silences around caste. How is it a “Hindu problem” when Islam,
Christianity and Sikhism in India are equally bedevilled by the monster
of caste? What makes an “upper caste” Kerala Syrian Christian or a Goan
Catholic revel in their supposed Brahmin origins, the ashraf Muslims to
refuse to interact with, or marry a pasmanda Muslim, and caste divisions
within Sikhs erupt in violence even outside the shores of India?
The
irony of spewing venom on caste politics is that it is mainly politics
that has delivered some limited empowerment and mobility to the
oppressed castes, through reservations in Parliament, Assemblies, and in
government jobs and public education. Dalit political struggles and the
oppressor’s need to acknowledge the power of the oppressed in an
electoral democracy, even if only symbolically, have given India a
President, a Speaker of Parliament, and a Chief Justice from the Dalit
communities.
But there is a mammoth and unbridgeable
gap between caste in the political sphere, and caste in the cultural
sphere and the private economic sector. There is some visibility in the
former, which attracts derision (think Ms. Mayawati), and a deafening
silence in the latter which leads to erasure. Of course, the latter is
not legally mandated to accommodate the oppressed.
It
is derision that leads Chetan Bhagat, the voice of the Indian youth, to
ask: “When we choose a mobile network, do we check whether Airtel or
Vodafone belong to a particular caste? No, we simply choose the provider
based on the best value or service. Then why do we vote for somebody
simply because he belongs to the same caste as us?” It is absolutely
true that we do not necessarily check the caste of an MNC owner, but Mr.
Bhagat does not go onto ask: if caste is irrelevant, then why is it
often the only thing that matters in marriage, the crucial ritual in the
reproduction of society?
It is silence that leads
Mr. Ravi Shastri to respond to the question of a domination of cricket
in India till recently by Brahmin players with the answer: “it’s a
coincidence” and players are picked not because “they are Brahmins but
because they’re Indians.”
American parallel
Is
it also a coincidence that Dalits and other marginalised castes are
equally and shockingly absent in other most lucrative and prominent
sections of the society, the corporate sector, Bollywood, television,
etc.? In a Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) survey of
315 important decision-makers in 37 Delhi-based publications and
television channels, not one was found to be a Dalit or Adivasi, and
only four per cent of them were Other Backward Classes. And capitalism
is not casteless as Mr. Bhagat thinks. India’s 65 billionaires are
emphatically savarna, and many come from just one caste! Where
are the Muhammad Alis, Michael Jordans, Tiger Woods, Carl Lewis, Michael
Jacksons, Oprah Winfreys, Denzel Washingtons and Serena Williams (the
list is endless) of the Dalits? The African-Americans have similar
histories of slavery and oppression as the Dalits, and even if their
general condition is vastly inferior to the white population, American
society has provided the conditions for the emergence of black icons who
are celebrated across race barriers.
On the other
hand, we think it is just a coincidence that a Dalit population
numbering 20 crore (as large as the population of Brazil!) has hardly
“produced” any national cultural icons in the non-political sphere
without realising the colossal scale of our participation in denying
them the opportunities, and the complicity in silencing their icons. It
is considered as “tasteless” and “insulting” to even ask questions about
representation of the marginalised castes in films, music, art, sport,
television, etc because there could not be a greater affront to our
identity of being an “Indian” first, and also to the idea of “merit.”
Cultural sphere and private sector
The
recoiling in horror while even debating about affirmative action for
the marginalised in the private sector is based on a gross ignorance of
facts and histories elsewhere. What could be a better demonstration of
the fostering of diversity, by representing the oppressed sections, than
the quota system (even with its flaws) in South African cricket, a
commercial capitalist venture (and now extended to all South African
sports teams)? Is South Africa not the number one Test team in the
world? And have not two of its “quota” players, Hashim Amla (of Gujarati
Muslim origin) and Vernon Philander, been the number one ranked players
in the world?
In India as well, the recognition of
the vibrant struggles for empowerment of the oppressed castes has to
expand beyond political confines to the cultural sphere and the private
sector. But the annihilation of caste is hardly on the agenda as savarna India,
especially the youth, rush to embrace neoliberal capitalist development
(now in a heady mix with Hindutva lite) in which concepts like
caste-based reservation are anathema. This is when 21st century India
also explodes everyday, away from the media glare, in violence,
punishing the Dalits for daring to love, for daring to wear footwear,
and for daring to ride a scooter.
All the moral
outrage that is directed against reservations should be targeted at
dismantling the caste system. Then, we would not be holding on to a
vacuous notion of merit which means keeping nearly 80 per cent of the
population’s talents from flourishing. What is simply not understood is
that discrimination does not always mean a deliberate picking of an
“upper caste” over a “lower caste,” as Mr. Shastri argues, but a
systematic exclusion which results from unequal starting points leading
to a grossly unequal competition.
Naran,
Kuttan and I are not equals for they do not enjoy the same material and
symbolic capital of caste accumulated over centuries that I do. I
cannot assuage my guilt by taking refuge in the fact that their children
are brilliant students, for they are still in government schools, long
abandoned by the elite and the privileged. And there are hundreds of
other roadblocks that will haunt them at every step that my children
will not face. Destroying caste is not “uplifting” the oppressed castes;
it is about liberating ourselves from the labyrinth of caste — not by
remaining silent about it, but by shamefully acknowledging the layers of
historical privilege that have sedimented every pore of our existence.
The Hindu
April 15, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment