Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-4
Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-4
This dynamics has largely escaped the world of scholars and intellectuals. Postcolonial India may be a unique place where the state came into being first and then it created its congenial class as against the normal process seen everywhere else of classes emerging victorious and constituting their state. With enormous productivity gains from the Green Revolution, the rich farmers amassed huge surplus which they invested in nearby towns to set up various businesses like transport, cinema theatres, rice/oil mills, ginning and pressing factories, contracting, and commission agencies. A typical rich farmer in a village was a landlord, a petty bourgeoisie, custodian of Brahmanism, politician, all rolled into one. While a section of this class allied with the ruling party at the centre and captured Panchayat Samitis, Zilla Parishads and significant part of the state assemblies, the other sections developed their independent aspirations and formed regional parties to emerge as formidable political forces. All these developments led to intensification of competition in electoral politics, thereby increasing reliance on small groups of people, which were to be naturally found in castes and communities. They became exceedingly important in the first-past-the-post (FPTP) type of elections. Even a small number of votes could make or mar the electoral prospects of politicians in this system. These domestic developments combined with general unrest manifesting from the crisis of capitalism the world over, which was just past its ‘golden period’ of two decades after World War II, led to the inauguration of coalition era in politics by the mid-1970s. The Janata Party, representing the grand coalition of disparate political parties capturing power at the centre, was to symbolize this trend. Caste would become the sole staple of politicians in electoral politics.
Here came the use of the weaponry forged in the Constitution. The politicians increasingly exploited reservations to lure castes. Reservations in colonial times were conceded as an exceptional policy to support the exceptional people, but in these postcolonial times, they were forged into reserved ammunition for the ruling classes. With the implementation of Mandal reservations, which could be potentially claimed by every caste, the clamour for reservations reached its pitch. There is no significant caste today that is not actuated by this dynamics to demand reservations. Interestingly, many of these demands were not to partake of the Mandal reservations—perhaps because they were already crowded being limited to 27% for the estimated 52% population—but to claim the ST status and share their reservations. Another intrigue of politicians was to inflame the latent grudge of the minor castes within the SCs that the benefits of reservations were disproportionately grabbed by some major caste. It led to the creation of sub-caste movements demanding reservations within reservation. The outcome could have been better read as the incapacity of reservations to benefit the real needy within the SC/ST communities, but such is the obsession with reservation that it would only be read in an inverted manner, which could then be easily exploited by the politicians. Starting from Andhra Pradesh with the Madiga-Dandora movement in the mid-1990s, it has spread today to most states. It proved to be the last blow to Ambedkar’s vision of annihilation of castes that his ‘Dalit’ so laboriously constructed as the vanguard in the anti-caste battle, itself was splintered into sub-castes. Interestingly, it was happening when reservation itself was on the decline due to constriction of the public/government sector under the impact of the neoliberal policies of the government. But the reservationists would not like to hear of it!
There was another significant impact of this postcolonial political economy on castes. With the huge economic and political empowerment of a section of the Shudra castes, the ritual differences between the Shudras and the Dwija castes also began to fade. Capitalism performed its expected role in ritually demolishing castes across the four varnas and in reducing the entire caste system into a class divide between Dalits and the rest. While the ritual caste differences have been weakened to a great degree, the caste identities appear to have gained in strength in inverse proportion. These identities are manured and watered by the modern institutions such as electoral politics and reservations. The FPTP election system has catalysed these caste identities. Here comes another shot of strategy by the ruling classes. Although all the newly independent British colonies have adopted this system of election from the British model, it was strikingly unfit for a country like India which was fragmented vertically and horizontally into castes, communities, religions, languages, regions, etc. However, the ruling classes could clearly see that only the FPTP system could ensure perpetuation of their class rule. They had only to manage the existing divisions by creating and manipulating identities. As we can see, this system has hugely contributed to transforming politics into identity politics.
The contemporary castes thus can be seen more as constitutional castes rather than as scriptural or Manu-ordained traditional castes. They mark a clear division between the Dalits and the non-Dalits. Dalits serve as the other for the non-Dalits and hence the ruling classes would not let go of castes. They would not even let Dalits stay as Dalits but would split them into sub-castes, eliminating any possibility of their coming together and threatening the prevailing order. Dalits today are a hopelessly fragmented and disoriented lot. While reservations have catalysed a middle class among the Dalits, which is visible and vocal, being located in cities and towns, it has overshadowed the woes of the vast majority of Dalits who live in villages and urban slums. Over the last six decades, reservations could be seen to have lifted about 10% of Dalits from their precarious condition. The condition of the balance 90% Dalits is relatively the same or perhaps worse than it was before these measures were introduced. Instead of being a tool for empowerment, reservations have actually marginalized them, as it tends to help an increasingly smaller section of beneficiaries; the majority being deprived of crucial inputs of health and education, it would not even pass the threshold of applicability of reservations. That is why reservation seats in IITs, IIMs, etc. go unfilled. While middle-class Dalits are not in as large a number to fill up the vacancies, it is beyond the capacity of majority of the Dalits to have the wherewithal for these admissions. Reservations have arguably benefitted the first generation of Dalits, but their lifetime cost-benefit remains surely questionable. The psychological damage reservation causes to a Dalit child at an early age may actually be intellectually crippling as their later performance indicates. In either case, Ambedkar’s expectation from reservation that it would help Dalit participation in administration and in turn be beneficial to the Dalit masses is not at all validated by practice. He himself had experienced this in his own life time; and this has surfaced every time in moments of crisis for ordinary Dalits. My books: Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop and Persistence of Castes amply explain it.
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Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-1
Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-2
Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-3
O- Anand Teltumbde
