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THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE

Beyond Varna: CASTE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Anand Teltumbde

Stated Aims and their Failure

Modernization in India was validated by the colonial intellectual tradition, which considered caste a precapitalist institution that would lose its basis, potency and relevance with the consummation of the modernist project. Most people visualized such a trajectory of transformation as an answer to the problem of caste (and even communalism) in Indian society. After all, modernization meant displacing tradition, removing fetters and pushing the country onto the path of progress. As a model of development, its success in Europe was there for all to see. There was therefore a unanimity of sorts in endorsing the Nehruvian project. Even the Ambedkarite perspective- though differing from the majority viewpoint in holding caste as an institution specific and central to India - had laid emphasis on state intervention towards reducing caste oppression. Modern secular education, state institutions and rapid industrialization thus came to be seen as important in post-Independence India.

Contrary to expectations, however, the relevance and significance of caste in society continued unaffected. Castes placed at different levels of the social hierarchy have not responded uniformly to the processes of modernization and democratic politics at the local, regional and national levels. Caste remains a key factor in the functioning of the democratic institutions of the modern Indian state, especially in its local arm of governance, represented by the panchayat raj (rule of the panchayats) system in the post- Independence period. Caste's cruelty still stands revealed in the unofficial but patent segregation of children in rural schools; in the unseen but hermetic lines that divide caste localities in villages, in the separate eating utensils reserved for the disprivileged in roadside eateries; in the unspeakable conditions municipal sanitation staff work under as they clear sewers, open drains and rubbish dumps; in the raucous, derogatory melodrama of brahminical demonstrations against affirmative action, and in the primeval hate that occasionally precipitates in media headlines and the public consciousness as an atrocity.

The Indian state has had a central role in shaping caste and caste contradiction as they prevail in the country today, for it is its modernist policies which have reinforced caste and accentuated its viciousness as never before. These policies brought the landed castes - the BCs and the OBCs - unprecedented wealth but failed to empower dalits to a comparable degree, thereby accentuating between the two groups the power asymmetry that is the prime mover behind atrocities. Modernism was embarked upon with neither adequate planning for the containment of its consequences nor serious intent to dismantle both caste thinking and the basic source of differential power in the rural context - the unequal distribution of land.

Throughout India's post-Independence history, we see the state weaving an intricate web of protective and developmental policies in favour of the marginalized but not touching the economic base of the village system. Instead, the ruling classes deliberately conceived of 'land reforms' that dealt with land in superficial, quantitative terms but stopping far short of the unconditional radicalism of taking away the basic resource of land from the domain of private property. If instead of implementing dubious land reforms the state had nationalized Land, as Ambedkar proposed in his States and Minorities, one can reasonably argue that the base of the caste system would have been broken. Of course, it can be equally reasonably argued that the state is intrinsically incapable of accomplishing such revolutionary tasks.

Some scholars fault state-driven modernization because of the state's intrinsic incapacity to bring about socio-economic transformation. Given the nature of Indian society and polity, it must have been a veritable feat that the euphoria of independence' was effectively used to adopt an egalitarian Constitution that directly or indirectly facilitated the creation of democratic institutions. If the ruling elite had sincerely nurtured these institutions, many of the problems associated with identities that afflict Indians today would have not surfaced. But that was not to be. The Indian state never really had the urgency to usher in genuine transformation. As Srinivasulu perceptively puts it:

In belated capitalist societies such as India, it is the state rather than class that has assumed a preeminent role in the process of economic transformation. Weak civil society, inadequate channels of communication on matters of social significance and the inability to provide society with ideological and intellectual leadership all demonstrate the capitalist class's historical and structural limitations. The question of socio-economic transformation was left inadequately addressed. The state cannot, due to its historical limitations and bureaucratic logic, undertake such an enterprise - and even if it does, it cannot fully succeed.

Beyond Obsolete Varna

Any discussion of caste typically begins with or bases itself on the classical fourfold varna system. As we just saw, the present-day caste situation does not have much to do with the varna system except for deriving from it a broad ideological framework. Since the 1960s, the shudra castes have emerged into a dominant position in the production process and have successfully translated this into the economic and political domains. This has given rise to a series of significant contestations. In the earlier period, these lay between the brahmins and the shudra peasant castes. Now, they are increasingly seen between the peasant castes as landowners and dalits as landless labourers.

Yet intellectual approaches to the caste question have persisted with the rhetoric of the classical, ritualistic caste system (‘brahminism' being used as shorthand to explain and understand every caste-related problem), and have refused to take note of these transformations. Anti-caste activism has also reflected and reinforced the worst stereotypes, identifying foes and friends in obsolete varna terms. While mouthing the Ambedkarite dictum that they are against brahminism and not brahmins, and that brahminism is not confined to brahmins alone and could well afflict dalits, in reality, anti-caste activists have failed to differentiate between brahmins and brahminism and have continued to associate people with their caste identities.

Electoral compulsions prompted the imagining of an amorphous identity called bahujan (the oppressed majority, discussed in the Introduction under the Bahujan Samaj Party) – amalgamating dalits with the so-called OBCs, sweeping under the carpet many a contradiction between them in the village context. Several landowning castes are part of this conglomeration. Even if they were excluded, and even if some shudra castes were in no better state than the dalits, their traditional social and economic ties with the landowning castes gave them a certain social edge, and they cannot be bracketed with the socially stigmatized dalits. There cannot be any dispute about the desirability of dalit and shudra unity, but it must be realized that caste cannot be the basis of such unity; only a class approach that impels them to identify, with each other on the basis of their worldly placement can achieve it. Indeed, the caste situation today has become so complex that the caste idiom is proving increasingly futile, and the earlier one thinks of substituting it the better.

To think, however, of discarding caste as an analytical category altogether would be counterproductive. What is needed is to sharpen the understanding of caste dynamics as they now exist. If this most brutal manifestation of caste power could be curbed, the expression of caste in terms of atrocities could be arrested. There may, be several strategies to accomplish it, depending on where and how one decides to block the process. It may be at its source - at the level of caste ideology. If one could strip it of its religious mystique with a counter-ideology, or by any other means, atrocities may be prevented by impacting the mindsets of their potential perpetrators. This is akin to the strategy of the classical anti-caste movement that diagnosed the roots of caste as lying in the scriptures and set out to confront them.

One can also tackle atrocity in its physical form. The root reason for atrocities against dalits is simply their relative weakness -numerical, physical and social. How is this weakness to be removed? The strategic options could be in terms of strengthening dalits from within or supplementing their strength from without. If dalits are perceived as being strong enough to retaliate, no one, howsoever determined, would be able to inflict an atrocity on them. This has been seen, for instance, in areas where there is a strong naxalite presence - 'naxalite' being the name given in India to communist groups belonging to various trends of Maoism. In Karamchedu, Andhra Pradesh, where kamma, Backward Class, landlords killed six dalits in 1984, the case headed absolutely nowhere for five years. The main accused, Chenchu Ramaiah, was the father of Venkateswara Rao, the then state health minister and son-in-law of the chief minister, N.T. Rama Rao. Then, in 1989, a people’s War Group squad shot Ramaiah at his home. The killing had such a pronounced effect that there has not been a major atrocity in the area ever since. In other places, however, such tactics have led to reprisals and counter-reprisals, as has been seen in Bihar.

There may also be a statist strategy to handle atrocities - to deal sternly with the crime after it has taken place. If a sure way could be devised of arresting perpetrators and ensuring their exemplary punishment, it could be assumed that it would act as a deterrent. These could be the strategic ways of dealing with the increasing incidence of atrocities.