Understanding Castes for their Annihilation Anand Teltumbde

Introduction

Understanding Castes for their Annihilation

Anand Teltumbde

Castes admittedly are a bewildering reality of India; amplified by some to the extent that would make them appear indestructible and ignored by some as a nonissue. Castes as a result, go on kicking menacing the lives of millions and fortifying the powerbases of the ruling elite. There is however a way of understanding castes and it is not as difficult as it is made out, only if one is focused on their annihilation. This essay "The Caste Question in India" by Comrade Anuradha Ghandy may be counted among the latter genre.

The importance of this essay is not so much because it purports to explain caste in its entirety, from its origin in antiquity to its contemporary forms down to the programme for its annihilation, as because it is written by Anuradha Ghandy, one who led a revolutionary life living among Dalits and Adivasis, realized that castes held the key to India's democratic revolution and was impelled by those conviction to study it with specific objective to create a framework for revolutionaries to deal with it. Anuradha Ghandy, Anu for us friends, had written this long essay in mid-1990s. She had discussed the draft with few friends which included me. We did not know why it was not published as thereafter Anu had gone underground. Only after her death, the Anuradha Gandhy Memorial Committee recovered it along with other of her writings. Since it was published in November 2011 in 'Scripting the change', the collection of her selected writings, it has been acknowledged to be a significant departure from the customary understanding of castes all streams of communists reflected thus far. It is therefore a welcome initiative to make it available in Telugu for broader masses of people for whom it was truly meant.       

The essay marks the culmination of Anu's study on caste, as a student of sociology and thereafter a revolutionary practitioner. Here she takes a comprehensive review of the caste system, beginning from the theories of origin of castes through the significant developments in history and ending with a practical programme towards annihilation of caste. Anu at the beginning itself identifies the caste system as an ideology as well as social system and transcends the stereotypical debate about the base and superstructure that shrouded the caste question in communist circles. Following Marx and Engels she identifies different stages in pre-British Indian society: (i) Tribal-oligarchy, (II) Ancient communal and state ownership which proceeded especially from the union of several tribes by agreement and/or conquest accompanied by the enslavement of the Shudra-helots, i.e., the 'Arthashastra Mode' and (iii) Feudal or estate property accompanied by the Jati-based system, i.e., feudalism of an Indian variety. While successfully navigating through the dark abysses of history she emerges into the contemporary period extending the unbroken thread of her argument to the programme of the party of the proletariat against caste system. It declares that class struggle against the caste system as an integral part of the struggle to accomplish New Democratic Revolution. She even tries to indicate what would remain of castes after such a democratic revolution is accomplished.

In its broad sweep Anu presents her own understanding of the origin and developments of castes. It was not in the mode of scholastic discovery but as reconstruction through interpretation of historical resources. However, it provides a coherent materialistic perspective, contrasted with the usual religio-cultural perspective within which the emergence and growth of caste system is normally discussed. With India's mythologized history, it becomes necessarily a speculative exercise to provide materialist form to caste like institution. It may not be accepted in the academic world but if the purpose is to prepare people for change, it serves it well. Anu's essay is precisely aimed at this change and hence could be expected to fulfil its expected purpose. In explaining India's caste system in materialist terms one natural question however needs to be answered, which is that how such an intricate system has developed only in India and not elsewhere. Anu also seems to have skirted past the issue.

Simply speaking, the caste system in India is a form of social stratification which most ancient societies had in proportion to the scale of their surplus production. In small-scale and low-technology societies, stratification is limited by low levels of accumulation and usually organized in terms of age, gender, and kinship position. In contrast, large-scale, wealthier societies are more likely to be stratified into enduringly complex groups or classes reproducing themselves. India with its rich natural endowment, in the ancient times was a wealthy country and hence its society had evolved to have a complex stratification. According to economic historian Angus Maddison (The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective), India was the richest country in the world and had the world's largest economy until the 17th century. The question remains however why with the change in modes of production and onslaught of modernity other stratificatory systems have disappeared all over the world but in India the caste system still survives with its menacing prowess.

Sociologists commonly identify three major forms of stratification in complex societies: caste systems with rigid borders, highly differentiated statuses, and little possibility of mobility; the system of estates characteristic of European feudal societies, which distinguished between the clergy, the nobility, and the broad category of peasants, merchants, and artisans; and class systems, more common in modern societies. The first two systems are dominated by ascribed status, or status into which one is born. Class systems, in contrast, provided a greater space for mobility for achieved status. In the class system, the contemporaneous meritocratic ideal places a premium on achievement, in spite of economic, cultural and institutional pressures for general reproduction of structures of inequality.

The caste system completely denies mobility. A person born in a caste finds his life chances frozen by his caste. Dr. Ambedkar gave a succinct definition of caste: "A caste is an enclosed class." This definition clarifies the distinction as well as interrelationship between class and caste. The essential element of the caste system is the division of society into many mutually exclusive groups called castes which are in perpetual contention with each other for hierarchical superiority within its varna cluster, but internalize their varna hierarchy in a macro-varna structure. The caste into which a person is born defines his or her social status through life, and prescribes the group within which that person could live, marry and die. Caste is also defined by religious rituals and governed by the doctrine of karma and dharma of Hinduism. This doctrine informs a person that his caste status in this birth is because of his past deeds and he could get a better caste status in the next birth by observing dharma, which is nothing but abiding by the caste code here and now. The question remains how such a structure came into being; whether it was created by an ideology or material factors peculiar to India.  

There are many countries where caste-like features are encountered. The Osu people in Nigeria and southern Cameroon are treated by the Igbo indigenous religious system to be a "living sacrifice", an outcaste, untouchable, and subhuman people. There is another caste-like system among the Mande societies in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Ghana, previously Ancient Manden, where people have traditionally been divided by occupation and ethnic ties. Besides, there are several other caste-like stratifications like Wolof in Senegal and Fulani in West Africa. Wolof lived in highly stratified societies based primarily on blood relationships. There were three highly separated castes: freemen (gor or jambur); those of slave descent (jaam); and artisans (ñeeño). Intermarriage rarely took place between the castes. Fulanis are a nomadic Muslim ethnic group located primarily in present-day Burkina-Faso, Mali and Niger. The Fulanis continue to adhere to a fairly rigid caste system. The major castes, in their order of stature, are the nobility, the traders, the tradesmen, and the descendants of slaves. There is a varna-like system among the Borana in north-east Kenya and southern Ethiopia wherein Borana Gutu (pure) are treated as the highest, followed by Gabbra, Sakuye and Watta—a traditional hunter-gatherer caste, being the lowest. The Wattas are considered unwanted, worthless, and condemned to lifelong servitude by members of the higher castes. In Yemen there exists a caste-like system that keeps the Al-Akhdam (the Arabic Akhdam means 'servants') social group as perennial manual workers (scavengers) for the society through practices that mirror untouchability. Though practising Islam for over 1000 years, they are treated quite like Dalits, and like Dalits they prefer to be called Al-Muhamasheen, or 'marginalized ones'. Likewise, there are people in Japan known as Burakumin (Buraku, meaning 'community' or 'hamlet', and min meaning 'people', or HisabetsuBuraku, meaning 'discriminated communities'/'discriminated hamlets'). Studies comparing the caste systems in India and Japan have noted similar discriminations. Like the Burakumins, the Baekjeongwere an "untouchable" outcaste group of Korea. The condition of the Baekjeong in pre-colonial Korean society was quite similar to the Dalits under the rule of the Peshwas. They were seen as a contemptible and polluted group of people that others feared and avoided meeting. If they saw Yangban (the higher caste) adults or even their children along the road, they were expected to bow and pay respect. Like Dalits, they too began their resistance movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, firstly aiming at reform and later a more radical change. The system, however, disappeared in the turbulence that the Korean society underwent.

Looking superficially at such instances of caste-like stratifications and discriminatory practices, some people who want to be in denial mode, liken these societies to that of India. They forget the fact that what they see is just the residue of the old structure and practices in those societies. They may look like India's caste system, but they are essentially different. Except for visible aspects of untouchability—discrimination and exclusion—these societies do not reflect the deep-entrenched and pervasive hierarchy, prejudice, and most interestingly, upheld by its social, political, cultural and theological structures. Moreover, they feature in a small section of the society and apply to a miniscule minority as in the case of the Barakumins in Japan, who come probably the closest to India's Dalits. The Indian caste system is not just based on stratification, but is a continuum of infinite castes strung loosely within the four-fold varna hierarchy which is vested with divine sanction. Although classically not a part of the varna framework, it includes as its distinguishing aspect, the people who are completely segregated as untouchables, and who are themselves divided into numerous castes mirroring the hierarchy of the classical structure. Therefore, the Indian caste system becomes a gigantic, complex, and intricately evolved continuum of simultaneously loose and rigid hierarchy—rigid in the macro framework of varna and loose within it—pervasively practised over a vast geographical area as the life-world of its people. Thus, it differs from others both in qualitative as well quantitative terms.

Notwithstanding many scholarly theories on the origin of castes, the most plausible materialist explanation of their origin could be given in terms of the uniquely rich endowment of the Indian subcontinent which did not require nomadic tribes to undergo structural change while settling for agriculture unlike other parts of the world. In India, with plenty of flat and fertile land, plentiful sunshine and rains, nomadic family units could easily settle without losing their tribal character as against, for instance, England, where because of a narrow window of sunshine and rains, and undulating lands, it required a huge army of labourers to cultivate large tracts of land, giving rise to structures with master and serfs. The Indian castes were to start with these tribal identities which evolved with magico-religious developments associated with agricultural societies into a very complex structure. Somewhere down the line, the outside Aryans vanquished the lands and superimposed their class system, varna system over the castes that already existed. This structure generally comprised the caste system, which went on evolving throughout history without affecting its essential integrity. This perhaps explains why such an intricate system of tribal identities (jati) embedded within the varna class system, together defining the caste system, the hierarchical interrelationship between these individual jatis fortified duly by the complex theological-social structure constructed by the dominating classes, evolved and still survived only in India and not elsewhere.     

Traits which really distinguish the Hindu caste, the jati, from the caste-like groups in the rest of the world are: (1) the specific kinship nature of its internal organization, which is very reminiscent of that of a primitive tribe, and (2) its relation to the structure of Indian class society as a whole. Interdining, endogamy, the social norms and customs; ostracization or outcasting as punishment for violation of these norms, the caste councils for their governance, etc. are typical characteristics of tribal kinship groups anywhere. The Indian castes, (actually the subcastes, which are truly endogamous units) display all these tribal traits. Even the exogamous groups within each caste and subcaste are very similar to the gens or clans of primitive tribal society in that all the members of each exogamous group consider themselves descendants of a common ancestor. Such groups have disappeared long ago in most class societies, although we still have remains of them in China, Scotland, and Ireland. Nowhere else have they remained such a fundamental part of the social structure as in India, where they show the close tie-up of the caste with primitive tribal society. Every Hindu belongs, thus, to three social groups: the property-holding family, the exogamous gotra, and the endogamous caste or subcaste, corresponding respectively to the family, the gens, and the tribe in primitive society.

The caste system, a system of social hierarchy, depicts the relationship of these castes to one another. Groups of castes by themselves, just as groups of tribes by themselves, do not necessarily constitute a hierarchy, and what characterizes the castes of India is that they are thoroughly organized in such a hierarchy, even though it may appear somewhat amorphous. This is the superimposition of the varna system over the castes. One of the earliest researcher of castes, Emile Senart had rightly pointed out as early as 1894 that the four varnas are not castes but classes, and that each of these classes today embraces a large number of individual castes whose position in the hierarchy depends upon social function, tradition, occupation, and so on. [Emile C. M. Senart, Caste in India, translated by Sir E. Denison Ross (London, 1950).] Thus the Brahmans are not one caste but a class, or rather an estate, comprising hundreds of castes, and this is likewise true for the Kshatryas, Vaisyas, Sudras and also Dalits. The social - theological hierarchy of caste masks the fact that behind this hierarchy and holding it together is this very class nature of Indian society which further is held together by the State. In turn the class nature of society expresses itself in the form of the caste system which has grown out of the interpénétration of caste and class. Thus caste appears as class and class appears as caste. We may even go further and point out that the caste is a caste only insofar as it is part of Hindu class society. If it is outside the pale of such a class society, it constitutes a tribe, as in the case of the aboriginal tribes still existing in India.

Castes are generally spoken about in static term as though they were in a deep freezer, fossilized, sans change, and not a living category. The confusion between varna and caste or caste and untouchability or Shudra and Dalit is commonplace. The caste system had evolved into a formidable system of stratification acquiring self-organizing, self-regulating characteristics. For instance, the structure of the caste system assumed the celestial system, which has million explosions within but still maintains its overall form. The caste system also had numerous low-key inter-caste contentions within the belly of a varna, but at the same time all castes abided by their varna hierarchy. This dynamics lent the system its resilience without ever challenging the macro structure. Another operative feature of the caste system was that all castes were held together in an interdependent relationship that ensured subsistence of all their members albeit corresponding to their caste status. The system provided them with a sense of security; the only condition being that the people ought to follow their caste dharma. Every caste had its psychological comfort or discomfort and differential benefits or losses. The exploitation and oppression was ingrained in the system but was so diffused that it was impossible to discern who precisely was the exploiter and who the exploited. Even the Brahman varna, which was ensconced at the top of the varna hierarchy, had various Brahman sub-castes which contended for higher status among themselves. And the situation was no different with the untouchables, who even being avarnas mirrored the same contention. The division between the Dwija castes, who did not live by the sweat of their brows and the Shudras and the untouchables who were to slog in service to them, which could only be noted in modern times, was not viable as it still is not. The structure did not permit the emergence of any such broad division anywhere that would threaten the system. This explains why castes are the longest living man-made system in the world and are still kicking.   

Castes were the life-world of people living in the subcontinent and they were resilient to adapt to the political-economic changes that befell the subcontinent. Moreover, while they were a subcontinental phenomenon, their operation was very much local as there were no means of easy transportation or communication. For the most part of history, whatever changes that took place due to changes in political economy, were confined to the Dwija castes; they did not affect the life-world of the lower, labouring castes, viz., Shudra and the untouchables as they did not have any interface with those changes. The first time they were affected was by the Muslim rule when it stabilized. That was the first time they saw that there could be an alternative god and an alternative religion, which speaks of equality among human beings. They were introduced to Islam mainly through Sufi saints, who mixed with them and spoke about human brotherhood. The Muslim rule also gave them an opportunity to leave their villages to work in guilds in cities, which came up with the advanced feudalism that the Muslim rulers brought. There was a huge exodus of the lower castes to Islam. But later when the upper caste elites also began converting to Islam for the lure of pelf and power, the castes entered the Islamic society. The phenomenon was more pronounced in the case of conversion to Christianity later in the colonial period. The Muslim as well Christian societies still bears their birth marks being predominantly of the lower-caste converts, which is why the Sangh Parivar hates them. Thus we need to see communalism in India as basically a derivative of casteism.

The more impactful changes occurred during the colonial rule. It brought varied opportunities to the lower-caste people, especially the more populous untouchable castes, which did not have specific caste vocations. They entered British armies in large numbers and took up jobs in their clubs, households and industry. Most significantly, the doors of modern education were opened to them; first by the Christian missionaries and later by the government. The rulers undertook huge infrastructure projects such as building of ports, roads, canals, railways, to facilitate their colonial loot which however came as a boon for these people. Infrastructure further boosted industrial investment in a spiralling manner, opening up huge job opportunities for them. Many of them made good of these opportunities and switched to petty businesses. While many such unintended positives happened during the colonial rule, the intended colonial policy to control people by instituting various anthropological studies and caste censuses concretised the amorphous lifeworld of people into rigid hierarchies and live caste consciousness. The ease of communication and transportation and political integration of India unleashed new pan Indian caste dynamics, which for the first time transcended social sphere and entered political space. It is in such socio-political environment capitalism entered India. Capitalism instead of facing contradiction with the caste system, found it useful to keep the labour divided. However, it did impact the other segment of the society, the upper castes in the Dwija band based in major cities, who embraced capitalism and capitalist modernity. While capitalism kept people divided, it bonded capitalists into a class, transcending ritualistic differences among them. The imperatives of the supply chain in business to build and maintain relationship brought them in contact with people from different castes, albeit within the Dwija band, to which they largely belonged. Over the years the caste differences between them faded and were reduced to class differences. The validity of Marx's observation that the growth "Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labour, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power." (On Colonialism, Moscow edition 1974, p. 85), needs to be reconsidered by people who uncritically lament that he was proved wrong on India.

Far more significant changes in the caste system than even those happened during the colonial period befell after the transfer of power. The native ruling classes made full use of the caste system with their characteristic intrigues to the detriment of masses, particularly Dalits and Adivasis, paradoxically posturing social justice. After assuming the power, the Congress began pushing the policy framework in favour of capitalists, camouflaging it with its high-pitched socialist rhetoric to address the mass aspirations which were built up during the freedom struggle. Notwithstanding its claim to represent all Indian people on the basis of Gandhi's mass following, the Congress at its core was always representing the class of the incipient bourgeoisie. The best evidence for its pro-capitalist character comes out in the Bombay Plan episode. While the Constituent Assembly was still busy writing the constitution, Prime Minister Nehru had announced the launch of Five-Year Plans (FYP), which was associated in those days with Soviet Russia. It was designed to create an impression the world over that newly independent India was going the Soviet way. It reinforced the domestic rhetoric of socialism. The Bombay Plan was prepared by a group of Indian industrialists and technocrats in January 1944, proposing a fifteen-year investment plan for India when it became free. It is interesting to know that while there was general anticipation that the British would grant India freedom after World War II, there were no official clues as to what form post-colonial India would take. The Bombay Plan, however, had rightly factored in the partition, which very few people could have imagined then, in working out its figures. While this Plan was not officially adopted by Nehru, not only the first but all the first three Five Year Plans had almost the same sectoral outlay pattern as that of the Bombay Plan. It may be interesting to recall our learning in schools and colleges that our second FYP was supposed to be based on the home-grown development model given by P.C. Mahalanobis! Surprisingly, these intrigues of our ruling class to cheat the people remain largely unexposed by our intellectuals.

The ruling class intrigues were also at play in the constitution-making, starting with its strategic masterstroke to induct Babasaheb Ambedkar, who had gained an iconic stature among the majority of Dalits, into the Constituent Assembly and thereafter making him chairman of its most important drafting committee. Ambedkar who had been an ardent and lifelong opponent of the Congress and its supreme leader Gandhi expectedly faced spirited opposition from the Congress legislature in Bombay when he made a bid to be part of the Constituent Assembly. He was eventually helped by Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Scheduled Caste Federation (SCF) leader in United Bengal, who prevailed upon the Muslim League to get Ambedkar elected from East Bengal. This success was to be short-lived, however. Soon the partition plan was announced and he lost his membership. By then, the Congress had realized his strategic importance and arranged for his election from Bombay. They further surprised him by making him chairman of the drafting committee.

With regard to castes, the Constitution outlawed untouchability, which was what the upper-caste reformers as well as apologists of the caste system led by Gandhi always hankered for. It however preserved castes with an alibi to make special provisions in favour of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). As a matter of fact, these provisions in the form of reservations and other concessions for the SCs were instituted during the colonial times itself. Even the initial preferential policy was transformed into today's quota system by Ambedkar while he was the labour member in the viceroy's executive council. The identity of these beneficiaries was also frozen into an administrative category, 'Scheduled Caste', way back in 1936. As such, the castes could also have been outlawed if the Constituent Assembly so wanted. But they were not. The Constituent Assembly wanted to extend these provisions to the tribal people, which it could without needing the castes to stay as the tribes were not a caste. But it created another schedule, the 'Scheduled Tribe' for them, knowing fully well that there could not have been a foolproof definitive criterion like untouchability used for identifying the SCs, for the tribals. Whatever may be the way of identifying these people, if they were to be provided with identical concessions, they could have been very well merged with the inmates in the existing schedule, possibly renaming it as something else sans the caste indicative nomenclature. It would have helped in diluting the traditional caste identity of the erstwhile untouchables in the schedule and divested the schedule of social stigma as, unlike the Dalits, the tribals did not carry it. But it was not to be. By creating a separate schedule the ruling classes provided space for any caste to claim Scheduled Tribe status as it happened in the agitations of the Gujjars in Rajasthan in 2008 and currently of the Dhangars in Maharashtra. Interestingly, no one wanted the Scheduled Caste status.

Capping all these intrigues, the Constitution included a still vaguer clause that the state would identify as Other Backward Classes (to be read castes) who were 'socially and educationally backward' and extend them adequate concessions. In a backward country like India in which almost all people could be construed as being socially inferior to someone in a caste hierarchy and educationally backward (which all were), this provision as such was hugely problematic. After all, reservations are not the only measure to help people. Rather, reservations were meant to be an exceptional measure to be used for exceptional subjects, as was rightly done during the colonial rule. For a backward country like India, the state, if it was really sincere in helping the people, could have implemented redistribution of wealth, ensured basic empowering inputs like health and education, and followed socialistic policies. Ambedkar was for such a reform and had provided a theoretical rationale for state socialism too in his very first speech in the Constituent Assembly. Obviously, it was not their intention to help the people but use them to perpetuate their rule. The entire exercise was to construct a can of caste worms for the rulers to be opened at an opportune moment as was done by V.P. Singh in 1990.

Soon thereafter, the government undertook land reforms in a convoluted manner. The real intention, as can be seen with hindsight, was to carve out a class of rich farmers in rural India which would serve as an agent of the central rulers, while pretending to respond to the voiced expectations of people that land would be distributed to the actual tillers. Land distribution did take place in varied proportions in various states (land being a state subject!)—to the tillers on paper, who happened to belong to the most populous Shudra castes that were preferable to the erstwhile landlords, many of whom fancied continuing their control over such lands. Although land in many cases was actually tilled by the Dalits, they did not get any. This half-baked land reform was immediately followed by the Green Revolution, supposedly to quench the widespread mass hunger prevailing then. While the Green Revolution would raise the productivity of agriculture, it would significantly transform the agrarian relations and thereby castes. The Green Revolution was actually a capitalist strategy which would create input, output, credit, implement, and services market and cash economy in rural India. It would hugely enrich the Shudra landowners and transform some of them into rich farmers who would assume social control of villages having wielded the baton of Brahmanism from the upper-caste landlords.

The capitalist relations demolished the traditional jajmani caste relations signifying interdependence, and rendered Dalits to be the rural proletariat, utterly dependent on the rich farmers for farm wages. The erstwhile multi-layered caste contradictions were replaced by a direct class contradiction between Dalits as farm labour and the neo-rich landowners as capitalist farmers. As these rich farmers were part of the most populous caste band—unlike the erstwhile sophisticated upper-caste landlords—who however lacked in cultural sophistication, these class contradictions would manifest through familiar faultlines of castes giving rise to a new genre of caste atrocities. Earlier, the caste atrocities happened at the level of individuals—someone of the lower caste being punished for his misconduct by someone belonging to the upper caste in a fit of rage. The new atrocities would now be committed by a collective of the Shudra people on a collective of Dalits with a conscious plan of teaching a lesson to the entire Dalit community. Kilvenmeni in Tamil Nadu was the first to see such an atrocity, signifying this new agrarian dynamics, on 25 December 1968. Forty-four Dalit labourers, mostly women and children, were burnt alive by the henchmen of landlords for daring to challenge them. In the following decades it would flare up into a veritable caste war in distant Bihar, overshadowing the class struggle that actuated it as in Kilvenmeni. The trend since has not only continued but also has zoomed under neoliberal India.

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.

Considering the hierarchy-seeking characteristics of castes, caste-based identities can be seen as unviable for any radical project. Identities are natural and benign in social and cultural spheres, but in politics they could be hugely problematic. Never could they serve universalist objectives of radical politics, which is what emancipation of Dalit-like people should entail. The FPTP system has promoted identity politics, which obviously has worked for the ruling classes as they willed for, but it has not helped the oppressed masses in achieving their emancipation goals. The grand experiment of the BSP, which raised identity politics to its logical high point, has eventually begun to show its limitation. The emergence of classes within the belly of each caste is a contemporary reality, which further incapacitates identities to do good for the lower classes. While identities serve as cover for the middle classes to further their class interests, as in the case of Dalit capitalists, they are of little service to the lower ones. On the contrary, they bear the brunt of all kinds of identity flaunting. Objectively speaking, a miniscule section of the Dalits have made progress during the last six decades, but with identity linkage it gets transposed to the entire Dalit community along with their cultural assertion.

The rural Dalits being the weak spots in this linkage have to bear the brunt of it in the form of atrocities, which have risen to an alarming level of 40,000 in 2013. Every passing day two Dalits are getting killed and six women are raped this very time. And this by police record; given their reluctance to register a complaint from a Dalit, the actual number could be left to anyone's imagination. The dismal conviction rate emboldens casteist elements to deal with Dalits with impunity. The most infamous atrocities right from Kilvenmani to the spate of carnage carried out by Ranvir Sena in 1990s have ended with acquittals. This horrific trend is met with total absence of any organized resistance from Dalits, most of their self serving leaders being busy brokering their interests with the ruling parties. The neoliberal juggernaut fast decimating public spaces, making such basic services like heath care and education also beyond the means of most Dalits, they are pushed back to darker times from where they strove to rise. The ascendance of the Hindutva brigade that has already declared this country as 'hindu rashtra' and is trying to restore everything including caste system to the old Brahmanical glory, with all the Dalit representatives having been bought off, the caste question is bound to get thornier in coming days.

Notwithstanding its comprehensiveness and passionate pro-Dalit stand, Anu's essay fails to note the contemporary dynamics of caste and therefore the framework it suggested suffers from consequent deficiencies. Although it transcends the Left phraseology of 'base and superstructure' which effectively distanced the Left from Dalits and consequently pushed both these potential forces of Indian revolution to margins, it has fallen prey to another stereotype of Dalitism which uncritically promotes reservations and seeks state largesse, which appears to have served the ruling classes interests better than that of Dalits. Expectedly it promotes proletarian solidarity across castes but does not provide clues how it would be accomplished except for listing out Dos and Don'ts. Without ruthlessly dissecting the causes of divergence between the Dalit and the Left movements; without acknowledging the reasons why Dalits tend to prefer Manu to Marx; without taking cognisance of the dynamics of contemporary castes and fathoming out causal linkages a framework for annihilation of castes perhaps cannot be possible. That however does not diminish the value of her contribution. It provides a perspective and platform for the people yearning for the end of this vile system to think through issues and enrich the theory and practice of revolutionary struggle. Acknowledging the complexity of castes, none other than D.D. Kosambi had noted way back in 1944 that any statement of a general nature made by anyone about Indian castes may be contradicted. If Anu had lived, she would have definitely rethought some of these things and corrected her thesis for I always believed she was an exemplar of a true Marxist, a revolutionary, who considered Marxism as a live science and not a scriptural dogma.

B-243, IIT, Kharagpur

10 December 2014