Let’s Talk Caste

In India, the questions of economic disparity and social disparity are intertwined. The two are rela­ted like skin and flesh. Over the past 70 years, many attempts have been made to address economic disparity, which, in essence, is an extension of social disparity, the fountainhead of all problems in the country. No wonder eradicating social disparity is key to economic growth in India. Today, farmers and labourers comprise 85 per cent of the population. Among them, Dalits and adivasis, who make up 25-30 per cent of the country’s population, are the worst affected by social disparity. This doesn’t mean, however, that farmers and labourers from other castes and people from religions other than Hinduism are not being suppressed as well.

The caste system has deep roots in Indian society. You can convert into any relig­ion, become a Christian or a Muslim, but your caste rem­ains the same. Your caste doesn’t leave you even after you adopt another religion.

Our history is full of struggles against social disparity:  think of Kabir, Guru Nanak, Namdev, Periyar, Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Mahatma Gandhi and many others, but we are yet to find a solution to the caste problem. Dalits don’t own land and other property. Most of them work as daily-wag­ers and their existence is hand to mouth. They are segregated and isolated from the rest of the people; their habitations are demarcated as Dalit colonies. A Dalit is suppressed, oppressed, exploited and ostracised in every way possible. He is almost a slave all his life. Even if he manages to overcome economic slavery, he still cannot break the numerous shackles of social disparity.

The caste system has been institutionalised through history in such a way that no government can do anything about it. It is like stagnant water waiting to be freed so that it can flow like a river. People who are exploited on the basis of caste want to break those shackles. To find out how we should go about eradicating the caste system, we must have a session in Parliament dedicated to discussing the issue.

Reservation has always been a big, emotive issue in India. People from the disadvantaged castes argue in favour of reservation while those from the privileged castes feel that reservation should be on the basis of economic disparity. It is so ironic. On the one hand, we like to ape the West, but, on the other, when it comes to affirmative action, we don’t want to follow them. We are selective in aping the West.

Martin Luther King, the leader of the Afro-Amer­ican civil rights movement, was assassinated in 1968, but today a Black man is the president of the US—that is a result of years of affirmative action. In India, however, despite reservation, we are unable to take full advantage of it; there are backlogs to fill in every sector. I think there is no Sup­reme Court judge who is from the SCs or STs. Even if a few are found in high posts, that is only symbolic and the numbers never match their proportion in the population. If one-third of India is not gaining anything, is that justified?

A Dalit has to face insults from birth to his death. Most people have difficulty with it, but it’s  good to understand this: what happened in Una, Gujarat, exactly mirrors what the Taliban does. Those who flogged the Dalits thought they were doing something laudable and had therefore made a video of the atrocity that went viral. Rohith Vemula said his birth as a Dalit was his “fatal accident”. Imagine the agony he must have gone through. Unless caste disparity ends, no government can function smoothly. Social disparity is the basis of all that is negative in the society. If the government wishes, I can come up with a blueprint on how to eradicate social disparity and the caste system from our country.

As told to Bula Devi

Slide Show

In contemporary times, caste violence can of course be ‘strategic’. Just like communal violence has always been. The novelty of the ‘beef controversy’ is how the two categories  have been merged.