A stir for casteist hegemony

The ilk of Hardik Patel and his hidden supporters want to pit the ‘better off’ among the ‘low’ castes against the rest of their caste people, saying it is their own caste elite who are responsible for depriving them. Thus through the divide-and-rule strategy, they want to nip in the bud any threat from the oppressed to the monopoly of the privileged castes over social, economic and political power.

The privileged classes are beginning to feel the pinch of a few under-privileged people being privileged over them for the first time ever in the very long history of exploitation, oppression and dehumanisation of a vast majority of people in India by the horrendous caste system

A typical scenario is being replayed in India again: the long-enjoyed privileges of the established elite under an iniquitous system are under threat by the idea of reservation and its limited implementation. Those who had enjoyed every advantage of and in a society are feeling threatened by the assertion of the hitherto exploited people.

The privileged classes are beginning to feel the pinch of a few under-privileged people being privileged over them for the first time ever in the very long history of exploitation, oppression and dehumanization of a vast majority of people in India by the horrendous caste system.

Do the privileged classes realise the injustice they dished out to so many people for so long and in the process, robbing them of their self-esteem, fallen in their own eyes, and hurting in their very souls, becoming mere shells of human being for being condemned for generations together to life-long inferiority! If they realised this, then their conscience would force them to do the right thing.

But whoever in human history gave up power, pelf and privilege meekly? Therefore, they will fight with all their might to retain their superior status, bad-naming the wronged as those without talent, ability and capacity or without “merit”. This is the broad message sent out by the Patel uproar in Gujarat whose face is that of a 22-year-old youngster called Hardik Patel.

His logic of either the super-rich Patel community being included in the list of communities deserving reservation or that only merit being recognized, in effect, calls for scrapping of reservation. In short, the Patel agitation is aimed at ensuring that the imbalanced social equation of the powerful and the powerless not be set right; that the oppressed not be empowered; that the age-old injustice heaped on the majority of the people by a small minority be continued without any let or hindrance.

Argument of merit is an affront

If the system of caste hierarchy is an obscenity, then the questioning of reservation in the guise of ‘merit’ being sacrificed is an affront to all thinking people. If the so-called meritorious students pay lakhs and crores of rupees to get admission into professional courses (the going rate in these parts of the world for a seat in MBBS is Rs 2 crores and for a PG seat, it is between Rs 3 and 4 crores) through ‘donations’ or ‘management quota’ it is not wrong. But if a student from the disadvantaged castes is given a seat on less marks, then all hell breaks loose.

And yet, however educated or elite a person from these castes becomes, or whatever high public positions they may occupy, their low caste status continues to dog them. Caste is a reality that the ‘low’ caste people live with and experience daily. I know of a university professor who sent away his children from his home town to the other end of the country to study to escape being labeled ‘low,’ ‘filthy,’ and ‘undeserving’ due to the caste into which they were born.

But the children could not escape there, too. Someone from their home town recognised them and asked in front of everybody if they did not live in “harijanwada” in their home town. Then there was this woman minister in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh who complained that she could not find anyone to work in her house as a maid because all who came looking for job were ‘higher’ than her in caste hierarchy. As for women from her own caste, they refused to bear the ignominy of serving a ‘caste-equal’ in an unequal position.

Camouflaging caste

There are any number of instances of such labeling and judging of a person’s worth through his/her caste. During a data gathering process for a research project, I met four young men, all graduates or Intermediate-pass, belonging to a nomadic caste. All the four youth were very aware of their situation in society, the need to get on top of it and they believed that the only one way of doing it was through education.

Two of the four youth who have regular jobs are paying for the education of their siblings, especially younger brothers, many times opposing their parents who would prefer to put the children to work rather than send them to school. Most of the educated youth of their community in the urban areas have taken to driving: cabs, cars, autorickshaws, goods trolleys, and so on.

They admitted that their caste draws sniggering and ridicule from others. They rue and curse their fate for being born in that caste. Nagesh, a cab driver, spoke of his experiences on long distance trips. On being asked by the customer if he tells them the truth about his caste, they keep their distance; they give him Rs 100 and ask him to eat in another hotel or at another table. If he lies and claims to belong to a higher caste, they invite him to sit at their table and share their food.

Asked if the young men had adopted the Sanskritised names on being exposed to urban living, they said their school teacher had helped them to re-draw their identity. The teacher convinced them to change their traditional names to modern ones so that they would not live with the burden of his name giving away his ‘low’ caste as he had his entire life.

So Madhavaiah became “Madhu,” Mallesh became “Mahesh,” Nagaraju became “Nagesh,” and Ushaiah became “Umesh.” Such is the tyranny of caste and caste-based discrimination. The stigma of ‘low’ caste follows one even in death. A group of ‘Beggar’ caste (Bicchamolu) in Nalgonda district in Telangana suffers such exclusion that they have no land even to bury their dead.

A few months ago when an old man died, the fellow caste-people buried him in a stream a few miles away as no caste group in the town would allow them to bury him in their graveyards. The ‘low’ caste people are accorded dignity neither while alive nor when dead.

Red herring

The argument that the better-off, the employed and the educated individuals who have made it through reservation should give up their ‘privilege’ of reservation for their children is a red herring introduced to negate the very concept of reservation. In the first place, what is the percentage of the population of different castes that has benefited from reservation in the last few decades? Secondly, how many of them have made it to IAS/IITs/Universities? Importantly, considering that the creamy layer principle is applied to on the basis of income criteria, how is it possible that children of these people are ‘grabbing’ the quota seats?

Besides, the OBCs, SCs and STs comprise anywhere between 60 and 75 per cent of the total population of the country. Their share in the reserved jobs is very small. So why is this small number of beneficiaries of reservation being asked to give up their small gains? Quite clearly, the upper caste elite have learnt well the lessons that their forefathers in turn learnt from the colonial masters whom they served.

The ilk of Hardik Patel and his hidden supporters want to pit the ‘better off’ among the ‘low’ castes against the rest of their caste people, saying it is their own caste elite who are responsible for depriving them. Thus through the divide-and-rule strategy, they want to nip in the bud any threat from the oppressed to the monopoly of the privileged castes over social, economic and political power.

By:Dr R Akhileshwari

(The writer is a Senior Research Fellow, ICSSR Project – The Other Backward Classes: Exclusion, Empowerment and Modernisation – Hyderabad)