Turning the caste clock back
by
AJ Philip |
It’s a major shift in the government’s policy
TWENTIETH-CENTURY social reformer from Kerala Sree Narayana Guru taught the people, “Ask Not, Say Not, Think Not, Caste”. He spent his whole life fighting the obnoxious caste system, which prevented intermingling of people and closed the doors of temples to people belonging to the “untouchable” castes. It was so rigid that Swami Vivekananda called the state a “lunatic asylum”.
The Guru would have turned in his grave when 82 years after his death, on May 7, the Government of India announced its decision to ask every citizen of India the name of his caste during the census enumeration now under way in the country.
The last time caste was included in the census was in 1931 when the British ruled the country. The nationalist leaders saw such caste-based enumeration as an attempt to keep the people divided in line with the colonial policy of “divide and rule”.
When India became independent in 1947, a conscious decision was taken by the founding fathers of the Constitution not to promote the caste-based identities of people. Some of the national leaders set an example by discarding their own caste names in a bid to promote egalitarianism. However, an exception had to be made in the case of the lowest of the low castes and the adivasis or tribals, who were classified as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes respectively.
This had to be done because, by popular consent, they needed the crutch of reservation (affirmative action) for membership in the legislative bodies and for jobs and admissions to educational institutions. Oppressed as they were for centuries, they could not be expected to compete with the upper castes all of a sudden.
Though the reservation was originally for a 10-year period, it had to be extended every ten years because of political compulsions. No political party could afford to antagonise the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes.
A large majority of the Hindu society belongs to what is known as the intermediary castes like the Yadavs and Kurmis in the North; Sri Narayana Guru himself belonged to the Ezhava caste, which is the preponderant caste in Kerala. Though they lagged behind the upper caste Brahmins and Kshatriyas, socially and educationally, there was no provision of reservation for them until 1991 when the then VP Singh government implemented the Mandal Commission recommendation granting reservation to the “socially and educationally backward classes” in government jobs.
The decision evoked violent protest from the upper castes who, very soon, realised that political power had already gone out of their hands and if the backward castes retaliated, they would have a harrowing time.
Such was the “aversion” for castes that there was hesitation even in recognising the ‘backward castes’ by that term. Constitutionally speaking, reservation is not for the backward castes but for the socially and educationally backward classes. As recently as a few days ago, Home Minister P Chidambaram, while replying to the debate on the demand for inclusion of caste in the 2011 census, virtually ruled out such a possibility by listing out the difficulties involved.
But it did not take long for Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to announce that caste-based counting would be done, signifying a major shift in the government’s policy. What prompted the about-turn was the majority view reflected during the debate in Parliament in which the Yadav triumvirate – Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Sharad Yadav – played a significant role.
Given the caste composition, neither the ruling Congress nor the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party can afford to overlook the demand. In agreeing to the proposal, it is a Herculean task that the government has taken upon itself. There are over 2,000 caste groups in India.
Listing the caste of each of the 1.18 billion people would require elaborate training for the lakhs of enumerators, mostly schoolteachers. And all this has to be done in about 10 months when the enumeration would be over so that the census figures can be published, as per the present schedule, by the middle of next year.
The track record of the census department has been confidence-inspiring; it never allowed its operations to be hit by floods, droughts or even wars. Thus, there is hope that the targets, however late they are set, would indeed be met.
The ongoing census is unique in the sense that apart from gathering the usual details like gender, religion, occupation and education of the people, information about the availability of the Internet, drinking water and toilet facilities would also be gathered. Also, clubbed with the census is the plan to photograph and fingerprint every citizen above the age of 15 so that he has a national identity card like the one in the US.
Though caste was not officially promoted during 63 years of Independence, it could not be wished away, either. Political parties would always look at the caste composition in a particular constituency before fielding a candidate. In the absence of reliable data, they would guesstimate on the basis of the 1931 census figures.
Even in social life, caste plays a major role, though few would admit it; a lady journalist in Delhi was allegedly killed by her parents, both highly educated, because, she had fallen in love in with a fellow journalist who belonged to a lower caste. Such killings are not infrequent in neighbouring Haryana, where khap (caste) panchayats are a law unto themselves. Elsewhere too, caste-based organisations have been growing strong.
Seen against this backdrop, the Central Government’s decision to count heads on the basis of caste is realistic. The flipside of the decision is that it will exacerbate caste feelings and divisions. Few realise the tragedy inherent in the 21st century India going back to a system that social reformers like Sree Narayana Guru found unacceptable in the 20th century!
(The writer is a New Delhi-based senior journalist)
Oman Tribune |
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