Gail is someone whom I am aware of quite well, this
is an article that was written about a decade and half back (just about the time
when the Congress on "Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerance", was held in South Africa, in 2001). Amazingly these
issues were pushed under the carpet with Gandhian ease!! It’s time for opening
up to global scrutiny. Indian elitizens have reasons to ignore these and carry
on as they have, there seems to be nothing amiss in the garden of muck. The reality
though is that they are being scrutinized, and they stand exposed. It is not out of place to
mention that Gail was not born Indian, therefore the necessary clarity, that
Sharmas and Mishras (and ofcourse Pandes) will never understand.
Not that I am an admirer of BBC, it has got juvenile,
the last stroke was puerile (ridiculous) obsession with anachronism of our time called monarchy. The feudal India too loves it, its how they stay connected. A woman from
dumb country New Zealand (could you believe, they accept British monarchy?!! I would
like to know what aborigines/ Maurois have to say on this) was rolling over for
monarchy. Amazing dimwit, that one. It is in the same context that Sharmas have
crept in without much shame!! They have in few decades established these as part
of culture, ideally this woman should be asked to get out. But then it is BBC,
they have to 'sex up' things! As Gail mentions “The sun has set over the great British
Empire; but not over the Caste Empire”
Discrimination that must be cast away
THE proposed World Congress on "Racism,
Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance", (Durban, South
Africa, August 31 to September 7, 2001), has provoked a long-overdue debate on
caste. Caste today enjoys unprecedented political leverage in this country. The
political establishment argues, nonetheless, that since constitutional
provisions for dealing with caste-based discriminations and disabilities are in
place, caste is no longer a problem waiting to be addressed. At the same time,
the protagonists of dalit identity have had considerable success, especially in
recent years, in globalising their grievances. The United Nations, in the
meanwhile, has become bolder in rejecting the erstwhile dogma that the
"internal affairs" of nations should not be interfered with. Those
who remain stuck with the mind set of nation states, though, will take a while
longer to get used to this changing reality.
Given the
track record of tenacious resistance to social reform, it becomes regrettably
necessary to expose the pathology of caste practices to global scrutiny. Sticking
plaster over festering wounds is not known to help in healing them. They are
healed best in exposure. The more we deny dignity and development to our dalit
brothers and sisters and try to keep this scandal under wraps, the surer we are
to invite scrutiny and embarrassment in a globalising world.
However, the Government, stage-managed by the
caste lobby, is keen to forestall the proposed debate. The strategy of
obstruction in this instance is two-fold. The official objection articulated by
Soli Sorabjee, Attorney General, is that caste being an issue internal to this
country, the U.N. should refrain from meddling with it. He argues, further,
that bringing caste into the ambit of this conference will dilute the focus on
race. The latter in particular is a curious argument. The U.N. Congress is not
envisaged to be an academic exercise on race, but an initiative to address the
evils of "intolerance and discrimination" in whichever form they
exist. Else, the words "Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" would not
have found a place in the ambit of the conference. The basic question is not if
caste is generically identical or related to race. It is if caste perpetuates
intolerance and discrimination as race does. The mandate of the world body is
not to shoot down race or caste, it is to rid the world of intolerance and
discrimination in its myriad forms.
In the meanwhile, a segment of the intelligentsia
has launched itself into endorsing the establishment's stand. Prof. Andre
Beteille has protested vehemently against equating caste with race.
"Treating caste as a form of race," he writes, "is politically
mischievous; what is worse, it is scientifically nonsensical." Even though
he concedes that "the practice of untouchability is reprehensible and must
be condemned", he feels obliged, nonetheless, to insist that caste is not
"a form of racial discrimination". It is not Andre's case that the
caste system is free from "discrimination". Like Vivekananda and
Gandhiji, he finds "untouchability" repugnant. Condemn it by all
means, but let not caste be polluted by having it discussed alongside race. Due
to his image as an ideologue of liberal individualism, Andre grants that casteism
deserves to be condemned. But that does not prevent him from objecting to the
way the U.N. proposes to deal with the issue of caste. The underlying logic
amounts to this. "Caste is obnoxious. It must go. But the U.N. should
leave it alone". That is clever; for if the U.N. does not question caste,
assuredly no one else who matters would.
The Gujarat earthquake is a recent illustration
of the discrimination native to the casteist mindset. Kuldeep Nayyar, one of
our most respected journalists, has this to say on the discrimination that
vitiated relief operations in the quake affected areas. "The criteria for
distribution of relief," he wrote, "are said to have been caste,
creed and religion. High caste Patels did not allow relief vehicles to reach
many places because the population living there belongs to lower castes, which
the Patels describe as 'the disease-ridden people'." This is distressingly
similar to the situation in Gujarat that Ambedkar describes in his book,
Annihilation of Caste. "In November 1935, some untouchable women of
well-to-do families started fetching water in metal pots. The Hindus looked
upon the use of metal pots by untouchables as an affront to their dignity and
assaulted the untouchable women for their impudence".
India was at the forefront of globalising the
opposition to Apartheid. We were among the earliest to honour Nelson Mandela
for undoing this discriminatory system. Even so we are averse to debating caste
objectively. In contrast, when the protagonists of the caste system began
targetting a minority community in certain parts of the country, the Prime
Minister found it appropriate to have a "national debate" on
conversion. Given the prolonged history of caste atrocities, shouldn't there
have been a series of national debates on caste, so that the dalits too could
have told their part of the story? As long as we are shying away from this
long-overdue exercise, how can we convincingly argue against a global debate on
caste?
Swami Dayanand, founder of the Arya Samaj, blasted
the citadels of orthodoxy and proved beyond doubt that the correct
interpretation of the Purush Sukta of the Rig Veda not only repudiated the
birth-based caste system but also supported the Varna system based on one's
Guna, Karma and Swabhava, i.e. Talent, Action and Aptitude. Dayanand advocated
inter-caste marriages and uplifted dalits to the status of Aryas. He also
denounced the very concept of race by insisting that all of humanity is one
race and any discrimination on the basis of colour or form was an abomination.
The Indian establishment should proudly appropriate the great legacy of Swami
Dayanand and his Vedic insights.
As a tribute to the legacy of another of India's
greatest sons, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, India should proclaim from Durban that both
race and caste are inhuman institutions and they deserve to be cast out, lock,
stock and barrel.
Race and caste leave indelible marks on their
victims, physically and psychologically. Various attempts have been made by
their apologists to invent scriptural sanctions for them. The Dutch Reformed
Church in South Africa, for instance, deceived itself into believing that
Apartheid was compatible with the biblical world view. The Church of England,
for long, dragged its feet in condemning this obnoxious system, largely because
of the mammoth investments the Church had in South Africa. The prolonged
silence of the Church universal in the face of such a scandalous treatment of
human beings is at once inexplicable and inexcusable. How on earth could the
Dutch Reformed Church preach that all people are created in the Image of God
and also justify racism is a riddle that is hard to unravel?
Apparently, caste too claims its sanction from
scripture: an allegation acceptable only to those who do not either know or respect
the Vedas. Ironically, the very fact that scriptural legitimacy had to be
invented for caste proves that it could not have been justified or legitimised
in any other way. It is not rarely that scripture is used and abused to defend
the indefensible. In point of fact, caste is a post-Vedic invention meant to
perpetuate the religious, social and economic domination of a few over the
rest. Despite the battle cry issued by social and religious reformers like
Buddha, Nanak, Kabir, Dayanand, Narayana Guru, Jyotiba Phule and Ambedkar,
caste discrimination continues to afflict millions in this country.
Caste, like race is exploitative, discriminatory
and anti- developmental. Its virulence can be gauged from the fact that though
originally a creation of the medieval Brahmanical priest- craft, the abominable
caste system has spread its tentacles into those religions that admitted
converts from Hinduism, such as Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. It has not
spared even a great social reform movement like the Khalsa Panth, launched 300
years ago, by the warrior-saint Guru Gobind Singh. The invidious character of
the caste system has even divided the Dalits into disunited fragments,
disabling them from breaking out of this social prison. Decades after B. R.
Ambedkar issued the clarion call for its annihilation, caste continues to
dominate the social, cultural, religious and political horizon of India. The
sun has set over the great British Empire; but not over the Caste Empire.
Hence the eagerness of our Government to
forestall the proposed U.N. debate. It is common knowledge that the sole agenda
of the Sangh Parivar is to perpetuate the iniquitous caste system under the
pretext of Hindu resurgence. It is a measure of the prevalent spiritual
illiteracy that this gross misrepresentation has managed to sway many in this
country. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, "In religion there is no
caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest may become a monk
in India and the two castes become equal. The caste system is opposed to the
religion of Vedanta".
In the euphoria that accompanied the birth of the
Republic, it was widely believed that the curses of casteism and communalism
would wither away with the rise of secularism and scientific temper. Precisely
the opposite has happened. An intolerant and casteist perversion of Hinduism is
asserting itself politically. The major institutions of our society and culture
are being ideologically colonised. Policies and priorities are being tilted in
favour of the upper castes and to the disadvantage of the dalits and
minorities. The rights and guarantees enshrined in the Constitution are being
eroded. A palpable allergy to dissent is becoming the order of the day. Shadows
of despair are lengthening over "the India of our dreams".
In the emerging, carefully choreographed media
debate on caste, it is doubtful if the voice of the victims of caste oppression
will be heard at all. Even if it is, it will be formatted strictly within the
academic and conceptual parameters set for this debate by the protagonists of
the caste order. This is only to be expected, as they are in a position to fix
the terminological and ideological framework for this debate. It is naive in
the extreme to expect that there can be a fair debate as long as one of the
parties enjoys the exclusive right to fix the rules. Hence the rationale for a
global debate that could ensure a level playing-field for both sides. The
invidious trick that the social, cultural and political elite have played all
through history is to invent the scruples that shape human perceptions and
options from within. Once these are internalised, the advocacies of the elite
seem logically inevitable. Today irrational scruples are being worked up
against linking race with caste, even though discrimination and endemic
injustice vitiate both. These arbitrary scruples are a far cry from the plight
of the caste victims. Sadly, they do not have the polemical weapons to counter
this rhetorical offensive.
The time has come to call the bluff on the
immorality of the scruples of the establishment. The reeking injustice of
perpetuating caste oppression and the irreligion of justifying this aberration
in the name of religion must all be seen for what it is. A world free from the
scandals of destitution and discrimination, a society where all are free to
fulfill their potential, where none is arya or "pariah" for being in
the right or wrong wombs, is the minimum goal towards which we need to move
together as a nation. If the forthcoming U.N. conference urges us to take a
step in this direction, we should avail ourselves of that chance rather than
relapse into defensive disarray.
The discriminatory nature of caste as well as
race is duly recognised by the Constitution. Article 15 (which outlaws
discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth) and
Article 17 (which in effect accepts the existence of caste-based discrimination
and its effect of untouchability as racial discrimination) are instances in
point. Likewise, Article 29 offers protection against caste-based
discrimination in admission to educational institutions. The recognition of the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as victims of caste discrimination over
the centuries underlies the need to provide for reservation in the Lok Sabha
and the legislative assemblies of the States (Articles 331 and 332). Statutory
provisions for reversing the ill-effects of discrimination do not make sense
unless caste-based discriminations are both prevalent and rampant.
The stark reality of discrimination that plagues
a fifth of India's population continues to stare us in the face. This can no
longer be hidden nor justified. Our stature and future as a nation depend on
the willingness to acknowledge mistakes and the readiness to correct them,
rather than on the stubbornness in denying their prevalence or the adroitness
in defending them. At any rate, the question of masking the true nature of the
caste system does not even arise; for it is not confined to Indian territory.
From here, it has spread to our neighbouring countries and, in that sense,
caste-based discrimination is not, strictly speaking, an "internal
affair" of our country. The fact that this sub-human pseudo-religious
mechanism has survived for so long and that it continues to be ascendant does
not prove that it cannot be eradicated. It is unlikely that the caste system,
despite its rare genius for survival, continues to remain immune to the
challenge of the global order, with the vulnerability of nation- states implied
in it, and the inevitable subaltern ferment in the wake of an unprecedented
celebration of human awareness.
This is not a time for academic hair-splitting.
It is a time for bold and forward-looking initiatives. The hangers-on of the
old order will have to realise sooner or later that their customary framework
of discourse has already given way to a global frame of reference. This is
bound to rob their rhetoric of the semblance of plausibility it enjoyed till
the rise of the global order. Caste is a blatant anachronism in a globalising
world. The sooner this is realised, the better it is for the country as a
whole. The attainment of an egalitarian society free from the stains of
casteism, communalism and corruption, rather than erecting some temples here
and there, should be our authentic "national aspiration".