Caste no bar in prison

 

Inside prisons, caste, religion, and economic status are not manifested through identity markers entered on paper alone. Names are asked, told, and revealed

A recent Supreme Court judgment has struck down discriminatory practices that have been found coded in prison manuals across India. While the judgment provides a concrete legal basis to advocate for reforms within prison manuals, the mere removal of discriminatory provision is inadequate as caste-based discrimination is deeply entrenched within the culture and practice of prisons.

Every morning, the nearly 4,000 inmates of Bihar’s central jail wake up at 5 am to the sound of a metal gong. The night had been spent in wards that are severely overcrowded. The wards are also organised along caste lines although this is not acknowledged officially. Upon entering the prison, the inmates are allotted a ward on the basis of their caste, be it upper caste, Dalit or Other Backward Classes. Each ward has its own toilets, which are almost always unsanitary. Some states had specific provisions in their manuals directing that only inmates from a certain community should be tasked with cleaning toilets. But even in states like Bihar which do not have any discriminatory provisions, Dalit inmates alone are given these ‘polluting’ and ‘degrading’ tasks. Between 6:30 am and noon, convicts are sent to work in prison-based workshops, making goods like mustard oil, bread, and wooden furniture. Here, too, caste plays a role in the allocation of work: the hardest tasks are reserved for Dalits and the more marginalised among the OBCs, while the clerical or more white-collar duties are taken up by the upper castes. This is not done officially either; it simply is the practice and culture of prisons across India.

Inside prisons, caste, religion, and economic status are not manifested through identity markers entered on paper alone. Names are asked, told, and revealed. If you are from one of the so-called upper castes, you would not be expected to do certain chores. If, on the other hand, you bear a surname such as Manjhi, Das, Rajak, Sada, Paswan, Chaudhari, Dom and Ram or any other name belonging to scheduled caste/scheduled
tribe communities — in Bihar, there are over 197 such groups including OBCs — then, according to prison manuals of several states, you’d be made to do work like cleaning toilets, washing laundry and other such tasks that are considered polluting and degrading.

Although Bihar’s manual contains no such provision, owing to the progressive politics that the state has incepted and pioneered under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and Karpoori Thakur in the decades after Independence, it would be naïve to believe that caste-based discrimination is not practised in the state’s prisons.

Pinku Thakur (name changed to maintain privacy) belongs to the Nai caste, a group traditionally seen as barbers. However, within Bihar’s highly stratified caste system, Thakurs, despite some social stature, often face caste-based marginalisation, especially in interactions with dominant upper-caste groups and State institutions like prisons. In 2023, Pintu was arrested under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, and accused of trading in illegal liquor. Although the charges against him were yet to be proven, Pinku was incarcerated as an undertrial in the central jail where his real
ordeal began.

Upon entering the jail, Pinku faced intense caste-based discrimination. Inside the prison, he was harassed by upper castes who imposed menial tasks upon him, singling him out due to his caste identity. He was forced to clean the toilets of the ward, wash the utensils used by other inmates, and perform personal chores for them. Pinku Thakur’s caste, though not as oppressed as Dalits, still placed him in a vulnerable position within the jail system where the unwritten codes of caste hierarchy dictated behaviour. Upper-caste inmates often refused to interact with him on equal terms. The prison guards, indifferent to his complaints, reinforced this discrimination by either turning a blind eye or tacitly approving of the caste hierarchy within the jail. Pinku’s repeated protests about his ill-treatment fell on deaf ears as the prison authorities were reluctant to intervene in what they deemed were ‘prisoner issues’. His dignity as a human being was eroded by this institutionalised casteism.

The discrimination Pinku Thakur faced is symptomatic of a larger issue in Bihar where the caste system continues to permeate all aspects of life, including the criminal justice system. Within the prison environment, caste-based hierarchies thrive, creating unequal power dynamics among prisoners. While undertrial prisoners like Pinku await justice, they are subjected to harsh social realities that mirror the outside world’s casteist structure.

Prison labour, in theory, is supposed to be shared equally among inmates; however, caste often dictates who does what. Lower-caste prisoners are typically assigned degrading tasks, such as cleaning latrines, picking garbage from wards, cleaning stinking dustbins and messy sheets, while upper-caste prisoners may dominate other duties or avoid such work altogether. In Pinku’s case, his ward mates, predominantly from privileged castes, imposed these menial duties on him as part of the social hierarchy that exists in the prison.

Sunny Manjhi (name changed to maintain privacy), a middle-aged man from the Musahar community in rural Bihar, was arrested in 2022 under the Bihar Prohibition
and Excise (Amendment) Act, 2022. The Musahar community is classified as SC, the lowest tier in the caste-based classification in Hindu religion. They are referred to as Mahadalits because they are often the most oppressed among the Dalit communities.

Since Bihar passed an Act banning production, sale and consumption of liquor in 2016, it has disproportionately affected the Musahar community. While the law was passed to address various social issues, it has inadvertently criminalised an entire community like the Musahars.

On his second day in prison, Sunny Manjhi was assigned the most dehumanising of tasks. He was made to clean toilets, scrub the floors of the cells and toilets, pick up waste from the prison and so on. He and the others from Dalit and OBC communities are not assigned the task of cleaning utensils because upper castes perceive them as untouchables. These tasks were imposed on him based solely on his caste identity.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau data of 2022, 65.9% of prison inmates in India belong to the SC, ST, and OBC categories. Although SCs and STs make up 25.2% of India’s population (as per the 2011 Census), their numbers in prisons are as high as 34%; this means one in every three prisoners belongs to the SC or the ST community.

For Pinku and Sunny, their prison tasks are not merely jobs; they are symbols of the systemic discrimination that has plagued their communities for generations. This reality reflects a broader issue faced by thousands of prisoners across India where caste-based discrimination continues to thrive in institutional settings.

Praveen Kumar is a PhD scholar at JNU and works with undertrials in Bihar’s prisons. Valay Singh is Lead, India Justice Repor

Source: Telegraph India, 30/11/24

Caste heat: Editorial on how SC/STs and OBCs face higher levels of work-time heat exposure

 Climate change is warming the planet at an alarming pace but not everyone, research has found out, is feeling the heat equally. A study that combined data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey and weather reports found that people belonging to the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes face much higher levels of work-time heat exposure than others. Between 2019 and 2022, in at least 65 districts across India, 75% of SC and ST workers spent 75% of their working hours outdoors. This is because marginalised communities continue to dominate occupations that rely on outdoor physical labour, such as agriculture, construction, mining or municipal work. These, in turn, come with an enhanced risk of exposure to extreme heat and related illnesses, including heat stroke that is life-threatening. Significantly, the ‘thermal injustice’ is not limited to the outdoors: several National Family Health Surveys have shown that marginalised caste groups have lower access to fans, coolers and air conditioners at home. The situation is worse for women. They not only face extreme heat outside but also bear an excess burden of household air pollution on account of cooking with polluting fuels. A 2015 study also found that more women walk to work than men, especially in the mornings, leaving them vulnerable to smog and air pollution. Yet another survey revealed that Dalit and Adivasi communities have fewer adaptation resources to combat the damage from events related to climate change since they continue to be deprived of socio-economic and political rights and face systemic discrimination.

India has a National Action Plan on Climate Change; states have individual climate action policies as well. But the vulnerabilities of caste-oppressed communities seldom form a part of these plans. There is thus a case for policy mediation to be sensitised to the intersections between caste and climate. For instance, data on heat and pollution deaths and ailments could be parsed by caste and gender to monitor the efficacy of policy changes. Affirmative action must also target the chokehold that caste has over labour, the choice of professions, as well as education and employment. Dismantling ancient prejudi­ces will take time. What can begin immediately though are interventions such as making breaks during peak hours of heat mandatory. Regular health check-ups of workers along with simple infrastructural modifications — the construction of shaded resting spots and public water dispensers — can be effective ways of making the respite from heat more democratic.

How caste comes into play when climate changes

 

Dalit and Adivasi communities have fewer adaptation resources to combat the damage from events related to climate change since they continue to be deprived of socio-economic and political rights and face systemic discrimination.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released the final part of the Sixth Assessment Report. This report is seen as one of the most important assessments which makes it clear that anthropogenic climate change has caused widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere. It’s already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damage to nature and people. The report stresses how vulnerable communities that have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected. Unlike most of the previous reports by the IPCC, the AR6 synthesis report stresses on international and internal inequality and the disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable communities, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.

How do we make sense of this report in India where the most climate vulnerable communities are Dalits, Adivasis, backward castes groups, nomadic and pastoral communities, traditional and small-scale fishers and small and marginal farmers, urban poor, women, and sexual minorities, etc?

In most part of India, the term climate change is slowly getting registered though its impact was being felt for more than a decade in India as variability in rain falls, changing monsoon patterns, increasing floods and heat waves, erratic weather conditions and coastal erosion, etc. As the Indian monsoon and rainfall patterns are changing significantly due to climate change, the agriculture sector, where 70 per cent of all farmers from the Scheduled Castes work as agricultural labourers dependent on daily or seasonal wages, gets hit first. As floods, heat waves, sea levels rise and extreme weather events are increasing, experiences from most part of India demonstrate how caste oppressed communities are not only disproportionately affected by them but get discriminated against during rescue, rehabilitation, and recovery from climate onslaughts.

Last year, Assam was flooded and around 197 people lost their lives and 2,35,845.74 hectares of crops were damaged. The sanitation workers (safai karamcharis) from the Banshphor (Scheduled Caste) community of Guwahati city had to work day and night to unclog drains and wash off the sludge in the city. According to the Safai Karmachari Andolan, a movement aimed at eliminating manual scavenging, approximately 98 per cent of all workers employed in this kind of work are Dalits and predominantly women.

Research has demonstrated how in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, one of the most drought-prone regions in the country, Mahar, Matang, Chambhar, Pardhi, and Koli-Mahadev communities bear the brunt of caste-based oppression, inequalities, and discrimination with recurring droughts in the region for decades.

As part of my research, in 2022, I traveled across South and North 24 Parganas districts in the state of West Bengal which are part of the Indian Sundarbans, one of the most climate vulnerable regions in the country. Most of the women from Munda, Bediya, Bhumij, and Oraon Adivasi communities I met complained about how their health is being impacted by the increasing saltwater content as a result of sea level rise. The women have to stand for several hours in the water to catch fish and collect crabs and mussels — a major part of their livelihood and diet.

Dalit and Adivasi communities have fewer adaptation resources to combat the damage from events related to climate change since they continue to be deprived of socio-economic and political rights and face systemic discrimination.

In the recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) in Egypt, India spoke eloquently about international climate justice and the loss and damage funds that developed countries have to contribute to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. However, India doesn’t address internal climate justice and inequalities within. How do we even think about loss and damage when our society is based on caste that ensure permanent loss and damage to Dalit communities for centuries? What about the loss and damage of Dalits, Adivasis, backward castes, nomadic and pastoral groups, traditional and small-scale fishers and small and marginal farmers, urban poor, women, and sexual minorities in India? Can the government of India acknowledge that caste oppressed communities have disproportionate losses and damages? Do these communities have any rights over the loss and damage funds? Though India has a National Climate Action Policy adopted in 2008 and all states have state climate action policies by now, caste and the vulnerabilities of the caste-oppressed communities aren’t part of most of these action plans. The action plans need to acknowledge and address caste and climate vulnerability and special protection measures need to be in place during climate event preparedness and during the onslaught of climate events and post that.

Along with class, gender, and race, caste needs to be acknowledged as a category by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. India should recognise caste and climate vulnerabilities of caste-oppressed communities and initiate measures to protect them, and these efforts should be part of the national and state climate action policies.

These special vulnerabilities should also be integrated into disaster and climate risk management plans, governance, climate risk preparedness plans, climate impact relief assistance programmes, and social protection coverage in the context of climate change.

Beyond that, there should be separate climate action plans and implementation funds for caste oppressed communities. Mushrooming climate, energy, and sustainability initiatives across the country, mostly led by upper caste and savarna professionals who are distant from the caste realities, is another challenge for caste to get any importance in these spaces. It’s also crucial that the climate justice movement in India, mostly led by the urban upper caste and savarna youth from major Indian metros, genuinely integrate environmental and caste justice questions into their campaigns. They also need to have honest conversations with the ongoing Dalit, Adivasi, and backward castes movements across the country that have been raising the issues of water, forest, land, environmental rights, and dignity for centuries.

Written by Ajmal Khan

Source: Indian Express, 16/04/23

BR Ambedkar said, ‘Caste System is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers’

 Earlier this week on April 14, Dr BR Ambedkar’s 132nd birth anniversary was observed. Dr Ambedkar remains one of India’s tallest leaders, the father of the Indian constitution, and an inspiration for generations of Indians continuing his struggle against caste oppression.

Today, we discuss a small excerpt from his classic undelivered speech, Annihilation of Caste. Written in 1936, the speech was meant to be delivered at a meeting of liberal Hindu caste reformers in Lahore. However, in light of its apparent controversiality, the organisers of the meeting revoked Dr Ambedkar’s invitation. Consequently, he self-published the speech which would go on to become arguably his most famous piece of writing.

Quotes from famous historical figures form an important part of the UPSC Civil Services Exam syllabus. This one becomes relevant for topics related to social issues and social justice.

The quote

“The Caste System is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers. Civilised society undoubtedly needs division of labour. But in no civilised society is division of labour accompanied by this unnatural division of labourers into watertight compartments … it is a hierarchy in which the divisions of labourers are graded one above the other.”

Responding to a commonly stated defence of caste (that it is just another name for division of labour), Dr Ambedkar succinctly yet profoundly describes the uniqueness of the caste system and why it is problematic.

Division of labour

The basic point of social organisation is to share responsibilities. In other words, living in a society means that no one person has to perform all the tasks required for their sustenance. The burden of these tasks is distributed in society, through what we call ‘specialisation’. Thus, a society has farmers who produce food, factory workers who produce goods, sweepers who clean buildings, cobblers who produce shoes, and so on. Over time, the division of labour has morphed and gained sophistication.

However, in almost all schools of thought, it is considered both necessary and inevitable. The issue surrounding it is rather about how this division is made – “who does what work” – and how remunerations are decided. This is at the heart of many discussions about different bases of injustice, such as class (why are factory workers paid a fraction of the amount a CEO is paid?) and gender (why is women’s labour at home not remunerated?/why are women expected to work at home”).

Division of labourers

Ambedkar acknowledges that the division of labour is necessary for society. However, caste goes far beyond being just that. This is because of two basic features of the caste system.

First, the caste system works on the principle of heredity – an individual inherits their caste, and thus their occupation, from their father. This means that if the father is a vaidya (doctor), the son must follow in his footsteps regardless of his own talents or proclivities. Through the principle of endogamy (marrying within one’s own community), the society is divided into “clear, watertight compartments”. This is why Ambedkar calls caste a division of labourers rather than labour – there is no scope for mobility and intermixing among castes (through taboos on things like interdining, untouchability, etc.)

If caste were just a division of labour, it would be possible for a sweeper’s son to become a priest and a priest’s son to be a sweeper. But that is not how caste society works. In fact, till this day, stories of social mobility are exceptions rather than the rule.

For instance, as recently as 2021, then Minister of State of Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athwale told the Rajya Sabha that 73.31 per cent of all manual scavengers were from Scheduled Castes, who, as per the 2011 census, make roughly 16 per cent of the population. Ambedkar calls this an “unnatural” division.

Gradation of these divisions

Not only does caste create watertight compartments in society, but it also grades these compartments on what French anthropologist Louis Dumont would call “the notion of purity and pollution”. Every occupation falls somewhere in this vast, often contested, scale. For example, intellectual work, such as reading scriptures, is considered to be the purest while manual work like cleaning toilets is considered to be polluting.

This is the basis of untouchability as well – people of castes who engage in certain tasks considered polluting are thus discriminated against as untouchables. Given that occupation is strictly passed down hereditarily, this gradation of individuals on the basis of the purity of their occupation is the ultimate injustice of caste.

While across the world, there are class divisions, which too treat some occupations as being better than others, the reason why caste is unique is that this treatment has a moral connotation, with certain tasks more virtuous than others. In fact, the justification for the caste system is done on moral terms – people are born into a caste based on the deeds/misdeeds of their previous life.

As Ambedkar writes in the following paragraph, “This division of labour is not spontaneous, it is not based on natural aptitudes… (the caste system) attempts to appoint tasks to individuals in advance – selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the social status of the parents.”

Written by Arjun Sengupta

Source: Indian Express, 17/04/23

The symbolism of inter-caste marriages

 

When countries worldwide are now integrating rapidly across color, racial, ethnic boundaries, the Indian government has to offer incentives for couples to marry outside rigid boundaries. Does inter-caste marriage then result in the anticipated social change and abolish untouchability?

Surrounding the anti-caste movement, a topic remains hotly contested. It is about inter-caste marriages as a way towards the annihilation of caste. Activists, thinkers and leaders are divided over this. Dr Ambedkar’s famous quote from Annihilation of Caste, wherein he stated that inter-caste marriages were “the real remedy for breaking caste”, is often cited. Ambedkar thought “fusion of blood” would create the feeling of kith and kin.

Ambedkar’s advice remains unheard. The Indian Human Development Survey reported that 95% of Indians still find partners within their subcastes. What is the situation of the rest 5%, who have braved the odds against tradition and caste? There isn’t data or satisfying coverage of them.

Many a time second- or third-generation educated Dalits who have managed to access quality education, and landed respectable (elite) jobs, find the prospects of marriage outside caste available to them. What then happens to their inter-caste marriages? Their union is unlike any other marriage. It is a political act — an achievement of love over caste. The Dalit person marrying outside caste, say to an upper caste, finds himself or herself duelling between the struggle of their community, and the culture of their spouses and in-laws. It’s akin to getting a good job in a company surrounded by oppressor castes. Rarely does one get a chance to balance both, and what is the outcome if they do?

The children of mixed-caste parents also grow up amidst profound misunderstanding of their complicated backgrounds. They are brought up in a caste-neutral or a-caste environment, which essentially means being subjected to the dominant caste parent’s identity. The closest they come to caste is while availing caste reservations or visiting their Dalit family. If they align themselves with the identity of the oppressed caste parent, which is need-based, they risk a backlash.

The Government of India launched a scheme in 2013 to encourage inter-caste marriages. It offers Rs 2.5 lakh if one of the partners is a Dalit. One of the requirements is a recommendation from a sitting MLA / MP and government officer concerned. The scheme wants to appreciate and promote the “socially bold step” of the couple. When countries worldwide are now integrating rapidly across color, racial, ethnic boundaries, the Indian government has to offer incentives for couples to marry outside rigid boundaries.

Does inter-caste marriage then result in the anticipated social change and abolish untouchability?

I can share my experiences. Of a savarna woman in the US who married a Dalit man and joined the Dalit community’s network. Often, during interactions, the savarna woman wouldn’t parse her background. The Dalit community’s culture, religion and festivals were different from hers. Unknowingly, the savarna woman would privilege her experiences. At some point, she forgot about her caste identity and started to claim Dalit identity passively. Since she was a student and an activist, she profited from the networks offered by her Dalit compatriots.

As she became more comfortable with the Dalit community, she began to take over leadership roles. She started to call out the Dalit leadership for their overrepresentation of males. Within a matter of a few months, she was representing Dalits at conferences and seminars.

What we see from the above anecdote is that the notion of inter-caste marriage has become a passport for those who have lived the life of oppressing Dalits directly or by virtue of their participation in anti-Dalit prejudices, to now suddenly assume the position of misrepresenting Dalits.

The second case is of a Dalit minister married to a Brahmin woman, who was asked about it on a Marathi talk show. He replied that it was because “Brahmin women are very good”, and appealed to all Dalit men to marry Brahmin women.

Coming back to Ambedkar’s speech quoted above, he further suggested that to break the caste system, it was pertinent to destroy religious notions, the sanctity of the Shastras on which caste was founded and not occasionally bring about “inter-caste dinner and inter-caste marriages, which were futile methods of achieving their ends”.

What Ambedkar is arguing is not against inter-caste marriage, but he is inviting us to go deeper, beyond social sanctions. He wants us to be participants in movements that would upend and eventually change mindsets.

Written by Suraj Yengde

Source: Indian Express, 6/02/22

Rise of Hindutva has enabled a counter-revolution against Mandal’s gains

 Hindu nationalism is generally defined as an ethno-religious movement. But it may have as much to do with social factors as with identity markers, as its last phase of expansion has been primarily a reaction to Mandal. Soon after the then prime minister, V P Singh, announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission report, Organiser wrote of “an urgent need to build up moral and spiritual forces to counter any fallout from an expected Shudra revolution”. And when Mandal II happened, the same newspaper argued that the “Congress-led-UPA government at the Centre is bent upon destroying the last bastion of merit…”. After the BJP was defeated in 2004, and again in 2009, it became urgent to hone a strategy that would enable it to come to power and prevent the deepening of policies that went against its Hindu nationalist ideology and the interests of its base.

The brand of national-populism that Narendra Modi had initiated in Gujarat was the perfect alternative. It could transcend caste barriers in the name of an existential defence of Hindus against threatening Others (by resorting to polarisation techniques) and attract OBCs and even Dalits, not only because of the polarisation but also because of the plebeianisation of the BJP, which used to be identified with the upper castes until then. Modi himself came from a backward caste, had developed the chaiwala narrative and pretended that he had been victimised by the English-speaking establishment of Delhi — a feeling many OBCs shared. After all, many of them had started to emancipate themselves after Mandal, but they had not succeeded in joining the middle class. Modi could exploit their frustration — all the more so as he promised to apply the “Gujarat model” for creating jobs.

While the BJP already had the support of the urban, upper-caste middle class, Modi brought to the party the OBC plus vote. The percentage of OBCs who supported the party jumped from 22 per cent in 2009 to 34 per cent in 2014 and 44 per cent in 2019. These figures explain the rise to power of Modi’s BJP, and, correlatively — but paradoxically — the comeback of upper-caste politicians. In the Hindi belt, 45 per cent of the BJP MPs were upper caste in 2014 and 2019. This over-representation of the upper castes was reflected in the BJP’s ticket distribution. If one removes SC and ST candidates from the picture, 62 per cent of all general category MP candidates of the BJP in the Hindi belt were upper castes as against 37 per cent for all other parties’ combined. In the government that Modi formed in 2019, 47 per cent of the 55 ministers were from the upper castes, 13 per cent from the dominant castes (including Jats, Patels and Reddys), 20 per cent were OBCs, 11 per cent were SCs and 7 per cent from the STs (plus one Muslim and one Sikh).

Parallelly, the Modi government has transformed the reservation system. First, the erosion of the public sector has resulted in a steady decrease in the number of jobs reserved for SCs. At the same time, the number of civil service candidates shortlisted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) dropped by almost 40 per cent between 2014 and 2018, from 1,236 to 759. Second, the creation of a lateral entry in the Indian administration has diluted the quota system. Third, the introduction of a 10 per cent quota in 2019 for the economically weaker sections (EWS) has altered the standard definition of backwardness and de facto reserved such a quota to upper castes who were not that weak. (By setting an income limit of Rs 8,00,000 per annum to qualify under EWS, the government has made over 95 per cent of the upper castes eligible for this quota).

Besides, BJP leaders have started to eulogise the moral superiority of the upper caste in public. For instance, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, BJP leader from Rajasthan Om Birla, declared: “Brahmin community always works towards guiding all other communities… hence, Brahmins are held in high regard in society by the virtue of their birth.” BJP leaders have also displayed caste-based observances that reflected their belief in the notion of impurity. After Yogi Adityanath was elected Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Hindu priests made elaborate arrangements for purifying rituals at the sprawling chief minister’s bungalow that had been previously occupied by Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The Sangh Parivar attempted also to enforce the value system of the Hindu upper castes. While vigilante campaigns launched against “love jihad” targeted Muslims, lower castes have been collateral casualties. This is not new. Twenty years ago, when Babu Bajrangi, the Ahmedabad-based Bajrang Dal leader, “rescued” Patel girls who had eloped with Muslim or Dalit men, he made sure they would marry within their caste. Incidentally, Adityanath declared in 2014: “Muslims who want to become Hindus will be purified and we will form a new caste for them” — a clear illustration of the role of caste as a building block of society.

Similarly, “gau rakshaks” also attacked Dalits who did leather work. In 2016, in Una (Gujarat again), Dalit leather workers were accused of cow slaughter and beaten up by Hindu vigilantes while they were skinning a carcass. Vigilante groups played a similar role vis-à-vis the conversion of Hindu Dalits to another religion. The ghar wapasi movement also affected them. In 2018, for instance, Bajrang Dal activists in UP reportedly reconverted a young Dalit who had become a Muslim.

If vigilantes were doing it before, what is new is the passing of laws against conversion or the regulation of slaughterhouses. Once again, Dalits are at the receiving end. In Gujarat, those who want to convert to Buddhism need to get permission from the District Magistrate since 2003. Whether the same problem will result from the anti “love-jihad” ordinance in UP remains to be seen. But the inclinations of the state find expression not only in laws and ordinances but even in the conduct of the police. This evolution is well illustrated by the way Dalits have been singled out in the state’s action against so-called “urban Naxals”. While searching the houses of one of the accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case, the police reportedly asked, “Why are there photos of Phule and Ambedkar in your house, but no photos of gods?’’ And to the accused’s daughter, they said: “Your husband is a Dalit, so he does not follow any tradition. But you are a Brahmin, so why are you not wearing any jewellery or sindoor? Why are you not dressed like a traditional wife?”.

The BJP’s rise to power may, therefore, result, not only in a post-Mandal counter-revolution that has enabled upper-caste politics and policies to stage a comeback but also in the promotion of some upper-caste orthopraxy and ethos via state vigilantism. The new dispensation exemplifies a style of control that is as much based on political power as on the enforcement of social order, something very much in tune with the RSS’s tradition.

This article first appeared in the print edition on February 10, 2021, under the title “The return of upper-caste politics”. Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London

Source: Indian Express, 10/02/21

Sexual violence in rural India draws on hierarchies of land, caste, patriarchy

 

Hierarchies of caste, class, and gender intersect to form a cocktail of horrors for the women of rural India — we must understand these nuances in order to form any policy that meaningfully tackles gender-based violence in India.

Since the Bhanwari Devi rape case in 1992 and the Khairlanji rape and massacre in 2006 to the Hathras case in 2020, successive Central and state governments have failed to address sexual violence as the multi-dimensional issue that it is. Hierarchies of caste, class, and gender intersect to form a cocktail of horrors for the women of rural India — we must understand these nuances in order to form any policy that meaningfully tackles gender-based violence in India.

Caste is the fault line that runs through rural India, the parts I call home. My constituency is in the rural and agrarian district of Ambedkar Nagar, with parts that lie in its much more famous neighbour, Ayodhya. I grew up in the Ambedkar Nagar (then part of Faizabad district) of the 1980s, where gunda raj was the only raj. A lot of that has changed now, due, in part, to an increased police presence and a steady urbanisation of people’s aspirations. But what has remained constant is rural India’s obsession with the caste order. This is how society has functioned for millennia: The lower castes have served the upper castes as potters, labourers, masons and cleaners, while the upper castes work to keep the status quo, adopting a few lower-caste families along the way as serfs in the world’s oldest feudal system.

In the political economy of post-Independence India, land is the currency that reigns supreme in the hinterlands. Land is class, power and honour. Its exclusive ownership is the basis of maintaining the caste order. The dominant castes in a particular region have traditionally been the largest landowners, and the benefits of the Green Revolution and the neo-liberal economic order have disproportionately benefited them and seldom the landless labourers who belong overwhelmingly to the lower castes.

But the post-Independence politics of Bahujan-Dalit mobilisation began challenging these ancient hierarchies. The reservation guaranteed by Babasaheb Ambedkar witnessed an emergence of a politically and economically influential sub-caste of Dalits in each state of the country. With the advent of Bahujan politics in Uttar Pradesh, oppressed castes found themselves represented in positions of power. This was an affront to the existing order. As a highly coveted resource, land is a flashpoint of conflict: In the Khairlanji rape and massacre, the upper castes retaliated brutally and bestially against the Bhotmanges, a Scheduled Caste family in the village, after the Bhotmanges filed a police complaint in In traditionally patriarchal societies, women are the currency of honour. A family’s, a community’s, a caste’s honour is inextricably tied to the “honour” of their female members — their purity, their morality, their chastity. Sexual violence operates on the nexus of land, caste, and patriarchy. It becomes a tool to maintain the status quo of land and caste. Sexual violence against women from lower caste communities is seldom about the individual woman; more often than not, it is about robbing the honour of a community, a caste, a family.

In the war of land and caste, women are both collateral and weapons. During land disputes between two caste groups with a large differential of power and influence, women’s bodies become collateral damage. But there is a different dynamic in conflicts among caste groups who are relatively close together in the caste (and class) order. When strongmen from one group pay a threatening visit to the property of another group, the defending group will bring their women out of the home, making them stand with the men. This is a deterring tactic — if threatened or harmed by the strongmen, a woman’s complaint warrants Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (outraging the modesty of a woman).

That police officials often fall in favour with the dominant caste groups has been much discussed. But it is because SHOs and SPs are under pressure from the administration to not register sexual crimes under their jurisdiction, since these cases make them targets for transfers and dismissals. This fear of bureaucratic reprisal sets the apathetic tone for investigations as well. The retaliatory cases of violence against women that are registered after land conflicts make it harder for genuine cases of sexual assault to get their due process.

Any attempt to tackle this situation can’t focus on police reform, caste discrimination, patriarchy and reforms in land ownership alone. We must take an intersectional approach that targets all of the issues. Land ownership reform must tackle the irregularities of demarcation and the lack of proper records. Sound policy involving all stakeholders should also tackle the illegal constructions on abadi land and banjar zameen. The goal of annihilating caste cannot be achieved without mammoth efforts in educational, professional, and social integration of lower castes into every field, be it healthcare, judiciary, education, entertainment, or sports.

In tandem with land and caste reforms, we must tackle the persistence of patriarchy in our society. “Women’s empowerment” is a buzz phrase for political and corporate organisations, but we must view these promises with a critical eye: In the last few central budgets, the Ministry of Women & Child Development has under-utilised its funds for multiple programmes aimed at women’s empowerment. We must demand more representation of women in positions of power — be it through reserved seats in MP, MLA, and MLC elections, or the judiciary and corporate boards. We must work for quality sexual education and consent training for our youth, with the aim of not just preventing sexual assault but also equalising and normalising healthy relations among members of different genders and sexes. And lastly, we must bridge the gender divide in access to the transformative and emancipatory power of consumer technology.relation to a land dispute.

Written by Ritesh Pandey

Source: Indian Express, 4/01/21

How Thakurs have dominated UP politics since Independence

 

Scholars agree that there is a close relationship between land ownership and socio-political mobility of a caste community

The dominance of Thakurs in the polity of Uttar Pradesh has been a point of discussion after the alleged rape and subsequent death of a 19-year-old woman from the Dalit Valmiki community in a Western Uttar Pradesh village. The accused in the Hathras case are four upper-caste Thakur men. The Thakur community has dominated the social and political landscape of northern India in general and UP in particular. In terms of sheer numbers, the caste composition of the village where the incident took place is an indication of the same. Out of the 600 families living in the village, nearly half are Thakurs, another 100 happen to be Brahmins, while Dalits comprise 15-odd families.

Who are the Thakurs?

In the caste-based structure of Indian society, Thakurs stand right below the Brahmins and belong to what is known as the warrior caste. Anthropologists say Thakurs and Rajputs are almost synonymous with each other. The community is also the predominant landowners in large parts of north India.“Although cultivation is not a caste occupation of the Thakurs, they have traditionally owned large-sized farms and cultivated them with hired labourers in the region for generations and thus have developed managerial skills for relatively efficient farming,” writes sociologist Satadal Dasgupta in his article ‘Caste dominance and agricultural development in village India.’

Scholars agree that there is a close relationship between land ownership and socio-political mobility of a caste community. Renowned sociologist M N Srinivas, well-known for his work on caste, has observed that three important requirements for the dominance of a particular caste in an Indian village — land ownership, a relatively high ritual position, and numerical strength.

The disproportionately large amount of land owned by Thakurs in UP is established by a study conducted by a December 2016 study published in the Economic and Political Weekly titled, ‘Identity equations and electoral politics: Investigating political economy of land employment and education’. The study surveys over 7,000 households in 14 districts of UP and comes to the conclusion that while “upper caste Hindu groups accounts for 15 per cent of the sampled households, they emerge as the biggest owners of land, controlling close to 30 per cent share of the total cultivable area.” Within this group, the Thakurs’ share in land is 2.17 times their proportion in the number of households.

“The Thakurs lost a lot of land during the land reforms of the 1950s and 60s. This was particularly so in western UP, where the Hathras incident has taken place, where under Charan Singh the reforms were carried out very forcefully,” says sociologist Satendra Kumar. “But the beneficiaries of these reforms were the Other Backward Castes (OBC). The Scheduled Castes continued to be dependent on the upper castes. Thereby Thakurs and Brahmins continued to exert power.”

Yet another source of power for the Thakur community is the fact that UP had a high concentration of princely states. “If you look at the genealogies of the Thakur politicians from the state, a majority of them belonged to the royal families. For instance, V P Singh was the Raja of Manda,” says Kumar. Other notables include Raghuraj Pratap Singh, popularly known as Raja Bhaiya, who is an independent MLA from Kunda constituency. He is a descendant of the royal family of Bhadri. Chandra Shekhar, who became the eighth prime minister of India, belonged to a powerful zamindar family in Eastern UP.

Thakurs in UP politics

It is a well-known fact that caste has played a central role in the shaping of the political landscape of UP, especially in the last 30 years. In a 2017 research paper, titled ‘After silent revolution: Marginalised Dalits and local democracy in Uttar Pradesh, North India,’ Kumar suggests that politics in UP can be broken down into three main phases. In the first phase, lasting from the Independence to the 1960s, the Congress dominated the political arena and leadership was primarily concentrated among the Brahmins and Thakurs. The second phase was from the 60s onwards, when land reforms and positive discrimination brought social mobility to a few middle castes like Yadavs, Jats, Kurmis and Gujjars. During this period, UP got its first Thakur chief ministers in V P Singh and Vir Bahadur Singh.

The third phase of UP politics, beginning from the 1990s, is what Kumar calls the era of ‘silent revolution’. “This phase is associated with the rise of Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BSP, which mobilised the lower strata of society against the higher castes using slogans of social justice, equality and demands for a greater share of power,” he writes. Despite the seeming upliftment of lower castes during this period, a closer examination reveals how the caste hierarchies remained unaffected.

“For instance, it has been observed that when the SP wins elections in UP, the Thakurs emerge as the largest group in the state assembly, and in the scenario of BSP’s victory, none other than Brahmins occupy the maximum number of seats,” states the EPW report. It adds that “together these two castes do not constitute more than 15 per cent of the population of the state, but in each election they have held more than 25 per cent of the seats in the assembly.”

It was in context of the dominant status enjoyed by Thakurs in UP that Mulayam Singh Yadav brought in Amar Singh in 1997 as a Thakur face, and in the next few years, Thakurs became one of the biggest caste gAs far as the lower castes are concerned, Kumar in his article notes that social mobility among them has not been uniform. While the Jatavs acquired political visibility, the Valmikis remained excluded from formal village politics. “Moreover, the Jatavs and Valmikis failed to emerge as a coalition group against the dominant castes due to their deem socio-ritual divisions. The past associated with scavenging and ritually polluted acts made Valmikis the lowest in caste hierarchies even in the eyes of the Jatavs who are still not ready to accept Valmikis as their equal brethren and political partners,” he writes.roups in Yadav’s cabinet.

However, the ‘silent revolution’ did create a restructuring of caste politics in UP, in the sense that some sections of Dalits under BSP and Yadavs under SP acquired dominance, which created a frustration among the other castes. “After the Babri mosque incident, BJP never came back to power in UP for the next 20 years. The upper castes had a strong feeling of discontent. Consequently, BJP was successfully able to bring together the Thakurs, Brahmins, the non-Yadav OBCs and the non-Jatav SCs, in their project of Hindutva mobilisation,” says Kumar.

“Now that a Thakur is the chief minister, the caste is more dominant. It is true that caste aggression increases the moment the community’s member is the leader,” says social scientist Badri Narayan.

While a renewed political dominance of the Thakur community cannot be ignored, yet, the history of the state since Independence shows that no matter who is in power, the upper hand enjoyed by this land-owning community has remained largely unshaken.

Further reading:

📌 ‘Caste dominance and agricultural development in village India.’ by Satadal Dasgupta

📌  Identity equations and electoral politics: Investigating political economy of land employment and education’ by Prashant K Trivedi, Srinivas Goli, Fahimuddin, and Surinder Kumar

📌  ‘After silent revolution: Marginalised Dalits and local democracy in Uttar Pradesh, North India by Satendra Kumar

Source: Indian Express, 15/10

What does it mean to oppose Brahmanism?

Anyone who adheres to the principles of the Indian Constitution is automatically anti-Brahmanical

A few months ago, a chilling report appeared in Deccan Herald stating that in 2017, 210 cases of atrocities against Dalits occurred in the urban districts of Bengaluru and 106 in its rural districts. Likewise, Kerala reported 883 cases of such crimes between June 2016 and April 2017. Other reports said that there has been a 66% growth in crimes against Dalits in the 10-year period of 2007-2017.

The horror of these statistics is made vivid when one examines concrete events. On April 12 this year, 200 people attacked a small group of Dalits for swimming in the Bhadra river in Karnataka. As they thrashed these people, the perpetrators screamed that the river belongs exclusively to the upper castes. Evidently, Article 15 of our Constitution is not worth the paper it is printed on. It remains toothless, impotent, ineffective.

What kind of thinking underlies these brutal attacks of social violence in which innocent folk are targeted merely because they belong to a particular caste? Since most atrocities revolve around the basic issues of land, wages and entitlements, poverty and powerlessness are viewed as the cause of such violence.

But such explanations do not go deep enough because they leave out the prime mover behind such atrocities — Brahmanism. This precisely was B.R. Ambedkar’s contention, who argued that without a robust movement against Brahmanism, Dalit emancipation is impossible. But then, we must ask what exactly is being opposed? What are the core features of Brahmanism?

Not ‘anti-Brahmin’

For a start, opposing ‘Brahmanism’ does not entail being ‘anti-Brahmin’. To do so would imply that all Brahmins are responsible for these atrocities. This is as preposterous as ascribing blame to all Muslims for any wrong committed in, say, the reign of Alauddin Khilji, or all British people for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre or, for that matter, all Hindus for the lynching of an innocent Muslim. We should not fall prey to this crude notion of collective responsibility. In a society which is riven by caste, a person may belong to the caste of Brahmins but not adhere to the core ethic of Brahmanism. He may even have morally disassociated himself from it. The resolution to burn the Manusmriti and thereby oppose Brahmanism was taken by Ambedkar jointly with G.S. Sahasrabuddhe, a chitpavan Brahmin.

Indeed, Ambedkar went even further. In a speech at the G.I.P. Railways Depressed Caste Workers’ Conference in 1938, he claimed that “when I say that Brahmanism is an enemy that must be dealt with, I do not mean the power, privilege or interests of Brahmins as a community”. On the face of it, this seems odd. For, what else could Brahmanism be except a defence of the power, privilege and interests of Brahmins as a community? In fact, this statement is not that perplexing.

Take an instance from our own history. The Rig Vedic society of 1500 BCE had a community of ritual specialists that transmitted its ritual related know-how from one generation to another. Others, the political rulers or ordinary householders, did not possess it. This group of Brahmins was granted some privilege on account of the knowledge it possessed. For satisfying the ‘religious’ needs of members of other communities, the group was even accorded respect not owed to others.

This produced an inequality but the resulting hierarchy was fluid, contingent and reversible. This contingently generated superiority of Brahmins was not systemic or integral to the structure of society, and therefore not necessarily demeaning to others. This sacrifice-centred Vedic Brahmanism is not to be conflated with the Brahmanism Ambedkar despised and wished to destroy. One should refuse to conflate the privilege of such ritual-performing Brahmins with Brahmanism.

A deeply conservative ideology

What then is Brahmanism? It is a sociopolitical ideology that encodes a memory of an ideal past and a vision of society in the future, one in which Brahmins occupy the highest place not only as exclusive guardians of a higher, spiritual realm but also as sole providers of wisdom on virtually every practical issue of this world. They possess superior knowledge of what a well-ordered society is and how a good state must be run. More importantly, their superior position in society and their superior knowledge stems from birth. This makes them naturally, intrinsically superior to all other humans, so superior that they form a separate species (jati) altogether. Nothing can challenge or alter this fact. No one becomes a Brahmin, but is born so.

A person’s acts may determine the position he occupies in the next life, but not in this one. Of course, this is true not only of Brahmins but of every other jati. The position of each jati is unalterably fixed at birth. The ati-shudra, the ‘untouchable’, is born into and therefore must occupy the lowest, most inferior rank; no action of his can alter this fact. This sociopolitical ideology makes hierarchy necessary, rigid and irreversible.

The hierarchical social order, it follows, corresponds to the natural order of things. No one can exchange his position with that of another, or move up or down. Any attempt to do so is morally wrong. Dalits, according to this view, must remain in ‘their place’ and if they try to move up, they must be put down.

Brahmanism then is the most perfect form of conservatism, a status quoist ideology par excellence, entirely suitable to elites who wish to perpetuate their social status, power and privilege. Paradoxically, this is the also the reason why it spread everywhere in India and beyond and why it endures: regardless of your religio-philosphical world view, if you are a privileged elite, you would find this ideology irresistible.

So, there can be Brahmanical Buddhists or Jains. And those who convert to, say, Islam or Christianity may still continue to embrace this sociopolitical ideology. Many Muslims and Christians, for all practical purposes, are Brahmins or Thakurs who continue to inferiorise Muslim or Christian Dalits.

Brahmanism naturalises existing power, privilege and higher status. The kings love it, the wealthy merchants and landlords are happy with it. Indeed, because it gives them power over ati-shudras, even the high-placed shudras in this system of graded inequality are willing to acquiesce to it. In short, everyone at the top finds it appealing because everyone below is required to carry out the task as dictated by his current social position and to not ask for more. Anyone who consents to, endorses or justifies this hierarchical order, regardless of his caste, creed or gender, is then a ‘Brahmanist’.

Because this ideology is fundamentally against any kind of social mobility, it restricts individual freedom; because it is totally enamoured of hierarchy, it is ineluctably inegalitarian; and because it separates one group of human beings from another, it is deeply incompatible with any idea of fraternity. No wonder Ambedkar defined Brahmanism as the negation of the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity. This makes Brahmanism and the Indian Constitution fundamentally opposed to one another. Anyone who sincerely adheres to the core principles of the Indian Constitution is automatically anti-Brahmanical. And one committed to Brahmanism disabled from embracing the values enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

Rajeev Bhargava is a political theorist with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi

Source: The Hindu, 23/07/2019