B.R. Ambedkar famously posited that “a nation is not a people synthesised by a common culture derived from a common language, a common religion or a common race. Nationality is a feeling of oneness which makes those who are charged with it feel they are kith and kin. It is a feeling of ‘consciousness of kind’. It is a longing to belong to one’s own group.”
Despite his exhortation, and the efforts of numerous governments after 1947, caste discrimination continues to be prevalent in India. Millions of Indians are systematically denied access to the great vaults of this nation and continue to be unequal partners in India’s prosperity.
This is exacerbated by the unspoken consensus among the select sections of the bureaucracy, the media, the corporate sector, and even political parties, that the BJP’s Kamandal politics was a necessary evil to reverse Mandal politics.
Designed to perpetuate caste hegemonies, this unstated consensus has deliberately stymied numerous progressive policy and programmatic measures meant to empower the people belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), and minority communities.
That is why there was concerted resistance to the release of the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data, or to conduct a fresh caste census (as the BJP government has stated in both the Supreme Court and in parliament).
This is why Bihar’s caste survey and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’s (INDIA) strident championing of the caste census offer a rare window of opportunity to meaningfully debate how India’s social justice paradigm can be deepened. Both moral and political considerations mandate that India leverage this debate to take a principled stand on some critical social justice issues.
Also read: Bihar Caste Survey: Why the BJP Is Jittery and INDIA Bloc Upbeat
INDIA’s stand on social justice issues
Morally, there are two reasons why the INDIA parties are taking a principled stand on social justice issues. Firstly, despite decades of reservations in government services, only 11.5% of the A-class administrative positions in India are occupied by SCs, and 13.5% by OBCs. Similarly, 95% of employed SCs are clustered in grades C and D, while 22.6% of OBCs are employed in Group C.
Similarly, a first-of-its-kind survey on the social profiles of senior decision-makers in 37 newspapers and television channels found that 90% of the decision-makers in the English language print media and 79% in television channels belonged to the ‘upper’ caste community. Likewise, while the average household income in India is Rs 1,13, 222 (approximately Rs 9,435 per month), ST, SCs and OBCs earned 34%, 21% and 8%, respectively. This is less than the national average.
As Ambedkar presciently noted, “by reason of our social and economic structure, (we) continue to deny the principle of one man one value” to India’s SCs, STs, OBCs, and minorities.
This structural discrimination is being exacerbated by the BJP government, which takes inspiration from M.S. Golwalkar’s argument that reservations are “divisive talk”, and that “we must cry a complete halt to forming groups based on caste…and demanding rights and privileges in services, financial aids, admission in educational institutions”. (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 351).
Consequently, the BJP government slashed the SCSP-TSP fund (renamed as the Special Central Assistance to SCs and STs) by 50%, looked the other way as gau rakshaks target Dalits for their vocations, undermined affirmative action by changing the unit of reservation, slashed and under-utilised the funding for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers, while its ideological collaborators have repeatedly asked for a review of reservations. All this, while atrocities against SCs/STs have increased.
In this light, conducting the caste census would provide a scientific basis to map socio-economic and educational backwardness for all communities, and not just the SCs, STs, OBCs, but also the economically weaker sections among the dominant, or ‘upper’ castes. This would ensure that India’s welfare programmes are customised.
Surely the targeted delivery of benefits and services to those really in need as well as the consequent curtailment of leakages/rent-seeking etc. are desirable goals for any government committed to furthering the public good. No one working in the national interest could possibly oppose this, although there are those who have myopically argued that conducting the caste census could unleash fissiparous tendencies and hence tear India’s social fabric. Sadly, such arguments reek of unchecked privilege.
Joint opposition parties meeting in Bengaluru. Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia
The need for championing the caste census
Politically, the INDIA parties must champion an inspiring vision premised on social justice because the BJP has methodically spearheaded the ethnicisation of Indian politics for its own politico-ideological ends.
Firstly, the BJP has symbolically accommodated the SC, ST and OBC community leaders in its party organisation and various cabinets. Arguably, this unfavourable inclusion is instrumental, for none of these leaders enjoys any real power or influence. However, it does offer upward social and political mobility.
Secondly, the BJP has leveraged these leaders to methodically reach out to the OBC and Dalit sub-castes, co-opt their icons and re-engineer their thinking towards a larger ideological agenda. This has paid rich dividends to the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, as the National Election Studies show.
Bucking earlier trends, 44% of the OBCs voted for the BJP in 2019, while only 27% voted for regional parties. Dissecting this even further, what emerges is that 41% of the OBC dominant sub-castes voted for the BJP, while 47% of the OBC sub-castes voted for it in the same election.
Thirdly, and most problematically, this is part of the BJP’s larger strategy to foster a macro-identity around Hindi, Hindu and Hindustan, and then cynically deploy this bloc against those that Golwalkar perceived to be the real enemies, namely Christians and Muslims (as well as ideological dissidents). Progressive parties cannot counter this by skirting around the caste census issue (or the allied issues that emanate from it). That would essentially mean giving a blank cheque to the Sangh parivar’s ideological goals.
The only way to disrupt the status quo is through normative and disruptive reforms, something the INDIA parties are doing by championing the caste census.
There are, of course, other allied policy issues flowing from the caste census debate that could very substantially deepen India’s social justice paradigm. These include making the media and the judiciary more representative, filling up the backlog in reserved seats, reserving seats for OBCs in legislatures, taking affirmative action in the private sector, etc.
However, they lie beyond the scope of this article, and perhaps even the political churning that is about to begin in India.
It is perhaps inevitable that the BJP’s aligned organisations will leverage these to caricature the caste census as antithetical to the interests of dominant, or ‘upper’ castes. It would, therefore, be expedient for the INDIA parties to anticipate this manufactured counter-revolution, and take measures to circumvent these by posing an inspiring economic and political alternative.
One of the ways they can begin to do this immediately is by extending reservations for the SC, ST and OBC communities in their respective party organisations, as the Indian National Congress has done. (Read Article XI-A[a] of the Congress Party’s Constitution reserves 50% of all posts in the party organisation for SC-ST-OBC-Minorities). That can be followed by other progressive measures that can be implemented through the governments.
Ultimately, any patriotic Indian interested in national integration will wholeheartedly support this rare opportunity to unleash India’s third democratic upsurge. This is because it will ensure that India’s constitutional promise is accorded to all Indians, regardless of their caste, creed or ideological inclination. This would go a long way in ensuring that no one gets left, or held behind. To paraphrase Jawaharlal Nehru, in the national interest, let us therefore collectively strive to rebuild the noble mansion of India.
Pushparaj Deshpande is the director of the Samruddha Bharat Foundation and editor of the Rethinking India series (Penguin).
