One of the most compelling stories I’ve had the privilege of teaching first-year degree students in recent years is “The Cockroach” by the Brazilian writer Luis Fernando Verissimo. I usually begin my lecture by highlighting the profound importance of a constitution for a nation as geographically vast, demographically diverse, and culturally rich as India.
I then invite my students in Pathiripala, Palakkad, to briefly delve into the history of the American Declaration of Independence, with particular focus on its iconic second line, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’
Following this, I ask them to consider the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. After both these readings are done, we move to a more challenging inquiry: the abolition of slavery in America.
I pose a question that never fails to spark some reflection: If the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed on 4 July 1776, asserts with absolute clarity that ‘all men are created equal’, ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’, of ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,’ why was it necessary to abolish slavery through the 13th Amendment nearly ninety years later, on 18 December 1865?
How could slavery persist for nearly a century more in a nation that had already declared that ‘all men are created equal’?
These questions invariably lead my students to a sobering realisation: either the foundational document was inherently flawed, or the phrase ‘all men’ did not, at that time, recognise Black people as human beings. To further illustrate the exclusion embedded in the concept of ‘man’, I briefly touch upon the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted American women the right to vote in 1920, nearly fifty years after the abolition of slavery.
At this point, I urge my students to read the Preamble of the Indian Constitution more carefully. I aim to underscore the fact that the Indian Constitution, from its very inception, sought to eliminate the gross exclusions that America had permitted.
A remarkable instance of this constitutional spirit is the incorporation of symbols onto ballot papers during elections, ensuring that those who lacked literacy would not be excluded from universal franchise.
But my central point comes at a tangent. By guiding them through the Preamble, I seek to instil the understanding that these words are not merely dead letters printed on a page, but living values for which people have fought and bled. The Preamble encapsulates the countless struggles waged by the disadvantaged and dispossessed against the ruling elites who appear in various guises throughout history.
The words ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’ echo the rallying cry of the French Revolution and the spirit of late eighteenth-century France, while the word ‘dignity’ embodies battles closer to home: those of the Nadar women in nineteenth-century Travancore demanding their right to wear a garment to cover their breasts; of Ayyankali boldly donning a dress forbidden to his people; of untouchable women casting off stone necklaces imposed on them by casteist society; and of Ambedkar’s decision to renounce Hinduism.
In essence, the values enshrined in the Constitution have not been handed down to us from above by masters, judges, and elites, nor are they eternal. They are dynamic, dialectical, and forged in the crucible of struggle.
They were established on the streets by those who were denied power, position, and dignity – through peaceful and violent means, at the cost of sweat, blood, and life. If the ‘all men’ of the American Constitution now includes a Kamala Harris, it is not the result of the Constitution’s miraculous self-evolution.
This new meaning was carved out by innumerable struggles fought outside its pages. In this sense, ‘man’ remains a historically constituted entity, an incomplete project. New struggles for visibility, recognition, dignity, and equality will continue to shape and expand its meaning. Yet, unless we remain vigilant, the meanings we have already established could easily deteriorate, erasing the existence of many as human beings.
What happens in Verissimo’s story
Let us now consider Verissimo’s story. Its allure lies in its unsettling exploration of how established meanings can be suddenly upended. It is set in a restaurant, where a customer is indignantly confronting the staff about a dead cockroach nestled in his salade niçoise. He demands an ‘explanation’, asserting his right as a citizen living in a democracy. As the complaint ascends the hierarchy – from the waiter, to the maître d’, to the manager, and finally to the owner — every explanation falls short.
He says in the story: ‘I’d like an explanation. I am a citizen. I know my rights. This is a democracy.’ The customer’s demand for accountability eventually escalates to the state, implicating the municipal secretary, the minister of health, and, finally, the president of the republic, who offers an apology and compensation. When the customer refuses to accept any of this, the situation takes a darkly absurd turn: The minister of the army is called in.
The general arrives and, much like the maître d’, asks:
“Is there a problem, Sir?”
The man points to his salad. The general examines it, then declares:
“An olive. Great!” and promptly swallows the cockroach.
Given the history of military coups in Latin America in the twentieth century, this sudden reversal of meaning, this swift transformation of the unacceptable into the acceptable, the inedible into the consumable, resonates deeply.
By the time Verissimo published the story in 1992, Latin America had endured more than a dozen coups, many of which resulted in prolonged dictatorships, such as the Somoza family’s rule in Nicaragua from 1937 to 1979, Brazil’s dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, and Pinochet’s regime in Chile from 1973 to 1990.
With this history of coups in place, I remind my students that democracy is hard-won, constantly under threat from forces eager to dismantle it. In an instant – as many Latin American countries have experienced – the dead cockroaches of history and tradition can be presented as the tasty olives of today, while the cherished olive laurels of today, like ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ or ‘dignity,’ can be twisted into something dead and repugnant.
Suresh Gopi and the fantasy of monarchy
Finally, to give a mental picture of 19th century Kerala, of a Constitutionless world, I ask them to envision a society where women are forced to walk bare-breasted – a horrifying reality that has already unfolded in Manipur – or where Dalits are beaten to death for wearing something the Savarnas disapprove of – an atrocity that is all too common even today.
As I begin to speak with growing urgency, I remind them that when democracy is taken for granted, as a given, it is already on the path of decay. In fact, in Kerala, we have already landed in the 19th century! The future is already here.
During the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign, actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi referred to the supposedly enlightened and educated Malayali voters as “Prajas’’ – subjects of a monarchy – rather than as citizens, and ended up winning. His ‘subjects’ in Thrissur were unperturbed at being characterised this way.
But democracy, I continue, my tone now verging on desperation, is a living thing. It breathes through you, survives because you give it life. As the framers of our Constitution so wisely understood, democracy is something you must give to yourself, live, breathe, and defend every day. The moment you forget this, democracy begins to wither – that is the beginning of the end. The end of a way of life where you, at the very least, hold a semblance of control.
At this point, most students typically start to tune out, comfortably assuming that the story is set in a distant context, without any bearing on their exams. This attitude, perfected by students these days, can be disheartening. Yet, I press on, having become immune, and even indifferent, to such indifference over the years. Besides, the few eager eyes in the room tell me that stopping now would be a crime.
To jolt them out of their complacent thinking – that military coups and democratic crises happen elsewhere, to other people far removed from their lives – I remind them that Verissimo’s story was written in the last century, reflecting the models of democratic subversion available then.
But as Nancy Bermeo argues in her article “On Democratic Backsliding” and as Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explore in their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the twenty first –century paradigm of democratic erosion is different: It is more subtle, more insidious.
The legal ways of democratic erosion
Instead of overt military coups, democratic backsliding now occurs through legal means and within the framework of democratic institutions. Extending Verissimo’s metaphor of the dead cockroach, threats to democracy in our times no longer require a military general to force a sudden shift in the meaning of established ideals.
Instead, we have master chefs who skilfully blend the dead cockroach into the democratic salad so seamlessly that it escapes the notice of the questioning customer. The cockroach in the salad still poisons you, but slowly, gradually, and from within – making a visible resistance almost impossible.
Recent commentary, both domestic and international, has expressed deep concern about India’s trajectory, fearing a slow but steady decline in its democratic credentials. That was until the recent general election, where the results disrupted the ruling party’s ambitions of fundamentally altering the Constitution.
This election serves as a reminder that the people of this nation, despite many remaining illiterate or semi-literate, displayed a level of vigilance and wisdom that even the educated population of Hitler’s Germany failed to muster. Some analysts have gone as far as to suggest that it is the educated and urban classes who have fallen short this time around.
Whatever the truth, our experience suggests that the faith one places in the common man’s ability to resist democratic backsliding cannot be similarly placed in what should be the most powerful safeguard against authoritarian excesses: the judiciary. All too often, instead of holding the executive to account, our courts have followed its lead, sometimes with sealed cover operations.
This pattern is unsurprising, given our disheartening history of courts growing weaker under the dominance of non-coalition governments with brutal majorities, only to regain strength when coalition governments take power. What remains baffling, however, is how the judiciary, whether knowingly or not, becomes complicit in distorting the principles that the Constitution’s founders so carefully crafted.
To extend our metaphor, blending a dead cockroach into the democratic salad is not the judiciary’s job. Yet, the recent positions and norms established by our courts on matters of human liberty and dignity – from Stan Swamy’s request for a mere straw to numerous habeas corpus petitions – indicate that the fundamental character of the Constitution and its founding principles have been reduced to lifeless words.
It is no longer sufficient to declare that justice delayed is justice denied; we must assert that justice delayed warps the very essence of justice. In the fleeting microseconds of our fragmented, postmodern, social media – driven lives, delayed justice can turn the unjust into the just, as witnessed in the delayed and unsigned verdict on the Babri Masjid case.
Conversely, delayed justice can turn the just into the unjust, as evidenced by those languishing in our prisons without bail or trial for years – where the mere fact of their prolonged detention is taken as proof of guilt. No one has time to wait for the final verdict from a competent authority.
On social media, a Musk or a Rowling can pronounce authoritatively the sexual identity of a person they have no personal or intimate relationship with, and their verdict will spread fast and become viral, wreaking havoc on individual lives.
The dead cockroach in the creamy layer
One striking example of how the dead cockroach of injustice is being blended into the fabric of our democratic society is the majority verdict on the sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes in relation to reservations.
A cursory examination of the judicial reasoning across various Supreme Court judgments reveals a troubling pattern: When it comes to reservations for Scheduled Castes or other backward communities, empirical data, questions of meritocracy, and the 50 per cent ceiling on quotas take on a particular significance (see, for example, Indra Sawhney v. Union of India) – a significance that mysteriously vanishes when the issue is reservations for the Savarna, as seen in the case of the EWS reservations.
The Supreme Court, in this instance, in the Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India case, did not bother to question the absence of empirical data justifying the 10 per cent allotted. Nor did it show any concern for the 50 per cent benchmark that was so rigidly enforced to limit backward class reservations to 27 per cent, despite this class, as the Bihar caste survey shows, constituting more than half of the population in many states.
This inconsistent reasoning, which applies different judicial standards to different groups, stands in stark contrast to the principles enshrined in our Constitution – a document that was never meant to legitimise such discrimination. Ironically, the text that seems to underpin this inequitable approach is one that Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of our Constitution, famously consigned to the flames in 1927: the Manusmriti, a text revered by the RSS and the Indian right-wing.
How do we account for this inconsistency in judicial reasoning? A mere statement that this echoes the reasoning embedded in the Manusmiriti will not suffice. Whenever we find inconsistent judicial reasoning not aligning with the Constitution, we must travel beyond the realm of the Law, of consciousness, to the realm of the inconsistent, the unconscious, and psychoanalyse the knot. We must lay bare the working of the inconsistent that over-determines the consistent from without.
Freud’s ‘borrowed kettle’ is a famous example used in his classic The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) to illustrate the concept of inconsistent arguments. It is illustrated through a joke where a man is accused of returning a borrowed kettle, damaged. The man defends himself with three mutually contradictory statements: (1) He never borrowed the kettle, (2) The kettle was already damaged when he borrowed it, and (3) He returned the kettle undamaged.
Freud uses this example to demonstrate how people can employ multiple, even contradictory, arguments when trying to protect themselves from guilt or anxiety. In this context, the borrowed kettle represents the various conflicting justifications or rationalisations that the mind produces to deal with an uncomfortable truth or accusation.
The contradictory nature of the arguments is significant because it reveals the underlying anxiety or guilt that the person is trying to conceal.
What is the underlying anxiety or guilt that the Indian judiciary is confronted with when they pass judgement over reservations, justifying this power they wield by claiming to be the most meritocratic persons capable of doing so? Why are they taking to the obiter dicta mode to talk about merit and creamy layers even when these are not the principal questions at hand?
The judiciary’s club: Right of entry reserved
The Indian judiciary’s anxious preoccupation with meritocracy and the creamy layer may just be a smokescreen for its own well-guarded secret: It is the greatest beneficiary of a reservation system that dares not speak its name.
We call it the collegium system – a cosy club where judges appoint judges, often from one’s own family or friends’ circle, all without the inconvenience of a competitive exam, a luxury that most Indians can only dream of.
This magic trick has worked wonders for one particular caste group and a select few families, who have held the judicial reins for generations. Ironically, these privileged few never thought to apply their beloved creamy-layer test to themselves, nor did they bother to open up their appointment process to the transparency and meritocracy they so fervently preach about.
Instead, this tight-knit, elite network has cultivated an inner guilt, a nagging sense of uncertainty, that they seem to project onto Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) whenever they go on a moral crusade about merit and the creamy layer.
It’s a classic case of projection – where the unconscious doubts and privileges of the bench manifest in lofty, moralistic judgements that demand from others what they dare not demand from themselves.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the ‘Other’ is a critical concept in forming a sense of identity, where one’s self-perception is reflected through the gaze of the Other. Here, the judiciary, deeply entrenched in a system that privileges a select few families, unconsciously experiences guilt and anxiety about its own elitism.
To mitigate this inner conflict, they project their compromised meritocracy onto marginalised communities like SCs and OBCs, scrutinising their claims to reservations with an intensity that lets slip their own anxieties about legitimacy and fairness. This projection allows the judiciary to maintain an image of upholding meritocracy without confronting the inconsistencies within their own ranks.
Why is this judgment deeply flawed? What compels me to say that it upends the essence of our Constitution? As we saw, the spirit of the Constitution was not born in the halls of power but forged on the streets by those who had long been denied their humanity by self-proclaimed gods and demigods in human form.
When the BJP sought to appease the anger of the Dalit community by claiming that ‘according to the Constitution given by B.R. Ambedkar, there is no provision for a creamy layer in the SC-ST reservation,’ they were, perhaps unknowingly, absolutely correct.
For the architect of our Constitution, there was only one true remedy for the scourge of caste: its complete annihilation, nothing more, nothing less. The sub-categorisation judgement that reifies castes – transforming the collective identity of ‘Scheduled Castes’ into a fractured landscape of warring factions – was never part of Ambedkar’s vision.
This vision was not simply the personal mission of an indomitable man; it embodied the collective will of millions who battled caste oppression every day. The very act of reducing their bodies to mere symbols of this or that caste was a degradation the oppressed resisted from the start.
They recognised that this fetishisation was what had long defined and confined their existence. Consider the struggles led by two towering anti-caste activists – one unlettered and the other highly educated – and you will see the spirit Ambedkar carried from the streets to the Constituent Assembly.
The unlettered Ayyankali in Kerala established the Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham (The Organisation for the Welfare of the Dispossessed), while the internationally educated Ambedkar championed the cause of the ‘Depressed Classes’.
These two organic intellectuals, as Gramsci might call them, did not advocate for the individual castes into which they were born—the Pulaya in Ayyankali’s case and the Mahar in Ambedkar’s. Similarly, when the social reformer Sri Narayana Guru realised that people were reducing his identity to the caste he was born into, he declared that he had no caste.
Along came Gandhi and bestowed the title ‘Pulaya King’ on Ayyankali, a man who remains a pivotal figure in the democratisation of Kerala’s public sphere. Gandhi’s Mahatma-like gesture echoes Fanon’s assertion that ‘what is often called the black soul is a white man’s artifact’. While the Untouchables endeavoured to cast off their imposed identities, external forces continuously sought to rebrand them according to these very labels.
As the formerly Untouchable strove to transcend the dehumanising aspects of their existence by forging a new identity – as the dispossessed, the depressed, or as Dalits – there were always forces reminding them that they belonged to this or that caste.
These forces insisted that their claim to reservations must be rooted in pride in their caste identity, rather than in recognition of being a collective that sees caste as a homogenous experience of untouchability.
What does the data say?
The ruling party’s innocent act is nothing short of theatrical. ‘There’s no creamy layer in reservations!’ they cry, as if they haven’t already woven this tactic of caste entrenchment into their playbook. All this hue and cry is just another instance of their endlessly rehearsed double-speak.
Let us talk data. In the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s script, “Post Matric Scholarship for SCs: Scheme Guidelines”, Clause 5.3 clearly states, ‘Scholarships will be paid to students whose parents’/guardians’ income from all sources does not exceed Rs 2,50,000 (Rupees Two Lakh Fifty Thousand only) during the last financial year.’
The activist and scholar M. Geethanandan has repeatedly highlighted the absurdity of this stipulation: The government generously sets an Rs 8 lakh ceiling to define poverty for the Savarnas when they seek to avail EWS reservations, but for SCs, a mere Rs 2.5 lakh is the cut-off to access scholarships.
Let us get this straight – a Savarna remains poor until they cross Rs 8 lakhs, but Dalits are ‘rich’ at just Rs 2.5 lakhs? Like they say, it has become so easy for Dalits to get a job.
It is still easier for Dalits to be rich. If this isn’t a guideline ripped straight out of the Manusmriti, I don’t know what is. To wit, it says in Chapter 10, verse 129: ‘A servant should not amass wealth, even if he has the ability, for a servant who has amassed wealth annoys priests.’
Postscript: This exercise in thinking is not meant to ridicule the Manuvadis who can be found in every political nook of the country. They’re just sticking to the script, defending Savarna privilege with flair. Don’t bother asking them questions; they’ve developed an immunity to them. My real question is for our Dalit parliamentarians and legislators who contested and won from reserved seats: What were you doing when these guidelines were penned? And what are you doing now?
Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan is a poet and an Associate Professor of English at Government Arts and Science College, Pathiripala, Palakkad. Under the sign A/nil, he is the author of The Absent Color: Poems.
