Today, November 14, is Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary.
A narrative has been built in recent days that the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, while projecting himself as a secular and democratic champion of anti-colonial struggle, was reactionary and was against the Other Backward Classes and castes, given that he was opposed to reservation to the OBCs, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The debate surrounding OBC issues has garnered significant attention during the nationalist movement in various states. The princely state of Kolhapur, the old princely state of Mysore, and the princely state of Travancore were facing two important problems in the midst of the anti-Brahmin movement which was severely challenging the upper caste hegemony in the administration.
The first problem that they confronted were how to define backward classes or castes.
The second problem was how much reservation to earmark.
By that time, however, centennial census reports and ethnographic studies had unlocked a wealth of caste identities, leading to the formation of hundreds of caste organisations. The identification of the OBC category included individuals whose mother tongue was not English. This did not signal the end of the debate on caste, as nationalist leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, and Rammanohar Lohia, among others, continued to develop their own theories on the subject. Meanwhile, colonialists presented their seven theories on the origin of caste, contending that scriptures sanction it as the primary social structure. However, they also identified caste among various religions like Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, etc. even though Semitic or other religions disown caste as it goes against the basic grain of the religion. Lohia, a bitter critique of Nehru, was the one who justified the need for positive discrimination both through land reforms and reservation.
Where do we locate Nehru in this debate? Did he propose a novel theory regarding caste?
How did he look at the social structure of India? Did Nehru’s caste and class overlap?
Despite being a cosmopolitan, Nehru was able to connect with the local masses due to his political engagement at the grass root level, engagement with global leaders, and firm belief in expanding democracy. He refused to shake hands with Benito Mussolini or meet Adolf Hitler. His serious engagement with the peasantry, mobilising them on tenancy, unpaid labour, rent, landlordism, and other issues in Uttar Pradesh during the 1920s, demonstrated his understanding of the peasant class. In fact, his speeches in Rae Bareli in 1930 served as a catalyst for the peasantry to initiate a movement.
During the colonial period, Nehru not only encountered caste issues, but also deviated from typical stereotypes about the origin of caste. His deep intellectual understanding of Indian culture, tradition, and social structure is evident in his magnum opus, Discovery of India, which he wrote between 1944 and 1945 while incarcerated in Ahmadabad fort.
Although some of the social structures of traditional India are fundamentally changing, these social structures revolve around three issues: autonomous rural economies, joint families, and caste systems. Dismissing the theory of Indo-Aryan enslavement or extermination as the origin of caste, Nehru promoted a new theory – often overlooked in mainstream discourses – that each group was formed due to their specialisation in trade, services rendered, or their functional specialisation.
Nehru believed that Indian tradition, following the Indo-Aryan path, allowed freedom to each group, allowing them to maintain their culture and traditions while also accommodating new and emerging groups. This flexibility has even aided in the vertical movement of the caste system, as individuals from lower castes can rise to ‘higher’ castes due to their intellectual and philosophical pursuits.
Meanwhile, Indo-Aryans maintained their higher social status and continued to be classified as upper groups.
Also read: Nehru’s Other Indias
This specialisation has not only become a theory on the origin of caste; it even led to the formation of hundreds of ‘sub-castes’, although he never uses this term in his book. It is a fact that, like Alberuni and Chanakya, he identified four traditional castes with untouchables as a specific caste – particularly menial workers and scavengers. But they were within the caste structure, they were not part of the Anavaranacategory. Here we find a paradigm shift in Nehru’s analysis: Nehru seems to be like a social anthropologist, agreeing to the cultural reproduction of pollution and purity, social distancing, and endogamy or exogamy by caste groups.
He had serious objections to the Manusmriti because it enumerated the practice of various Dharmas, functions, and duties, but did not address the topic of rights in detail. He concluded his argument by asserting that the caste system and its associated practices in today’s society are entirely incompatible, reactionary, restrictive, and serve as barriers to progress. Nevertheless, he delved into the analysis of Buddhism and Jainism in India. The latter made concessions to the caste system, enabling it to withstand any attack. Meanwhile, Buddhism emerged from its resistance to ritualism, Vedic philosophy, and social structure, ultimately forcing it out of its native land.
One more interesting observation he makes is that Christianity, which came thousands of years later, also adopted the caste system; however, the same is equally affected by Islam in India. While documenting various aspects of the opposition to the caste system throughout history, Nehru came to the conclusion that the resistance groups themselves became caste groups over time. One more issue which is less known about Nehru is that he weighed in on the origin of the word ‘Hindu’, even though many argued that it is an Arab construct. He refers to the ancient Zend Avesta, to deconstruct this stereotype, approximating Max Muller’s argument.
Reservation and OBC
Was Nehru opposed to a caste-based census report in 1951? Was he opposed to the classification of OBCs and reservations? These are two questions that need to be addressed. In fact, the constitutional assembly witnessed severe debates on the issue of defining OBCs, reservation to SCs and STs, and minorities.
Nehru had a clear-cut position. He did not participate in each and every issue but his imprint, including that of Gandhi and Ambedkar, was very much visible. He voted for the removal of untouchability, backed the reservations to SCs and STs, and showed no resistance to the removal of reservations for minorities.
He accommodated his ideological opponents in his government – Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Ambedkar, etc. His initial response to reservations was evident in his intervention during the select committee report on the first amendment Bill in 1951. This occurred against the backdrop of the Madras high court’s decision to strike down caste-based reservations. In general, he agreed with the court’s decision, but he felt that it contradicted either explicit or implicit constitutional provisions. He acknowledged that 80% of India’s total population, comprising various groups, classes, individuals, and communities, was economically, socially, and educationally backward. To realise egalitarianism, every one of them should be given the opportunity to end the infinite multitude of social division. The Amendment Act made special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens.
The most important commitment from Nehru came when he said that, the educational, social, and material development of the backward classes is a sacred obligation that none of us can deny.
His concern for OBCs and caste identity was evident when his government appointed the Kaka Kalekar Commission to identify various OBCs, a task it accomplished by identifying 2,399 castes. Paradoxically, the commission had to function without the misleading caste census, which colonialist government had initiated in 1871 and concluded in 1931.
During the Commission’s inauguration, two issues emerged, clearly defining Nehru’s position. First of all, Nehru opposed using the phrase ‘backward class’. As the majority of the population is poor and backward, any new identity marker would belittle and stigmatise the castes. The second issue was the caste census. Patel opposed the caste census more than Nehru, as it portrayed India as a caste-ridden society at the time. Interestingly, when different states, including the Mysore state, Kerala, Bihar, or Tamil Nadu, formed backward class committees or reclassified the OBC list during the first and second decade of independence, Nehru did not oppose it, except in his 1961 letter to the then chief ministers, where he said he would prefer empowering the OBCs through education. When he introduced the Zamindari Abolition Act, his aim was to dismantle both the caste hegemony and class power relations.
Nehru exhibited a certain amount of ambiguity, which can be observed at two levels. On the one hand, Nehru asserted that the caste system established the foundation for democracy, however he refused to acknowledge the role of Cholas, our own Anubhava Mantapa, and cultural syncretism, with the exception of Buddhism. Secondly, for Nehru, caste was a given category rather than a defining one. For him, it originated in Arya-Dravidian conflictual relations and he believed that India’s trajectories of development would decrease the centrality of caste.
How could Nehru, an exceptional scholar who studied everything from Huein Tsang to Plato, and from the Vedas to the Upanishads, not be able to reconcile these contradictions?
One reason is that he oscillated between ideas of class, Gandhi, colonial theories and the idea of modern India, stressing more on class. Paradoxically, his idea of modern India remained as an incomplete project and his idea of caste took a backseat.
Muzaffar Assadi is former Dean, University of Mysore, Mysore.