The August 1 judgement by the seven-member constitutional bench of the Supreme Court upholding the constitutional validity of the sub-classification of the Scheduled Castes reservations was historic and should have set aside all the legal and constitutional apprehensions about the issue. But the unsolicited “opinions” of some of the judges on the bench about introducing the “creamy layer” condition to the SC reservations predominated the response resulting in overwhelming negative reaction about the main aspect of the judgement — the need and power of the state assemblies to further sub-classify the castes within the SCs to facilitate more marginalised within the category to get their share of the diminishing cake.
The confusion among the semi-informed was compounded further by the reluctance of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main Opposition Congress in welcoming the judgement. On the other hand, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of the INDIA bloc openly opposed the judgement.
All these confusions, apprehensions, genuine concerns, and prejudices against the sub-classification of SC reservations manifested in the nationwide protest against the judgement on August 21. Although it did not have any reverberations in South India, it made an impact in North India. While opportunist political parties from both spectrums extended support to the bandh, notwithstanding their earlier commitment to sub-classification, there were some genuine voices expressing concerns about the possible polarisation it could cause, resulting in the breaking of Dalit unity, which the BJP has been trying to induce for a long time.
Even Chandrashekhar Ravan, the young MP from Uttar Pradesh who has emerged as a ray of hope for Dalits, has announced that he will intensify the anti-sub-classification movement from September 11 and defeat the designs of the governments to divide Dalits.
Moreover, some of the country’s leading progressive scholars, who are concerned about the oppressed, are also raising serious questions and apprehensions. Their concerns stem from the fact that the current neoliberal economic context is rendering reservations irrelevant. Furthermore, there is a limit to reservations as a tool of social justice. While intended to ensure ‘adequate representation’ in state services, reservations have an inherent limitation — they only achieve the upliftment of a small stratum within the community, rather than the overall progress of the community. In such a situation, when the oppressed need to fight for their existence and identities with even greater unity, these pro-Dalit intellectuals wonder if sub-classification creates a cleavage between Dalits and assists Brahminical and capitalist forces.
Although these cautious concerns cannot be dismissed, some opinions from these quarters are also fraught with incorrect diagnoses, and therefore, wrong prognoses.
The questions – misconceptions emanating against the subclassification broadly fall into the following categories:
- Scheduled caste classification is in itself based on untouchability and extreme social backwardness and hence forms a homogenous class. Therefore, finding further hierarchy and more backwardness among them is not factual and hence has ulterior motives
- Subclassification is the continuation of identity politics aiming at breaking the unity of the oppressed.
- Internal reservation is a continuation of the BJP’s politics aimed at abolition of reservation itself because no one had asked for internal reservation.
While acknowledging the caution and concern that these questions raise, let’s take a look at some historical and political issues that these questions have failed to consider.
Scheduled Castes — Homogenous externally, heterogenous internally
The root of all the above questions depends on how well we understand the breadth and depth of the Brahminical caste system in this country. Caste cannot exist without the hierarchy of superior and inferior. Thus, B.R. Ambedkar described it also as “graded inequality”. And explained it as “a ladder-less multi-storied structure wherein those above never come down, those below can never climb up”.
Is there no such stratification among the castes clubbed together as Scheduled Castes?
Untouchability is generally considered a prime criterion for being classified as a Scheduled Caste and untouchability itself is perceived as homogenous in its social operation.
In 2004, a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, which denied internal reservation in the E.V. Chinnaiah case, also put forward the same argument. But the seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court, which has interpreted this perception as wrong, provides several historical and contemporary evidence for its conclusion.
Neither Article 341 nor Article 366 (24), which pertains to the identification of Scheduled Castes in the Constitution, provides for definitive criteria as to who is a Scheduled Caste. After the Constitution came into force, the list of Scheduled Castes promulgated by the President in 1950 as per Article 341 was based on the ‘Government of India (Schedule Castes) Order-1936’ promulgated by the British in 1936 in accordance with the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935.
The Scheduled Caste criteria framed by the British in 1936 has a history.
Although the debate on reservation in British Indian territories started in 1916, Shahu Maharaj in Kolhapur and Wodeyar in Mysore province began an effort to identify the exploited castes and provide reservation in government jobs long before that. Although their emphasis was mainly on providing reservation to other non-Brahmin savarna castes, there were primary attempts to give reservation to predominantly untouchable castes that did not fall within the Hindu savarna caste framework. Untouchable castes were then known as Depressed Classes.
In 1916, for the first time in the British Indian territories, the debate on who should be called the Depressed Class began. An opinion that Adivasis, nomadic-criminal tribes and untouchables will be considered depressed classes took shape. In furtherance of this discussion, the then British Educational Commissioner, Henry Sharp, included a list of Adivasi, tribal, and criminal tribes — and also those who were not completely outside the savarna caste framework but extremely backward educationally, were considered part of the depressed class classification.
In 1919, the Southborough Commission used untouchability as a standard criteria for identifying the Depressed Class.
In 1931, census commissioner J.H. Hutton established the criteria for untouchability, defining untouchables as those whose touch was considered polluting by members of the savarna society. He identified nine social practices that could help determine untouchability, setting the standard for inclusion in the list of Scheduled Castes.
For example, does the savarna society use the water provided by that community? Do Brahmins provide religious services to that community? Do other communities in society, such as barbers and washermen, extend their services to that community? It also included in its list those groups who are considered untouchables not strictly based on their birth, but because of the profession they pursue.
The British “Indian Franchise Committee”, formed in 1932 as part of the Round Table conferences to grant Indians self-government, also had the responsibility of demarking separate constituencies for Scheduled Castes. For that purpose the Committee had to first identify who constitute Scheduled Castes in different provinces. The different reports the Committee got from different provinces showed how the concept of untouchability and its practice vary from region to region and also community to community among the potential Scheduled Castes.
For example, in some parts of North India, the report recognised that there may be a variance in the degree of restrictions based on the degree of untouchability. For example, a few castes may have been denied entry to a temple as compared to castes which were denied entry to the inner sanctuary of the temple.
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The report issued by the then commissioner of undivided Assam recorded the difference between the absolute untouchability experienced by the Jal-Chal castes, in comparison to untouchable Mahars, who were allowed to serve Hukka to savarnas. Similarly, Bihar and Orissa provinces also recorded that untouchability in their territories was not as severe as the untouchability practised in Madras province or entire South India.
Some of the Franchise Committee members like S.B. Rambe, C.Y. Chintamani and R.R. Bakhale go a step further and argue that untouchability exists only in Madras, Mumbai and Central Provinces, while untouchability in the rest of India exists not because of birth but because of profession. So they advocated that they should not be considered untouchables.
It was then that Ambedkar intervened in the argument and explained the principles of untouchability, arguing that it was wrong to impose the rigidity of untouchability as a uniform standard for determining who is a Scheduled Caste. Ambedkar explained that all forms of untouchability, rigid or not so rigid, stemmed from the same Brahminical notion of pollution and purity.
Not only that, when the First Scheduled List was announced by the President in 1950, out of the 25 castes in (present-day) Madhya Pradesh which were classified as Scheduled Castes, only nine castes were classified as SCs across the state.
Thus, although untouchability is the criterion for SC classification, it makes it clear that there is a difference in the severity and impact of untouchability. Thus, the Supreme Court order makes it clear that castes within SCs cannot be treated as uniformly affected.
In addition to that, the Usha Mehra Commission constituted by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) in 2007, through its empirical study especially with regard to the differential backwardness of castes in the Scheduled Castes list in the then undivided Andhra Pradesh, provides ample evidence that there is persistence of relative social discrimination between the Malas and the Madigas and also glaring difference in the educational status and representation. The Sadashiva commission constituted in 2006 to study the comparative backwardness of the SC communities in Karnataka has also provided sufficient empirical data to prove the same.
Thus, while the castes classified as Scheduled Castes are most exploited compared to the rest of the society, among them there is a differential impact.
Thus the Scheduled Caste category does not constitute castes with homogenous social, economic and educational level, since some castes within them are relatively more affected than the others and hence ill-equipped to avail the opportunity of reservation being grouped in the same class.
Therefore, internal reservation is the deepening extension of the principle of reservation, and the reclassification within the Scheduled Castes is complementary and not contrary to the constitutional goal of social justice.
Saga of the people’s movement for sub-classification
It appears from some statements made by the forces that organised the August 21 bandh against sub-classification that many of them are unaware of the decades-long people’s movement for sub-classification within the SC communities, particularly in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. As a result, some of them believe that sub-classification is a ploy to divide the Dalits, assuming that no one had demanded it. However, since the 1990s, the Madiga and Madiga-related communities, as well as the Arundhatiyar communities, have been fighting for internal reservation on the streets for decades in the south Indian states of undivided Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
It is because of these struggles that the then Andhra Pradesh government constituted Justice Ramachandra Raju Commission in 1996 and the Karnataka government formed the Justice Sadashiva Commission to gather empirical data to understand the relative backwardness of the castes within the Scheduled Caste category. Both the commissions had undertaken surveys and came out with verifiable, empirical and scientific data to prove the need for sub-classification among the Scheduled Castes.
The E.V. Chinnaiah’s judgement posed legal hurdles that prevented governments from implementing sub-classification. However, the chief ministers of Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu welcomed the judgement and expressed eagerness to implement it. As a result, none of the political parties or organisations in these states could openly oppose the judgement, even for appearances’ sake. Consequently, the August 21 bandh did not have any impact in these states.
But it is another matter that the apex body of the Congress party which is ruling Telangana and Karnataka has postponed any action on the judgement by declaring that the party would take a final stand on the matter after the Mallikarjun Kharge-lead committee give its opinions on the judgement.The national leadership of the BJP remains silent on the judgement although the BJP government in Haryana, that is facing assembly elections in September has declared its decision to implement subclassification, violating the Model Code of Conduct. The decision is not taken seriously because all the indicators suggest that the chances of BJP forming government in the state is very remote and hence this bold declaration. This analysis sounds logical because none of the other BJP lead states have made any statements about its implementation in their respective states.
Identity politics and the unity of the oppressed
Doesn’t internal reservation break the hard-earned unity of the oppressed as the Dalits into sub-castes?
Some Dalit friends and intellectuals are raising these apprehensions and are also justified in their worry if this sub-classification precipitates and consolidates differences and hatred among the subcastes instead of the unity.
Still this apprehension refuses to consider the reality of discrimination based on sub-castes, which is the root cause of the movement based on the identity of sub-castes. Hence their arguments do not reflect the complete reality.
In fact, Ambedkar described pitfalls of such grand standings about grand unity which do not consider the reality of identity-based exclusion in the context of the debate around the unity of Mumbai mill workers. Although the suffering of all the Mumbai mill workers were relatively the same, workers belonging to the untouchable castes faced additional discrimination in the workplace due to their caste identity. Most of the workers belonging to the savarna castes also did not want to allow Dalits to do work which required them to put their saliva on the yarn, etc for reasons of purity and pollution. The communist labour leaders who were then organising mill workers tried to rule out this question to maintain workers’ unity. Ambedkar had warned that labour unity will not be possible as long as this specific injustice within the broader injustice caused by this casteist Brahminism within the workers is not addressed.
Even in post-independence India, efforts to ignore caste-based discrimination within the existing system, or blindly build a nation, build class-based united struggles continued. But since caste identity-based discrimination was a reality, exploited castes-based struggles against caste-based exploitation arose as a parallel stream.
If the relatively advanced castes understood this discrimination and came forward to share the benefits equitably, there would not have been sub-caste based movements, neither it would have been possible for the BJP or the Congress to break the Dalit identity itself.
The lesson is just this — when exploitation is a reality, unity cannot be forged just by its denial. Unity is possible only by eliminating all forms of exploitation, particularly internal exploitation. There is a democratic intent to ask for a fair share in the identity struggles of the oppressed. And it arises when existing identities neglect them. Social justice can only be achieved when emancipatory movements include the identity of the oppressed. It is only through such inclusion the ‘divide-and-rule’ trickery of the ruling class could be defeated.
Limitation of reservation and internal reservations
Beyond all this there is a limit to reservation and internal reservation.
Reservation brings economic and educational upliftment to only one stratum of the exploited communities. And some representation in the state services.
But social justice and economic justice, which are the aspirations of the constitution, are not intended only for liberation of just a strata of the oppressed community. It aspires for liberation of oppressed communities and all-pervading equality. Hence demanding internal reservation will not be very effective without questioning — changing the unscientific Brahminical upper limit of 50% over reservation , and raising the demand to fulfil backlogs.
Especially in this present neoliberal era of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation, when the state is increasingly constricting and becoming an instrument for maximising corporate interests, either seeking representation within such a state without questioning its nature or demanding a fair share of the cake without questioning the diminishing size of the cake would be detrimental to the larger interests of the community and the country.
In today’s economy, where inequality has reached its peak, the richest 1% of India’s population holds 32% of the wealth, while the exploi
ted community, comprising 50% of the population, possesses only 3%. Social justice and economic justice is impossible without a complete overhaul of this unequal system.
If the system is to change, awareness among the oppressed about both the need and limitations of reservation, including internal reservation and unity and united struggle is essential. Therefore, it is vital to maintain this political awareness in the struggle for equality.
Shivasundar is an activist and a freelance journalist based in Bangalore.
