Anand Teltumbde 
Shivasundar, a longstanding friend and comrade, wrote an article in The Wire on August 29, accusing the opponents of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the sub-classification of the Scheduled Caste quota of “negation of reality, equality and unity.” His concern, one understands, stems from the commitment to the downtrodden.
Therefore, when the verdict came to favour the minor castes within the SC category, which did not benefit from the reservation, like a good progressive person he jumped to uphold it, and, in the process, allowed his judgement to be warped with emotions.
I was particularly surprised because he has written this piece after reading my two articles, in Leaflet and in Scroll.in. The first one does acknowledge the issue but argues that no amount of sub-classification can solve the problem of unequal distribution of reservation benefits and proposes an elegant solution to the tangle without referring to the castes. I had also cryptically mentioned that all these exercises may be futile; diverting peoples’ attention from the reality that the space for reservation is fast contracting under the impact of the neoliberal policies of the government and the influx of job-eroding technologies. The second one focused on how the verdict tended to help the Bharatiya Janata Party’s agenda and also its discontents. He was not satisfied, as he conveyed to me. But the reasons given were quite off the mark.
Foremost, as a political activist, I expected him to understand that the demand for sub-classification is political. Anything relating to reservation is. I was surprised that the keen observer in him could ignore the fact that the BJP had promised sub-classification in their election manifestos for 2014 and 2019 elections. Wooing the minor castes and communities into its fold has been the major stratagem that distinguished BJP from other parties. It inherited it from its parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which had found virgin land among Adivasis to silently work on their Hinduisation plans. When all other parties focused on the generic Dalit, the BJP silently found out the minor ones, dug out their caste heroes, made them into icons with soft layers of saffron and thus got them into its fold. The best illustrative example (but not the only one) is Suhaldev, a hero of Pasi caste, whom the BJP-RSS combine characterised as a Hindu Dalit who fought against a Muslim invader. The combine, along with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, organised fairs to celebrate the Suhaldev legend.
Sub-categorisation is another opportunity that they grabbed to co-opt them en masse. This strategic context cannot be ignored while dealing with the issue.
As I wrote in my second article, during the last Telangana elections, Narendra Modi assured the Madigas sub-classification and in exchange their leader, Manda Krishna Madiga, who had spearheaded the Madiga Dandora movement for sub-categorisation in the mid-1990s publicly announced Madiga support to BJP. Amit Shah had also promised that the BJP would implement sub-categorisation. How would they do it in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement that had rejected it previously? The more legitimate way was to bring in a constitutional amendment. But with substantially diminished strength in the parliament, this option was rudely deleted.
Also read: Opposition to Sub-classification — Negation of Reality, Equality and Unity
In this situation, by the stroke of serendipity, the Supreme Court verdict by the expanded bench of seven judges came to its rescue. Without this political context to see sub-categorisation merely as the grant of share to the minor castes of SC is short of naiveté.
The creamy layer comments by some members of the Supreme Court bench came handy for the BJP to score brownie points by declaring that they reject the creamy layer proposition. The creamy layer was by way of observation and not as such a part of the verdict, as Shivasundar himself rightly discerned. But his attribution of the negative reaction of the Ambedkarite Dalits to the creamy layer line is utterly misleading. The protests of Ambedkarite Dalits, including their Bharat Bandh, and the review petition filed by Dr Thol Thirumavalavan, VCK Member of Parliament is not against the creamy layer but the verdict itself.
I do share his concern for those identified as the “more marginalised within the category” but unfortunately it is mis-founded because the ‘Scheduled Caste’ is not based on the consideration of marginalisation but social exclusion defined by the sole criterion of untouchability. This is the commonplace confusion most people reflect when they bring in backwardness in discussions of SC reservations. The backwardness, social and educational, was brought in for identifying the Other Backward Castes and, according to me, is not without mischief.
Shivasundar’s comment that the reluctance of the BJP or the Congress in welcoming the judgement has compounded the “confusion among the semi-informed” is amusing to say the least. Since when, does he think, have people started taking these parties’ opinions seriously? The amusement is rather compounded when he adds “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.”
So to dispel the “confusion of the semi-informed” is it not enough that some constituents of the ruling National Democratic Alliance, as well as the opposition INDIA bloc have openly opposed it? It is not clear how he characterises “the nationwide protest against the judgement on August 21” because he attributes it to “confusions, apprehensions, genuine concerns, and prejudices against the sub-classification of SC reservations.” He concedes that there were “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.” If he sees this much, he should have smelt a rot and been impelled to fathom deeper as to how the verdict came to reverse the well-reasoned judgement decision in the case, E V Chinnaiah v State of Andhra Pradesh. Sadly, the entire thrust of his exercise is on taking up the cudgel for the “more marginalised,” not minding whether the term is constitutionally viable or not.
Next, Shivasundar reads that the concerns of “some of the country’s leading progressive scholars…stem from the fact that the current neoliberal economic context is rendering reservations irrelevant.” While it is a fact that the relevance of reservations in the diminishing space for public employment is fast eroding, that is not the factor in consideration of the subject verdict. Nor is even the observation that “there is a limit to reservations as a tool of social justice”. The main issue is whether sub-classification is constitutional or not and even if it is, whether sub-classification would serve the end of equitable distribution of reservations to all constituent castes within the SC category. Everything else is irrelevant. And of course, if the problem is conceded as genuine, which I do not have any hesitation in admitting it is; it is most relevant to find a solution which is conceptually well-knit and practically workable without feeding the monster of caste. This is the solution I have been hinting at since 1995 and explicated in my Leaflet article.
Shivasundar articulates progressive scholars’ concerns as “misconceptions emanating against the sub-classification” and summarises them into the three categories. He writes:
- 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.
Having first assumed them wrongly, he goes on to refute them. What are his wrong assumptions?
(1) His addition of “extreme social backwardness” to Scheduled Caste definition is illegitimate. Untouchability is the only criterion that defines the SC and they are therefore deemed homogenous.
(2) “Sub-classification is the continuation of identity politics aiming at breaking the unity of the oppressed.” Well, sub-classification does not automatically equate with identity politics but it would potentially boost it. The unity of the oppressed is a tall order. It is one thing to take them as disunited and quite another to promote disunity by fragmenting their consciousness.
Also read: BJP Refuses to Bite Dalit Sub-Classification Bullet But Madigas May Have Reason To Press On
(3) It is true, for the reasons given before, that the BJP would like the minor castes and communities, not only within SC but anywhere, to be detached so that they could be co-opted into its fold, but no one has said to my knowledge that there was no demand for internal reservation as Shivasundar assumed. The demand for sub-classifications has been there whether they were seeded and boosted by the political parties or not.
Then Shivasundar goes on to refute these points. As for the first point – his belaboured invoking of all histories and Ambedkar – I am sorry to dismiss as irrelevant to the issue. And so also his entire section, “Saga of the people’s movement for sub-classification”, which relates with his assumption that the protesters against the verdict did not know about there being popular demands for sub-classification.
I do not think that assumption is true. And even if it is, it is irrelevant to the issue. Both, the protagonists and opponents of sub-classification are people, and when they agitate, they should be respected, provided they are not acting at the behest of reactionary forces.
Both pose their demands to the state, not against each other, although they may seem so. It is the state’s responsibility to resolve them within the constitutional framework. The Supreme Court verdict, as for now, has validated sub-classification, but it does not exhaust the constitutional process, and least the rights of people to protest.
Shivasundar now deals with the second point of identity politics and the unity of the oppressed. It is simple: when the Dalit identity is fragmented, the result will be sub-identities, whether they lead to identity politics or not. He also does not have quarrel with this apprehension. But he comes back to the same point that this consideration ignores the deprivation of the ‘more marginalised’ castes within the SC and hence concludes that “their arguments do not reflect the complete reality”.
Well, if he concedes that sub-classification splinters the Dalit community negatively to achieve a positive impact, the problem reduces down to weighing which one is more beneficial or to examine whether the solution could be possible by diminishing the negativity and enhancing the positivity. All that he does is to marshal all irrelevant data to support his frozen formulation and completely ignore the second possibility. How on earth can Ambedkar’s exposition of intersectionality of untouchability with the working class be conflated with the issue of equitable distribution of reservation benefits among the constituents of the constitutionally conceived class of the Scheduled Caste? It would have been better if he thought through the problem without emotions, to realise that the entire policy of reservation inheres such an unequal outcome. The castes which had initial advantage would keep on accruing benefits of reservations to the increasing detriment of others.
Shivasundar’s last point is against the argument about the limitation of reservation and internal reservations. I do not see, however, that he has any disagreement on this point. My only expectation is that he should have realised while thinking over this issue, the basic fallacy in the reservation policy that while it is counted against the caste, it benefits an individual, and at most, his immediate family. The answer to the problem then is simple: to correct this anomaly and devise a solution for equidistribution of benefits across the targeted population. This is what I had done in my Leaflet article.
Anand Teltumbde is former CEO, PIL, professor, IIT Kharagpur and GIM, Goa; writer and civil rights activist.