On July 31, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, in his Indian Express column ‘Caste Questions to Rahul Gandhi,’ derided the Leader of the Opposition for demanding a caste census in parliament.
According to Mehta, “Invocation of caste becomes a substitute for serious thinking and will not serve the cause of social justice or healthy institutions.” He begins his article by laying out the unacceptable aspects of caste injustice and dehumanisation that continue even today but then bemoans Gandhi’s caste census demand for leading us to the “suffocating cul-de-sac of caste”.
This line of argument by privileged liberals in India is not a surprise. The liberal tradition in India suffers from a severe credibility crisis because of its inability to show an alternative to counter the Hindutva assault on constitutional institutions and democratic foundations. Instead of building a robust ideology that can challenge Hindutva – a task they have failed to carry out – many liberals are busy delegitimising social justice politics.
India under the Hindutva regime is experiencing a civil societal crisis in terms of communal and caste violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Adivasis. The growing poverty and rising wealth inequality match caste marginality and economic disempowerment. The liberals helped bring us here but they don’t want to accept responsibility for having done so.
Also read: Why Congress Mustn’t Go Back on Rahul Gandhi’s Caste Census, Social Justice Promise
Who is afraid of a caste census?
Democracy as a political system recognises the value of individuals and their right to represent themselves in terms of political parties. Thus, counting heads is the fundamental ingredient of democracy. As numbers matter in democracies, they take up the exercise of a decennial census to count the numbers and to understand the demographic changes in terms of ethnic composition, gender ratio, age, health, distribution of wealth and other parameters. Of course, non-democracies are also interested in counting. In India, the British colonial state conducted the first decennial census not to democratise but to govern, rule and control the subject population.
Beginning in 1872, the British colonial state continued the exercise of the decennial census without interruption till 1931. The last caste-based enumeration was held for the 1931 census. After 1947, the postcolonial Indian nation-state abandoned that practice. Since then, all speculation about the number of people in each caste is based on the 1931 census. By abandoning caste-based enumeration, the postcolonial state has created an illusion that caste does not matter.
The caste-privileged elites of the Hindu and non-Hindu religions conveniently took forward the state’s illusion. They denied the existence of caste in public life, and in private, they pretended to be above caste. In their public and private lives, of course, they hardly associated with the oppressed castes, except as their servants and manual labourers. The erasure of caste from public life also helped them protect their inherited caste privileges, as they did not need to self-reflect on their subjectivity.
File photo. B.P. Mandal submitting copies of the Mandal Commission report to Gyani Zail Singh, former President of India.
The liberal bubble that overlooked caste burst in 1989 with the implementation of the Mandal Commission report that granted reservations to Backward Castes, who were not represented in public educational and employment sectors until then. Implementation of Mandal brought out the vulgar contempt of the privileged castes towards the oppressed, as they used demeaning and dehumanising forms of protest, such as sweeping streets and polishing boots. These protests facilitated the consolidation of savarnas in urban India, which breathed a new lease of life into the Hindu right as it sought to overwhelm the social justice agenda with communal politics targeting Muslim minorities.
In facilitating communal polarisation and the spreading of contempt towards the social justice agenda, liberal intellectuals and the media, exclusively dominated by savarna elites, played an important role. By valourising Hindu right politics as principled opposition to the mainstream, they ridiculed oppressed caste politicians as boorish and corrupt. In this way, they demonised the social justice agenda as undeserving and worthless. By enabling Hindutva, they prevented any genuine discussion on caste-based oppression and exploitation. They claimed to be above caste – to be conscience keepers of the society. They defined the public and intellectual sphere as casteless, and their arguments coincided with Hindu right’s arguments.
In the last decade, liberals have been trying to suppress any discussion on caste and avoid census enumeration so that India’s imagined Hindu majority can remain intact. They know that any data which sheds light on the actual number of people in each caste, when coupled with the educational and employment details and wealth distribution based on caste, would puncture majoritarian Hindu communal politics.
In this regard, Mehta’s stand is not especially different from that of other liberal elites who make meritocratic arguments against reservations. Mehta resigned from the National Knowledge Commission in 2006 as a protest against giving reservations to Backward Castes in premier institutions, saying there was a need protect the quality of these institutions.
Historically, elites have always feared numbers and facts as they reveal the pedestal of unearned privilege they stand on at the expense of the oppressed majority. Moreover, the numbers awaken the oppressed to ask questions about their share in education and employment and demand opportunities on par with the elites. The elites, whether liberal or radical, will always fear equality as they imagine the ground under their feet will vanish and their world will turn upside down. At the very least, the data will force privileged elites to acknowledge their inherited caste privileges.
Check your privilege
Indian elites, especially the caste privileged, are a strange species. They were one of the earliest colonised non-whites in the world to be assimilated into colonial institutions and trained in Western liberal ideas. They effectively used liberalism against colonialism but refused to see that the foundation of their privileged existence was built on caste-based exclusion and denials. Even after more than 70 years of independence, political and public life in India is the prerogative of caste-privileged elites who have monopolised intellectual spheres and media spaces in such a way that they made caste an anathema.
They act as gatekeepers and conscience keepers of the nation. If one watches mainstream media channel debates, privileged elites sit across the tables and argue against each other. They aren’t even conscious that not a single person from the oppressed castes, who number around 70% of the population, is present at the table.
It was the same when Ambedkar was at the Round Table conferences. If he was not present as a Dalit and became a member of the constituent assembly and the drafting committee chairman, would the liberals of that era have championed the cause of the oppressed caste against their own privileges? Would they feel ethical suffocation at the unbearable suffering of most people? In the world of privileged people, the marginalised would not even figure in their blind spots.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar delivering a speech. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
So, one Ambedkar was needed to bring the sufferings of Dalits to the centre stage of Indian national politics. Telugu has a proverb: “Unless you ask, even mother will not serve you food.” Similarly, justice is not a charity, and the caste census is necessary to build an inclusive society that responds to inequity and injustice.
Data is a basic requirement for any policy changes in this context. As a political theorist, Mehta should understand this. The absence of data helps the elites make spurious arguments to avoid accountability – which is what the present regime in India is doing.
Is Rahul Gandhi a trailblazer of social justice politics?
It is heartening to see oppressed castes reach the altar of Indian democracy, i.e., parliament, and take centre stage in the mainstream. The heartlessness of the Hindu right regime for a decade has proved that the state had abandoned its responsibility to deliver justice, delegitimised the language of equity and normalised the savarna culture of arrogant entitlement. Caste-based humiliations haunt even the political elites from the oppressed castes.
For example, a temple was cleansed after a visit by Akhilesh Yadav, former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the president of the Samajwadi Party. The assault of Brahmanical elites is so complete that political parties and ordinary people feel powerless and voiceless. It is here that the courage with which Rahul Gandhi rose has the potential to make a difference in the lives of the marginalised.
While challenging Hindutva, he articulates the aspirations of the oppressed and marginalised sections. One might think of it as the cheap political use of identity. But isn’t it the responsibility of a leader of a political party to speak on behalf of the people? When all other parties surrender, his refusal to kowtow to Hindutva is a new hope for the nation. Mehta cannot recognise the revolutionary potential of caste data that can pulverize the mythical majority Hindutva has conjured up to serve the interest of a few Brahman-Bania elites.
Also read: Politics of Caste Census: How BJP and Mandal Parties View the Contentious Issue
Mehta says of Rahul Gandhi that there is something “deeply insincere about a savarna calling out the caste of individual civil servants or ministers to signal his own virtue on this score.” But there are many examples in India where people voluntarily gave up their privileges. They dedicated themselves to the cause of the marginalised. Among those legendary figures were P. Sundarayya, S.R. Sankaran, B.D. Sharma and many others. They are celebrated by the oppressed castes as their messiahs.
Rahul Gandhi succeeded in bringing the issue of the caste census to the political centre stage through his unwavering commitment to the cause of the oppressed, which will be a new beginning in democratic politics. He will undoubtedly become the trailblazer of the social justice movement in India as V.P. Singh did by the Mandal Commission.
It is important to remember that Rahul Gandhi is not alone in demanding a caste census. The formidable INDIA alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi among its constituents signifies its larger ideological front. Moreover, Dalit leaders like Koppula Raju in Congress act as Gandhi’s conscience keepers.
Chinnaiah Jangam is an Associate Professor at Department of History in Carleton University, Canada.
