Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political philosopher I deeply respect and whose writing I look forward to reading, has written a piece on the caste census and also on the call made by the Congress party of “Jitni aabaadi utna haq”.
The piece begins:
i) The opposition is finding common ground in “social justice”.
ii) This social justice agenda is articulated in INC’s slogan “Jitni aabadi utna haq”+ calls from various parties to mobilise around “caste issues” (quotes mine).
iii) i) +ii) = poison.
At this juncture, some questions came to my mind.
a. What does “caste issues” (quotes mine) mean? Is it a reference to deeply entrenched program of discrimination, violence, humiliation and exclusion which has resulted in marginalised castes being robbed of their rights and deprived of dignity? Does it include that all domains (government jobs, police, private jobs, education, wealth ownership, professional vocations directors in companies) are overwhelmingly dominated by so-called upper castes, in significant disproportion to their size in the population?
b. Imagine, hypothetically speaking, there are ten jobs and 100 applicants. Eighty are marginalised caste, and 20 are upper caste. Out of 10 jobs, upper castes have eight jobs. Why is wanting representation in proportion of numbers….poison? It may be inadequate; it may need fine-tuning. It may need a better design but… “poison”/”snake oil”?
I couldn’t help but be reminded of Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s words: “I have criticised the Hindus. I have questioned the authority of the Mahatma whom they revere. They hate me. To them, I am a snake in their garden.”
The piece says that this will do “almost nothing” (quotation marks and emphasis mine) to address the “real issues” (quotation mine). Then, it makes an extraordinary claim. It says that “Its moral logic shares more with the majoritarianism it seeks to combat.”
The majoritarianism in question is clearly and aptly identified as “Hindutva+Authoritarianism+Communalism” in the piece’s beginning. I want to understate this as much as possible, so I will describe the ‘moral logic’ of that majoritarianism a bit conservatively.
The logic is this: Indian Muslims and Christians are malicious corona-spreading sub-human enemies of India whose lynching must be celebrated, whose homes must be demolished, whose trades must be boycotted, the women of those religions be treated as objects of conquest in war, their rapists be acquitted, their murderers be acquitted and celebrated, and patriotism be reduced to the demonstration of violence against them.
Also read: Congress’s Push for Caste Census Is a Step Towards Ideological Unity in Opposition Ranks
I may be missing out on some aspects, but as I said, I wanted to understate this. I have read all the speeches in recent years on caste issues, including Rahul Gandhi’s speech about ‘Jitni aabadi utna haq” but I couldn’t find any of these elements. If someone does, I will not hesitate to be corrected.
The piece shifts briefly from its focus on social science to electoral strategy. It declares that these efforts are “politically imprudent” and will, at best result in “short term gains, whose long-term political logic will be self-defeating” Why? The piece doesn’t say.
The piece then shifts back to adopting a social science lens as the piece generously and large-heartedly concedes that India needs strong affirmative action programmes for Dalits and some “deeply marginalised sections of OBCs”.
But another extraordinary charge is made: “post-Mandal, the logic of social justice discourse has rarely focused on the ethical issues of discrimination, the agenda of creating economic growth that is inclusive, or of creating a state and public institutions that deliver the material basis for dislodging the inequities of caste. Instead, social justice has been reduced to a simple formula of the distribution of government largesse based on officially reified caste identities.”
There are two arguments to be made about the role that politicians have played in social discourse. First, Mandal is framed as an event that marks the beginning of time instead of the conclusion of centuries of ‘discourse’ on ‘ethical issues’ of discrimination. This is self-evidently incorrect.
Second, I would urge readers to take a cursory look at the discourse around and after the time that three politicians first became chief ministers. Their names are Mayawati, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. While the degree of improvement in their material fortunes remains a matter of debate, there is plenty of reportage and oral history which concludes that there was a significant improvement in the self-respect, political power and assertion of marginalised castes.
The piece now reveals an admission and states that “Jitni aabadi utna haq” is admittedly just a slogan.
It is followed by the following questions:
“The obvious question is: On what basis is the division of the population being measured? And over what goods will this distributive logic apply? The answer seems to be caste: That the logic of numbers should be used to relax the already flimsy 50 per cent cap on reservations so that a larger OBC population can be accommodated. And second, that this category can be appropriately subdivided in light of social progress communities might or might not have made over the last few decades.”
The aforementioned paragraph appears to be conceding that the percentage of the OBC population is larger than 50%. It completely omits Dalits. A query that arises here is, why this fervent opposition to an exercise of enquiry? Why so much sound and fury against a data collection exercise?
The piece then speculates:
“Then there is the tricky question of over which goods this distributive logic applies, besides education and government jobs? Will this criteria apply to the private sector and all private economic activity? If this is the case, then the policy will be deeply unsettling. We need an inclusive economy. It is a mistake to think that such an inclusive economy can be legislated into existence by measuring the share of officially created caste groups and then distributing largesse according to it. If not, is this then just about expanding and redesigning the distributive logic for OBCs in the government sector? If that is the case there is nothing new to this. But neither is this social justice.” (Emphasis and italics mine)
Social justice being imposed on private capital will be unsettling, it is argued. Why? It is not explained. The state gave away so much of its body to the private sector, India has no horizontal discrimination laws whatsoever (a private company can openly discriminate against a religious or caste or gender identity without any consequence in law), but marginalised communities should not be given a legislated share in the pie of private sector opportunity? Why?
The observation which follows this is bewildering – “We need an inclusive economy”. Is an economy in which over 90% of directors are upper caste inclusive? Is the open secret of discrimination against Muslims in the private sector inclusive? Why is private sector opportunity so kosher? “It is a mistake to think that inclusive economy can be legislated.”
Where and when in human history has inclusion been achieved sans legislation? If legislation can’t result in inclusion, we may as well throw the Constitution out.
“The most important things required for social justice do not require caste data.” The piece then gives a list of measures, all of which point to capacity expansion. “Jitni aabaadi utna haq” does not mean that Haq will be pursued and capacity expansion will be abandoned. It simply means that an overwhelming number of people should not be condemned to wait till this ideal capacity expansion is achieved.
Also read: Why the BJP Is Afraid of a Caste Census
“The mistake of the social justice agenda was that it forgot Ambedkar’s lesson that to effectively attack caste you have to (for the most part) strongly but indirectly attack the range of material deprivations that make its logic so insidious.” Ambedkar never said that “for the most part”, the challenge was about capacity. If all one read was this sentence about Ambedkar, one could be forgiven for assuming that Ambedkar had nothing to do with reservations.
The piece then claims (I’m paraphrasing):
i) RJD, SP, BSP, JDU achieved nothing for caste equality except reservation.
This claim is patently false, and there are libraries worth of empirical and other data which prove otherwise.
ii) This agenda shares an elective affinity with Hindutva politics.
This is an incredible thing to say in 2023. The caste census or policies consequent to it do not seek to snatch away anyone’s citizenship. They will not result in inhuman detention centres and calls for murder.
“This agenda is also politically self-defeating. Social engineering has not gone away. But one of the few silver linings in Indian politics is that so many chief ministers have held on to power because of governance and welfare coalitions. Many state governments have been innovating — Andhra in cash transfer, West Bengal in rural health, Odisha across a range of goods. The Congress in Rajasthan has staked a lot on health, as the AAP did on education in Delhi. But if the most visible plank of the motley coalition of opposition leaders is not their ability to project the capacity to effectively govern together, but a plank of doubtful economic consequence, they will obscure their own achievements. There is also something odd in thinking that projecting political unity on the basis of social division is a winning formula.”
This assumes that “social engineering” and “governance and welfare” are exclusive. It lists positive governance measures some states took and simultaneously admits that “social engineering” hasn’t gone away. Has capacity expansion gone away? Has entrenched exclusion and discrimination gone away? With respect, I confess I’m not sure what argument is being made in the aforementioned text.
“Caste, as historically practised, was an oppressive form of a compulsory identity. But this is a project that wants to re-inscribe that sense of compulsory identity, now through officially sanctioned categories, and then have smaller caste groups fight over a few small fish. In a subtle sense, it also collapses reason into identity. Social justice now means only one thing — how dominant OBC mobilisation defines it.”
Is caste now an oppressive form of optional identity? Is this project “re-inscribing” what is fading or bringing to light for public awareness, deliberation and education what has been suppressed?
“But in a deeper psychological sense this new social justice agenda represents a narrow and deeply pessimistic politics. It underestimates that caste and communal politics can be aligned and are not antithetical to each other. It cedes the space on matters of truly national importance to the BJP. And it is a measure of how low our expectations are that we can present caste majoritarianism as the paradise that will be the answer to the hell of communal politics.”
Finally, in saying that x or y space is being ceded, the piece assumes that the entire manifesto will only say “Jitni aabadi utna haq” and nothing else. That all other issues have been abandoned. It makes this claim even as multiple parties are asking questions about accountability for Pulwama.
Some would argue that there is another kind of prejudice, one which manifests in the form of panicked and fervent opposition to any call which even remotely resembles bringing social justice to the doors of private enterprise.
It is crucial, however, that we continue debating this and keep the doors of our minds open, because the status quo ensures, as Ambedkar said, that some close the doors while others find it closed against them.
Dushyant Arora is a lawyer and a writer.
