Caste and liberals

There has been much liberal hand-wringing over the Centre’s decision to include a caste-count in the 2011 census. This is wrong-headed because a caste-count is not going to promote further casteism just as its absence will not usher in a caste-free society. If we have a reasonably accurate estimate of how many people belong to what caste, we can at least know where we stand.

Of course, no caste enumeration is going to be right. In the last count in 1931, the British found that entire groups of jatis used the opportunity to move up the hierarchy. This time around, the reverse could happen. Our guilt-ridden upper classes may stop indicating their castes while the rest may try to up their numbers in the hope of pressing for more reservations. What is not going away is our obsession with caste.

The real problem with caste is the liberals’ approach to it. Thanks to a deep sense of guilt about the inequities of the system, the Indian liberal (which usually means upper caste Hindus) is overapologetic about caste, and refuses to make peace with it. He is thus giving caste-based politicians an emotional handle with which they can stifle rational arguments for change and greater inclusiveness.

It is time for all liberals, and especially the Hindu upper classes, to abandon unwarranted guilt about caste. Caste may have originated in the religious-civilisational system we now call Hinduism, but it is owned by all Indians. Islam and Christianity have embraced caste even though these religions have no scriptural sanction for it. The bottomline: caste is an Indian system rather than just a Hindu albatross.

Caste is not something that could have been invented by anyone. It can grow only when almost everybody accepts it. It grew from this soil and struck deep roots. With every invasion and religious or reformist attack, its roots went deeper. Caste has proved to be a stronger binding force than religion precisely because it is rooted in Indian realities.

The biggest attacks on caste —  all futile — have come from sons of the soil, and not Islamic invaders or Christian proselytisers, as some liberals are prone to believe. The Buddha didn’t succeed. Neither did Vivekananda, Kabir, Guru Nanak, Ram Mohun Roy, Dayanand Saraswati, Ramanujam, or even Gandhi and Ambedkar. All frontal attacks on caste have been repulsed. The post-Ambedkar Dalits, and especially Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, have gone the other way and embraced caste with a vengeance.

They opted for a political consolidation of the Dalits and lower castes. The other backward castes have also made a virtue of caste consolidation and reaped huge gains from it — it started in the south and moved north. In the south, caste oppression today means non-Brahmin oppression of the lowest castes.

To get an arm around caste, you first need to understand it. For one, it is not just a system of discrimination; it became one. Caste is about kinship and community ties. It offers a protective cocoon for members in turbulent times. Caste will weaken and disappear only when people feel secure about themselves and their future. It will dissolve when the state protects individual rights, without necessarily setting it against community rights.

Caste survived in India because we took a different approach to diversity. In the west, diversity was treated as a threat, and thus met with annihilation and destruction. The Americans annihilated the Red Indians, the Australians massacred the aborigines, and so on. Ambedkar, quoting 19th century French theorist Ernest Renan, makes much the same point about the role of brutality and extermination in creating homogeneity in society. “Unity is ever achieved by brutality. The union of northern and southern France was the result of an extermination, and of a reign of terror that lasted for nearly a hundred years.”

In India, diversity was not seen as a threat. The approach was to accommodate, with minimal violence, different groups without disturbing the power structure. This is how castes grew with every invasion, with every expansion of the Hindu economy. In hindsight, perhaps we could have achieved a casteless society through much brutality in the past. But we chose the other route of peace and compromise.

Does this mean caste, and its negative consequences, will be with us forever? Not quite. Market forces, urbanisation and globalisation are chipping away at the edifice. It will be diluted in due course. Socially, we can help the process by making simple changes in the institution of caste by drawing up objective entry and exit rules. Caste cannot remain an institution driven purely by birth. Once it behaves like a regular club, with proper entry and exit rules, its worst excesses will tone down. We can allow demography and market forces to finish the job.

Liberals should not wallow in guilt about caste. They need to reform caste, not fight it.