Most of the textbooks of sociology which I have gone through have a chapter, usually towards the end, titled ‘Social Problems’. There we read about a number of issues like poverty, population, illiteracy, corruption, gender inequality, unemployment, communalism, alcoholism, drugs abuse, etc. All the issues are discussed separately, perhaps for a didactic purpose. There are considerable overlaps and sometimes it becomes too fuzzy to understand what is what. Let me take two of these- casteism and communalism.
Usually, the victims of casteism are believed to be Dalits, while the victims of communalism are mostly assumed to be Muslims. Violence is the clearest form of any social discrimination. But a lot of discrimination happens on an everyday basis, usually taking a normalised form. When seen from this lens, we see that the exclusion of many people happens on an everyday basis and hence appears as normal. Is it not ‘normal’ for Dalits to do menial jobs, for Muslims to stay in slums and for women to serve their family and children? Injustice, when takes this normalised form, means it’s well entrenched and will take a lot of time to get eradicated. The task, for all of us, is to keep the flame of critical consciousness alive by engaging in dialogue with all the stakeholders. Any change in our thought process takes time. We should never get disheartened that it is a long struggle of years and not a street fight.
For a change to be sustainable, what we need to change is ‘habits of the heart’, to borrow a phrase from Alexis de Tocqueville’s work, Democracy in America (1835). These habits are deeply ingrained in our thought process and get reflected in our public life. Since the last few years, caste-based assertions have gained much public attention. Though this assertion is mainly from the Dalits, we see even intermediate castes raising demands using the same language. The desire of all the ‘lower’ castes to share the fruits of economic and social development on equal terms with ‘upper’ castes, is well documented by now. Such struggles have happened and are still happening, and I must say, they will keep on happening in the coming times. This is much resented by the upper castes. One way to lessen ‘lower’ caste assertion is to instil in them hatred for Muslims, displacing the desire for distribution of resources and acknowledgement of dignity as the primary bond of humanity.
Rise of Hindutva has always been parallel to rise of ‘lower’ castes. When the lower castes started to assert themselves, Congress slowly lost its ground. As Zoya Hasan says in her book, Quest for Power (1998), that the dominance of the ‘upper castes’ in the Congress party leadership was challenged by the lower castes in Uttar Pradesh. For 1980s is the point of inflexion where Congress started to fall and Hindutva politics replaced it. Though she has written with the perspective of Uttar Pradesh, one can say that the story is partly correct in the Hindi heartland. What is important to note is that upper caste hegemony remains intact in both erstwhile Congress and today’s BJP. There has been a spate of resignations of lower caste BJP legislators since past few months. All of them alleged that saffron politics is outwardly communal and inwardly casteist. Anti-Muslim sentiments are raised to lessen the ‘caste contradiction’ in the Indian society. This is most clear when one talks to the bhakts about the rights of Dalits, OBCs or even women. No wonder writing against affirmative action for SCs, STs, OBCs, religious minorities and women in social media has been the hallmark of BJP supporters’ Freudian slip. Thus by whipping up the communal sentiments one crushes the other, that is Muslims, and deviates the others, that is lower castes. Hindutva politics is the classic illustration of the idiom- killing two birds with one stone.
We should not forget that both casteist and communal politics involves the control of women’s freedom. The moment a woman marries outside her (higher) caste or (Hindu) religion she faces a tremendous amount of violence, sometimes even murder. A female friend once told me, “Who doesn’t want to marry a guy of one’s choice. The social practices of caste and religion constraints these wishes and one has to settle for family’s choice.” When this is the case in elite academic spaces, one can easily guess what might be happening to women at the local colleges. The issue of patriarchy, therefore, has an inextricable link to both casteism and communalism. Since the problems of casteism and communalism are intertwined, the solution has to be multi-pronged. First is to acknowledge that these are problems and not hide behind the cliché of traditions. This is most acute in case of discrimination against Dalits and women. Second, would be to understand various social problems that are interconnected; for example, casteism-communalism-patriarchy are three sides of a triangle. Preferring one or another would not eliminate the issue completely. Thus we need to fight smaller and bigger battles together. And third, which I think is the most important, is acknowledging that each and every individual’s life is interwoven into the fabric of humanity. Development of one group is always dependent on the development of every other group. We need not only fight for ourselves but equally for others. Together we can fight, together we can win and together we can grow.