Just before India celebrated its 75th Independence day, an incident shook up the entire nation. In Jalore district of Rajasthan a boy belonging from Scheduled caste had been beaten to death only for touching the water pot. It somewhere shattered the belief that Untouchability did not prevail in India.
Let’s have a look at the Caste Hierarchy. The caste system in India is the most heinous illustration of how humans try to impose their superiority on others by virtue of their birth, and its cruelty is almost as old as the gods. In the later Vedic period a large caste pyramid in society had four layers, or varnas.
The priestly caste of Brahmins, the military class of Kshatriyas, and the mercantile class of Vaisyas are at the top. The Shudras or labouring castes are at the bottom. Outcastes are not even included with the rest.
The caste system was maintained by the British Raj, which included varnas in its imperial system of government. The outcast “untouchables,” today known as Dalits, were subjected to severe prejudice for their “polluted” labours, which included picking up human faeces.
Dr Bhim Rao Ji Ambedkar understood the problem as he himself belonged from the dalit caste. During this time there was hardly few people who could understand his ideas. Affirmative action was first codified in the Indian constitution, which was largely written by B.R. Ambedkar.
The “reservation” policy is a massive quota system for positions in publicly funded colleges, as well as other elected assemblies and public posts. The goal is to help the 120 million or so adivasis, indigenous communities who live primarily in rural areas of the nation and make up 232 million of India’s 1.4 billion people.
Affirmative action has grown and expanded over the years. In the 1980s, a panel was formed known as the Mandal Commission. The Mandal Commission recommended that 27 percent of central and state government jobs should be reserved for OBCs, and that the 27 percent figure should be applied to other “compensatory discrimination” or “compensatory protection” benefits, including those provided by universities and affiliated colleges.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court decided that the total number of public employment that might be reserved could not exceed 50%. But states frequently go beyond the limit. The state government mainly uses it as bait for gaining votes. For example in my state West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during the time of elections announced that the people of the hills would be assigned under Other Backward class.
Other castes are attempting to get recognition as backward in order to qualify for quotas. They include ethnic groups that sociologists refer to as “dominant,” such as the land-owning Patidars of Gujarat, the Jats of Haryana and Rajasthan and many more. Few months back Bihar demanded a national census on caste in order to advance their aim for increased reservations.
The National census on caste was last done in the year 2011 during the UPA regime. It was done for the first and the last time. The Supreme court asked the current government to do a similar caste based census unfortunately it was rejected saying that the task is cumbersome.
It is unclear how many socioeconomic issues reservations have resolved, in part because succeeding administrations have been remarkably pessimistic in awaring the SCs and STs about their rights. After 1990, there has been much greater progress made in reducing poverty.
In the meantime, inequality has increased both within and between caste groups. Caste intermarriage is still extremely uncommon. Caste-based housing segregation is pervasive. For refusing to work for the local landed castes, marrying outside your caste, or even just drinking from the village well, you risk being lynched.
The Indian diaspora went to all parts of the world, spreading caste and casteism with them. Dr BR Ambedkar rightly said that “If Hindus migrate to other regions on Earth, Indian caste would become a world problem”. Our caste prejudices are most blatantly displayed in the newspaper matrimonial columns, where hopeful brides and grooms of all faiths are sought for customary marriage arrangements.
The most crucial factors in deciding whether to admit a strange woman into that most private setting—the home and family—are caste and skin tone. Almost always, the lady who will bear offspring to carry on the line must be fair-skinned and belong to the same caste.
Most upper caste people mainly blames the policy of reservation for the entrenchment of caste hierarchy. These type of statement is far from true. I got a chance to meet Dr Satish Deshpande, professor from Delhi School of Economics whom I asked why people gets enraged when a well off family belonging from SC and ST category takes up quota? To this he answered that Reservation system has nothing to do with rich and poor.
It was made to give representation to the communities. There is a lot of social stigma still attached to these communities. As per the statistics collected by the Centre for Dalit Studies, between the 26 years of 1994 and 2020, 17,835 Dalits were murdered, 44,506 Dalit women were raped by upper caste men and 85,219 people were victims of grievous injuries in attacks by people of upper castes.
Voices of the civil society becomes loud when it discusses other issues but it becomes soft when it comes to the issue of the Dalits. It is high time that our leaders now make the lower caste people aware of their rights.
Our caste system will only break free from the entrenchment if the social stigma, untouchability are completely done away with. I hope that in the 100th year of Independence India may break free from these narrow walls of casteism.