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Caste Conundrum

In the recent past there has been a huge uproar over the suicide of a young scholar Rohith  Vemula.  This is not about his suicide or the events that have followed. It is about my thoughts on the caste system we have.

For centuries India has had a caste system. Religion has intermingled and made a concoction that is difficult to unravel.  For decades the British used the divide and rule strategy so effectively that we even had cricket matches “Hindus v/s Muslims” and none in the country felt like protesting. No, this was not in some past forgotten stone age, it was as recently as in  1946 meaning just 70 years ago when the heroes of our freedom movement Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel were all in their leadership positions.  It grew to encompass Christians, Buddhists etc as others.  For more on these cricket matches read here.


These matches came to a halt in 1946 not because someone found it obnoxious or that one of the worthies we worship s leaders protested but because independence was looming with the partition and the BCCI was formed.  

For centuries be it the British or Mughals or Europeans they had exploited the religious and caste differences in the sub continent and managed to hold sway over power for centuries.  So this chasm of caste division is centuries old which has been exasperated over time but never addressed to be reduced.   The caste system is a historical fact and while we may wish it to go away, it is not easy, but we can definitely work to reduce its impact.  

When the sub continent fought for freedom from the British the identity that was proclaimed was Indian. But when the sub continent saw independence with partition a different India was born and you had Pakistan which were 2 distinct identities being formed.

While even before independence leaders like Gandhiji and others made noises about the caste system, coined new names like harijan they never took action to stop activities like the cricket matches mentioned above or forge a common identity. They also played similar games like the British to forge new identities within the society.

Post independence one would have thought that our leaders having learnt the lessons from the past would strive for a common identity, but they didn’t. The only time when they came close to that was when Patel united the country but divided it with a new identity – language.

If one were to look at a country like USA which is a land of immigrants with no native populations, practically, the only identity that every leader talked about and fought for was “American”. Within that tutelage you have Italians, Indians, native Indians, Mexicans and many others, you have had racial discrimination with blacks and whites but nobody talks of any identity other than being American.

In India on the other hand today, the ONLY time when the identity by and large becomes common is when there is an India Pakistan cricket match. If not we are South Indians, North Indians, Biharis, Mallus, Xians, Brahmins, Muslims, Tamilians, Gujjus and so on – never Indians.

Not withstanding the fact that the freedom fighter netas like Nehru and Gandhi and Patel could have kept focussing on a common identity – Indian – but yet worked for reducing caste issues with policy interventions like reservations etc the fact is that they did not. They brought in language as a further point of division. What these worthies started their successors have fine tuned it and made it into a art and perfected it.

Today the situation is so worse that even a politician intellectual like a Shashi Tharoor is not even apologetic   when talking of this identity. Just read his recent tweets.



His gives a high flatulent explanation that the constitution makes us Indians – whatever that means. Do a billion people walk around with the constitution or refer to it often enough to forge a common identity as Indian? He is only telling the bitter truth – we are not Indians except when it comes to getting a passport or some vague constitutional guarantee or like I said before in an Indo Pak cricket match.  The situation is so tragic that in recent times there is a section that is willing to further divide us with a new identity.  If you talk of being Indian passionately, the identity  is interpreted as a idea that a particular political party has and so must be opposed.

We have a national song but a significant section of society feels that it’s not compatible with their religion so they will neither sing it nor respect it.
We have a national anthem but a section of the society feels that they don’t agree with it since their identity is different.

There is a significant section of the society which one can call the Privileged, the Powerful, the Influential, the Rich, the Famous (PPIRF) and these great folks not only accept the behaviour of any section of the society that wants to resist the idea of one identity under the garb of freedom of speech, freedom of expression etc but go to the extent, that someone speaking of such a common identity is classified as a affiliate of a particular brand of politics with contempt.

Before the reader jumps to the conclusions that the above are aimed at a particular religion, let me say that a significant section of the PPIRF crowd are Hindus who actually encourage minorities and dare I say the so called “lower castes” to display contrarian behaviour since this division is what keeps them powerful.

Let us read any newspaper headline or TV Breaking news. Every incident, every death, every crime, every achievement, every person is given a prefix or suffix to create an identity that is anything but Indian.

The campus politics and mismanagement of University of Hyderabad did not kill a Rohith Vemula a PhD scholar. It killed a Dalit.
The VC who expelled and took action against him, the hostel warden, the enquiry committee  – rightly or wrongly – is not the issue, but  each of the people involved is a backward class, a dalit etc  so their decision must be right. The country has a PM who is from the OBC community so he can never do wrong to others of his ilk. How inane can logic get??

Rohit Vemula must either be considered guilty of some issues or innocent  but  get justice as an Indian and from other Indians. Everything else is immaterial. His Dalit identity is and should not be relevant.

Every politician like a hungry vulture swoops on these dead bodies to feast on it and reinforce these caste divisions all the more.

While caste is a reality, fact is that if I compare the situation to my own childhood to today, these differences and divisions have reduced significantly. True that in rural areas they are still strong, they stay below the surface in urban areas.  But with education, globalisation, exposure, significant sections of the population are unable to make these caste differentiators though religious and language divide persists. Not just me, but with most people I know and interact with, they wouldn’t know a dalit or a SC or ST unless presented with a board hung around his neck.   In any organisation I have worked with or dealt with I haven’t seen a focus on caste the way our media and PPIRF portrays it to be.

But what is happening is that politicians, liberals, intellectuals in our country find that they have no work, no power and no influence unless they further these identities. These caste identities are their oxygen. While I can understand the politicians for such thinking, what amazes me is the PPIRF crowd which also propagates this. If a Rohit Vemula is not identified as a Dalit these folks don’t have any  opportunity to sit in TV studios and pontificate to the nation. Justice for Vemula is the last thing on their mind and he occupies top of the kind recall till the next incident with a Muslim or a Tribal or some such other identity for them to return to the studios.

It is tempting to ask a political question as to how many  opportunities these PPIRF folks have given to the so called Dalits and such in their own organisations or businesses or in their own houses ? But I will let that go.


If these PPIRF folks including the media were really so concerned about reducing/ abolishing the caste discriminations why cannot they STOP tagging and focussing on the caste rather than on the issue? Possible isn’t it?

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