Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (20 page)

11
BAWS 1, 222.

12
See, for example,
Madhu Kishwar (
Tehelka
, 11 February 2006) who says “the much reviled caste system has played a very significant role in making Indian democracy vibrant by making it possible for people to offer a good measure of resistance to centralised, authoritarian power structures that came to be imposed during colonial rule and were preserved even after Independence.”

13
See Béteille (2001) and Gupta (2001, 2007).
Dipankar Gupta, formerly professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, was part of the official Indian delegation that in 2007 opposed the Dalit caucus’s demand to treat caste discrimination as being akin to racial discrimination. In an essay in 2007, Gupta argued that “the allegation that caste is a form of racial discrimination is not just an academic misjudgement but has unfortunate policy consequences as well”. For a cross-section of views on the caste–race debate at the United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, see Thorat and Umakant (ed., 2004), which features counter-arguments by a range of scholars
including
Gail Omvedt and Kancha Ilaiah. Also see Natarajan and Greenough (ed., 2009).

14
For a response to Béteille and Gupta, see Gerald D. Berreman in Natarajan and Greenough (2009). Berreman says: “What is ‘scientifically nonsensical’ is Professor Béteille’s misunderstanding of ‘
race’. What is ‘mischievous’ is his insistence that India’s system of ascribed social inequality should be exempted from the provisions of a UN Convention whose sole purpose is the extension of human rights to include freedom from all forms of discrimination and intolerance—and to which India, along with most other nations, has committed itself” (54–5).

15
See
www.declarationofempathy.org
. Accessed 16 January 2014.

16
Das 2010, 25.

17
Inter-caste and intra-
gotra marriages are resisted in the name of ‘honour’; in extreme cases, the couple, or one of the partners, is killed. For an account of the case of Ilavarasan and Divya from Tamil Nadu, see Meena Kandasamy (2013). For an account of the consequences of violating ‘gotra laws’ in Haryana, see Chander Suta Dogra’s recent
Manoj and Babli: A Hate Story
(2013). Also see “Day after their killing, village goes quiet”,
Indian Express
, 20 September 2013, and Chowdhry (2007).

18
In 2009, Ahmedabad-based
Navsarjan Trust and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, published a joint report, “Understanding
Untouchability”. It listed ninety-nine forms of untouchability in 1,589 villages of Gujarat. It looked at the prevalence of untouchability under eight broad heads: 1. Water for Drinking; 2. Food and Beverage; 3. Religion; 4. Caste-based Occupations; 5. Touch; 6. Access to Public Facilities and Institutions; 7. Prohibitions and Social Sanctions; 8. Private Sector Discrimination. The findings were shocking. In 98.4 per cent of villages surveyed, inter-caste marriage was prohibited; in 97.6 per cent of villages, Dalits were forbidden to touch water pots or utensils that belonged to non-Dalits; in 98.1 per cent of villages, a Dalit could not rent a house in a non-Dalit area; in 97.2 per cent of villages, Dalit religious leaders were not allowed to celebrate a religious ceremony in a non-Dalit area; in 67 per cent of villages, Dalit panchayat members were either not offered tea or were served in separate cups called ‘Dalit’ cups.

19
AoC 17.7.

20
CWMG 15, 160–1. All references to Gandhi’s works, unless otherwise stated, are from
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
(CWMG) (1999). Wherever possible, first publication details are also provided since scholars sometimes refer to an earlier edition of the CWMG.

21
Cited in BAWS 9, 276.

22
Cited in CWMG 59, 227.

23
See the 20 November 2009 UNI report, “India’s 100 richest are 25 pc of GDP”.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/indias-100-richest-are-25-pc-of-gdp-forbes/105548-7.html?utm_source=ref_article
. Accessed 8 September 2013.

24
A Reuters report (10 August 2007) based on “Conditions of Work and Promotions of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector” by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector said: “Seventy-seven per cent of Indians—about 836 million people—live on less than half a dollar a day in one of the world’s hottest economies.”
http://in.reuters.com/article/2007/08/10/idINIndia-28923020070810
. Accessed 26 August 2013.

25
S. Gurumurthy, co-convenor of the Hindu right-wing Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, talks of how caste and
capitalism can coexist: “Caste is a very strong bond. While individuals are related by families, castes link the families. Castes transcended the local limits and networked the people across [sic]. This has prevented the disturbance that industrialism caused to neighbourhood societies in the West, resulting in unbridled individualism and acute atomization.” He goes on to argue that the caste system “has in modern times engaged the
market in economics and democracy in politics to reinvent itself. It has become a great source of entrepreneurship”. See “Is Caste an Economic Development Vehicle?”,
The Hindu
, 19 January 2009.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/19/stories/2009011955440900.htm
. Accessed 26 August 2013.

26
See “Forbes: India’s billionaire wealth much above country’s fiscal deficit”,
The Indian Express
, 5 March 2013.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/forbes-indias-billionaire-wealth-much-above-countrys-fiscal-deficit/1083500/#sthash.KabcY8BJ.dpuf
. Accessed 26 August 2013.

27
Hutton 1935.

28
Hardiman 1996, 15.

29
See “
Brahmins in India”,
Outlook
, 4 June 2007.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?234783
. Accessed 5 September 2013. Despite the decline, the Lok Sabha in 2007 had fifty Brahmin Members of Parliament—9.17 per cent of the total strength of the House. The data given by
Outlook
is based on four surveys conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, between 2004 and 2007.

30
BAWS 9, 207.

31
See Singh 1990. Singh’s figures are based on information provided by one of his readers.

32
BAWS 9, 200.

33
Reservation was first introduced in India during the colonial period. For a history of the policy of reservation, see Bhagwan Das (2000).

34
Selected Educational Statistics 2004–05
, p.xxii, Ministry of Human Resource Development. Available at
http://www.education-forallinindia.com/SES2004-05.pdf
. Accessed 11 November 2013.

35
Under the new economic regime, education, health care, essential services and other public institutions are rapidly being privatised. It has led to a haemorrhage of government jobs. For a population of 1.2 billion people, the total number of organised sector jobs is 29 million (as of 2011). Of these, the private sector accounts for only 11.4 million. See the
Economic Survey 2010–11
, p.A52.
http://indiabudget.nic.in/budget2011-2012/es2010-11/estat1.pdf
. Accessed 10 November 2013.

36
See Ajay Navaria’s story “Yes Sir” in
Unclaimed Terrain
(2013).

37
National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (NCSCST) 1998, 180–1.

38
Prabhu Chawla, “Courting Controversy”,
India Today
(29 January 1999). The lawyers quoted are Anil Divan and Fali S. Nariman. Later, India did get a Dalit
Supreme Court Chief Justice in K.G. Balakrishnan (2007–10).

39
Santhosh and Abraham 2010, 28.

40
Ibid., 27.

41
The note submitted to the JNU vice-chancellor was signed by, among others, Yoginder K. Alagh, T.K. Oommen and Bipan
Chandra. Alagh is an economist and a former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), a former union minister and regular newspaper columnist. Oomen was president of the International Sociological Association (1990–4), and published an edited volume called
Classes, Citizenship and Inequality: Emerging Perspectives
. Chandra is a Marxist historian, former president of the Indian History Congress, and was chairperson of the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU.

42
Raman 2010.

43
The Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee was appointed by Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh on 9 March 2005 to assess the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community of India; its 403-page report was tabled in Parliament on 30 November 2006. The report establishes that caste oppression affects India’s Muslims too. According to Teltumbde (2010a, 16), “working from the Sachar Committee data, the SC and ST components of India’s population can be estimated at 19.7 and 8.5 per cent respectively”.

44
According to economist Sukhadeo Thorat (2009, 56), “Nearly 70 per cent of SC households either do not own land or have very small landholdings of less than 0.4 ha [hectare]. A very small proportion (less than 6 per cent) consists of medium and large farmers. The scenario of landownership among SCs is even grimmer in Bihar, Haryana, Kerala and Punjab, where more than 90 per cent of SC households possess negligible or no land.” Citing Planning Commission data, another research paper states that the majority of the
Scheduled Castes (77 per cent) are landless, without any productive assets and sustainable employment opportunities. According to the Agricultural
Census of 1990–1, the essay says, “Around 87 per cent of the landholders of scheduled castes and 65 per cent of
scheduled tribes in the country belong to the category of small and marginal farmers” (Mohanty 2001, 3857).

45
NCSCST 1998, 176.

46
“13 lakh Dalits still engaged in manual scavenging: Thorat”,
The New Indian Express
, 8 October 2013. See
http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/13-lakh-Dalits-still-engaged-in-manual-scavenging-Thorat/2013/10/08/article1824760.ece
. Accessed
10 October 2013. See also the status papers on the website of the International Dalit Solidarity Network,
http://idsn.org/caste-discrimination/key-issues/manual-scavenging/
. Accessed 10 October 2013.

47
Data from
http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/uploads/directorate/stat_econ/pdf/Summarypercent20Sheet_Eng.pdf
accessed 26 August 2013, and Bhasin (2013).

48
See the interview of Milind Kamble, chairman of DICCI, and Chandra Bhan Prasad, mentor to DICCI, in
The Indian Express
, 11 June 2013: “
Capitalism is changing caste much faster than any human being. Dalits should look at capitalism as a crusader against caste.” Available at
http://m.indianexpress.com/news/capitalism-is-changing-caste-much-faster-than-any-human-being.-dalits-should-look-at-capitalism-as-a-crusader-against-caste/1127570/
. Accessed 20 August 2013. For an analysis of how India’s policies of liberalisation and globalisation since 1990 have actually benefited rural Dalits of Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh and Bulandshahar districts, see Kapur, et al. (2010). See also Milind Khandekar’s
Dalit Millionaires: 15 Inspiring Stories
(2013). For a critique of the “low-intensity spectacle of Dalit millionaires”, see Gopal Guru (2012).

49
“Anti-caste discrimination reforms blocked, say critics”,
The Guardian
, 29 July 2013. See
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/29/anticaste-discrimination-reforms
. Accessed 5 August 2013.

50
Vanita 2002.

51
Sukta 90 in Book X of the
Rig Veda
tells the story of the myth of creation. It describes the sacrifice of the Purusha (primeval man), from whose body the four varnas and the entire universe emerged. When (the gods) divided the Purusha, his mouth became Brahmin, his arms Kshatriya, his thighs Vaishya and Shudra sprang from his feet. See Doniger (translation, 2005). Some scholars believe that Sukta is a latter-day interpolation into the Rig Veda.

52
Susan Bayly (1998) shows how Gandhi’s caste politics are completely in keeping with the views of modern, privileged-caste Hindu ‘reformers’.

53
In 2012, the newsmagazine
Outlook
published the result of just
such a poll conducted on the eve of independence day. The question was: “Who, after the Mahatma, is the greatest Indian to have walked our soil?” Ambedkar topped the poll and
Outlook
devoted an entire issue (20 August 2012) to him. See
http://www.outlookindia.com/content10894.asp
. Accessed 10 August 2013.

54
See Ambedkar’s
Pakistan or the Partition of India
(1945), first published as
Thoughts on Pakistan
(1940), and featured now in BAWS 8.

55
Parel 1997, 188–9.

56
In a 1955 interview to
BBC radio, Ambedkar says: “A comparative study of Gandhi’s Gujarati and English writings will reveal how Mr Gandhi was deceiving people.” See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJs-BjoSzbo
. Accessed 12 August 2013.

57
Cited in BAWS 9, 276.

58
AoC 16.2.

59
See Tidrick 2006, 281, 283–4. On 2 May 1938, after Gandhi had a seminal discharge at the age of sixty-four, in a letter to Amritlal Nanavati he said: “Where is my place, and how can a person subject to passion represent non-violence and truth?” (CWMG 73, 139).