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Caste, Untouchability, Anti-caste Politics and Strategies

The caste sy stem in India originated about 2,500 hundred y ears ago. It is prevalent not only
among Hindus but also am ong Sikhs, Christians and Muslims. While it has m any aspects, here we
are concerned with the aspect of hierarchy , of high and low, of touchable and untouchable, which
has provided legitimation for the unequal access to resources, and to the exploitation and
oppression of lower castes, besides the discrim ination against lower castes by higher castes.
The m ost obnoxious part of the caste sy stem was that it designated certain groups as
untouchables and outcastes, and then used this to deny them ownership of land, entry into
temples, access to comm on resources such as water from the village tank or well. Non-
untouchable castes, including the lowest am ong them, were not to have any phy sical contact with
untouchables. They could not accept water or food from their hands.
In the villages, the untouchable castes perform ed all the menial j obs such as those of
scavengers, water-carriers, skinners of hides of dead animals, leather-workers, as well as, of
course, agricultural labour. Under the jaj mani sy stem, they received a fixed share of the
produce from the landowning fam ilies as pay m ent for their services.
From the m iddle and late nineteenth century onwards, breaches began to appear in the sy stem
described above. Econom ic changes, especially the com mercialization of agricultural production
and agrarian relations, emergence of contractual relations, new employ ment opportunities
outside the village in factories, mandis, governm ent service, the arm y (aided by education), all
contributed to a shift in the position of the untouchables. Social reform movem ents, such as those
of Jy otiba Phule in Maharashtra and Sri Naray ana Guru in Kerala, also began to question the
caste sy stem and caste inequality . From 1920 onwards, Gandhij i integrated the issue of abolition
of untouchability into the national movem ent and maj or cam paigns and struggles, such as the
Vaikom (1924– 25) and Guruvay ur saty agrahas (1931–32) were organized.1 Gandhij i’s effort
was to m ake the upper castes realize the enorm ity of the injustice done via the practice of
untouchability and to persuade them to atone for this wrong. He opposed the British attempt to
treat the Depressed Classes, as untouchables were then called in official parlance, as separate
from Hindus, and grant them reserved seats in legislatures, based on separate electorates in the
Com munal Award of 1932, because once they were separated from the Hindus, there would be
no ground for m aking Hindu society change its attitude towards them.
Dr B.R. Am bedkar, a brilliant lawy er, educated in the United States with the help of a
scholarship given by the Maharaja of Baroda, emerged as a m ajor leader of the Depressed
Classes by the late 1920s. He was a Mahar, a m ajor untouchable caste of Maharashtra. In 1932,
after Gandhiji went on a fast against the Com munal Award, he agreed to the Poona Pact by
which the Depressed Classes (later Scheduled Castes or SC) were given reserved seats from
within the general Hindu category . But by 1936, he argued that conversion to another religion was
necessary and even chose Sikhism . But the conversion was deferred since the British government
would not prom ise that the benefits of reservation would be continued in the case of conversion.
In 1936, he form ed the Independent Labour Party which sought to com bine with peasants and
workers and contested and won a few seats in the 1937 elections to the Bombay Legislative
Assem bly . By the early 1940s, Am bedkar realized that his effort to build an alliance against the
Congress was not m aking m uch headway , and he decided to focus on the SCs alone and form ed
the All India Scheduled Castes Federation in 1942. He also cooperated, politically , with the
colonial governm ent on the understanding that he could get more benefits for the SCs. His loy alty
won him a seat on the Viceroy ’s Executive Council (the equivalent of the cabinet) in the 1940s.
Other strands also em erged in different regions; in Punj ab the Ad-Dharm, in Uttar Pradesh the
Adi-Hindu and in Bengal the Namashudras. Interestingly , in both Punj ab and Bengal, they allied
with the pro-British Unionist Party and Krishak Praja Party respectively . In Bihar, Jagj ivan Ram ,
who emerged as the m ost im portant Harijan Congress leader, formed the Khetm ajoor Sabha and
the Depressed Classes League. The m ain demands of Harijan organizations before independence
were freedom from the begar or caste-specific im posed labour, grant of forest or wastelands for
cultivation, and rem oval of legal disabilities from owning land, such as those im posed by the
Punj ab Land Alienation Act, 1900, which did not include SCs am ong agriculturist castes. Many
individual Gandhians and Gandhian organizations were very active in this respect.
With independence, maj or initiatives in the area of rem oving caste inj ustice and inequality
were to be attem pted. The constitution extended political rights to all citizens irrespective of
religion, caste, sex, language, race and this included the SCs. But it also specifically in Article 17
declared that: ‘“untouchability ” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The
enforcement of any disability arising out of “untouchability ” shall be an offence punishable with
law’. In 1955, parliament passed the Untouchability (Offences) Act which further specified that
any offences were punishable with a fine, and/or cancellation of licences and public grants. In
1976, the Protection of Civil Rights (Am endment) Act was passed which provided for enhanced
and stringent punishm ent, appointment of officers and special courts to deal with offenders, legal
aid for victims, etc. The constitution also m ade provisions for reservation of seats in legislatures
and educational institutions and of government j obs for SCs. The reservations were initially made
for a period of ten y ears but have been extended continuously since then.
Dr Am bedkar was a party to the constitutional and legal initiatives as, despite their differences
in the pre-independence day s, he was chosen by the Congress as the chairm an of the Drafting
Com mittee of the Constitution and was the law m inister in Nehru’s cabinet. However, differences
emerged, and he left the government to form the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, which
contested elections but its candidates mostly lost to Congress candidates in reserved seats. In 1956,
he reverted to his position of conversion being necessary and, with him self at the head, led half a
m illion people (som e say 6 million), mainly Mahars, his own comm unity , to becom e Buddhists.
He could probably do this because reservations were not denied to Buddhist converts as they
were to SCs who converted to Christianity and Islam. Som e other untouchable groups, such as the
Jatavs of Agra, also followed him, but m any others did not.
Ambedkar died soon after, in 1956, leaving no second line of leadership. However, on the basis
of a letter written by him, published posthum ously , the Republican Party was founded in 1957
and it fought the elections to the Bom bay Legislative Assem bly in the same y ear and won a few
seats. Personality clashes and other issues soon led to splits and in a few y ears m ost factions
j oined or allied with the Congress, which under Y.B. Chavan m ade special efforts to
accomm odate them.2
In the early 1970s, a new trend identified as the Dalit Panthers (Dalit, m eaning downtrodden,
being the name by which the SCs now prefer to call them selves in various parts), em erged in
Maharashtra as part of the country wide wave of radical politics. It was first reflected in creative
literature and then in politics. Established as a political organization in 1972, the Dalit Panthers
leaned ideologically on Am bedkar’s thought, and had their base m ainly am ong y outh and students
in urban centres. They talked about revolution, but there is little evidence of any concrete strategy
being evolved. The agitation for renaming Marathwada University as Am bedkar University
resulted in the anti-Dalit riots in 1978 in the rural areas of Maharashtra in which the main
aggressors were the middle-caste Maratha Kunbi non-Brahmin peasants.
By the 1980s, the Dalit Panthers had developed serious differences over issues such as whether
or not to include non-Dalit poor and non-Buddhist Dalits, primacy of cultural versus econom ic
struggle, as well as over personalities, for example, Raja Dhale versus Namdeo Dhasal. Splits
began to occur and m ost factions, as in the case of the Republican Party twenty y ears earlier,
j oined or allied with Congress over tim e. Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of B.R. Ambedkar, in 1990
m ade an effort to unite all Dalit organizations for contesting the Maharashtra State Assembly
elections and a huge m orcha of 500,000 people was organized in Bombay but later differences
cropped up again.
In North India, a new party , the Bahuj an Samaj Party (BSP) em erged in the 1980s under the
leadership of Kanshi Ram (and later May awati, who became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh)
which declared electoral power as its basic aim and strategy . Though initially there was talk of
Dalit and Backward Castes and minorities com ing together as a bahujan samaj , in practice the
BSP has becom e a Dalit-based party willing to ally with any political force, BJP, Congress,
Janata, Sam ajwadi Party , as long as it advances its vote share and gets political power. Such a
deal with the BJP got May awati her chief m inistership in Uttar Pradesh in 1995 and, m uch to the
annoy ance of those who regarded V.P. Singh as the m essiah of social justice, the BSP happily
dropped him to support Devi Lal and Chandra Shekhar in 1990. The BSP has succeeded in
securing a sufficient base among the SCs in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Madhy a Pradesh for it to
become a significant factor in electoral calculations of other parties and the lack of dom inance of
any one party has given it an importance it might not have had otherwise. A m arked feature of its
ideology has been a strident and often abusive stance towards upper castes in general, though
proxim ity to power appears to be already exercising its m ellowing effect.
In May 2007, May awati led the BSP to a clear maj ority in the assembly elections in Uttar
Pradesh. This was a maj or achievem ent, because even though she had been chief m inister of
Uttar Pradesh earlier on three occasions, June to October 1995, March to Septem ber 1997, and
May to August 2003, this was the first time a Dalit party had com e to power on its own, without
support from other parties. The BSP won 206 out of 403 seats. The m ost significant feature of the
BSP victory is that May awati m anaged to attract support from across India’s com plex caste
spectrum . Brahm ins, Thakurs, Muslim s and OBCs voted for the first tim e for a Dalit party ,
because BSP had offered seats to people from these comm unities. As usual, this was
accompanied by a colourful slogan: Haathi nahi, Ganesh hain, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hain: The
elephant (BSP logo) is really the wise Ganesh, the trinity of gods rolled into one. After being
sworn in as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time, on 13 May 2007, she announced
that her agenda is focussed on social justice through laws and other m eans for weaker sections,
providing em ploy m ent instead of distributing money to unemploy ed and her slogan is to m ake
Uttar Pradesh into an Uttam (excellent) Pradesh. In keeping with the policy of attracting the votes
of upper castes, she also talked about a policy for poverty -based reservations rather than caste-
based reservations.
Non-Dalit parties and groups taking up issues of concern to Dalits have also play ed a significant
role in their empowerment. The agricultural labour unions set up by different parties and NGOs
that have taken up agricultural labour issues such as wage dem ands, dem ands for em ploy m ent
guarantee schemes, right to work, house sites, abolition of child labour, right to education, etc.,
have all contributed to a new Dalit self-confidence. Exclusively Dalit organizations have also
m ushroom ed. Dalit y outh in rural areas have organized Am bedkar Sanghams. In urban areas,
students, teachers, y outh and office workers have been organized into associations, but these are
m ore concerned with advancing the interests of their mem bers and have little link with rural areas
or the urban poor.
It m ust, however, be recognized that despite all the efforts of Dalit parties and other political
groups, the maj ority of Dalits still vote for the Congress. It is this sim ple but overwhelm ing ground
reality that has propelled Dalit leaders over the y ears towards the Congress and not sim plistic
explanations based on theories of cooption or betray al. If their aim is to change this, Dalit
ideologues will have to understand the underly ing causes.
Sociologists have found that despite the claims of the leaders of the Dalits, Buddhist converts in
the villages have not given up their old Hindu gods and goddesses, but have only added
photographs of Am bedkar and the Buddha, in that order, to the pantheon. Buddhist converts in
villages show their newfound confidence by celebrating Hindu festivals, especially ones earlier
barred to them, such as Gauri puja and Ganapathi puj a, with great gusto and public display , by
cooking prohibited religious foods, etc. The upper castes are angered not by their having become
Buddhists—they are able to accom modate that quite easily — but precisely by their defiance of
traditional Hindu norms and emulation of Hindu religious practices. Thus, despite conversion, we
find that Dalits feel equality with caste Hindus only when they are able to practice the sam e
religious rites and custom s which the upper castes had denied to them. Gandhij i’s understanding
and strategy of struggle against the Dalit problem, which em phasized gaining religious equality
via temple entry , stands validated. The fate of converts to Christianity , who continue to have
separate Dalit churches, or separate places within churches, who face discrim ination, including
denial of promotions within Church hierarchy , denial of right to perform ceremonies, refusal by
priests to accept water from their hands, etc., also proves that conversion has only transferred the
problem of caste-based discrimination from Hinduism to Christianity . The same is true of
Muslim s, with low-caste Muslim converts being treated by high-caste Ashrafs in a similar
m anner.
 Similarly , reservation of j obs and seats in educational institutions at a higher level could only
m ake a marginal difference. Given that, in the total population, only about 3 per cent get higher
education and can have access to governm ent jobs, the percentage of SCs who could possibly
benefit is m uch smaller, as they are m ostly poorer, more rural, etc. Reservation of seats for SCs
in legislatures has had som e effect, with electoral im peratives forcing representatives to take up
issues of concern to their constituents, but the tendency for co-option and personal
aggrandizement am ong representatives of SC origin has not been any lower than that among
those belonging to higher-caste groups. A more recent problem is the competition between
different SC castes, such as Mahais and Mangs in Maharashtra, Malas and Madigas in Andhra
Pradesh, Chamars and Chuhras in North India. As the benefits of reservation are inevitably
availed of by the better-off castes am ong the SCs, the disadvantaged ones begin to dem and quotas
within quotas, and intra-SC hostility is becom ing increasingly politically visible. This is the logic of
reservation—once reservation is secured, the only way of further im proving one’s prospects is by
try ing to secure a larger slice of the apportioned cake for one’s group.
The overall position of SCs has im proved considerably , nevertheless. But the causes are not to
be found m ainly in either conversion or reservation, the two highly visible strategies. The more
invisible processes of social and econom ic change, of industrialization, of agricultural growth
leading to growth of rural employ ment, of urbanization, have all helped. The extension of
prim ary education and health facilities, the anti-poverty program me, the rural em ploy m ent
guarantee schemes, rural income-generating schemes such as subsidies and loans for dairy ing
and goat rearing, the literacy cam paign, the cam paign for abolition of child labour, have all been
crucial. The provision of house sites in villages, begun by Indira Gandhi, has been particularly
important since it has rem oved a maj or instrum ent of coercion from the hands of the upper
castes who could earlier threaten to throw out the recalcitrant mem bers from the village land.
Adult franchise, which m akes the vote of even the poorest and the lowest caste valuable, has had
its own consequences. Distribution of land, where it has occurred, has also helped in improving
status by removing the stigma of landlessness and raising living standards. An innovative new
schem e started in Andhra Pradesh enables SCs to purchase land on the m arket with the help of
grants and loans provided by the government. The breakdown of the j ajm ani sy stem , and the
increasing delinking of caste from traditional occupation, has also been critical.
As a result of all these and m any other sim ilar processes, untouchability in urban areas has
virtually disappeared and in rural areas has declined drastically . In the m ore prosperous rural
areas, where em ploy m ent opportunities for low castes have expanded untouchability has
decreased. When employ ers have to seek out labour, they can ill-afford to flaunt their higher-
caste status. In factories and offices, caste-based discrim ination is rare, though old casteist
prej udices m ay linger. Atrocities against SCs continue to occur, but they are usually a reaction to
open defiance of upper-caste norms, such as a lower-caste boy eloping with an upper-caste girl,
or lower castes ally ing with extremist political groups, as in Bihar, to challenge upper-caste
authority . As such, the atrocities, though worthy of condem nation in the strongest terms, are to be
understood as proof of increasing assertion by lower castes.
However, great inequalities still rem ain in access to education, to employ ment, to other
economic and social opportunities. The link between caste and literacy is strong, with studies
showing that in villages where upper castes have had near-universal adult literacy for several
decades, lower castes could have literacy rates close to zero, particularly for women.3 In 1991,
in India as a whole, while literacy rates for men were 64 per cent and for wom en 39 per cent, for
SC m en they were 46 and for SC wom en only 19. In Uttar Pradesh, the comparable figures were
56 and 25 and 39 and 8. In Kerala, however, the gap is much narrower, with the general figures
being 94 and 86 and SC figures being 85 and 73.4 The regional contrast shows how it is possible to
reduce inequality through positive social m easures such as provision of elementary education.
Even the benefits of the policy of reservation cannot be utilized without education as is shown by
the general inability to fill quotas reserved for SCs at every level.
In the future, too, the em phasis on anti-poverty strategies such as rapid econom ic development
and employ ment, and incom e expansion via em ploy m ent guarantee schemes and other similar
m easures needs to continue. Education has been found to be a maj or vehicle for social mobility
and therefore em phasis on providing universal primary and even secondary education is an
imperative. This must include a special em phasis on fem ale education, given the direct im pact
observed on fertility rates. This also shows the need for greater emphasis on equal opportunities
for quality education from the prim ary level itself as education has been found to be a critical
vehicle for social m obility .
The issue of the Backward Classes or Castes, which cam e to a head with the Mandal report in
the anti-Mandal agitation in 1990, is quite different from that of the SCs, though efforts are m ade
at the political level to equate or collapse the two.5 The so-called Backward Castes are really the
interm ediate castes whose position in the ritual hierarchy was below that of the Brahmins and the
Kshatriy as and above that of the untouchables. They did suffer from certain ritual disabilities as
compared to the upper castes, but they were in no way comparable to the SCs since they often
had access to land and other econom ic resources. Nor did they suffer from untouchability .
Besides, the category includes great disparities, with som e castes or sections of castes being very
powerful economically and socially and others being quite disadvantaged with a ritual position
j ust above that of the SCs.
Sociologists have shown that Backward Castes such as the Ahirs, Yadavas, Kurm is, Vokkaligas,
Lingay ats and Lodhas have gained considerable econom ic advantage via post-independence land
reform which gave land rights to ex-tenants of zamindars. This new found strength increased their
political clout and representation and they are now seeking to use this clout to secure greater
advantages for them selves in jobs, education, etc. In rural areas, they are the biggest exploiters of
the SCs who are agricultural labourers and there is little in comm on between them. The Mandal
report has been shown by scholars to be based on faulty m ethodology and a weak database. The
Mandal j udgments have also been subjected to severe criticism by sociologists who have argued
that caste has undergone such drastic changes since independence but the judiciary is still working
on the basis of outdated and ill-informed Western notions of caste. In fact, the politics of
reservations for Backward Castes has m ore to do with sharing the loaves and fishes of office and
power than with a struggle for social justice.