Column | Reservation System Has Given the Oppressed-Caste Youth The Hope That Change Is Slowly On the Way: Kancha Ilaiah

As a tool of transformation of caste society, reservation worked and did not work. In the background of B.R. Ambedkar’s struggle for annihilation of caste, it started for Scheduled Castes (SCs )and Scheduled Tribes (STs) from 1947 itself in two sectors: education and employment and legislative bodies in the realm of the electoral system. Reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) began only in 1995 subsequent to implementation of the Mandal Commission report. The implementation process was accom­panied by a conscious manipulation by the upper castes, which kept on denying the very existence of caste and refused to implement reservation in different structures.

The Vedic and scriptural acceptance of varna and caste and the textual silence about the role of labour in building civilisation in post- and pre-Harappan times, and discoveries in agrarian and artisanal economic systems, stunted the nation’s development for millennia. Forceful denial of education and employment to Shudra/Chandala/Adivasis as part of Brahminic spiritual ritualism continued in post-colonial India even among the educated upper castes. English-medium education became the preserve of the upper castes.

The process of implementation of reservation with such denial by all shades of ideological upper castes—right, liberal and left upper castes—forced the process to walk on crutches. Yet, if we take stock of the system of the Indian mode of caste-based affirmative action in the government sector, it has produced a small middle class from among the OBC/SC/STs that became a definite player in India’s post-colonial development.

The post-liberalisation capitalist market economy needed an increased social mass of buyers of globalised commodities. If the OBC/SC/STs, who constitute a vast social force in India, were not allowed to come into the urban globalised mall markets, the very existence of such malls would have been rendered unviable even for the monopoly capitalists, who happen to be only upper castes. As of now there is no share of SC/ST/OBCs in monopoly capital, as they still remain outside the domain of entrepreneurial economy. Because of haltingly expanded school education into spread-out villages, where the OBC/SC/STs live and the reservation-based higher education and employment in the government sector, a small middle class, which in terms of numbers is significant, made the mall market sustainable. But they do not get preferential treatment in the hugely expanding private sector, within the consciously getting privatised public sector units by the present right-wing regime. This is being done with a caste consciousness that the OBC/SC/STs march into the high-end economy must be halted. But this will harm the nation. If representatives of every varna (Brahmin, Shudra, Bania and Kshatriya), every caste in every sector are not allowed, India can never progress enough to catch up with China.

The Telangana caste survey and the critical study of the data by the Independent Expert Working Group have clearly shown how caste functions as benefactor to the upper castes and denier of opportunities for the SC/ST/OBCs. Out of 242 castes that the state’s population is divided into, the upper castes are just 18 and they constitute 15.79 per cent. This percentage of upper castes includes the ‘no caste’ category that constitutes 3.4 per cent. The category does not constitute only upper castes but also others. The actual upper castes of Telangana is just 12.39 per cent.

According to the state’s socio-economic survey, the top one per cent of households (mostly upper castes) own 25 per cent of the total wealth and the top five per cent own 46 per cent. In the state private-sector jobs, OBCs’ share is 6.3 per cent, SCs’ 5.6 per cent and STs’ 2.8 per cent of their population. Not that there are no equally qualified and competent OBC/SC/ST youth to compete with upper-caste youth in the private sector. However, caste-based bias keeps them out of the private-sector job market.

Though reservation was expected to end after 10 years of adoption of the Constitution, even after 75 years, the SC/ST/OBCs have not reached the level playing field in any modern sectors. The reservation system must go on, in spite of opposition from sections of the upper castes. The present regime satisfied such sections with 10 per cent economically weaker section. But how does caste that has hierarchically divided Indian society need to look for other methods of de-castising the social system?

The caste system is a unique problem of the Hindu religion. A solution must also be sought within the Hindu spiritual system. Equal education for all is both a social and spiritual issue. Hinduism has produced manys spiritual texts starting with the Rigveda to Manu’s Dharma Shastra. But that literature is basically caste centered. Educated Indians, irrespective of caste, should get equal rights in the Hindu religion, including in priesthood and maintaining the temple system. Since Hindu spiritual language is Sanskrit, it was denied to Shudra/Dalits. Democratisation of spiritual language and allowing all caste youth to get spiritual positions will create conditions of change in caste relations.

Occupation and food have been tied to caste culture, but not left to individual choice in Hindu religion. These two economic life-related practices of caste evolved a spiritual theory of purity and pollution that sustained caste gradations. The idea of ritual indignity of labour has destroyed the scientific innovations in Hindu society. Notions and practices embedded in our caste-based daily life need to be undone with conscious efforts of the state and society. Seventy-five years of reservation produced organic intellectuals in each caste who could demand equality in every sphere. The most positive aspect of Ambedkar’s theory of reservation is that it imbibed peaceful methods of struggles for change. The reservation system has given the oppressed-caste youth, generation after generation, the hope that change, though slow, is on the way.

The constitutional democracy that Ambedkar, Nehru and Patel, who came from different caste backgrounds, established in 1947 enshrined that hope in theory and laid the early foundations of practice. In a long history of caste-gra­ded inequality, 75 years is a small period. While implementing the existing reser­vations with full openness, we must use all other methods to annihilate caste.

(Views expressed are personal)

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd political theorist, social activist and author

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)