Asia Times: Practice casteism, don't talk about it


	September 11, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Practice casteism, don't talk about it
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - Both the Indian government and the Dalits (formerly untouchables) of India have something to celebrate. The government succeeded in keeping the word caste out of the final declaration of the recently-concluded race conference in Durban in South Africa.

But the World Conference against Race, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR) also proved to be an historic occasion for the Dalits (the Hindi word meaning "battered, broken and crushed").

Numbering 160 million they still largely remain out of the mainstream of life in India despite a constitutional ban on untouchability. For the first time, though, the international community heard their voices and their non-governmental organizations were able to highlight their case, said Mary Robinson, head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and secretary-general of the WCAR. She praised India's official National Human Rights Commission's support for inclusion of the Dalit issue in the agenda of the WCAR, despite the government's opposition.

At the World NGO Forum, with a membership of over 160 NGOs from all over the world, and over 6,000 delegates participating in Durban, caste and work based on discrimination became the new catch-phrase.

The forum's declaration, writes M S Prabhakar of the Hindu newspaper, situates the issues of caste and untouchability in their broader historical and social context, taking note of both the anti-discrimination provisions of the Indian constitution and their lack of effectiveness in practice, resulting in the persistence of violence against the Dalits.

"There is little doubt that the issue of caste and work-based discrimination in India has now been widely recognized as one of the persistent evils of Indian society. By openly and eloquently speaking at every available forum on these issues and disseminating valuable information, much of it based on official sources, to an audience most of whom were not even aware of these evils, the Dalit NGO representation from India has achieved a triumph in terms of visibility and impact, albeit outside the formal structures of the WCAR. No wonder most newspapers have characterized the government's success in keeping the word caste itself out of the final declaration as pyrrhic," Prabhakar wrote.

Other groups of about 520 million lower castes officially designated Other Backward Castes did not have the wherewithal to take their case to Durban. Historically, they have also suffered caste discrimination but not untouchability and are better off than the Dalits financially. More deprived of education than even the Dalits - some untouchables have entered the British army and received an English education - they are even less able to cope with the demands of modern life.

With their numerical superiority, however, they are beginning to acquire political clout and enter the government at lower levels, benefiting from affirmative action introduced in 1989 - reservation in government jobs.

The Dalits started fighting for emancipation from caste iniquities early last century while the British ruled and started benefiting from affirmative action with wider applications in their case - reservations in educational institutions, government jobs and legislatures - soon after independence in 1947. They have also benefited from the fact that those Dalits who converted to Christianity and were educated in missionary schools have nevertheless remained untouchable and are now able to provide leadership to the Dalits, who are basically part of the Hindu community.

As a result, the Dalits have a sizeable educated class and are active in the NGO movement. Thus, while one will not find a single Dalit or Other backward Class journalist in the large Indian media that employs about a million people, there is at least one small weekly journal - Dalit Voice - brought out by the Dalits themselves. But nothing even as marginal as that is published by the much larger, stronger and richer Other backward CLass community.

All levers of power - politics, media, bureaucracy, banks, universities and so on - are still controlled by the 120 million-strong upper castes in India. A TV program anchor doing a show called "We, The People", and discussing India's caste problem on the eve of the Durban conference, was not overly surprised to discover that there was not a single Dalit or Other Backward Class present in the audience numbering about 100. A similar discovery was made by another anchor doing a show called "The Big Fight" on the same subject earlier. Two-thirds of India generally goes completely un-represented in any intellectual discussion.

The Dalit Christians providing leadership to the Hindu Dalit struggle for recognition at Durban has been greatly resented by the Hindu fundamentalist leadership in India. What is India's Catholic Church doing at Durban, asks Devendra Swaroop, well-known ideologue of the Rashrriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), an organization to which the present Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his party the BJP belong. Swaroop believes this is basically an attempt by the Catholic Church to keep its Dalit followers within the fold of Christianity. These Dalits converted to Christianity 250 to 300 years ago, but they have still not attained either social acceptance or economic equality in the society, he points out.

Despite the presence of a small middle class among them, the Dalits truly remain the oppressed of India. The vehemence with which the entire political class, not just the government, indeed even the human rights lobby, opposed the inclusion of a caste debate on the Durban agenda over the past year has taken even some upper class intellectuals by surprise.

"I was amused to hear a minister in parliament say during the last session that the lot of the Dalit was improving day by day," says Kuldip Nayyar, a former journalist and diplomat, now a Member of Parliament and columnist. "The where and how of this may be impressive on paper, but the reality is that they continue to live in separate habitations, draw water from separate wells and get the worst chastisement if they ever dare raise their head. They are hanged if they marry out of caste. Official figures show that one Dalit woman is raped every six hours and one Dalit killed every three days," he adds.

As police are reluctant to register cases related to atrocities against Dalits, often because they may themselves be involved, these figures do not tell the whole story.

True, caste is not race, but the fallout from caste is more discriminating and devastating, says Nayyar, and goes on to ask some pretty inconvenient questions, "Why run away from the fact of caste, which has been there for more than 2,000 years and which prevails in the same ugly shape as it was a long time ago? If bias against women can be discussed at international conventions, why not caste? Do the Dalits not go through the same humiliation, the same harassment and the same horrors of living as women in many parts of the world? Borrowing words from Shakespeare, they can say, "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge'?"

The lone Dalit journalist and editor of Dalit Voice, V T Rajshekhar, explains their plight in a report entitled "Dalit: The Black Untouchables of India." "The existence of untouchability has been justified within the context of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma and rebirth. Hindus believe that persons are born untouchables because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them was regarded as polluting.

"Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in Indian history untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed, the untouchables' very shadows were considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence of their presence. Cups were tied around their necks to capture any spittle that might escape their lips and contaminate roads and streets. Their meals were taken from broken dishes. Their clothing was taken from corpses.

"They were forbidden to learn to read and write, and were prohibited from listening to any of the traditional Hindu texts. Untouchables were denied access to public wells. They could not use ornaments and were not allowed to enter Hindu temples. The primary work of untouchables included scavenging and street sweeping, emptying toilets, the public execution of criminals, the disposal of dead animals and human corpses, and the clean up of cremation grounds. The daily life of the untouchable was filled with degradation, deprivation and humiliation.

"The basic status of India's untouchables has changed little since ancient times, and it has recently been observed that 'caste Hindus do not allow untouchables to wear shoes, ride bicycles, use umbrellas or hold their heads up while walking in the street'."

Rajshekhar continues, "Untouchables in urban India are crowded together in squalid slums, while in rural India, where the vast majority of untouchables live, they are exploited as landless agricultural laborers and ruled by terror and intimidation. Official Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against untouchables have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of atrocities by caste Hindus against untouchables in 1989 alone. However, Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities against untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for untouchables is rarely dispensed."

Caste discrimination cannot be understood merely as a human rights violation. Perhaps one has to delve deeper in the Indian psyche in order to explain this phenomenon. As early as in 1936 the foremost Dalit leader, B R Ambedkar, also known as the father of the Indian constitution, said, "My quarrel with Hindus and Hinduism is not over the imperfections of their social conduct. It is much more fundamental. It is over their ideals. Under the caste system, an ideal society is unequal. In every respect, caste rejects the notion of human equality and justifies discrimination on the basis of graded inequality. Principles of common good exist only within each caste group. The question of balancing interests between groups does not exist, for the simple reason that each caste is a world unto itself.

"Caste prevents the possibility of associated living among people; it is the most extreme division of social and political power. Its enclosure is complete, to the extent that direct contact between castes is prohibited, in order to avoid 'pollution'. It means total segregation, whether in temples, at wells, on roads, in schools and in marriage. Thus, while caste discrimination bears some similarity to that of slavery, it is in many respects more dehumanizing. The very term 'untouchable' means one with whom no social contact of any sort should be held, under threat of punishment. It degrades beyond all comparison," wrote Ambedkar.

In a written statement submitted to the Asia-Pacific Regional Seminar of Experts held at Bangkok, Thailand 5-7 September 2000, Asian Legal Resource Center, an NGO with the economic and social council of the United Nations, pointed out, "The constitution of India accepts the principles of equality, fraternity and liberty; it outlawed all enclosed units by implication. However between this legal position and reality lies a vast gap. The world's largest democracy has failed to develop beyond a mere formal democracy. No amount of criticism about the conflict between constitutional principles and practice can be of any impact on ethical principles and practices based on the opposite ideal.

"Ethically, there is unity of theory and practice, as inequality is accepted both as ideal and is practiced. Legal confusions have no bearing on the ethical foundation of caste-based societies. Constitutional declarations of equality or acceptance of international covenants founded on the principle of equality may create legal obligations; nonetheless they do not change the ethical foundations of a given society.

"The essence of caste discrimination is that it limits employment to one's ancestral calling, it prohibits inter-marriage, and thus, it is a permanent form of social stratification. Caste is a total form of discrimination limiting education and nullifying social mobility. Caste is also a political ideology. It is a means of social control by which the largest sections of society are denied their basic rights of free speech, assembly and participation. It is an ideology that not only denies equality but also considers inequality as an ideal to be pursued. It is, in essence, a violently suppressive ideology.

"As long as the influence of caste remains, humane treatment of all people is impossible. Although some constitutional and legal provisions were enacted during the 20th century to negate the influence of caste in several countries, the impact of such legal measures has not been able to make a significant change to the caste structure and influence in these societies. In fact, some of the laws, such as laws against atrocities against Dalits, have not been implemented. The claim that these legal provisions are evidence of the eradication of caste is untrue as extreme forms of discrimination are perpetrated on hundreds of millions of people every day."

As mentioned, although it is generally agreed that caste is not race, the protagonists of the case for caste as race explain their position with the following arguments, among many others, "Racial and caste discrimination are synonyms as both are determined by birth and membership is automatically ascribed and unaltered. Individuals in low castes are considered inherently inferior and are relegated to a disadvantageous position regardless of their behavior and quality. High castes maintain their superior position by exercising powerful sanctions and they rationalize their status with elaborate philosophical, religious or sometime genetic explanation.

"For example, the superstitious belief preached by the upper caste or is part of the Vedic explanation that the division of the ancient society is from the body parts of the creator God, his mouth became the Brahmin, his arms were made into the Kshatriya, his thighs the Vaishya and from his feet the Shudra were born. Such cosmogony becomes the starting point for the enunciation of the duties the creator allocated to each of the social classes. There is another popular notion that one's particular duty is calibrated to the class into which one was born and the stage of life one is presently passing through, the belief in karma and the cycle of rebirth whereby one's social position in this life is ethically determined by moral action in the past life. These are all the formulation made by the upper caste people to their advantage. Thousands of these type of stories were made by the upper caste people to their economic gain and high social status and cheap manual labor exploitation."

Seeking to understand the fervor with which India sought to stop the debate about caste at Durban, Teesta Setalvad, the editor of Communalism Combat, came up with an interesting hypothesis in an article in north India's largest circulated newspaper, the Hindustan Times, "Every country, an outstanding Middle-Eastern writer of modern times has written, has a myth. A country's myth can console and knit together men and women of different needs, carry them through different times, explain sorrow, defeat, locate them in the world. But the myth can also hide the country from itself, hide itself from scrutiny. The mesmeric myth of being the most glorious, non-violent, tolerant and ancient civilization of the world has been woven by us within, and also sustained actively, at international fora. This is starkly visible to anyone privileged to walk the corridors of the buildings of the United Nations, be it in Geneva, Paris or New York. It is a myth, which like all myths, reflects some truth and much desire. Does the myth by its very reassertion not block scrutiny?

"The myth has lived despite the violence of poverty and denial suffered by India's millions after Independence. Though severely bruised, it has survived, somehow, the aggressive nuclearization led by India within South Asia even though the action of bursting the bomb was cushioned by an aggressive domestic policy within the typified intermittent, yet systematically propelled, acts of medieval brutality on sections of our own people. Can it survive the haunting reality of the violence and discrimination of caste that will be systematically projected at the UN conference at Durban this week?

"It is the real danger of this myth - of being the most non-violent and tolerant civilization in the world - that stands the risk of being exploded at the UN's World Conference Against Racism, Racial Intolerance, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances at Durban. It is the realistic assessment of the far-reaching implications of the myth being exploded that is behind the Indian government's arrogant and dogged refusal to allow discussion of caste and caste-based discrimination, exclusion and violence being discussed before the world community," Setalvad writes.

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