Official recognition of caste can widen social schism
3 Jun 2010, 0626 hrs IST,
Salil Misra, Professor of History, IGNOU
Caste in India is a social institution that performs multiple
functions. It is a unit of social division, a source of discrimination
and exclusion , a strong community consciousness based on ascribed
status, and a social category chosen for a policy of protective
discrimination by the state in independent India, all at the same
time. The four functions mentioned above are not mutually exclusive .
They feed into, and reinforce, each other. A strong caste
consciousness creates boundaries along caste lines and helps in the
making of a hierarchical social order.
A hierarchical order excludes those organised at the bottom from
sharing the benefits of development. Their exclusion makes it
essential for the democratic state to extend protective discrimination
to them. Benefits extended on the basis of caste inevitably
consolidate caste consciousness. Caste consciousness produces strong
boundaries along caste lines and creates caste solidarities , cutting
across region. The circle is closed and complete. Is it possible to
break through the circle in order to diminish the role of caste in our
social life?
Caste is not fixed and static but fluid and dynamic. Its meaning and
connotation have changed with time. To take an example, a teenager
growing in north Indian cities will recognise three major castes:
upper castes, other backward classes and Dalits. Fifty years ago, none
of the three categories would have figured in a discussion on caste.
Although a local category, it can — given a little push from politics
— acquire a pan-Indian connectivity and create solidarities on
all-India basis.
Caste is a form of identity. Identities are historically constructed
and, in their construction, are crucially dependent on major
historical developments of the times. For instance, the pan-Indian
communal identity that started developing from the end of the 19th
century had a lot to do with the British decision to recognise
religious community as an important unit for the purpose of census
enumeration. As a result, there was a transformation from local, fuzzy
and syncretic religious identities to sharply-demarcated , pan-Indian
religious communities with distinct and neat dividing lines.
Creation of such pan-Indian religious communities fed into strong
communal consciousness, which, in turn, consolidated communalism in
Indian politics. This impeded both nation-making and a development of
society along modern, democratic and civil libertarian lines. Even
today, communalism is a great obstacle in India's modern development.
Indian society since Independence has been involved in one of the most
complex and comprehensive social transformations. To be precise, it is
the transformation of nearly a fifth of humanity from a pre-modern
static life to a modern, egalitarian and affluent conditions. Such a
mammoth transition is bound to be painful and tortuous, and produce
various sets of distortions . An acute sharpness in identity politics
is one such distortion.
Caste, in its contemporary avatar, does not belong to antiquity, but
is rooted in the distinctive nature of the country's transition to
modernity. Any attempt to give it an official recognition for the
purpose of a pan-Indian enumeration is, therefore, bound to create new
caste solidarities and pan-Indian blocs of consolidated caste
communities organised against one another. That would inevitably
create a huge obstacle in the country's transition to a social,
economic and political modernisation of its people and society.
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