Posted: Mon, Jun 14 2010. 1:15 AM IST
Economy and Politics
Rise of India's caste warrior
Even as caste continues to puzzle and infuriate many, caste-based
organizations show remarkable resilience, promote philanthropy
Pallavi Singh
Dubai, Ghaziabad: Caste is most often seen through the prism of
conflict—the heated national debates about reservations, the political
polarization on the census and the attacks on young couples that have
been blessed by caste panchayats.
But far away from the spotlight, there is the more benign world of
organizations and activists who continue to nurture informal networks
based on caste, to help fledgeling businesses, build educational
institutions and promote philanthropy.
Consider the case of Avneesh Dahiya.
Dahiya owes his three-year journey from Bhojpur, a small village about
187km from New Delhi, to the National Capital Region (NCR), to the
commitment of one man to use personal success to help other members of
his caste.
Help at hand: Choudhary Chhotu Ram Girls' Inter College manager Sunil
Chowdhry. Pradeep Gaur / Mint
Yashpal Malik is a real estate developer from the Jat community who
made it big in the Capital. When Malik began the construction of
Vasundhara Plaza in Ghaziabad, the shopping complex where Dahiya now
runs a busy Mother Dairy outlet, he visited Bhojpur as the convenor of
a series of workshops on caste-based reservation for the Jat
community.
Malik, also national president of All India Jat Arakshan Samiti
(AIJAS), a caste-based outfit demanding recognition of Jats as Other
Backward Castes (OBC) at the national level, met Dahiya in 2007.
"What do you do?" he asked Dahiya, who had already spent more than
three decades in the village, landless and jobless. With Jats rallying
to demand reservations for their community, AIJAS had just been
formed, and Malik invited Dahiya to join.
In order to help a fellow Jat, Malik also helped Dahiya procure a
licence to run the dairy outlet and waived the rent for the shop. The
dairy helped Dahiya meet two fond aspirations: to earn a livelihood
and send his children to college.
Caste continues to puzzle and infuriate many modernizers, but the
institution has survived and changed in the six decades after
independence even as it continues to whip up passions that can split
most political parties down the middle.
But away from the heated arguments whether the government should ask
citizens details about their caste, the institution itself has shown
remarkable resilience and acts as a magnet for identity and
philanthropy.
And while the government struggles with the issue of caste-based
headcount, caste organizations carry on their work under the national
radar, even as officials at these outfits draw a subtle line between
caste organizations and casteist politics on the one hand and worry
about the failure to attract young members on the other.
Malik's focus, for example, is not just Masscon India Pvt. Ltd, the
real estate firm of which he is the managing director. As a leader of
AIJAS, Malik says he finds his true calling. "The business is
important because it helps you make money, but AIJAS is what takes the
money where it truly belongs—back to the community."
Malik is a caste leader, of sorts. His caste outfit and business firm
collectively serve the community in two ways: while AIJAS helps needy
people from his community who approach him, Masscon becomes the
employment generator.
Since the company was set up in 2000, it has recruited around 40
people from the Jat community as office staff alone.
Sociologists view the rise of caste-based organizations as an
after-effect of post-Mandal politics in India, the period after 1989
when the Indian government introduced 27% reservation for OBCs in
government jobs. "Caste remained unattended before that. Prior to
Mandal, there was no reason for individual backward castes to be
assertive at the national level. Post-Mandal, caste-based
organizations are using caste as an effective instrument of community
building and its social and financial upliftment," Anand Kumar,
professor of sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New
Delhi, says.
While there are no hard numbers to measure the spread and appeal of
such caste organizations, a search on the Internet throws hundreds of
names of such outfits with regularly updated websites. While most of
them claim extensive membership, many admit that finding issues
relevant to the youth of their communities is a big challenge these
days.
The Chitragupta Kalyan Sangathan, an organization for Kayasthas, who
are traditionally known as the caste of the account keepers, in
Delhi's Shahdara, has a helpline for jobs and marriages. The small
office tucked away in an old dilapidated building is remarkable
because it has no staff, except a peon and a typist to answer the
telephone, no photocopier and no conference room. "We do most of the
work in the field," its convenor Santok Saxena says. "We have a large
community pool of lawyers, financial planners and bankers. Whenever
someone needs us, we offer guidance and relevant contacts."
The Kayastha Mahasabha in Mumbai helps entrepreneurs start their own
ventures. "We help them in securing bank loans from our contacts,
because it is very difficult for a new entrepreneur to get loans.
Sometimes we act as guarantors as well," says Pramod Srivastava,
convenor of the organization.
Over the years though, organizations admit much of their appeal has waned.
"What we do is very traditional, such as organize mass marriages and
religious festivals, which don't attract the youth of our community.
While forward castes are capable of financial means to dispense with,
there is lack of unity," says Praveen Sharma, secretary of the Brahman
Samaj Sanstha in Delhi.
Sociologist Anand Kumar says unlike the backward caste organizations,
associations of forward castes today are on the defensive owing to the
rise of OBCs. "They are suffering downward mobility. In the 1950s,
they were 70% in elected positions. Now, it is down to 30%. In the
changed situation of coalition politics, they are adjusting and have
no individual identity," he points out.
At the same time, analysts feel that the caste organizations'
co-option into politics and vice-versa has led to trivialization of
the groups' roles such as their activities remaining limited to
distributing medals and organizing dinners to community members.
Some of the examples of this co-option, where caste groups made way
for political voices, are the Bharatiya Lok Dal, which was led by Jat
leader Chaudhary Charan Singh in Uttar Pradesh, and the Rashtriya
Janata Dal led by Lalu Prasad in Bihar, which acted as growth engines
of caste-based politics in India.
Avneesh Dahiya at his outlet in Ghaziabad.Pradeep Gaur/Mint
Sometime in 2005, the decadence was visible through several small,
unorganized protests in Delhi. As Amar Chauhan, a member of the Gujjar
community, seen as a rivals of Jats, and a postgraduate student of
sociology at Delhi University, recalls, hundreds of volunteers from
the community agitated over a little black stone plaque on National
Highway 24 in east Delhi. "The plaque was put up after the road was
renamed after noted Gujjar leader Mihir Bhoj and generated a lot of
heat as it later became invisible due to plantation of trees and road
construction," Chauhan says. "This was sad enough. As if we had no
issues to raise any more."
Ajay Navariya, Dalit writer and assistant professor at Jamia Millia
Islamia University in New Delhi says caste organizations got
politicized after independence and expected the government to provide
for everything. "They have lost sight of more pertinent issues at hand
and have become victims of casteist politics," he adds.
About 40km away from Delhi on National Highway 58, Choudhary Chhotu
Ram Girls' Inter College (CCRGC) in Duhai is perhaps a near-perfect
example of what may have gone wrong with social work centred around
caste and community welfare in the last six decades.
Since 1946 when Jat leader Chaudhary Mukhtiar Singh set up the school
for girls' education, the village of Duhai hasn't seen the
establishment of any other institution of higher education by a member
of the community. Around the time the college was founded, the western
Uttar Pradesh belt, particularly Muzaffarnagar, saw a spurt in schools
and colleges set up by Jat businessmen and leaders.
Since then, the pace of educational work slowed only to stop
completely in the 1980s, say educationists.
In his rhetoric on the diminishing role of caste-based organizations
in social welfare, Sunil Chowdhary, manager of CCRGC, is quick to lash
out at caste-based politics, especially by parties such as the Bahujan
Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in north India. "Earlier,
caste-based organizations were set up to work for social uplift. After
the 1980s, almost each one of them rallied with a political outfit to
assert themselves politically," Chowdhary says. "There was a time when
even Jat leaders like Choudhary Charan Singh laid foundation of a
degree college by Gujjars. Is it possible today?"
Listening intently to the entire debate, Balbir Singh, manager of BR
Ambedkar Primary School in Duhai, where he has been providing free
education to children of the scheduled castes, differs. "They (caste
groups) at least organize our struggle through a forum and raise a
collective voice for our causes," he argues.
Inside Chowdhary's office, dark and humid without electricity,
Singh—with his greying hair and tense forehead—is suddenly agitated by
the debate. Slowly, the gathering grows to half a dozen people in the
room. Someone quotes example of caste groups in Gujarat, which set up
orphanages, rest houses, old-age homes and colleges for the community.
Kantaben Kamdar Charitable Trust and Jhaverchand Manekchand Trust of
the Saurashtra Khadayta caste, or the trader caste, for example,
contributes around Rs30,000 every month to support 42 families in the
villages of Junagadh in Gujarat.
For what little Singh has known, this doesn't happen in his world.
"There are hardly any such groups which work for lower rungs of their
communities," he says.
His concerns are not entirely unfounded. The Ambedkar Samaj Sudhar
Samiti (or Ambedkar Social Reform Committee), founded by him, often
ends up facing resistance from upper caste groups for the work they
do: opposing child marriages, untouchability and manual scavenging.
Eleven years ago, he, then unmarried, even picked up a girl child from
the streets and brought her home after police refused to find a
shelter despite his repeated reports. "Well, what would you have
done?" he asks.
Priyanka P. Narain contributed to this story.
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