Monday, Oct 11, 2010
Resurrecting an ancient curse
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The caste system has survived thousands of years but today its grip on
society is on the wane, thanks to technology and education. The
inclusion of caste in the 2011 Census may open up largely forgotten
schisms, says V. C. KULANDAISWAMY.
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Abolishing the caste system is realisable if political leaders have
the will and courage of conviction.
The inclusion of caste as a factor in the Indian Census was given up
after 1931. Seven censuses were conducted thereafter without any
reference to caste. Now, there is a demand for its inclusion in the
2011 Census. This would amount to a great departure from a practice
followed by the founding fathers of the Republic and their successors
for nearly three quarters of a century. One would expect a national
debate on the subject, but that does not seem to be happening.
At the outset, this writer would like to declare that he is an ardent
believer in the concept of social justice, and a strong supporter of
the policy of reservations as the strategy to achieve that objective.
But he is also of the discerned view that the data available from the
1931 Census are adequate, either for formulating new measures, or
refining the existing ones, to ensure social justice.
It may safely be assumed that while the absolute numbers of each caste
group have kept increasing, the ratio of each caste, in terms of
percentage of the total in the Hindu society, would have remained
almost the same between 1931 and 2011. Any State that may still need
some additional information for any of its schemes can arrange to
collect it on its own.
The existing structure in Tamil Nadu, for instance, hardly needs
change and, if any refinement is contemplated, it can certainly be
done on the basis of data already available, or which can be
selectively collected.
SCOURGE OF CASTE
Hinduism is perhaps the most flexible among the religions of the
world. Down the centuries, the Upanishads have been held in high
esteem by intellectuals and philosophers the world over.
Hinduism, however, stands condemned almost by all — including many of
its own followers — for a single, fatal blemish — the caste system.
What seems to have started as an occupational division gradually
degenerated into a rigid institution, establishing an abominable
hierarchy of high and low in the social system. In a matter of three
millennia, the world has seen the beginning and end of innumerable
systems that were man-made. But the single scourge that has defied all
human efforts to root it out is the caste system. Few other
institutions in the world have been so persistently examined by
philosophers and social scientists and proved as mysterious as the
caste system, in its capacity for survival.
The practice of untouchability and the concept of pollution by the
sight of an individual signify the height of outrage on, and an
abominable insult to, human dignity. As observed by C. Subramania
Aiyar, as early as 1893 in the Young Men's Association of George Town,
"Caste is a regular Himalayan Mountain; it cannot be pulled down by
any feeble effort. Nevertheless the Himalayan Mountain must go down."
The dazzling light of education, the penetrating rays of science and
technology and the global impact of modern civilisation have
anaesthetised the caste system and brought it to a point of painless
removal by a few successive procedures. It is at this point, however,
that a movement is on, in the mistaken hope of social justice, to
resurrect this ancient curse and undo the benefits of centuries of
reform.
Even 'Periyar', the uncompromising fighter for social justice and
author of the first amendment to the Constitution, enabling special
provisions for backward classes, did not object to dropping caste in
the 1941 Census; nor did he plead for its revival in the three
Censuses that followed during his lifetime.
The innumerable castes have been reduced, if we take Tamil Nadu for
example, into five or six classes, namely, the forward, the backward,
the most backward, the arunthathiar, and the scheduled classes and
tribes. If only these distinctions are assigned to every family and
its members, in place of caste, and this distinction is continued for
a generation or two, individual caste names will disappear from
records and, if after two or three decades, economic criteria are also
introduced, the distinctions by birth shall disappear as well.
UNFORTUNATE REVIVAL
In Article 17 of our Constitution, in 1949, we declared majestically
that "untouchability is abolished". We may be able to declare in 2049,
a century after the enactment of the Constitution, that "the caste
system is abolished". It is not a dream, but a realisable objective,
if only there is the will and courage of conviction on the part of our
leaders.
It is tragic that this possibility is being rudely sought to be
revised by introducing caste in the 2011 Census and creating a new
awareness of caste affiliation, promoting new agitations, providing
new fields and new issues for politicians to pose and project
themselves as saviours. The younger generation has no significant
awareness of caste, though there may be some knowledge of the effects
of such classification.
If caste is to be a factor in the 2011 Census, the leaders of various
communities, especially the major ones, would start an aggressive
movement for creating caste awareness and educate them of the
privileges that they are entitled to, but denied now, and stress the
need for organising themselves and prepare for a massive agitation.
Indian society, which is already fragmented in terms of religion,
language and even region, would suffer from the revival of existing
caste divisions, running into thousands. A fine opportunity to make
caste irrelevant would have been missed.
Every cell of the writer's body shivers at the thought of an innocent
infant being registered officially, in the national census, at its
birth as 'Brahmin', assigning to it the accountability for all the
commissions and omissions of its forefathers or as 'SC' (scheduled
caste) and burdening it with the indignity of millennia that goes with
this word.
To refer to some as 'Brahmin' or 'SC' and then state that they are
both equal is self-deception. A word is not merely a combination of
alphabets. In a given context, it is the container of a millennia old
legacy of a civilisation. We are in the knowledge era, when human
dignity is held in highest esteem and human possibilities are reckoned
unbounded. If in this age we give a lease of life to this ancient
curse that has been a bane and a blemish, an abominable practice, an
affront to human dignity and individual self-respect, a cancer that
has been sapping, through ages, the strength and vigour of Hindu
society, it would be, in simple terms, damning the nation beyond
redemption.
(The author is an educationist and former Vice-Chancellor of the Anna
University and the Indira Gandhi Open University.
blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)
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