Friday, June 11, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Nepal: SC fiat to address Dalits' concern

http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=SC+fiat+to+address+Dalits%60+concern&NewsID=246612

SC fiat to address Dalits' concern
Last Updated : 2010-06-10 10:41 PM
The Himalayan Times - Saved Articles(s)

Ananta Raj Luitel

KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court today directed the government to
constitute a special committee to find in what context the words
chhota and bada are used in the preamble of the Country's Code (Muluki
Ain).

A three-member full bench of Chief Justice Ram Prasad Shrestha,
Justices Prem Sharma and Bharat Raj Upreti issued the directive in
response to a two-year-old public interest litigation.

The Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Ministry of Law and
Justice, the Ministry of Federal Affairs, Constituent Assembly and the
National Dalit Commission were given a year to come at a conclusion
after conducting a substantial study.

The preamble states that promulgation of the code was required to
provide justice to all chhota and bada equally, as the holy books
"were not sufficient to do so."

Dalit advocate Ratna Bahadur Bagchand, who is now appellate court
judge, had stated in the PIL that use of words chhota and bada in the
preamble code violated the spirit of the interim constitution that has
abolished caste based discrimination. He claimed that such words were
nothing but a stigma on the lower caste people.

"Historic importance of the promulgation of the code may be lost by
removing these words. A substantial study should be done to find in
what context these words were used. Only after that the court will
decide whether to remove these words or not from the code," the bench
observed.

Stating that removing the words based on an assumption will be
inappropriate, the bench also directed the authorities to find what
should be done if the words were removed from the Muluki Ain.

It directed the authorities to include a historian, a sociologist, a
culture expert, a legal expert and an expert on caste-based system in
Nepal in the special committee.

The bench directed that the study should unearth whether the words
were used to address the the historic caste based system or were used
in some other context.


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[ZESTCaste] Three included Sarpanch booked for Dalit’s murder in Punjab

http://www.punjabnewsline.com/content/three-included-sarpanch-booked-dalit%E2%80%99s-murder-punjab/21131

Three included Sarpanch booked for Dalit's murder in Punjab

Punjab Newsline Network
Friday, 11 June 2010
TARN TARAN: Sawinder Singh, sarpanch of Pandori Sidhwan village, his
two sons and another villager have been booked for the murder of a
Dalit of the same village.

The victim identified as Charanjit Singh (60), an ex-serviceman, had
been missing since June 6 from his village. The decomposed body of
Charanjit was found from under the bridge of a canal in Thathgarh
village, 6 kms from his village, yesterday.

The Chabal police on the statement of Jaskarnjit Singh, son of
Charanjit, registered a case under section 302 and 34 of the IPC
against the accused. Jaideep Singh and Raju, two sons of the sarpanch,
and one Raja of Mannan village are the other accused.

Charanjit was also a property consultant. Jaskarnjit in his statement
to the police said his father after receiving a call from mobile phone
99146-48431 on June 6 went to somewhere on his bike but did not
return.

It is learnt that the sarpanch had been facing a trial in a case under
the SC (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which has been filed on the
complaint of Charanjit. The case was in its final stage in a local
judicial court.

SSP Preetpal Singh Virk that raids had been conducted to nab the accused.


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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati dissolves all BSP district, city units

 

http://sify.com/news/mayawati-dissolves-all-bsp-district-city-units-news-national-kgkv4cjhaaj.html

Mayawati dissolves all BSP district, city units

2010-06-10 21:30:00
Last Updated: 2010-06-11 00:43:58

Lucknow: In a sudden move, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati on Thursday dissolved all
district and city units of the party, including the 'bhaichara
samitis' (social harmony committees) meant to promote her 'social
engineering'.

While senior party leaders were tight-lipped on the issue, insiders
claimed that the move was a part of the exercise to revamp the party
and prepare it for the 2012 state assembly elections from now itself.

Having announced earlier this week to keep her party out of all
bye-elections in order to keep her partymen focused on the next
assembly polls, Mayawati again told her supporters: 'Your goal should
now be 2012.'

Addressing a marathon meeting of party MPs, legislators and other
important functionaries, including district coordinators, here, she
sought to impress on them that a complete revamp of the state BSP was
necessary.

Opposition attacks Mayawati move on local bodies polls

'This move is aimed at reinforcing the party right down to the
grassroots level,' she said.

The bhaichara samitis, formed before the 2007 state assembly polls,
were believed to have accomplished their purpose of wooing a section
of the upper castes into the ambit of the otherwise essentially
Dalit-oriented BSP.

Mayawati also announced suspension of district level demonstrations to
mark the BSP's protest against what she termed the 'step-motherly'
treatment by the central government, as also against the
'unprecedented price rise'.

'The demonstrations will remain suspended until Sep 1,' she said,
indicating that the re-organisation of the district-level units would
be completed by then.

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[ZESTCaste] Who’s afraid of caste census? (Kancha Ilaiah)

http://www.asianage.com/opinion/who%E2%80%99s-afraid-caste-census-158

Who's afraid of caste census?

Jun 11th, 2010 -- Kancha Ilaiah

Ever since the Centre announced that it would collect data on various
castes during the ongoing Census, the media has created a hue and cry
saying that this would harm the nation and open a Pandora's Box of
caste conflicts. On the other hand, those who seek caste enumeration
are of the view that this would clear the cobwebs and deliver proper
data on other backward classes (OBCs) that will help implement
reservation policies and welfare schemes better.

The collection of caste data was not a decision taken by the
government on its own. The OBC leadership across the country has
demanded it and the Supreme Court advised the Centre to go for such a
Census to ensure that an accurate population database was made
available.
Let us not forget the fact that even at the time of the 2001 Census
there was a strong demand for caste census. The then deputy Prime
Minister L.K Advani, in fact, went on record to say that caste data
would be collected. But Right-wing academic forces — particularly a
group of sociologists and anthropologists — advised the Bharatiya
Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government not to go for
such an enumeration as it would go against the interests of the ruling
upper castes and communities.
It should be noted that the opposition to caste data has been coming
from upper castes that still control the levers of power. The lower
castes have never opposed such a proposal.
It is fallacious to argue that society would get further divided if
the population of each caste is known to the policymakers and to the
public.
Caste culture is all around us. In the dalit-bahujan discourse, the
upper castes are being shown as constituting less than 15 per cent.
This could be totally wrong. Even within the lower castes there are
several false claims about numbers. Every caste claims that it is
numerically the strongest and keeps asking for its "rightful" share.
How to tell them that their claims are wrong? When caste has become
such an important category of day-to-day reckoning it is important to
have proper data at hand to tell communities that they constitute this
much and cannot ask for more than their share.
It is true that we cannot distribute everything based on caste. But
caste census is the right basis for statistics such as literacy rate
and issues like the proportion of representation. Once we cite the
Census data there cannot be any authentic opposition to that evidence.
The upper caste intelligentsia is afraid that once detailed data on
number of people in lower castes is available it would become a major
ground for asking for accurate proportional representation in certain
sectors, such as education and employment.
For example, once the caste data is available, the 50 per cent limit
on reservations imposed by the Supreme Court could be questioned on
the basis of numbers. This would in turn help in sustaining the
overall system of liberal democracy. The system of democracy would
only get deeper with the discourse of numbers.
Democracy is in effect a system of numbers unlike communism, which
does not deal with numbers while institutionalising a government. In a
democracy, the governing system is institutionalised through an
electoral process and in such a system the people must be counted from
all angles — sex, race, religion, caste and so on. In a democracy
based on numbers, any section of society can come to power.
Based on the counting on the basis of religion, Hindus have realised
that they are the majority. And because of that understanding they
have claimed power. When Mahatma Gandhi suggested that Muhammed Ali
Jinnah should be made the first Prime Minister in order to avoid
Partition, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel put forth the argument
that India was a Hindu-majority nation and would not accept a Muslim
as its first Prime Minister. Where did the notion of Hindu
majoritarianism come from? It came from numbers.
With the same logic what is wrong if women, cutting across religious
divides, count themselves, and organise themselves to come to power?
They constitute about 50 per cent of the population and if they want
to fight for gender democracy, they too can come to power. So should
there be a demand for abolition of gender enumeration, too?
If caste census is done, the India democracy would thrive on the firm
support of the lower castes who keep hoping of getting their share
based on their numbers. The upper castes may feel desolate with the
system of democracy itself, if this shift begins to take place. They
might call such a shift "castocracy". But would they call a state or a
nation being ruled by women "womenocracy"?
Cognitive social psychology says all such theories are constructed on
a convenience known as "comfort zone". If brown upper castes live in
white societies they see brown bashing but black bashing remains
hidden in their blind spots. In white societies the browns are not in
their comfort zone but in India they are and do not want to see the
other's "discomfort zone".
Many upper caste intellectuals say that caste was a construction of
the colonial census system. They talk as if caste never existed before
the British started an enumerative process. By their logic we should
come to the conclusion that before the British enumerated people based
on religion, there were no religions in India. There are many such
blind spots in India and that is why we still remain backward in
theories of knowledge.
Let all castes — not just OBCs — be counted for strengthening our
democratic system. I know that even mine is a blind-spot theory but it
may have the effect of an antidote.


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[ZESTCaste] Caste in doubt

http://www.economist.com/node/16319821?story_id=16319821

The Indian census and caste
Caste in doubt
The perilous arithmetic of positive discrimination
Jun 10th 2010 | Delhi

Asking some uncomfortable questionsSIXTY years after India's
constitution banned caste discrimination, Hinduism's millennia-old
hierarchy retains a tight grip. Lonely-hearts ads in the newspapers
are classified by caste and sub-caste. Brahmins, at the top, dominate
many professions. There are still hundreds of "honour killings" by
which families avenge inter-caste marriages and liaisons. Caste
discrimination is still drearily evident in the wretched lives of
dalits, formerly "untouchables", who remain India's poorest and least
educated people. It is not surprising, then, that India is considering
the inclusion of caste in its ten-yearly census, the next of which is
due in 2011.

The proposal has caused a storm of controversy. India has not counted
caste in its census since 1931. Many argue that its inclusion would
buttress a system that independent India's first leaders railed
against. The Congress party, which led the independence struggle,
struck caste from government forms and has resisted calls for a
nationwide caste count.

However, now heading a coalition government, Congress needs the
support of smaller parties, including a number of caste-based groups
that have sprung up in recent years, to push through important
legislation. A system of affirmative action has given caste greater
potency. In 1990 "reservations" in government jobs and university
places for dalits were extended to a group of castes slightly
higher-up the pecking order, the "Other Backward Classes" (OBCs).
Reservations are based on data from the 1931 census. Caste politicians
are not alone in arguing that this makes a nonsense of the system.

Counting caste in the census, however, would be difficult, or even
impossible. Besides the four main varna, or castes, India has
uncounted thousands of sub-castes, few of which census officials will
recognise. More worryingly, the count would surely lead to a flood of
demands for more reservations; already, the government is battling
quota demands from non-OBC castes, Muslims and Christian converts from
Hinduism—and a call for reservations to be extended to India's private
sector.

Six decades of reservations have done little to better the lot of
low-caste Indians. But recent economic growth has been more
transformative. As millions have moved to urban areas in search of
work, they have left the rigid social groupings of their villages for
the relative anonymity of cities, and swapped hereditary trades for
jobs in which family background is largely immaterial. Many Indians
are becoming caste-blind, and marrying across caste lines. Anidhrudda,
a 30-year-old software engineer in Kolkata (Calcutta), says his
inter-caste marriage was no big deal. But even he concedes there are
limits. If he had married a dalit, he says, "my family would not have
been able to face society."

The Economist Newspaper | Asia


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[ZESTCaste] Haryana govt orders judicial probe into attack on Dalits

 

http://www.ptinews.com/news/706951_Haryana-govt-orders-judicial-probe-into-attack-on-Dalits

Haryana govt orders judicial probe into attack on Dalits

STAFF WRITER 19:56 HRS IST
Chandigarh, June 10 (PTI) Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda
tonight ordered a judicial probe into the torching of houses of Dalits
in which an aged man and his physically challenged daughter were burnt
alive in Hisar district.

The state government has decided to order a judicial inquiry into the
incident which had taken place in Mirchpur on April 21, an official
release said here this evening quoting the Chief Minister.

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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati give land holdings to dalits

 

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Mayawati-give-land-holdings-to-dalits/articleshow/6036671.cms

Mayawati give land holdings to dalits
11 Jun 2010, 1330 hrs IST,AGENCIES

LUCKNOW: After prolonged upper caste baiting, Uttar Pradesh chief
minister Mayawati is back to focussing on her core support base of
dalits.

She has begun the exercise by issuing directives to allot 'pattas'
(small land holdings) to landless and homeless dalits in the vast
rural expanse of the state.

In a circular issued by the chief minister's office Friday, Mayawati
directed all divisional commissioners and district magistrates to
undertake a special drive for allotment of 'pattas' to "eligible
persons", which primarily include landless dalits.

The move is seen as part of her new agenda to gear up her party and
government for the 2012 state assembly elections.

"While carrying out 'patta' allotments to the landless poor, you must
also look into complaints of fraudulent allotments to ineligible
persons, who must dispose of such land latest by the end of this
month," the directive said.

"There is an urgent need for regular monitoring of 'pattas'. Strict
action needs to be taken against mafias and musclemen, who are found
to be in illegal possession of such plots," she stressed.

The chief minister has also urged the officials to personally carry
out spot verification of various development and public welfare
programmes.

Reviewing the progress of disposal of public complaints, the chief
minister directed officers to give priority to the problems of common
people and ensure their disposal in a time bound manner.

She emphasised on the need to make the weekly 'Tehsil Day' system more
effective so that common people get a fair chance to bring their
problems before the district officials.

The chief minister also stressed upon the need for speeding up work
related to long pending consolidation of land holdings.

While expediting the verification of beneficiaries under destitute
widow pension scheme, she also urged officials to draw up a list of
beneficiaries under Mahamaya Gharib Balika Ashirwad Yojana within a
month's time.

The chief minister's directives also include emphasis on "improvement
of power supply in both rural and urban areas", and "repair of
defective hand-pumps and extension of piled drinking water supply in
untapped areas".

Besides issuing directions for priority based allotment of land for
primary schools in slums, Mayawati has also directed the health
department to ensure proper implementation of various health,
pre-natal and post-natal immunisation programmes.

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[ZESTCaste] Homeless in city, Mirchpur Dalits wait for justice

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/homeless-in-city-mirchpur-dalits-wait-for-j/628124/

Homeless in city, Mirchpur Dalits wait for justice

Priyanka Singh Posted online: Wed Jun 02 2010, 00:44 hrs
New delhi : A month after 150 Balmiki families fled Mirchpur village
in Hissar (Haryana) to Delhi, their miseries remain unaddressed.
Around 50 more people joined the community's protest in the Capital on
Tuesday and are camping at the Valmiki Mandir against the alleged
atrocities by the Jat community in their village.
The protest was sparked off by an attack on the Dalit families on
April 21, allegedly by Jats in Mirchpur, that left two dead and 35
homes torched. The families say they were forced to leave the village
after repeated threats from the Khap panchayat and the Jat community.
One of the protesters, Darshana, mother of a five-year-old, says they
cannot live in the village under the reign of constant terror. "My
child has no education, no future and no shelter," she says.

The families are being funded and taken care of by the Haryana Dalit
Bachao Sangharsh Samiti. Its convenor O P Shukla says, "We want the
removal of Bhupinder Singh Hooda's government. Despite repeated
assurances, the Haryana government has failed to provide any relief.
We have had several meetings with senior Congress leaders — Prithviraj
Chavan, Oscar Fernandes and Kumari Selja. The matter is still being
considerd by the Centre."

The families who have migrated now want to be relocated to a 500-acre
unused government land in Talwandi Rana village of Haryana.

Satyawan (30), one of the protesters, says, "An FIR has been lodged
against 107 Jats. The criminals must be punished. The attack was
pre-planned and supported by the police. We want a proper judicial
inquiry."

Similar torching incidents have also been reported earlier from
Gohana, Duleena and Jhajjar villages of Haryana, where Dalits had to
face atrocities. The cases are pending in the court.

The families reportedly met CM Dikshit on Tuesday morning, who assured
them that their demands would be forwarded to Congress president Sonia
Gandhi.


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[ZESTCaste] The big deal about caste (Opinion)

http://www.livemint.com/2010/06/10213835/The-big-deal-about-caste.html?h=B

Posted: Thu, Jun 10 2010. 9:38 PM IST
Columns

The big deal about caste

In a country where symbols and symbolism matter a great deal, the
census, a 'ritual of citizenship', should be indifferent to caste
identity

Public Eye | Sunil Khilnani

Can more knowledge about our society, about the individuals and groups
who constitute it, be a bad thing?

I've been wondering about this lately, in the context of two
government initiatives to gather more knowledge about us Indians, as
caste groups and as individuals. Both of these information-gathering
exercises—the proposal for a "caste census", which has generated a
stormy argument, and the merely desultory discussion over the planned
Unique Identification number (UID) for every Indian—has implications
for our sense of what it is to be a citizen, and for the terms of the
social contract that holds us together as a nation.


These two debates raise a series of common questions: What do we need
to know about our society to make it a better one? What are the
dangers and costs to certain types of knowledge? And are we prepared
to shoulder these costs? The problem is that we've got worked up about
only one initiative, the caste census, when the other initiative is
the one that speaks more urgently to our future.

The counting of caste groups was first undertaken in a systematic and
exhaustive manner by the British, and gave statistical reality to the
operative motto of the empire: that India was so fractured by caste
that only the grip of imperial rule could keep it together.

Counting castes was a trial for the British census officers. Their
questioning elicited many thousands of self-descriptions, including
sub-castes, sects, lineages and jatis, which the census men pruned
down and ranked as "castes". To some of these castes, the British
awarded social and economic privileges, so that politics in the
colonial era revolved around caste groups petitioning the British for
preferential categorization.


Congregations: (top) Thousands of low-caste Hindus participating in
mass conversion to Buddhism in Mumbai in 2007. Rajesh Nirgude / AP;
and Rajeev Goswami after he set himself alight during the 1990
anti-Mandal Commission agitation. AFP


At independence, the Indian state decreed caste abolished. Although
the 1948 Census Act makes no mention of what categories should or
should not be enumerated, the 1951 Census broke with the colonial
census tradition and did not count individual castes. The exact
reasoning behind the decision remains a mystery of history—in part
because the relevant documents weren't transferred to the National
Archives, in yet another instance of our recent history disappearing
into ministerial dustbins. But census-makers no doubt wished to
reinforce the Constitution's abolition by fiat of caste, turning a
Nelson's eye to the existence of caste in the hope that it would
gradually fade out in favour of a common citizenship.

However, the counting of two social groups subject to particular
social and economic deprivation was continued. The scheduled castes,
those castes marked by the stigma of "untouchability", and the
scheduled tribes, outside the Hindu caste order altogether, were
enumerated and made the recipients of state policies of positive
discrimination.

Debate about reintroducing caste counts was reopened from the early
1980s, with the invention of new hold-all categories such as the Other
Backward Classes (OBC), designed to identify other castes subject to
systematic inequality, who therefore had a claim to benefit from
positive discrimination. The BP Mandal Commission repeatedly asked
governments to compile detailed figures on the OBC population, in
order to validate percentages set aside for quotas. But, although
legislation was enacted to expand the use of quotas to include OBCs,
no new figures at the national level were produced (today, the best
estimates put India's OBCs at around perhaps 45% of the population).
So we have a policy, but no clear sense of the people who are the
policy's target.

In the current debate over caste in the census, all parties agree that
they wish to see the abolition of caste; and all share a concern with
remedying the systemic inequalities of our society: with providing at
the very least equality of opportunity, "a level playing field" for
all (all agree too that Dalits and tribals should continue to benefit
from affirmative action policies). The differences turn on what they
judge to be the best means to get there.

There are three broad positions. Some thinkers are entirely opposed to
counting caste, and argue that we must move to more universalist
policies to address inequalities. According to this view, giving caste
groups the imprimatur of the census serves only to harden the
identities which are themselves opportunity traps. It does little to
bring disprivileged groups into the social and economic mainstream,
and reinforces political mobilization along caste lines; as such, it
fosters resentment and undermines any sense of common citizenship.

Others argue that the census must be used to produce a detailed caste
enumeration of the OBCs. Such data, they argue, will reveal that the
OBCs don't form a homogenous bloc subject to equal deprivation. Some
within this broad category—for example, those who own land—are doing
quite well, while others are clearly not. More data, it's plausibly
argued, will help to identify the genuine from the spurious claimants
to positive discrimination. This is a view that places positive
discrimination at the core of India's efforts to address
inequality—but asks that it be more precisely targeted.

Finally, still others are calling for a full caste census, arguing
that a complete count of all castes is the only non-discriminatory
form of caste enumeration. This view seeks to politicize all caste
categories and to disabuse those (upper castes) who believe themselves
somehow to be "casteless". Only by counting all caste groups can we
come to acknowledge the pervasive reality of caste. Merely to count
the lower castes is to perpetuate a discriminatory order. In this
view, "annihilating" caste—to use Ambedkar's verb—requires nothing
less than full-on confrontation between the upper and lower castes. It
is in the end only political struggle, not law, that can rid us of
caste.

I think there is force to the case for OBC enumeration. Given that we
already have extensive affirmative action policies, it seems essential
to have the basic empirical data to help us judge those policies'
effectiveness. How many people qualify for this affirmative action?
Who exactly is benefiting from such policies and who is getting left
behind? Without this information, it is impossible to assess and
improve our policies.

Some proponents of OBC enumeration hope to show that perhaps half of
those today classified in the OBC category are doing well enough not
to justify being recipients of positive discrimination. They see hard
data will be a basis on which to exclude those who are better off, and
to direct resources more precisely at the truly needy. However, I
wonder if this is a realistic reading of the nature of caste politics.

Is it credible that simply collecting the empirical data will be
sufficient to induce the better off OBC groups to renounce their
reserved benefits? It's far more likely that they will mobilize in
order to preserve their quotas; and they will certainly find political
entrepreneurs willing to defend their interests in return for votes.
We will have a more fragmented and more vicious mobilization of
politics along caste lines.

Second is the fact that the reserved sector to which the OBCs are
struggling to gain access is fast shrinking. Quotas apply to the
formal economy, and within that to the public sector; and to places in
higher education. The public sector employs around 20 million people;
there are around 10 million students pursuing higher education.
Positive discrimination in the form of quotas has diminishing
returns—and as such, it should be allowed to fade out naturally. But
the counting of OBC castes will generate pressure to extend
reservations into the private sector, when we ought to be thinking of
quite different policies to deal with inequalities.

Third, there is the matter of the social and political costs of
enshrining caste counts in the census. The census is, precisely, a
"ritual of citizenship": the one moment when the state and every
citizen encounter one another. Should we make this encounter one where
the majority of our citizenry have to account for themselves in caste
terms? Is that the message we want our state to convey: that it's
interested in our caste?

I think not. Rather, I think we need to collect empirical data on OBC
castes by means other than the census: by academic studies, special
commissions and reports. We may well lose something in accuracy and
authority. But I'd argue it's a necessary discount. As one of our few
tangible expressions of citizenship, the census needs to maintain—and
to be seen to maintain—an indifference to caste identities. In our
politics, it need hardly be said, symbols and symbolism matter.

The Census of India symbolizes a certain way of thinking about what
India is, what it is to be a citizen of this society and state. That
society and state recognize a range of diversities among its
members—and so the census rightly enumerates gender, language,
religion, place, occupation, education. These are self-descriptions
that make us who we are, and are part of our identity as citizens. It
has also enumerated those who have been subject to the most scandalous
feature of our social order: the practice of treating some of our
fellows as sub-human, through the crime of untouchability—in order to
give them a special push towards becoming full citizens. But it never
recognized caste, because it saw that as disintegrative to the idea of
citizenship.

To advocates of a caste census of OBCs, opposition to such a measure
is seen as a peculiarity of anxious liberals, perplexed by the
workings of real politics. After all, isn't caste ordinary—just one
more form of identity available to Indians, and one among several
indicators of social disadvantage (which would include gender, region,
religion, class)? It follows that we shouldn't essentialize
caste—that's to fall into the trap of advocates of caste politics,
those who see it as the only reality of Indian society. Rather, we
need to treat caste as a sort of administrative category: and
enumerating the OBC castes, in this view, is essentially an
administrative matter rather than one that goes to the foundations of
identity and citizenship.

This is disingenuous. Caste in India is not just another form of
identity, like any other—it does have a pervasive quality, and it does
possess the potential to grip our politics in ways paralleled only by
religion. In fact, it is caste—much more than religion—that has proved
to be the identity around which our democratic politics has organized
itself. A caste census would further entrench this; it would deepen
the nexus between caste, electoral politics, and the pursuit of
legislative favours.

Yet I think the strongest case against a caste census is the fact that
persisting with policies of positive discrimination and reserved
quotas is no longer the best way to construct a more just society.
Instead of continuing to tinker with reservation policies, we'd do
better to write a new social contract for ourselves, based on a more
universalist approach to justice. Instead of arguing for privileges
for some, we should be redesigning the state so that it works towards
providing adequate public goods—above all, education—for all.

In working to build a new social contract, founded on a universalist
approach, the ability to individuate our citizens is fundamental. And
for this, the Unique Identification number is an important tool.
That's not to say that there are not dangers inherent in it. All forms
of knowledge, especially those collected by a state and linked to
state power, contain the potential for pernicious misuse. But it is
that debate, about the utility as well as the perils of the UID
project in the task of building a new idea of citizenship, that we
should be having today. It's more future-directed than the argument
that distracts us now, about whether or not to revert to a practice
that kept the British busy—and us divided—well over a century ago.

Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea of India and is currently
working on a new book, India in Search of Wealth and Power. Write to
him at publiceye@livemint.com


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[ZESTCaste] New panel to look into SC/ST issues

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Varanasi/New-panel-to-look-into-SC/ST-issues-/articleshow/6034220.cms

New panel to look into SC/ST issues

TNN, Jun 10, 2010, 10.32pm IST

VARANASI: The director of National Commission for SC/ST, R D
Chandrahas held a meeting with the district officials on Thursday and
instructed them to constitute a vigilance and monitoring committee to
look into the issues related to the Schedule Castes and Schedule
Tribes (SC/ST).

Chandrahas said that the district magistrate would head the committee
while the district social welfare officer would be the secretary.

For quick and timely disposal of problems of SC/ST communities, the
officials were instructed to hold regular meetings. Chandrahas
instructed to hold meetings with the help of non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) to spread awareness among people.

The district officials were asked to expedite the allotment of houses
under the Indira Awas Yojna among the SC/ST people.

He asked the DIG to instruct circle officers of the district to
register FIRs in SC/ST matters and dispose of the cases on priority
basis.

He also instructed for holding surprise inspections to stop the
practice of bonded labour. The meeting was attended by the district
magistrate, DIG, chief development officer and other officials.
Earlier, Chandrahas also visited Chaubepur police station and the
Dalit basti of Munari village on Wednesday.

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[ZESTCaste] Fwd: Finally, Dalits build temple in Odisha town

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: shishir bhadke <shishir_bhadke@yahoo.co.in>
Date: Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 9:44 PM
Subject: Finally, Dalits build temple in Odisha town
To: mailsiddhartha.k@gmail.com

Dear

It is very strange, even if people are still agitating for temple
entry. Why our people become crazy to set up temple. what have they
achieved? People should denounce such insane practices. They must
follow the path shown by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar.

shishir

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