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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

[ZESTCaste] We can only look forward...

http://www.himalmag.com/We-can-only-look-forward..._nw4412.html

We can only look forward... April 2010
By: Meena Kandasamy

...when we no longer have to look back.

The future of cast
Lokesh Khodke
Turning in any direction you like," B R Ambedkar once stated, "caste
is the monster that crosses your path." I write about the future of
caste with the determination and the desperation of a suicide bomber
who has been handpicked to assassinate that monster. If you look
closely at my fragile frame, you will see the belt-bomb strapped to
me; you can count the hand-grenades I caress. On my mission, I turn
bullet-spitting historian, I turn acid-throwing stalker. My anger is
the most potent undetonated device that I carry. I write with frenzy,
with blinding rage, with hatred, seeing nothing ahead of me but the
obituary of the oppressor I have set out to kill. I am baying for
blood. Its death dances out in front of my eyes.

Like the rest of my tribe that is indoctrinated to destroy itself in
order to annihilate a cruelty whose presence makes the world a worse
place, I dream of the appointed day, I rehearse scenarios. There is a
smile on my lips because I am in the company of women and men, like
me, who would die, if that is what it takes, to put an end to this
dehumanising system. This is an obsession, a shame that spills over.
We have chosen our target, and like a secret society of terrorists we
work out the logistics in the belief that we will live forever, that
we have the license to kill. In this macabre jihad of sorts, we are
convinced that caste is a savage system that deserves to be crushed
and consigned to the pages of history.

Caste has survived because of its atrocities, literally over the dead
bodies of lynched lovers, over charred Dalit settlements, through the
use of organised violence to enforce and maintain super-ordination and
subordination. Caste is the colourful poison in syringes injected into
women who elope. Caste razes a hut to ashes in Kilvenmani. Caste kills
those who are defenceless and unarmed in Khairlanji. Caste is the
dried excrement that finds its way into the mouths of rebellious
Dalits in Thinniyam. Caste is the massacre of Dalit village headmen in
Melavalavu. Caste is extrajudicial detention, torture and murder;
caste is custodial gang-rape. Caste operates in consensus. Its
atrocious face comes about because of collusion, and the absence of
any substantial group of privileged people who are willing to turn
caste-traitors.

On the other hand, the caste-Hindu backlash refuses to accept who we
are when they know what we are – the result of a supremacist mindset
that has the single aim of delegating Dalits to the bottom of the
social hierarchy. This everyday dismissal has several facets. In my
immediate, personal case, it denies me my Dalit selfhood, doubts my
origins because of my way with words, my choice of clothes. This
explicit project engages with me in every sphere of life. It is a dual
struggle in which one has to escape pigeonholing and also affirm ones
identity when on the edge of assimilation.

Cola casteism
Fighting against caste, and resisting casteism, involves combating the
malady of easy assumptions and crude prejudices. It means dealing with
a discriminatory mindset that eagerly awaits the opportunity to
translate its deep-set hatred into action. This is the mindset that
advises me to go to the slums and ensure that all Dalits get food,
shelter and clothing when I begin a discussion on how caste operates
within the classroom. It sets my priorities and defines and drafts my
agenda. It dictates the notes stuck on my desk, drafts the to-do list
on my mobile phone. And if I were to listen to them and submit myself,
I would be bestowed with an honorary inclusion to offset the centuries
of systematic exclusion. In exchange for my commodification and
celebration of the outcast experience, I would become a token, a
trophy to be flaunted. After the ceremonial co-optation, I would be
asked to don the mantle of a gatekeeper, with an instruction to let in
only those who pose no threat to the status quo.

In all other cases, the system operates through distrust: and a
preconceived notion that we are not only low, but also evil.
Demonising us, and dehumanising us, allows caste Hindus the luxury of
having an argument to defend their case, and to gloss over all the
social injustices with which the system has been permeated. This is
one of the reasons why, when asked to critically reflect about the
future of this structure, I find most dominant 'upper' castes not
holding any discussion on how the structure should be dismantled;
instead, they adopt a dialogue of condescension in which their
approach seems to revolve around humanising or civilising or educating
the Dalits. Another favourite position taken by a majority of the
'upper' castes on how to eradicate the caste system is the bizarre
request to scrap the reservation policy at the earliest.
Currently, arguments about the purity or impurity of the castes are
not given as much emphasis as are those about innate intelligence or
refinement. This is because of the social shift in importance accorded
to religion and piety vis-a-vis importance accorded to talent,
sophistication and social mobility. In his book on Hindu manners and
customs, the 18th-century Roman Catholic missionary Abbe Dubois
recorded an instance of how a Tamil Brahmin woman fled the place when
her Shudra friend had publicly disclosed that she had tasted chicken
broth. In the present day, neither beef-eating nor beer-drinking would
make anybody any less a Brahmin; just as all claims to vegetarianism
by a Dalit is not going to reduce her social stigmatisation.

What would the death of the Indian village – that bastion of caste
supremacy – mean? Suppose we simply entrusted every village to our
governments, and suppose they decided overnight to achieve a complete
corporate sell-out. I can still see the stratification, and almost
anticipate reading research volumes on the forms and functions of
Coca-Cola casteism. On the other hand, neither do I believe that the
mere reaffirmation of local, territorial or linguistic identities and
ethnicities, even as one witnesses genocide and ethnic cleansing in
pockets of the Subcontinent, help to diminish the relevance of caste.

It is wishful thinking that caste, also being a 'geo-demographic'
system, could simply fade out and not carry any relevance if only the
people were displaced. At the village level, caste may no longer be a
system of production, but it remains a set of coded practices. The
emergence of caste-neutral occupations has not led to the death of any
single caste identity. Such predictions about urbanisation's effect on
caste have likewise proved futile. Cruising across the seas, it has
been carried to every landscape. Even expat Southasians are in no mood
to give it up so easily.

My techie friend in Silicon Valley, a fellow Tamil Dalit, shared an
anecdote about driving through the inner city in Denver along with a
colleague. Seeing the poor African Americans there, the rundown
neighbourhoods and obvious poverty, the other man, a caste Hindu,
said, "Namba ooru cheri maadiriyae irukku illa?" (It is exactly like
the Dalit settlements in our village, isn't it?) That is the problem
with the caste-Hindu mind: it is trained to recognise caste
everywhere, to replicate its order. It is for this reason that it is
often seen as perfectly alright when a non-resident Indian acts
ultra-strict and oppressive at home, wondering, "How do I face my
relatives and family back in the village if my daughter marries a
kallu (black)?" His fear is as heartfelt as that of a 15th-century
Brahmin facing excommunication for transgressing caste boundaries.

President Barack Obama might be astonished that his black brothers and
sisters are not only seen through a coloured perspective, but also in
a casteist manner. This is not like the parallels that Dalits love to
make in order to build networks of solidarity and shared experience
with African Americans – rather, this is a small example of the
stigmatisation in which caste-supremacist Indians love to indulge.
Until there is a change in this mindset, wishing away caste is going
to be a pointless pastime.

Even Ambedkar's idea of discarding Hinduism as a means of escaping
caste is no longer feasible. The promise of egalitarianism in other
religions may be enticement enough, but converts would have by now
realised firsthand that such changes are merely cosmetic. As a truly
secular religious identity, caste has literally gone places,
permeating every aspect of any faith-based order. Dalit Muslims and
Nadar Christians are identities as well entrenched as that of Iyengar
Hindus – thus making caste an Indian and Southasian, rather than a
Hindu, identity.

Most backward
The philosopher Naomi Zack has called race a biological fiction.
Caste, too, is another that-which-cannot-be-named fiction, which
merely derives its reality from the manner in which it affects
people's lives, occupies their consciousness and establishes itself as
a nightmare for any theoretician of history. Instead of laying trust
in multiplicities and mind-boggling hybrids, even those who are
anti-caste believe in splicing the world into uniform binaries:
Dalit/non-Dalit, Brahmin/non-Brahmin. Although each of its individual
parameters has undergone change, caste by itself has survived by
reincarnating itself in the face of any kind of social and economical
upheaval.

The eminent sociologist M N Srinivas observed that one of the
commonest and most cynical features of the movement towards equality
was that "each caste regarded itself as the equal of castes superior
to it while simultaneously denying similar claims from those inferior
to it." Caste, however, calls for a continuous revision of theory.
Srinivas's conjecture is no longer true, because what we have observed
since the 1990s has been the race for claiming backwardness (or in
some states such as Tamil Nadu, 'most backwardness') in order to gain
from the quota system.

This struggle to be labelled inferior and unrepresented is part of an
elaborate masquerade. When the Gujjars wanted to claim the Scheduled
Tribe status, they paralysed India by bringing the railways to a halt.
The demand of the Vanniyars – in a truly novel casteist manner, by
setting fire to Dalit settlements – in order to achieve the separate
category of Most Backward Classes was also successful. In both of
these instances, the Indian nation (especially its trigger-hungry
police force) was portrayed as villainous – not merely denying these
people what were phrased as 'legitimate' rights, but also silencing
the people by killing those who dared to protest. The corpses of those
killed in the police violence became the currency that let these
castes strike a deal with the state.

Lokesh Khodke
But caste does not end with being merely a blackmail tool that tries
to obtain positions of privilege for individual communities. It is as
vehement and its movement is as orchestrated when it seeks to deny the
same power or authority or opportunity to others. Caste is enshrined
in the 100-odd gory self-immolation bids that took place all over
North India against V P Singh's government's decision to implement the
recommendations by the Mandal Commission to introduce reservation for
the Backward Classes. Caste is a system that lacks any semblance of an
excuse for its existence, and yet it has the power to hold a country
to ransom.

Like its strength, the only weakness of the caste system lies in the
fact that caste is never based on choice. The supremacist and
patriarchal nature of its control ensures that, at every stage, people
are stripped of choices. A decision to step across those restrictive
caste lines, to refuse to accept the enforcement of caste practices or
to collude with a projects of violence and discrimination, to resist
its patriarchal controls and the patterns of thought that it
imposes/ingrains/instigates in our midst will lead to multiplicity and
unpredictability and disintegration. It is for this reason that I
often imagine the annihilation of caste as a feminist exercise – where
women totally reject the control of their sexuality in the name of
caste or custom, refuse to internalise patriarchy, and speak out
against the other forms of discrimination deeply embedded in society.

The readiness to destroy caste requires us to destroy a part of
ourselves. But finally it will culminate in the end of imagined or
assumed inferiorities and superiorities. That is why, irrespective of
where we find ourselves in that hierarchy, we can militate against
caste only if each of us make it a personal rebellion, a conscious
choice to defy that oppressive, self-defeating system. As an
Ambedkarite, I can look at the future of caste only from an obsessive
perspective of annihilating it: I believe that real looking forward
can take place only when there is no reason to look back.

------------------------------------

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[ZESTCaste] As India urbanises, caste is losing, and will continue to lose, its strength (Chandra Bhan Prasad)

http://www.himalmag.com/New-order_nw4419.html

New order April 2010
By: Chandra Bhan Prasad

As India urbanises, caste is losing, and will continue to lose, its strength.

Karen Haydock
It is better [to discharge] one's own duty incompletely than
completely that of another; for he who lives according to the law of
another [caste] is instantly excluded from his own," mandates Manu. "A
man of low caste who through covetousness lives by the occupations of
a higher one, the king shall deprive of his property and banish
[him]," Manu adds. "By [selling] flesh, salt and lac [resin], a
Brahmin at once becomes an outcast; by selling milk he becomes [equal
to] a Shudra in three days/But, by willingly selling in this world
other [forbidden] commodities, a Brahmin assumes after seven nights
the character of a Vaishya," Manu warns.

India's caste order is structured on the twin principals of
occupational and blood 'purity'. If one were to carry a copy of the
Manusmriti, and then to pay a visit to traditional Indian society, one
would find the Manusmriti to be the script while the traditional
society is the film. Recall 25 December 1927, and decode the
importance of Manusmriti Dahan Divas, the day when B R Ambedkar
symbolically burnt the Manusmriti, celebrated every year by Dalits. A
thorough liberal, Ambedkar listened with respect even to his
adversaries; he would ban no thought or idea, even those he might not
have liked. Yet while he critiqued, rejected and condemned all Hindu
scriptures, he burned the Manusmriti alone – as caste's constitution,
which accords divine sanction to occupation and blood purity.

Yet post-1990, India's caste order has slowly been losing one of its
pillars, that of occupational purity. Seemingly by accident, bullocks
have disappeared from much of northwestern India. To the 'twice born',
touching the handle of the plough was long no less than religious
blasphemy, let alone tilling land using bullock-drawn ploughs. As
such, it was the Dalits who worked the land of twice-born landlords,
and thus it was the bullock that was the key instrument in tying
Dalits to the caste Hindus. Now, with the near-complete disappearance
of these animals, the main instrument of bondage too has disappeared.
Just to showcase how caste is losing its foundation of occupational
purity, even feudal Thakurs are now reconciled to tilling Dalits' land
for wages – driving tractors themselves.

There have been several important catalysts since 1990, which have
triggered a social revolution that seems to have gone largely
unnoticed by most 'thought leaders'. A host of caste-neutral
occupations have and continue to come into being, while many other
occupations are becoming increasingly caste-neutral. Harvesting wheat
and paddy through the use of large harvesting machines, for instance,
is now a caste-neutral occupation; as noted, the twice-born thus have
no hesitation working for Dalit land owners for wages. In small towns
and tiny roadside bazaars across India, twice-born women are opening
beauty parlours where, as a matter of course, nearly all women,
including Dalits, go before their weddings. But just a few decades
back, almost none could imagine a Thakur or Brahmin woman giving a
massage to a Dalit.

In shopping malls, hotels and corporate hospitals, sweepers are now
designated as 'housekeeping staff'. With new cleaning kits, they now
have uniforms to wear and shoes to sport; with caps on their heads,
they look more like paramedical staff than the sweepers of old. And
with these changes, much of the caste stigma is fading, as even
non-Dalits are taking up such jobs. A University of Pennsylvania
research team recently surveyed three shopping malls around Delhi, and
found more than 60 percent the housekeeping staff were non-Dalit – in
which the twice-born accounted for more than 38 percent, the same as
Dalits.

The new economic order has made the Indian psyche far more
consumer-oriented than it used to be, with significant implications
for caste. Whereas earlier, even a poor Brahmin would claim supremacy
over a Dalit due to the supremacy of his or her social marker, now
'material' markers are replacing the old social ones as indicators of
well-being. In the market-driven consumer economy, the Brahmin must
possess a combination of material goods – a television, mobile phone,
refrigerator or two-wheeler, for instance – in order to claim status
in the neighbourhood. The 'Brahmin' marker is no longer enough. In
fact, for a Brahmin or even a Thakur, the caste indicator has at times
come to be even an embarrassment, leading many to hide their caste
when, for instance, driving a cycle-rickshaw.

In the market-driven culture, rank can be negotiated, unlike those
fixed by birth. Those twice-born who continued to live in accordance
with their social indicators were suddenly faced with a thoroughly
confusing situation when, for instance, a Dalit in the village bought
a television. Not used to hard labour, the twice-born youths are now
reconciled to taking up occupations once described as the meanest and
most polluting – those reserved for Dalits. Caste evolved in a rural
set-up, after all, and sustained itself in agrarianism. But now, India
is fast becoming increasingly urban. According to a Planning
Commission estimate, by 2050, some 55 percent of the Indian population
will be considered urban – and the caste order simply cannot operate
with the same strength in urban India as it did in the rural areas.

A combination of several factors – globalisation, capitalism,
consumerism, mechanisation, industrialisation and urbanisation – will
thus make the caste order obsolete in public life. India may not
become caste free in the foreseeable future, but India will become
caste-neutral before 2050.

------------------------------------

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[ZESTCaste] Caste articulation

http://www.himalmag.com/Caste-articulation_nw4427.html

Caste articulation
April 2010
By: Satish Deshpande

Three lessons from the creation of the OBC category.

Jayalal
What is new about caste today is that, whether as idea or as
experience, it is now articulated – in both senses of the word. Used
as a verb, articulated means 'made distinct', 'set forth' or
'expressed'; used as an adjective, it describes something 'having
segments united by joints', or 'consisting of elements joined in a
flexible arrangement'. Thus, caste today is spoken, expressed, made
explicit – it is no longer silenced or repressed as it was in the
Nehru era. And caste today is very much a jointed, segmented or
multi-layered reality – it is no longer something singular and
homogenous. The problem is that these two aspects are in active
tension with each other. The political language in which caste has
been spoken is unable to acknowledge its segmented nature; indeed, it
even seems as though caste assertion is only possible by insisting
that it is singular and indivisible. This is not a problem unique to
caste, it reappears in other contexts as well. To fashion new
political languages that can voice concerns without evading fractured
and contradictory realities – this is the crucial challenge of our
time.

The loudness and omnipresence of caste in India's public arena today
needs to be contrasted with the mute marginality that preceded it.
What might be called the 'silent era' of caste stretches across the
five decades that separate the Poona Pact of 1932 and the emergence of
the 'caste atrocity' in the 1980s. Of course, the silence is only in
the so-called 'national sphere', and in public discourse. At the
regional level, caste was always prominently public; and outside
public discourse, in everyday life everywhere, caste was an integral
if constantly changing part of social existence.

The Poona Pact is the name given to the arrangement by which the
Depressed Classes (as the 'untouchable' castes were then known), led
by B R Ambedkar and others, were forced by M K Gandhi to forego a
separate electorate and agree to be represented by the Indian National
Congress. In return, they were promised special concessions, later
included in the Indian Constitution and popularly referred to as
'reservations' – caste-specific quotas in the legislatures, in
government jobs and in education. The shift from the flawed but
fertile mechanism of separate electorates to the politically
emasculating device of reservations manoeuvred the untouchables into
the position of supplicants dependent on the largesse of the very
society that had excluded them. Thus, well before Independence, Gandhi
had almost singlehandedly 'settled' the caste question at the national
level. This settlement involved two crucial moves – equating caste
inequality and oppression with untouchability; and presenting
reservations as a sort of 'full and final payment' of the material
debt owed to the untouchables.

The Nehru era simply cemented the Gandhian settlement by insisting on
a 'caste-blind' state. Apart from reservations – which it treated as a
regrettable political-moral compulsion – the new state refused to see,
hear or speak caste, in deference to the formal equality decreed by
the Constitution. Both oppressors and oppressed were exhorted to join
the virtuous conspiracy of silence about caste, or risk being
denounced as 'casteist'. Whether it was due to naive idealism or an
upper-caste conspiracy, the fact is that such even-handedness was not
just ironic or unfair, but politically unviable.

Mandal's advance
It took a spate of spectacular violence for the caste question to
reappear on the national scene as the 'caste atrocity'. Beginning with
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (Pipra, Paras Bigha and Belchhi), through the
southern states (notably Chunduru and Karamchedu in Andhra Pradesh),
and on to more recent incidents in Maharashtra (Khairlanji) and
Haryana (Jhajjar, Gohana), murderous pogroms against Dalits in
villages and small rural towns acquired an undeniably 'national'
character. By the 1980s, the atrocity had demolished the belief that
caste oppression was a relic of the past, a historical debt discharged
by reservations.

If the 'caste atrocity' ended the era of silence and sanctimony, the
dynamic encompassed in the term Mandal inaugurated a new era of caste
assertion in the 1990s. Derived from B P Mandal, the chairperson of
the Second Backward Classes Commission, the popular term Mandal refers
to the forces unleashed by the Indian government's 1990 decision to
(partially) implement the Commission's recommendation to provide
reservations for the Other Backward Classes, or OBCs. In the last two
decades, this acrimonious acronym has transformed the landscape of
Indian democracy, altering not just the strategies and tactics of
parties and movements but the very shape of politics itself.

Accepting the risks involved in a simplified summary, one may say that
Mandal advances the theory and practice of Indian democracy in three
main ways. First, it demonstrates the integral (rather than
exceptional) place of caste in Indian society; second, it foregrounds
the complexities of aggregative social groups; and third, it prompts
us to revisit the terms of the social contract on which our republic
was founded.

Post-Mandal politics has undermined the dominant common sense of
caste. Aided by the Gandhian reduction of caste to untouchability,
this common sense presented Dalits (and, in a different sense,
Adivasis) as the caste-marked exception to the universal norm of the
unmarked, casteless citizen – the 'general category'. This allowed the
upper castes to occupy the universal, to speak for and as 'we the
people', while simultaneously positioning Dalits and Adivasis as the
particularistic, aberrant category. The political assertion of the
OBCs has exposed the close congruence between the upper castes and the
privileged minority. It is now clear that the privileged 'few' are
overwhelmingly upper caste (though some upper castes may be
underprivileged), just as the underprivileged 'many' are
overwhelmingly lower caste (though some lower castes may be
privileged). With the exit of the OBCs from the general category, this
category is now no more than a euphemism for the upper castes, and
cannot sustain its earlier claims to representing the nation.

Conventional wisdom presented the OBCs as a negatively defined
residual category – neither upper caste, nor Dalit or Adivasi – that
receives meaning passively from the other elements of the caste
system. On the contrary, OBC turned out to be an active,
meaning-giving category that has forced the other elements to redefine
their identities. Thus, in the post-Mandal era, there is a renewed
effort by Dalit activists and intellectuals to foreground the 'excess'
– loosely expressed as untouchability – that is unique to Dalits and
makes them the quintessential 'other' for both OBCs and upper castes.
The pressure to do this is generated by the emergence of the OBCs, who
also claim to be victims of caste discrimination. This prompts Dalits
to try to capture the difference between the kind of
inequality-producing discrimination that OBCs may have suffered from,
and the kind of deeply humiliating and oppressive caste prejudice that
only Dalits face.

By contrast, the upper castes are responding to post-Mandal pressure
by defining themselves as having no caste, or being 'casteless'. This
may seem on the surface to merely reiterate what liberal upper castes
have been saying since the Gandhi-Nehru era, but it acquires an
entirely different meaning after the advent of the OBCs. Now, the
claim to be casteless is itself a sign – it is instantly recognisable
as the unmistakable mark of upper-caste identity, because the
experience of apparent castelessness has been available only to the
upper castes.

In sum, the OBC category has taken us from a situation in which caste
was repressed and no one was supposed to have it (Dalits and Adivasis
being an aberrant residue of the past), to a situation where everyone
has caste and is talking about it, even when they are claiming to be
casteless. Despite its short-term costs, this is much healthier than
being in denial, as India has been for most of the six decades of
Independence. It is only by confronting caste and working through it
that the country can hope to get beyond it. This, after all, is the
difference between mere censorship and true transcendence.

A second lesson offered by the OBC category concerns the inevitable
complexity of aggregative social categories. The OBCs remind us that
it is not the ritual-religious hierarchies of purity and pollution
that keep caste alive today, but the material inequalities that it
systematically reproduces, which eventually invite political
mobilisation. The OBC category is crucial for the understanding of
caste inequalities because it discourages presumptions based on caste
membership alone. Since their relative status is more ambiguous than
either the lower or upper castes, the OBCs encourage us to investigate
– rather than take for granted – the relationship between caste and
privilege or disprivilege. The complex, multi-dimensional profiling
required to determine the material status of specific segments of the
OBC category is now becoming the norm for all caste groups. For
example, a relatively 'good' position in one sphere, say land
ownership, may be offset by a 'bad' position in another sphere, say
education or employment. This raises questions about appropriate
standards of comparison and procedures for aggregating across
different dimensions of material status to arrive at a 'net' result.
State interventions for social justice in today's world cannot avoid
these issues, and the OBCs provide useful testing grounds for policy
design.

Because it is so clearly an artificial construct, and so obviously
heterogeneous and segmented, the OBC category alerts us to the
presence of similar traits in other groups, including those wrongly
perceived as 'natural' or homogenous. It teaches us that, in the
modern world, all large social groups are constructed by a complex
mixture of past inheritance, colonial or imperial intervention, and
contemporary mobilisation. The OBCs remind us that internal disparity
is simply an empirical fact about all large groups – it cannot be used
to de-legitimise their political claims, even if it inevitably
complicates the response to these claims.

Renegotiating the social contract
The third lesson taught by the OBC category is diametrically opposed
to the managerial metrics of measuring group disadvantages. It urges
us to 'return to politics' and revisit the terms of the social
contract on which the nation is founded. Rights and entitlements in a
democracy are of broadly two kinds – the unconditional (eg,
fundamental rights) and the conditional (eg, deprivation or
needs-based rights). Conceptually, the nation state is defined by an
absolute and unconditional distinction between citizens and
non-citizens. But within the nation state, the question of whether and
to what degree a particular right is treated as conditional or
unconditional depends on the distribution of power – in short, on
politics. Whatever their problems, separate electorates emphasised the
unconditional aspect of power-sharing among the different social
groups that were to constitute the nation. By contrast, 'reservations'
reposition lower-caste rights as a conditional entitlement, a special
exception to the rule of equal citizenship. This formulation
completely erases the power-sharing dimension inherent in any group
right. Translated into the cruder terms of popular common sense,
reservations become a gift from 'the nation' to the lower castes, who
must produce proof of their deservingness.

Whatever their own motivations, the OBCs have made India collectively
and self-consciously aware of what the country has always known –
namely, that the lower castes and Muslims are a largely disprivileged
aggregation constituting roughly three-quarters of the Indian
population, while the largely privileged upper castes account for the
remaining quarter. That is why post-Mandal politics packs a new punch
into an old question: Who constitutes 'the nation'? Asking this
question today promises a political re-education. It enables us to see
that, in effect, the Gandhi-Nehru dispensation positioned the upper
castes as the casteless 'owners' of a nation of lower castes. It also
makes visible the bad faith in 'merit' arguments that confuse group
entitlements with individual qualifications.

Can a democracy founded on the promise of nation-sharing survive the
public awareness that a large majority is being systematically
excluded? If the majority consists of disparate and conflicting
groups, are its political-moral claims invalidated? If not, how are
these claims to be settled – how is the nation to be shared? Can the
seemingly indivisible form of sovereignty on which nation states are
founded be transformed into a shareable form? If political voice can
only be acquired by mimicking the grand, implacable rhetoric of
nationalism, then how is nation-sharing possible? How do we go about
inventing a post-national political language that can be
uncompromising without being secessionist, and can articulate demands
that are compelling yet circumscribed? Obviously there are no easy
answers to these
questions, but not asking them is no longer an option.

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[ZESTCaste] AIR: Dalit employees complain of harassment

http://www.thehindu.com/2010/03/31/stories/2010033162670300.htm

Karnataka - Mangalore

AIR: Dalit employees complain of harassment

Sudipto Mondal

Complaint to Superintendent of Police brings matter to light

In the last 10 years, seven 'victims' are said

to have left the station

Former Station Director says he too faced harassment in 2000

MANGALORE: In the past 10 years, seven persons from the Scheduled
Castes and the Scheduled Tribes have left the Mangalore All India
Radio station because of alleged harassment by a group of employees.

Making this allegation, the national general secretary of the All
India Akashvani and Doordarshan SC/ST Employees' Welfare Association,
O.P Gautham, said, "The Mangalore AIR is a hub for the worst kind of
casteism and prejudice."

"Although none of the seven persons wanted to lodge formal complaints,
they all said that they were leaving because they could not bear the
daily mental torture and harassment," he said.

Background

Mr. Gautham spoke to The Hindu over telephone from New Delhi on Monday
about the case of Sudhakar (35), a Dalit transmission executive of the
radio station. He said, Mr. Sudhakar was allegedly stripped, beaten
and humiliated by the Mangalore East police on January 25 and detained
for the entire day in connection with his alleged involvement in the
misappropriation of Rs. 5,000.

The case came to light when Mr. Sudhakar complained to Superintendent
of Police A.S. Rao during the monthly SC/ST grievance meeting held
here on March 28.

Mr. Sudhakar said that he had been fixed in the misappropriation case
and that a group of employees at the station, which "hates people from
SC/ST communities", connived with the police in this incident. This
conspiracy had been hatched by some employees to take revenge against
him for a complaint filed by him under the SC/ST (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act in 2008.

Grievance meeting

Mr. Rao reprimanded the Kadri police during the grievance meeting, and
said that even if the allegation was not true, he saw no need for such
extreme action in such a petty case. He even ordered a departmental
inquiry into the incident.

Speaking to The Hindu from Bangalore, Banandur Kempaiah, Executive
Producer at Doordarshan, said he too faced harassment when he was in
Mangalore as Station Director in 2000.

On the condition of anonymity, another former employee who sought a
transfer in 2009 because of alleged caste-based harassment, said that
several tactics were used by "caste" Hindu and non-Dalit employees to
unsettle SCs/STs. "They rate us as substandard and often say that we
got the jobs because of reservation," this employee said.

Mr. Gautham, Mr. Kempaiah, Mr. Sudhakar as well as the former employee
referred to above named the same set of people as those who had
harassed them, while speaking separately to The Hindu.

The present station head of AIR, Mangalore, could not be contacted.

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[ZESTCaste] Dalit organisations stage protest

http://www.thehindu.com/2010/03/31/stories/2010033152240300.htm

Karnataka - Hubli-Dharwad

Dalit organisations stage protest

Staff Correspondent

HUBLI: Members of various Dalit organisations blocked traffic for more
than half an hour and staged a dharna in Hubli on Monday in protest
against the alleged defilement of a statue of B.R. Ambedkar in
Bangalore.

A dharna was staged in Dharwad in protest against the State
Government's failure to check exploitation of Dalits and minorities.

In Hubli, the protestors staged the dharna near Ambedkar's statue near
the Head Post Office and blocked the road for more than half an hour.
They raised slogans against the Government for its failure to check
exploitation of Dalits and minorities.

They said the desecration of the statue of Ambedkar at Nanjappa Circle
in Shantinagar of Bangalore seemed to be a deliberate political act,
as the elections to the Bruhat Bangalore Mahangara Palike Council were
held on Sunday.

They urged the Government to immediately take steps to arrest the
perpetrators of the crime, which had pained Dalits and all those who
advocated social justice.

The protestors then submitted a memorandum addressed to the Governor
urging him to direct the Government to take action in the matter.
Hubli Tahsildar S.S. Biradar received the memorandum from them.

During the protest in Dharwad, the protestors alleged that after the
Government, led by the BJP, came to power in the State, atrocities
against Dalits, minorities and weaker sections of society had
increased. They wanted the Governor to issue directions to the
Government and submitted a memorandum addressed to the Governor.

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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

[ZESTCaste] We can only look forward...

[ZESTCaste] As India urbanises, caste is losing, and will continue to lose, its strength (Chandra Bhan Prasad)

[ZESTCaste] Caste articulation

[ZESTCaste] AIR: Dalit employees complain of harassment

[ZESTCaste] Dalit organisations stage protest

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