Caste: Still a Key Issue in the Minds of Indian Voters

By M. M. Ali

Even before Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, India's election of May and June 1991 had the potential either to unify or further destabilize the "world's largest democracy." It is disconcerting, therefore, to realize that this election was necessitated partly by a dispute over caste—a question most foreigners assume India put behind it generations ago.

A tempest was created by former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh's decision last year to implement the caste-related recommendations of the Mandal Commission. However morally correct, V. P. Singh plunged into a question that had daunted two of his predecessors as prime minister, the late Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv.

Nothing was done about the Mandal Commission's report for more than 10 years. Then, when the government sought to implement its recommendations, young men belonging to the upper castes indulged in public self-immolation in various cities throughout the country. The actions demonstrated, as never before, that India remains engulfed in a crisis of conscience. Elections can either narrow or widen the divide.

A Stratified Society in Turmoil

The Mandal Commission recommendations are an admission of a society's guilt. They are a small effort at overcoming the legacy of a social arrangement designed to benefit one section of the population at the cost of another. Implementation comes at a time when the US Supreme Court continues to wrestle with the problems of creating a level playing field in America's multiracial society. Even South Africa appears to have come to terms with its surrounding reality. Similarly, the Mandal Commission was a weak and belated attempt to cure a centuries old malady in a country whose problems, like its population, are on a giant scale.

Unfortunately, deep-seated, arcane dogmas and retrogressive institutions cannot be eradicated through simple legislation. Inequality may be eradicable in the social environment, but the prejudice that sustains it remains invisibly present in human minds. Dealing with such prejudice will always be painful. The devil does not die without a furious fight.

Nor are there many angels in the realm of human relations. Each society in its turn has heaped injustices of various kinds on its fellows. Human hands are stained with sins of commission as well as omission. Whether called Adivasis, Harijans, Dalits or "untouchables, " all refer to the segment at the bottom of the caste system that has kept Hindu society stratified.

At the top of the four-tier arrangement sit the patrician Brahmins—the priests and the ruling group. Within each caste lie the subcastes or sub-groups.

The lowest—Shudras (Adivasis, etc.)—are further categorized by the menial functions they perform in society. They are condemned to be the scavengers, the shoemakers, the undertakers, etc. Through religious injunction, the Shudras have historically been kept isolated from the upper castes and deprived of all opportunities in life. By contrast, racism is obvious and visible. Castism is concealed and blended into the system and sanctified by holy men. Both are different manifestations of the same ugliness.

With the coming of independence in 1947, the drafting of the Constitution of India was spearheaded by two leaders from the opposite poles of the caste system. They were Jawaharlal Nehru, a Brahmin, and Bhimrao Ambedhkar, an Adivasi who had converted to Buddhism. The 1950 Constitution incorporated provisions abolishing "untouchability" and declaring its practice illegal.

A section added to the Constitution identified the different groups of Adivasis as "scheduled castes." Special provisions were incorporated to help them catch up with the more privileged classes in the course of time.

Secular democracy became the political creed of the country. This was a giant step that promised redress to a portion of the population that, in the words of Beverly Nichols, had been treated as "the scum of the earth" for centuries. Another section was added to the Constitution offering concessions to the tribal groups that had remained outside the mainstream because of neglect. These measures were to wash away the sins of commission regarding the scheduled castes and of omission regarding the tribal peoples. The US parallels for these two categories of Indian society are obvious.

Paper reforms help, but they do not at once obliterate what has been imbedded in the mind for centuries. The Dalits are still discriminated against, particularly in the countryside and several parts of the north also known as the Hindi belt.

Hindu temples, in many cases, are still the exclusive sanctuary of the upper castes, presided over by the Brahmins, and remain out of-bounds for scheduled caste members. While the Dalits have gradually entered the government and private offices, mostly in the lower cadres, distances are maintained between castes in noticeable ways. Intercaste marriages are rare, and give rise to social tensions when they occur. There are roughly 150 million Dalits in India today, constituting about 20 percent of the population. The Constitution reserves seats for the scheduled castes and tribes in educational institutions and in government jobs.

India remains engulfed in a crisis of conscience.

In India's highly stratified and checkered society, besides the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes, there is also a large underprivileged section of the population identified as the "other backward castes" or classes. It is this OBC group, not covered by constitutional reforms, that the Mandal Commission dealt with directly.

The commission submitted its report in December 1980. According to the findings of the commission, 52 percent of the population consists of the backward castes. A standing ruling of the Indian Supreme Court, however, stipulates that no more than 50 percent of the total places in any institution can be "reserved," although the Constitution does not fix any upper limit. Respecting the court ruling, the Mandal Commission recommended 27 percent of reservations be designated for the OBC. That would keep the overall reservations under 50 percent, since 22.5 percent already were reserved for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Those are very impressive numbers. On the basis of such efforts, the backwardness, wherever found, might be expected soon to disappear from Indian society and the stigma of social and economic injustice should be removed.

Unfortunately, however, 52 percent of India's population is some 425 million people. The sad truth is that the 27 percent reservation recommended by the Mandal Commission amounts to a very minuscule relief for a long time to come.

In essence, the reservation will affect only central (federal) government jobs, and some university seats. In 1988, the central government announced 204,290 job vacancies. Twenty-seven percent of this is 55,000 jobs. A breakdown within the overall total works out to: 3,572 top-level 'A' category; 6,712 mid-level 'B' category; 133,934 lower level 'C' category; and 60,072 at the bottom level 'D' category.

For the foreseeable future, the backward castes (OBC) will continue to benefit only in a very small measure, and that mostly in category 'B' and 'C' jobs. Another important aspect of the commission findings is that there are no fewer than 3,743 castes and subcastes that have been classified as backward. Dividing the 55,000 jobs among them would amount to roughly 14 for each group.

At present, 94.3 percent of the top positions in the central government are held by upper caste Hindus. The share of the backward classes after 44 years of independence is only 5.6 percent, although they constitute 52 percent of the population.

All this illustrates why V. P. Singh's decision to implement Mandal Commission recommendations touched off a national furor that led to the fall of his own government and its successor and to the holding of new elections. The recommendations strike directly at the caste system and its inordinate role in the distribution of political and economic favors among the elite.

Disregarding the logic of the Mandal Commission's arithmetic and the rationale of social justice for the reforms, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), which had joined Singh's Janata Dal coalition government, withdrew its support, and Chandra Shekar's faction within the Janata Dal broke away, causing Singh's government to fall. Chandra Shekar's faction was too weak to govern, however, without more cooperation from Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Party than it got. Meanwhile, the Mandal Commission recommendations remain tied up in the courts.

My friends who take another view of the political parties involved argue that the Janata Dal Prime Minister V.P. Singh should have consulted his BJP coalition members and other leaders in the Lokh Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Parliament), before going public on following recommendations in the Mandal Commission report. They maintain, further, that there are policy as well as tactical questions involved. They have problems with some aspects of the report, and they fear that many who have already benefited sufficiently because of their "backwardness" now will make further gains. Further, they say, people with doubtful credentials will try to qualify as members of "other backward castes," and thereby cut larger slices from the limited opportunity pie.

There is some validity to such fears, which chum in the minds of those seeking to decide which candidate is best for the country. Supporters of Singh make a good case by asserting that a social program aimed at correcting chronic injustice is destined to be opposed, and inevitably there are people who will try to profit unfairly from it. It is also true that the Mandal Commission recommendations will not remove backwardness from India totally. None of this, however, should justify giving up on policies that help bring the Indian reality closer to the country's professed philosophy and ideals.

Whichever way the courts decide, the Dalits and India still have a very long road to travel. The Mandal Commission recommendations are designed to be just another road mark in that journey by the "world's largest democracy. " It is important, therefore, that, in the ferment of Indian politics, commission recommendations not become an obstacle to or the excuse for a detour in India's social and democratic evolution.

M.M. Ali, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia, is presently in India.