The bitter truth about
caste in India
The
world's most extensive, powerful and viciously bigoted anti-conversion law
enforces a particular religion
Union of Catholic Asian News
(seen in Goan Voice UK)
The Chief Justice of India looked down from the middle chair in
Court Number 1 and very calmly, almost in a cold tone, asked the counsel for
the Christian community: Will any bishop tell the court his church practices
casteism?
It has been many decades, but no bishop has filed an affidavit
that he, his church or his community discriminates against fellow Christians
because of their “low” caste.
Christians converted from the group once known as untouchables,
and later classified in the more dignified nomenclature of the scheduled
castes, have fought a lonely battle in court, parliament and in their churches.
They remain alone in the battle, which continues. Because so does caste in
their community.
And such is also the case with the Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist
communities, among the five religious groups listed as official minorities
in India.
For as long as he was alive and deemed a spokesman and
religious-political leader of his community, the brilliant diplomat-turned-politician,
Syed Shahabuddin, swore that since Islam believed in the equality and
brotherhood of man, and did not acknowledge the existence of caste, there was
no question of seeking scheduled caste status for any section of the community.
Long before the Justice Rajinder Sachar commission was set up to
evaluate the economic status of the Muslim community and found it to be far
below the national average, Shahabuddin, whom I knew well, would only support a
backward class status for the entire community, with all the economic and
political perks it attracted.
My own research as a grassroots reporter and activist had
brought me face to face with the stunning reality in the soil of South Asia.
On a visit to Pakistan, when
such things were still possible without being lynched on social media, I saw a
major strike by the local Christian community, all Punjabis. They were
demanding a half-day off on Sunday, if not a day off, to be able to go to
church. Almost every one of them was a municipal employee, what in Hindi would
be called a safai karmachari. And there, as
here, they were from the former untouchables. They were called Choora, a derisive term also heard in Jammu and Punjab
in India. They had been almost forced to stay back during the Partition of 1947
because the government needed to staff its civic services, and no one else was
willing to do the dirty work.
And back in India, in a study tour of the villages of Punjab
along the border areas, I came across a few manual scavengers who worshipped
the same God as I did. Years later, during a visit with the late Swami Agnivesh
to launch a march against manual scavenging in Rajasthan, I came across scores
of Muslim families who worked as manual scavengers. The women were the ones who
did the demeaning work. I met the daughter of one of them. She had gone to law
school. Agnivesh joined me in washing her mother’s feet in a gesture of
atonement.
The Sikh and Buddhist sections were far luckier in their
political clout with governments of the day. Mazhabi Sikhs, as they are called,
and Ambedkarite Dalit Buddhists, as they called themselves, had been both
braver and far luckier in their political leadership and clout. Both were in
turn covered by the scheduled caste definition, which helped them get seats in
parliament and every elected legislative and local government body. It also got
them protection of the law under the Anti-atrocities Act. Political rulers used
the defensive, and very polarising, distinction of Sikhism and Buddhism being
Indian faiths, as opposed to the alien Abrahamic Christianity and Islam.
The writ petitions of the Christians and Muslims of Dalit origin
— they are called DC and DM in a celebrated socioeconomic study by
Prof. Satish Deshpande of Delhi University — are still pending in the
Supreme Court, awaiting a listing before a constitutional bench. This is all
the progress they have made in more than a decade and a half after summarily
losing their first attempt in the court for justice. That terrible judgment is
called the Soosai Case after the cobbler who had sought protection of the law
as much as others from his community but worshipping a different god.
Deshpande’s momentous study was at the behest of the National
Commission for Minorities. Another panel, the National Commission for Religious
and Linguistic Minorities, headed by former chief justice Ranganath
Misra and set up in 2004, not surprisingly found that caste had crossed
the borders of the original Varna system of the law-giver Manu to permeate
every single religion that came to the land. The commission did not use the
words, but the meaning was clear. Caste, and caste-based discrimination, had
tainted every faith, in about equal measure. Like Deshpande, Misra also
discovered that the discrimination was social, of course, but also economic and
in representation in the government and private workforce.
“We have found no indication whatsoever in the constitution ...
of an intention that scheduled castes must remain confined to any particular
religion or religions," Prof. Tahir Mahmood, a commission member and
former chairman of the National Commission of Minorities, said when the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led a series of objections to the Misra panel’s
findings.
“It is not only unconstitutional but it would also encourage
conversions. We would oppose any move towards reservations for Dalit Christians
and Muslims," said BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar, now a central
minister. These are words that were repeated in parliament this session by the
BJP, now in government. Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad made it quite clear in
the Rajya Sabha this session that the Narendra Modi government had absolutely
no intention to bring Dalit Muslims and Christians on a par with Hindus, Sikhs
and Buddhists of the same caste groups.
Javadekar’s reference to religious conversions — the root of the
current “love jihad” laws and their parental anti-conversion legislation in
eight Indian states — is what this is all about.
Babasaheb Ambedkar and the prime minister of the day, Jawaharlal
Nehru, had in the newly independent country’s constitution sought to make
amends to a historic ethnic wrong done over three millennia to this group of
citizens. Article 341 therefore gave them a special place, and social rights
which invaded political representation, and reservations of up to 15 percent in
educational institutions and government employment. Ambedkar would later leave
the cabinet, and in 1956 leave the Hindu religion to join, with half a million
others, the Buddhist faith. His followers would be called Ambedkarite in time,
and today they are an important part of national politics and civil society.
So, what forced the very secular Nehru and the chair of the
constitution-writing committee to renege on their own written promise?
Article 341 was not diluted but emasculated by the Presidential
Order of 1950 under the irresistible pressure of the most powerful segments of
not just the opposition parties but also of the ruling Congress, especially its
members from what is now Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and
Maharashtra. This said that the constitutional guarantees of affirmative action
would be limited only to those who remained Hindu. In effect, people would not
be entitled to reservations and the umbrella of the untouchability-ending
laws if they left the Hindu fold.
This, in effect, is the world’s most extensive, most powerful,
and most viciously bigoted anti-conversion law. It is a law that enforces a
particular religion. It robs the Hindu Dalit of the freedom of choosing his or
her religion at pain of being denied education, employment and other
aspirational and political benefits that come with remaining in the fold. And
it robs possibly 10 million or more Christians — most of them outside the
Northeast and Kerala — of what is rightfully theirs for sharing a painful
past, a violent racial memory and continuing social discrimination and
vulnerability.
It also, in effect, communalizes the protective cover of the law
of the land, leaving a large number of people out of its shield, victims though
they are of social derision and economic neglect compounded by political
exclusion.
This is not how newspaper articles narrate the persistent
tragedy of the DCs and the DMs. But legalese cannot take away the bitterness of
the truth.
John Dayal is a journalist and
human rights activist based in New Delhi. The views expressed in this article
are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial
position of UCA News.
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