Youth at PUKAR doing research on Caste

An article published on 16th May, 2010 in Sunday Times.

Ideas are fatal to caste
–E M Forster, in A Passage to India

Vineet Mittal is often teased by his friends for being “a baniya”. Kripashankar Pandey’s colleagues show their reverence by calling him ‘Panditji’. Vishal Singh Rathore’s employees always address him as ‘Thakur sahab’, a clear recognition of his authority. And then there are people who use caste names to hurl insults at others, particularly those at the bottom of the pile. India may be an emerging economy but caste identities remain our mindset. Most “modern” Indians won’t admit it but our conversations and behaviour is peppered with caste references.

Listen in on the urban, the middle-class, the upwardly-mobile Indian. Typically, there are jokes that reinforce caste stereotypes. “My friends who are Sharmas and Guptas often remark — ‘We should live like Ahluwalia (Jats are considered casual and carefree), while I tell them one should study like Sharma (Brahmins are supposed to be scholars) and take care of money like Gupta (baniyas are perceived as wealthy but miserly),” agrees Patiala psychology professor Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia.

The caste system has existed since the Vedic Age, but it was during British rule that the census enumerated Indians by caste. The founding fathers of newly independent India wanted to build a “casteless society” and decided to do away with it as a category. But it didn’t go away.

India may have changed but Indians have not. Psychologist Nirmal Sharma in Chandigarh says that India’s modernization and cosmopolitan culture have failed to abolish caste, which is a constant presence in our lives. “Marriage is the most important decision in an Indian’s life. Look at all the matrimonial ads in newspapers. They are classified caste wise. Brahmins seek Brahmins and Kshatriyas seek their own.”

Sharma adds that even the New Age media could not break down caste barriers.

“A host of matrimonial websites cater exclusively to one caste or the other.”

Then there is the proliferation of caste-based organizations such as the Kshatriya Sabha, Aggarwal Mahasabha, which are ostensibly “community organizations” but are really no more than caste cliques. They are patronized by large sections of the middle class, including politicians and bureaucrats. Sasheej Hegde, professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad says this reflects the pattern of social transformation in India — castes are being transformed into communities. “This is much more in the political domain than in the social domain but the tendency could undermine the pluralist basis of our socio-political order in the long term,” says Hegde.

Does that mean that the Indian essentially has the caste gene? “The fact that we live in a social set-up defined by caste does not mean we are a casteist society. In fact, not every appeal to caste need translate into casteism,” says Hegde.

Not everyone is so sanguine. A Ramaiah, professor at the Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policies at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences, insists that most Indians “are always conscious of our caste and the nature of our interaction with fellow Indians depend on the caste he/she belongs to”.

Admittedly, this does not always mean all of us discriminate outright all the time. But it does mean that a study by Indian economist Sukhdeo Thorat and Princeton University sociologist Katherine Newman a few years ago found a low-caste surname a great disadvantage when applying for a job. Applicants with lower-caste surnames would mostly not even be interviewed.

The casteism affects even the affluent dalit. Rashmi Venkatesan, daughter of an IAS officer, recounts her nightmarish search for a house in an upper-caste dominated locality in Bangalore. “I found one house but the landlord put a condition that I won’t cook non-vegetarian meals on the premises. I agreed and paid some token money. As I was getting ready to move in, the landlord discovered that I was a dalit. He immediately returned the advance and said I couldn’t have the house.”

But it is the inter-caste marriage — the actual event and its aftermath — that often reveals the caste gene most starkly. Psychologist Sharma says that even families that allow such unions, generally consider the new (out of caste) member of the family “the outsider and he or she has to make extra effort to mix in…Caste bias is so deeply entrenched in our psyche that we can’t shed it for at least another 200 years.”

Perhaps. But Javeed Alam, Chairman, Indian Council of Social Science Research, says there is reason to hope Indians’ caste gene won’t be a chromosomal cancer for the country. “Caste today is no longer what it was a few decades ago. Even though caste discrimination is present, the caste system has died out. In fact, the struggles of the lower castes have led to the expansion of democracy and the greater democratization of society.”

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