Caste consciousness and the sociology of public culture in India

In his book Mistaken Modernity Dipankar Gupta has an essay presenting a sociological explanation for the unclean public spaces in India. The apparent dirt in the public environs is something everyone comments on. Everyone notices it. Many attempts to clean up have been made both by the state and by the individuals. But the general habit of dirtying up the outside-the-home-environs seems to defeat all efforts to clean up our environment. Surprisingly, in our society with regards to inside-the-home, the general habit is the opposite of this: there is an excessive concern to clean the house.

This attitude finds itself expressed in public parks, tourist centres, bus and railway stations, hospitals, roads, and even cinema halls. Spitting and urinating in the public, littering the place with polythene bags and pieces of paper, tossing cigarette buts or food crumbs onto the road are all too common to shock us. You can rarely find a public utility place – hospital or a bus-stand – which is not spattered with the colours of pan or gutka.

Is this so because we are a dirty tribe? Such a characterisation can fall into the essentialist trap because what can explain a habit common in our society though across any recognisable commonality of social practice? Dipankar Gupta in fact gives exactly such an explanation by invoking that which is common across the country and that which inculcates a certain attitude to cleanliness in us. He contends that this has to do with caste consciousness. Gupta argues that the attitude to cleanliness in our society is related to caste. He points out that the idea of there being castes to clean up the toilets and the gutters meant that cleaning the public place is an inferior job meant, in the caste conscious mind, for the ‘lower caste’. This attitude leaves the responsibility of keeping the public places clean on the ‘cleansing castes’. In short, Dipankar Gupta, much more clearly and persuasively than my summary can do here, argues that the Indian middle class does not consider it their responsibility to keep their environs clean as they take it for granted (a) that it would lower their status to do so and (b) that it is someone else’s job (the cleaning castes).
This argument is very convincing. It also leads me to think that we should be able to find explanations for several of our social evils in this manner. Ambedkar in his “Annihilation of Caste” does a similar sociological analysis: he points out that the reason why there is so much political disunion is to do with the caste feelings in this society.

I think it is important that we conduct such a sociological theorisation explaining social phenomena with respect to caste because otherwise these tendencies will be seen as natural. For example, through the analysis of caste consciousness in the society we must try to find the reasons for such general habits as:

i. easily accepting inferior quality in any work

ii. easily resorting to destruction of public property

iii. failure of our education system, even in private sector institutions

iv. extreme disregard for environment in every endeavour

v. extreme disregard for public hygiene and health in manufacturing sector

vi. extreme disregard for public convenience or safety in our town planning

vii. etc.

 

Girish Karnad, Caste system, Hindu fascism

In a response piece in The New York Review of Books Karnad says

I wonder if Mr. Griffin isn’t confusing the caste system with untouchability, which certainly could be described as “the greatest single evil in the modern world.” The two are distantly related but not identical, which tends to mislead many Westerners unfamiliar with India.

Since Mr. Griffin is interested in today’s India, he might like to know that it has been argued that, given that 88 percent of India is Hindu, the internal diversity resulting from the caste system may be our main defense against a Hindu fascist state controlled by the traditionally advantaged classes.

NYRB, Volume 47, Number 10 · June 15, 2000.

from: google images

I for one didn’t understand this distinction, nor the rationality behind making such a distinction. I know that caste system is something far beyond untouchability, which is one of its sins. As a system it has  pernicious customary differentiations within the so called ‘touchable’ castes.

Yet, Karnad puzzles me.What is the benefit of suggesting that ‘untouchability’ and caste system are ‘distantly related’? Can we say it is not intimately maintained by caste system? What is more shocking is his statement that caste system has the benefit of defending against a fascist rule. He seems to ignore completely that caste system is equally evil as (if not more evil than) fascist rule. Defending caste system on the ground of the possible Hindu fascist rule is a very very strange idea. Caste system has been encouraging fascist practices for ages. Now to defend it as a defense against a danger being perceived in today’s society is weird.

But his plays visit caste issues interestingly. While his Fire and the Rain is one such play dealing with the issue of caste system directly, Taledanda, obliquely, there are other plays that deal with it symbolically.

Some of Karnad’s plays have the theme of metamorphosed beings. For example: Hayavadana (Horseheaded Man); Nagamandala (Snake-circle). These plays are seen as presenting the motif of shape-shifting, metamorphoses. I wonder if we could also see these mixed-species beings symbolically and relate these to the concept of ‘varna-sankara’ or caste-mixing. ‘Sankara’ within the brahmin protocols is the mixing of caste through certain kind of ‘touches’. In Karnad, the shape-shifted beings could be telling a story ‘between the lines’.

Any thoughts on the symbolic connection between Karnad’s metamorphosed figures and caste system? Share with me.

 

Caste, Anti-Colonialism, Indian Nationalism

The term ‘Independence Struggle’ that names a cluster of discursive practices (associated with nationalism and anti-colonialism) in 19^th and 20^th centuries cannot be taken as unproblematic or as referring to practices with a singular politics. The phrase assumes that the struggle is for independence that is lost. This would mean that prior to the event of colonisation ‘independence’ did exist. For whom did it exist? The term would suggest that the entity on behalf of which this independence struggle is carried out was, if not a unified whole, at least a continuous field. That is, ‘India’ as such has to be ‘freed’ from the British because it has been enslaved by the British. Now, what is this India? It is most commonly seen as a territorial unit and the people within it. The people within this territorial unit have lost independence, which has to be recovered, is the logic here. The question is: whose independence was lost? If it had to be recovered, from whom? Secondly, what has to be recovered – the lost political agency or cultural agency? Both questions bring in the issue of whose independence was lost and in which spheres. No doubt, colonialism was bad, had to be opposed and defeated. But in asking questions about the nature of the recovery, sense of loss and fields of sovereignty to be wrested, one would be able to examine diverse implications of the idea of independence in the context of the notions of nation as well as the discursive practices of nationalism.

As some of the socio-cultural actions in the 19^th and 20^th centuries suggest, the aim to achieve independence was not always solely from the British. Therefore, the event of loss and the structures of loss of independence were various in the discourses of differently inflected nationalisms. One example is the anti-caste/ anti-brahmin nationalism, which considered colonialism as an opportunity that had accelerated the mobility of the lower castes and had loosened the grip of brahminism, thus providing a historical opportunity for the lower castes to obtain independence from the brahminical order.

Seen thus, independence struggle was multifarious not merely because of the differences in approach to anti-colonialism but because the very notion of independence, the loss that has to be amended, varied. Broadly, the logic of recovery in the discourses of independence struggle may be divided into two streams. One is internal recovery – recovery of independence from the ‘internal’ coloniser, i.e. the brahminical patriarchy. The second is external recovery – recovery of independence lost to the ‘foreign’ coloniser. The internal recovery logic mounted its critique in the socio-cultural field wherein the shift in the political power to an agency beyond caste had not broken down the structures of caste slavery. The external recovery logic mounted its critique in the political field wherein the political power had to be recovered from the coloniser. In both, there were massive importations from the European knowledge systems to strengthen their case.

What is significant is the engagement between these two. The critique of brahminism forced the critique of colonialism to restructure itself. The latter felt the need to employ the terms of modernity and borrow from the culture of the coloniser to restructure itself though it hardly ever completely accepted the former’s demand for a total revision. Thus the modernising/ reformation attempts were not merely responses to the exposure to western culture but also a response to the internal critique.

Independence was being claimed on different grounds and also different kinds of independence were pursued. The external critique claimed for political independence – reserving the right to socio-cultural restructuring to itself, as Partha Chatterjee (NF) shows – while internal critique aimed at socio-cultural independence from the very forces of the external critique and questioned their programme of restructuring the internal sphere. This meant that different notions of the nation were in operation in terms of what is lost, what has to be recovered and what has to be constructed and reconfigured.

The response to modernity in the internal critique was largely non-resistant as modernity offered means of emancipation – for example, industries provided new employment outside the obligations of caste, rationalism provided the platform to challenge the metaphysics that held the system of caste in place. The internal critique on the other hand was selectively resistant to modernity.

To put it briefly: the notion of nation informing the various standpoints in the socio-political activism in 19^th and 20^th centuries in India were different and the notion of independence sought was also of diverse nature. The independence struggle was not a monolithic mass aspiration. What proceeds from this is that the socio-political activisms were diverse in their content, form, modality, target and representation. Different politics, different aspirations, different structures of feeling and experiences, different notions of past and future, and hence different histories inform the plurality of the socio-political action that often is seen as one. The extent to which the categories coloniser and colonised need to be fragmented is suggested in the view that ‘India’ was being constituted differently: ‘India’ the object of nationalist discourses, the past of this ‘India’, the notion of independence, the future contours of ‘India’.

 

Shah Rukh Khan and identity politics

One can talk about the public debate on that ugly events linked to the security check on Shah Rukh Khan. The passion seems to have been spent. Dust settled as it were. National pride no more staked on the incident. So one can talk about it better in public. I say ugly because it was difficult to be heard in the noise made about the incident.

from: google images

Upfront let me say: there was nothing wrong in the former President or a popular star being frisked. There is everything wrong in going to the town tom-toming about how hurt you are that someone checked you in the airport. True, ex-Prex didnt personally make an issue. I am talking about everyone who did. I dont want to pretend that it was totally a creation of the media. Even if the controversy surrounding the two personalities may have been media circus, the structure of feeling is very common in India of which we regularly find evidence.

The issue is not what Shah Rukh or ex-Prez felt. The issue is why the people of India tend to associate national pride with issues of privilege. Not being frisked is a privilege. Seeing such a privilege as matter of national pride does not enhance anybody’s IQ. In fact the brouhaha perhaps harmed the image of India more than anything else.

Why should the identity of India be invoked in an issue so obviously related to security protocols. If the officers were less than civil to Shah Rukh, then it is a matter of significance. If their reason for delaying him and asking him strange questions were related as Shah Rukh said to his name, it is a grave matter. But, none of this necessitate the invocation of national pride; national identity. That Indian government felt it necessary to respond, is a sign of how sensitive we are to the world’s reaction to us.

from: google images

Such reactions only indicate that as far as the national identity is concerned, whatever that may be, however much doubtful we are of it, in India there is so much of anxiety. Why is the society in India, the civil society, the media, the bureaucracy, the ruling class etc, so anxious that the world see us exactly as we wish ourselves to be seen?

I think right now the biggest challenge we are facing is not so much naxalism but nationalism. The monster invoked as an anti-colonial and integrating strategy is now coming to our grief as it is giving rise to so many nationalisms. The million mutinies are really nationalism taking deeper roots in our society.

 

Punjabi Novelist Dalip Kaur Tiwana’s Gone are the Rivers

Gone are the Rivers is a novel by the Punjabi novelist Dalip Kaur Tiwana.

from: sikhiwiki.org

Tiwana is considered as the leading prose writer in Punjabi. She has written novels, short stories, autobiography and literary criticism. She was a professor  of Punjabi. Her first novel is Agni Prikhy (The Ordeal of Fire) in the late sixties. One of her early works was the famous Eho Hamara Jivan. Her autobiographical work Travelling on Bare Feet is also much discussed. As these titles suggest her works are bent towards the metaphorically.

I have read only one of her works: Gone are the Rivers. It made an immediate impact on me. Primarily for two reasons: it revises the form of the novel. secondly, it has clear unmisty eyes about the past.

Gone are the Rivers uses two kinds of temporalities. The first refers to a feudal time while the second to a modern/democratic time. The narrative in the first part is cyclical, episodic, symptomatic and never linear. The second part is refers to the post-Independent time; the narrative is more linear, more realistic, more like the ‘novel’. This internal refraction about the genre seems to be alive to the burden of a postcolonial writer. This novel becomes important, I think, because of this experiment in relation to the novel form.

The second feature I like is that it is least nostalgic. One of the irritating aspects of some novels is the nostalgia for the bygone lifestyle. A nostalgia that seems to express craving for the feudal social structure. While this novel narrates the passing of time and the transformation in society and culture, major reshuffling in social relations, at no pint this novel indicate a desire for the revival of what is past.

It begins with a graphic portrayal of the lifestyle of the courtiers of the state of Patiala. This depiction is not a chronological narrative. It follows in an episodic manner the various walks of life. The novel builds up a dense picture of the political economy, the social relations, the sexual domain, the familial relations, the  master-servant relations etc. The story line relates the changes in the life of a high ranking minister of the Patiala court.

The second part of the novel refers to contemporary India. Here, the feudal classes have been humbled, there is now the social relations are more flat.

More in the next blog.

 

Caste as Human Rights Violation

The ongoing UN session has drafted a resolution which considers caste discrimination as a human rights violation. This is a welcome development considering India’s consistent opposition to allow internationalisation of the issue of caste. Foreign policy of a nation quite often is based on reasons of false pride. In refusing in 2001 a resolution linking caste to racism India had displayed the same pride. Now with Sweden (EU) and Nepal going with the resolution, let us hope that India wont manage to block it.

The TOI says:

The draft principles specifically cited caste as one of the grounds on which more than 200 million people in the world suffer discrimination. “This type of discrimination is typically associated with the notion of purity and pollution and practices of untouchability, and is deeply rooted in societies and cultures where this discrimination is practiced,” it said.

UN treating caste as human rights violation might help in drawing the attention of the international community to the ancient horror that still thrives. If this increases the visibility of the practice of caste system we can hope it will bring greater pressure on the Indian civil society to emerge out of complacency. You may want to read this on the same issue.

from: ambedkar.org

Unless caste system, as Ambedkar taught us, is annhilated there is no real progress for this country.

 

Globalization, Public Policy and the Secret Agents

Bhupinder Singh has an interesting post on globalization (here). I am inclined to think that globalization or not, things remain the same with us. I don’t buy the argument that with a better economic policy, one that is less committed to globalization, we would do better. This is so because, in our society, despite economic factors, underdevelopment and misery are socially maintained. I mean to say, as long as we keep the caste system alive, no amount of economic force will eradicate hungry masses. Because, caste is both a social and an economic structure. Elitism in India is caste determined. Class therefore largely becomes an insufficient category for both mobilization as well as analysis, as discovered by some communist intellectuals in the recent past.

In India caste framework is the source of the nature of much of the public policies and their implementation. Let me take the example of primary education. By and large, the aim of primary education for all has been achieved as far as the upper castes are concerned. Now, illiterates are nearly always from the ‘lower’ castes. This is not entirely wrong in the case of health care too. I am sorry I am not providing the necessary data here, but I am sure my readers would upon reflection find enough signs of the truth of this statement around them. So this means that implementation of policies is not always a problem; nor is it always the policy that is wrong. I agree that India boasts of some of the most radical social policies and initiatives. Globalization may have lessened this urge among our legislators. But, when it comes to implementing policies that would undermine the dominance of the upper castes in any field, we see a problem. True, there are millions of upper caste poor. It is true that the country hasn’t yet been able to feed all the upper caste masses. But, if we do see the proportion of the upper caste society that has benefited from any of the system since modernity came to India with the British and compare it to the proportion of the oppressed castes’ social improvement, we see the truth of my statement.   

Globalization’s present avatar is doubtlessly discriminatory and in countries like India, it will benefit a few by dis-empowering many; it wears the mask of progress, while it hides the millions who are no more even exploited, just thrown out of the system. But, in a caste ridden society most policies will not fare better. Indian socialism never addressed annihilation of caste oppression. What I believe is urgent is the creation of a public sphere which is public enough for the policies to represent the interests of all social groups in India not only at the level of framing it but also at the level of implementing it. When we have a situation where terrorist attacks invite the full fury (justifiably) of the country but not when a colony of the dalits is burnt; when caste oppression becomes the affair only of those castes and not of the ‘society’, we are miles away from making a system work for the benefit of all.

 

Education System: Alive yet Dead

Being involved with higher education, like all else, I am often confronted with the question what is wrong with education. Now, if we believe that in becoming a lecturer / teacher we have done well, and if we are the products of the same educational system, then we should conclude that nothing is wrong. But, this is as bad as our assessment of the situation on the basis of various statistics. One of the areas where we are facing a severe crisis is in terms of the issue of equity in education. The policy reformulation exercise regarding this, the Moily committee for example, has to consider the fundamental malice in our system that has not only caused under-education, but also willfully dishes out substandard education. This can be seen in the disparity between the education that the haves get and what the have-nots get.

Our primary education where the state is the main provider of access to education to millions of lower class / caste population is in such bad shape that it is a shame it exists. Ditto in secondary and higher education. Let us not be carried away by all the hoo-haa about the IIMs and IITs, and the IIMS. Their health or lack of it is relatively speaking of less importance as the numbers they churn out is miniscule compared to the millions of under-educated, and hence disabled, youth that our general education system spawns. It is these youth who form the unemployed and largely unemployable army that end up as the malleable contents that politicians can use for their devious purposes.

It is not as if the Indian state is so dumb that it is unaware of the ills besetting the education system. It is not as if Indian state is so insensitive that it does not to care about the education system. It is not as if the Indian state is so stupid that it can’t find solutions to the problems it perceives to be haunting the education sector. I am sure there are enough intelligence within the state machinery and the public sphere in
India to find and operationalise solutions that time to time amend the systemic evils. But, let me say this loudly, our society (including the state and the public) does not want to solve the problems. Our society does not want all sections to get the kind of education that ensures improved standard of life. Our society does not want the lower classes and castes to ever become transformed into something other than lower classes / castes. Our society hence perpetuates a system of education that sucks the youth into the vicious circle of educated unemployables.

Don’t dismiss this as mere cynicism. We all know that education is an instrument of consent production, disciplining, homogenization, pacification, and indoctrination for social and cultural mores. Our system does all of these by providing rubbish quality education.

This can only be addressed if the larger public sphere including the employers see that quality education at all levels is an effective medicine for a number of evils that consume our society today. Quality education can increase skills, positive social climate, lessen social resentment and strife, and certainly help ‘productivity’. Our corporate moguls who are quick to wax eloquent on merit should realize that with a larger pool of skilled workforce they will get a better deal. The abominable situation that exists today of a small minority from a particular class and caste forming the primary supplier of skilled labor in most of the areas of economy, especially in the new economy, is a recipe for not only constrained productivity in the long run, but also civil unrest.         

Right now the state as well as the elite society is keen on keeping our education system alive yet dead. 

 

The vicious circle of language politics

India is the only country where no social science journal is published in any of the Indian languages. All “eminent” historians write their histories of
India in English. All “eminent” sociologists publish their micro and macro level studies of Indian society in English. For those who are not well trained in handling the English language, all the new knowledge being generated about the past and present of Indian society is inaccessible. There are no serious books or journals available to them in the subjects they study or teach.

This is whar Madhu Kishwar says in her article “Deprivation’s real language” in Express (Read). Makes me wonder how many Indian languages she knows and how much research has gone into this statement. It sounds a bit like that famous Macaulay-ean statement by Salman Rushdie about the worth of post
Independence literature in Indian languages other than English.

She makes a valid point in the article about the advantage that students emerging from English medium schools have over those from non-English medium schools. But, I wonder if her point is well served by such exaggerated, half informed statements about social science journals. For example, in Marathi there is Samaj Prabodhana Patrika. Quite a few of Gautam Bhadra’s (a prominent subaltern historian) articles are in Bengali. I here take only two example, half because I don’t have enough information about the scene in all Indian languages.

Madhu Kishwar’s general point is ill-served by these statements is only my secondary grouse. I think she displays here a kind of complacent arrogance that is often seen in those who operate exclusively within the English media and academia. Their intellectual laziness coupled with snobbery makes them look down on whatever is published in Indian languages, and then they begin to complain that there is nothing in these languages, and to boot it they criticize such a situation where all that is valuable is in English. Excuse me, if you have no access, or don’t want access, to the quality work done in Indian languages, might as well keep your judgment to yourself.   

Let me clarify that I am not saying everything is rosy as far as resources in our languages for modern knowledge is concerned. I am aware of the big gap in terms of the diversity of approaches and opinions available, between English and other Indian languages. It is lamentable that so little work is done in Indian languages in precisely those areas that are much sought after in educational institutions. One of the reasons perhaps is that those who do study these subjects in English, once they have had success, find it demeaning to do work in their own languages. May be. But it must not be assumed that paucity is absence.

There is much room for improvement, long distance to go in creating an atmosphere wherein both equipping the language to accommodate all aspects of modern knowledge and life and creating resources in Indian languages.

Her argument that reservation policy doesn’t factor in the contribution of the lack of knowledge of English in the deprivation that the policy aims at correcting is well taken. It is also true that availability of quality education in Indian languages even when realized substantially, may not offer a solution to this problem. But let us give the credit where it is due.

Saying things like “All “eminent” historians” write only in English is like saying your estimation of all those who write in other languages is that they are short of any eminence. Now, isn’t this a vicious circle? First you confer the eminence to those who write in English, and then you say no eminent writer writes  in other languages.  

 

Performative Production of the State in India

Akhil Gupta has this article titled ‘Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics and the
Imagined
State’ in Zoya Hasan edited book Politics and the State in India (Sage,
New Delhi, 2000). In this article he examines the way people construct the state through various practices including corruption. I found this article extremely interesting as it couples solid field work with fine theorization. The very idea of viewing how people imagine the state into being performatively is great. His is a nuanced reading of his field work data which attends to local history, culture, social set up as well as resonances of relationships. I think it is important to not see corruption as the same everywhere and always (it wont lead us anywhere). There is much sense in following Gupta’s approach and study the performative production of corruption, state, and the relation between state and subjects. If your interest includes state, corruption, performativism, any or all of these, I think you would find Gupta’s article interesting.

An excerpt: “At the local level it becomes difficult to experience the state as an ontically coherent entity: what one confronts instead is much more discrete and fragmentary… it is precisely through the practices of such local institutions that a translocal institution such as the state comes to be imagined.”

Akhil Gupta points out that western categories of civil society and state as well as private citizen and public servant become inadequate to describe the lived realities in India as one finds boundaries being blurred such that the function of public servant need not transpire only in the rationalizes locations of the offices; and the interaction between the civil society and state may continuously be revised on the basis of various factors.

I have only picked a few bits of the many fine ideas to be found in this article. Check it out, folks.

 

Gender trouble

The cabinet decision to have only women judges trying in rape cases is a good example of fast backward. It assumes that only women can sympathise with women; that the poor record of our judiciary with reference to rape cases has a malice whose name is male judges! This is no change for the better, it is at best an escapist move. Indian Express has a good op-ed here on this issue.

The problem is more with the overall law and order system. Here I am afraid what is lacking is not officers with the right gender to do justice in rape cases but the desire to foster gender equality. The above article refers to a lower court verdict which is the height of prejudicial opinion masqerading as judicial verdict. Warning: It is too absurd, so beware, it requires a brave heart to finish reading the paragraph!

Bhanwari had been gangraped by five upper-caste men for attempting to stop a child marriage in her village. Acquitting the rapists, a sessions court had ruled: “Rape is usually committed by teenagers. The alleged rapists here are middle-aged and therefore, respectable citizens. Since the offenders were upper-caste men, the rape could not have taken place because Bhanwari was from a lower caste.”