After years of this being confined to academic discussions, the prospect of Scheduled Caste status for Dalit Muslims and Christians suddenly feels real. There has been a lot of activity on this question in the past month.
The appointment of the central government on 8 October under the leadership of KG Balakrishnan has received a lot of press coverage. However, it is not well known that the government did not constitute the commission of its own accord, but after being asked by the Supreme Court to respond to an ongoing case.
On August 30, the Supreme Court had listed the case of M Ejaz Ali v Union of India, in which a batch of PILs from Muslim and Christian groups sought Scheduled Caste status. Some of these petitions date back to 2004.
Denial and protest
While the anticipation of Scheduled Caste status brings hope to the most marginalized Muslim and Christian communities as it will allow them to access reservations in educational institutions and government jobs, it also faces denial and opposition from many sectors.
Clearly, groups like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which have claimed to represent Muslims for decades, are silent on this question. Ashok Bharti of the National Confederation of Dalit and Tribal Organizations wrote a letter opposing this. Prominent Dalit leaders such as MP Thol Thirumavalavan and Communist Party of India leader D Raja have supported inclusion.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has not said anything yet, but her letter from 2007 supports Dalit Christian groups' demand for an amendment to Article 341. Article 341 of the Constitution lays down the framework for notifying groups, castes or tribes as Scheduled Castes.
The case for inclusion of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians in the Scheduled Castes list is clear: conversion did not change their caste status and they continued to face humiliation and atrocities against Hindu Dalits along with untouchability.
Academic studies, activist groups and national level commissions and reports led by Rajinder Sachar, Ranganathan Mishra, Elaya Perumal and Satish Deshpande and others have all reiterated that Muslims and Christians are excluded from the Scheduled Caste list on religious grounds. should not be taken out.
'Casteless' India
Instead of debating why Christians and Muslims can be Dalits, a more fundamental question is, who benefits from keeping Dalits "Hindu"?
The answer lies in the two great narratives of modern India that are in friction with each other and yet work together. The first is that of upper caste leaders trying to cover up caste as the basic organizational structure of Indian society. Second, the importance of the number of groups in modern forms of governance, and with it the frantic attempt to incorporate Dalits into the idea of "Hindu".
When India became independent, most of its leaders were upper caste Hindu men. Without attacking caste roots - and often celebrating it in terms of culture or diversity - he created the narrative that India could be casteless if it stopped talking about caste.
This "castelessness" helped members of the upper castes to establish themselves as meritorious, capable leaders, hiding the undue power and privilege they had in society. Thus, in 1950, Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel stopped counting individual caste figures in the census, arguing that collecting data on caste groups would tantamount to caste strengthening.
In this fictional narrative of a casteless India, the Scheduled Caste class has been the most prominent place. It is a strong constitutional declaration that provides opportunities to the most marginalized communities in public education, politics and employment and also protects them from atrocities. It refuses to bury the question of caste in matters of equality and justice. This is the reason that since the creation of the Scheduled Caste category, it has been continuously attacked by the upper castes, who have been the most prominent in their constant opposition to reservation.
This is also where the handling of caste among Muslims and Christians is more important than the handling of caste among the upper castes may be assumed. The "casteless" state has tried its best to negate caste - but while this may not be the case at all in the case of Dalits and Scheduled Castes, it has benefited from keeping the caste "Hindu".
In today's world the impulse to deny the importance of caste and to refute it as a key feature around which Hinduism is built is the same impulse that caste seeks to keep Hindu. So as long as Muslims and Christians are considered casteless, the caste can remain Hindu, and at the same time historically untouchable and occupational castes can also be considered Hindu.
Muslim and Christian Dalits find themselves facing the double denial of caste. Their political and religious leaders have insisted that there is no caste among them claiming religious equality as it helps them retain power.
Matter of numbers
The narrative of specific castelessness among minority religions helps explain the widespread castelessness prevalent in national politics since the turn of the 20th century.
This distinct castelessness of minority religions then makes it possible to transform the larger demonstrative castelessness into a Hindu/non-Hindu binary, deepening the divide between Indian and non-Indian religions, and creating a unified Hindu majority. The excessive focus on religion rather than caste helps upper-caste elites across the religious spectrum.
Caste as endogamous groups based on purity, pollution and segregation predates the current notion of Hinduism as it is understood today. Works such as historian Robert Fryckenberg suggest that in the 19th and 20th centuries various stakeholders such as Western Orientalist scholars, Brahmin-led revivalist movements, nationalist leaders and census enumerators played a role in the incorporation of significant sections of Dalits into the larger Hindu identity. played.
Anthropologist Joel Lee has provided sufficient sources to explain that between 1870 and 1930, untouchable sanitation workers called Lal Begis formed a socio-religious community that was distinct from the modern defined categories of Hindus and Muslims. Thus, caste needs to be understood as a continuous social phenomenon with its practices across the subcontinent rather than being analyzed through the framework of Indian versus Abrahamic or religious versus non-religious.
Even in the early and middle of the 20th century the concern for the untouchables was inspired by the concerns of Hindu upper caste men as the British agreed to count the untouchables as a separate class in the British census. This was a time when the British were introducing various representative systems where the number of groups suddenly became significant.
The Muslim upper castes introduced a unified view of Muslims and argued for not counting the untouchables as Hindus. The Hindu upper castes, in turn, reacted by calling for reforms, a way to incorporate the untouchables into the Hindu fold.
After independence, the method of allowing only Dalits to get Scheduled Caste status has been a continuation of this impulse. It consolidates a Brahmanical Hindu identity by gradually incorporating traditions and different groups of people, and divides Dalits on the basis of religion. Most importantly, it deprives Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians of equal citizenship rights.
Source: Scroll.in
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