Caste and the City

Well religion is the most active player in formation of Indian society. What else you can think of, when dominating religion is comprised of cast system. No offence, but I haven’t seen any other religion which divide its followers on the bases of there cast/profession.

And to my surprise you guys still talk about “Bhangi Colony” in Lahore!!

Hi Shivam,

It is really disgraceful that even in this day and age some people think along caste lines. We must really eradicate this menace once and for all from our society. However, the idea of reservations in the private sector is not good because our private sector is still nascent and developing. It is not like the US where the private sector has been around for centuries. We are still building it and it is powering our economic growth. You do not want to handicap your engine of economic growth and kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs. However 25-30 years from now, it may be okay to consider the idea. Right now we should look at other things like expanding education opportunities, investing in primary education and offering scholarships to dalits.

Re:Imran #2

I have always been fascinated about the real reasons for the emergence of casteism. India has been a multi-ethnic multi-racial melting pot for millenia. One group or the other may have dominated the land but they could not finish off the others. This is unlike other parts of the world which are fairly homogeneous. The only way for people to preserve their unique ethnic background was to avoid intermixing. Some people say the caste system came from professional divisions but I doubt it because other parts of the world with homogenous ethnicities did not witness the same phenomenon. Original hinduism i.e. vedic hinduism of the Aryans doesn`t have caste system. So my guess is the caste system developed from some form of racial/ethnic apartheid ever since the arrival of Aryans. After that it must have become part of the social system and got imbued with religious connotations.

An interesting parallel would be with countries in Latin America or South America like Brazil or Argentina. Originally a small minority of whites dominated a melting pot of brown and black races in these countries. Now after a lot of intermixing, you have seemingly whitish minorities ruling these countries. I say whitish because they certainly have some mixture and do not look like pure white Europeans. Still I heard that these whitish minorities are economically dominant and very restrictive about who they marry to jealously protect their exclusiveness. Sounds similar to South Asia?

Again the biggest barrier in mixing is religion. If you look at South American countries they are predominantly Christians. Religion is not playing a dividing role, one way or other they are following same religion. And by all means there religion (Christianity) is not dividing them on the bases of profession or social class they belong to.

Second if one look at your argument, Then why this division/discrimination is only part of Hinduism? Sikhism, Buddhism or Islam they all flourish in same region under same circumstances, we are not seeing this sort of division there, do we? Which means its more of the structure of religion, in Hinduism few group of people are more equal then others. They have more rights and prestige and to preserve there very own rights/prestige they promote caste system which is somehow backed by religious values.

shivam,
I dont think the first world countries are being altruistic.They have interest in the cheap labour force. Again,for the upliftment of the SC,ST and OBCs ,I think reservations are neiher correct nor adequate,though political compulsions will mandate against getting rid of them anytime soon.Since a large part of India is self employed,our education should be geared towards fostering entrepreneurship,instead of engineers,doctors and clerks.These issues have been debated at length in this dost mittar article .
Amit,we are casteist because we are Hindu,there is no denying that. We cant shrug off this fault from our religion,and it is codified in manusmriti etc. You may have overcome that,but religion`s effect in this case is regressive, this is a pretty much open and shut case.

How old are you, Shivam?

Re:#4

Well, I believe Pakistan has a lot of casteism and ethnic hatred in spite of Islam. I have heard that rajputs don`t marry jats, jats don`t marry arains, sindhis don`t marry mohajirs, mohajirs don`t marry pathans etc (there are exceptions, but I mean in general). I think it is in the water of the subcontinent. I also know lot of Pakistanis who are very proud of aryan background etc and of course, we all know the Pakistani attitude towards Bengalis. So I am afraid we are all guilty of it in the subcontinent.

re: casteism in non-Hindu religions in the subcontinent

I have personally witnessed discrimination and clear bigotry and bias within the Islamic, Christian and Sikh religions in the subcontinent based on caste. In Islam for example, the Syeds consider themselves a class apart and above everyone else. Syeds tend to be from all ``racial`` groups. These ``racial`` groups claim descent from Turk, Persian or Arab ancestors. Next in line are non-Syed ``foreign`` descendants. Then come the ``native`` high-caste and low-caste land and cattle owning converts such Rajputs, Jats, Gujars, Ahirs, Meos etc. At the bottom are the sheikhs (Dalit and other low caste converts) who are expected to serve and be subservient to all the others.

Sikhism, like Islam, does not sanction discrimination on any basis, much less on the basis of caste. But casteism, female infanticide, honor killings, racial and language discrimination is among the highest within the Sikh community. I have personally been at the receiving end of some of this bigotry. Modern day Sikhs are quite obsessive about caste and usually do not intermarry with Sikhs from different castes. Interestingly, supposedly low caste (Jat) Sikhs are at the top of the hierarchy and bully all others. It is also interesting that unlike in Islam, where descendants of Muhammad (Syed) have influence and power, in Sikhism, there is no significance attached the Gurus` descendants and family lines. (None of the Sikh Gurus were Jat; they were predominantly of Khatree origin, while I believe Guru Amar Das was of Brahmin ancestry). The hierarchy within Sikhism is something like Jat-Rajput-Khatri-Ramgharia-Dalit; in decreasing order of power and influence.

Christianity, for all its evangelism, has not escaped the clutches of caste and race. Through the four centuries or so of European influence in India, there has formed a distinct hierarchy within Christianity. First come the descendants of supposedly pure European blood, people who have no native blood. This class more or less left India when European rule came to an end. Then come the Anglo-Indians, a terms used to denote all descendants of mixed European and Indian relationships and marriages. This class of people consider themselves as being white and the guardians of Christianity and European values within India. Huge swathes of this community has also emigrated abroad, leaving mostly their poor, elderly and uneducated behind. Then come the land-owning, well off christian converts, mostly in South India, who are proud of their language and origins. Rajasekhar Reddy, the current CM of Andhra Pradesh is from this class. Last in this hierarchy come the Dalit Christians who to their credit have taken advantage of their conversion to Christianity and utilized the missionary educational institutions well. The Anglo-Indians do not mix with Dalit Christians much and do not intermarry with them. In villages, it is not uncommon for Dalit Christians to be mobile between Hinduism and Christianity, depending on the incentives provided to them at any particular point in time in terms of reservations in jobs, education etc.

Pakistanis are generally not well informed about India. Mostly, they don’t have as much interest in India as Indians do in Pakistani affairs. Amazingly, a majority of hits on Pakistani English newspapers come from India and the number of hits from the US suggests that a good number of readers are other than Pakistani. I think Omar Qureshi can easily provide the stats for Dawn.
I have some interest in India but I don’t read Indian newspapers for months. I did read Indian newspapers for couple of days during and after the Gujarat riots but I found those accounts so repulsive that I stop reading them at all.
Most of the Pakistanis are not fully familiar with social and religious problems in India. I had the feeling that things are not okay with Muslims in India but thought that is to be expected in a poor country where several groups clash for limited economic opportunities. Until the horrors of Gujarat brought to fore the kind of hatred both communities have for each other.
Recently, on this site a poster Dalit posted a few articles from the net. I followed those links and then I did some research of my own. It took me weeks to comprehend the nature of the problem and how Indian media attempts to hide it, at least the English media. I obviously can’t read any other Indian language. Internet covers only about ten percent of information from the third world countries so there is whole slew of information about treatment of dalits that has not even been made available to this new media.

I must admit my ignorance. After reading dalit sites and other facts, I found out that dalit outnumber Muslims in India and are approx 250 million. Unlike Muslims that are concentrated in certain areas, dalits are everywhere in India. The problems that dalit face in India completely overshadows Muslim problems that gets more press. What is happening to Dalit in India is much more horrendous than any Gujarat. Gujarat happens once in a while but dalits are going thru a systematic humiliation for centuries and it does not seem that there is an end to it in sight.

Dalit problem is not that some jat would not marry arian or arian wont marry Rajput. It is not even a problem of Spanish/Portuguese VS. the original tribes in South America. People don’t marry outside of their own environments, when they do it is an exception. But people do rape and take advantage of people of any color, caste or creed if they have the ability to that. That’s why every single black in the US has some white blood but not many consummated marriages to show for.
Dalit problem is not a marriage problem, it is a cultural equivalency problem and it is an issue of treating all human being equally. Any attempt to hogwash human problem under social prejudices is the worst kind of hypocrisy and it is the responsibility of any government or all social groups to find ways to eliminate it.

Until I understood the problem somewhat, I also felt that quota is bad and it should not happen and I think I posted some thing of similar nature on DM’s article couple of months back. After that I tried to study this problem even more and my sad conclusion is that India and Indians have not done enough to bring disadvantaged people in to the mainstream. Muslims and Dalits are about 400 million in population. This population is about the third largest country in the world itself.
I also tried to find out what Indian government has done about it. Constitution, quota and few more govt sponsored program and that is the extent of what India has done for 400 million people, 400 million Indians a good 40% of its population. Even if we leave Muslims aside as they represent the centuries of exploitation by the foreign invaders and Indians may have legitimate gripe about them, but what about Dalit? They are for all practical purpose Hindu. If religion is the basis of privilege in India then why some Hindu humiliate other Hindus just because they do menial work and why are they destined to do menial work only?
Agreed that centuries old prejudices will not go away overnight but who said you cannot make the effort? Looking at the size of the problem, 250 million plus and a centuries old system, has the effort so far put forward by the Independent India enough? It has not even begun.

I also looked at myself in the mirror in an attempt to find out where I stand on this issue. The litmus test was; did I know any dalit in my life? Only a few people barely showed up on radar doing cleaning and other chores in our house, I can honestly say that now I don’t even remember their names and some of them spent years in our family home.
Then I asked myself would I have kept some social contact with them or would I have ever invited them to my dining table? I realized that I would not have done anything of that sort.

That made me realize that I am as guilty as other Indians. So I am not blaming anybody but I feel that I wish I was aware of this issue, which I never was, when I was in Pakistan. In Pakistan dalits are limited in numbers. But in India they are everywhere, how could anybody hide 250 million people and deprive them of basic human rights and still call the country an inheritor of one the most enlightened civilization in this world?
Is quota enough to bring those poor souls back to the civilization?

Re:HP#9

Casteism is very similar to racism except that it gets the additional sanction of religion to make it even more rigid and difficult to eradicate. I believe that we desis are basically one of the most racist people on earth. Take any Indian or Pakistani. We crave for the white skin, light eyes, caucasian type features. Our movie stars represent these fantasies. Our choice for marriage partners reflects these cravings. We automatically tend to favor lighter complexioned people. It is programmed in our genes for millenia. Conversely we look down upon dark complexioned people with blunt features.

Our pathologies have probably derived from the fact that fairer skinned people have always conquered and ruled the subcontinent in spite of being small minorities. Whether it is the aryans, brahmins, rajputs or afghans, turks or the brits, it is essentially fairer skin defeating the darker skin in any conflict. Casteism is nothing more than the manifestation of this mindset. It is terrible in today`s context of secularism, democracy and human rights, but that is our legacy in the subcontinent. While hindus are certainly guilty of this, I have seen that Pakistanis are even more racist than Indians. One Pakistani friend told me that one of his Pakistani friends married an African-American in New York and had the guts to actually take his wife with him to Pakistan. She had converted to Islam. When he met his family, his parents gasped and said - ``Yeh, kis bhangi ko utha ke le aaye? (Which sweeper did you pick up)``. This is our desi mindset. Nothing much we can do. Hopefully with education and development, we can change.

I think, it is just the interaction with Muslims and Westerners that urges Hindus to look at their `castic` society otherwise they neither have inclination nor desire to change it; it includes means both type of Hindus - those at receiving end and those at the giving end. I think you people should be proud of your heritage and stick to it. There is a Punjabi proverb that says that one shouldn`t slap his own face red if he sees someone else`s red face; so if caste system has served a useful purpose in the past then it will do the same in the future as well. It is a divine mandate - and sometimes we do not understand the depth of it in our limited mental capacity.

Chowk is my favourite South Asian website and it`s great to see people react to my article. While it is impossible to reply all of them, I want to comment on this debate linking Hinduism with caste. The link is no doubt undeniable, but that was not thepoint of my article. My article is not but history but the present; not about rural areas but The City, where we think we DON`T discriminate on caste lines. Caste discrimination in urban India is so hidden and subtle that it`s worse than caste violence in villages, where you expect it.

Fighting over caste vis-a-vis religion is pointless. Those who think casteism affects only Hinduism should do some more Googling on the subject. Despite conversion many generations ago, caste discrimination continues in an institutionalised form in all religions in India and the rest of South Asia.

And #6, `nb`, why do you want to know my age. I feel at least as old as the history that I learnt in those stupid NCERT books. You could say I was born in 1857.

Why? Just so that I knew what generation I was dealing with, but I realised that when your classmate`s parents were from the post-Mandal era, you`re fairly young. That`s all.
I would also like to say that as an MP person, I have watched UP degenerate before my eyes, so perhaps you did see more casteism than I did. Friends who lived in the hostel didn`t care who they shared with, and before you ask, I did have huge birthday parties with much of my class, including, now that I think of it, all castes there.

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Once a number of years ago, while visiting Lucknow, I got to know about a scientific/technological infrastructure institution(don`t want to be more specific) which had fallen upon bad days because no initiative was being taken by its head to upgrade /manage it better. The reason was that Ms Mayawati who was CM at the time would allow only a Dalit to head the institution. And the person thus appointed had no other interest in the institution except to preside as its head.

As your description indicates, there is good reason why BSP/ UP Dalit rhetoric is the way it is. (Searching around for exact wording) Kanshi Ram`s/BSP`s philosophy is ```Political power is the master key to all other doors`` . I just wish having attained power, Dalits and Yadavs would now move one step forward from simply enjoying that power and become genuinely constructive wrt their own constituency and wrt UP. That will greatly accelerate the process of joota maaro`ing the tilak, tarazu and talwar.

Amit,
I am kind of surprised at your comments. It appears to me that you are attempting to trivialize the issue. It is not you alone but every Indian that has posted on this board, has attempted to point fingers at other countries and nation to justify what’s happening to dalits in India. The article specifically talks about treatment to Indians in India and here we have people trying to equate that with issues in Pakistan and South America.
Most of the posters on this site live in the US and it is only the second largest democracy in the world behind India. What they do with democracy and freedom of speech in the US is evident to all. Every issue no matter how uncomfortable it is is comprehensively discussed and people discuss it to death. Now India is not exactly at par with the US in any way but it is an established democracy and freedom of speech is a birthright for every citizen. That means that Indians have the ability to discuss any issue that matters to their country in detail in any forum. But what they chose to do? Ignore it, hide behind smoke screens, point fingers at other, and not even acknowledge the issue at all. How much attention this issue gets in Indian newspapers compared to the Indian Muslims or the rights of Kashmiri Pundits? Not much!

Yes! You can claim that I am from Pakistan and I may not understand the problem but when 250 million human beings are involved that issue does not belong to India alone. 250 million is more than Pakistan’s population; it is almost a country right behind the US in population alone.
Dalit claim that Dalit are the original Indian, but do they even get the treatment those aborigines in Australia and the American Indian in the US get? No! The situation is far too worst in India.
Religion may have provided all the taboos and social prejudices. It may have propagated and supported the caste system but a religion is as good and as bad as people following it. Am I to assume that Indians in the current India, in this 21st century believe that caste system is irreversible? Or is it a system they are not willing to change or do any thing about it?
In theory and by constitution India is not even a religious country so invoking religion to avoid an issue is like being an ostrich.
I am not saying that what I have read does not show that India has not made any progress in the caste and Dalit issues. They have! This article clearly displays that there are a percentage of people that have been helped with some programs but what is that percentage? I doubt that it is even one percent of the size of the problem.

This article also shows that despite gaining some social benefits, dalits are still looked down upon and ridiculed in public institutions. Is there any law against this kind of humiliation in India?
Are they really considered goonda and badmaash like this article points out?