vikaspathak

On Slumdog Millionaire

2009-03-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

I saw Slumdog Millionaire only yesterday. The hype generated by the media had already become too much to bear. Add the west-knows-we-exist hype post-Oscars, and watching the movie had become crucial, even if only for not looking like a fool in front of India’s polished minority of “mimic men” (those who mimic the Euro-American west in all seriousness).

Once I saw the movie, I was amazed at the level of intellectual (pardon my using the word for fools) colonization of the Indian elite celebrating India’s ‘arrival’ on the world stage – even if this has happened only after – and perhaps partly because – the movie made the Indian poor successfully wade through human excreta to instant money!

Slumdog is not about poverty. The India-shining English media says it is a real depiction of Indian poverty – but in their celebration for this “realistic” description, they forget that no Indian poverty finds any place in their TV channels and newspaper columns. Surprisingly, rather than feeling ashamed of themselves, they are singing praises of Danny Boyle.

Slumdog is more about neo-colonial cultural power than about poverty. Priyadarshan’s Billu is about poverty. It looks at ways in which we can see the poor without attacking their dignity. It shows how material poverty is not the same as moral degradation.

Slumdog, however, is a voyeuristic engagement with poverty. The poor are not just to be seen, observed and monitored, but also to be imagined in unbelievably brutal conditions: they wade through shit, they have their eyes gouged out, they rape their brother’s girlfriend, they are openly and needlessly laughed at not only by the anchor of a TV show but also by the Indian audience in the show.

They have short-term American rescuers, however. The scene where a “true” American – and therefore upright – couple rescue the Indian boy being beaten by an Indian brute – the “real” Indians, as the boy tells the American couple – would give Lord Clive some moral pangs.

As any art is in fact political, this scene can also be used to explain to the western mind why American imperialist presence is required in many parts of the third world to restore order. And it tells us why the “civilized” British colonialists were required in India for 200 years to keep the brutal natives from killing each other. It is another matter that they financed much of their industrial revolution through this civilizing mission. Boyle also has returneed much richer, it seems.

It does not matter here that the “true” American rescuers of the Indian slumdog in distress belong to the country that has killed – and not just slapped – millions of innocent children from the days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to its bombings of Baghdad. The Indian upper-middle class, it seems, is too stupid to put the movie’s message in perspective or deconstruct it critically.

But the Indian media tell us that we have “arrived”; that the words slumdog and ‘Jay ho’ are the latest entrants in popular English. The arrival – they are too ignorant to know – is not on the global stage but on the American stage. The very notion that Oscars – an ethnocentric attempt to rate art across the world from one location, with no idea of relativism – are universal betrays intellectual colonization as well as foolishness.

The movie is entirely a western product, but constructs a “real” India – with paternalistic western sympathies thrown here and there – so as to exercise a cultural power over India: the miserable, corrupt Other.

One would advise that the columnists defending the movie – and bowing to its “global” power – read Edward Said’s Orientalism to see the movie as a project of cultural hegemony, even if not very consciously so. Power after all, is so internalized that it operates without being easily identified.

Said’s critics said that he saw colonial power as a one-way project without looking at counter-hegemonic processes, but the Indian media today – one can say in defence of Said – has shown a near-complete absence of any counter-hegemony, and even the ability to construct it.

The movie’s hype in India – not Bharat, if I may add – reminds me of a poem by Faiz Ahmad Faiz where he likens those who submit to imperialism as dogs and rues that there is none to awaken their self-respect. Will post it, and see how it makes sense here.

Mumbai attack and the elite tirade against democracy

2008-12-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

The English media (particularly channels) have suddenly got very angry with politicians. It's a different matter that the way the bureaucracy and the media have responded to the blasts is much worse than politicians.

The only people who have actually quit their chairs are politicians. Not a single napping Babu or cop (sufficiently discredited after the MASSIVE intelligence failure) or a single journalist (roundly condemned for sensational, insensitive coverage) has quit. The reason is not that saints take to politics and sinners to the media or babudom. The reason is that while Babus and journos are answerable to their seniors alone, the politician is answerable to every citizen -- be he a raja or bhikhari. This is the greatest strength of democratic politics -- the only structurally accountable system (where the corrective mechanism -- read election in every five years -- lies within the womb of the system) known to human civilisation from the days of Mesopotamia.

So why are all the beautiful protestors of South Mumbai dead against people elected by a popular vote? The reason is far more shameful than the present debate shows. It is that the English educated, upper class elite hates democracy for the simple reason that on that one day of polling their vote has the same weightage as a rickshaw puller's vote. Imagine the pain of the anglicised Sahib/Memsahib -- who earned his/her snobbery as a by-product of the insults heaped on his/her ancestors by the British Raj -- when faced with this humiliation of equality. So the answer is: abuse democracy and itch for dictatorship. This class never voted before the blasts. The blasts have given them an opportunity to throw their anti-democratic impuses around in a brazen, holier-than-thou fashion.

Though elitism is problematic in any age, globalisation has led to the rise of a virtually illeterate elite in India. There is a small leisure class who think they have an opinion because they speak Lord Macaulay's language. Without their English, their level of knowledge would match that of a frog.

We had an anglicised elite in colonial times too, but they knew a good deal of politics and economics apart from the Queen's language. So the elite of the time -- from Dadabhai Naoroji and Gokhale in the 1890s to Jawaharlal Nehru -- kept struggling for democarcy. Now we have fools like Shobha De and Suhel Seth donning the 'class' mantle, and they are struggling against democracy.

Surprisingly, while the landed elite in colonial India was the Dalaal class then -- like the anglicised upper middle and upper class now -- we recently saw a most democratic aristocratic politician -- V.P. Singh -- die unsung after a long career devoted to social justice (and some melodrama), the day the terrorists struck in Mumbai. It seems even former Zamindars are more democratic than the Taj-obsessed English-educated illeterates.

Some days back, the English media were sobbing that India does not have an Obama. For the first time they began to wonder why we never had a Dalit PM -- after spewing venom on reservation for years -- just because they felt that as true Chamchas of the US, they should cry for the transplantation of every thing and idea from the US to India. It is a different matter that it will take us some years to form an informed opinion on Obama as US president.

Well, after apeing the US, the English media have developed a new obsession after the Mumbai attack -- but without saying it in so many words. In their uncritical celebration of the army (though I myself respect the sacrifices of our Jawans as defenders of the country) and rejection of democratic politics, the TV journalists are now seeking India's Musharraf. They have learnt nothing from Pakistan's tryst with military dictatorship. They could have, if -- apart from English -- they knew some political science too.

The Left turns Right

2008-11-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

From surrendering its economic agenda to Tata and Salem Group, the Indian Left has now decide to openly embrace radical Islam.

The Indian Left had begun its rightward shift in terms of what Marxists once called the economic base -- human history being a product of the dialectics of material forces -- with Singur and Nandigram. Communist China had anyway shown dialectical materialism the dustbin long ago.

But now the superstructure in classical Marxist theory -- meaning the non-economic realm of culture, politics, ideas and religion that are supposedly dependent on the economy -- has also been contaminated. Naturally, when the base has collapsed, the superstructure will automatically cave in.

Two days back, our Left leaders like D. Raja, Atul Kumar Anjan and Sitaram Yechuri reportedly shared the dais with a group of 50 anti-Batla House encounter Muslim organisations looking for a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative. Among these was Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, an organisation that believes in establishing in India a society based on Islam. It was the brainchild of Maulana Maududi, the founder of Jamat-e-Islami Pakistan.

So, now our scientific-socialist clowns are flirting with radical Islam. They have effectively become the counter-part of Bajrang Dal and VHP -- who believe in Hindu Rashtra, though this is a rather un-defined concept. The BJP still looks at politics through the 'secular-pseudo-secular' discourse and is not really a Hindu Rashtra votary.

But this is not the first sectarian slippage of the Indian Left. Powerful sections of the CPI supported both the Pakistan demand and the demand for a Sikh homeland in the 1940s. The CPM allied with the Muslim League in the 1967 elections in Tamil Nadu. AISA in Delhi is more interested in waving flags in Jamia after the Batla House encounter than in seeing which workers are being retrenched by capitalists.

Interestingly, not a single Communist was seen saying or doing anything about workers fired by the Italian company whose CEO was murdered in NOIDA recently or protesting against Jet Airways' threat to fire 1900 employees recently. It was left to the goon Raj Thackerey to speak for these workers on the idiot box -- one can now understand how his estranged uncle Bal Thackerey could wipe out communists so easily from Mumbai some decades back.

The only concern of the Left today seems to be Indian Islam and its representation. Had Mahatma Gandhi taken this concern one could have understood it. But the fact that this concern has become the primary one for the self-proclaimed radical lilliputs of Marx can only leave one surprised.

People in the service of the market

2008-10-01T07:53:00.000-07:00

One is confronted with a new market-madness these days whenever one flips through a newspaper or switches on a television set. There is an almost lunatic obsession for 9, 10 and 11 percent GDP growth, as if pure adding of numbers is any substitute for looking at what quality of life the common Indian is enjoying.
Had I been P. Sainath I would have dished out data like “in a country with X millionaires, Y percentage of children are anaemic”; that 42 percent India lives under 1.25 dollars a day, even if in PPP terms.
The point, however, is that we have entered a radically new free market regime where individual wealth gets linked to everything from nationalism to social morality. If we believed that markets are for people even up to two decades back, today we believe that people are for markets.
Even the Supreme Court in a recent case said that the displaced people’s willingness is not required for ousting them from their lands if the land is used for “public” activity, even if by the private sector. In other words, we have erased the distinction between the public and private sectors.
All riches are public – goes the new mantra. If Mukesh Ambani beats Bill Gates by a mile, he will enrich the whole country through the adding of figures leading to higher national income, if the media are to be believed. And to ask whether the whole nation would be benefited by his private profit is thought to be illegitimate. The market would, after all, ensure that some crumbs trickle down.
If Tata’s Nano comes on the road, new puncture-repair shops will be needed, opening new service sector avenues for each displaced farmer, according to the free market logic.
In other words, whatever a capitalist does with land – unless he buries gold inside it like rich people in villages some time back – he is believed to be serving a public purpose. If he wants 1000 acres of land to make whale-sized cars, he is indulging in some sort of philanthropy as the cars will be bought by the public.
And yes, he is contributing to the GDP. And the poor farmer whose land is taken away even without his consent cannot raise the GDP much because of his poverty, lack of saving and impossibility of investment in money-spinning enterprise. So, he cannot serve public purpose: he can either patiently wait for some trickling down of crumbs, or pose a law and order problem, or worst, become an encroacher on useful public land.
A loss to Ambani is a loss to GDP, and, therefore, national interest! A loss to the rickshaw puller is a loss to none, as he cannot contribute much to GDP.
So, 17 years after he liberalized India’s economy, Manmohan Singh has stood Nehru and the entire freedom struggle on its head. And Gandhi, who was the biggest enemy of growth-madness through his emphasis on cottage industries and small-scale and non-mechanised production, is rendered hypocritical lip-service on October 2 each year.
While during the freedom struggle, capitalists used to come forward to join the cause to enhance their legitimacy. Today, politicians – witness Buddhadeb’s boot-licking – joins the capitalist profit-maximisation cause to somehow enhance his standing among the rootless urban upper middle class.
We may believe that in the courts an innocent should not be punished even if the guilty go scot-free. But in the working of our economy, we are ready to sacrifice the poor GDP-irrelevant farmer to please the pot-bellied dons of the GDP-obsessed discourse of development.

Vote of confidence and new Brahminism

2008-07-29T05:55:00.001-07:00

Much was written about horse-trading in the run-up to the recent vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha in the media. One could see images of Mayawati and Mulayam being flashed across newspapers as they speculated how and how much money was changing hands. Significantly, this one-sided flashing of images reflected the frog-in-the-well brand of latent caste bias that is rampant both in the English media and its readership.

Throughout the run-up to the vote, the media would have readers believe – and readers, I have little doubt, would have no problems lapping up this sort of stuff – that the whole plot was about two committed, foreign-educated leaders – Manmohan and Karat – who represented two sides of a no-nonsense, visionary, ideological debate, with the media siding with Manmohan. There was a sub-plot too, with cent per cent corruption and no ideological commitment, represented by two non-Dwija, non-anglicised, non-foreign-returned leaders, Mayawati and Mulayam.

While our clean elites were fighting over morally elevated future visions, these “rustics” were just buying out MPs. That the anglicized, upper caste elite thinks and envisions, and the low caste politician pollutes the public space is the underlying message of the media.

All channels and papers somehow believe that Manmohan and Karat, leading two sides of the alleged MP market, were entirely oblivious of horse-trading that was going on under their noses in the supervision of their new-found allies.

I think this whole thing about clean visionaries versus corrupt upstarts is the old Brahmanical bias playing itself out again. The “new Brahmins” ( Manmohan and Karat) dispute, think, envision and debate, while those at the bottom of this middle class hierarchy pollute!

CPM and Manmohan

2008-07-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

So our champagne socialists of the CPM are busy crying hoarse over Manmohan Singh's compromise with "imperialism"and some in the English media, even while being in favour of the deal, are impressed by the Karats' integrity! These five-star critics in the media know nothing about Marxism, as they have chosen to glorify the man whose party presided over a farmers' massacre just some time back to roll the red carpet for capitalism for his integrity as a Marxist. There can be no better proofs of the death of Marxism than the general ignorance about it and the gross deviations of its flag-bearers even at the cost of large-scale bloodshed.

There is in fact only a slight difference between Manmohan and Karat. While Manmohan is a liberal both in the economic and the political sense, Karat flirts with economic liberalism where his party is in power but keeps up his commitment to Communist state repression intact.

Most Communists have a problem with the US but like to visit it often -- perhaps to reinforce their hatred! They never set foot -- nor send their children -- to their beloved Iran and Iraq perhaps because they believe that the dignity of selfless love lies in maintaining distance.

If Gandhi famously said, "My life is my message", the CPM's national leadership insists that the lifestyle of a socialist should be poles apart from his message -- perhaps to magnify the message through the contrast!

Manmohan's greatest achievement lies in showing these holier-than-thou combination of anglicised hypocrites that there can only be a limited democratic role for those whose disconnect with the common man makes them electorally irrelevant.

Understanding Delhi's Marxists.....

2008-07-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

Rather than looking at ideologies -- professions of adherence to largely theoretical models of looking at the world -- it is far more instructive to look at the social composition of movements to figure out the politics of ideology.

The Marxist in Delhi displays some unmistakable characteristics. He is on an average more meritorious than his "class enemies". This may make many respect him. But those aware that merit is more a result of socialisation than individual brilliance explore further only to realise that the Marxist is generally from a more elite background than his "class enemy", at least in the national capital. Here I refer to the Marxist leader and not every follower, sympathiser or voter. Many students mistake the slogan of the Marxist leader for sincerity and an egalitarian inclination and support him, at least in JNU.

I studied in the School of Social Sciences, JNU, at a time when there was a fair sprinkling of right-wing and centrist students there. But one thing was remarkably clear: students coming from the most elite colleges -- and also from the most elite backgrounds -- would invariably turn Left. And the Right and Centre would be filled by our sons-of-the-soil from UP, Bihar, Orissa and Haryana. It was as though the proletariat did not want the revolution: only the elite wanted it. Many of my revolutionary friends are now in Europe and America, and the "reactionaries" from "right-wing parties" are generally in Munirka!

So global capitalism is being enriched by our dear old Left. They will abuse the US only to surrender for the slightest crumbs. They will cry hoarse over "what is being done to Iran" without ever desiring to set foot there.

Is it plain hypocrisy? I would say it is a class position; the politics of elitism. And in understanding this politics the social composition of Delhi's Left establishment will again help us. But we will discuss that another day. The Indian Left may be infantile, but it deserves much more than a single blog post!

Medha Patkar's alternative model of development

2008-06-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

At a conference organized at Baawangaja in Madhya Pradesh to chalk out at an alternative model of economic development for the country, Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar combined the legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb B.R. Ambedkar to make a powerful plea for decentralization by making villages the locus of planning. Attacking land acquisition for large-scale development projects that displaced people against their consent, Patkar said, "Rather than Land Acquisition and Resettlement Acts, we want a National Developmental Planning Act that paves the way for micro-planning, making the village the focus of the planning process. Article 273 of the Constitution envisages the preparation of plans for economic development and social justice at the village-level and extends powers of taxation to the village Panchayat. It is this spirit of local self-government that needs to be taken forward," she said.

"We stand with Mahatma Gandhi when it comes to decentralization, village-level planning and economic development. However, we believe that the Ambedkarite legacy should be added to the Gandhian legacy to radically address internal hierarchies within the village community," she said.

She also said that such an approach to planning would also be more environment-friendly. "When local communities are made to feel that they have rights on their land, water, forests and other natural resources, they will be better inspired to protect them," Patkar added.

Patkar said the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007, was worse than the original colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894. "While the British Act legalised the forced acquisition of land for public interest, its 1984 amendment allowed the acquisition for companies too. The latest Bill to amend the Act allows the acquisition of 70 percent of land required by a person for purposes useful to the general public and asks the government to acquire the remaining 30 percent on his behalf. The definition of public here includes a company. This is a ploy to acquire land and hand it over to corporate houses after displacing the poor," she said.

Nandigram shows why Foucault was more correct than Marx..

2007-11-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

If we see ideology as a system of ideas that seek to explain the world; to add to our knowledge of it, we should expect those claiming to be convinced with an ideology to stand by it. After all, modernity is in part the conviction that we can rationally understand the world and theorise it.
Marx the modernist had the conviction that scientific socialism was the correct path. He saw society in terms of a class struggle between those who owned the means of production and those who owned nothing. He saw economic change as the key to all other change (though later Marxism has gone beyond this classical Marxist formulation). Marx professed to stand by the exploited. This was both his theory and his political agenda.
Foucault saw knowledge as synonymous with power. In other words, our theories, terminologies, our notions of truth, are just discourses that we are conditioned to believe to be true under the influence of power structures in society. Notions of truth and knowledge, and thus ideology, here become markers of subversion and subordination of human agency.
Now if we see Nandigram, we find a party that professed to see Marxism as the correct path and theoretical formulation. They had their "truth" in place. But they willingly acted contrary to it by first embracing capitalism and then killing the poor. Yet many in CPM defend Nandigram. This goes to show that ideology is not a free rational choice. Had it been so, all CPM cadres would have deserted the party by now.
Here we have to agree with Faucault: Marxism is a "regime of truth", a power structure that subverts and suppresses human agency. This alone accounts for the movement being as attractive to its votaries even after the bluff of ideology having been called. In Bengal and in Delhi, it is power that sustains Communist politics -- here power is used in broad hegemonic terms -- and not "truth" or "ideology".

More on Buddhadeb

2007-11-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

Many Left-leaning people are criticising Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for his "right revisionism" in taking to the capitalist model of ecnomic development.

I do not personally mind Buddhadeb's acceptance of or deviation from his party line. That's a matter for the party to decide. If his "right revisionism" is against the popular mood, he'll lose a substantial chunk of the popular vote.

However, if he thought a chemical hub or a small car unit were good for the state, he should have allowed the private party to negotiate directly with the farmers and offer them a satisfactory price or forget it. He should not have acted as Dalaal: laissez faire has no conceptual place for the state as broker.

Another point is that he has chosen a heady cocktail of the capitalist model of economic development and the Communist commitment to state repression. This should -- unless he is dislodged -- lead to a society with wide disparity as well as zero freedom. In fact, he has chosen the worst of capitalism, i.e., inequality and socialism, i.e., lack of freedom.

Unless Communist activists are made to realise that freedom and democratic tolerance are vital for society and not "bourgeois", this systematic subversion of demcracy will go on. Hope Bengal is open to change at least to the extent of giving him a five-year break next time.

And yes, Modi had the disadvantage of being the Other of the Indian intellectual community. So Vajpayee had to at least declare that Gujarat 2002 was a tragedy. Here we have a party that has had most intellectuals at its beck and call ( for camouflaging their class interests, among other things). So Karat has confidently had the cheek to say that what the Red goons did was a perfect response.

CPM bleeds Nandigram red

2007-11-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

The story of Nandigram is something like this. Our left-liberal government of Bengal tried to act Dalaal (broker) for capitalists by getting them cheap land by dispossessing farmers. They have lately been impressed with private enterprise, SEZs etc., for Bengal while being highly critical of these elsewhere.
There was local reaction in the countryside, something Mamata Bannerjee had long been waiting for. She blessed the reaction -- and rightly so -- and BUPC was formed as the first direct challenge to CPI(M) entrenchment -- goondagardi being a better word -- after many years at the local level. After months of tension, the collective ego of the dictatorship-in-the-name-of-the-proletariot was suitably hurt to plan a massacre. Thousands of partymen with guns were sent in. They barricaded Nandigram, allowing neither social activists nor the media to get in. Since the state police is generally a stooge of the state government, they obediently stayed out. So with the blessings of the state, the party shut out both the state and civil society for painting the area red. They killed, raped, maimed at will and successfully recaptured the lost Communist utopia. The CRPF is now in to maintain the status quo.
Lord Buddha from the City of Joy is "smarter" than Modi. Remember, it's not for nothing that Communists are intellectuals and Sanghis fools. Firstly, Buddha did not allow the media to get incriminating photographs of people begging for life, like Modi had allowed. Secondly, while Modi ordered the police to stand still while people were killed, Buddha declared them (the police) out-of-bounds till "people's democracy" was re-established after bloodshed.
A rare feat in the history of democracy has been accomplshed. Buddha Babu ko Lal Salaam!
And our intellectuals -- a section of the social elite who regularly shed tears on poverty to obfuscate the reality of their privileged class position in a disparate sociey -- are now running away from the CPM to guard their moral capital earned through years of hypocrisy. Here I do not mean Sumit Sarkar, who has displayed consistent honesty for the past several months.

‘Chak De India’ vs. ‘Swades’

2007-09-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

Swades and Chak De India, two recent movies starring Shah Rukh Khan, articulate nationalist feelings in different ways. The first was a flop and the second a hit; the first had depth and the second only superficial ‘popular’ appeal.
The much-celebrated ‘Chak De India’ is replete with stereotypes. And the underlying message of the film, which unfortunately lies buried beneath piles of patriotic one-liners, has a certain violence and hierarchy to it.
The obvious critique of the movie from the point of view of any social science is its celebration of the nation-state at the cost of all diversity. The nation-state articulated by coach Kabir Khan has no Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, etc: it has place only for India. In one broad sweep the locality, with all its specificities, is ostensibly sacrificed at the altar of a brutally homogenizing nationalism.
But only ostensibly! Even from a nationalist standpoint, the movie has disturbing underlying messages. Here is a nation-state demanding unalloyed affection. But does it also dispense equal justice to all its citizens coming from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds? Ostensibly yes, but in a deeper sense no. The nation-state here is full of stereotypes that are naturally suited to construct a cultural hierarchy within the nation. They are calculated to clearly lay down the core and the peripheries of the nation. So in this India with no regions, we have an uncritical portrayal of the “naturally aggressive Punjabi” girl who stands in sharp contrast to the naturally “voiceless tribal girl” from Jharkhand who can say nothing but “ho”. That these stereotypes derive from the same colonizers (“goras”) whom coach Kabir Khan so passionately despises is missed both by the filmmaker and the audience. When some goons pass lewd remarks against the “north-eastern tribal” girls, we have the “naturally aggressive Punjabi” again leading the fight-back. It’s a different matter that all others soon join in – a symbolism of a nation where the North always leads, to be followed by others. No wonder we could not have a non-north Indian Prime Minister for the first four decades of independence!
Again the “real” players in the hockey matches are the girls from Punjab and Haryana, the collective space given to the obviously southern and north-eastern girls being not more than a minute. And we are supposed to believe that there are no regions; there is only an India! A euphemism for north Indian – more specifically Punjabi – dominance at the expense of the “silent” tribals. Surprising that little has been written till now on the deeply hierarchical nationalism of ‘Chak De India’.
The funniest part of the movie is that cricket is sought to be attacked by depicting a comic, evil cricket star in contrast to the celebrated hockey players. Surely, there could have been less crude ways to promote hockey than to make the coach say, “hamaare game mein chhakke nahin hote.”

Swades was very different and much better. The nationalism of this movie sought to engage meaningfully with a society differentiated along class, caste and rural-urban lines. The educated NRI comes to stay with villagers in India. Mutual engagement, though somewhat acerbic at times, leads to both learning from each other. He works to bring self-reliance among them; they in turn make him conscious of the fact that much needs to be done by Indians for their own society far from the West and Indian metropolitan centres. Interestingly, the movie has no enemy to be fought against except the enemy of greed that lies within. There is no celebration of a single, undifferentiated India. Rather, there is an attempt at constructing an India through people’s engagement across class and caste lines in rural areas where development is needed the most. An India strikingly similar to the Gandhian ideal of village republics.
That nationalism loves hierarchised unity rather than critical engagement with the locality has made ‘Chake De India’ a hit and ‘Swades’ a flop.

Elephant tramples Hindutva in the “Heartland”

2007-05-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

The real news of this UP election is not the SP’s defeat. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s vote share will still hover around 30 per cent, which may be the same as last time. His core constituency of Yadavs and Muslims seems to be by and large intact, minus some tactical voting by Muslims in favour of BSP.
The real news is the decimation of Hindutva at the very core. The BJP has suffered heavy losses in Awadh, the heartland of the Ram Mandir issue. This shows that the project of Hindu consolidation has collapsed in the Brahmanical heartland itself.
Another project of the BJP-RSS that has failed this time around is the Sanskritisation agenda. Faced with the impossibility of Hindu consolidation for its own sake, the BJP and RSS had been aiming at carving out a support base within the OBC category. The Sangh Parivar had been reaching out to OBCs with its celebrated cultural agenda as an agent of upward social mobility. While powerful backward castes like Yadavs (and even Jats in Western U.P., though they were never really Sanskritised) had begun to spurn this agenda, other backward castes were seen to be susceptible to it. But they seem to have gone with the BSP this time. In the Doab region of Western U.P. – the home of the Lodh leader Kalyan Singh – the BJP is not doing well. Kalyan Singh’s son was trailing from Dibai when reports last came in, though his daughter-in-law was leading in Atrauli bordering Aligarh. The Kurmi alliance has also not worked for the BJP. Sonelal Patel has in fact lost his Kurmi support base and Apna Dal is leading in just one seat, down from last time’s tally when it was not with the BJP. The Kurmis seem to have split in favour of Mayawati. It also seems that lower OBCs have turned in favour of Mayawati.
The third defeat of the BJP is the erosion of its own core base. The Brahmin votes have split this time. This is particularly obvious in south-eastern U.P. -- the region with the highest Brahmin concentration of about 20 per cent, which also contains Allahabad. In this region, the BSP has made massive gains and the BJP has lost ground. It seems that Mayawati’s Brahmin-Dalit alliance has worked here.
With the party hovering around 60 seats, it is the BJP’s lowest-ever Vidhan Sabha tally since 1991, though the condition is better than the 9 seats it got in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, which would translate into about 40-45 Assembly seats. The Rajput vote, which had gone with the SP in 2004 on account of Raja Bhaiyya, may have made this marginal difference because of Rajnath Singh.
The Congress has predictably done badly. Dreams of its revival due to the Rahul “charisma” were nothing but ignorance of politics. As I had said earlier, “charisma does not exist without a social base, and Congress is the only party for which no caste or religious community will primarily vote.”
But at about 180 seats Mayawati has gone beyond expectations. Mulayam is still crossing 100 as per expectations, what with a loyal constituency and an anti-incumbency factor combined. The one party that has really gone below expectations is the BJP.
Sanskritisation is perhaps passé in UP now. Rather than lower castes imitating upper castes, the latter are realigning behind the former. Some say that the Brahmins will appropriate the BSP’s Dalit movement, but with such a solid constituency this is unlikely. Dalit empowerment, albeit from above and not from the grass roots, is taking place in a predictable way. Power is converting an angry pressure group into a mainstream political group. Brahmins are flocking to it “opportunistically” for a share of the power that they have got used to, but also shedding their arrogance in the process. The future is bleak in UP for basically Brahmanical parties like Congress and BJP, as caste Hindus will now realign with Dalit and OBC parties, the former being a reversal of the famed Congress “coalition of extremes”, as Paul Brass once called it.

UP elections -- advantage Mayawati

2007-05-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

The Uttar Pradesh election process is now entering the final phase. Opinion polls and exit polls have painted different pictures, but none is ready to take a guess as to what alliance will form the Government in the State.
There are some things, however, that seem almost certain. Mulayam Singh Yadav seems to be on his way out due to various reasons. Firstly, in the 292 constituencies that have gone to the polls till now, the Election Commission has done a fair job so far as security is concerned. So the use of State and muscle power, including dacoits like Dadua in Chitrakoot – a department where Mulayam clearly leads his opponents -- has been curbed this time around. Secondly, Mulayam’s failure to strike a pre-poll alliance with Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal will give his archrival Mayawati an advantage in the second phase of the polls. A Jat-Muslim combination, had it come through, would have been invincible in the “Jat belt”. Thirdly, the rebellion of Samajwadi Party’s Kurmi leader Beni Prasad Verma, coupled with the BJP’s alliance with Sonelal Patel’s Kurmi-led party Apna Dal, will work to the detriment of the SP. Fourthly, with exit polls writing Mulayam Singh off, the Muslims, who were by and large with him when elections began, may shift for fear that every wasted vote may work in favour of the BJP. If this happens, they will strategically shift in the last two phases towards the stronger BSP and not towards the Congress. Mulayam went into these elections with a possible core vote base of 26 per cent of the population (18 per cent Muslims and 8.7 per cent Yadavs). But the Muslims may vote strategically for Muslim BSP candidates and there will be some wearing away of this support. His tally will thus go down from last time’s 140.
Mayawati seems poised to become the next Chief Minister. The Dalit population in the state is 22 per cent, of which the Chamars, her core vote-base, constitute the largest chunk. The Pasis and many others are also there among the Dalits, but the day when there will be a major vote-split within the Dalit castes has not yet arrived. So we can safely predict that Mayawati will corner a huge section of Dalit votes. Add to this her overtures to the Brahmins (close to 10 per cent of the population of the State according to the 1931 census and the 1994 Rapid Census) and we have a huge support base. Brahmins will mainly split between the BJP and the BSP – a few may even vote for the Congress – and every Brahmin vote for the BSP is the BJP’s loss. One must remember that Mayawati has given 86 seats, out of a total of 203, to Brahmins. The BSP will also get sizeable Muslim votes in the 61 constituencies where it has fielded Muslim candidates. So her seats will rise from last time’s 98 and should hover around the 150 mark.
The BJP is also witnessing a revival in U.P. since its poor performance in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. One important reason is the return of its core support base of caste Hindus. With Rajnath Singh as the party’s national president, the Thakurs (more than 7 per cent of the State’s population) are by and large back with the BJP. They had moved towards the SP when the Mayawati Government, supported by the BJP, had slapped POTA on Raja Bhaiyya. The Banias and Kayasths also seem to be with the party, along with many Brahmins. Perhaps Mandal II is one of the reasons for the upper castes’ return and their preference for the BJP. Though the BJP has not opposed Mandal II, they expect a sympathetic treatment from it. Upper castes together constitute 20 per cent of the state’s population, but the BJP will lose some of their votes to the BSP.
One major strategic success of the BJP has been its alliance with the Kurmi Apna Dal. The OBC Kurmis have a population of 3.5 per cent in the State and are influential in some pockets. Dainik Jagran claimed that they have a presence around Bareilly, which went to the polls in the third phase. This may benefit the BJP marginally in the Rohilkhand region that, on account of its high Muslim population, is otherwise electorally fertile for the SP. The sixth phase in south-eastern U.P. certainly has a considerable Kurmi population in constituencies like Gangapur, Nawabganj, Allahabad West, Raigarh, Robertsganj, etc., and the BJP, which was third here in the 2002 elections after the SP and the BSP, is all set to improve its tally in this region. It had 20 per cent votes in this region in 2002, behind SP’s 26 and BSP’s 24. Apna Dal had 7 per cent votes here. If the BJP and Apna Dal votes pile up here, the BJP will be a tough contender. The SP registered gains here in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, but these may be lost this time. In all, the BJP should be around the three-digit mark.
The Congress will surely remain fourth. Media reports are talking of the success of Rahul Gandhi’s rallies. But it is true that the Congress is the only party with no social base in U.P. today in the sense that no caste or religious group will primarily vote for it. If Rahul Gandhi’s family name and charisma can break sufficient individual votes to make a difference, the Congress may gain some seats from its 2002 tally of 25. But as charisma does not exist independent of a social base, there is a strong possibility that the Congress tally may not improve much.
Moreover, a European friend doing Ph.D. on U.P. told me that the Congress has divided its constituencies in three groups – most winnable, moderately winnable and not winnable. Rahul Gandhi’s rallies have focused on the first lot, and some in the second. This will ensure that even with poor results, the Congress can claim that the Congress won in most seats where Rahul campaigned.
Post-poll possibilities
In this scenario, the first possibility is of a BSP-Congress-RLD-Independents’ alliance coming to power with Mayawati as Chief Minister, but this will depend on the tally of the BSP and the Congress. If Mayawati gets about 150 seats, this alliance has high chances of shaping up, what with the Congress having the bargaining power of CBI probes against Mayawati.
The only other possibility as of now seems to be a BSP-BJP alliance with Mayawati as Chief Minister. The BJP, despite Rajnath Singh’s statements to the contrary, may eventually settle for it. For, expecting to win Himachal Pradesh next year, the BJP may like to go into the next Lok Sabha polls with practically the whole of North India under its belt.

The Gujarat encounter, Hindutva and caste

2007-05-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

The Gujarat Government’s revelation before the Supreme Court that Kausar Bi was killed shows how far the State has gone as a “Hindutva laboratory”. It also shows how insecure daily existence has become for Muslims in a State where the BJP has firmly entrenched itself. It seems today that a statesman like Vajpayee was, unfortunately, but a mask.
Situating the Hindutva movement
The Hindutva movement did not become powerful just because of the Ram Mandir issue. Its power is directly related to the evolution of the caste dynamics in India. The Congress, at least in North India, functioned as a party of the upper castes – with the exception of some “co-opted” Dalit leaders like Jagjivan Ram -- post-independence. They materially benefited from the power it gave them. And the Gandhian influence made the upper caste Congressmen more universalistic in religious terms. That is why the influence of the RSS remained limited till Rajiv Gandhi’s time. Their material interests made the upper castes stay with the Congress. And the Gandhian influence around it fostered a broad atmosphere of harmony, some riots notwithstanding.The peasant castes had become powerful in the South and West much before the North. So the Congress Brahmins, belonging to a numerically small caste, had to accommodate them. Christophe Jaffrelot has worked out this point in detail. The Congress, thus, still survives in parts of South India (except Tamil Nadu, with its Dravidian legacy) and Maharashtra. In the North, particularly in U.P. and Bihar, situations were different. The upper castes were more numerous in the Hindi-belt and the backward caste rise, with the exception of Jats in the “Jat belt”, took place only in the 1960s and 1970s due to various reasons like incomplete land reforms (the case of U.P.) that left out Dalit agricultural labourers and promoted backward caste peasant-proprietors. These peasant castes remained anti-Congress in U.P. and Bihar. In Rajasthan, the Congress had accommodated the Jats and remains a force in the State to this day.
Mandal I
V.P. Singh as Prime Minister captured the backward caste assertion when he announced that he would implement the Mandal Commission recommendations about 1990. While Narasimha Rao actually implemented the Mandal recommendations after the fall of V.P. Singh’s Government, the BJP came out in favour of the upper castes and merit. Thus, there was a mass exodus of Brahmins, Rajputs and Banias from the Congress in North and Central India. They suddenly turned to the RSS-backed BJP.Now their material interests lay with the BJP, and the Gandhian symbolism of religious universalism was overthrown by RSS’ religious particularism (Hindutva). The RSS’ Brahminical ways – their functions resemble temple gatherings – made this shift very easy. Had it not been for globalisation coming in, the Congress could have turned left after losing its right wing. Savarkar’s Hindutva is a potent tool for a hierarchised Hindu unity and Sanskritisation of lower castes and tribals. Its Brahminical symbolism, however, makes the educated among these groups ambivalent, if not hostile.
The future?
These backward peasant castes (many of whom are classified as Other Backward Classes) hold the key to the direction India will take. The problem with the Congress is that it has no cultural discourse to attract social groups. Its secularism may attract only the religious minorities. It has lost the Gandhian legacy that constructed an inclusivist Hinduism. And it does not hold the promise of Sanskritisation to ritually low but otherwise dominant peasant caste groups. Upwardly mobile groups are particularly vulnerable to grand cultural discourses.
Mandal II
Perhaps this consciousness is what has made the Congress introduce Mandal II to woo the OBCs through secular state intervention. It perhaps fears that any cultural discourse – even if more inclusive than that of the RSS -- would make the religious minorities wary of it. The future political battles of the Congress and BJP will be fought around the OBCs. The BJP had almost captured the North Indian OBCs some years back, but the upper castes inside the party ousted them – like Kalyan Singh, who is now back, and Uma Bharti – for fear of losing their own position. So the upper castes in the BJP are vacillating between reaching out to the OBCs and being wary of their future power.The backward castes are the only ones that can contain the BJP-RSS in future. If the Congress attempt to reach out to them can wean them away from the Sanskritising RSS influence, the Congress will gain in the long run. If not, it will be the BJP’s gain, and a loss for Muslims and Christians. The only other way is the rise of a pan-Indian OBC platform, which is very difficult to imagine because of regionalism and the sons-of-the-soil doctrine that inspires many a peasant caste, whether included in the OBC list or not. If the peasant castes move towards the BJP in the next 20 years, the Gujarat model – where tribals and dominant peasant caste groups have turned towards the BJP – may be replicated elsewhere.

The best and worst "Bollywood" actors

2007-03-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

In between those political stories, it would not be out of place to discuss the Hindi film industry. More so when the media is increasingly viewing entertainment as news.
The acting talents, or the lack thereof, of our movie stars are often discussed by film lovers. So much so that there are orkut communities dedicated to many of these stars. If the media is to be believed, Shah Rukh is a bundle of energy, a euphemism for melodrama, and Aamir is the first perfect thing to happen to the world after God. Salman, too, is seen by some as shirtlessly serious.
Well, before being judgemental, we should see what acting as a craft is all about. It is basically an attempt to represent reality; to recreate an existent cultural context on the screen. The performing artiste, in this sense, becomes a symbol of the entire social milieu, or milieus, that a particular film industry is situated in. In short, social location defines art.
What, then, is the milieu that the Hindi film industry supposedly reflects. It is primarily north and central India. The cultural territory of the Hindi film world broadly lies between Punjab and Bengal from west to east, and Kashmir and Maharashtra from north to south. In this geographical space are situated cultures -- agrarian material cultures, some zones of industry, and particular sets of caste, religious and gender relations.
A good actor in the sociological sense, thus, is anyone who can ably represent this cultural complex through his performances. In recent times, I would particularly mention the efforts of Naseeruddin Shah and Sarika in playing a Parsi couple in Parzania, different roles played by Konkona Sen Sharma, Saif's depiction of Langda Tyagi in Omkara, Irrfan Khan's roles in Haasil and TheNamesake, and even Govinda's depiction of a Poorvanchali taxi driver in Salaam-e-Ishq.
By this yardstick, among the worst recent performances would be Shah Rukh Khan's unrealistic depictions of a Bengali in Devdas and of a simpleton from east U.P. in Don, a part Amitabh played very well in the original.
Shah Rukh is a non-actor for the simple reason that he cannot play any section of the population of the aforementioned cultural space convincingly. He can play even a Punjabi only if it's a metro-based or NRI role. Even someone like Akshay Kumar, who is generally wooden, would play a Punjabi farmer much more convincingly.
The reason why we hear so much about the likes of SRK is because the multiplex and NRI viewers, both representing microscopic minorities, can identify with them. And they are the ones who pay those hefty sums for movie tickets, and provide a good collection to aesthetically poor and culturally hollow movies.

Skewed social composition of the Congress under Nehru and Indira

2007-03-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Uttar Pradesh was an important centre of Congress activity during the colonial times. With the coming of mass politics after the rise of Gandhi around 1920, U.P. and Bihar became major centres of Congress activity. Allahabad became the seat of the AICC.
Gyanendra Pandey has impressively documented the rise of the Congress in U.P. in his book “Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh”.
There were of course problems in the Congress mass mobilization, a major one being a skewed caste composition among its workers. The dominance of Brahmins can, of course, be accounted for on the basis of the fact that modern political consciousness in any society begins among the elite, particularly the literati. But, something that cannot be easily accounted for is the assertion of Pandey that not a single Dalit student was enrolled in the nationalist schools established throughout U.P. in opposition to the colonial state.
After independence, the Nehruvian socialist rhetoric, surprisingly, went hand in hand with a skewed social composition. Right from the 1950s to the 1980s, the Congress in U.P. was heavily dominated at all levels – candidates for Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha seats, and presidents of provincial and district Congress committees – by Brahmins, Rajputs, Banias and Kayasths. These four castes accounted for about 60% of these positions (See detailed tables in Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘The Silent Revolution’) though their combined strength was hardly 20%. Brahmins alone consistently cornered an unduly large share. In 1973, 38 of the 75 presidents of the Congress district and town committees were Brahmins. ( Jaffrelot, Page 132).
There is today a strong section of the population that would claim that this was nothing but giving the “meritorious” their due. The problem is that merit cannot be reduced to bookish knowledge. Any truly democratic representation should give any sort of vocational knowledge the same importance as mere bookish knowledge. Intelligence should thus be seen socially. In his book “Political Agenda of Education”, NCERT Director Krishna Kumar has powerfully argued that the Gandhian emphasis on vocational training ( Nai Talim) was in a way an attack on the Brahminical bias in favour of bookish knowledge as against forms of knowledge involved in labour. One can relate this to the traditional Brahminical aversion against working the plough.
Moreover, access to bookish education itself is dependent upon one’s resource base. Therefore, exclusion of entire social groups from political power on grounds of lack of education was tantamount to a very shallow commitment to democracy.
This skewed social composition despite lip service to socialism made the Congress under Nehru and Indira Gandhi primarily an upper caste party in U.P.
It managed to win elections through the co-option of individual Dalit leaders. The Congress vote bank in U.P. thus comprised caste Hindus, Dalits and Muslims. Several examples can be cited to drive home this point. B.P. Maurya and Chhedi Lal Sathi were Dalit leaders from Western U.P. who were initially with Ambedkar’s Scheduled Caste Federation and, later, the Republican Party of India. Maurya became M.P. from Aligarh (a district with 22% Chamar-Jatav population) on an RPI ticket in 1962. His rabid anti-Congressism was taken care of by Indira when he was co-opted into the Congress in 1969.
In other words, rather than being a solid cadre-based party, the Congress, as Jaffrelot has argued, relied on vote banks. On the one hand, it used local upper caste notables and former princes to get votes for the party on the basis of their general influence while, on the other, it co-opted Dalit leaders to get their community vote.

Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections

2007-03-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, to be held in seven phases, are just round the corner. Not only is U.P. important because it is the “heartland” of imagined cultural notions of Indian nationhood, but also because it contains almost all social trends that constitute the political dynamics of independent India. It has a gradual caste hierarchy spanning the Dwija category, intermediate OBC castes and Dalits. The only component not strongly represented is the tribal component. It is the civilisational core of the Gangetic plain – a region that has supported populations and civilization for 3500 years. And it is the heartland of Indian Islam (also of the idea of Pakistan).
Social (mainly caste) composition
The state has a sizeable upper caste component (20%) comprising Brahmins (10% according to the 1994 Rapid Census and over 9% according to the 1931 census, the only one that talked about caste), over 7% Rajputs ( Thakurs), 4% Banias and Kayasths combined, and 2% Jats (1.4%), Bhumihars (0.4%) and Tyagis taken together. The OBC Kurmis also have a small presence. They have a high population (15-20%) in Robertsganj.
The Jats are concentrated in the western districts, where they are traditionally one of the landed castes. Paul Brass’ case study of Aligarh district, for instance, shows that 20% of the Zamindars of the district at the time of the 1952 Zamindari abolition were Jats, just below Thakurs (24%) and above Brahmins (14.4%). The Tyagis, who claim to be Brahmins, again are a dominant landed caste found in some of the western districts. The Bhumihars, another dominant caste claiming Brahmin status, are found in the eastern districts, particularly Varanasi, Ghazipur and Azamgarh.
The 1994 Rapid Census places the Scheduled Castes at 22% and the OBCs at 37%, the Yadavs alone being over 8%. Etah, Saidpur, Azamgarh, Jaunpur and Ghazipur, etc., have sizeable Yadav poulations.
Muslims constitute 16% of the population of the state.
The only caste-group that constitutes close to 25% population in many districts are the Dalits.
Implications
The political behavior of this large state has to be seen in relation to these caste and religious identities. In his book “Interrogating Caste”, eminent sociologist Dipankar Gupta has argued that the voting patterns of different U.P. districts do not necessarily correspond to caste. Though he is right in claiming that other factors have also to be taken into account, he has perhaps over-stretched the point and missed the woods for the trees. Any meta-study of U.P. spanning the last 50 years can show how different caste mobilizations have altered political equations in the state, almost permanently. Caste coalitions and patron-client relations have been central to this. The coming posts shall seek to delineate these changes, beginning with the terminal decline of the Congress in the political Pitrbhumi of the Nehru family.

Religion and the media

2007-02-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

I had recently been to St. Stephens College Delhi as a panelist for a discussion on “Religion and the Media”. The other panelist was Prof. Vinod Chaudhari of the same college. This is a brief summary of the points I raised there.
Religion as faith is very different from religion as ideology, as Ashis Nandy has argued rather powerfully. Columns on religion and reportage on festivals, which pertain to religion as faith, therefore, constitute a largely unproblematic domain of journalistic writing. It is only in reporting mass mobilizations on religious grounds and situations of religious conflict that newspapers and television channels should be particularly careful.
The very nature of the media is such that they create communities over a vast geographical area.
Prior to the printing press -- and the advent of quick means of transport that could transport the mass-produced literature in printed form across a vast geographical space – notions of community were localized, based on personal interaction and interdependence. This is not to deny pre-modern inter-regional linkages, but these were rather elitist in nature, based on the movement of missionaries, traders and envoys across regions.
The printing press came as a watershed. It fostered “imagined communities” of little or no personal interaction. The very act of reading a newspaper, as Benedict Anderson has argued, is like a community ritual, for the reader is aware that the same writing is being read by many others over a wide area, thus leading to a print-community.
Seen in this context, a local conflict is no longer “local”. Historians often argue that communalism in India is a modern phenomenon. The reason perhaps is not the religious tolerance of pre-modern times but the absence of trans-local print-communities in medieval times. It is only after the growth of the media that a conflict in Malabar can have consequences in Saharanpur. A local rumour can spark off riots in regions far apart – something that calls for great caution in journalistic reportage of religious conflict anywhere.
The print medium has also been responsible for the creation of compact religious communities across vast geographical spaces. Hinduism, particularly, is unimaginable as a compact community prior to the coming of print. It earlier referred to a very loose network of practices, but the dissemination through print of Orientalist writings and the large-scale pamphleteering of organizations like the Arya Samaj fostered a modern, compact Hinduism. Thus not only does print create national, and even global, religious conflicts out of local ones, but it has also been, to an extent, historically responsible for the creation of compact, global religious communities.
Identities exist in overlapping, multiple constructs of the self: one can have co-existing religious, national, regional, caste, class and gender identities. But the nature of the media is such that they tend to make one of these variants the dominant variant in the moment of reading, or viewing. A Hindu or Muslim reader going through a story on a communal riot may become, during that moment of reading, primarily or essentially a Hindu or Muslim. This is not a fault of reportage: it is a limitation of the medium itself.
It is within such structural limitations that a journalist has to operate while reporting on religion as ideology. Thus, avoiding sensationalism and trying not to name communities is generally advisable.

Should there be a "creamy layer" for SC/STs?

2006-11-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court’s emphasis on exclusion of the “creamy layer” from SC/ST reservation has given a new turn to the reservation debate. It was in the context of OBC reservations that the concept of “creamy layer” had seen the light of day. In the Mandal Commission case (1992), the Apex Court had ordered the exclusion from the benefits of OBC reservation of those falling in the creamy layer. No “creamy layer” exclusion has hitherto been applicable for the SCs and STs.
The issue being far too complex for an either-or approach, I believe there should be an internal differentiation within the SC category, as also the ST category. The following arguments refer to the SCs in particular but can perhaps hold good for the STs as well.
Some arguments for “creamy layer” exclusion
The purpose of reservation is to provide opportunities to deprived social groups to come at par with other sections of the society. Reservation for the SCs (Dalits) has constitutionally sought to do the same and has succeeded to an extent.
The argument for the exclusion of the “creamy layer” rests on the premise that giving reservation to children of Dalit politicians, bureaucrats and academics would be injustice to non-Dalit candidates. Moreover, one could argue that reservation should be provided in such a manner as to institutionally facilitate the empowerment of the poorest of the poor, and not restrict the fruits to a small, middle-class, Dalit elite. Children from elite Dalit families have had far better access to quality education than those belonging to Dalit families who have not been able to avail themselves of the benefits of reservation till now. This, coupled with the limited vacancies for government jobs, makes an undifferentiated SC category problematic. For it tries to create a monolithic regime of “merit” among all Dalit children, despite the fact that merit is social – depending on one’s background, schooling, etc.-- and not merely individual.
Arguments against “creamy layer” exclusion
The problem with the above premise is that it fails to historicise itself in terms of empowerment of social groups, as distinct from individuals. What is being sought to be argued here is that Dalits as a social group can benefit, and have benefited, from the formation of a materially secure Dalit elite.
A concrete example is the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. As argued by Sudha Pai in “Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution”, the BSP movement is a ‘movement from above’, i.e., a movement led by a small Dalit elite of reservation beneficiaries to acquire state power. Formed in 1976, the late Kanshi Ram’s BAMCEF (Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation) was an association of Dalit and backward caste government employees to safeguard their group interests. The DS-4 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti) came up in 1982 as the agitational wing of BAMCEF, and the BSP was born in 1984 as the political arm. Post-1995, the Dalit-backward alliance has collapsed as the two groups are often contending groups in the countryside, with the backward castes, at least the dominant ones among them, having far more resources and muscle power.
Sudha Pai has shown that the BSP’s MLAs in U.P. in the 1990s were “from the new generation of young, educated Dalits, who were new entrants in politics.”
Thus, reservations for the Scheduled castes have performed the additional function of creating a Dalit leadership. The impact has been momentous. Taking the case of U.P., which goes to elections shortly, the last decade has seen Dalits acquiring political agency, which was in the Congress days concentrated in the hands of caste Hindus, who then took the Dalits along as sub-ordinate allies. True empowerment, as also the ‘deepening of democracy’, lies in the transfer of agency. Political patron-client alliances between social groups, with a few castes being agents of change and others mere recipients, constitute only a partial democracy. Dalit beneficiaries of affirmative action have been the agents of the deepening of Indian democracy.
A third alternative
Having argued in favour of a Dalit elite as an agent of democratic change, it should be remembered that the role of the state should be the provision of equality not only among diverse caste groups, but also within each of them. The policy should be such that it strikes a balance between group empowerment and justice to the individual. One would do well to remember Mahatma Gandhi’s emphasis on ‘Antyodaya’ (welfare of the last man).
The balance can be best struck through a differentiation within the SC, as also the ST, category. From among the 15 per cent seats reserved for the SCs, for instance, a certain proportion should be open in an undifferentiated manner for all SC candidates, while the remaining should have “creamy layer” exclusion. Alternatively, there should be two mutually exclusive categories within the broader SC category, one only for “creamy layer” SCs and the other only for non-creamy layer SCs. This would lead to empowerment at lower levels among SCs and also sustain a Dalit leadership.
While a monolithic SC reservation – as it exists now – may prevent the benefits from reaching the poorer Dalits, an unqualified exclusion of the “creamy layer” from SC reservation may reverse the process of the formation of a community leadership as a vehicle for political agency.

Going virtual

2006-10-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

That I have thought of having my own blog is perhaps a symbol of my acceptance of the virtual world. Well, given my post-modernist sympathies, it is but natural. The cyber world is the best 'real' example of the collapse of the 'real'; of images, as distinct from claims of the 'real', coming to acquire primacy in our ways of understanding the world and in our attempt to make ourselves heard. Moreover, though such pieces of writing are a means for nobodies to have an ego boost, they serve, even at a limited level, to turn attention away from 'personalities' to 'arguments'. History has its own ways of democratisation, it seems. I saw a film review by a friend sometime back on her blog. It occurred to me that she would equal "expert" reviewers in newspapers any day. But she is unfit for "real" publication at present, for she does not already have a name in the world of publication.
It is fashionable to contest hierarchies -- historical, global, and local -- but true democratisation is far more difficult. The virtual world affords just that, albeit at a limited level. Hence, this new found love for blogging...