Caste in Contemporary India

The Idea of Caste or the varna were first documented in the Hindu scripture called Manusmriti, meaning the “Laws of Manu” or the “Institution of Manu”. It is one of the most important and authoritative Hindu Law book. Manu in Hindu tradition is considered the first son of Brahma and progenitor or the originator of human race. Manusmriti was written around 1500 years before christ was born, and until the modern times was a standard reference for all civil and criminal cases by rulers who followed the Vedic faith and to the followers of hinduism.

It underlines the three core values of Hinduism the Varna, Karma and Dharma. Varna meaning caste which is universally seen as a traditional institution of Hindus is a very complex subject. The subject is so complex that even Dr. B.R. Ambedkar before presenting his paper, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, started by saying that even after so many scholars have tried unraveling the mystery behind the subject it still remains in the domain of the “unexplained”. The Varna system divides Hindus into four main categories the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. While the the last category is of the socially outcasted the Dalits. Dr. Ambedkar in his essay names this category as the Panchamas or the untouchables ,the acchoots. While M.K. Gandhi calls these as the Harijans.

The Hindu social order is based on the principle that men are created from different parts of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. The Brahmans from the head, Kshatriyas from the arms,Vaishyas from the thighs and the Shudras from the feet. The four classes are not on a horizontal plane but on a vertical plane. Different and unequal, the classes stand one above the other. This order of precedence is not only spiritual but also moral and legal.

This principle of graded inequality has even carried out into the economic field also symbolizes the fixity of occupations and continuance thereof by heredity. Ambedkar in his Paper Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development defines caste as an enclosed class, he traces the origins of caste to the origin of the practice of endogamy ie. prohibition or absence of intermarriage. Since this would lead to the problem of surplus women or surplus men in a particular group, ambedkar points out that the practice of sati and enforced widowhood , two other evils prevalent in the Indian society were a result to tackle the surplus women as every caste had enclosed itself and practiced endogamy. While reading this paper I had a question as to why do surplus men not posses a threat to the enclosed group the way surplus women do? Ambedkar mentions that since a man is an asset to the group he cannot be burnt with his wife and hence celibacy is imposed on the man or the man is married to a girl who is not in the marriageable age. Thus it would be appropriate to comment that the roots of Sati and child marriage can be traced to caste

Caste is all pervasive

After reading the paper by Ambedkar and attending the lectures by Prof. Matthew, I wanted to understand whether caste is still prevalent in the Indian society. What I found out was shocking. On the quest to understand the relevance of caste in modern India, I came across a documentary called India untouched — stories of people apart, directed by Stalin K. The documentary spans over 8 states and 4 religions and provides a comprehensive take on caste and un-touchability in India.

Everyday Discrimination

Kids in rural Gujarat would not allow their friend to enter their house or sit and eat their lunch alongside him because he was a Bhangi (Dalit). These kids would not be more than 10 years old and believed that having their lunch alongside their Dalit friend or letting him in their houses would pollute them. In Bhavnagar Gujarat, Chamars(Dalit) are not allowed in chakkadas,(passenger vehicles which carry people, made from Royal enfield) because it would pollute the food tiffins in the chakkadas. In Madurai, Tamilnadu Dalits are not allowed to wear slippers in the upper caste area.

In a survey carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, US reports that One in Four Indians still practice un-touchability. The survey sample was 42000 which is huge. 52% Brahmins still do not allow a Scheduled Caste to enter their kitchen. Every third Hindu and 23% Sikhs were found to practice some kind of discrimination against the scheduled caste.

Occupation

The dalit caste and rankings are generally linked to occupation. They are stratified in as many as 900 castes or caste like subdivisions. Traditional Dalit professions include skinning carcasses, collecting garbage, cleaning toilets, cremating the dead and other unclean jobs . In Jamui, Bihar a Musaharni (Dalit) women who bathes and massages new born babies of the upper caste is not allowed to eat food or drink in their houses. In Patiala, Punjab only the Valmiki (Dalit) women are employed by the Municipal corporation to sweep the streets. In Jhaja, Bihar people from the Dom(Dalit) caste carry dead bodies on the rail tracks, collect the pieces of dispersed corpse and send it for post mortem. These people are not even employed by the Railways. In Jalandhar, Punjab the labourers in a leather factories only belong to the Chamar, Valmiki and the Malibi community. Even 85 years after the poona pact when reservations for the Dalits was first conceived, 30% of the Dalits are found doing unskilled low level jobs. Majority of them are found doing unclean jobs. As per the 2011 socio economic and the caste census 1,82,505 households in rural India reported as manual scavengers. The government survey done in 2015 reports a figure of 12,226. This low figure suggests understanding of manual scavenging as something which is far from the truth. SC/ST’s lower themselves into raw sewage for a salary of Rs. 6700 per month. Education Kids from the Mushar community dont go to school and where kids do go to school face discrimination.School going girls in rural gujarat have to clean toilets every week ,clean utensils and clean the ground. 100% reservation is available for the Wankar caste kids in these job. Kids from the Patel and Shiroya (Non Dalit) caste are not allowed to do these jobs. Children from the Chamar caste are not allowed to have lunch in the mid day meal scheme of the government because it pollutes the food. Chamars in UP are not allowed to sit in front in the class only the Rawat kids are allowed. After the right to education act was passed in 2009 to combat illiteracy and disparity in Indian Education system. 51% of Dalit kids 63% of tribal minorities dropout before completing class 8. Even in institutions like the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, discrimination is prevalent. A brahmin boy does not want to share a room with a Dalit because he believes that looking at a Dalit face as the first thing in the morning would pollute and spoil his day. In the last decade 23 Dalit students have committed suicide in premier educational institutions like IIT and AIIMS. Crimes against Dalits The villages in India which Gandhi says is where the country resides, the situation is even worse. Different crematoriums of the Dalits, different water wells and even different parts of the rivers to wash clothes is a norm. Utensils are specially kept aside for the Dalits. Dalit houses are only found in the periphery of the village. Even a kid from the upper caste has to be addressed in plural by a lower caste even if he is much elder in age. Anyone who does not obey these rules is not only socially outcasted but in some incidents beaten to death, burnt and raped. The ones who could escape, their houses were put on fire. If someone tries to lodge a case in the police station, the officers don’t lodge the case and don’t let it reach the courts. The ones from the upper caste who condemn any of the practices are socially outcasted, threatened for life and beaten up by the village strongman. Every day, on average, three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits murdered, and two Dalit houses burnt. According to the The National Crime Records Bureau data for 2015 and 2016 showed that the number of crimes reported against Dalits had risen from 38,670 to 40,801, with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan heading the table of states with most instances of crimes against Scheduled Caste people. The successful Dalits who inspite of the system made it to a respectable position in their life, do not get the respect they deserve. A surgeon at the Safdargunj hospital, New Delhi says that he still does not get the psychological recognition by his peers. He is not given responsibilities because he is a Scheduled caste and his existence is not being accepted at a sub-conscious and conscious levels. A women professor of Sanskrit at Delhi University calls herself a double dalit because she is a women and a Dalit.

Escaping Caste

Dalits who tried to escape caste by converting to other religion still face discrimination in their new religions. The Guru Granth Sahib, which is a religious scripture of Sikhism mentions that there is no caste and all are equal, but casteism has crawled into Sikhism too. The langar at the Naudh singh Gurudwara is served through two different doors, one door for the Jatt while the other for the Majhabi Sikh. If a majhabi Sikh, tries to get the langar from the Jatt door, the Jatts have got violent to the extent that they broke the skull of the person who tried to do it. Many villages have different Gurudwaras for different castes. Christianity and Islam which believe in one single God, the situation is not different. There are different churches and crematories for the dalit christians and the non dalit christians. Similarly muslims have as many as a dozen castes like the Bhangi, Bhat, Dhobi, Bakho and the upper castes which are the Syeds, Pathans and the Khans. While muslims are allowed to offer prayers together in the same mosque they face discrimination in every other activity.

The Future

I studied in a Government Engineering college where there was 50% reservations for the OBC/SC and the ST, and thus had interacted and been friends with a lot of people born in the lower caste. We never talked about the subject of caste during our discussions because most of us believed that this would lead to differences since both groups had their own prejudices. While researching for a few topics I talked to a few friends from the underprivileged caste when they told me about the discriminations they faced during college and before that. These incidents were extremely harsh and have left a deep impact on most of them. When I asked one of my best friend, a UPSC aspirant and born in a Dalit family about what can be done to remove caste from the soul of Indian society? His answer was simple and complicated at the same time. He said I can forget everything that has happened to me and my ancestors if people from the upper caste are ready to drop their surnames which they hold with pride and also appoint Dalits as priests in temple. He said he was ready, but are people on the other side ready?