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News Updates 27.07.15
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Beltangady: Landlord severs youth's fingers for objecting to cutting weeds - Daijji World
http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=339109
Modi government now keen on tougher SC/ST Atrocities Act - The Hindu
HTTP://WWW.THEHINDU.COM/NEWS/NATIONAL/TOUGHER-SCST-ATROCITIES-ACT/ARTICLE7467324.ECE
Month On, Brain Behind Gokulraj Murder Elusive - The New Indian Express
12 cases against unauthorised moneylenders - The Hindu
Quartet Booked Under SC/ST Act - The New Indian Express
49% of children out of school are SC/STs, 25% are Muslims: Survey - The Times Of India
Caste clash: Both parties file cases - The Times Of India
Please Watch:
National Convention of Scavenger Community on Education- 02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uqIHPdsR9Q
Note: Please find attachment for DMW Hindi (PDF)
Daijji World
Beltangady: Landlord severs youth's fingers for objecting to cutting weeds
http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=339109
Daijiworld Media Network - Beltangady (SP)
Beltangady, Jul 27: Fingers of a Dalit youth were allegedly cut off by a landlord at Neriya in the tauk on the night of Sunday July 26.
Fingers of Sundar Malekudiya (45), son of Babu Malekudiya from Kataje in Neriya got severed in this incident. Sundar's hands also suffered injuries. He has been admitted into a hospital at Mangaluru.
On behalf of the injured, locals complained that a local land owner named Gopal Gowda had committed this dastardly act.
Gopal Gowda was cutting the weeds at a place with the help of a weeding machine. It is learnt that Sundar and Gopal had pre-existing enmity relating to land dispute. Sundar objected about conducting weeding operation in the disputed land.
Gopal, angered at this objection, lifted the weeder that was in operation, and poked it at Sundar. Sundar tried to block the machine from hitting him, and in the end, lost fingers of his right hand. His left hand too is injured, it is gathered.
A complaint was made to the police about this incident. The police are expected to act on this complaint in a day or two, it is said.
The Hindu
Modi government now keen on tougher SC/ST Atrocities Act
HTTP://WWW.THEHINDU.COM/NEWS/NATIONAL/TOUGHER-SCST-ATROCITIES-ACT/ARTICLE7467324.ECE
After sitting on a key Bill to strengthen the law against atrocities on people belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Modi government now appears keen on pushing it through during the Monsoon Session of Parliament, possibly with an eye on the forthcoming Bihar Assembly elections.
The United Progressive Alliance government had promulgated the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Ordinance on March 4, 2014, just before the Lok Sabha elections. But the new government, after bringing the Bill in Parliament in July that year, ensured that it was sent to a Standing Committee. The ordinance has since lapsed.
The Congress argued against sending the Bill to the committee as most parties supported the legislation. "The other ordinance that the BJP got from the UPA, on empowering the financial watchdog SEBI, was passed as a Bill in August 2014. And the BJP doesn't send even the most contentious Bills to standing committees unless forced to," pointed out a member of the Congress SC/ST Cell.
RSS opposition
Sections in the Congress allege that that the BJP is delaying the introduction of the Bill because the RSS believes that it can be misused to file false cases against members of the upper castes.
The Bill seeks to strengthen the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, by adding new categories of actions to be treated as offences. For instance, forcing an individual from a Scheduled community to vote or not to vote for a candidate unlawfully and occupying land belonging to such individuals wrongfully will now be treated as offences.
The Bill specifies punishment for public servants from other communities who neglect their duties relating to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe people, such as not registering a complaint or a First Information Report. The Bill mandates the setting up of special courts at the district level, with exclusive public prosecutors for each special court, to speed up the trial process.
A contentious clause, even during the UPA regime, is one that states that mere acknowledgement of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe status of a victim is sufficient to establish guilt.
These measures were thought necessary since the original Act had failed to deter crimes. National Crime Records Bureau figures show that cases registered under the Act in conjunction with Indian Penal Code provisions increased from 38,449 in 2010 to 46,114 in 2013. More worryingly, the conviction rate under the law stands at below 30 per cent in several States.
Tabled in December
The Standing Committee tabled its report on the Bill last December, affirming most of its provisions and adding some important clauses on special courts for atrocities against women, which would be presided over by a woman judge.
The government, however, did not table the Bill for discussion during the Budget Session, prompting Congress president Sonia Gandhi to write to the Prime Minister, pointing to a distressing rise in the incidence of atrocities against Dalits and urging the government to act.
A senior BJP MP denied that the government's decision to list the Bill for the Monsoon Session had anything to do with Ms. Gandhi's letter or that anyone in the BJP had reservations about the Bill. The delay, he said, was simply to study the recommendations of the Standing Committee and see if they could be incorporated.
The New Indian Express
Month On, Brain Behind Gokulraj Murder Elusive
By R Sivakumar Published: 27th July 2015 04:32 AM Last Updated: 27th July 2015 04:32 AM
NAMAKKAL: It is over a month since Gokulraj, a young Dalit engineer had fallen victim to honour killing perpetrated by a core group of a fanatic, fringe caste outfit 'Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai.' Apparently, the police are still groping in the dark over the elusive mastermind behind the murder.
Yuvaraj, the kingpin of the heinous crime committed allegedly to protect the pride of Gounder community, is still on the run. A caste chauvinistic gang led by him abducted Gokulraj as he was spotted with a caste-Hindu girl, believed to be his lover, at the Arthanareeswarar temple atop a hill in Thiruchengode, on June 23.
The following afternoon his mother Chitra got a phone call from the Government Railway Police saying Gokulraj was lying on the railway track at Pallipalayam. Police initially registered a case of suspicious death.
Even as the police claim to have taken 'all the steps' to nab the culprits, the engineer's family members and Dalit organisations accused them of lethargy
"Police are struggling to nab the culprits. We doubt whether they are taking earnest steps to nab him," a Dalit leader said.
It is alleged that Yuvaraj, facing charges of abduction (Section 363 of IPC), murder (302 IPC) and atrocity against Dalit Sections 3(2) (5) of SC/ST Act), had reached a safe abode, which he was constantly changing. A police official said, "He slips out whenever we come close to his whereabouts."
He even challenged the police through an audio clipping circulated through WhatsApp. They expected him to surrender before a court somewhere but that too did not happen. The public outcry to entrust the probe to CB-CID has fallen only on deaf ears.
The Hindu
12 cases against unauthorised moneylenders
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Some were registered based on complaints, others were done suo motu : SP
The Mangaluru City police have registered 12 cases against unauthorised moneylenders in the past four-five days.
While some cases were registered based on complaints, some were done suo motu , said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Shantharaju on Sunday.
He was presiding over a grievance redressal meeting for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes here. Responding to a suggestion from Dinappa Bangera, to act suo motu against moneylenders, Mr. Shantharaj said they were doing so. Mr. Bangera said many were afraid to come out openly against unauthorised moneylenders.
S.P. Anand, district convener of the Karnataka Dalit Sangharsha Samiti, complained about continuation of a home-based food making unit in a Dalit colony in Urva in the city despite the Mangaluru City Corporation ordering its closure.
The unit uses cashewnut husk as the fuel and was causing air pollution. He said the proprietor of the unit, Uday Kumar, had been threatening complainant Purushottam and issuing death threats.
He had even filed a police case against the complainant.
The DCP said the jurisdictional police inspector would take suitable action in consultation with the MCC.
Another participant complained about safety threats being faced by Dalit women who work as daily wage workers for the Railways at the Central Railway Station. He said about 40 Dalits work as daily wage workers undertaking house keeping and other works.
Those on the night shift have to complete the work by 11 p.m. While returning home, Dalit women are abused by drunkards on their way back and he sought suitable directions to the contractor as well as the Railways.
Mr. Shantharaju said he would bring the matter to the notice of the Railways.
Many afraid to come out openly against unauthorised moneylenders, says official
'Dalit women working as labourers in Railways face abuse'
The New Indian Express
Quartet Booked Under SC/ST Act
By Express News Service Published: 27th July 2015 04:32 AM Last Updated: 27th July 2015 04:32 AM
COIMBATORE: Four persons were booked under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act by the Madukkarai police after they allegedly assaulted five members of a tribal community near Marapalam, Madukkari on Saturday morning.
Police said two of the assault victims - R Mathivanan (23) and his brother, R Boopathy (18), had entered a Caste-Hindu neighbourhood on a bike, when they fell off their vehicle due to speeding. The four accused, identified as V Selvaraj (31), M Balakrishnan (38), C Thirumoorthy (26) and V Karthik (26) began quarreling with the siblings following the mishap.
Although the cops said the two parties subsequently compromised and dispersed, the siblings have claimed they were assaulted during the altercation.
Following this incident, the quartet allegedly assaulted another tribal man, identified as K Subash Chandra Bose. When the victim's parents - P Kulanthaivelu (50) and K Pushpa (42) questioned their actions, the middle-aged couple were also allegedly beaten with sticks by the accused.
Based on a complaint by Kulanthaivelu, the four Caste-Hindus were booked for voluntarily causing hurt with dangerous weapons, criminal intimidation and under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act).
Police said one of the accused registered a counter complaint against four members of the tribal community. As a result, Mathivanan, Boopathy, P Karthik and S Raja were booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code. No arrests have been made thus far.
The Times Of India
49% of children out of school are SC/STs, 25% are Muslims: Survey
Chethan Kumar,TNN | Jul 27, 2015, 04.47 AM IST
BENGALURU: A Union government-backed survey has revealed a disturbing trend: in the six years since the Right to Education Act, around 60 lakh children between ages six and 13 years remain unschooled in the country.
While children from Scheduled Castes and Tribes form 49% (29.73 lakh) of the deprived kids, those from Other Backward Classes constitute 36%, which shows RTE has brought little change in the lives of marginal groups. At 77%, a majority of out-of-school (OOS) children are in rural areas. Besides, 15.57 lakh Muslim children too are out of school, comprising 25% of unschooled children.
In all, around 3% of the total 20.4 crore school-going children in the country are deprived of their right to education.
Speaking to TOI from Delhi, Rakesh Senger, director, Victim Assistance and Campaign at Bachpan Bachao Andolan, said: "It's not necessary that even this number is accurate as a recent study by us shows that many children who continue to work as labourers in Delhi are being marked present in schools. That is just dubious. There is a long way to go in this regard."
Activists argue that families from backward communities fail to send their children to school largely because doing so reduces the family's earnings. It means even with subsidized education for these children, families believe their earnings suffer if their kids go to school, thus neutralizing the government's efforts to incentivize children's education.
The only silver lining lies in gender parity: at 29 lakh, girls constitute about 48% of unschooled children. It means fewer girls are out of school than boys.
What's the right figure?
The number of OOS children has always been the bone of contention. A July 2015 Unesco report saying India "has made impressive progress provision of primary education it notes," is based on the 2012 figures provided by India according to which 1.7 million (17 lakh) children are out of school. The number was borrowed from various agencies.
The Unesco report clubs India with some of the worst performing nations. "At least 1 million children were denied the right to education in each of the following countries: India, Indonesia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan and the United Republic of Tanzania," it notes.
TIMES VIEW
Bringing a law is easy, but following it up with concrete action to fulfill its spirit is more important. Instead of focusing on children in rural areas and wooing them to government schools, now most discussions on RTE seem to revolve around the role of private institutions, which are mainly in urban areas. Instead of playing the blame game, authorities must take urgent steps to not only enroll poor children in schools, but also ensure that they continue to attend classes so that the country will have a brighter future.
The Times Of India
Caste clash: Both parties file cases
TNN | Jul 27, 2015, 01.07 AM IST
COIMBATORE: Members of the Kuravar community allege harassment by people from a dominant caste in Marapalam village near Madukkarai in Coimbatore on Saturday.
A few days ago, four motorcycle bound men from the Kuravar community were waylaid and verbally abused for riding in a rash manner in an area where several children lived. Several women who were fetching water also admonished them. Some time later, when a few Gounder men were travelling without their headlights on at night, were questioned by the Karuvar community.
They were asked if they had any traffic sense.
V Selvaraj, 31, a member of the Gounder community, had filed a complaint at the Madukkarai police station at 2pm on Saturday stating that a few Karuvar men assaulted him with a pen knife. A case was registered against R Mathivanan, 23, R Boopathy, 18, P Karthick, 23 and S Raja, 32 who are all mat sellers.
At 5pm the same day, Selvaraj, accompanied by Balakrishnan, Thirumoorthy and Karthick, visited the Karuvar area and abused them using their caste name.
They also assaulted them using sticks and rods, said police officials. Mathivanan, Boopathy, Karthick and two others sustained injuries on their hands and legs. They also registered a complaint at the Madukkarai police station. "We are investigating the case and would arrest the guilty at the earliest," said M Sudhakar, superintendent of police. Tnn
News Week
Modi's India: Caste, Inequality and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism
HTTP://WWW.NEWSWEEK.COM/MODIS-INDIA-CASTE-INEQUALITY-AND-RISE-HINDU-NATIONALISM-356734
BY ABIGAIL FRADKIN 7/26/15 AT 1:32 PM
When Aakash was a young boy, his family lost their small plot of land in the Indian state of Maharashtra to make way for a government dam-building project.
The Indian government is legally required to compensate people it has displaced from their homes, but Aakash's father, a virtually illiterate low-caste farm laborer, was compelled to sign theirs away without fully understanding what he was doing.
The family eventually settled on the outskirts of a village, where Aakash's father was never able to earn enough money to support the family, let alone pay his son's school fees of 100 rupees—less than two dollars a year.
His mother never went to school. His father left after the fourth grade. Aakash (whose name has been changed out of respect for his privacy) got lucky. TheRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the nation's predominant Hindu nationalist organization, took him under its wing and paid his annual school tuition.
He, in turn, spent his summers and weekends in RSS camps and training sessions, learning the tenets of the Hindu Right, which include Hindu supremacy and advocacy of a strong caste system. The other young recruits came from similarly poor backgrounds, attracted by a stable source of food and financial support.
Aakash's origins resemble those of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. The son of a tea seller, Modi was born into a low caste, joined the RSS as a teenager, and gained a new sense of purpose. But whereas Aakash grew increasingly uncomfortable with the organization's ideological extremism and eventually left, the young Modi flourished in the RSS, which provided an outlet for his political ambition.
The RSS thrives in the gap between the needs of the poor, urban and rural, and what limited services the government provides. Its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), gains support for its political agenda through the RSS's wide-ranging social programs: schools, health centers, rural development projects and disaster relief.
The RSS also cultivates loyalty through its local branches, like the one with which Aakash was involved. It addresses India's human needs—physical, educational and spiritual—providing the kind of comprehensive social and political project that the Congress party, which has largely dominated Indian national politics since independence in 1947, has failed to provide.
In the five-week-long 2014 national elections, India's electorate, 815 million strong, voted overwhelming for Modi, the BJP candidate. It was an impressive feat, successful in part because Modi drew national attention away from his social record and RSS ideology to focus it on economic growth in Gujarat, the western state where he served as chief minister.
The massacre in Gujarat
That he not only survived the political fallout from the 2002 massacre of Muslims in Gujarat—which happened under his watch and some argue was sanctioned by him—but rebuilt his political image so effectively that he became prime minister only 12 years later, is a testament to India's obsession with its economic promise.
It is not clear, however, that the Hindu Right's comprehensive project can hold together. Will Modi's focus on economic growth mean that India's social problems—caste, poverty, illiteracy, religious violence, sexual violence—again be neglected? Might economic prosperity provide an opening for more robust campaigns for social reform, or will Modi's Hindu nationalism resurface at the expense of the lower castes?
The disparity between political institutions and social reality is one of the defining features of contemporary India, expressed most starkly in the gap between de jure equality and de facto inequality. "Equality of status and of opportunity" is enshrined in the preamble to the constitution of India, alongside justice, liberty and fraternity.
One manifestation of this push for equality is a quota system that reserves a given number of political posts for women and members of specific castes and tribes, and has resulted in real political mobilization and power-sharing.
Yet in spite of the country's liberal political foundations and the representation of lower-caste groups in government, Indian society remains rigorously hierarchical and unequal. Many elites—even those who collaborate politically with lower-caste leaders—would never consider their political colleagues social equals, nor allow their children to marry out of caste.
And though the lower castes are increasingly conscious of their political rights, societal acceptance of their social inferiority remains widespread.
Day laborers and domestic workers, most of whom come from lower castes, are not in a position to protest their exploitation. Lower-caste women face the constant threat of sexual violence. Many poor students grow accustomed to having their teachers not show up at school; others are too poor to attend in the first place.
Darker-skinned Indians, more likely to come from lower castes, see in advertisements for skin-whitening products another reminder that fairer skin is a mark of beauty. So ubiquitous is caste-based discrimination that even the personal ads in the Times of India are organized in descending order by caste, with a small "Caste No Bar" subsection at the end.
This troubling divide has its roots both in the development of the modern Indian state and in the nature of Hinduism and Hindu society. Before political independence and self-determination were on anyone's agenda, Indian thinkers and public figures were already considering what social democratization would look like in a nation so fundamentally shaped by social hierarchy. And the 19th and 20th centuries saw numerous attempts to bring Indian tradition, especially Hinduism, in line with a vision of a modern liberal—and sometimes explicitly egalitarian—society.
Bhimrao Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian constitution and the nation's first law minister, anticipated the problems that inequality would pose to the development of independent India as a modern democratic state.
Ambedkar's experience as a Dalit, or "untouchable," as well as his remarkably rigorous and international education, led him to advocate for social reform, broader access to education and the abolition of the caste system. And when much of that activism proved unsuccessful, he rejected Hinduism altogether.
For those who dreamed of social democratization, the Hindu tradition, so deeply hierarchical, seemed ill suited to modern egalitarian and democratic society. Could Hindu social practices be adapted to a modern democratic world? Or, as Ambedkar finally concluded, was that an impossible task?
The caste system denounced
Like earlier movements that sought to break with orthodox Hinduism (most notably Buddhism and Jainism), reform efforts in the 19th century emphasized direct, unmediated interaction between individuals and the gods—undermining the power of the Brahmins (the highest, priestly caste).
Two major reform movements, the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj, went further, offering critiques of religious, caste and gender hierarchy and promoting a vision of a more egalitarian and communal faith.
The Brahmo Samaj, founded in 1828, embraced a version of Millian liberalism while seeking to reform Hinduism for modern times. It established a canon of Hindu scripture and denounced many Hindu practices, including the caste system.
The Arya Samaj was heavily influenced by the work of the Brahmo Samaj; in 1875, it translated the Vedas, Hinduism's ancient Sanskrit holy texts, into vernacular languages and pushed for literacy as a way of building an inclusive religious community. The Arya Samaj favored merit-based castes and social welfare as the vehicles of its egalitarian, pluralistic vision and emphasized the importance of individual religious morality and an attendant social mobility.
The Brahmo and Arya Samaj laid a foundation later built upon by Hindu leaders Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi.
Vivekananda, a much-beloved nineteenth-century Hindu monk and philosopher, saw the potential for divinity in every individual and preached the importance of mass education and material improvement to the development of a vibrant, modern Hindu society. Gandhi sought to shift the focus of Hinduism away from the ideal of spiritual renunciation towards a practical commitment to improving society.
Ultimately, the prominence of upper-caste leaders in social reform efforts tempered the movements' critiques of Hinduism. The more radical movements were led by lower-caste leaders. Most notable among these was the "non-Brahmin" movement in western India during the 1870s and 1880s.
Jotirao Govindrao Phule and his Satyashodhak Samaj ("truth-seeking society") were the most radical incarnation of this movement, with an emphasis on the lower castes as a moral and historical community that transcended conventional religion. Phule's rejection of the upper castes and their traditionalist Hinduism placed him in opposition to the Brahmin-led Indian National Congress, which was founded in 1885 as a pro-independence political organization and later came to dominate the political scene.
Even though the Congress drew on the efforts of 19th-century social reformers, it focused its efforts on opposition to British rule rather than on internal reform. This anti-imperial focus also meant that the brand of secularism developed byJawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and a member of the Congress party, never adequately addressed India's deep-seated religious and social contradictions.
Ambedkar participated in Nehru's project, but also drew on those earlier 19th-century social reform movements that the Congress had sidelined. Consequently, he saw clearly the contradictions that resulted from the constitution he helped to write.
India's constitution did not establish an official religion, nor did it not offer any kind of uniform civil code. Untouchability was banned, but caste hierarchy remained largely intact. Discrimination against women and Muslims went unaddressed.
Neutrality, not separation
The constitution's framers studiously avoided using the word "secular" (the term was later inserted by amendment in 1976), and in so doing they initiated a brand of secularism in which the state maintains a neutrality toward India's different religions instead of complete separation from them.
Ambedkar believed that this constitutional structure would, in practice, promote Hindu interests in government while perpetuating the caste system in society. In 1948, proposals for a "Hindu Code" sought to establish a civil code in the place of traditional Hindu practice.
In the long debate that followed, Ambedkar proposed major reforms, including the abolition of the caste system; the enactment of property inheritance for women; the legalization of divorce; and the inclusion of Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists under the code's jurisdiction. His proposals were gutted and the resultant bills were ultimately defeated.
For Ambedkar, it was the final outrage. He resigned as India's law minister in 1951.
After that defeat, Ambedkar concluded that even if political equality were achieved for Dalits, they would never be accorded dignity and recognition within a Hindu social sphere. In the last five years of his life, he turned his efforts toward a larger project of social reform.
Although he rejected Hinduism, he understood that the Dalits could not cut themselves off from Indian tradition entirely; they needed something to connect them with the project of creating an Indian modernity. In the last months of his life, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism—along with almost 40,000 Dalit followers—out of hope that his social egalitarian reworking of the faith would provide a more stable foundation for Dalit political participation in Indian democracy.
Although caste and social equality persist in modern India, the poor are now political in a way unheard of in the first several decades after independence.
At independence, India had a small, highly educated urban population, which dominated the political sphere and was quite separate from the largely rural, staunchly traditionalist majority. But with the expansion of the Indian state in the 1980s and the dismantling of the planned economy in the early 1990s, that dynamic began to change.
Until the 1980s, Indian democracy was marked by the simultaneous existence of modern and traditional sectors. Different elites—industrial capitalists, rural landowners, urban managerial classes—grappled for political power. As the urban middle classes grew in power and began to focus their energies on the business sector at the expense of political involvement, the government extended its services into the impoverished countryside.
The new Indian elite—urban, commercial, single-mindedly dedicated to business—left a vacuum in government, and by the 1980s the rural poor increasingly found themselves engaged in politics through the struggle for adequate government services.
The 1980s also saw the decline of Jawaharlal Nehru's secular nationalist vision for the country and, as a consequence, the rise of caste-based politics. In 1980, the Indian Parliament's Mandal Commission issued a report recommending quotas in public education and state employment, reserving 27 percent of openings for members of lower castes (also referred to as "other backward classes" or "OBCs").
The commission's recommendations were not implemented until 1990, and even then, the introduction of quotas drew heated public debate and violent demonstrations. The increasing political mobilization of the lower castes threatened the dominance of traditional elites. To appease the elites, the government began to rearticulate the question of equality in terms that promoted merit as a political principle, precluding any real consideration of social condition and caste.
The debate surrounding caste quotas has been further complicated by the question of quotas for women. Along with the development of caste politics, the 1980s saw the emergence of nonpartisan women's rights groups, which have sought to bring public attention to issues such as marriage dowries and sexual violence.
Cast and gender
In 1993, two constitutional amendments established a 33 percent minimum quota for women in village and district councils. And in 1996, the Women's Reservation Bill (WRB) was introduced to extend that quota to the lower house of the Indian Parliament and all state legislative assemblies.
Nineteen years later, the bill is still pending. Critically, the most powerful opposition to the WRB has come from OBC and Dalit parties, which fear that quotas for women would limit the lower castes' newfound political power. For many, caste identification is stronger than gender identification, and the women's movement has long been criticized for being overly focused on the concerns of upper-caste women and insufficiently sensitive to the problem of caste.
Some critics assert that in basing political representation on caste, India has made caste identity inescapable. Upward social movement does not change caste identity; an individual who improves his or her economic status is still marked by his or her caste.
Although quotas have opened up the possibility of political representation—and even higher education—for some lower-caste individuals, they have not brought about increased equality in the social sphere. Caste persists in the social realm in part because caste identity is the path to political recognition and power. And as long as caste identity is the key to political recognition, the pernicious social aspects of caste will continue to define Indian society.
At the end of the debate in the Constituent Assembly that approved the Indian constitution in 1950, Ambedkar warned, "We are going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality.… We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment, or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this assembly has so laboriously constructed."
Indian democracy has not blown up. But Ambedkar's contradiction persists, and the caste foundation of India's political structure maintains the hierarchy at the root of the country's tremendous inequality of status and condition.
Much of the careful thought of the 19th-century reformers and the founding generation has been shunted aside by the force of caste-based politics on the one hand and capitalist materialism on the other. The political principles on which the Indian state is founded have not been sufficient to create an inclusive, egalitarian society.
Although the post-independence generation of Congress politicians promoted a secular vision of the Indian nation, they did not pursue the kinds of reforms that might have brought social reality closer to their political ideal. In doing so, they opened the way for the ascendance of caste-based politics and, ultimately, the more reactionary rise of religion in politics.
Hindu nationalism, with its dual focus on cultivating traditional social practices and providing social services afforded neither by the state nor economic growth, would seem to provide the strongest alternative to a modern capitalist society.
But Hindu nationalism itself has adapted to India's increasing wealth. The upper castes, particularly the Brahmins, once prided themselves on simple, even ascetic, living; they now hold up material success as another sign of caste superiority. The traditional Hindu elite is no longer distinguishable from the modern economic elite.
Prime Minister Modi is the living embodiment of this troubling marriage of Hindu nationalism and capitalism, of traditional social hierarchy and modern materialism. While he has maintained the support of his elite urban business constituents, he has proven himself to be as much a disciple of the Hindu Right as he was in his youth.
Even as the RSS offers hope and basic services to thousands of poor, lower-caste youth like Aakash, we cannot take the organization's apparent social egalitarianism at face value. At its core remains the inequality that has long marked Indian life.
Abigail Fradkin studied political philosophy at Harvard College, and studied and taught in India. She currently works with immigrants and refugees in New York at the nonprofit organization Upwardly Global. This article first appearedon the Wilson Quarterly site.
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