Caste Analysis and its lesson today

Twenty years ago, at the beginning of the new millennium and after the ‘Mandal decade’ of the 1990s, it seemed that the institution of caste had become legible in a new way ( See “Caste and Social Structure”, Hindu, 6-7 December 2001). The break with the past seemed decisive; A code was broken, and caste could be ‘read’ as before. Like any newly literate person, we assumed that the change was permanent.

But the new era of caste clarity barely lasted two decades. Today, in Modi’s middle age, after the novel coronavirus pandemic, we are struggling to come to terms with the notion that caste has become opaque again – the code has changed. what changed? And how has it affected our understanding of caste?

we’

To begin with, the notion of ‘we’ has changed. It can no longer remain an unmarked universal ‘us’ that speaks for all, but must be accepted as an upper caste. In particular, it is the vantage point of extremely high caste liberal intellectuals, a group that certainly holds caste space with its own prejudices, but is more a spectator than a player in the caste game. Unlike players (who must strategize to win the game by taking into account possible moves by opponents and allies), the spectator attempts to map out all possible moves by all players.

Other changes can be divided into two types – those that are intrinsic to the caste structure itself and those that are located in the larger context. The internal changes are taken here initially with respect to the largest group, the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), except for the changes relevant to the latter.

on OBC

The re-orientation of caste in the new millennium was mainly due to the advent of OBCs on the national stage. OBCs were good at thinking for several reasons.

First, the OBCs helped to keep the caste on the right side. From the Nehru era to the 1990s, the dominant ideology presented caste as the exception and casteless as the rule. The OBCs forced us to believe that the upper castes were a minority rather than a ‘general’ or universal category. Second, because they were an intermediate group, OBCs drew more attention to the notion of backwardness and the interplay of hierarchical privilege and inequality among different caste groups. Third, because they were defined as a recessive category – neither among the Scheduled Castes (SCs) or the Scheduled Tribes, nor among the upper castes – OBCs highlighted the pros and cons of classification and the challenge of internal inequalities within larger groups. Cast light on. OBCs were also important in their own right because of their demographic weight and distribution. They were present in most parts of the country and formed a large (usually the largest) segment of every class group, from the poorest to the richest. This is the reason why he had a special affinity for federalism and was instrumental in starting the politics of coalition at the national level.

Is this method of reading caste still valid for caste analysis? The short general answer is yes; But it’s the details that matter for a more useful longer answer.

internal mobility

The most significant change in the last two decades is that the process of internal discrimination has now penetrated very deeply within each major caste group. The effect of this process depends on the amplitude of discrimination and the contextual characteristics that allow or prevent subgroups from crystallizing as separate entities along an autonomous trajectory. The most common dimensions of discrimination are economic status, sources of livelihood and regional location. The single most important relevant factor that allows or prevents crystallization as an independent entity appears to be region-specific electoral effects. For example, the Yadavs of Uttar Pradesh have not only united as a coherent group, but have also facilitated the emergence of a derived sub-group called ‘non-Yadav OBCs’. However, the different castes within this latter group have not yet acquired a distinct electoral identity.

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Similar region-specific developments can be seen in the case of Scheduled Caste groups such as the Mahars of Maharashtra or the Malas of Andhra Pradesh. But the emerging entity need not be defined as a distinct caste; And it may be an off-stage rather than an on-stage actor in the drama of electoral politics. For example, economic discrimination within the upper castes has created a division into non-rich, wealthy and ultra-rich regions, but these are not sub-castes, and they are not (yet) a separate political constituency and largely live on. upper caste level. Nevertheless, such groups demand to be addressed politically and are of significant ideological importance.

The result is that caste analysis today has no choice but to be nuanced and multidimensional. It is not just quantitative changes – the crystallization of new political institutions also leads to qualitative changes, which changes the game without creating an entirely new game. Furthermore, as caste is fundamentally relational, it is the changing dynamics within and between caste groups that matters. From a social science point of view this means that a comprehensive analysis of caste will become more and more difficult; They will either end up as unhelpful (and durable) generalities, or they will simply become a collection of detailed microscopic studies.

Source

Thus, the apparent ambiguity of caste today appears to have two distinct sources. The first is the exponential increase in field complexity, mainly due to the differentiation of initial groups that were too large to be consistent. It is not that the caste-code has changed, but the caste-text taught today is much more advanced. In other words, we have not become illiterate in terms of caste, but we have to take our reading skills to an even higher level.

However, it is a second source of ambiguity that is far more consequential, and is located not within caste but in relation to other relevant factors. The most important of these is neoliberalism as a supremacist worldview that has re-established the state and the market; The dominance of Hindutva as a political modality; the new media regime saturating social life; the ongoing restructuring of federalism; And finally, changes in the ecosystem of official statistics.

Satish Deshpande teaches at Delhi University. Views expressed are personal