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India has been hailed as a land of unity in diversity for long. However, how unified India actually is, can be put under scanner, as caste based pogroms hog the lime light every other day. Be it a macro or a micro analysis, one is bound to agree that caste distinction is prevalent in India, irrespective of rural or urban, only that some embrace it while others claim to discard the tenets of caste.
Politics in India has chosen to remain interwoven with the call of caste. That Bihar has woken up to the lure of development in the forthcoming election is worth attracting raised eye brows. However, an insight into the pattern of candidate deployment and promises to voters reveal that caste might not be the trump card in securing votes any longer, but it is still a prime constraint which voters keep in mind. On one hand, Nitish Kumar is banking on the Extreme Backward classes and the Mahadalits, apart from Kurmis, Koeris, upper castes and Muslims. Lalu Prasad and Paswan are coaxing Yadavs, Muslims and Paswans to stand by them.
This is not a novelty in Bihar which bears the stigma of several caste based discriminations. The trend shows that the self proclaimed upper or privileged classes, with the tenets of Manu as a support to their agenda, are unabashed in using the services of lower castes, discarding them when the need gets over. This need based acceptance of the lower caste forces us to reconsider the hypocrisy and futility of caste distinctions in the country. As an example, one can cite a mid wife in Jamui, Bihar, who presides over every birth in the village, irrespective of caste, but still deprived of an invitation in social gatherings hosted by the upper castes. The same applies to the Doms in Jhaja, who dispose dead bodies off railway tracks and clean human excreta; still railways have been apathetic in imbibing them in its payroll. The crux is, the lower castes play a substantial role at life and death, only to be hypocritically discarded in the interim period.
Disparity in society is not an alien to South India as well. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala are states practicing caste distinctions in full throttle. In Madurai, Tamil Nadu, lower caste people are expected to walk barefoot in upper caste localities. Even in Kerala, the Indian state with highest literacy rate, caste distinction prevails.
Gujarat is a striving centre for caste distinction where malice has corroded the souls of school children as well. While Bhangis (Dalits) are forbidden from travelling in chakkads (tempos) in Bhavnagar, Gujrat, Dalit girls are forced with the onus of maintaining sanitation of school wash rooms. Pouring 20 buckets of water daily to clean up the mess is no nondescript job for the 15 year olds. Several students have preferred to drop out of school to save themselves from such plights.
Such throbbing instances show that development is yet to over ride caste. Inclusion of caste in census, touted to be a revolutionary move, will have an important role to play in changing India’s mindset. On one hand it will enlighten us about numerous unrecognized classes striving for recognition and benefits, enlisting those castes which have benefitted immensely from various reservations implemented by the government at the same time. It has been aptly stated by Bhanwar Meghwanshi in his article in the Hindu that more than enlisting castes in the census, under pretext of uplifting social standards of those deprived, measures to eradicate the evil would be more apt. The ruckus created over inclusion of caste in the census, possibly because concerned persons are worried about its implications in their own ways, shows that caste has not gone down many places in our list of priorities.
The trouble lies in the loss of self respect in the down trodden. They are so accustomed in their squalid existence that they have started accepting the step child like as a custom. In Gujarat, Dalits are glad to accept Prasad from the higher castes directly, overlooking that they are not entitled to set their foot inside the temple premises. According to the documentary, India Untouched, a manager of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, a harijan, still refuses to be seated on the same platform with a higher caste person, even if offered a seat. Unless they find comfort in asserting their caste with pride, averting the perils of caste distinction is an improbable feat to achieve.
Not only Hinduism is a partisan to such practices. Castes are equally prevalent among Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, implementation of Islam being a tad bit lenient as it allows every Muslim to pray in the same mosque, unlike Christians and Hindus who often have separate temples to offer prayers, biased by caste hierarchy.
Government might have undertaken measures to dispense off the miseries of low caste. However, whether the aid reaches the targeted beneficiaries, unfortunately, depends on what class and caste they belong to. It is imperative to say that it is required to banish the caste distinction from our mind, to inculcate the mentality to realize that the so called low castes are entitled to social security and welfare schemes, at par with higher castes.