Untouched . . . by change

PROFESSOR VALERIAN RODRIGUES is Head of Department of Political Science, University of Mangalore. He was Saint Agatha Harrison Fellow at Saint Antony's College at Oxford and a Fellow at the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies at Simla. He is author of the third volume in the Essential Writings Series of the Oxford University Press on Dr Ambedkar. He has also been commissioned to write a biography of Ambedkar as part of OUP's series on Indian Masters.

In a lengthy interview with GARIMELLA SUBRAMANIAM in Mangalore, Prof. Rodrigues dwelt upon the deeper domains of lives untouched by change despite the very visible social transformation of the Dalits and Adivasis. Excerpts.

GARIMELLA SUBRAMANIAM: Dalit and Adivasi groups and human rights organisations have been successful in having the issue of Caste Discrimination (CD) included in the agenda of this week's United Nations World Conference against Racism (WCR), Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The Indian Government resisted the move on the ground that caste and race are distinct and mutually exclusive categories and that inequalities rooted in the caste hierarchy could not be reduced to Racial Discrimination (RD). The rhipost to this has been formulated in terms of the definition of RD by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). On the committee's view, RD encompasses discrimination based on descent and occupation. Insofar as CD is based both on occupation as well as descent, the committee has maintained, it is part of RD. Given your distinguished career working on the Dalit movement, how do you think this whole question should be addressed?

VALERIANRODRIGUES: The Dalits constitute about 16 and two-third per cent of our population and the Adivasis 7.5 per cent, as per the 1991 census. Together they make up 24 per cent of the population - 240 million - much bigger than the black population in the United States.

Both the Dalits and Adivasis are identified in terms of descent and additionally, the category of pollution weighs heavily against the Dalits. The 1911 and 1921 censuses and the Indian Franchise Committee gave a set of criteria which took pollution as the basis of identification. Even though the Adivasis are reckoned with reference to descent and not pollution, discrimination against them is also influenced by pollution. Descent and pollution are not altogether separate criteria. Some people are polluted precisely because they have descented from certain groups. Since descent locates them in terms of communities which carry pollution with them, they are polluted. Since pollution is an attribute of descent and as many occupations in India continue to be traced to one's social descent, the Dalits ought to be included within the parameters of RD. For instance, Ambedkar felt that RD practised in India against the Dalits was forgotten by the western world, even though the latter was of the same kind as discrimination experienced by the Blacks and the Jews in other countries. So in that sense, Ambedkar viewed discrimination against the Blacks and the Jews and what the Dalits experienced, all under the rubric of RD. To a great extent, the situation continues and given the conceptual clarifications that have been worked out with respect to the category of race, we have a great deal of clarity on issues falling closer to RD. But that kind of conceptual clarities have not been worked out with respect to the conditions of the Dalits. But if descent and pollution are the criteria, then definitely the kind of discrimination that the Dalits face in India is no different from what the Blacks experience.

Could you suggest ways of identifying specific forms of Dalit and Adivasi RD?

Unlike in the case of the Blacks, colour does not become significant to demarcate the Dalits. Commonsense might mix it up; but any serious evaluation has primarily been on the basis of pollution and pollution is with respect to a whole range of objects and artifacts that engage social relations. To the extent that the Dalits handle these objects and social relations are necessarily involved relative to these objects and artifacts, both the objects and persons tend to be distanced on grounds of purity and pollution. Untouchability being a construct both cultural and a ritual one, it is fluid enough to take on a whole range of forms. But the argument remains that untouchability in India is exclusively hereditary. Just because one is in a situation of pollution or one is polluted, one does not become untouchable. One becomes untouchable precisely because one is a bearer of inherited pollution. That distinction is crucial. A large number of forms of pollution continue to survive; for example pollution related to menstruation, to childbirth, death and the dead. These are an integral part of our rituals and social activities. Untouchability also being related to pollution is very intimately related to these other forms of pollution. Just as modern ways of life have brought about fairly significant changes in the way we handle these other forms of pollution and also untouchability of the hereditary kind, its persistence is there in a way similar to the persistence of other forms of pollution. Pollution involves that you begin to cut off any kind of interaction with the polluted agent. But also keep that person away from any kind of community bonds that one otherwise shares with other members of the community. It was a different case with the Blacks where the demarcation was on the basis of inferior and superior races. The Blacks did most chores in white households.

There was also a great deal of illicit physical relation between slaves and masters. Children born through such interaction of course continued to be treated as Blacks. But sometimes they could be publicly acknowledged. While this happens in India too, this is continuously denied. Slaves were kept as keeps in a public way; therefore there is a lot of difference between the two situations.

Could you spell out the changes that have taken place in the construction of untouchability?

Before Independence, the untouchables were not allowed to draw water from common village wells and this practice continues even today in large parts of the country. The situation may be slightly mitigated because of the intervention of the Government or other agencies. They have no entry to the main temples and surveys show that although there is no legal ban, they still do not go to temples either on their own, or if they dare to enter, there are ways of telling them that they are not welcome.

Grooms among these communities cannot climb onto a horse in the wedding procession. They have to remove their footware when passing through the house of the landlord or the main village streets and wearing ornaments is still forbidden. The Dalits have entered in a big way to public places earlier banned to them; although there is evidence to suggest that they tend to flock to areas in urban centres which are primarily inhabited by the Dalits or sometimes by the Muslims. They are a major presence; particularly in the big cities, partly because it gives them a degree of anonymity and partly because it saves them from the very crude traditional forms of discrimination in the rural areas. But that anonymity itself is deeply suspect and through body language and through the confidence with which one carries oneself, one can identify the relative rank of the person. There are significant sections of the Dalits today among the so-called middle classes in India.

But surveys tell us that socialisation of these middle class Dalits with non-Dalit middle classes is extremely low.

Are you in effect saying that the continuity and change that is noticeable today could be characterised in terms of cruder forms of discrimination and inequality giving place to more subtle manifestations of them?

Cruder forms of ranking and inequality persist even today in many places. Subtle forms could not be understood as being pursued consciously; that is, "because I cannot pursue cruder forms of untouchability, let me therefore practise more devious and subtle kinds of discrimination". It does not work that way. There are spaces today which are available to the Dalits as well as to others. Those are marked by a set of reasoning which does not inform a large number of other spaces.

You may not talk crudely to a Dalit in an office, not because there is going to be retaliation, but because you think that the course that should govern that space is different. But you may not like to have a Dalit as your personal friend, or invite him to your house. One would not like to give to a Dalit in the sphere of learning for example, the same kind of credit as one would like to probably give to one's Kula bandus or caste brethren. This is also manifest in terms of the kind of language we use. Remember the expression "Sarkari brahmans" used in the 1970s to designate the Dalits. In areas where matrilineal systems prevailed, they were called the "sons-in-laws of the Government".

Such expressions may not be current today because one knows that there are not many jobs in the Government.

Isn't the important difference between discrimination based on caste and RD that the former enjoys religious sanction?

While this distinction is there, there is also the position espoused by Mahatma Gandhi that caste discrimination manifest in untouchability has no religious sanction. Ambedkar put forward powerful arguments that since caste and particularly untouchability were a matter of religion for a vast majority of Hindus, these practices were not going to be given up. If religion is to be perceived primarily as a set of rituals and religious activities, definitely caste and untouchability figure in a very big way.

Well, Hinduism is largely concerned with rituals, isn't it?

I do not think I agree with you much on that. There is of course a dimension of ritual and religious practices that are attached to any organised religion, to the extent that it is organised. Hinduism is not reducible to that precisely because we have very powerful currents of thought which say that pulling yourself out from any set of practices is religiously legitimate.

One can become a renouncer for example if one reaches a certain height of religious greatness and need not necessarily be tied down in terms of the mundane ritual and religious practices that are the bounden duty of the normal rung of people. Whether one has reached that spiritual height there is also no authority to suggest, but these perspectives are simultaneously present.

Therefore, although the distinction is made that behind race there is no religion and behind untouchability and caste practices in India there is religious sanction, the distinction does not hold good beyond a certain extent. Remember that in South Africa, the Dutch church at a certain stage became integral to the apartheid system and modes of religious interpretation were developed, suggesting that to treat the Blacks in strongly racial ways did not amount to committing religious offence. At this juncture, let me also point to the many modes of acceptance of a Dalit.

The first is to look upon him as deserving equal respect and consideration. It could also be in terms of regarding him as the embodiment of the Atman or the supreme principle, as Swamy Vivekananda suggested. There are lots of very reflective people I am sure who opt for this position.

It does not necessarily involve alienating yourself from your immediate social conditions or the struggle involved in terms of bringing about equality. The third, more complex position entails a notion of interiority, where reckoning with the reality of caste by the untouchable and a process of self-reflection by the other are critical to carry on the larger struggle against a discriminatory social order. At the same time, you entertain no illusion that his social position will automatically change merely on account of your recognition of him as an equal. It is not an individual to individual relationship. It has greater social nexus and interface with it. For me as well it is a big challenge, a challenge that I live in an inequitous society where, very often, for very undeserved reasons, I get a social recognition which automatically entails a great deal of deprivation and indignity on the other. In this communication, I tell the other that by acknowledging him as a Dalit, I do not say that his struggle is his own struggle.

But to the extent that I regard him as an equal, his struggle is also simultaneously my struggle. It is a struggle both for social transformation as well as transformation of myself. Here, one has to play with a great deal of interiority - something that is unavailable in the rights position - as one needs to be self- critical.

One of the great dimensions in Gandhiji's campaign against untouchability is precisely this; that it is not enough to bring about a transformation of social relations where you get access to the village wells for untouchables or you let them build their places of residence outside the ghetto. What is essential is a transformation of mental attitudes and that should be manifest in concrete ways.

Ambedkar's option to Buddhism is also an expression of interiority. Ultimately, the values and norms that you embody make a significant difference to the way you reorganise social relations. Only if transformed social relations are underpinned by moral norms is there a certain guarantee that these social relations would sustain in the long run.

How do you assess the effectiveness of protective discrimination in India?

Here, one must distinguish among reservations to representative bodies, public employment and in the domain of education. Without political reservation, the advances at least a section of the Dalits have registered would have been extremely difficult to come by. There are structural reasons for the inefficacy of this method - such as a Dalit representative having to be elected by a majority of non-Dalit voters - which constrain him not to push the Dalit agenda beyond limits acceptable to the majority. The tremendous resources that non-Dalit communities wield also makes him extremely deferential to their wishes. The proportion of reserved vacancies in employment in the State and public sector industry are almost filled up at all levels.

Backlog vacancies came to be mandatorily advertised and positions filled up during the V.P.Singh regime. One person out of nearly 10 per cent of Dalit households is the occupant of one or the other of these employment avenues. The worst record in this area is that of autonomous institutions directly aided by the State like universities both in the provincial and particularly at the central level. Education is the other area where protective discrimination has made major dents. Dalit literacy which was one fourth of the rest of the community at independence is now 60-65 per cent of the rest of the population. There has been an enormous fallout of the great intervention of the Indian State in all these arenas.

The Bahujan Samaj Party in particular, primarily draws its support base from this vast section that found employment in the State, the public sector and autonomous institutions. Dalit parties would not have seen the light of the day but for this large constituency.The nation can be truly proud of the achievements in public sector employment for the Dalits and Adivasis. The employment opportunities that came to favour the Blacks in the U.S. have never reached anywhere to these kind of proportions. But one must also emphasise the contrasting abysmally low levels of private sector employment for the Dalits, unlike in the U.S. where a number of laws mandate private firms dependent on Federal and State funds to recruit Blacks and other minorities.

So are you suggesting that positive discrimination has worked well in the realm of private employment in the U.S., whereas its effectiveness in India has been in the domain of public employment?

Yes, and this has something to do with the fact that political representation is provided in India for the Dalits, which is not available for the Blacks in the U.S. except through some form of Gerrymandering to ensure their presence. Where it has not made an impact, it is because the Dalit movement in India has not created civic values, which even today are informed by purity/pollution and caste hierarchy.

Thus, in a sense, Gandhiji's campaign left behind a very superficial legacy. Ambedkar looked upon the State as an ideology; but even in his own lifetime, the State became an instrument. Hence, he began to look towards Buddhism for the inculcation of a new kind of value system. But then, Buddhism increasingly turned out to be a religion where enclaves came to be built rather than become a pervasive value-presence.

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