Bangalore: When our award-winning book, Caste-A Nation Within the Nation, came out in 2002 a small section of Dalits criticised it as casteist. Though every effort was made to explain the difference between casteism (caste system) and caste, Brahminised “educated” Dalits rushed to their own conclusion.
However, the critics of our “caste identity” theory proved wrong.
Caste will never die: Now that the country is facing parliament election, this is the best time to test the power of caste which remains in tact. Even the Brahmana Jati Party is fielding candidates on the basis of caste though it swears by Hindutva and hates caste.
Several parties have come up based only on caste. They are all contesting, and the Brahminical media is mentioning the play of caste. And yet our upper castes go on asserting that caste is dead. But caste is not only not dead but going strong. Why? Because the caste is our ethnic identity which can never be erased. Even Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Budhists have caste. The Gujarati killer CM, Narendra Modi, is a lowly Ghanchi of the oil crushing jati. Who said caste is dead?
We have to kill the caste system not the caste. Why? Because the caste cannot be killed because it is our identity. But all those Brahminical anti-caste Walas and their obedient pen-pushers never talk of destroying the caste system because that amounts to killing their Hinduism. Upper castes are not ready to destroy Hinduism which gives them the ruling class status.
Annihilation of. caste: Even our “highly educated” persons do not know the difference between the caste and the caste system. Dr. Ambedkar in his famous speech, Annihilation of Caste (DSA-1987), demanded destruction of the caste system but not the caste. Hundreds of times we had said this but our brain-washed “educated Dalits are not trying to understand this simplest of truth. (Dr. V.D. Chandanshive, Caste Identity & Social Justice, DSA-2006, pp.20, Rs. 10).
Bihar has given us the latest example of the power of caste and how it can be used to establish social justice. But social justice could be won only on one condition -that is when a caste strengthens its “caste identity”
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, a Backward Caste Kurmi, is using the power of caste to defeat Lalu Prasad Yadav. He consolidated the extreme Backwards (EBCs) of 105 castes comprising 35% of the votes. He did this to fight the Yadavas of Lalu Prasad jati which is the dominant OBC in Bihar. His own Kurmi jati is also OBC but a richer landed caste compared to Yadavas and yet numerically small.
Yadavas will go with Lalu. A jati loves its jati leader. So how to cut Lalu to size? Nitish reached the ECBs whom Lalu and his Yadavas neglected.
Paswan cut to size: Yet another caste weapon he used is by constituting a Mahadalit Commission to identify the most backwards among the Dalits and won over 21 of the 23 subcastes of Dalits from Dalit Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP. When the Madigas in AP demanded share in reservation in proportion to their population the more affluent Malas shouted saying that subcaste-wise reservation would divide the Dalits. Dr. Ambedkar has said that Dalits are not a homogenous pp.10 community. Nor the Muslims and Christians. Sikhs too. No caste in India is homogenous. There are enough divisions called “subcastes” which is a sociologically wrong term.
There is nothing like a subcaste. Each subcaste is an independent caste.
What is important is each “caste” is coming up with a vengeance and asserting its “caste identity through caste consolidation. You may call it social engineering. But such an “engineering” must be used to socially and culturally strengthen each jati. But if you exploit your jati for purposes of vote politics, cultural revolution will be forgotten.
Brahmins will not allow any jati to consolidate itself culturally.
That is why they drive a caste towards vote politics which will place that caste under its thumb.
