Author: R Jagannathan
Publication: Firstpost.com
Date: August 24, 2011
URL: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/how-creamy-layer-dalits-have-betrayed-ambedkars-vision-68392.html
One of the big red herrings strewn across
Team Anna's path is the alleged Dalit cause. From assorted Leftist intellectuals
to Dalit groups, it has become fashionable to take potshots at Anna using
the Dalit bogey: where are the Dalits in your anti-corruption cause? By implication,
they want to say: if there are no Dalits with you, your cause itself must
be wrong.
Udit Raj, a Dalit activist, claimed the Anna
group's Jan Lokpal Bill was against the constitution: "If Dalits have
achieved anything, if you see any diversity today, it is because of the constitution,
Parliament and bureaucracy. You cannot discredit the constitution." He
wants to present a Bahujan Lokpal Bill of his own.
Sure, he's welcome to it. The more the merrier.
Chandra Bhan Prasad, another Dalit writer,
who has written for Firstpost, elaborates: "SCs see everyone questioning
parliamentary process as villain. The scepticism started the day he (Anna)
questioned the integrity of electoral politics."
Point taken, Mr Raj and Mr Prasad. Maybe Anna
should figure out ways in which his anti-corruption campaign can be more inclusive,
since it can be nobody's case that corruption does not affect Dalits.
However, what Mr Raj and Mr Prasad should
be introspecting over is whether Dalits themselves have done what they should
to protect the constitution fathered by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
This is what Ambedkar said about the constitution
and its primacy:
However good a constitution may be, it is
sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it happen to be
a bad lot. However bad a constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if
those who are called to work it happen to be a good lot. The working of a
constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the constitution. The
constitution can provide only the organs of state such as the legislature,
the executive and the judiciary. The factors on which the working of those
organs of the state depend are the people and the political parties they will
set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.
Who can say how the people of India and their parties will behave? Will they
uphold constitutional methods of achieving their purposes or will they prefer
revolutionary methods of achieving them?"
We can read two meanings into this: one is
that Anna should work within the limits set by the constitution and parliamentary
processes. But equally, since the worth of the constitution depends on the
people administering it, Anna & Co may be right to question whether the
people running the parliamentary processes are doing it right.
But more, important, one wonders if Ambedkar
himself would have approved of what the Dalits are doing with the constitution
and democratic processes.
A public interest litigation (PIL) filed by
one group of Dalits in the Supreme Court shows that Dalits are often their
own worst enemies. In fact, they have done everything to subvert the constitution
and a Supreme Court judgment which holds that the "creamy layer"
must be excluded from reservations.
The PIL, filed by a Dalit from the Balmiki
community, claims that barely five to 10 communities from the scheduled castes
and tribes (SC/ST) have cornered all the benefits from reservations - when
there are 1,677 Dalit communities needing those benefits. The court on Tuesday
sought responses from both centre and states.
The PIL mover, OP Shukla, wants to exclude
the Chamar, Mala, Mahar, Meena, Dusad, Pasi and Dhobi communities from the
list of SCs because they have already benefited from it. "A select 5-10
castes/tribes among the target group have become financially so strong (as)
to be compared with the higher castes of society. Therefore, further empowering
them by way of giving them continued and further reservation will amount to
unjust enrichment and will amount to violation of constitutional provisions,"
The Times of India quoted the Shukla's PIL as saying.
While political Dalits like Udit Raj and Chandra
Bhan Prasad would like to believe (correctly) that upper caste oppression
remains the main challenge, one doubts if Ambedkar would have approved of
Dalits who stop thinking about their own downtrodden segments.
A report in The Pioneer says the court relied
on the findings of two committees which went into - the Lokur Committee of
1975 and the Usha Mehra Commission of 2008 - to issue notices on the PIL to
centre and states. The petition, while pointing out that not excluding the
creamy layer would make the scope of Articles 341 and 342 (under which the
SC/ST lists are compiled) arbitrary and unequal.
The report also talks of a 1990s Haryana report
which concluded that just one Dalit caste was cornering all the reservations
benefits. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar set up an extremely backward SC commission
which recommended the exclusion of four castes from reservations (Dhobi, Chamar,
Dusad and Passi), but courts have substantially stayed its implementation.
But Dalits are also fighting another battle
among themselves that goes beyond the creamy layer argument. This relates
to the exclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslims from obtaining the benefits
of reservation. While Hindu groups have opposed this for communal reasons,
Dalit groups have been divided on this, when there is no socio-economic justification
for this exclusion.
A 2008 study by Satish Deshpande and Geetika
Bapna, which studied the condition of Christian and Muslim Dalits, came to
this conclusion: "There can be no doubt whatsoever that Dalit Muslims
and Dalit Christians are socially known and treated as distinct groups within
their own religious communities and that these groups are treated as 'socially
inferior'."
Caste is not a curse only in Hinduism. It
pervades Islam, Christianity and Sikhism in India. There is thus no basis
for excluding them from reservation benefits. Their numbers are estimated
at around three million.
But so-called "Hindu" Dalits are
opposing their inclusion, fearing a squeeze in their own entitlements.
The conclusion is obvious: by focusing on
surface issues like whether Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement is anti-Dalit
or whether the film Aarakshan is fit to be screened, the "creamy layer"
Dalits are essentially trying to shift the spotlight away from their own efforts
to continue cornering the available quotas. They are thus doing the same things
they accuse the upper castes of: exclusion of the poorest of the poor.
Let's go back to Ambedkar, who says we must
not be "content with mere political democracy." He wants social
democracy, too.
We must make our political democracy a social
democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the
base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way
of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles
of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be
treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the
sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of
democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced
from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity.
Without equality, liberty would produce the
supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual
initiative. Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the
few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.
Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course
of things. It would require a constable to enforce them.
In short, this is as much a critique of upper
caste Dalits walking away with all the benefits of reservations as it is about
upper caste people trying to exclude Dalits and OBCs from advancement.
This is what, I believe, Ambedkar would say
today, if he were alive: "We need reservations to improve the lot of
the depressed classes. On that there can be no two opinions, though it makes
me wonder why we have not managed to lift ourselves up even 60 years after
we gave ourselves reservations. I thought we could do it in 10 years, but
that hasn't happened for various reasons. Upper caste opposition and exclusion
strategies are certainly one part of the answer. But surely, some of the fault
must lie with us. Why have we not reviewed the reservation scheme to check
why it hasn't worked for us? Why is one section cornering the benefits of
reservation all the time? I look forward to the day when the Depressed Classes
will not need reservations to educate ourselves or get a decent job. That
is our goal. But right now we need to introspect and ask ourselves whether
we are our own worst enemies."
Dalits have let down Ambedkar. They have elevated
him to god and forgotten his lessons and exhortations.