Retrofitting the caste angle into just about everything is an avoidable trend of contemporary public discourse. But who will bell the catIJ
Scanning through the slew of articles written in the aftermath of any election in India or any official Government of India appointment be it a new District Commissioner, a Chief Minister, even the President of India,or a court judgment like the recent 3G spectrum scam or even a traffic challan, one can’t help but see how nearly every socio-political event in this country is seen from the prism of caste. Don’t you wonder at times that if on the one hand caste is a ‘bad thing’ that has kept India from transforming into the world leader that it has the potential for, then how come most so-called senior journalists or editors try to fit (or retrofit) the caste angle into just about everythingIJ Of course, they try to make this appear as an effort to decipher the complexities of the Indian society but this often comes at the cost of true equality, the very thing that the founding fathers of a newly independent India aimed for in 1947. Intriguingly enough, the passion with which some intra-religious complexities such as caste are explored in the name of fighting for equality is hardly at play when it comes to a triple talaq verdict or the call for a Uniform Civil Code.
From a broad, no, make it an ‘extremely’ broad viewpoint, the relentlessness with which some quarters of media purse the caste aspect such as Shekhar Gupta pondering if the conviction of lalu Prasad Yadav and the acquittal of Jagannath Mishra in the Fodder Scam case suggested a “caste differential” of corruption. Similarly, a RajdeepSardesai readily suggested that by appointing the ‘upper caste’ Jairam Thakur as the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh the BJP is somewhere responsible for not letting Indian politics change. The TV anchor also pointed out in his rather casteist tweet, which he later deleted following a massive backlash, that only two Chief Ministers out the 11 States where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power were from OBC (Other Backward Class).
To suggest that asking questions such as “Could it be that the upper crust tends to be “cleaner” as a rule, or is it that the system is loaded against those in the lower half of the social pyramidIJ” is all fine but to what endIJ There is no denying the harsh reality about fissures due to caste existing in India. Yet, the manner in which it is evoked to suit a particular narrative that seems to be as far as possible from allowing a conducive environment for us to overcome such horrors is far from coincidental. Just a few months earlier Sardesai had induced political tokenism at the time of Shri Ramnath Kovind’s elevation to the highest office in India by expressing “when in doubt, turn to a ‘dalit’ face.” But the bigger question still remains why is that the discourse is not being allowed to move away from the antiquated mindset that got us here in the first placeIJ An argument is often made that the BJP is the fount of ‘divisive’ politics or how it “nursed upper caste resentment” or how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh needs to empower Dalits to shake its upper-caste image off, and even if that be the case, why are then the ‘others’ more insistent on the keeping the caste wheel spinningIJ
Take the recent Gujarat elections. Here, the Congress, which otherwise leaves no opportunity to remind one and all how it is the only one that truly stands for the aamaadmi, supposedly agreed to give reservation to the Patidars if voted to power. It openly supported an organization, Patidar AnamatAndolan Samiti (PAAS) that fought the entire elections on a platform that aimed to promote division on the basis of caste. While the dangers of this caste politics spearheaded by Hardik Patel, the leader of the Patidar agitation, were pointed out, a majority of the press had no qualms in hailing Patel as a trailblazer. This even though he was openly doing something that the doyens of the fourth estate had repeatedly called against the idea of India — dividing people. In a similar fashion, many political parties in India that form the opposition or some part of it opposed the Triple Talaq Bill on one pretext or the other. Such is the state of a segment of mainstream journalism in India that it might also see some hidden conspiracy in Ishrat Jahan, one of the five petitioners in the triple talaq case, joining the BJP. Her husband divorced Ms. Jahan over the phone from Dubai by uttering talaq consecutively three times in 2014 and while it might seem as a sudden decision, the fact is that be it Ishrat Jahan or scores of others, Muslim women have been joining BJP since a long time. The BJP was among the petitioners that moved the Supreme Court against triple talaq and while outfits such as All India Muslim Women Personal law Board welcomed the historic bill, the inability of the opposition to stop it was labeled a “glaring lack of coordination” on their part by a web portal.
In the days, we as a people should be prepared to witness more activity around the whole “caste” debate. Additionally, splits on the basis of sub-sects, the dominance of a particular language over other, the glory of the colonial past and such would also be for the picking in the run-up to every single election from now till 2019.There would be an escalation in this rather senseless debate as itwas one of the tactical tools suggested by a Senate committee in Pakistan to the Nawaz Sharif led-government to check India’s growing stature. Unsurprising, as it is, this document, which was also available in the public domain, had suggested to the Sharif government to play up caste and religion by talking about Dalits, unhappy Muslims and encourage those opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi besides highlighting the issue of Kashmir. While this was reported in a ‘reputed’ mainstream publication, the mere suggestion of such Pakistan sponsoredPsychological Operations (PSYOPs) by anyone other than the bunch ascribed to mainstream media are labeled cuckoo! Needless to mention then questioning those who unfailingly underscore the caste aspect on every occasion is but somewhat cuckoo too!
(The writer is spokesperson for the BharatiyaJantaYuvaMorcha (BJYM), Chandigarh)