Over a month has passed since Narendra Modi and his Cabinet took charge, endorsed by the mandate of a billion-plus population. The successive go-aheads of a youngish electorate have tasked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to steer a beast which can spring to the upper echelons of the world order. Poised economics, confidence-building foreign policy and hawkish security will be crucial to realise such an electoral will. 

Modi’s first term recorded transformative signals in these departments, especially in security. While it’s too early to croon “times, they are a-changing”, it’s true that the signs are a-changing. And such signs are visible in the case of social justice too. 

So far, India has not had the courage to interrogate the common sense of social justice. The concept is acutely one-dimensional and policies based on it are bound to yield limited results. In fact, the common sense of social justice furthers social injustice. But two years ago, the central government established a commission to sub-categorise the many jatis who constitute the OBC category. The term of the commission ends on July 31. Its purpose is to distinguish between the dominant OBCs, the Reddys and Yadavs for instance, and the non-dominant ones so that the former cannot continue to monopolise the economic benefits of the reservation system. 

In January this year, the central government passed a bill which allowed 10 per cent reservation for college and university students who compete in the general category but are from the economically weaker sections. At his victory speech, Modi asserted that social scientists will have to update what “jati” means as there are only two in India now: the poor and those who want to help the poor overcome poverty. 

Despite the obvious rhetoric, a revolutionary signal has emerged from each of the above instances. The BJP-led NDA government is keen to contest the varna-based, orientalist narrative of caste and emphasise its jati-based, economic narrative. Europe has defined the etymological origin of “caste” which refers to both varna and jati. So why does caste summon only varna in the public discourse? 

History is crucial here. Besides Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra (OBCs), the Panchama (SCs) is an appended category to the four-fold system of varna. The jati, on the other hand, has innumerable sub-types which proliferate with progressive division of labour. A commonality between varna and jati is organisational hierarchy based on the sacred principle of “purity” and the profane notion of “pollution”. 

When the British set forth to administer India, they found it impossible to document jati marked by overlaps among occupational multitudes. But the varna order appeared comprehensible because the four-fold system was akin to the three estates structure—priesthood, nobility and professionals/workers—of Europe. In addition, varna is prescribed as a hereditary system and the horror of it allowed the British Raj to justify its presence in India as a “civilising mission”. 

This line of historical investigation is explored in Castes Of Mind by Nicholas Dirks (2001). Though excluded from most academic syllabi in India, the book has long made its way into university libraries. Some scholars use region-specific statistics and pose frivolous challenges to the elaborate examination that Dirks conducted of the colonial census since 1881. Such insincere huff-and-puff by Leftist scholars is motivated more by the need to find a ready readership in universities at a time when their cadre-student conglomerates are on the retreat.

For three centuries now, Indian society has been depicted as a caste-based ladder with four steps. But when jati and varna are taken together—as they should be since caste refers to both varna and jati—the ladder gains a hierarchical altitude of innumerable steps. The top and bottom of this juxtaposed ladder and the height in between becomes a haze. Competition and domination characterise the vertical of the ladder and jatis rise and fall along this serrated pole of social mobility. For instance, quite a large section of the Devendrakula Vellalars—a combination of 10 jatis in Tamil Nadu—are currently engaged in a battle to deregister themselves from the SC list. Such a demand is unthinkable unless there is social mobility.    

The jati complex is a veritable maze on the ground. It is a segmental organisation with numerous subdivisions. The Barendra and Rarhi Brahmins of West Bengal are still at odds with each other to establish superiority just like the Iyengar and Iyer Brahmins in Tamil Nadu. Among the Panchama order of West Bengal, the “chamar” (leather worker) has the same notion of pollution against the “dom” (handlers of corpses, carcasses) though both are SCs. Such graded hierarchy is why the Mahagatbandhan between the Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party failed in Uttar Pradesh. The immediate rival of the SC-Jatav is the OBC-Yadav; not the rhetorical “tilak, talwar and tarazu”. 

In this varna-jati order, it is unfair to suggest that all Shudras (OBCs) and all Panchamas (SCs) face equal social disadvantage. Those who assert this are the dominant jatis of these varna orders such as Chamar, Jatav, Kamma, Mondol, Reddy, Vokkaliga, Yadav and others. Their numerical strength has counted in elections and they have monopolised the spoils of a shadowy system of reservation. 

Also, in most cases, they are the largest landholders in the countryside which is another source of their domination. This is precisely why the Marathas have been able to mobilise their claim for reservation. A system of empowerment has gradually turned into a system of domination. Caste may not be hereditary anymore but reservation is. There is no exit route for those who have already availed the benefits for generations or whose very inclusion in the list of scheduled castes is questionable.

The power of the dominant jatis has almost succeeded to make “Dalit” (oppressed) synonymous with caste-Dalit. They recognise oppression that arises from other sources such as chronic illness, class, gender, mental illness, race and sexuality. But these are bundled under the rubric of “Bahujan” (subaltern masses). 

To garner numerical strength, the caste-Dalit has attempted to unite with the Bahujan-Dalit. But this bonhomie is hardly fruitful since the caste-Dalit is against the inclusion of the Bahujan-Dalit in the reservation system. This trend underlines that the caste-Dalit hierarchises oppression whereby violence against the caste-Dalit is greater than that against the Bahujan-Dalit. To sustain such a weak argument about oppression, the way out has been to doll it up. Why else does the suicide of a tribal doctor from the Tadvi Bhil community need to be appropriated as that of a caste-Dalit? Why else does Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd have to remind Shashi Tharoor that the latter is apparently a Shudra when Tharoor himself does not assert it?  

I hope I’ve now established that the reservation system is flawed because it considers only the simplistic varna and not the nebulous jati. I also hope to have convinced the reader that that oppression and related deprivation is not just one dimensional or centred on the caste-Dalit identity. Such beliefs and consequent policy are deeply unjust to the Bahujan-Dalit. 

The response to oppression and related deprivation has to develop diverse matrices. A backdoor experiment in this regard was the deprivation point system which JNU followed. In the entrance examination, points were awarded to female candidates and to those who had schooled in the backward districts of the country. Of course, other indices of oppression-deprivation needed to be added but this extra-legal experiment indicated that there was an acknowledgement of diverse matrices already. The dilemma, however, was who would bell the caste-Dalit cat in a polity that had been totally overtaken by a hegemonic definition of persecution.

Modi understands the limitation of the varna-based conception of caste and the social fissures that it encourages. His effort to introduce the occupation-based i.e. jati-based narrative of caste may finally challenge the orientalist representation of India as a straitjacketed society. But the shift towards the economic dimension is fraught with the danger of dependence on a system of income record that is easily manipulated. Extension of reservation on the basis of the ascertainment of the lack of education among the preceding generations of a student seems like an agreeable alternative. 

I must admit that many heads need to get together from the caste-Dalit and the Bahujan-Dalit backgrounds along with others to pre-empt a repetition of the exclusionary system of reservation that is in place today. While “the signs, they are a-changing” indeed, it is still a long way before India can sing “the times, they are a-changing”.