Caste Matters

by Suraj Yengde

In India, casteism touches 1.35 billion people. It affects 1 billion people. It affects 800 million people badly. It enslaves the human dignity of 500 million people. It is a measure of destruction, pillage, drudgery, servitude, bondage, unaccounted rape, massacre, arson, incarceration, police brutality and loss of moral virtuosity for 300 million Indian Untouchables.1

those who openly defend or have a defensive justification of the caste system or present their ‘naivety’ over such a gruesome form of subjugation give historical references for the indefinite perpetuation of the caste system. Those who enjoy the privileges of caste never want to attack an abhorrent system as that would threaten their position of power. They are unwilling to face challenges to the caste privileges that were granted to them without any work. Many in this category offer ‘merit’ as a justification for this attitude without paying attention to their privileges that add up to the creation of ‘merit’, which is then considered ‘impartial’. Their cultural and social capital becomes ‘merit’. And therefore, anyone lacking access to these avenues is judged against their predetermined merit. In a competitive, unjust world, merit becomes an excuse for the historically privileged and dominant groups to rally against welfare measures that are oriented towards addressing inbred social inequalities. To address an unequal system, provisions to improve material conditions are necessities. Such material conditions are based on improving the living conditions of those who are oppressed and deprived. Currently, numerical scores are taken as an arbitrary measure of a person’s ability to study further, notwithstanding the fact that

merit is an outcome and not representative of something. It is an outcome of family (support, care and attention to child’s education, extracurricular activities, education and economic condition), surroundings, economic support, teachers and access to quality schooling. Entrance exams are designed in a way to cater to the population which has all or most of the above boxes checked. Therefore, anyone coming from such a background can easily segue into the so-called merit-oriented world.

The networks that become the lingua franca of a capitalist society are nothing but caste-based ties, wherein a person from a specific caste ensures that his ...

In businesses and most other careers, caste networks play a significant role. They are nothing but euphemisms for caste nepotism. Many people who have seldom experienced the above don’t bother about these issues. By choosing to remain silent, the dominant castes effectively practise a thinly veiled ‘caste terrorism’ by pleading ‘ignorance’ over caste issues. This ‘ignorance’ is practised, it is intentional to not have to face up to reality and instead continue living in a cocooned world. Therefore, their problems become the rest of the world’s problems.

Our impulse to celebrate the common humanity irrespective of differences has been atrophied owing to the diminishing capacity to love. This catastrophic occurrence is the outcome of what Cornel West aptly describes as a market-oriented ‘spiritual blackout’—a relative eclipse of integrity, honesty, decency and courage’ in the face of naked violence and deceit.

Groupism combined with casteism produces feelings of hostility among different groups. Ambedkar had presciently observed that each caste is a nation in itself as each caste has its own caste-consciousness that did not help to form a fellowship of national feeling.10 And due to the caste-nation feeling—a sentiment of self-centred growth overlooking the larger benefit of humanity—caste nationality grows stronger as more insecurities hit society in the form of unemployment, poverty and partisan control over resources. In all these issues, caste plays a central role.

the ‘nationalistic’ feeling has to be constantly manufactured by the ruling classes to obscure the divisions, often seeking opportunities to display their angst. Due to this, India continues to be a nation of repeated riots and atrocities imposed by one caste nation upon another.

In India, the privileged would protect their free privilege to the death, fearing that a dialogue on equality might lead to questions about their unjust position in society.

The Dalit position has often been relegated to the dilemma of ‘metaphysical futurism’, that is, whether Dalits are to live in the future or be permanently fixed to the historical registers of India’s past. The unseen future is sold as a promise. The future for the dispossessed acts as hope. The hope for Dalits is not of abundance. Time acts as a perception of the lived reality. Historical records show that their being is not considered as precious as that of others. This has a bearing on the making of the future. The present is a randomly arranged accident for Dalits to imagine themselves through the canon of attackers. The Dalit lives in a no-time.

The Dalit ‘being’ is to be understood in a temporal setting that exhibits the limited ownership of existence or dasein—one of the original human experiences of being. ‘Time’ in the Dalit experience could be understood as a deprivation of privilege where the body politic is facilitating the civic death.

Capitalism, as Anupama Rao has observed, took Dalit existence’ outside the culturalism of caste’.18 On the other hand, Balmurli Natrajan reassesses the cultural dogma that inhibits the cessation of casteism. His theory purports to revisit caste as a system and caste as a functionality. Natrajan argues that the cultural aestheticism attributed to the caste system is a modernist concept that at times ends up ethnicizing an identity which then comes across as ‘positive’. This idea supports the conclusion that since caste is a cultural thing, there is no necessary hierarchy or oppression in place, only a tension of intercultural wars; that it is merely a fundamental part of India’s intercultural diversity. This presents to us an untenable ‘paradox’ of multiple misunderstandings: whether the caste system can be improved within the existing structure or it should be eliminated to achieve the sanctity of a religious society, or if caste is needed to maintain historical identity. Such sanitized versions of casteism are made all over by various stakeholders—the state, civil society, in sacred and secular, private and public spheres. This attribution of the ‘cultural’ promotes the value of caste as that which upholds culture. Thus, the caste system becomes something to be preserved and not destroyed. Many public spaces echo these amplified iterations of casteism. The ‘difference’ that persists in the hierarchical form is renamed so as to tamper with the formations of caste-based hie...

Many liberal Brahmins and ‘upper castes’ do express their disagreement with casteism but their disapproval of such a system does not change the situation of Dalits. This has to do with passive liberalism rather than the radical humanist position of being a ‘cultural suicide bomber’ willing to blow up the oldest surviving edifice of discrimination.

The solidarities that were created in the post-colonial phase nurtured the Third Worldism that was premised on anti-imperial nationalistic sentiments. It also made a call for solidarities mostly premised on class issues, overlooking the internal strife in newly independent nation states. Due to this, the inheritors of the independent nation state, who were mostly from the upper echelons of social hierarchy, continued their dominance by initiating struggles that did not threaten their unquestioned privilege. The historically poor and oppressed continued to live under depredation and penury. Their suffering did not lead to much of a social revolution. Today, such groups are being pushed further to near-extinction by the stakeholders of neo-liberal capitalism. This again is giving rise to class-based sensibility by withdrawing internal caste-based struggles.

Unlike race and gender, the issue of caste is not physically distinguishable. Thus, hiding behind this justification, many dominant-caste supremacists continue to inveigle themselves into positions from where they can speak for the oppressed. Due to access to global culture and spaces, dominant-caste people auction Dalit-related issues to attract the attention of international development agencies. The development-related model reinforces the unequal donor–receiver relationship, thereby permanently putting Dalit people at the receiving end—the lower end. This hierarchical engagement with Dalits sidelines the radical call of Dalits who want to destroy the oppressive system from its root. It instead proposes development-based models tied to the liberal notions of welfarism, wherein project-based instalments of community ‘progress’ are proposed, undermining the urgent call of the oppressed who want to end and annihilate the echo chamber of their oppression. Such development-based models are under neo-liberal control across the world; they are funded wherever oppressed people have demonstrated dissent. These models, as vehicles of neo-liberal finance capitalism, are deployed to pacify the brimming anger of the oppressed and slow down radical action by bureaucratizing and eventually paralysing a potential revolution. The handlers of such agencies and country/mission heads are invariably dominant-caste people who are hand in glove with neo-liberal aggression. Perhaps due to this...

The invisibility of extant caste violence—psychic, bodily and on the group—needs serious consideration. As much as caste is cultural, social, political and economic, caste nurturing is also bio-individualistic. It is a performance of individually managed acts conspired to execute violence upon the ‘Otherly’ body. This is done to produce pain upon beings who are considered lesser.

Caste is an anti-fellowship institution. It does not encourage the sentiment of commonality, of fellow feeling; rather, it encourages belonging to distinct, individual hierarchical groups. The possibility of building a strong unity among various castes on human terms is severely limited.

By loving the Other and embracing the ignorant for his lack of empathy, the Dalit community has shown how to deep-love and efface the malice that hides beneath. To love in a casteist society is violence and a violation—of the juridical, moral and sexual codes underwritten in the religious dictions that are sold as idealized tradition. Insubordination and defiance form the methodical process of Dalit Love.

India needs to be grateful to Dalit Love. Had it not been for Dalit Love, Dalits would have created their own vengeful organizations. They would have had their own version of Dalit supremacist movements and hate camps against the non-Dalit Indians who continue to perpetuate violence upon them, as if their survival is premised on the altar of dead Dalit bodies. Indian history would have witnessed repetitious episodes of caste violence. The historical struggle of Dalits carries rich legacies of non-violent movements. Their commitment to resolve through dialogue rather than violence is an understated and under-appreciated fact.

The fact that we have ‘arranged’ marriages in India is primarily because of the fear of Dalit Love, which has the ability to inject the ideals of justice, compassion, forgiveness and the cultivation of humanness into closed orthodox minds; hence, it is banished by the prejudiced society. Through arranged marriages, the entire caste society is dispossessed of the unique ability to give and receive love. A kind of love that is not material, temporal or vulgar, but one that is earthly, grounded and dialogical with mutual communication, and one that speaks of possibilities and hope. The potential to understand and learn from each other and bridge gaps is curtailed by the system of arranged marriage.

Love within the confines of caste also limits itself to hetero-normative values. It doesn’t open up a space for love as an ultimate human virtue that is beyond the constructed identities of gender, sexuality and caste. As Dhrubo Jyoti, a powerful and genuine voice of the Dalit queer movement, said in an exposé of inter-caste homosexual relationships: ‘Caste broke our hearts and love cannot put them back together.’4 This construction of love puts the locus on the receiver and giver of love, who are not caste blind. Hence, the imposition of caste features prominently even in queer and trans circles in India.

The situation that Dalits live under is akin to an open prison. They are heavily policed since childhood and their actions are disciplined by caste codes. They face trauma, abuse and exploitation at the hands of the beneficiaries of the caste system. Since childhood, every insult and heckling abuse that comes their way from rabid landlords, teachers, neighbours, coaches, tutors and advisers adds to the creation of a psychological condition. Having no access to mental health support, Dalits carry around these scars and are weighed down by emotional stress. When they grow up, their actions are doubly policed and if they do not ‘act’ in prescribed ways, they are declared insane or mentally assaulted for being ‘unstable’.

In his reference to the English language as a hegemon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o talks about the imperial imposition of language. When one is compelled to use that language while voicing one’s concerns, it is a cultural bombardment. The ‘cultural bomb’ is to ‘annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves’.14 If the Dalit experience is not acknowledged and studied through its humour and language, the public and private spheres of Dalits face the threat of erasure.

the young comedy scene in India has not matured enough to offer a humorous critique to the social system that Dalit humour easily lives off. It is a far distance away from taking up sociopolitical issues the way their American contemporaries have done. From among the issues Indian comics take up, the historical ramifications of caste and untouchability are starkly missing. They seldom deal with the privileges of caste supremacy and rarely offer a wider perspective on the ills of Indian society. They’re usually satisfied with issues of the middle class, which is a dominant caste concern, but in the enlightenment of the comedy era there is barely anyone—with a few exceptions—willing to take the cudgels of caste alongside class, religion and authoritarianism.15 Therefore, we need to explore the internal spheres of the world of Dalit humour. These spaces are as much a revolt against as a relief for suppressed thoughts. They also carry a powerful counterculture of art that remains unknown to the rest of Indian society.

We measure ourselves through someone else’s perception. This self is charted through a constructed vision—even we have not imagined ourselves in the form imposed upon us by the Others’ thought, or visited our selves the way the seer does. Thus, it brings with it a two-ness of our identification. This means more demeaning harm to our unrecognized—and marginalized—self, the oppressed self that is freshly wounded by the derisive gaze of the outsider who is watching us. This watching transcends the mere act of subject objectivity. It is placed in historical junctures where watching someone is not to observe but to pass unqualified judgements on them. The gaze becomes even more painful when the seer and the subject have an unequal power relation that is built on the dossiers of oppression. Jean-Paul Sartre describes what it means to look for self in the eyes of others.22 It is the other’s perfection that we choose to prioritize while presenting ourselves. Therefore, we constantly rehearse identity performances. Such repeated rehearsals add to the improvisation of how one finally comes to declare oneself. This becomes ‘my being without being-for-me’,23 meaning I am someone but I am not the owner of myself in this particular moment of interaction between the oppressor seers and the oppressed seen, the subject. This happens because, Sartre argues, we give up the agency of our self and willingly become an object for others. The audacity to giving up oneself comes from the historica...

As much as the constitutionality of the state emphasizes the spreading of social and economic equality and scientific temper, it does not, however, explicitly talk about the unequal stakes inherited by the traditional power brokers. The reconciliation of the horrid past that manifests into the present remains unacknowledged. As a result, the question of reparation and inherited privilege does not feature in the discussions of dominant-caste people. This lack of historical accountability creates a group of self-declared nationalists, religionists, supremacists and merit holders that parade around as pundits proffering distorted versions of Indian society.

By exclusively relying on the constitutionalism as a means of emancipation, this class of intellectuals argues for a utopian dream. The methods of attaining Dalit emancipation, however, remain unknown. The sooner India’s oppressed realize this, the better. One cannot depend on the limited conceptions of constitutionalism for deliverance. Owing to the limited control of this institution, the Constitution has become synonymous to a grievance cell offering no immediate solutions.

The linguistic accessibility of the Constitution and its reach to the oppressed is extremely limited. Few peasants would consider the Constitution as a written word that would guarantee them protection from the landlord’s real and financial whipcord. Similarly, beggars who are living on the mercy of donors’ charity would think that this dossier guarantees them equality and access to freedom. The idea of the Constitution is romantic. No one really knows its limitations but lauds its profundity without testing it out. Many Dalits are repeating the state’s narrative of constitutionalism as being the ultimate virtue—a god-sent panacea. It does nothing more than apply a lotion to massage one’s shattered ego. But when it comes to exercising the enshrined codes in the Constitution, Dalits seem to be harming their self-worth. This is because not everybody feels this document is close to their hearts as much as Dalits.7 Not everyone has similar expectations from the Constitution. Thus, it creates genuine gaps while considering constitutional morality as a common virtue. Hence, in such a situation of one-sided applicability, mutual cohabitation is a long shot. One has to pierce through the devious agenda of casteist rogues by injecting a radical antidote to set a tone of mutuality and respectability. Unless this is settled, no further conversation can be foreseen that will yield real results. As much as Dalits feel empowered in a constitutionally mandated democratic republic, any ho...

One of the limitations of the Indian Constitution often echoed within Dalit circles is the absolute visionary absence of Dalit pride and the eruptive definition of liberation. Constitutionalism has proved to be an unreliable doctrine to influence perpetrators of casteism.

Guarding the elitism of the Constitution and selling it under Ambedkar’s name has come at the cost of Dalit radicalism. Ambedkar is now centralized as a sanctimonious figurehead. And in a country like India, to worship someone is to kill any critical thoughts about the person. Various ideological and semi-social and political circles play football with Ambedkar and enjoy the show put on by Dalits around his portraits. Ambedkar’s image is used to silence Dalit rage around any issue, to the benefit of the oppressor, who is more than happy to co-opt Ambedkar into their vicious programme of hatred and violence.

Dalit rationality and radical conformity, on the other hand, retains a quality of elegance. This elegance is a result of its capacity to marshal adherent criticisms against vile Brahminical forces. By attributing the authorship of the Constitution to Ambedkar alone, the state as well as the casteist society plays into the banality of identity politics. Ambedkar is a father figure of the nation because he has authored the Constitution and therefore it is upon every Dalit to uphold it without understanding it adequately—this is a clever propaganda spread by the ruling caste in society.

The burning of a juridical text was not a foreign act for Ambedkar. It emerged from the tradition of radical love centred around the claim of equal rights for all. Ambedkar’s episodic interventions with rigid Hindu society had already been made clear when he burned the Manusmriti, the oldest legal doctrine of Hindus. His courage to denounce the repressive form of legality—as represented by the Manusmriti, which propagated inequality and oppression—connects to his commitment to the radical pragmatism which believes in contemporary actions as opposed to the settled doctrines of the past. It is a constant process of wrestling with the past—its hazards and wrongs—as opposed to its vitality to the present. Such codes of injunction deserve annihilation, that is why he burned the Manusmriti; in the same way, he expressed his frustration towards the handling of the Constitution of India.

Ambedkar needs to be a subject of intellectual inquiry and there needs to be an engagement with his scholarship so that his erudite criticisms come to light. Ambedkar, then, will be available for larger public scrutiny beyond the circumscribed and idle interpretations of Ambedkar only as the author of the Indian Constitution and The Buddha and His Dhamma (1956).

Ambedkar’s vision was a class-based solution for all castes. The society that was divided on social and economic terms still held on to social norms as a prerogative to everything they did. For land distribution, if it was merely a class issue, it would not have attracted the wrath of landlords. The land issue was primarily a caste issue and therefore an issue of social prestige. That was why Ambedkar concentrated on nationalizing land along with industries, insurance and education. This would give the state a rightful authority of being the welfare state looking after its subjects void of caste and class sentiments. Everyone in the village would be given land equally depending upon the standard sizes in the families. Ambedkar was a proponent of collective or cooperative farming in which intensive cultivation took precedence over the size of the farm. This gave more control to the farmer to focus on production and also helped the state regulate the revenue being generated from concentrated cultivation. This radical vision of Ambedkar surpassed every other binary of ideologies that were on the national scene in India. The Congress party disowned the agenda of land redistribution and did not seriously care for the nationalization of land as it was busy catering to the new landowning class which was extremely sensitive to its dominant position in society. However, overlooking the fact that Ambedkar talked of social divide and economic injustice in the same breath has limited ...

Dalit Nationalism has the rightful potential to demand equality on its own terms and without frugal negotiations. This would set an uncompromising and non-co-opting tone of liberation. There are no national-level political calls for reclaiming Dalit land—land exclusively set aside for Dalits in rural and urban areas for the uprooted Dalit community—which is in tune with Ambedkar’s thesis of separate settlement.

Dalit Nationalism is also a space of congeniality and mutual respect. It is not a space that espouses ethno-centric nationalism. It is also not a geographically constricted spatiality. It is a consciousness of the highest standard based on the solid foundation of respect to everyone. Dignity and justice form the crux of Dalit Nationalism, which is a radical reimagination of selves in the topography of human virtues. Dalit Nationalism centres its attention on the lives of Dalits, the most vulnerable section of society, who need care and attention as the society mirrors the failure of collective humanity. By redrawing the lines of human-created boundaries, it breaks the axis of separation and encircles everyone who is willing to let go of their inhuman virtues. In it there is absence of hatred but a firm conviction to retort to the privilege-blind, entitled oppressor castes. It is not an appeal to the consciousness of the oppressor; it is a direct action of the oppressed.

Cross-caste solidarities among Scheduled Castes do not take place owing to the caste dominance of numerically strong sub-castes. Due to this, the left-out Dalits are co-opted by Hindutva forces into their projects of violence. Such groups act vehemently against upwardly mobile Dalit castes because there is a lack of social endosmosis amongst 1200 Dalit castes. Barriers are created through intra-caste marriage prohibitions, together with affixed caste occupations that force oppressed Dalit sub-castes much lower down the socio-economic ladder. The under-represented always feel oppressed and left out. Therefore, to gain legitimacy, they volunteer to not only confront the hegemonic Dalit discourse but also effectively puncture the dominance of the governing classes among Dalits. The various attitudes among Dalits could be effectively typified into four ‘castegories’ that aim to inscribe a contemporary lexicon of Dalitism. These are also overwhelmingly visible in the touchable–oppressive caste structures as they operate on a higher pedestal of immoral hierarchical oppression.

The third-generation educated Dalits mostly inherit their parents’ lifestyle, approach, practices and attitudes towards society. Very often, educated parents with salaried jobs and balanced lifestyles expose their children to the issues of caste as an economic problem—that of poverty alone. Therefore, they reason that begging has not been eradicated due to a failure of economic policies. The social disabilities that lead to economic disadvantages for lower-caste communities are seldom discussed. Thus, third-generation educated Dalits are class-sensitive and caste-blind. Due to this, they submit to the class structures in society as being the model of development for Dalits. They have nothing to do with Dalits who do not fit into their class category. They are well off and have good lives, many of them joining the private sector and not asserting their existence in society.

Dalit humanism is to claim an equal position. It is argued as a right to be considered at par with other human beings. Dalit humanism does not claim for an unjust subversion of order; rather it professes an equal order. It is due to the belief in the other person’s humanity that it gives a chance to the fallacies of human deficiency and aims to establish equality. The subversion of a hierarchical oppressive system would produce more inequality and not resolve it. Thus, Dalit humanity does not contend with having a divided hierarchical order. Rather, it advocates for dismantling the rigid structures that differentiate humanity by affixing its position in society. Dalit humanism is a modernist doctrine with ethical actions diffusing bitterness and hatred, and searching for love instead.

The term ‘middle class’ could be ascribed to the social position gained through education and ‘convention behaviour’, not by occupation and income alone.13 Convention behaviours are the attitudinal dimensions of a particular group that are tied to the overall social values of the larger group than any specific one.

While liberal politics offers a critique to the right-wing majoritarian view and counters the hatred spewed by the casteist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it does not address the urgent needs of struggling people. The right wing benefits due to this blatant oversight and the scant attention paid to economic problems by liberals. Thus, most of the country’s contemporary issues can be traced to the failure of liberal parties, and the liberal elite have become the primary target of anger, having invited the wrath of working people. Communal hatred is conveniently whipped up by the right wing, and those supporting liberal values are downplayed as those who support oppression. The downgraded and repressed populace gets easy traction with the right-wing promises that appeal to their immediate needs. The hatred towards the elite due to dynastic or nepotistic arrangements in politics or the workplace where the common man seldom has access is manipulated by the right wing to recruit the disgruntled masses. Liberals have failed to provide a model to the subaltern groups that will offer safety and security to their future. As these groups see no other option before them, the conservatives are able to feed off their reactionary mood.

The Dalits who found the leveraging of economic advantage a primary programme for their upliftment subscribed to the policies of the ruling Congress Party despite its casteist make-up. Each Dalit ghetto in India has a Dalit Congressperson. The Congress Party worker is enamoured of the promises of neo-liberalism and thus s/he acts on the orders of rich landlords who are by default Congress supporters and who have profited out of its successive regimes.

The primary money and muscle that sustains the party is feudal in nature. It is not by default but by design. It manufactured a political class among the rich landowning Shudra farming community in rural India.24 Since the inception of the Congress Party, the caste elite in Indian society single-handedly ran the Congress project as a private enterprise. The movement towards Independence provided a golden opportunity to mobilize the masses, and its emotional appeal was effectively used to advance the caste elites’ goal of establishing their rule. M.K. Gandhi was used to shepherd a ‘cause’ that was never meant to weaken the caste hegemony.

There is no single prescription for casteism, and thus the experiences of caste and its forms of credence are drastically different for different caste groups. Therefore, to identify caste oppression only with influential individuals from the Dalit community is to downplay the rigour of caste oppression. Manual scavengers, kiln workers and landless farmers will have different experiences of caste than drivers, teachers, students, executive officers, government officials, those in the judiciary or a head of state. However, even in the diversity of their experiences, one common aspect remains, and that is the blatant execution of caste as a supreme method to denigrate fellow human beings.

The ruling elite who describe the public sphere are the ones who are in fact empirically bankrupt. Their knowledge is limited to the well-known and oft-repeated examples of Mayawati, former president K.R. Narayanan, President Ram Nath Kovind and the emerging Dalit capitalist enterprise Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) as proof of their claims of Dalit emancipation. The public sphere’s list is exhausted beyond this handful of examples. Consider this in light of the number of rapes, murder and torturous crimes along with the everyday physical and mental humiliation that an oppressed-caste, second-class citizen has to undergo. In the caste crime statistics and reported incidents of everyday casteism, the graph is harrowing. The crimes are so persistent and conviction-free that it calls for a serious intervention, a reframing of the globally holistic terminology of crimes against humanity. About half a million crimes were committed against Dalits alone in the decade from 2006–16.27

The judiciary adds to the unrepresentative character of Indian democracy and state machinery. In the twenty-four high courts in India, there is not a single Dalit or Adivasi chief justice. No Dalit judge has been elevated to the Supreme Court since K.G. Balakrishnan in 2010. According to an Indian Express report, the Supreme Court collegium responsible for the appointments of judges and promotion to the superior courts does not have clarity on the rules and criteria.38 There are indications of nepotism and parivaarwad in judicial appointments. More than 70 per cent of the judges are connected in one way or another to 132 families.39 One report by Outlook magazine stated that eleven out of twenty-eight sitting Supreme Court judges had relatives within the law fraternity.40 In the Allahabad High Court, the appointment of nineteen judges in 1999 indicated nepotism. Of the nineteen, two were sons of former Supreme Court judges, another two were offspring of former advocate generals, one was the son-in-law of a former high court judge and one a junior advocate of the former chief justice.41 The Ministry of Law and Justice released information on the representation of gender diversity in the appointment of judges.42 Although the communiqué stated information on women/SC/ST/minority judges, it did not explicate the representation of SC, ST and OBC judges, stating that ‘no caste- or class-wise data of judges is maintained’ owing to the nature of their appointments under Articles 1...

The 2017 budget of the government of India scrapped the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) and the Scheduled Tribe Plan (STP) that were made a constitutional guarantee in the 1970s.44 These plans’ premise was simple: funds would be distributed according to the demographics of caste. However, each successive government has sincerely failed to allocate the desired funds. Dalit activists have been staging demonstrations in the capital ever since, which have gone unnoticed by the dominant-caste propaganda machine: the Indian media.

Crude strategies of not implementing the budget and thereby letting the amount lapse have become the norm for budgetary allotments meant for SC/STs. A social welfare secretary in Karnataka once requested me to help him spend the allocated money by suggesting some policies that could be used appropriately so that the budget would not lapse. The money was allocated under the sub-component plan; however, due to the delay in depositing it in the department’s account it ran the risk of being taken away. Such tactics are used to derail the work of social welfare departments.

The Commonwealth Games scandal is one such well-known instance from the recent past. This scandal exposed the corruption of the Delhi government under the Congress. From 2006 to 2011, it consistently redirected its budget from the SCSP towards the Commonwealth Games; this amounted to 744 crore rupees.48 However, this misdirection of funds remained an undiscussed, undebated and underrated topic. The money was meant to build healthcare facilities and schools and fund micro-credit projects for the development of poor, disenfranchised, under-represented Dalits. The same funds had been set aside for ending the practice of manual scavenging.

They unconditionally submit to the casteist order, adopting its values, morals, standards of speaking, beauty, logos of assimilation, consumption, food and social habits. Their dual image, which is neither true nor original, puts them in an awkward position; they unquestionably buy into Brahminical myths as the ideal characteristics of gaining personhood. However, they are refused by the Brahminical class that still sees the aspiring Dalit middle class as Untouchables. This creates tremendous risk for their social survival and so they develop what E. Franklin Frazier calls a ‘considerable self-hatred . . . because of their ambivalence’ towards their own group.