While the constitution of India pledged itself to a casteless society, said Srinivas, in fact ‘the power and activity of caste has increased in proportion as political power passed increasingly to the people from the rulers’. Thus caste was ‘everywhere the unit of social action’. There were, however, some regional variations. It was ‘not unlikely that the absence of powerful Brahmin groups in the North has prevented the rising of an anti-Brahmin movement and this has probably led to the popular impression that caste is more powerful south of the Vindhyas than to the north’. But, as Srinivas continued, ‘there are signs, however, that caste is becoming stronger in the North. Whether caste conflict will ever become as strong as it is in the South today, remains to be seen.’ 1
Srinivas’s talk was delivered in absentia, since the anthropologist himself was away in the United States. Withal, it attracted a stream of excited commentary in the English-language press. For the second general election was just round the corner. Would voters exercise their franchise according to their individual preference, as democratic theory urged them to do? Or would they instead validate the anthropologist by simply voting according to their caste?2
II
The subsequent decades were to provide resounding confirmation of M. N. Srinivas’s thesis. Far from disappearing with democracy and modernization, caste continued to have a determining influence in (and on) Indian society. In town or village, at leisure or at work, most Indians were defined by the endogamous group into which they were born.
True, the caste system was by no means unaffected by the economic and social changes unleashed by Independence. Inter-dining, once strictly prohibited, was quite common in the cities, and among the professional classes there were now many marriages contracted between members of different castes. The association between caste and occupation, once so rigid, was also weakening.3
Set against this was the growing salience of caste and caste identity in the modern domain of electoral politics. The most striking feature of Indian politics in the 1960s and 70s was the rise of the ‘backward castes’, of those groups intermediate between the Scheduled Castes at the bottom and the Brahmins and Rajputs at the top. Yadavs in UP and Bihar, Jats in Punjab and Haryana, Marathas in Maharashtra, Vokkaligas in Karnataka and Gounders in Tamil Nadu – these were, in Srinivas’s phrase, the ‘dominant caste’ in their localities: large in numbers, well organized, exercising economic and social power. At election time – to use another of the anthropologist’s concepts – they acted as a ‘vote bank’, lining up solidly behind a politician of their caste.
In Indian law these groups are known as the Other Backward Castes (or Classes), to distinguish them from the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. It was these OBCs who formed the social base and provided the leadership of the parties that were successfully to challenge the dominance of the Congress Party. The DMK, which came to power in Madras after the 1967 elections, as well as the SVD governments of the states in the north, were in essence OBC parties. Ten years later, these backward castes asserted themselves emphatically on the national stage. At least two of the four components of the Janata collective – the Lok Dal and the Socialist Party – were also, in essence, OBC parties.4
Economic power had come to the OBCs through land reforms and the Green Revolution; political power through the ballot box. What was lacking was administrative power. It was thus that the Janata government had appointed the Backward Classes Commission, known then, and ever after, as the Mandal Commission after its proactive chairman. The Commission concluded that caste was still the main indicator of ‘backwardness’. It identified, on the basis of state surveys, as many as 3,743 specific castes which were still backward. These, it estimated, collectively constituted in excess of 50 per cent of the Indian population. Yet these castes were very poorly represented in the administration, especially at the higher levels. By the Commission’s calculations, circa 1980 OBCs filled only 12.55 per cent of all posts in central government, and a mere 4.83 per cent of Class I jobs.
To redress this anomaly the Mandal Commission recommended that 27 per cent of all posts in central government be reserved for these castes, to add to the 22.5 per cent already set apart for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. For, said the Commission,
we must recognise that an essential part of the battle against social backwardness is to be fought in the minds of the backward people. In India Government service has always been looked upon as a symbol of prestige and power. By increasing the representation of OBCs in Government services, we give them an immediate feeling of participation in the governance of this country. When a backward caste candidate becomes a Collector or Superintendent of Police, the material benefits accruing from his position are limited to the members of his family only. But the psychological spin-off of this phenomenon is tremendous; the entire community of that backward class candidate feels elevated. Even when no tangible benefits flow to the community at large, the feeling that now it has its ‘own man’ in the ‘corridors of power’ acts as morale booster.5
By the time the Mandal Commission submitted its report the Janata government had fallen. The Congress regimes that followed, headed by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi respectively, sought to give it a quiet burial. But when a National Front government came to power after the general election of 1989 the report was disinterred. The new prime minister, V. P. Singh, was sensible of the rising political power of the OBCs, and of his less-than-solid position as head of a minority coalition. Thus on 13 August was issued a four-paragraph government order implementing the basic recommendation of the Mandal Report. Henceforth, 27 per cent of all vacancies in the government of India would be reserved for candidates from the ‘socially and educationally backward classes identified by the Commission.
The order sparked a lively debate in intellectual circles. Some scholars argued that the criteria for job reservation should be family income, rather than membership of a particular caste. Others deplored the extension of affirmative action in the first place; by allocating one job in two on considerations other than merit, the efficacy and reliability of public institutions was being put at risk. However, there were also scholars who welcomed the implementation of the Mandal recommendations as a corrective to the dominance of upper castes, and especially Brahmins, in the public services. They pointed to the states of south India, where more than two-thirds of government jobs were allocated on the basis of caste, without (it was argued) affecting the efficiency of the administration.6
In September 1990 a case was brought before the Supreme Court of India, contesting the constitutional validity of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations. Three principal arguments were made by the petitioner: that the extension of reservation violated the constitutional guarantee of equality of opportunity; that caste was not a reliable indicator of backwardness; and that the efficiency of public institutions was at risk. While it deliberated on the case, the bench issued a stay of execution on the government order of 13 August.
As is so often the case in India, arguments about public policy were conducted in newspapers and courts, and also spilled over into the streets. On 19 September a Delhi University student named Rajiv Goswami set himself on fire in protest against the acceptance of the Mandal Commission report. He was badly burnt, but survived. Other students were inspired to follow his example. These self-immolators were all upper-caste Indians whose own hopes for obtaining a government job were now being undermined. Altogether, there were nearly 200 suicide attempts – of these, sixty-two were successful.
Other protests were collective. Across northern India groups of students organized rallies and demonstrations, shut down schools, colleges and shops, attacked government buildings and engaged in battle with the police. The guardians of the law sought to defend themselves, sometimes to deadly effect. Incidents of police firing were reported from six states of the Union, these claiming more than fifty lives.7
The conflicts sparked by the Mandal Commission recommendations were far more intense in northern In
dia. For one thing, affirmative action programmes had long been in existence in the south. For another, that region also had a thriving industrial sector; thus educated young men were no longer as dependent on government employment. Again, while in the south the upper castes constituted less than 10 per cent of the population, the figure in the north was in excess of 20 per cent. Since there was more at stake all round, the battles, naturally, were fiercer.
Among the strongest supporters of the Mandal Commission were two rising politicians. These were Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had become chief minister of Uttar Pradesh late in 1989, and Lalu Prasad Yadav, who became chief minister of Bihar early in 1990. Both were born in poor peasant households, both became politically active at university, joining the then still influential socialist movement. Both were jailed during the emergency, and both joined the Janata Party after it was over.
As their common surname indicated, Mulayam and Lalu were from the same caste of farmer-herders scattered across north and western India. In colonial times Yadavs had often acted as the lathials (strongmen) of upper-caste landlords. After Independence, now with lands of their own, they had steadily gained in economic strength, social prestige and political power. Both Mulayam and Lalu actively reached out to the Muslims, another very numerous (if much poorer) community in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The arithmetic of this move was electoral, for Yadavs and Muslims each comprised about 10 per cent of the population. In multiway contests – the norm in India – 40 per cent of the vote was usually enough. So any candidate who had sewn up both the Yadav and Muslim votes and persuaded sections of other backward groups to join up had a very good chance of winning.8
As India’s most populous states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh together sent 139 members to Parliament. General elections were often decided here. In the first four elections the Congress won a majority of seats in UP and Bihar. In 1977, following the emergency, the party was wiped out, but in 1980 and 1984 it recovered, winning 81 and 131 seats respectively. The last was an aberration, a consequence of the martyrdom of Indira Gandhi. In 1989 the Congress fared disastrously, winning a mere nineteen seats in the two states. When mid-term elections were held two years later, it fared even worse, winning just five seats in UP and only one in Bihar.
When V. P. Singh announced the implementation of the Mandal Report the Congress, then in opposition, was lukewarm. The elections of 1991 saw the party return to power, its poor showing in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar compensated by a strong performance in the south. Now, the numbers set out in the preceding paragraph forced a swift reassessment. Were the Congress ever to regain ground in the north, it had to woo back the backward castes. Accordingly, the new Congress prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, issued afresh government order on 26 September 1991, endorsing the Mandal Report but adding the ‘rider that in allotting 27 per cent of jobs to OBCs preference shall be given to candidates belonging to poorer sections’ among them.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continued its hearings on the petition placed before it. It finally gave its verdict on 16 November 1992. Seven judges dismissed the petition, upholding the constitutional validity of the Mandal Commission and the orders which sought to implement it. Three others dissented. The judgements were characteristically prolix, filling nearly 500 closely printed pages. The dissenting judges argued that caste-collectivity’ was ‘unconstitutional’; that in deciding on who was disadvantaged, impersonal criteria such as income should be used instead. On the otherside, speaking for the majority, Justice Jeevan Reddy referred to past judgements where caste had been used as a proxy for backwardness. He invoked the example of affirmative action for black sin the United States, a precedent worthy of emulation in the present case. For,
it goes without saying that in the Indian context, social backwardness leads to educational backwardness and both of them together lead to poverty – which in turn breeds and perpetuates the social and educational backwardness. They feed upon each other constituting a vicious circle. It is a well-known fact that till independence the administrative apparatus was manned almost exclusively by members of the ‘upper’ castes. The Shudras, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and other similar backward social groups among Muslims and Christians had practically no entry into the administrative apparatus. It was this imbalance which was sought to be redressed by providing for reservation in favour of such backward classes.9
In upholding the government orders the Supreme Court added two caveats: that reservations should not exceed 50 per cent of the jobs in government, and that caste criteria would apply only in recruitment, not in promotions.
It was the Janata Party that had constituted the Mandal Commission in 1978; it was its new avatar, the Janata Dal, that implemented its recommendations in 1990. Its enthusiasm was not at first shared by rival parties. For the CPI and CPM traditionally saw class, not caste, as the major axis of political mobilization. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accorded pride of place to (the Hindu) religion. As for the Congress, it presumed to speak for the nation as a whole. However, by the time the Supreme Court passed its judgement, these parties were all prepared to endorse it. For they very quickly realized the political implications of the Mandal Commission Report, and the political costs of opposing it.
The controversy surrounding the Mandal Commission is reminiscent in some ways of the debate, conducted back in the 1950s, around the report of the States Reorganization Commission. As a marker of identity, caste was as primordial as language – as likely to be deplored by modernizing intellectuals, as prone to be successfully used for social and political mobilization. Then, as now, the force of argument was found powerless when faced with the logic of numbers. Then, as now, what began as a contentious and many-sided debate ended with an all-party consensus.
Most reports commissioned by the government of India are read by few people and discussed by even fewer. The reports of the States Reorganization Commission and the Mandal Commission were altogether exceptional. They were read by many, debated by many more, and actually even implemented. They may even be – if only because of the number of people they affected – the two most influential reports ever commissioned by a government anywhere.
The influence exercised by the States Reorganization Commission was direct: it led to the redrawing of the administrative map of India on linguistic lines. The Mandal Commission’s influence, however, was mostly indirect. By its terms only a few thousand government jobs came up for allotment to OBCs. But the debate the Report sparked, and its eventual acceptance, provided a tremendous fillip to OBC pride and solidarity. Among the beneficiaries were the two Yadavs, Lalu and Mulayam. Both left the Janata Dal and setup their own parties, and very successfully too. Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal stayed in power in Bihar for more than a decade (until 2005); Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party was in power in Uttar Pradesh for much of the 1990s, and he is once more chief minister of the state as I write in 2007.
III
The 1990s also witnessed an upsurge by Dalits, as the former Untouchable castes were now known. This was led by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which was founded by a brilliant political entrepreneur named Kanshi Ram.
After the death of Dr B. R. Ambedkar in 1956, the most prominent Untouchable leader was Jagjivan Ram. He was in the Congress, and it was in good part because of him that the lowest castes were regarded as a captive ‘vote bank’ by the party. The claim was challenged only in Maharashtra, first by the Republican Party which Ambedkar had founded, and later by the militant Dalit Panther organization. One consequence was that ‘Dalit’, meaning ‘oppressed’, replaced the official ‘Scheduled Caste or the Gandhian ‘Harijan’ as the preferred self-appellation for the low castes. But, from the 1950s to the 1980s, they mostly voted for the Congress nonetheless.
For decades Jagjivan Ram had ‘carried the banner of the downtrodden and stood for their interests’. His death in 1988, said an obituarist, ‘left a void’ which would be almost impossible to fill. ‘Scattered, unorganised, leaderless and oppressed, t
he fate of the scheduled castes, who form 15 per cent of the country’s population ... hangs precariously in the balance.’10
As it happened, by this time Kanshi Ram (no relation) had been active for more than a decade. Born in 1932 in the Punjab, he joined government service after university, working in a laboratory in Maharashtra, where he was introduced to the writings of B. R. Ambedkar. Thus radicalized, he quit his job in 1971 and formed an organization to represent government employees from a disadvantaged background. This was called the All-India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF). For the next decade Kanshi Ram travelled across India, building district and state chapters of the organization. By the early 1980s BAMCEF had a membership of 200,000, many of them graduates and postgraduates. This was a trade union of the Scheduled Caste elite, which, in the leader’s words, would form the ‘think tank’, ‘talent bank’ and ‘financial bank’ for the depressed classes as awhole.11
BAMCEF’s growth area was north India, and particularly Uttar Pradesh, where its rallies regularly attracted audiences of 100,000 and more. The organization’s success emboldened Kanshi Ram to start a political party. Several names were considered, but finally it came to be called the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), ‘Bahujan’ being amore inclusive category than ‘Dalit’. Whereas the latter represented the Scheduled Castes or former Untouchables, the former contained within it backward castes and Muslims as well.
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy Page 77