Caste and Politics

Author(s): Christophe Jaffrelot

Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2 (AUTUMN 2010), pp. 94-116
Published by: India International Centre
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 QUARTERLY

Caste

and

Politics

word 'Dalit' is now commonly used in India

to designate groups, which had earlier been given
many names, including 'Harijan' (literally 'sons
The of god') in Gandhian parlance. The other usual
expression is 'Scheduled Castes', an administrative category that
the British introduced in 1935 when they established the lists
of those who were entitled to benefit from special programmes of
- Untouchables - is still
positive discrimination. But the oldest name
employed because of its power of evocation.
Indeed, the notion of Untouchability immediately calls to mind
one of the mainstays of the caste system, the notion of ritual purity/
impurity. In oldest Sanskrit texts dealing with castes, including the Rig
Veda, Hindu society is divided into four varnas (colours): Brahmins
(the literati - including priests); Kshatriyas (the warriors); Vaishyas
(crafts- and tradesmen) with whom ends the dvijas (twice-born)

ByChristophe Jaffrelot

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

category; and the Shudras, servants of categories earlier mentioned.

The Untouchables are not part of this society - hence the other
name they were known by in the past of 'out castes'. But the notion

of Untouchability is the logical outcome of one of the main criteria

of the caste system, the degree of ritual purity. The Brahmin is at the
top largely because of the superior purity that he needs to cultivate
through, for instance, a strictlyvegetarian diet. Other twice-born castes
are too - hence their 'twice born' status - whereas the Shudras
pure
are considered to be impure but 'touchable'. While Untouchables
are not referred to in the oldest texts, they are one of the oldest
institutions of Indian society. Their name derives from the fact that
they are not supposed to be in contact with the rest of society. This
segregation finds a topographical expression in the location of special
neighbourhoods away from the village. They are also not allowed to
use the village well, to enter the temples of other castes, or even to
cross the Brahmin neighbourhood.
The relative (im)purity of each caste coincides with their
occuption. Brahmins will work with their brain, for instance, in the
administration of kingdoms where they will be recognized not only
as prestigious, but as powerful too. Kshatriyas, who have conquered
territories, will become local suzerains as landlords (zamindars,
jagirdars or even Maharajahs). Vaishyas will concentrate on trade and
economic activities in general (as money-lenders, too, for instance).
Shudras are also artisans, sometimes in very prestigious fields such as
jewellery. Untouchables are involved in the most degrading activities
and work as tanners, shoe makers, meat cutters, sweepers and so on.

But most of them are landless peasants.

Besides ritual (im)purity and occupation, the third mainstay
of the caste system is its endogamous character. For the system to

continue, castes must not mix: inter marriages are strictly prohibited
in the Dharmashastras, which present them as the recipe for chaos.
As a result, the varna system encompasses a system of endogamous

jatis, which are the real castes. The word jati derives from jan\ 'to be
born: one is born in the caste both one's parents belong to; they are
organized in a hierarchical manner due to their status, given in terms
of ritual purity, according to a continuum ranging from Brahmins to
Untouchables. However qualitative leaps exist in this gradation since
the varna system gives a structure to the profusion of jatis. Each
jati belongs to a specific varna. The jatis of the 'twice-born' varnas

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naturally enjoy a higher status than those that are placed at the level

of Shudras and even more among Untouchables. This hierarchy

of inherited statuses goes together with the economic functions,
sometimes extremely specialized, mentioned earlier. For instance,
the main Untouchable jati of the north of India, the Chamars, are
leather workers who are particularly impure because they work with
the skin of the cow, considered a sacred animal in Hinduism.

Before Independence, the British identified Untouchables as

a specific social category, as evident from the creation of an
administrative notion, Depressed Classes, that coincided more or
less with them and that was used in the census of 1921 for the first
time. In the 1931 census - the most detailed one till now, so far as
- the criteria
castes are concerned defining Depressed Classes had
much to do with ritual impurity (access to wells, schools, temples
are taken into account, for instance). As these dimensions derived
from the rationale of the caste system, it was not surprising that

the Depressed Classes were rechristened Scheduled Castes in the

Government of India Act (1935). The following year, a list of 429

jatis was established under this name. The British used these data to
fine tune their positive discrimination agenda.
They had started caste-based affirmative action programmes in
favour of Untouchables in the late nineteenth century in the field of
education. Schools were reserved to them -
they would, otherwise,
have remained illiterate because of caste discrimination.1 But it
turned out that educated Untouchables, though in small numbers,
could not get jobs in relation to their qualifications. A case in
point is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who, after most successful studies in
the United States and England, established himself as an advocate
in Bombay but could not get many clients.2 As a result, the British,
under pressure from Dr. Ambedkar who gradually became the first
leader of the Dalits, a word he introduced to designate the members
of his caste group, introduced quotas for the Untouchables in the
administration. In 1934, the Government decided to reserve 25 per
cent of the vacancies in the administration for the Muslims and 8.3
per cent for other minorities, including Untouchables, who then
represented 12.5 per cent of the population according to the 1931

Christophe Jaffrelot

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

census. The latter was increased to this level - 12.5 cent -

quota per
in June 1946, which means that proportionality became the rule.
Dr. Ambedkar also wanted to improve the political representation
of Dalits in the political sphere. During the second Round Table
Conference he demanded a separate electorate for them. For

him, such an electoral reform would have transformed his caste

fellows into a solid interest group. Gandhi objected to this saying
that this would mean the division of Hindu society. When the
British government, through the 1932 Communal Award, gave a
separate electorate to Dalits, Gandhi went on a fast unto death. Dr.

Ambedkar had to resign himself to a compromise that is known as

the Poona Pact. It established a system of reserved seats and primary
elections, which granted 148 seats (instead of the 71 provided for
in the Communal Award) to the Untouchables in the provincial
assemblies, but which removed the principle of separate electorates:
in 148 constituencies were present in large
where the Untouchables
numbers the members of the Depresses Classes would elect four
persons amongst them and these would be candidates for which the
electors of all the castes put together would be called upon to vote.

After Independence, Congress rulers could not claim impeccable

past records in terms of the fight against Untouchability. In fact, the
Congress had inherited a certain ambivalence vis-a-vis the caste system
reform movements, such as the Arya Samaj. On
from socio-religious
the one hand, they considered Untouchability as fully illegitimate.
On the other hand, some of them - including Mahatma Gandhi -
wanted to reform the caste system, not to eradicate it. This profoundly

ambiguous attitude was reflected in the making of the Constitution of

India whose Drafting Committee was headed by Dr. Ambedkar, who
was also the Law Minister in Nehru's government in 1947-1951.
The Constitution of 1950, through Article 17 spells out that:
'"Untouchability" is abolished and its practice in any form is
forbidden'. 'Untouchability' is not defined, but another article
stipulates that no citizen, on ground of caste, should be subject to
restriction with regard to '(a) access to shops, public restaurants,
hotels and places of public entertainments; or (b) the use of wells,
tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained

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wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the

general public' (Art. 15 (2). Similarly, 'forced labour' (Art. 25),
including in the case of the so-called traditional 'inferior village
servants' who, as members of service castes, were supposed to

accompish the most polluting tasks.3

Several laws were passed after the promulgation of the Constitution
in order to reiterate the egalitarian agenda of the new Republic of
India with respect to the Untouchables. In 1955, the Untouchability
(Offences) Act reasserted that Untouchables could not be prevented
from entering/visiting any public place and should be treated
respectfully. It was amended in 1976 and rechristened Civil Rights
Act. The same year, the abolition of forced labour having been a dead
letter, the Indian Parliament passed a law called the Bonded Labour
System (Abolition) Act. In 1989, the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled
Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was passed to introduce special
provisions protecting Dalits and Adivasis from physical and verbal
abuse, and violence.4

The 1950 Constitution also introduced new rules in the realm

of positive discrimination. The most ambitious innovation that
was common to all the domains was regarding the principle of
proportionality. Reservations in favour of Dalits and Adivasis in the
education system, in the public sector and in the assemblies, had
to be proportional to their percentage in society.5 Correlatively,
the SCs - like the STs - were the only castes which continued to
be enumerated in the census every 10 years. This arrangement was
- for 10 - but it has been
supposed to be temporary years only
voted again in Parliament every 10 years ever since. While the
number of the Scheduled Castes has increased steadily - 607 jatis
were registered in the first notification of 1950 of the Indian Union,
- but the
they were 1109 by 2002 proportion of Dalits in the Indian
population has remained almost the same.
The frontiers of the SCs has changed for mainly two reasons. On
the one hand, some caste groups have claimed successfully that they
were Dalits (in order to benefit from the positive discrimination
programmes, mainly).6 On the other hand, new religious groups
have become eligible with the recognition of their Dalits as
Scheduled Castes. In 1956, Sikh Dalits have been admitted in this
social category. In 1990, it has been the turn of the Buddhists. Dalit
Christians and Dalit Muslims are still excluded from the Scheduled

Christophe Jaffrelot

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

Castes, allegedly because their religions are egalitarian, and, more

probably, because the inclusion of Christianity and Islam would
result in conversion to these two religions.

Table 1.1: Dalits in the population of India

Census year Total population Scheduled Castes pop. % oftheSC pop.

(in millions) (in millions) To the total pop.

1961 439.2 64.4 14.7

1971 547.9 80.0 14.6
1981* 665.3 104.8 15.7
1991** 838.6 138.2 16.5
2001*** 1028.6 166.6 16.2
Source: Census of India.
* ** ***
Excludes Assam; Excludes Jammu and Kashmir, Excludes the Mao

Maram, Paomata and Purul sub-divisions of the Senapati district in Manipur.

The Constitution of India undoubtedly opened up new

perspectives. It was progressive and even revolutionary to some

extent, in large part because of the key role that Dr. Ambedkar
played in its making. Yet, it also marked a certain regression so
far as the politics of reservation was concerned. Certainly, Dr.
Ambedkar had given up any hope for separate electorate (this
formula had become completely illegitimate in 1947 since it

was considered as the root cause for Muslim separatism and the

formation of Pakistan). But he was keen to retain the system of the

primaries, which enabled local Dalits in any reserved constituency
to select the four candidates who were to contest the elections.

Congress leaders wanted to abolish the primaries in 1948. Dr.

Ambedkar fought a losing battle by asking - through one of his
lieutenants - that in the reserved seats, no MP or MLA could be
elected if, besides the largest number of votes, he did not get at
least 35 per cent of the Dalits' vote. These precious safeguards
were ignored by the Congress party,7 which established a system
of reserved seats in which Dalit MPs and MLAs were not especially
accountable to the members of their community in any way, but to
the voters at large.

• • •

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In post-Independence India, positive discrimination programmes

relied mostly on the mechanism of reservations. This system had some
advantages and obvious drawbacks. In the political domain, Dalits
were obviously not in a position to send MPs and MLAs representing
them in any radical way in the Lok Sabha and in the Vidhan
Sabhas simply because of the arithmetic of groups. Under the 1961
delimitation of parliamentary constituencies, 75 seats were reserved
for Scheduled Castes candidates. The proportion of the population
made up by these castes in these constituencies varied considerably,
but they were never in a majority, as evident from the following table:

Table 1.2: Distribution of the constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes

according to the percentage of Scheduled Castes

% of Scheduled Castes Number of Constituencies

[0-10] 4
[10-20] 25
[20-30] 33
[30-40] 10
[40-50] 3
Source: M. Galanter, 'Compensatory Discrimination in Political

Representation', Economic and Political Weekly 14 (7-8), Feb. 1979, pp. 438

Besides, 75 per cent of the Scheduled Castes were in non-reserved

constituencies. A coalition of high and intermediate castes could very

well have their SC candidate returned, even if the SC did not vote for
him. Now, Congress had become adept at co-opting SC leaders and
to have them returned by mobilizing non-SC voters.8 One such SC
leaders co-opted by the Congress, Jagjivan Ram, admitted that 'since
one had to depend on the non-SC vote, one went along with the
fortunes of the party'.9 As a result, Dalits had no real spokepersons
advocating their case in Parliament. For instance, the 'official' Dalit
representative the Congress promoted, Jagjivan Ram, was very pliable.
Reservations in the administration posed different problems. While
in the assemblies, the 15 per cent quota was immediately fulfilled, the
situation was not that favourable in the bureaucracy, especially so far
as the highest classes were concerned. The situation was satisfying
in terms of aggregates (see table 1.3) but like the varna system, the
Indian bureaucracy has four classes and Dalits have been very poorly
represented for a long time in its upper echelons (table 1.3).

Christophe Jaffrelot

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

Table 1.3: Number and percentage of Dalits in the Central government

employment (1960-2003)

Year Numbers (and %) of SC in Central government employment

1960 228 497 (12.24)
1969 359 943 (15.24)
1970 291 374(11.66)
1979 467 712 (15.12)
1980 490 592 (15.67)
1989 568 600 (16.41)
1990 590 108(16.41)
1999 591 839 (16.70)
2000 582 446 (16.05)
2003 540 220 (16.52)
Source: S.K. Thorat and C. Senapati, Reservation in India - Dimensions
Policy
and Issues, New Delhi, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, 2006, p. 9 (Coll.

'Working Papers Series').

Till the 1980s, Dalits were well represented in Class C and D of

the administration. In the 1980s, Class B crossed the 10 per cent
threshold, something that happened in the 1990s in the case of Class
A. For decades, the quotas were not fulfilled, allegedly because there
were too few skilled candidates for the posts of the upper classes of
the administration.

Indeed, Dalits were affected by a massive under-education till the

1980s. Between 1981 and 1991, the proportion of Dalits who knew
how to read and write jumped from 21.38 per cent to 37.41 per
cent. This trend accelerated in the 1990s, so much so that by the
turn of the twenty-first century, almost 55 per cent of the Dalits were

literate, men reaching the remarkable figure of 66.6 per cent while
women were lagging behind with a poor 41.9 per cent. While the
gap between Dalits and the general population in terms of literacy
was 15 percentage points large in the 1960-1990s, it is now ten
points large only. In some ways, Dalits are catching up.
Better education has been one of the reasons for the presence of
Dalits in the administration in larger numbers. The reduction of the
backlog and the fulfilling of most quotas are also due to changes
of policies. In 1974, for instance, reservations were extended to
promotion by selection from Class C to Class B, and from Class B
to Class A. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled against reservations in

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Table 1.4: Percentage of Dalits in Central Government employment, class

(1965-2003)

Year Class A Class B Class C Qass D

(excluding

sweepers)

1965 1.64 (318 people) 2.82 (864) 8.88 5(96114) 17.75 (201073)
1968 2.11 3.11 9.22 18.32

1971 2.58 (741 people) 4.06 (1794) 9.59 (136259) 18.37(212248)

1972 2.99 4.13 9.77 18.61

1973 3.14 4.51 10.05 18.37

1974 3.25 4.59 10.33 18.53

1975 3.43 4.98 10.71 18.64

1981 5.46 (2883 people) 8.42 (5298) 12.95 (243028) 19.35 (238985)
1982 5.49 9.02 13.39 23.41

1984 6.92 10.36 13.98 20.20

1985 7.65 10.04 14.88 20.81

1987 8.23 10.41 14.45 20.04

1988 8.67 11.18 14.80 19.88

1989 8.51 (5204 people) 11.65 5(10021) 14.85 (330330) 20.41 (223045)
1990 8.64 11.29 15.19 21.48

1991 9.09 11.82 15.65 21.24

1992 9.67 11.57 15.74 20.88

1993 9.80 12.17 15.91 20.73

1994 10.24 12.06 15.74 20.47

1995 10.15 12.67 16.15 20.53

1996 11.51 12.30 15.45 20.27

1997 10.74 12.90 16.20 24.06

1998 10.80 12.35 16.32 18.65

1999 11.29 (10558 people) 12.68(13306) 15.78 (378115) 20.00 (189860)

2000 10.97 12.54 15.88 17.38

2001 11.42 12.82 16.25 17.89

2002 11.09 14.08 16.12 20.07

2003 11.93 (10256 people) 14.32(26040) 16.29 (345718) 17.98(158206)
Source: Ibid., p. 11.

: Christophe Jaffrelot

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

Table 1.5: Literacy rates of those who are more than 7-year-old among the

general population and among Scheduled Castes (1961-2001)

Year National average Scheduled Castes

1961 24.02 10.27

1971 29.45 14.67
1981 36.23 21.38
1991 52.10 37.41
2001 64.8 54.79
Source: Census of India.

promotions. But the government had the Constitution amended in

1997 to continue reservations in promotion for SCs and STs till the
representation of each of these social groups reaches the prescribed
quota. These measures can only be explained by the growing
bargaining power of Dalits on the political scene.

Several laws voted by the Indian parliament have remained dead

letters. The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction
of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, is a case in point. It was
supposed to eliminate the degrading practice of manual scavenging
of human excreta by some Dalit castes (called Bhangis in North
India) but has not been implemented in many places. Ten years
after the Act was passed, the Union Ministry for Social Justice and
Empowerment had to admit to the existence of 676,000 manual
scavengers in India (according to unofficial estimates, the number of
manual scavengers in India may be as high as 1.3 million).10
Similarly, atrocities against Dalits continue in spite of the 1989
law. The practice of atrocities has a long history in India. One of the
most infamous cases took place in 1968, in a village of Tamil Nadu,
Kilvenmani (Tanjore district) where 42 Dalit agricultural labourers,
who asked for better wages, were locked in a hut and burnt alive
by upper-caste local dominants.11 Almost four decades later, in
September 2006, a similar development occurred in a village of
Maharastra, Khairlanji (Bhandara district where upper-caste people
killed four members of a Dalit family (including the mother, her
two sons and her daughter) who were resisting land expropriation.
Obviously, the upper-caste people of the village resented the growing

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assertivenessof this family whose children were especially bright.12

According to the Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, 27 atrocities are
committed against Dalits every day: 13 Dalits are murdered every
week, 5 Dalits homes' or possessions burnt every week, 6 Dalits
are kidnapped or abducted every week, 3 Dalit women are raped
everyday and 11 Dalits beaten everyday.13 And this in spite of the
fact that besides the Anti-Atrocities Act, the SC/ST (Prevention
of Atrocities) Rules, 1995, framed under the Act provides for a
comprehensive legislative mechanism to achieve the aims of the
Anti-Atrocities Act.
Dalits continue to be submitted to atrocities because the police
refuse to register their complaints. When they do, the intimidation
techniques of the upper castes dissuade the witnesses from testifying
before the judges. And the judiciary itself is known for its biased
approach towards Dalit issues. As a result, according to the
National Human Rights Commission annual report, 27,894 cases
were registered under the Atrocities Act in 2002 and only 2.31 per
cent of cases resulted in conviction. Even when the guilty men are
condemned, their sentences may be commuted into less severe

ones after some time. For instance, the six accused who had been

sentenced to death in the Khairlanji case have seen their sentence

commuted into a 25-years of imprisonment by the Nagpur bench of

the Bombay High Court in July 2010.
The continuation of atrocities is also due to the fact that, in spite
of reservations, Dalits remained among the weakest parts of society,

especially in villages, where positive discrimination programmes

have made little difference. Certainly, caste and class do not coincide
in India. But they largely overlap, as is evident from table 1.6.

Table 1.6: Social groups stratified by monthly per capita consumption

expenditure classes, rural India (1999-2000)

MPCE Class ST SC OBC Hindu upper castes All groups

Below poverty line 50.9 42.9 33.7 16.9 33.6

Rs 329-470 30.8 34.4 35.8 32.5 33.8
Rs 470-775 15.6 19.2 24.5 36.6 25.3

Rs 775 or more 2.7 3.4 6.1 14 7.3

Total 100 100 100 100 100

Source: Reports no. 468 and no. 469, NSSO, Sept. 2001

: Christophe Jaffrelot

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

Almost 43 per cent of the Dalits lived below the poverty line at
the turn of the twenty-first century, against less than 17 per cent
of the Hindu upper castes. These figures reflect the poor socio
economic status of the former who work mostly in the fields of
others as landless labourers. In 2003, the share of cultivable land
owned by the SCs was 9 per cent only, against STs, 11 per cent;
OBCs, 44 per cent; and others, 36 per cent. That was due to the
fact that the per-household land area owned by the SCs was the
lowest, 0.304 ha, against 0.767 ha in the case of the STs, 0.758 ha
for the OBCs, and 1.003 ha for the others.
Under these conditions, some Dalits opted for an open revolt and
joined the Naxalite movement. This trend was especially popular in
Bihar where class conflicts coincided with caste cleavages, mostly
between Bhumihars and Dalits. The former formed militias (Senas),
such as the Ranvir Sena while Dalits partly aligned themselves with
Maoists. This opposition resulted in caste wars. In December 1997,
armed Ranvir Sena activists entered 14 Dalit homes in Laxmanpur
Bathe village (Arwal district) and killed a total of 58 people,
including 16 children and 27 women. This attack, alledgedly came
as a response to the killing of 37 upper-caste people by Naxalites in
Bara (Gaya district). However, it appears that the Bhumihars wanted
to seize 50 acres of land that had been earmarked for distribution
among the landless labourers of the village. On 7 April 2010, the
Additional District and Sessions Judge of the Patna Civil Court
sentenced 16 men to death and 10 to life imprisonment for the
massacre of Laxmanpur-Bathe.

While some Dalits take to arms to fight their oppressors - mostly in

the countryside - others prefer to mobilize in a constitutional way
and develop their struggle in the political arena. Here, Dr. Ambedkar
- who has - showed the
always advocated a legalistic approach
way as early as the 1930s-'40s when he started political parties.
He, however, oscillated between two strategies: either building a
political party that would advocate the cause of the working class at
large or concentrate his attention on Dalits alone. The Independent
Labour Party (ILP) founded by Ambedkar in 1936, reflected the
first perspective: as its name suggests, it aimed to represent workers

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and peasants (especially landless ones). However, the ILP did not
succeed in attracting support beyond Dalits, not even Mahars,
Ambedkar's caste fellows. In 1942, Ambedkar decided to replace it
by the Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF) the objective of which was
to promote the cause of Dalits. This approach, however, reached its
limits in the 1950s. The first general election of 1952 showed not
- the
only that the SCF remained confined to Maharashtra province
of Ambedkar - but that it could not attract Dalit voters beyond
Mahars either. The latter thus conceived another party in 1956, the
year of his death, the Republican Party of India (RPI) which was
meant to combine the distinctive features of SCF and ILP to the
extent where, on the one hand, it targeted ascriptive groups, as the
SCF that aimed at Dalits, and, on the other, it was open, as was the
ILP, to other groups such as religious minorities, lower castes and
aborigines, rather than only to Dalits. This approach would ensure
the rise of RPI in 1960s. It is this perspective that the Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) was to follow even more successfully in the 1980-90s.

In 1957, the RPI mobilizedpopular support in favour of the

redrawing of the map of the Bombay province according to the
linguistic criterion, a movement that gave birth to Maharashtra
and established the party on the political scene of the new state.
However, its firstbreakthrough was in Northern India in the 1960s,
highlighted by its performance in the Uttar Pradesh elections of 1962
and 1967, when it won 8 and 10 seats respectively in the assembly of
the largest state of India, as against 3 and 5 in Maharashtra. In 1962,
it was so because in Uttar Pradesh, RPI was supported by Muslim
voters whose faith in the Congress - for which they usually voted
- had been shaken
by a major riot between Hindus and Muslims
in Aligarh in 1961, an event during which the government had not
responded with necessary promptness. This alliance between Dalits
and Muslims dovetailed with the logic of Dr. Ambedkar's project,
aiming for the coalition of status groups from lower castes to
religious minorities.
The RPI did not abandon the socio-economic stakes that it
continued to address with the logic of class. In 1959, it campaigned

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

in Maharashtra for a new redistribution of land, arguing the fact -

all - that land reform in the 1950s
recognized by impartial observers
had been a decoy. In 1964, the fourth session of the party, held in
Ahmedabad, addressed this issue as its top priority. In the meantime,
the manifesto drafted by the RPI before the election of 1962 had
advocated for a nationalization of land and development of agrarian
collectivist structures.
The growing importance of socio-economic issues on the party's
agenda displeased the old guard of former lieutenants of Ambedkar
who, faithful to the philosophy of SCF, considered the problems
of Dalits as specific and regretted that the RPI diluted them with
others.14 The leader of this group, B.K. Gaekwad (1902-1971), a
Mahar of Nasik district who had been the architect of SCF and then
of RPI in Maharashtra, was opposed to a new generation of leaders
both more urban and better educated, of which B.C. Kamble, a
lawyer from Bombay, was the leader.
The conflict over strategy quickly doubled the classic factional
struggle; the death of Ambedkar created a crisis of leadership
from which RPI never emerged. Factional fights resulted in
several divisions, so that by early 1970 no less than four RPIs
were in existence, including the one headed by Ambedkar's son,
Bhaiyyasaheb. Their competition was a major factor in electoral
decline. In 1971, only 3 of their candidates could be elected to the
Assembly of Maharashtra.
The RPI had failed in its efforts to expand beyond Maharashtra
and to broaden its base. Not only would it attract few Dalits, but
even among them, it would be confined to the Mahars; the other
Untouchable castes, especially the Chamars would prefer to support

the Congress or the Shiv Sena. Past master in the art of co-opting
Untouchable leaders, the Congress also knew how to attract the
Ambedkarists' - whose defection only weakened the RPI. The four
RPIs ended this coup by collaborating with Indira Gandhi in view
of elections of 1977, but without gaining any profit from it. From
1980 to mid-1990, not a single RPI (candidate) won a single seat.
Prakash, the grandson of Ambedkar, who took over after his father's
death in 1978, however, managed to unite the issues of formation of
RPI, which enabled him to win 4 seats in the Lok Sabha during the
general elections of 1998. Nevertheless, the party again fell into the

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rut of factionalism of the past the following year. The result was that

the 3 new RPIs could only win one seat in 1999 and in 2004, a very
lacklustre performance in contrast to the irresistible BSP.

Another party claiming Ambedkar's legacy, the Bahujan Samaj Party

(BSP), was indeed a success story of the 1980s.15 Its founder, Kanshi
Ram, was from a Chamar family of Punjab who, like Ambedkar,
had benefitted from the opening of the army to Dalits during the
colonial era - his father and uncles had held military posts. Kanshi
Ram had also benefited from the policy of positive discrimination of
post-independence India. He got a BSc degree and in 1953, worked
as an assistant chemist in a laboratory under the Ministry of Defence.
Transferred to Poona, in Maharashtra, he discovered the miserable
condition of Mahars there. They were in a situation worse than Dalits
of Punjab. Kanshi Ram read the works of Ambedkar and joined the
RPI shortly after. But soon he turned away from the party because of
its rampant factionalism and alliance with the Congress of which he

was critical.
Kanshi Ram launched the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes,
Other Backward Classes
and Minority Communities Employees
Association in 1971. Its name reflected his loyalty to the Ambedkar
project, aiming to aggregate all religious minorities, Scheduled
Castes, tribes and even low castes - all victims of discrimination
related to their status. The components of what he called the Bahujan
Samaj (literally: 'Society of those who are the most numerous') were
clearly found there. With the same logic, Kanshi Ram established an
equally eloquent organization on behalf of the All India Backward
(Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes)
and Minority Communities Employees Federation in 1973. This
movement, known as BAMCEF, defended the interests of the
Bahujan officials. Its success reflected the growing number and
assertiveness of the beneficiaries of reservations policies. These
people, gradually, were forming a Dalit middle class. The rise of
BAMCEF, which would claim up to 200,000 members,16 disturbed
the prevalent power structure. Faced with State harassment, Kanshi

Ram transformed BAMCEF into a secret organization and founded

a parallel political party for which BAMCEF provided skilled

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

cadres. The Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DSSSS or DS4,

the committee of Dalits and oppressed) tended to refocus the work
of Kanshi Ram on his original targets, the Dalits. Then in 1984, he
set up a new party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP — Party of the
Masses) whose name was more consistent with the initial plan of Dr.
Ambedkar: rally support from all segments of the Indian plebe.
The BSP met with growing electoral successes between 1989 and
2009, despite large regional disparities. The area of party strength
lay in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of India, where it crossed from
12 to 66 seats between 1989 and 1993. Such a score enabled it to
form the government in association with the Samajwadi Party (SP -
Socialist Party), a regional party particularly well established among
OBC. However, this coalition broke up two years later because of
personal rivalries among leaders of the BSP and the SP, and because
of a class conflict between the OBC and Dalit in the countryside
where, in many cases, the latter, landless peasants, were working for
the former.

Table 1.7: Results of BSP in the general elections from 1989 to 2009.

Year Candidates Winning Candidates % ofvalid votes

1989 246 3 2.07
1991 231 2 1.61

1996 117 11 3.64

1998 251 5 4.7

1999 N.A. 14 4.2

2004 435 19 5.33
2009 500 21 6.17

Sources: Election Commission of India, Report on the Ninth General Elections

to the House of the People in India, 1989, New Delhi, Government of India

Press, 1990; p. 7, Election Commission of India, Report on the Tenth General

Elections to the House of the People in India, 1998, New Delhi, [no date];

p. 9, Election Commission of India, Statistical Report on General Elections,

1996 to the Eleventh Lok Sabha, Vol. 1, New Delhi, 1996; G.V.L. Narasimha

Rao et K. Balakrishnan, Indian Elections: The Nineties, Delhi, Haranand, 1999;

Y. Yadav and S. Kumar, 'Interpreting the Mandate', Frontline, 5 November

1999, p. 120-126; and Y. Yadav and S. Palshikar, 'Between Fortuna and Virtu:

Explaining the Congress' Ambiguous Victory in 2009', Economic and Political

Weekly,26 Sept. 2009, Vol. XLIV, No. 39, p. 33

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Table 1.8: Electoral performance of the BSP in five states of North India

during the general elections of 1989-2009, in percentage of valid votes and

in terms of seats (in parenthesis)

States Haryana Punjab Uttar Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Uttarakhand

% of SC 19.75 28.31 21.05 14.5 -

in 1991
1989 1.62 (0) 8.62 (1) 9.93 (2) 4.28 (0) -
1991 1.79 (0) No election 8.70(1) 3.54(1) -
1996 6.6 (0) 9.35 (3) 20.61 (6) 8.18(2) -
1998 7.7(1) 12.7 (0) 20.9 (4) 8.7 (0) -
1999 1.7(0) 3.8 (0) 22.1 (14) 5.2 (0) -
2004 4.9 (0) 7.67 (0) 24.6 (19) 4.75 (0) 6.8 (0)
2009 15.7 (0) 5.75 (0) 27.4 (20) 5.85(1) 15.3 (0)

The BSP had shown great pragmatism - called opportunism by its

detractors - by getting into alliances with any party — including
the BJP - which would agree to support a government headed by
Mayawati, the Dalit woman who led the BSP in Uttar Pradesh and
then nationally after Kanshi Ram suffered from a stroke in 2003

(he was to die 3 years later). Mayawati was chief minister of Uttar
Pradesh, at the helm of coalition governments, three times: in 1995

(between June and October, with the support of the SP), in 1997
(between March and September), in 2002-2003 (between May 2002
and August 2003 with the support of the BJP). In 2007, for the first
time, the BSP won an absolute majority in Uttar Pradesh.
The feeling of social revenge that the supporters of BSP drew from
this conquest of power consolidated the electoral base of the party.
But these subjective feelings were not the only reasons for the BSP's
growing success in Uttar Pradesh. Besides these symbolic reasons,
social and economic policies mattered a lot. Mayawati implemented
public policies, which benefited mostly the lower castes. The
Ambedkar Village Scheme, that harks back to the mid-1990s is a
case in point. It consisted in special development drives (in terms of
roads, schools, irrigation, etc.) in the villages where Dalits were in
large numbers. As soon as she took over as chief minister, Mayawati
also issued a Government Order on 31 May 2007 to clear the
backlog quota of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs.
In July of the same year she increased the daily agriculturalist wage
from Rs. 58 to 100 - a measure benefiting mostly Dalits. Last but

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

not least, the government returned to a strict implementation of the

Scheduled Castes and Scheduled

Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act
by making the administration, including the police, more responsive
to Dalits - many Dalit policemen have been recruited and posted
in rural thanas (police stations). This last move has been resented
by the upper and dominant castes who are realizing that not only
were Dalits were asserting themselves economically, but were doing
so psychologically, under Mayawati.
The rise of BSP was based primarily on support from the
Chamar community (the caste of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati), but
gradually other Dalits (including Pasis in the North and Mahars
in Maharashtra), and even significant chunks of lower OBCs and
Muslims rallied around the party (see table 1.8).

Table 1. 9: The Dalit vote for the BSP in seven states (in %)

States % of Dalit votes

Chhattisgarh 27

Delhi 23
Haryana 57

Madhya Pradesh Jatavs: 27

Other Dalits: 6

Maharashtra Mahars: 15

Buddhist Dalits: 37

Other Dalits: 9

Punjab Hindu Dalits: 21

Sikh Dalits: 14

Uttar Pradesh Jatavs: 85

Pasis: 64

Other Dalits: 61

Source: Rahul Verma, 'Dalit Voting Patterns', Economic and Political Weekly,
26 Sept. 2009, vol. XLIV, No 39, p. 97.

Apart from its poor outreach in many Indian states, the BSP's
main weakness, similar to Ambedkar's parties, was its poor
organization. This handicap went hand in hand with a striking
taste for personalization of power: the BSP has gradually become
identified with its leader, Mayawati, who rules in a rather solitary
and authoritarian way.

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With 21 per cent of the Dalits voting for the BSP (against 27 per
cent voting for the Congress), the party has become the third party
of India, before the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2009.

Today, Dr. Ambedkar has become an inescapable reference point

for all politicians, including BJP and Congress leaders who have
discovered him recently but often pay allegiance to 'Babasaheb' more
than to their own founding fathers. Dalits seem to be everywhere
at the top of the state: India has become familiar with Dalit chief
ministers, such as Mayawati; Dalit ministers, to begin with Dr.
Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram as early as 1947; Dalit party presidents,
Bangaru Laxman on the BJP side and Jagjivan Ram on the Congress
side; Dalit chief justice, like the outgoing one; Dalit University vice
presidents; Dalit Planning Commission members; and even one Dalit
president of the Republic, K.R. Narayanan.17
However, these personalities represent only the tip of the iceberg,
as evident from the pervasiveness of mass poverty among Dalits and

the oppression they are subjected to. They are the products of a
public policy of positive discrimination which are precisely designed
to create elite groups among social categories where they could not
emerge otherwise.
The challenges ahead are directly related to the specificities of
this public policy. First, this policy is applied by the public sector
only. Now, this sector is on the decline because of the new rules of
the game introduced by the post-1991 liberalization programmes,
including a few privatizations and the growing informalization of
work. In 2002, the public sector employed 18,173,000 persons,
against 19,467,000 in 1995. The private sector, at the same time, has
slightly increased from 8,058,000 people in 1995 to 8,432,000 in
2002. The number of Dalits in public sector enterprises has declined
from 428,491 in 1990 to 236,618 in 2004 (see table 1.9).
Hence the demand spelled out by Dalit leaders for introducing
positive discrimination in the private sector, something the Mayawati
government has initiated indirectly since in each Uttar Pradesh
- where the
public/private partnership project government's share
cannot be less than 11 per cent and more than 49 per cent - 10 per
cent of the posts would be reserved to the Scheduled Castes, 10 per

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

Table 1.9: Numbers and percentage of employees in Public Sector Enterprises

(1971-2004)
Year Number (and %) of SC in the Public Sector
1971 40640 (7.42)
1979 300405 (16.90)
1980 317401 (17.44)
1989 423879(19.51)
1990 428491 (19.58)
1999 336140 (17.45)
2000 324140 (18)
2004 236618 (16.03)
Source: S.K. Thorat and C. Senapati, Reservation in India - Dimensions
Policy
and Issues, New Delhi, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, 2006, p. 18,

(Coll. 'Working Papers Series').

cent to the OBCs and religious minorities and 10 per cent to the
upper caste poor.
The second problem posed by the reservation policies can be
captured by one word: co-option. As mentioned above, these policies
aim at generating elite groups; as a result they are very vulnerable
to the strategies of dominant groups, which can deprive Dalits
of their leaders by offering lucrative and prestigious posts in the
establishment. This mechanism has been observed for decades in the
political domain where the ruling party, the Congress, minimized
the competition coming from Dalit parties by attracting the leaders
of the latter in its rank. In the early 1970s, Indira Gandhi lured B.P.
Maurya, the most important leader of the Ambedkarite Republican
Party of India by promising him a ministerial portfolio. In one go,
the RPI lost its momentum in Uttar Pradesh, the state where he had
made the maximum gains in the 1960s. When the elite are tiny,
such things can happen. And generating tiny elite is in the nature of
positive discrimination programmes.
The third issue concerns the ambivalent relationship that the
beneficiaries of reservations entertain with their caste fellows.
Reservation programmes enable them to join the privileged classes
at university and in the administration. Their life style changes, not
only in terms of material gains, but also in terms of values. They
tend to be cut off from their original milieu and, moreover, they tend

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to marry upper-caste women when they are successful Dalit males.

Today, some of these who behave

that way are not ashamed any
more of their attitude. They argue that, by their personal ways and
means they prove to the world that a Dalit can be like any upper
caste individual. That may be a great achievement, but by severing
their links with their caste brethren they deprive them from any
substantial leadership.
The last challenge pertains to the notion of the creamy layer.
Today, the quotas are cornered by those Dalits whose father and/or
mother have already benefited from positive discrimination policies.
They often come from one special jati in a given region. In Uttar
Pradesh, Jatavs are in the forefront; in Maharashtra, Mahars play a
similar role. Such a situation tends to defeat an important part of the
whole purpose since it prevents other Dalit jatis from a substantial
access to the reservations. Bhangis and Khatiks in UP, Mangs and
Chambhars in Maharashtra remain massively under-represented
in the State apparatus. In February, the Supreme Court suggested
that the creamy layer of the Dalits be excluded from the quotas - as
done with the OBCs. The entire political class objected to this move.
However, to be fair to the non-elite Dalit groups, special provisions
will have to be evolved sooner or later.

The challenges ahead may be negotiated by India's society and

government. The rise of the BSP has already upgraded the bargaining
power of Dalits, as is evident from the way job quotas have been more
effectively filled. The stakes are very high since Maoists may be in
a position to attract Dalits who will be deprived of any hope in the
regular functioning of the constitutional polity.

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 CASTE AND POLITICS

ENDNOTES:

1. For an overview of the reservation policy of the British, see B.A.V. Sharma,

'Development of Reservation Policy', in B.A.V. Sharma and K.M. Reddy (eds.),

Reservation Policy in India, New Delhi, Light and Light Publishers, 1982.

2. Dr. Amdedkar, who had registered at the Bombay High Court in 1923, had to

teach at Sydenham College to supplement his revenue (C. Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar

and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste, New York/Columbia University

Press; Londres/Hurst; New Delhi/Permanent Black, 2004, p. 29).

3. In Maharashtra, Dr. Ambedkar had fought against this caste-based division of

labour known as baluta.

4. The list of the offences which were made illegal by this act give an idea of the
kind of oppression Dalits and Adivasis were still suffering from in 1989: forcing
the SC/ST members to eat inedible or obnoxious substances, dumping excreta or
obnoxious substances with intent to cause injury, insult or annoyance, stripping,

dishonouring or outraging modesty of SC/ST women and sexual exploitation,

forced or bonded labour, intentional public humiliation, property-related offences

like wrongful cultivation or dispossession of land, wrongful eviction from land,

premises, house or other place of residence or village, unauthorized interference

with the enjoyment of rights over land and water, offences like intimidation or

coercion of voters to either abstain from voting or to vote for a particular candidate,

enforcing social disabilities like corrupting or fouling water used by members

of SC/STs, denial of rights of passage or entry to public places, abusing legal

process like insulating false, malicious or vexatious legal proceedings, furnishing

false or frivolous information to a public servant are made punishable with an

imprisonment for a term not less than six months but nor more than five years

and with fine. (Ajay, 'Atrocities on Dalits - A Human Rights Perspective', ILI Law

Review, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 63-64 (http://ssrn.com/abstract= 1578221)

5. 'At the time of Independence, instructions were issued on 21.9.1947 to provide

reservations of 12.5 per cent for Scheduled Castes in respect of vacancies arising
in recruitment made through open competition. However, for recruitments made

otherwise than open competition reservations of 16.66 per cent was fixed.

After the Constitution was promulgated, the then Ministry of Home Affairs in

its resolution of 13.9.1950 provided 5 per cent reservation for Scheduled Tribes

apart from the reservation that was already in effect for the Scheduled Castes.

According to the population ratio of these communities, based on 1961 Census,

the government on 25th March, 1970, increased the seats reserved for SCs & STs

from 12.5 per cent and 5 per cent to 15 per cent and 7.5 per cent, respectively'

(Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, New

Delhi, Ministry of Minority Affairs, p. 115).

: 115

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6. This race to backwardness is also evident from the trafficking of caste certificates,

which allows non-Dalits to profit by the reservation system.

7. C. Jaffrelot, India's Silent Revolution - The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India,

New York/Columbia University Press; Londres/Hurst; New Delhi/Permanent Black,

2003, p. 93.

8. M. Galanter, 'Compensatory discrimination in political representation', Economic

and Political Weekly 14 (7-8), Feb. 1979, pp. 438-439 and M. Galanter, Competing
- Law and the Backward Classes in India, Delhi, Oxford University Press,
Equalities

11984], 1991, p. 549.

9. Interview cited in F. Frankel, 'Caste, Land and Dominance in Bihar', in F. Frankel

and M.S.A. Rao (eds), Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a

Social Order, Delhi, Oxford University Press, p. 83.

10. Human Rights Watch, Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India's

Untouchables, 83 (2007), http://www.chrgj.org/docs/lndiaCERDShadowReport.pdf

11. Manoranjan Mohanty, 'Kilvenmani, Karamchedu to Khairlanji: Why Atrocities on

Dalits Persist', available at: http://www.boell-india.org/download_en/mohanty_

amrita_corrected.pdf
12. Anand Teltumbde, Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop, Delhi, Navayana, 2008.

13. '27 Atrocities against Dalits', available at: http://www.ncdhr.org.in/esdi/2-dalit

houses-are-destroyed (visited on 17 Oct. 2009).

14. J. Gokhale, From Concessions to Confrontation. The Politics of an Indian

Untouchable Community, Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1993, p. 220.

15. On the BSP, see S. Pai, Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution.

The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi, Sage, 2002; K. Chandra,

Why Ethnic Party Succeed. Patronage and Ethnic Head Counting in India,

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

16. G. Omvedt, 'Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Party' in K.C. Sharma (ed.). Caste and

Class in India, Jaipur, Rawat, 1994,163.

17. Narayanan, of Paravane caste, a caste of fishermen of Kerala, had known an

early career comparable to that of Ambedkar as it was because of a philanthropic

organization and then a Tata firm and a letter from Nehru to Harold Laski he could

continue his studies at the London School of Economics. But he then opted for

the Indian Foreign Service (an elite body of the Indian administration which led

him to the post of ambassador in USA). After entering politics, he was elected

under the label/ticket of Congress the year of his retirement in 1992. He died in

2005 (R. Krishnakumar, 'A Long Journey. From Uzhavoor to Rashtrapati Bhavan',

Frontline, 11 July 1997, pp. 12 and 161).

: Christophe Jaffrelot

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