The Entrenchment Of Casteism In India: In Light Of Rajasthan Dalit Boy’s Death

Introduction

Caste is a word that is one of the obligatory in Indian history that decides the social, economical, and political empowerment of the people even in the 21st century in the country. This pre-historic system of being, established by the Vedas has been plaguing the country since. Recently, a nine-year-old was beaten to death in Rajasthan, owing to his caste. This is the kind of supremacy that has been accorded to caste and its significance, allowing it to enable barbaric acts. Caste is a part and partial of the social and political organization of the country in all aspects and this can be protected by the group of leaders, organizations, and political parties to sustain their identity. The present article focuses on an overview of the caste system in India.

Rajasthan Case: Death of a Dalit Boy

Mere days before the colorful, animated celebrations on account of Independence Day, Rajasthan witnessed a dark day, re-affirming the existence of everything that attacks the “independence” we celebrate. On August 13, a nine-year-old Dalit boy was beaten to death by his upper caste teacher for allegedly drinking from a pot meant only for the teacher. 

The boy’s, Indra’s lower caste was the only point of conflict and instigation, as maintained by the police report. The family found support from Congress MLA and Rajasthan Commission for Scheduled Caste Chairman Khiladi Lal Bairwa, who hit out at his own government over the death of the boy and condemned the lethal casteism that allowed such a horrific incident to take place. 

As the issue snowballed and garnered more attention on social media, Congress MLA, Pana Chand Meghwal, on Monday submitted his resignation to Assembly Speaker C P Joshi and Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, saying he was “hurt at the constant atrocities being committed upon Dalits and the marginalized, even after 75 years of Independence”.

Chail Singh, the accused teacher, was arrested the day the child died, with an FIR replete with accusations of him using casteist slurs as a form of abuse against the child. The case is still ongoing. 

Rohith Vemula

Rohith Vemula’s suicide is another instance of institutionalized murder that can be chalked up to casteism. Just like the murder of the innocent nine-year-old gives a face to violence suffered by Dalits, Rohith’s story also talks of such brutal violence, taking all forms except physical.  I mention the case of Rohith Vemula because he presents an irony where the issue he strived to resolve still lives on after his death, because of his death. Rohith Vmeula was a Dalit Ph.D. at the University of Hyderabad, who committed suicide and his suicide letter sent ripples throughout the system, triggering off a chain of events that still remains unresolved. Vemula’s suicide was triggered after the university decided to revoke his scholarship for raising “issues under the banner of the Ambedkar Students Association” (ASA). Soon after, he found it difficult to manage his expenses and succumbed to the pressure. Vemula’s death is an ominous reminder that humanist and liberal ideas rarely fail to prevail in the face of centuries-old prejudice. His death is evidence that casteism is a plague that reduces a person to his immediate “identity” and nearest possibility and in the contemporary scenario, to a vote. 

History of the caste system in India 

Manusmriti or the Laws of Manu, a highly controversial yet widely regarded authoritative book on Hindu law provides the first instance of the institutionalization caste system.  Dated at least a millennium before even Christ was born, this collection of manuscripts, which held legal sanctity in the diction of Hindu practices acknowledges and justifies the caste system as the basis of order and regularity of society. The book further propounds on the same and divides Hindus into four main chronological categories - Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and the Shudras. Many believe that the groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation, however, the exact origin has stayed unclear. There are at least two perspectives on the origins of the caste system and its existence in medieval and ancient India. Each of these takes either ideological factors or socioeconomic factors as a nodal point. The first school focuses on the ideological factors which are claimed to drive the caste system and explains how caste is only rooted in the varna system which has been reinforced for centuries. The second school of thought focuses on socio-economic factors and claims that those factors affect the evolution of the caste system. It believes caste to be rooted solely in the economic, political, and material history of India. The term caste in itself, however, doesn't belong to the Indian vernacular. Caste comes from the Spanish and Portuguese word “casta” which means “race”, “breed”, or “lineage”. Many Indians use the term “jati”. There are roughly 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes in India, each related to a specific occupation. Although originally caste depended upon a person's work, it soon became an unalterable, hereditary status.

Brahmins were the priests and thus over time, were associated with being holy, Khastriyas were considered nobility, Vaishyas were associated with being traders and respectable hard-workers, and Shudras were considered peasants or servants. Some people were born outside of (and below) the caste system; they were called "untouchables" or Dalits—"the crushed ones."

This system still prevails in the Indian subcontinent where morphed versions of the aforementioned interpretations still exist. 

Theology Behind the Castes

Theology refers to divinity studies, or in contemporary times, studies of religion and god. The theology behind the caste system is difficult to pin down because while most religious texts and manuscripts acknowledge its presence, none elaborate upon its reason for existence. However, it was informally believed and propagated that the caste system is a product of reincarnation.  Reincarnation, in Hinduism and its mythology and cosmology, is described as the process through which a soul is reborn into a new material form after each life. It is believed that souls can move not only among different levels of human society but also into other animals. This belief gave rise to several branches of ritualistic practices and pillars. For instance, vegetarianism among Hindus is widely practiced because of the same. Reincarnation also implies that the rebirth of a soul into its next life form is decided by the virtuousness of said soul. This essentially means that a soul which has sinned in its past life would be potentially re-born as a shudra or a Dalit in its next life. Thus, caste was accorded a status of divinity where “you reap what you sow” was magnified on a cosmic scale. 

Casteism 

In Kaka Kalelkar’s words, “Casteism is an overriding blind and supreme group loyalty that ignores the healthy social standards of justice, fair play, equity, and universal brotherhood.” Casteism in the modern context is the politicization of caste, however, semantically it means discrimination against an individual by virtue of their caste, dismissing their merits or demerits prima facie. The caste system in India is a division of society into strata, influenced by the classic Aryan Verna’s of north India, and the Dravidajati system found in south India. Casteism enables the phenomena where “outcastes” have been reduced to servility and brahmins affirm their impunity, dominating the rest. 

History is witness to vivid punishments amounting to torture and death being assigned for “crimes” such as members of the “lower” castes gaining literacy or insulting a member of a dominant caste. Ever since, though such severe “punishments” are still carried out in an extra-judicial format, they have reduced in number (at least according to official records). 

 This ostracization though carries on in the form of micro-aggressions and conditioned discrimination. For instance, having separate utensils for people from lower castes, or the operation of a separate elevator for servants and domestic help. This social ostracization has thus been informally legitimized where inequality (however so the books try to justify it) is the guiding principle. The individuals belonging to higher castes thus are born into social and societal privilege. 

Violence against Dalits 

“Tell everyone we scalped you,” recalls Sardar Singh Jatav as a group of upper caste men pinned him down, broke his arm, and shaved his forehead. He was brutalised﹘when he had gone to talk to his son’s upper caste employers only because he is a member of the Dalit community, treated as pariahs for centuries.

This incident from September 2018 was just one among 4,15,821 cases of violence against Dalits that took place between 2011 and 2020, according to the latest available data from the National Crime Records Bureau. But these figures hide the reality and are merely a peephole into the actuality. The systemic subversion of the basic rights of Dalits that socially excludes and accommodates violence against them is ingrained in the very atom of Indian society, even in the 21st century.

Driven by majoritarian prejudices and political biases, the constitution too stands powerless against the dominating forces of doom prevailing in the society. Commenting on the same, Dr. B R Ambedkar had once remarked that though he has been called the ‘maker of the Indian constitution, he would be the first one to burn it because only a core fundamental shift in the attitudes of the public would bring forth the reform that the country yearns for. 

Years after Ambedkar’s remark in the constituent assembly debate, India appointed K R Narayan, as its first Dalit president. However, this facetious development was soon revealed to be a mere token, the bright mediocrity of which was supposed to distract the public from the actual, grave issues plaguing the country. Since the tenure of Mr. Narayan, ironically enough, atrocities against Dalits and their reportage have only increased in number. The cases lodged under the law, concerning the same have gone up by almost 300 percent in the past three decades, according to the NCRB’s ‘Crime in India’ collective reports (1990-2020).

Per NCRB data, there were 50,291 cases of reported crimes against Dalits in 2020; emphasis on the word reported, for the reported crimes are simply the tip of the iceberg. The increase in this sudden rise in number since 2011 has been recorded under the rule of the saffron party. 

The highest number of cases in the past decade have been reported from Uttar Pradesh (95,751), Bihar (63,116), Rajasthan (58,945), and Madhya Pradesh (44,469), and Andhra Pradesh (26,881). 

The primary cause in the dispensation of these organized and miscellaneous caste-driven crimes against Dalits is their low status in the social and economical hierarchy. Socio-economic inequality systematically victimizes Dalits by making them vulnerable to violence at the behest of upper-caste individuals. This is because the unequal distribution of capital and ownership of economic establishments creates a power dynamic that is biased towards those belonging to the upper caste. In most cases, as data records, this unfavorable power dynamic is abused.  

Untouchability too also plays a great role in perpetuating violence on a daily basis. Individuals ranking higher in the spatial caste category discriminate against those belonging to the scheduled cases and tribes, especially in rural areas, where the men who have the upper hand usually belong to dominant sections of Savarnas or Other Backward Castes. In modern times, people from lower castes, especially those who are constitutionally protected receive flak because the diaspora feels “threatened” by them benefiting from reservations and fear of losing their status. This is also the reason why reservations have become a contentious political tool, that is tossed around time and again, especially during elections, resulting in the accumulation of internal aggression, the brunt of whose fallout is borne by the already oppressed.  This is what Ambedkar called as ‘graded inequality, where rural upper castes are economically oppressed but oppress rural lower castes more explicitly than the subtle violence which an urban Dalit would face at the hands of the urban Savarna.

This surge in violence adds to Kshatriya pride and feeds into the socially constructed Brahminical supremacy. This also makes the society at large ignorant of such heinous crimes and ultimately, “caste-blind”. Besides, there is an alarming gap between acquittals and convictions, and per data, also a high pendency in such caste-related cases with a skewed charge sheet rate because it is often difficult to translate such socially polluted intentions into concrete legal terms.

Dalit insecurity has increased over time because even after 75 years of independence, the colonial hangover ensures that the uniformed forces feel obligated to primarily protect the rich and those belonging to the upper cost, often at the cost of the lower-class individuals.  

A report by the Human Rights Watch, in collaboration with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, researched the same and corroborated that the police generally support the propertied landlords over the oppressed and view the latter as inherent criminals. Dalits are overrepresented among those who are detained and tortured as they cannot afford to pay bribes and lack social or political support. Political representatives, too, mirror the Brahminism inherent in society. 

Cases of violence against Dalit women especially are symptomatic of the Brahmanical patriarchy of our society that legitimizes barbaric acts. For instance, the rape of a 19-year-old in Hathras, which led to protests throughout the country was one such case that was brought to the fore. In the Hathras case, the police cremated the body without prior consent from the family, because of an underlying sense of ownership and social privilege. Even more recently, a national daily was the target of public hate because they published the photo of the burnt body of a woman belonging to a lower class. This wouldn't have happened had the woman been accorded the status of a higher-class individual.

From the struggle to lodge an FIR to the filing of charges and a long, slow trial amid hostilities; the judicial process becomes just another form of punishment for those born as Dalit and those who dare to speak up.

These are not merely isolated incidents but an ominous pattern of manifestations of Brahmanical vengeance against the Dalit identity, upholding the oblivious cycle of violence against the marginalized groups.

Conclusion 

Casteism in India is unique and pernicious. The effect it has on human behavior is deplorable, as is evident in the aforementioned cases. Its effects have killed the public spirit too. The situation has not changed radically over the years. Gita Ramaswamy’s book- Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary, is autobiographical but tells us about the shocking exploitation of Dalits by the upper caste landlords in Ibrahimpatnam in Telangana and elsewhere. Though, the fact that a brahmin takes charge of a narrative that doesn't belong to them, is telling enough of the poor representation that Dalits and people from lower castes get in media and literature. Anyway, she talks about brutality against Dalits, especially in the form of bonded labor.  Gita also explains the efforts to organize the Dalits and the challenges that they faced.

The Constitution remains the most formidable political instrument against casteism. Articles 341 and 342 empowered the President to enlist the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. By way of special provisions like Articles 15 and 16, caste-based discrimination was sought to be replaced by protective and uplifting state action. Article 17 banned the practice of untouchability. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 penalized untouchability. Other atrocities against the Dalits were made punishable by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,1989, which was amended subsequently. 

However, this mammoth task of protecting the marginalized from the oppressors is not an easy task, nor is it a task fulfilled. The constitutional functionaries have to endeavor to free the society from the clutches of casteism. These laws are merely ways to look after the sufferers, they do not abolish the caste system and this brutal phenomenon of class discrimination is not limited to just territorial boundaries. Nor is it merely a primitive rural phenomenon. It very much prevails in modern economic and societal life in varied ways. In a globalized world where the exchange of ideas has permeated borders, casteism too has transcended national boundaries. It is an Indian form of apartheid with an age-old scheme for systemic exploitation. As citizens of the new world, it is upon us to not let caste escape the executive and legislative measures and ensure its eradication from society by means of mobilization.