For hundreds of years, a hierarchical caste structure has repressed Indian society, sustaining various forms of exploitation and inequality. The ruling castes/classes in India have a shameful history of institutionalising graded inequality and stigmatising labouring classes as untouchables and unseeable, even though oppression and inequality are prevalent in many nations. This caste system is defined by graded inequalities in which no caste is equal to another. Revolutionary stalwarts like Babasaheb Ambedkar, Periyar, and Mahatma Phule battled against these injustices and inequality during the colonial era. Therefore, while the Indian Constitution was drafted in the post-independence era, the founding fathers accepted a democratic political setup with its normative commitment to equality and included safeguards for the age-old oppressed castes and communities, statutorily called ‘reservations’ in the law-making bodies and public education and employment by abolishing social distinctions based on heredity. Thus, the Constitution deliberately enshrined social justice to eliminate graded inequality.
Article 14 of the Constitution states that everyone is equal before the law. Article 16(4) provides reservations in education and government employment for socially and educationally backward castes and tribes who have suffered untouchability, humiliation, and deprivation. Judicial interpretations have long emphasised that reservations are not contrary to the right to equality but rather an exception that enriches Article 14 by advancing its substantive meaning. However, it took decades for the judiciary to affirm that untouchability and social backwardness justified reservations, not economic backwardness. The state and its institutions have continuously failed to provide advantages to deserving castes and efficiently execute reservations since independence. Even the ruling class has shown indifference toward reservations given to former untouchable castes. Because of the long-standing carelessness of the ruling castes and classes, all oppressed castes who were structured in graded inequality did not prosper equally, making the society more unequal despite equality of opportunity.
Educational access is crucial for leveraging reservations, yet schools, colleges, universities, and technical institutions have been kept out of reach for the untouchables and most backward castes. Though the Constitution makes reservation an obligatory/mandatory policy for an adequate representation of caste-oppressed groups, the ruling elites have used them as a tool for vote bank politics, suiting the ruling elites for petty political and electoral interests. Consequently, most backwards among the SCs and most backward families within those castes have been deprived of adequate representation in educational and employment opportunities.
However, some groups within these oppressed castes have made marginal gains, if not adequate representation, in education and employment due to reservations. The dominant castes' ruling parties accommodated these relatively advantageous sections within the SCs for petty political gains. Even the public sector, which is mainly headed by the dominant castes/classes, saw to it that these reservations were not reached to the most oppressed castes/families within the SCs. These actions of both have deepened inequalities within oppressed castes and fostered divisions.
Towards a casteless society
As Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar envisioned, reservations should aim to dismantle the caste system and build a society free of inequalities. However, rulers have often used the reservation system to strengthen caste hierarchies. Beneficiaries of reservations are supposed to lead two-pronged simultaneous struggles: firstly, expansion of reservations within the system by representing the oppressed castes in workplaces according to the proportion of their population, making it more adequate; secondly, struggle in civil society against the violence and oppression inflicted upon their communities by dominant castes. Unfortunately, those who have benefited from reservations have often not fulfilled these dual responsibilities effectively. In Uttar Pradesh, where the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led a historically united struggle for political power, it didn’t resolve the problem of inadequate representation in reservations by the most backward among the SCs. The Karamchedu-Tsundur united struggle in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, which brought the historic SC/ST Atrocity Act of 1989 against caste violence, also didn’t address the inequalities within the SCs.
Public policy and philosophy have differing opinions on the ‘reservation policy.’ The philosophical justification of reservations is logically prior to the public policy justification. In India, the unit for implementing reservation is a homogenous group identity based on social untouchability and caste discrimination, which represents graded inequality. An individual cannot be the criteria but a preference. We would like to reiterate that the primary criteria for reservation are untouchability and caste oppression and not the economic criteria. Some Scheduled Castes have made limited progress in education, employment, and politics, while many others remain inadequately accessed to the reservations. Reservations provided for the SCs do not guarantee equality of results unless these communities are empowered by allocating adequate funds and fostering skills and opportunities in emerging scientific and technical fields.
To ensure equity, reservations must be distributed among the oppressed to guarantee the equality of results to the neediest within the castes. To do that, we must ensure that the benefits reach the first generation of those eligible within the castes. Subsequent generations can then access opportunities progressively. The creamy layer concept must not be introduced as long as untouchability and caste oppression persist.
Way forward
Oppressed castes must unite democratically and demand proportional increases in reservation quotas based on population growth. Quality education in schools, colleges, and universities, similar to Navodaya Schools, must be provided for these oppressed castes. All the struggling forces must resist privatisation and corporatisation of education to safeguard their reservations in education and jobs. Efforts should also push for legislation ensuring reservations in the private sector for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, women, and the most deprived Other Backward Classes. Only collective and sustained struggles involving democratic sections of the dominant castes can achieve these goals and move toward a casteless, equitable society. Here, we propose the following tentative proposals based on our understanding of the problem of sub-classification.
The aim of these proposed models is primarily to strengthen the unity and homogeneity of the oppressed castes; secondly, it is intended to reach the reservation benefits of the most deserved groups within the SCs to achieve equality of results.
First Approach: 1. Identify the most deprived castes that lack access to education and employment and group them separately, giving them the highest priority. 2. Create another group for castes that have marginally benefited from reservations, such as Malas and Madigas, and assign them a secondary priority.
Second Approach: 1. Group the most deprived Madiga sub-castes and prioritise them first. 2. Similarly, group the most deprived Mala sub-castes and assign them the second priority. 3. Separate the Madiga caste as a group for the third priority. 4. Create a group for the Mala caste for the fourth priority.
Addressing the classification problem, we prefer the ‘preferential model’. Any preferential model requires honest, reliable and demonstrable data that the Union Government can collect through the caste census at the national level. Once such data is collected, the classification process may be initiated according to the Constitution.
(While K Lakshminarayana is Professor, School of Economics, University of Hyderabad, KY Ratnam is an Associate Professor with the Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad)