Source : India MediaThis blog is in response to an article by distinguished journalist, Mr. A.J. Philip, in the newspaper he edits, The Herald of India. Here is the link to the original article: http://www.heraldofindia.com/article.php?id=489
Dear Mr. Philip,
Your reference to Bihar brings back lots of memories of my own stint as a journalist in that state. A senior colleague of mine, the late Arvind Das, used to call Bihar the centre of the universe, given the state's social complexities. While I appreciate your views on caste, and do abhor discrimination of any kind, I would like to point out a couple of things. Discrimination is as Darwinian as oppression. The evolution of a society is studied through the many cycles of catharsis that it has experienced. Our sociologists and historians have been trying for centuries to simply understand what is India and why is India different from any other society in the world. I have not found a decent answer yet in my many readings. I feel a society has to be seen in its living past and living present. Ignoring or denying any variable of that society and then attempting to study its evolution is a backfiring proposition. We may abhor cateism, we may deny we are casteists, but that does not make casteism go away. For the simple reason that our actions of the present have their moorings not only in our geneology but also in our cultural past. These actions define our identity, our location in society, whether we believe or not. Our society has evolved over thousands of years, its culture influenced by societies from across the seas at frequent intervals of history, now more so and at faster intervals because of the factor of globalisation. Some of the best Sikhs I know, professionals all in various countries abroad, came from Khalsa College. I know of two youngsters currently at an IIT who proudly say they are the alumni of the Brahman-Bhumihar Collegiate in Muzaffarpur. I know of many families with liberal values subscribing to caste-based matrimony publications. And so forth. Are these people casteist? I'd say yes. And any other answer conveys self-denial. More than ever before I today feel the need for a full-fledged caste census in India. For, never before has our society seen siesmic social and cultural changes as like now, what with India in the vortex of globalisation. There are many who predict a homogenous mass of peoples in a few generations' time. That would be the time of a society, truly classless and casteless. That would also be a time to forget where this society came from because for the citizens of that future society, their past would be an alien, long-forgotten, un-understandable phenomenon. In short, the legacy of this society of our times and our past will not remain even a memory. Why? Because nobody in our times cares to write a true account of it in the first place. I challenge any sociologist or historian to refute that their research of the Indian society is based on half or quarter knowledge considering the singular fact that never in our history has an accurate data of the caste composition been made available. Furthermore, histories and social texts are contructed realities and mediated by the ideologies of their authors. For example, I want to recall the controversy created when social and history theoreticians of the Left and Right fought over the origins of Ayodhya in the 1990s. Secondly, histories are written by conquerors, whether Hindu, Pashto, Iranian, Persian or Christian. And we have never had any clear interest in the subaltern and native histories except some works which in any case have never become mainstream reading material. For example, how many Indians even know what Kamban Ramayan is? See, even our so-called national epics have not escaped the scalpel of a divided society. So, when I say I am a a Vaidi ki Velanati Brahmin from Vemuru village in the coastal Andhra region of south India, am I speaking the truth? I have no way of verifying it. None of us Indians have. The point is, when we talk of caste even if to deny it, we have no historical or cultural basis to do so. That is why I support the caste census. Let us at least know what is that multi-cultural society we are a part of? We have already lived quite long in a social oblivion, basing our identities and ideologies developed out of socio-cultural castles built merely on belief. What we need is a new sociology of our not-so-new past.