It is cleaning season in India. Country's prime minister has gone to town with a broom. He started the campaign to clean India by sweeping a dalit neighburhood of erstwhile untouchables, seemingly breaking many caste barriers. There are very few public defenders of caste system nowadays. Upper caste men and women, whose ancestors only three generations ago fought tooth and nail to not yield even an inch of their caste privileges, now cry and organise under the slogan of Equality, once affirmative action for lower castes in educational institutions and government jobs has begun to have some traction. Is now not an opportune time to sweep away the garbage of caste into the dustbin of history?
Reality is too complex for this simple hope. If caste appears to be disregarded, or flouted, in some domains, its prejudices and violence are flourishing in others. The day country's news channels were busy showing the prime minister sweeping a dalit basti in the heart of the capital, a young woman of Madurai in Tamil Nadu was burnt alive by her family for marrying a dalit. She could have been from anywhere in the country, from Haryana in the North to Maharashtra in the West, or Bihar in the East, to have met a similar fate; if not murder, certainly social ostracism. In all villages, where majority of Indians live, habitation areas are divided along caste lines; upper castes occupying the most secure central areas with easiest access to public utilities like road, school, and panchayat ghar; and dalits on the outskirts. In cities too, where caste markers are less visible, caste networks are the most potent resource the poor fall back upon while searching for job and habitation. Come election time, the caste distribution of any constituency is the primary data for electoral calculations of every major political party. Caste remains a major determinant of personal life experiences. It stamps marriage and friendship of Indians, from a landless agricultural labourer to high professionals integrated into global economy. Yet, when one looks at the self-articulation of influential Indians about their country, caste is one social reality missing. The vision of the great future that country's prime minister painted for his fawning NRI audience at the Madison Square in New York had not a single reference to caste. Country's popular media, soap operas, films rarely refer to caste, in striking contrast to religion which is almost always carried on the sleeve.
Why these two contrasting features of caste, its overwhelming presence in social reality, while simultaneous absence in dominant discourses? In fact, the absence of caste in India's dominant imaginings is not really an absence, a silence resulting from ignorance, lack of familiarity or interest. This absence comes along with a carefully crafted sub-text about caste, that serves the interests of a certain type of caste hegemony. Take the 'Swachh Bharat' campaign, a five year campaign to make India clean. If the campaign is successful, it will certainly make life better for every Indian, irrespective of caste, creed or religion. What better proof can be there of the universal concerns of the Indian state, or the currently ruling Bhartiya Janta Party, for the welfare of all? The inaugural 'event' of the campaign saw country's prime minister sweeping a Balmiki basti on 2nd October. But, why a dalit basti? Are these the dirtiest of the places in the country? Decades before Mr Modi went for his sweeping errand in the said bastee, Gandhi had lived there for a few days. Country's media and chatterati only saw the association with Gandhi on 2nd October, and his emphasis on cleanliness. But Gandhi had started his struggle (or rather experiments) with cleanliness by cleaning the community latrine at his Tolstoy farm in South Africa, much before he started the practice of living in Dalit bastees for a few days at a stretch, mainly after his conflict with Ambedkar over separate electorates for untouchables. Our prime minister is a proud Hindu, he would have surely known that surroundings of Hindu temples, or places of pilgrimages like Banaras, his parliamentary constituency, are among the filthiest in the country. Why not start a campaign of cleanliness from there? No secularist would have criticised him for that, for exhorting his co-religionists to keep their places of worship clean. Yet, only a dalit basti is seen fit for starting the national cleanliness campaign! Why? Because in the caste ridden popular consciousness of India, both dirt and broom are associated with dalits, the Balmiki caste in northern India, and other similar dalit castes in other parts of the country. Besides, the prime minister of the country cleaning a dalit basti follows the long tradition of politically dominant groups in India treating dalits condescendingly. Gandhi had started that tradition by christening untouchables as Harijans, a term much despised by dalit activists. If a politician is not willing to target the real scourge of dalits, the caste system, then the best s/he can do is to proclaim how worthy their condition is. Gandhi declared them 'God's people'; Mr Modi in one of his rare writings has declared cleaning others' filth a deeply 'spiritual' experience. Mr Modi's jaunt also fit like a glove with the strategy of his mentor organisation. The RSS, forever making stories to target Muslim community, has come up with a new theory for the condition of dalit castes in Hindu society. For it, pretty much like the second rate position of women among Hindus, the social deprivation of “untouchables” came about due to invasion of the country by the outsiders. RSS's is a concerted plan to bring dalit caste voters under its Hindutva fold, so that a solid electoral majority of all the so called Hindus can be created. Gandhi too had tried the same with his campaigns against untouchability.
While the dominant political forces in the country have been trying to incorporate dalit castes within their political programmes, their poverty and oppression has continued. Sixty four years after the country was declared a republic based upon liberty and equality, the Balmikis in the heart of national capital are still living in a separate neighbourhood. Generations have come and gone, yet the overwhelming majority of them still clean city's filth. Many of them are employed by the government. But none of the governments have thought of providing them with mixed housing where their neighbours could be teachers, or clerks of other castes? Why this segregation? Why decades after government jobs were opened to all, irrespective of caste, one class of profession, that of cleaning public places, has been one hundred percent occupied by the men and women of only specific dalit castes?
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