Caste in a changing mould

Being the most intelligent not the best prime minister, Rao certainly arrested the brahminical decline. His entire support base in Parliament came from the south and Maharashtra. Political expediency was one of the elements in his politics of consensus with the BJP in power in the Hindi belt.

Rao played no mean role in virtually handing the baton to Atal Bihari Vajpayee. And when Vajpayee completes his five year term, he will have sustained a tradition set by Nehru. Every Brahmin prime minister has either completed his full term or exceeded it. Of the 56 years since Independence, the Brahmin has been at the helm in New Delhi for over 50 years.

And yet this fact disguises the gradual erosion of Brahminical influence in the countryside, across the nation. I sense it in whatever connection I keep with my village near Rae Bareilly.

For years my mother, a widow, has kept up the semi-feudal 8220;pairavi8221; or patronage system by turning to me to help relatives and friends with small favours. These ranged from obtaining Indian visas for relatives across the border attending weddings in the area encompassing Lucknow, Kanpur, Rae Bareilly, seeking confirmations in teaching jobs in the same belt or finding clerical openings in government departments.

These requests came to me at average intervals of about six months. But in the last two years there is an exponential, almost desperate, increase in the frequency of her requests on behalf of people resident in her vicinity. This is reflective of other sources for the community drying up totally.

Two months ago I received a request the sociological implications of which are far-reaching. A Panditji8217;s ailing son had to be admitted to a government medical college. Now Panditji, resident in a state of which the first chief minister was Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant, always had political access from the district to the state secretariat. But with mandalisation, old systems of patronage have fallen into serious disrepair. In the midst of the current social upheaval, the needy are searching for new avenues of patronage which sometimes have the merit of being secular. Or, are victims of caste politics and those weakened by communalism turning to each other for support?

A little understood fact has remained etched on my mind ever since I made a film on the communal disturbances in Kanpur following the demolition of Babri Masjid. A rioting Hindu mob entered the house where a Hindu woman had, the rioters alleged, given shelter to a Muslim woman. They asked the Hindu woman to swear by Lord Ram that there was no Muslim on the premises. She did. The mob left. Later, Aayesha Bi told us how the Hindu woman had risked her life, but not revealed the fact that Aayesha Bi had been hidden in a trunk under her bed. Reads like a common story of Hindus saving Muslims in riots but read on for the startling caste twist to the narrative.

When another mob approached a Muslim bustee, once again a Hindu woman climbed the terrace with a sack full of large stones. 8220;I shall kill you if you approach the Muslim bustee8221; she screamed. The mob retreated. A Hindu stood in a lane leading to Muslim houses, obstructing the mob. Another Hindu, likewise, thwarted a mob entering a Muslim compound.

When Gopal Gandhi was in charge of the Nehru Centre in London, he had the film screened as proof of the vast reserves of compassion in the midst of communal madness. After the screening, a friend approached me with a revealing observation. 8220;Only a particular caste in India would have the moral authority to obstruct a rioting mob without being killed8221; he said. The first woman who saved Aayesha Bi was a 8220;Panditayan8221; Brahmin, the woman pelting stones from the terrace was a 8220;Mishrayan8221;, wife of a Mishra Brahmin, the men who obstructed mobs in the lane and the compound were Pandeji and Tripathiji, both Brahmins. 8220;A lower caste trying to physically obstruct an incensed mob would be lynched8221; he said.

The upheaval unleashed by the march of democracy in India is not a unidimensional happening. Its complexities are mind boggling and will only yield to clarifying scrutiny by future generations, from a dispassionate distance in time.

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