The bans of caste

The intellectual quagmire of our discourse is that upper caste will remain upper caste no matter what they think, how they behave and what their condition, and by corollary so will the lower caste. By our classification, a mochi will remain a mochi even if he becomes a sonar; a meena a meena even if he becomes chief secretary. Does not this inescapability of identity carry its own risks? Is this not offensive in its own way? While we focus on insults, is there not a deeper indignity being inflicted on those to whom emancipation is being promised? You will be your caste, no matter what. There is a risk of gracelessness here. But we have too many purveyors for whom social justice is endless stratagem to assert the power of compulsory group identity, for whom demagogic baiting of trivial targets is far more important than redeeming the promise of genuine freedom and justice. By doing so, our politics loses credibility at both ends. It fails to build trust amongst the marginalised that a genuine politics of transformation is possible. And rather than producing a genuinely self-reflective policy, it enhances cynicism on even such an important issue as caste justice.

We are also reaching the slippery slope where offensive automatically entails ban. Forget Taslima Nasreen. In Karnataka, four books, including the Sahitya Academy-nominated novel Dharamkaarana, have been banned in recent years because lingayat followers of Virshaivism, assert their caste dominance through the ability to proscribe what they think is an insult to Baaveshwara. What is genuinely offensive is no longer a function of the principle in question: it is determined by how much power a group can muster or how much violence it can threaten. We will let genuinely offensive things pass in India, because there is little protest or the response does not threaten violence. But we will penalise more debatable offenses because we can evoke the spectre of violence. In the Nachle case, the extent of possible violence is a debatable matter. But we are setting up a dangerous incentive. The message we are sending out is: if you want to have your way, convince the state that you can threaten violence.

We will go back to priding our moderation. We are the great nation that proscribes offensive speech and gives remedies to the oppressed. And in doing so, we will assuage our guilt and our politicians will engage in self-congratulation. Did not our handling of Taslima prove that we care for religious sensitivities? Does not the resolution of Aaja Nachle finally prove our maturity as a democracy, our ability to send a signal that we don’t tolerate humiliating references to groups? This would be a wonderful story to tell, were it true. For the underlying reality is that these stories are not so much a reminder of our success as they are of our failures. In the Taslima case, as in many other cases, we have held the peace by appeasing professional offence-mongers. The Nachle case is more complex. Who can say that the history of impunity towards dalits should not weigh on how we view this case? But invoking bans entails three losses. It sets up a dangerous politics of competitive state intervention. It may allow you to punish the perpetrator, but in doing so you get defined even more by terms the perpetrator has imposed upon you. You foreclose a more radical form of resistance that says you are capable of defining who and what you are in your own terms, no matter what others might say. Finally, against the backdrop where identities are becoming inescapable, and the arc of our concerns increasingly limited to our own group, the idea of India is disappearing. This is the deeper precipice on which we stand.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research pratapbmehtagmail.com