Beyond ethnology

In a far-reaching ruling,the Supreme Court overturned its own earlier precedents on Tuesday,introducing a more liberal interpretation of the tests required to prove the genuineness of a claim on the benefits assigned to historically disadvantaged sections. The judgment said indicators of affinity with a Scheduled Tribe are no longer required for a successful claim; they can at best be corroborative of documentary evidence. This differs from earlier rulings,which had insisted that anthropological moorings and ethnological kinship affinity gets genetically ingrained in the blood. On the contrary,said the court once again,demonstrating a sensitivity to the social changes sweeping India claims cannot be disregarded on the ground that his present traits do not match his tribes peculiar anthropological and ethnological traits,deity,rituals,customs,mode of marriage,death ceremonies, and so on.

This is a far-seeing point because it goes to the very heart of what special benefits for the historically disadvantaged seek to do. Preferences in schooling,in credit,in job searches are designed to aid the mobility of those born into sections of Indian society insufficiently connected to the mainstream of the Indian economy and polity. The whole point is to aid individual aspiration; and sometimes,those aspirations are not served by clinging fast to the traditions,rituals and traits of ones ancestors.

Furthermore,it is not the case that disadvantage or discrimination is a product of a single,static mode of life. They persist in insidious ways,even as technology and urbanisation make the manner of their propagation harder to pin down. In one story long tracked by this newspaper,100 young tribal men and women who were sent to Punes privately run Air Hostess Academy discovered last year they would not be hired because they were not physically appealing,according to a Maharashtra cabinet minister. In a world in which objective barriers are seen for the primitive discrimination they are,they slowly become subjective. The courts words are a timely reminder that we need to be alert to lingering manifestations of discrimination and deprivation of opportunities.