Stretching that logic

What were they thinking? St Agnes school in Kottayam,Kerala,recently made the prize blunder of tagging its students by caste their identity cards listed this information along with the usual categories of name,class,parents name,etc. While angry groups picketed the school and the state government ordered an inquiry,this episode only points to the increasing currency of caste,as something that can be acknowledged and instrumentally wielded,after generations of ambivalence about the category. Of deep concern is the lack of nuance so that affirmative action can be better targeted without reinforcing the hierarchies or identities of caste.

Even as caste was declining as a social force,it was reinstated as a political force. Post-Mandal Commission,electoral mobilisation and social policy have been channelled through caste. Kerala has seen the worst forms of untouchability,as well as some of the most intense,sustained social movements against caste. Despite the strong Marxist impress on the state,even the recent assembly election testified to the way the state is segmented along community and caste lines,and how these factors play into the choosing of candidates and constituencies,and voting decisions it has been persuasively argued that the LDF did especially well this time among upper-caste Hindus because the UDF was seen as minority-pandering. We will now have a caste census that further entrenches the category,and give it further legal-administrative sanction. Caste is what is called a polysemic category it changes through marriage and migration,and people respond differently depending on whether they are being socially placed or making a bid for affirmative action. However,it is being increasingly treated as a fixed fact. So in that sense,St Agnes school is only a clear example of that creeping caste-consciousness.

However,theres something particularly galling about a school pinning these markers on young children,herding them by these odious categories. Even if they required this information,as many schools do,to target scholarships and assistance,making it public and visible to everyone on their identity cards was a crass,thoughtless decision,one that revealed the dangers of reifying caste.