‘Caste is India’s unifying factor’: RSS-linked weekly goes all out to justify caste system

“The caste system was a chain that kept various classes of India together after classifying them according to their profession and tradition. Following the industrial revolution, the capitalists saw the caste system as the guard of India,” the weekly’s editor Hitesh Shankar said in the editorial.

Shankar argued that the caste system was always the target of invaders. “The Mughals targeted it with the power of the sword and the missionaries under the guise of service and reform. In the form of caste, the Indian society understood one simple thing – betraying one’s caste was betrayal of the nation. The missionaries understood this unifying equation of India better than the Mughals: If India and its self-respect is to be broken, then first break the unifying factor of the caste system by calling it a constraint or chain,” Shankar wrote.

The editorial argued that this understanding of the caste system by the missionaries was adopted by the British for their “divide and rule” policy.

This justification of the caste system by Panchjanya is significant as it comes at a time when the RSS has been at pains to explain it is not against reservations for the depressed classes. While the RSS has time and again tried to trace the roots of the caste system to the ancient Varna system based on division of labour, it has generally been apologetic about the caste discrimination that the system enforced in society. The Sangh has since its inception campaigned against untouchability.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has repeatedly said caste discrimination is the bane of Indian society and must be done away with. Sangh members take pride in saying they do not know the castes of their colleagues. Last year, Bhagwat said if reservations have to continue for another 200 years to compensate for the discrimination lower castes have suffered for 2,000 years, he would support it.

Shankar argued it was because of the skills passed from generation to generation in a caste group that Indian artisans, such as Bengal’s weavers, were so good that Manchester’s mills could not produce such fine quality products.

“Apart from destroying India’s industries, invaders focused on conversion to alter India’s identity. When caste groups did not buckle, they were humiliated. These were the people who forced a proud community to carry human faeces on their heads. There is no record of such tradition in India before that,” the editorial said.

“The eyes that hurt seeing the generational talent of India are the same that dream of destroying the diversity, traditions and rituals of the Hindu religion,” Shankar added.

Attacking the Congress, the editorial said, “The Hindu life, which includes dignity, morality, responsibility and communal fraternity, revolves around caste. It is something that individual-centric missionaries could not understand. If missionaries saw caste as a roadblock to their conversion programme, the Congress sees it as a wedge in Hindu unity. On the lines of the British, it wants to divide Lok Sabha seats on the basis of caste and increase the division in the country. This is why it wants a caste census.”

Notably, the BJP has not opposed a caste census openly.

In an apparent reference to the caste row over Thakur’s jibe at Rahul Gandhi, Shankar said, “What is India’s caste? The answer from the society and history is Hindu. But when Congress party is asked of its caste, the answer will be East India Company and A O Hume.”