Sub-classifying Dalits: A revolution or counter-revolution? : Valley Vision

The recent Supreme Court judgment on the sub-classification of SC/ST reservations has initiated new dialogues on reservation among the public as well as within the Bahujan community. The hegemonic discourses have already constructed a narrative in the public sphere that instills guilt among the beneficiaries of reservation from Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). The dominant forces, especially the anti-reservationists, have constructed a notion of “real’’ SCs and “unreal” SCs to denote the deserving and undeserving castes for reservation. 

But what do they mean by “real” SCs? Are they referring to those who are more oppressed by the privileged castes? If so, somehow they are admitting the oppression is real while they attempt to classify the oppression imposed by themselves over the SCs and STs! Historically, it is the problem of oppression that resulted in the implementation of affirmative actions including reservation, which benefits(?) a lot of castes among SCs and STs. And that is the sole purpose of affirmative action existing anywhere in the world. But instead of talking about various dimensions of oppression, the system is confining the entire discourse only to the realm of reservation, thereby escaping from the historical question of caste privileges.

SCs in general are victims of the caste system. However, the current discourse initiated by the oppressor castes has created a notion that only certain castes of SCs are the actual victims and the rest of them are using ‘false victimhood’ to claim the benefits of reservation. Other arguments revolving around reservation are similar to using the identities of prominent individuals like Droupadi Murmu or Ramnath Kovind to falsely project the empowerment of the communities they belong to. However, no state machinery has provided any statistical data to substantiate the actual empowerment of either SCs or STs. 

Moreover, the idea of empowerment itself is a subjective as well as a relative term, especially in a nation like India where caste and class overlap with each other. The anti-reservationists are comparing the “more” benefited SCs with the “less” benefited SCs to validate their idea of sub-classification. This comparison doesn’t make any sense as it does not reflect the socio-economic reality of the Indian public sphere. Instead, the comparison should be made between “more” benefited SCs and the privileged castes, which would reflect the socio-economic disparity between the oppressor castes and oppressed castes.

The present discourses on reservation attempt to evoke guilt among the SCs who received some kind of reservation benefits and compel them to sacrifice their constitutional rights. This is nothing but divisive politics to hide the failure of the state to ensure the proper implementation of reservation policies across various sectors. And the recent judgment of the Supreme Court would only help to perpetuate this guilt and lead them to sacrifice their benefits of reservation.

The concept of reservation has socially constructed a kind of belongingness among the oppressed masses. This has helped to construct an “imagined community”as conceptualized by Benedict Anderson. The newly proposed sub-classification is a threat to this very particular idea of imagined community as it covertly carries the issue of divisive politics. The Supreme Court judges have rightly observed that SCs are not a homogeneous group. But this leads to a basic question of what makes them a non-homogenous group. The answer lies in the caste social order of Indian society. Historically, various terms have been coined by anti-caste philosophers to overcome this caste social order and politically organise different oppressed castes into a single identity. Shudras, Ati-Shudras, Sadhujan, Depressed class, Bahujans, Scheduled Castes and the widely popular and the most assertive term Dalits are some of them.

The sub-classification idea would destroy belongingness and also lead to muzzling the Bahujan demands to conduct the caste census since it would create a division among the Bahujan communities. To be more specific, the present discourses revolving around sub-classification is a counter-revolution against Ambedkarite politics by reinforcing sub-caste identity and sub-caste politics among the Dalits and also overthrowing the demand for caste census intrinsically.

The concept of Dalit is an imaginative political construct to counter the philosophy and principles of the caste system. However, the sub-classification would lead to the disintegration of this concept by restricting reservations only to fewer castes and would eventually put an end to the reservation itself. The disintegration would help the dominant forces to easily oppress, silence and nullify the rights and voices of the marginalized communities. 

But there is no doubt that the under-representation and under-development of different SCs should be addressed, and the author is not against the castes who are far behind in receiving the benefits of reservation. But disintegration is not the solution, instead, the issue should be addressed by conducting proper research and caste census which would be helpful not only for SCs and STs but also for different categories including OBC, General, and Minorities etc. Perhaps, sub-classification without proper data and research, and constructing guilt and othering the slightly more-benefited SCs is not the right course of action to address this issue. Furthermore, any amendment to the present reservation policies without conducting the caste census would ultimately lead to subverting the very concept of reservation.

Srutheesh Kannadi is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies, GITAM University, Hyderabad.