Author: Ashok Malik
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 20, 2013
URL:   http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/courts-cannot-erase-what-death-cannot.html

The best answer to the social inequity produced by the caste system is equality before the law. This, however, is different from stamping out caste-based identities, which is what the Allahabad High Court appears to do

 Raja Mahendra Pratap was born to a princely family in Hathras in 1886. He studied in what is today the Aligarh Muslim University and took a keen interest in politics and contemporary affairs. Even as a young prince, he was drawn to the Congress and to the battle against untouchability, and gave away much of his estate to modern educational institutions. When World War I broke out, Mahendra Pratap was a pioneer of the Ghadr movement. Influenced by Marxism and committed to overthrowing British rule in India, he went to Germany in 1914 and met the Kaiser.

 He was part of an internationalist band that the Kaiser and his Ottoman allies used to promote disaffection and rebellion against the British in the Muslim world and in India. Mahendra Pratap travelled widely, including to Russia where he met Vladimir Lenin in the Kremlin and to Afghanistan where, in 1915, he proclaimed the first Government of free India. When the Kaiser’s plans to destroy the British Empire collapsed, Mahendra Pratap left for Japan. Here he caught up with Rashbehari Bose, another revolutionary hero in exile. It was only in 1946 that Mahendra Pratap was allowed to return home to India. In the 1950s, he was elected to the Lok Sabha.

 By then he was already a romantic figure, one of the most travelled Indians of his time. His story matched that of Subhas Chandra Bose who came a generation after him. Mahendra Pratap was an internationalist, equally comfortable with Islamic societies, Christian Europe and Asian cultures such as Japan. He was a progressive and a Marxist, a patriotic Indian and a citizen of the world.

 It is worth noting that among the last public positions Raja Mahendra Pratap held — he died in 1979, well into his nineties —was that of president of the All-India Jat Mahasabha.

 What is the purpose of this story? This article commemorates no anniversary in the life of Mahendra Pratap and marks no milestone in his impressive and illustrious career in the service of India and humanity. It only seeks to highlight that notwithstanding all his accolades and other identities, Mahendra Pratap did not give up his caste badge and in fact headed India’s leading Jat community association, one that combines Hindu and Sikh Jats, living in a variety of States and speaking more than one language and dialect.

 The story of Raja Mahendra Pratap came back to this writer earlier this month when the Allahabad High Court banned caste-based political meetings in Uttar Pradesh. It was responding to a public interest petition that argued such political meetings were against the Constitution and ran counter to the principle of equality of all castes and communities. The court’s decision is highly debatable and contestable. On the face of it, it violates the right to freedom of expression and lawful assembly. If caste-specific political meetings can be banned, why not political meetings of lawyers’ associations and shopkeepers’ associations; or for that matter of women voters? Men and women are equal before the law, after all.

 Less facetiously, the episode has us confronting the issue of traditional identities and politics. Can these traditional identities be obliterated and rendered politically infructuous by fiat? Indeed, is it even necessary to expend effort to render such identities political infructuous.

 This is no defence of a hierarchical caste system, one that deems that some castes are placed vertically above others and are superior. Neither does it condone or sanction hate speech against other groups or communities or castes at a caste-specific political rally. It only suggests that if all castes are equal and are recognised as equal, what is wrong in allowing members of a particular caste to advertise their identity and mobilise other members of the same group for an electoral purpose?

 To a distant metropolitan elite or a scholar from overseas and to the sentiment that perhaps informed the Allahabad High Court’s decision, caste may appear a primordial evil. However, blunting the edge and ferocity of caste has been one of the great achievements of the democratic project in India and of the institution of universal franchise. Socially caste prejudice and discrimination still exist. If a Dalit man and a Vanniyar woman cannot choose each other as husband and wife and be allowed to live in peace —as was evidenced from a recent tragedy in Tamil Nadu — then surely there is a problem.

 However, at the level of political mobilisation, caste has more or less ceased to be hierarchical. The Vanniyar voter collective and the Dalit voter collective can easily neutralise each other in either the State of Tamil Nadu or in an individual constituency. If one group is significantly larger than the other, then the smaller one can enter into a coalition with a third caste/community and bolster its numbers. Such transactionalism and dynamic social coalition building at the grassroots is the bedrock of electoral politics not just in India but in any democracy. It is a much more organic antidote to caste discrimination and caste angularities in politics than a Government or judicial ban.

 It is easy to imagine electoral mobilisation on the basis of identities or sub-identities is unique to India, and a feature of only this country’s politics. Actually, it happens everywhere. For example, the Polish Catholic community in Chicago or the Arab-American community in Dearborn are specific, historically endogamous communities that have been seen as voter constituencies to target. Politicians have addressed meetings and gatherings of such communities; it is considered part of normal canvassing.Why would one expect it to be different in India?

 Caste and caste-ism have a contentious and troubled history in India. Whatever the origins of the system, over time, stratification, absence of mobility, animosity and oppression did come to be developed as by-products and off-shoots of the caste matrix. No one should defend these and no one can. Equality before the law and in the exercise of political choices for all castes and, more than that, all individuals is the best answer to any tradition of inequity.

 However, this is very different from seeking to stamp out identities and identity-based affinities, whether social, economic or political. This is neither desirable nor feasible. Caste is an Indian reality. If the Allahabad High Court decision stands, it will only push caste-specific meetings underground or have these disguised under some other banner. How will this help anyone?