DOI: / Against Caste in British Law

Transcription

1 DOI: / Against Caste in British Law

2 Other Palgrave Pivot titles Susanne Lundin: Organs for Sale: An Ethnographic Examination of the International Organ Trade Margot Finn and Kate Smith: New Paths to Public Histories Gordon Ade-Ojo and Vicky Duckworth: Adult Literacy Policy and Practice: From Intrinsic Values to Instrumentalism Brendan Howe: Democratic Governance in Northeast Asia: A Human-Centred Approach to Evaluating Democracy Evie Kendal: Equal Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis Joseph Watras: Philosophies of Environmental Education and Democracy: Harris, Dewey, and Bateson on Human Freedoms in Nature Christos Kourtelis: The Political Economy of Euro-Mediterranean Relations: European Neighbourhood Policy in North Africa Liz Montegary and Melissa Autumn White (editors): Mobile Desires: The Politics and Erotics of Mobility Justice Anna Larsson and Sanja Magdalenić: Sociology in Sweden: A History Philip Whitehead: Reconceptualising the Moral Economy of Criminal Justice: A New Perspective Robert Kerr: How Postmodernism Explains Football and Football Explains Postmodernism: The Billy Clyde Conundrum Ilan Bijaoui: The Open Incubator Model: Entrepreneurship, Open Innovation, and Economic Development in the Periphery Pilar Melero: Mythological Constructs of Mexican Femininity Rafael Kandiyoti: Powering Europe: Russia, Ukraine, and the Energy Squeeze Cristina Sánchez-Conejero: Sex and Ethics in Spanish Cinema Matthew Gritter: The Policy and Politics of Food Stamps and SNAP Bridget Kevane: The Dynamics of Jewish Latino Relationships: Hope and Caution Nataly Z. Chesky and Mark R. Wolfmeyer: Philosophy of STEM Education: A Critical Investigation Seung Ho Park, Gerardo R. Ungson, and Andrew Cosgrove: Scaling the Tail: Managing Profitable Growth in Emerging Markets David Michalski: The Dialectic of Taste: On the Rise and Fall of Tuscanization and other Crises in the Aesthetic Economy DOI: /

3 Against Caste in British Law: A Critical Perspective on the Caste Discrimination Provision in the Equality Act 2010 Prakash Shah Reader in Culture and Law, Queen Mary, University of London, UK DOI: /

4 Prakash Shah 2015 Foreword Gautam Sen 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

5 DOI: / For Sia and Sohni, Naia and Anay, wishing that you can do more in all things than we could, and be more than we were

6 Contents Foreword Gautam Sen Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations vii xii xiii 1 Intellectuals and the Indian Traditions 1 2 Religion, Caste and Race: The Moral Basis of Anti-Caste Legislation 14 3 Equality and Human Rights Commission Reports on Caste 44 4 Caste Discrimination Legislation: Implications for Business, Employers and Organizations 64 5 Caste and Continuing Foreign Interference in India s Internal Affairs 83 6 Is Caste Already Part of UK Equality Law? 99 7 Conclusion 114 Bibliography 117 Index 124 vi DOI: /

7 Foreword Accusations of caste oppression, pointedly levelled mainly against Hindu Brahmins, remain the auto-da-fé for the accused in political life. But they often lack meaningful historical context or careful scrutiny of quoted facts. The intellectual community delving into issues of caste has also become complicit in what may be deemed a wider political project of evangelists and the Left with regard to Hindu society. The former is engaged in its historic mission of religious conversion and regards intellectual and political subterfuge to achieve it legitimate. The latter considers religious fealty a barrier to its paradisiacal aspiration of atheistic collectivism. And their principal targets at present for transformation are India and Nepal, where Hindu idolatry endures. Dr Prakash Shah s research is an exceptional attempt to analyse and question some of the conventional intellectual wisdom and political consensus on caste. Irrespective of any disagreements that may arise over specific arguments advanced by him, the very endeavour of reviewing established nostrums is a welcome intellectual venture. In doing so, he also performs a signally useful methodological task of highlighting the deeply political nature of much academic enterprise in the social sciences, coloured by the goals and prejudices accompanying them. Indeed it is well to recollect that whole academic disciplines have arisen as a result of the political goals of imperial powers, such as anthropology, to discover the means of controlling native people, and international relations to justify Cold War aims. DOI: / vii

8 viii Foreword Christian organizations are at the forefront of the critique of what is portrayed as the singular expression of Hinduism as essentially a manifestation of caste oppression. Evangelical critics routinely equate caste with racism and a unique form of apartheid. To the Left, Hindu religious fealty is perceived as the principal barrier to the transformation of Indian society into an egalitarian socialist order. They are therefore perfectly happy to demonize Hinduism to achieve a supposedly higher goal, even if their attacks on caste issues are unfair and indeed factually incorrect. The Christian evangelical critique of Hinduism, which conceives it as essentially an expression of socio-economic discrimination in the shape of caste, occurred from the early days of the East India Company s conquest of Bengal. The political significance of this view acquired greater significance in the aftermath of the so-called Indian War of Independence of The newly installed imperial political authority that replaced company rule subsequently embarked on an unprecedented attempt to map Indian society. The censuses undertaken were intended to deepen their understanding of the dynamics of the society they ruled in order to enhance secure control over it. Caste and hierarchies surely existed in historical Hindu India and does so today in the 21st century. But its history and reality are much more complex than even the most distinguished observers, some of them not instinctively hostile to its very mention, have managed to articulate. Of great importance to the socio-economic dynamics of Indian society and caste is the wider historical and political context in which society functioned. It is also relevant to note the self-evidently erroneous popular, and often intellectual, conviction that the caste system has proven immune to change, almost outside history, given its supposed longevity and durability. In addition, the analysis of caste seems unable to review its intrinsic sustainability in terms of standard social science concepts that would question its presumed unfailing transmission through heritability. Totally absent from the discourse on caste is any attempt to situate it in the context of frequent political upheavals and devastating famines that disrupted life across the Indian subcontinent over several centuries before and during the British rule. There is an implied presumption of the prevalence of a basically undisturbed and stable rural society that would allow caste dynamics to operate relatively unhindered. The first question to be posed is how caste dynamics survived intact the widespread mass enslavement of cities that fell to Muslim DOI: /

9 Foreword ix conquerors, which the Emperor Akbar had sought to curb, but failed? Some periods like the 18th century were characterized by constant wars of succession that laid waste vast tracts of northern and central India that surely denied any tranquility to caste hierarchies. Another source of desolation was famines that periodically decimated populations on a massive scale and cannot but have affected the viability of any prevalent caste social hierarchy. Both are singularly absent in the earnest portrayal of oppressive caste hierarchies. The extant contemporary reality of caste is deeply imbued with the British colonial impact on India. As a result, the ongoing manifestation of caste dynamics cannot be regarded as an adequate basis to infer historical patterns of past social behaviour by retrojection. The 18thcentury British East India Company s attempt to understand Indian society by assuming that Hindu scriptures were the appropriate guide for comprehending social behaviour in Hindus society was misplaced. The real world of disparate local life and practice of Hindu society could not have conformed meaningfully to imputed scriptural sanction. Indeed all societies are characterized by social stratification that changes over time, none exhibiting the timeless integrity attributed to so-called caste Hindu society. Legal procedures subsequently initiated by the colonialists, on the basis of the conviction that reified scriptures were the best guide to rules for governing the conquered, instituted custom not present earlier, in the form and with the integrity imagined. In fact, 19th century and later censuses also conjured a reality about caste identities that had been historically characterized by social fluidity and far less social rigidity. Census takers baffled by the inability of respondents to affirm their caste often imputed them by invention, on the basis of occupation, etc. In fact, the mendacious Lysenko of caste fantasies and arch colonialist H. H. Risley was to inaugurate the extraordinary career of caste in the aftermath of his pernicious influence. The malign role of the 1901 Risley census, insisting on the racial origins of caste, is underscored by conclusions drawn by the earlier one in 1891 headed by Denzil Ibbetson. The latter had asserted that the religious dimension of caste was not its sole progenitor. He had concluded that caste in Punjab was a social organization as well and more in the nature of a guild, based on descent, rejecting unequivocally its alleged racial origins in a division between Aryans and aboriginals. But Risley was aware of the advantages of deploying caste as a political weapon DOI: /

10 x Foreword for perpetuating colonial rule. He effectively equated Hinduism itself as an upper-caste phenomenon and rising Indian nationalism as their conspiracy to dominate the mass of Indians, which British colonialism was honour bound to protect from their machinations. Risley s intervention was the final chapter of the colonial project of turning India into a caste society that had begun with the advent of the East India Company. The imperative of the historic transmission of caste through endogamy also encounters the barrier of continuity since the male blood line cannot survive without exogamy. This must be especially true of a society in which partners are usually found locally and numbers within one s own caste community are at a premium. Investigation of this limitation that constitutes a fundamental challenge to the integrity of caste identities over time is required. There are also grounds for suspecting that only upper-caste identities can be reliably assumed to have prevailed with any integrity though it cannot have done so undisturbed since time immemorial. But the notion of an oppressive ritual hierarchy that privileged Brahmins is hard to sustain because assumed ritual primacy was subject to the power wielded by royal rulers of lesser castes. The highly politicized contemporary discourse on caste, quoted by Dr Prakash Shah, appears to have bypassed discussion and doubts about Risley s mendacious intervention in the early 20th century. Their insistent assertions are grounded on his thoroughly discredited intellectual heritage. In fact, the British legislators of the United Kingdom s Equality Act 2010 and self-interested caste lobbyists favouring it appear to have adopted Risley s colonial mantle with alacrity. It suggests a duplicitous bad faith that can only be described as obscene in its demeaning racist depiction of British Hindus, whose principal failing appears to be political timidity. Caste in modern India itself is a complex phenomenon and palpably the dominant organizing principle of secular political aspirations. Higher castes with superior education and better endowed materially no longer enjoy exclusivity in politics or administrative jobs. Many supposedly lesser castes have organized themselves and wield significant political power across India. The outcomes that have arisen for the outwardly empowered disadvantaged are less clear at present though the churning is of great significance. It should be noted that conflicts of interest pit lower castes against each other in rural India that are primarily a conflict of secular interests rather than the result of ritual hierarchies. The parameters of socio-political division in India have also acquired DOI: /

11 Foreword xi a sectarianism that has severely undermined the criterion of merit in assessing competence. It also perpetuates creaking state structures that allow caste reservations in access to education and employment despite serious doubts about their efficacy in achieving wider economic goals. In the final analysis, the issue of caste has acquired immense contemporary relevance as a vehicle for delegitimizing the cultural and historic basis of Hindu India. It is the key ideological weapon to justify and advance religious conversion on the grounds that it is the only possible means of overcoming the alleged irreducible bane of caste apartheid. In fact it may be surmised that dominant Western countries are using the alleged evils of caste as the excuse to extend their influence over India and Nepal by creating facts on that ground through religious conversion. It is designed to forestall their historic primacy, which began with Christopher Columbus, slipping from their grasp because of the rise of 21st-century Asia. The UK Equality Act is a policy measure complicit in this mundane political competition that extends far beyond its shores. Dr Gautam Sen 1 May Dr Sen taught international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science for more than two decades. DOI: /

12 Acknowledgements I wish to thank several people for their help in the achievement of this project. Mukesh Naker would have to rank at the top because were it not for his cajoling and orchestrating, with the best of intentions, over the past two years to ensure my engagement in the resistance to the caste provision in the Equality Act 2010, and in selflessly gathering and commandeering a group of people to that same end, this book would not have materialized. It is basically an outcome of the efforts expended over that period in engaging with members of the Indian communities, officials, fellow academics and others to find out just where the problems lay and what should be done about them. The list of others is long and although I mention them only by name, their contribution cannot be minimized. They are S.N. Balagangadhara, Anil Bhanot, Jakob de Roover, Kapil Dudakia, Martin Farek, Chris Fuller, Dunkin Jalki, Marianne Keppens, Mara Malagodi, Amrish Patel, Jasdev Singh Rai, Gautam Sen, Atul Shah, Rex Shah, Satish K. Sharma, Amit Singh, Bharti Tailor, D. Venkat Rao and John Zavos. This book relies on the insights generated by the research programme on the Comparative Science of Cultures instituted by S.N. Balagangadhara and the superb team of researchers and wider circle of scholars around that programme. I want to thank the Oshwal Association of the United Kingdom for hosting the conference on Caste: Critiquing Colonial and Contemporary Constructions, held at the Oshwal Centre, Potters Bar, on 5 April 2014, which helped discuss some ideas contained in this book. All hyperlinks were last accessed at the end of May Errors and omissions are all mine. xii DOI: /

13 List of Abbreviations ACDA Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance CERD Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination DfID Department for International Development DSN-UK Dalit Solidarity Network-UK ECHR European Convention on Human Rights EHRC Equality and Human Rights Commission HFB Hindu Forum of Britain ICERD International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination IDSN International Dalit Solidarity Network NIESR National Institute for Economic and Social Research VODI Voice of Dalit International WCAR World Conference against Racism DOI: / xiii

14 Palgrave Pivot