Is the ground more fertile or does it produce a better yield because of its caste?

Change requires action, which requires sacrifice, which requires courage, which requires freedom. Caste is the antithesis of freedom. So, how to force change on a society so deeply entrenched in unfreedom, asks Akshat Jain.

—

IN The Gospel of Mark, there is a parable about seed being sown in four different places. The point of the parable is to tell us that nature can be cultivated by human art for a definite purpose.

Using the same farming metaphor, Plutarch talks about the purpose of education to suggest that deficiencies of nature can be made up with training and practice.

Their collective argument is that no matter how the ground is, or how a student is born, correctly working the ground, or training the student, can produce the required yield.

Therefore, if the required yield is not being obtained, the problem is not the ground or the student, but the farmer or the trainer. And, if the required yield is being obtained, then the credit goes not to the ground or the student, but to the farmer or the trainer.

What do the Greeks and Romans have had to do with anything happening in South Asia today? Quite a lot, it turns out.

When NEET became too neat

While the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) controversy rages on for various reasons, what interests us is its implications on the merit versus reservations debate.

In India, we are all aware of the existence of coaching centres for various kinds of entrance tests and examinations. Year after year, these coaching centres prove that without the training they impart, cracking exams such as Forum For Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (FIITJEE), Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and NEET would be nearly impossible.

Also read: Consequences of Indian democracy forgetting the 'art of the possible'

One of the points raised by one of the petitioners arguing for reconducting the NEET in the Supreme Court was, "If we calculate top centres in the country with students getting more than 650 marks (the minimum mark required for government medical admissions), 38 out of 50 centres are only from Sikar."

A total of 27,216 students appeared for the NEET-undergraduate (UG) from centres in Sikar, of which 2,037 (7.48 percent) scored over 650 marks.

"This is a very high percentage of students scoring top marks from Sikar. The national average is 1.29 percent (30,204 of 2,333,162) scoring above 650 marks. The clustering should be probed," another petitioner, Dr Krishan Sharma, added.

If it is indeed so obvious that clustering to a district is anomalous and should be probed, then the need for probity should also be obvious in other cases of clustering.

What other cases, you ask.

Are some clusters more natural than others?

Dominant castes, around 12 per cent of India's population, account for 80 percent of the seats on high court Benches. In its review of the Supreme Court at the end of 2023, the Supreme Court Observer reported that while Brahmins, according to the 2011 'Socio Economic and Caste Census' (SECC), constitute about 5 percent of India's population, 12 of the current 33 sitting judges (36.4 percent of the court) come from Brahmin communities. Roughly 30 percent of the Chief Justices India has had so far have been Brahmins.

This caste-based 'clustering' can be observed in many other fields such as the media (90 percent of leadership positions in Indian media occupied by dominant caste groups) and business (93 percent of board members in India's top 1,000 businesses belonged to dominant castes, according to a 2012 study).

Given the numbers, it seems fairly obvious that access to coaching centres in Sikar gives candidates an enormous advantage. And unless we think that candidates in Sikar are somehow born with more merit or that it is the air, water, radiation, pollution or any other environmental factor specific to Sikar that makes students there more meritorious, we will have to conclude that the training received in the coaching centres is responsible.

Also read: Gender fluidity will slowly dissolve the rigid opposition to it— An interview with transgender rights activist Vyjayanti Mogli

Similarly, given the numbers across the judiciary, media and business, unless we think that the dominant castes are born more meritorious because of their genes, we will have to conclude that caste itself still plays a big role in these outcomes. Because if it did not, then the numbers would be more even across castes.

To be sure, Dr Sharma is not saying that the candidates in Sikar did anything wrong, did not work hard or are not meritorious at an individual level. He is suggesting that this clustering is a statistical anomaly which calls into question the examination's ability to test merit.

The problem is not at the level of the individual but at the level of the system. At the individual level, no high-scoring candidate from Sikar can be responsible for this outcome nor can they be punished for it. It is the fault of the system which favours a particular set of individuals. Therefore, the system must be changed.

This allows us to see a central problem in the reservations debate. When anti-caste groups demand the continuance and expansion of the scope of reservations because marginalised castes are being systematically discriminated against, the dominant caste ploy is to reduce the argument to the individual level and thus short circuit it.

Anti-caste groups are also not holding individual Brahmins responsible for hogging the judiciary, media and corporates. They are not saying individual Brahmins did not work hard or that they should be punished because of this systematic clustering. They are saying the system which makes this clustering possible is flawed and needs to be changed.

But individual Brahmins only ask in return, how is it my fault I was born a Brahmin? They assert the clustering is natural because it somehow represents their inherent worth and not an artificially determined outcome.

The absurdity of their position can be appreciated in the case of Sikar. It is like a high-scoring candidate from a Sikar coaching centre asserting that the clustering in Sikar is natural and represents the inherent worth of candidates training in Sikar. Or asking, how is it my fault I trained in Sikar?

Also read: Are anti-conversion laws antithetical to the Constitution of India?

It is not. No one is arguing that. What is being argued for is a systematic correction such that the effect of coaching centre access, which is not merit-based, be reduced in examination. Similarly, what is being argued is that the effect of caste, being born into which is not merit-based, be reduced in societal outcomes.

If you do not think it is natural that candidates from one city dominate the examination, then how can you think it is natural that people from one caste dominate Indian society?

The non-meritorious production of merit

If merit is produced by the coaching centres, the question then becomes, how does one access these coaching centres? Is merit needed to access them or is the access determined by non-meritorious factors such as location of birth, family income, gender, caste, etc.

Firstly, the coaching centres are expensive. It is not just that not everyone can afford them, it is that very few can afford them.

Secondly, the geographical concentration. For a person who lives in Sikar, accessing the coaching centre will be easier for a number of reasons than, say, for a person living in Bihar.

The student from Sikar will be able to live and eat with their parents, thus saving enormous amounts of time and money compared to the student from Bihar.

Given their proximity, the student from Sikar might also have contacts in and around the coaching centres who can help them get in. The student from Bihar will have no such social capital to facilitate their entry into the coaching centres. In fact, they might not even get to know of the brilliance of Sikar coaching centres.

Further, and this is where caste becomes primary again, a Brahmin student from Bihar is much more likely to have contact with Brahmins in Sikar than a Dalit student in Bihar with Dalits in Sikar. This is due to various factors such as access to a common language, ability to make contact restricted by limited means, ability of the Dalit community in Sikar to support a Dalit student from Bihar, and so on.

Also read: Free speech underpins all other freedoms

Finally, gender. It is not too hard to see that a boy from anywhere will have more access to the coaching centres than a girl. Then, a girl from Sikar will have enormous advantages over a girl from Bihar. But, and more to our point, a Brahmin girl from Bihar will also have more access than a Dalit girl from Bihar. This is because Brahmins will have better contacts and Brahmin hostels will give the girl a safe place to stay.

While Brahmin parents in Bihar will not find it problematic to admit their daughter in the Sikar coaching centre if she shows promise and if they can afford it, it is hard to imagine that a Dalit family in Bihar will take the risk of sending their daughter all the way to Sikar by herself, no matter how much promise she shows, not just because they cannot afford it but because it is not safe.

All of this is to say this: If the ostensible purpose of the examination is to test merit and merit is produced through training, then non-meritorious access to training implies that the exam does not end up testing merit but only the capacity of the student's family to make training accessible.

Hence, the solution here would be to make training equally accessible.

Whither reservations?

A person cannot be a Dalit by himself, but a person can be poor by himself. Poverty is not in its essence a social relation, but a relation of the individual to material resources. Caste, on the other hand, is in its essence a social relation.

To be a Dalit, one needs to be part of a group called Dalits in relation with a group called Brahmins. Poverty does not function like that. I can be poor even if there are no rich people, or rich even if there are no poor people. But I cannot be a Baniya without the existence of the caste system in its entirety.

My 'Baniyaness' is predicated on someone else's 'Dalitness'. Neither can they individually stop being a Dalit nor can I individually stop being a Baniya, we are implicated in a totalising system. To escape our respective castes, the entire caste system needs to be dismantled.

Also read: Preventive detention: A loss of right within the fundamental rights

To escape poverty on the other hand, the entire class system need not be dismantled. Therefore, even though Dr B.R. Ambedkar wanted to remove poverty, he did not write a speech called 'Annihilation of Class'.

I say this to point to the primary difference between caste and class. A lower-class person can earn money and become upper class. Class is fluid over a person's own lifetime and over generations. I can be lower class but my son and so on can be upper class. So, the solution to class is economic mobility of individuals.

This is not true for caste. Caste is rigid. A person born Dalit can neither escape Dalithood themselves nor can their sons and so on escape it. No matter how educated they become, how much power they have, or how much money they earn, they will always remain Dalits and as long as caste-based discrimination exists, they will be discriminated against. Case in point, Ambedkar can be the most educated man in the country but he remains a Dalit.

This is why when anti-reservationists say that reservations should not be given to those whose parents and grandparents have already benefited from them, they are missing the point. No matter how much his father and grandfather benefitted, the son still remains Dalit and is discriminated against on the basis of caste. His class position might have changed but his caste position has not. And since reservation is about caste (a point I will make clearer later on), it cannot be discontinued till caste stops being the problem.

Since caste is not a matter of individual marginalisation but that of social marginalisation, only a social solution is possible.

Therefore, the social solution proposed by Ambedkar for removing the cancer of caste from Indian society was inter-caste marriages. The child of such unions will not belong to any one caste and will be able to access the social and financial capital of both castes, hence rendering the basis of caste moot.

To take the above example again for a simplistic illustration. If a Brahmin in Bihar married a Dalit, their daughter would find it easier to travel to Sikar because she would be able to access the social network of Brahmins, hence removing at least one of the impediments to equal access to training.

Also read: The right to religion and the Shudra predicament

It is easy to see the problems with legislating inter-caste marriages. One cannot force people into such things. So, reservations become a stop-gap measure till inter-caste marriages begin to happen of their own accord. Reservation is not to challenge caste directly but to raise the status of marginalised castes such that inter-caste marriages become possible— to imagine— and hence to do.

Reservation then is a placeholder for a law which says inter-caste marriages should happen. Taking that logic to its end, reservations can only end when inter-caste marriages start happening. Is that the case yet? Have reservations succeeded?

Only 5.8 percent of Indian marriages were inter-caste, according to the 2011 census 2011, a rate unchanged over 40 years. Pew Research Centre's 2021 report says this on attitudes about caste, "Strong majorities of Indians say it is at least 'somewhat' important to stop men (79 percent) and women (80 percent) from marrying into another caste, including at least six-in-ten who say it is 'very' important to stop this from happening regardless of gender (62 percent for men and 64 percent for women)."

So, no. Hence, the continuing need for reservations. I will make that clearer after this non-non-sequitur into Bangladesh.

The right time for reservations to end

When the British left the subcontinent, two new States were formed, India and Pakistan. Pakistan was geographically divided between East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Even though West Pakistan had fewer people, it dominated East Pakistan because the capital, Karachi (and later Rawalpindi and Islamabad), was in West Pakistan and it had more resources and military power.

One of the forms that this domination took was that Urdu and Punjabi speakers occupied all the top positions not just in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government but also in the military, civil bureaucracy and other government jobs, at the expense of Bengalis. This became a major cause of dissatisfaction and later active contention between the two groups.

Also read: A Midnight's Child cautions against the gathering darkness

When Urdu–Punjabi speakers did not relent, the Bengalis staged a rebellion and proclaimed their independence from West Pakistan, forming a new country called Bangladesh under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

To make corrections for the historical marginalisation of Bengalis by the previous government, a system of quotas was established for government jobs, which mandated that 30 percent of the postings go to the Bangladesh Liberation War fighters.

Over the ensuing decades, the system was modified to include the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters. The recent student protests in Bangladesh were against this. The students were asking for the quota given to grandchildren of freedom fighters to be stopped.

It is important to point out what the students are not protesting. They are not against the quota system in general. They do not want its complete abolition but its reform. In fact, they explicitly want the quotas for marginalised minorities like indigenous communities and the disabled to continue.

This is why, in the previous round of protests in 2018, Sheikh Hasina abolished the quota system altogether, in effect telling the protestors that she would be willing to remove the freedom fighter quota only if they were in return willing to accept the deprivation of other marginalised communities.

Her ploy was this, either accept quota for the grandchildren of freedom fighters or no one gets any quota at all. But, and this is the most important part, the students differentiate between a legitimate use of the quota and an illegitimate use of it.

At the time Bangladesh achieved independence, it was argued that Bengalis in general and Bengali freedom fighters in particular had been marginalised by Urdu–Punjabi power-holders. The quota was accepted by Bangladeshi society on the basis of the felt reality of this marginalisation.

But, in the succeeding two generations, the freedom fighters and their families have successfully become part of the dominant majority in Bangladesh. Bengali Muslims are not marginalised in Bangladesh, they in fact have all the power.

So, today, the quota, rather than being a corrective to historical marginalisation, allows one class of Bengali Muslims— the grandchildren of freedom fighters— to effectively discriminate against all other Bengali Muslims and other communities.

Also read: Sub-classification of Scheduled Castes: Homogeneity in forwardness, non-homogeneity in backwardness

The quotas succeeded in their job of ending language-based discrimination against Bengali freedom fighters, which was their entire point. Hence, the cause no longer being in existence, they ought to be removed. Where the quotas have not succeeded, in the case of indigenous communities, they must stay till they succeed.

What does Bangladesh have to do with EWS reservations in India?

Turns out, a lot.

The case of Bangladesh teaches us that in judging the need for quotas or reservations, we need to pay attention to the nature of the marginalisation which makes it necessary.

In Bangladesh, the marginalisation was on the basis of language. The centre of power was in West Pakistan and the Urdu–Punjabi speakers discriminated against the Bengali speakers of East Pakistan. Hence, the quota was to make a correction to this. Once language stopped being a cause of marginalisation in Bangladesh, the need for quotas also vanished.

In India, the marginalisation is on the basis of caste. Reservations were a correction to that. The only constitutional correction to that. To use another farming metaphor, this time Ambedkar's, their purpose was to prepare an undemocratic soil for democracy.

Ambedkar's problem was how to create an egalitarian society out of a stratified society like India. His contention was that unless a powerful force works over the soil again and again till it becomes fertile, the seed of democracy will not take root. Left to their own devices, the people of India will fall back into their old patterns, they will prefer the status quo to change.

This is because caste makes people impotent. It takes all the power away from the individual and deposits it in an impersonal set of rules interpreted by priests. Every little thing of life is regulated by these rules, the individual never has to think for himself and certainly never act for himself.

In the caste system, the individual does not even exist, only units of a group exist, through whom the group acts. Since there is no concept of individual morality and one is not identified by what one does but who one is (born as), change through an individual understanding of morality becomes impossible.

Also read: The devil is in the detail: need for contemporaneous caste census in India

To illustrate, a caste-person does not act a certain way because they want to. They only do whatever they do because the system compels them to act their caste. The responsibility for action is thus safely disavowed and the individual never has any power to do anything of their own accord. Even Rama did not kill Shambuka or abandon Sita because he wanted to, but because it was his caste-dharma to do so, he had no choice as an individual.

Today, this is most reliably seen in the case of marriages, where a Brahmin might say they love a Dalit and would want to marry them but 'society' does not allow it. On the other hand, they do not say this when they 'rebel' against the same society by drinking, smoking and ingesting drugs. Society only becomes operative when they need it to justify an action they cannot take. Hence, they pick the status quo without taking any responsibility for their actions.

This is how impotent people always choose the status quo over change, because choosing the status quo is choosing to do nothing, while change requires action, which requires sacrifice, which requires courage, which requires freedom. Caste is the antithesis of freedom. So, in this situation, how to force change on a society so deeply entrenched in unfreedom?

Ambedkar's solution to this problem was a strong central State, which would act as a counter-power to the power of the caste system. If the constitution mandates reservations, then even if people do not want it, they have to accept it.

Change is forced onto them from above. By mixing castes together over generations by the artificiality of reservations, the soil becomes ready to sprout individuals to nurture the seed of democracy.

But has that change happened? Has the soil matured? No, it has not. As Rahul Sonpimple argues while making a case to extend caste-based reservations to the private sector, caste is still a dominant factor in determining societal outcomes. If post-British India's only prince, Rahul Gandhi, can be asked his caste in the Parliament, one can only imagine what the common man on the street has to go through.

What has happened, though, is the very removal of the engine of that change. The nature of the State has been transformed and it no longer is the counter-power to caste that Ambedkar wanted it to be.

Also read: Sub-classification may create more problems than it solves

With the judgment granting reservation to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), the dynamic motor attacking caste has been dismantled. The purpose of the EWS quota is to maintain status quo, to stop the reworking of the Indian ground, to let the society remain stratified, such that the sapling of democracy wilts and dies.

I say this because the EWS quota attacks caste directly by changing the very basis of reservations from caste to class. A poor dominant caste and poor lower caste are equated by their poverty, thus neutralising caste as a factor in marginalisation.

Since caste was the original reason for reservations and EWS quota makes it true that caste is no longer the only factor of marginalisation that allows reservations to exist, reservations can end because they have achieved their purpose. Such runs the infernal logic of the EWS quota.

Running over the same old ground

Overruling E.V. Chinnaiah, a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court (by 6:1) passed a judgment on August 1 permitting sub-classification within Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the purpose of reservations. 

The question in front of the Supreme Court was very simple, was the previous judgment in E.V. Chinnaiah correct or not? They said it was not and gave various good reasons for it. 

They said that Scheduled Castes are a heterogeneous lot and treating them as a monolithic block undermines the constitutional objectives of reservations. Given caste discrimination, prohibition of inter-marriage and even Untouchability is practised within the different castes included in the Scheduled Castes, there is a fair case to be made that the caste-based logic of reservations be deepened and extended within the Scheduled Castes as well.

So far so good. The problems begin in the obiter of some of the judges in the case, which had nothing to do with the judgment at hand, and gave away some mala fide wishes.

Under the cover of the judgment, Justice Pankaj Mithal questioned the desirability of caste-based reservations in toto. Calling for the "evolvement of other methods for helping and uplifting the depressed class or the downtrodden or the persons belonging to [Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes/Other Backward Classes] communities," his judgment reads that "any facility or privilege for the promotion" of these communities "has to be on a totally different criteria other than the caste, may be on economic or financial factors, status of living, vocation and the facilities available to each one of them based upon their place of living (urban or rural)".

Also read: Babasaheb Dr Ambedkar's utopia

Agreeing with Justice Mithal, who said that "reservation has to be limited only for the first generation or one generation," Justice B.R. Gavai went on to opine that, "the State must evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer even from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes so as exclude them from the benefit of affirmative action" as "this alone can achieve the real equality as enshrined under the Constitution".

While Justice Satish Chandra Sharma opined that "the identification of the 'creamy layer' qua Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes ought to become a constitutional imperative for the State".

By using this opportunity to air their unsolicited opinions, are the judges preparing the ground for a change in the policy of reservations? 

While Justice Mithal mounts a direct attack, saying caste should be dropped in favour of class, the other judges take a more indirect route to achieve the same. Their opinions on introducing a creamy layer hinge on the difference in class between first generation beneficiaries and second-third generation beneficiaries of reservations, thus trumping caste by class.

It is true that after the first generation avails the benefits of reservations, the class position of subsequent generations changes. But it is also true that their caste position does not change. As I have argued earlier, given the nature of caste discrimination, a Dalit remains a Dalit and is marginalised on the basis of caste no matter what his individual class position.

The reason these opinions could not be expressed earlier was precisely because of the recognition that reservations correct for historical marginalisation on the basis of caste, and class has got nothing to do with it.

Things have changed now with EWS. Since the raison d'etre of reservations is no longer caste-based discrimination, it has become possible to imagine class as the determining factor of reservations. We can already see editorials being written in the Times of India using the EWS judgement to argue for "50 percent quota for all poor Indians, including Brahmins".

We can posit a situation, not necessarily possible but now plausible, in which the class position of all Scheduled Castes rises so much that reservations for them can end even without an end to caste-based discrimination. This is precisely the situation which was not even imaginable earlier.

Also read: Subcategorisation verdict: India needs a reservation model solving the problem of caste, not perpetuating it

The opinions of the judges prepare us for a world in which, to dismantle reservations it will no longer be necessary to prove that caste discrimination has ended. Contrary to the case in Bangladesh, reservations will end without fulfilling the purpose for which they were instituted. The first shots have been fired from the pulpits of the judiciary.

Aside: The return of repressed sociology as its knowledge opposite

Due to various reasons not important to get into here, the Supreme Court Bench hearing the matter regarding the reconducting of NEET, directed the Union and the National Testing Agency (NTA) to provide the correct answer of a particular physics question. A three-member expert committee from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi was tasked with stating which option of the physics question is scientifically correct.

There were four options. As it stood, students who had chosen Option 2 and Option 4 had both been given full marks. But that was not to be. Only one option would be deemed most correct and only one or the other cohort of students would be given full marks for the correct answer while the other cohort's marks would be deducted accordingly.

The expert committee from IIT-Delhi reported that Option 4 is the only correct option and the Supreme Court accepted that, directing the NTA to come out with a new list of ranks.

The interesting thing is not that this simple change affected 4.2 lakh students who now had chosen the wrong answer, or that 44 students who had achieved perfect scores of 720 had not now achieved perfect scores and would get less desirable colleges because of that, or that 16,000 candidates who had chosen the previously correct but lately incorrect answer would now in all likelihood not get a seat in government medical colleges at all.

The interesting thing is this: The reason the NTA had allowed both the answers to be correct has nothing to do with physics, it is simply that earlier editions of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books pre-2019 asserted Option 2 was correct, while the post-2019 editions of NCERT books asserted that Option 4 was correct.

Also read: B.R. Ambedkar's timeless relevance

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the NTA, justified giving grace marks to those who chose the second option, saying they were poor children who may have borrowed the textbooks of their  older siblings to study for NEET.

The NTA essentially accepted they were not judging knowledge but access to books. Specifically, access to books mandated by them. The NTA is the only arbiter of merit. The students could not even have obtained the right answer from the internet, because the NTA does not recognise the internet as a valid source of knowledge.

Mind you, this is not sociology or philosophy or even literature, in which all answers are correct as long as you can argue them or there are no correct answers because … subjectivity. This is physics we are talking about. In which there most definitely are correct answers. And the question was not about a cutting-edge field in which there is debate between scientists and so the students cannot possibly be expected to know the correct answer because the scientists themselves do not know. The NTA would not ask 12th graders such questions.

The question was on atoms, about something that has been settled for a while and has not been a matter of debate for decades. The NCERT book was not updated in 2019 to reflect the latest advances in physics, they had merely corrected a mistake.

The absurdity of this sequence of events should make clear that not even the NTA thinks it is testing merit. What they are testing is merely the student's ability to access the latest edition, which is determined by … I will let you do the maths.