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Caste in a racist mould

There is scientific evidence now to show how caste has acquired clear racist characteristics and it is cause for alarm.

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An interesting old debate has been revived by the latest upsurge of Dalit protests and assertion across the country, provoked by excesses and discrimination mostly, but not necessarily limited to cow-protection. For example Rohith Vemula, whose suicide lit the first racispark, was not at all linked to the beef issue. The question is, is casteism comparable with racism?

There is no debate that crores of Indians have suffered from caste-based discrimination over the centuries, and as recent developments remind us, continue to do so. Despite 65 years of affirmative action, educational and job reservations, we have too few Dalits in positions of responsibility or power in the government, judiciary, professions, corporate world and, not to forget, news media. Casteism is a phenomenon that, by itself, has inflicted horrible discrimination on at least 20 per cent of our fellow Indians, mostly Hindus. Besides, there are many more now classified as OBCs who suffer to various degrees and are often condemned to their scores of essential but usually low-paying traditional and caste-denominated avocations, from cattle-rearing to blacksmithy.

In terms of just the degree and depth of this discrimination and its historicity, it is difficult to see how this is any different from racism and apartheid as we know it. This point of view is strongly contested by the other side, usually consisting of the so-called upper castes that claim a traditional system of distribution of skills and roles within the adherents of the same faith only made for better cohesion and orderliness, besides economic and social stability. Manu, who crafted this, was more a scientist, or like somebody you would today describe as a big corporation’s HRD head.


Also read: Modi era begins in politics as caste factor fades. Here’s why he won’t be easy to beat


In Manu’s view, this school argues, no caste was higher or lower. Each had its assigned role and so what if skills were passed down to offspring within the same family.

That this is too clever-by-half, a convention and self-serving mythology invented by the upper caste elites can be proven with millions of examples over history, from Eklavya to Rohith Vemula to now Yogesh Sarikhada the Dalit who attempted to commit suicide in protest against the torture and humiliation of fellow Dalits by self-styled gau-rakshaks in Gujarat and died last week.

But we also now have scientific–both genetic and anthropological–evidence to show how, whatever Manu’s intention, caste has now acquired clear racist characteristics, and it is both a national embarrassment, and threat to social cohesion.

In January this year, Mohit M. Rao of The Hindu reported a study by researchers from National Institute of BioMedical Genomics (NIBMG) which has “looked at the genes of various communities” to examine this question. They concluded that for upper castes “endogamy (that is marrying within one’s caste) started nearly 70 generations ago, or around the time of the Hindu Gupta period about 1500 years ago.” Their paper was published in reputed journal Proceedings of the National Academic Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Researchers concluded that social transformation in that period led to “enforcement of social strictures against marriage between castes, as enshrined in Dharmashastra.” The imprints this left on DNA, they conclude by careful genetic studies, is like looking at the “block length of ancestral genes.”

What started 70 generations ago, has not really reversed. If you have any doubts, looks at the matrimonial advertisement columns of all your newspapers and websites. Unless there is social change that reverses this, the argument that our conservatism has genetically thrust racial characteristics on our population and that old casteism has morphed into racism will only get stronger.


Also read: Uttar Pradesh is India’s broken heartland, break it into 4 or 5 states


 

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