If few Kerala students don't mention caste, what changes for India?
“Whenever I give a hard-hitting lecture on the perils of our caste system,” Prof AF Mathew would tell me, “I have at least a couple of people filled with curiosity to know which caste I belong to.”
Prof Mathew is a sociologist par excellence, and a popular professor. He explained: “It’s (his caste) difficult to guage since I don’t have a surname that reveals it, but if there are any Malayalees among those curious folks, especially Christian ones, they would drop by to ask me which church I go to.”
Having grown up as a Malayalee Christian, I almost instantly stumbled upon the realisation that I’ve been asked that same question during past conversations, though I had never thought about its implications. In Kerala, as with most of India, Christians of different castes still go to different churches. Perhaps it is the time I have spent with Prof Mathew inside and outside classrooms that has made me a cynic who wouldn’t even bother to roll his eyes if someone told me how caste was no longer relevant among educated, urban Indians.
Three years from the conversation with Prof Mathew, I’d move into a new apartment in an upscale neighbourhood in South Bangalore, to be greeted warmly by another Malayalee Christian family who lived next door; a family that has spent nearly its entire lifetime outside of Kerala. It didn’t take long for the question to come up.
“So, which church do you go to?”
There would be a confirmation about my Latin Catholic identity based on my church, and then, there would be a subtle proclamation of Syrian Catholic pride from the other end. My cynicism around the absence of caste in modern India isn’t just based on my conversation with Prof Mathew.
For the past couple of days, many a newsfeed and social media page has been awash with articles surrounding C Raveendranath, the sparkling new poster boy of Kerala’s secular credentials – the state education minister’s statement that 1.24 lakh students across government and government aided schools in the state had sought admission without filling the column soliciting their caste have decidedly created ripples.
The minister also revealed that the number of such students in class 10 and class 12 combined was just around 500, concluding that it is the younger breed of parents who have chosen to leave columns on caste blank. As heartening as this sounds, the cynic in me cannot help but wonder if this is an indication of a world yet to come, which would be caste-free or caste-blind.
Who can denounce caste?
The singlemost important point to be considered in the discourse around this trend of parents not declaring their child’s caste is, as ironic as it may sound, the caste of those parents. In a recent interview to a Malayalam news channel, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor spoke of how he had been bought up in an environment entirely devoid of caste and its existence, but it is only many years later that he realised that such a caste agnostic existence was a luxury only the upper caste could afford.
It’s fairly safe to say that only those from a privileged, upper caste background can afford to denounce their caste. For most of those who do, the entitlement that their caste has been gifting them through their life is so ingrained in their existence that it is almost impossible for them to alter their world view to consider these as privileges.
It isn’t just about my otherwise liberal mother turning casually casteist when she speaks about the super smart son of her friend who scored a single-digit rank in an entrance exam, telling me that the result wasn’t surprising as the family is Brahmin — their “entire body is filled with brains”! It is also about that above average Iyer boy who laments on how he was denied a secure future due to the evil called reservations, an unethical shortcut that students who weren’t as good as him availed of to make way ahead of him.
Unfortunately, our entitled Brahmin boy had only memorised the height of the Qutub Minar and the date of Quit India Movement during social sciences classes, and not learnt how his community, one that constituted less than five percent of the Indian population, has historically dominated the higher echelons of government services disproportionately – so much so that Brahmins made up for 55 percent of appointments of civil services in 1912 (when their share of population was 3.2 per cent), and continued to enjoy a share of 37 per cent even as late as 1990 (population share: 3.5 per cent).
An even more interesting contrast is the employment pattern of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the country. As per the Annual Report 2005-06 of the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions, 60 percent of all sweepers in central government offices belonged to various SC communities. Affirmative action and reservation policies of our government only seek to disrupt this status quo, and over the years, it is only natural that the dominance of our so-called higher castes slim down and representations from the marginalised castes grow consistently.
Now, we have children born into Brahmin families where aspiring to be an IAS officer would be commonplace, and children born into SC families where even securing a class D clerical job availing reservations would tantamount to an achievement. Are there any doubts as to which of these children would be comfortable openly denouncing their castes?
What is in a name?
Writer and thinker civic Chandran Chinnangath posted a question on Facebook upon hearing this news of caste denouncement in Kerala: “Do we know how many Nair’s, Varma’s, Panicker’s, Warrier’s and Namboothiri’s sought admission to these schools this year”
These are surnames eponymous with various forward caste groups in Kerala, equivalent to Sharmas, Bansals, Jhas and Sinhas from other parts of the country. A typical case of entitlement entwined with existence is when usage of such caste-based surnames is passed off as merely a name with a nice ring. So, we have a wonderfully articulate and progressive individual like actor Prithviraj Sukumaran who decides to keep his caste in his daughter’s name, yet speaks with full conviction that he is against the caste system, justifying his choice as merely a name, and not a caste reference.
As with the anecdote with which I began this piece, caste hasn’t let go of Christian families who had chosen not to use caste names for decades, if not centuries. Thus, it’s quite naïve to believe that a Menon or a Nair would be perceived and accepted as mere names by the society we live in.
A Punjabi friend of mine had told me a few years back that the rationale to eradicate caste differences was behind the usage of the generic surnames “Singh” for all men and ‘”Kaur” for all women. But when I sat inside a multiplex watching the biopic of our beloved Captain Cool, I could only smile to myself, seeing Sushant Singh Rajput play Mahendra Singh Dhoni on screen.
What is there to celebrate?
In my favourite scene from the movie Newton (India’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars this year), an old man asks Nutan Kumar, an upright government officer, a rather innocuous question.
“Do you know what your problem is?”
“My honesty?” Nutan asks.
“No.” He clarifies. “Your arrogance about your honesty.”
It is a conversation that drives home a range of messages. Why is there a need to carry arrogance over the fact that you are sincere at your job? Why the need to be proud of the fact that you are giving up a privilege that you’ve been unfairly living through for as long as you know?
The moment a person from an upper caste expects even a bit of applause for choosing not to use her caste for their next generation, she defeats the purpose of her action, as it comes across as a sacrifice that she seems to be making for the greater good.
It isn’t by any means a sacrifice, but merely an act of disparaging long-standing injustice. Yet, it would be unfair to blame people who have chosen not to use caste for admissions as the school entry form is a personal document, and not a space for public proclamation, hence it would be their own choice to do so. But, what many individuals do not understand is that caste is not a personal choice – it is a societal practice that clings to you even if you choose to ignore it.
That said, I’m certainly not proud of the state government using this data as a reason to celebrate. It is also important to explore whether such an act of promoting a caste agnostic society would cast pressure on lower castes, inculcating a feeling of guilt in them for wanting to declare their caste identities to avail the legal benefits that the government has bestowed upon them for their upliftment.
As is clear from every empirical study and pattern, the ones who would benefit most from a caste agnostic society are those with lineages soaked in the scent of privilege, which, in our social context, would mostly constitute our upper castes.
However, beyond everything above, I too felt a shimmer of hope seeing the number of parents who have chosen to keep their children casteless. I’ll conclude sharing a rather astonishing insight I gathered during my research on this article. For almost every Google search that I ran around castes and professions, most results were links leading to matrimonial websites, where castes still reign supreme, unchallenged and undisputed.
My glimmer of hope lies in there. A couple of decades from now, even if half of these casteless children from Kerala schools decide to carry that belief when — as grown-ups — they choose their spouses, we would indeed be welcoming a beautiful new era in our country.
One where we can sit back and let Louis Armstrong’s words revel in all their glory to be a true reflection of the time, “What a wonderful world!”
Also read: Why caste alone will not win 2019 general elections