The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `Urbanisation helps to combat caste identity'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 24, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`Urbanisation helps to combat caste identity'

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, NOV. 23. Urbanisation will pave way for the emergence of fraternity among different sections so that caste identity in the country will be removed gradually, Dipankar Gupta, professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said today.

Speaking on `Caste in India: from system to identity' at a function organised by the School of Social Sciences of the University of Madras here, he said villages no longer offered a closed natural economy, as the so-called landed elite could not keep everyone under its control and the votebank politics started losing its charisma.

People of different castes in villages felt free and were able to come out of the grip of the dominant castes. This resulted in "strong assertion of caste identity", which brought about "caste politics." Almost every caste had some kind of organisation behind it, which spoke about its origin and place in society, besides telling how it could further its interests in the democratic structure, Dr. Gupta said.

Caste groups, despite differences among them, forged self-centred political alliances, not because of natural affinity but due to similarity of their position in society. How long the groups could hold together was a moot point, as they were not formed on a strong foundation of ideology but on the basis of "secular opportunism."

Inter-caste marriages

Urbanisation could offer the ambience for nurturing fraternity among people of different castes as it did not have casteism on its agenda. He cited the growing trend of inter-caste marriages in the urban metropolis. But it would not be feasible for anyone to shed his caste identity overnight, Dr. Gupta said.

Stressing that attention must be paid to the notion of caste identity, Prof. Gupta said, "we can think in terms of wiping this out only by accelerating the urban movement." "Unfortunately, reservation mantra had become almost universal", though the founding fathers of the country, including B.R. Ambedkar, architect of the Constitution, introduced a policy to eradicate the caste order and not to perpetuate it. Dubbing the Mandal Commission "politically motivated", he said it was not really meant to remove castes but to represent them. Thus caste identity became a political resource in perpetuating it, he said.

"Unless we realise the way our founding fathers looked at the caste order and its removal, we will not be able to combat it," he cautioned.

The meeting was presided over by the Director, National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, Chennai, Kannegi Packianathan. The School of Social Sciences chairperson, D. Jayalakshmi, and V. Sudarsen, Professor and Head, Department of Anthropology, spoke.

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