At a recent public interaction, Kamal Haasan, the leader of the Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM)-led political front — which positions itself as an alternative to the long-standing Dravida Munnerta Kazhagam and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led political formations — stated that his party’s application form for aspiring candidates had no column for caste. This was in response to a question whether Tamil Nadu will ever transcend caste-based politics.
Merit and identity
An often-paraded argument by the caste privileged is that merit is an untainted guiding light while identity is a biased lens. Merit is an absolute, a metric detached from social variances and undulations. It is not a product of society. On the contrary, it is a measure that circumvents societal discrimination. One solution advanced is the removal of the ‘caste column’ from all application forms.
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Kamal Haasan speaks in the same vein. By the simple act of removing one column , presto, his party becomes casteless; and will, consequently, lead to caste-free politics. A meritocracy will be born!
The field is far from level
People enjoying caste privilege will no doubt demand that caste should not be a dominant determinant in electoral politics. If you belong to brahminical or politically dominant castes, it is convenient and self-serving to demand this false level-playing field. But the field is far from level. It is so uneven that those who have been pushed down the slopes into the crevasses and forced to remain there will not be represented unless they are specifically identified and representatives of their communities gain the power to speak for themselves.
When you are a Dalit, it matters that you are being represented by someone who shares your lived experience. The community lives on the margins, not just economically but in every socio-political sphere. This results in marginal political power and, in such an environment, the agency to speak for Dalits remaining with Dalits is essential. This is not very different from an African-American tending to identify with their own or women rallying around women candidates. Elimination of caste requires the dismantling of edifices of power and the empowering of those who remain unseen. These two seemingly opposite actions need to work in tandem in order to attain equity. A reserved constituency is an important political tool for Dalits. B.R. Ambedkar spoke of the ‘Annihilation of Caste’ but that did not mean keeping it out of political action. Rather, quite the opposite. An annihilation of caste can be achieved only when we create a political, economic and social environment that affirms marginalised identities with vigour and confidence. Parties such as the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi with their thrust on Dalit political presence, are, therefore, indispensable to bringing about political parity, making that caste column central to empowerment.
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Caste always lingers
The caste-empowered close their eyes to the reality of how caste operates. Biases are hereditary societal implants. When a provision for self-identification by caste is done away with, the candidate presumes he has elevated himself to a trans-caste pedestal. This is a delusion. The party, on its part, believes that prior social work for the marginalised or politically progressive answers given in an interview reveal the individual’s ‘above-caste distinction’ attitude. But this is not how the story unravels. Caste always lingers and operates in ways that go unnoticed. Even the most well-intentioned Forward Caste or Other Backward Caste politicians need to keep themselves in check. This will only be achieved if every political party consciously and deliberately looks for candidates from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities and fields them as such, up-front. Importantly, this must not be confined to the obligatory reserved seats. I would have been far more impressed had Kamal Haasan said that his party made a conscious effort to identify Dalit and tribal candidates and allocated a certain percentage of seats for them. Caste is such an enclosed identity that parties that present a progressive face take the route of negating its active presence rather than taking it head-on.
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The counter argument would be that the Gounder and Thevar caste groups consolidated themselves only because of caste-based politics. What this perspective ignores is the fact that these were already socio-culturally dominant communities and they further consolidated this inherent position. Communities such as Vanniyars also formed caste-based formations, further squeezing Dalits into a corner. Therefore, to speak of caste-identity-less candidate selection is problematic. We need to break powerful caste-centric groupism-s but that will not happen unless we first recognise that such communities come together only because of their caste might within the social order. Whereas, Dalit communities find it much harder to assemble and are always viewed with suspicion by all. The brahmins’, even the anti-caste brahmins’, complaint about casteism in Tamil Nadu politics does not stem from their social, cultural or economic marginalisation. Their frustration comes from their removal from the high seats and being relegated to the gallery.
The demolition of caste from Tamil Nadu politics needs to begin on the ground. Only then will it reflect in elections. At the same time, despite many serious failings, we have to applaud Tamil Nadu for the social progress that it has made over the decades. This is the direct result of robust, socially aware politics. But the caste column from a form can only be removed when Dalits and Tribals feel that it has become redundant and their caste identity irrelevant; not when those who will always benefit from caste proclaim castelessness in order to feel good about their hearts being in the right place.
T.M. Krishna is a musician and author
