The 21st
Century has been teeming with discourse of how society excludes certain
category of people from the mainstream of society and how these excluded
populations have to live on the fringes of society without access to
development and the fruits that it generates. This call for inclusion based
societies has been almost global with almost every conceivable society having
substantial populations living outside of the mainstream society. In India too, the call for inclusion or
inclusiveness as it is called by some has found a place not just among the
members of the academia and activists but also among those who belong to the
excluded communities notably from among the LGBT community. When the Supreme
Court of India criminalized homosexuality and sodomy (the criminalization was
based in an archaic law dating back to the 1840s) it has overridden a judgement
of a lower court, the Allahabad High Court which decriminalized both
homosexuality and sodomy taking into consideration the spirit of the law (which
is an acknowledgement of changing times) and went by the word of the law to
recriminalize it, saying that it was up to the government to end the problem by
carrying out a constitutional amendment.
We would do well to
remember that the issue of exclusion of LGBT communities, though every bit
valid, is usually the subject of interest to the urban based populations and
very little of it actually means anything to the rural folk. We would also do well to remember that in
India exclusion from the mainstream involves many different strokes for many
different folks. When Prof. Sukhdeo
Thorat became the Chairman of the University Grants Commission of India, he
sanctioned the setting up of Centres in select universities to study the process
of social exclusion. These Centres came
to be called the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive
Policy. The wording not only sounds
inelegant but also garbled which became in difficult to understand what exactly
these centres’ mandate was. With time it became clear that these Centres became
de jure and de facto Centres for Dalit Studies.
In India, the caste system has claimed the right to be studied first and
this has been the case since the times of the Indian freedom movement and the
debate between M K Gandhi and B R Ambedkar and this culminated in the Poona
Pact, which then become the basis for the creation of a reservation policy.
What was interesting about the system of reservations that it also included a
7.5% reservation for the tribal people, while giving 15% to the lower castes in
the hierarchy of the caste system, and most of these lower castes consisted of
people who were characterized as the untouchables. To make sure that these
reservations would be constitutionally guaranteed, they were included in the
Constitutional (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 and the Scheduled areas and
Tribes in the 5th Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
However, the output of
research in the various Centres for the Study of Exclusion and Inclusive Policy
only has created a rhetoric against the Caste System and exclusion of Scheduled
Castes from the upper echelons of the Hindu society. While some forms of research have brought out
newer dimensions most others only reiterate the same story again and again.
What is very surprising is that research on Tribal populations in this Centres
(not situated in the North-Eastern region of India) has almost ritually given
the question of inclusion of scheduled tribes in the mainstream of life, the
blind eye treatment. Apart from that, the various activists who work for the
interests of the scheduled tribes seem to believe that the best way to deal
with them is to make them continue in their present existence in remote
forests, arguing that bringing them into the mainstream society would
disadvantage them tremendously because of their lack of familiarity with the
complexities of modern life which would
perhaps add them to the already burgeoning numbers of labourers who have
been dispossessed of small land holdings that were originally theirs. This
argument while having some merit, raises questions which are both ethical and
moral.
One can differentiate
between the moral and the ethical because the latter term derives itself out of
a certain ethos often a social ethos and the former is derived out more out of
a faith that people have in them or a faith that they follow and hence like the
German philosopher Kant would say morals and morality are a categorical
imperative. One could debate on the morality of leaving the tribal people as
they are. Those who support their existence in the forests would argue and not
very wrongly that they are most comfortable leading a form of life which they
have led for centuries so for them the so called goods of modern society are
not of any consequence. Others argue again not very wrongly, just because they
are used living in a certain way does not mean we can leave them there open to
the diseases that have a cure and also exposing them to the problems of modern
civilization like environmental pollution which have already made way into
their living sphere. Also the growing population of the country has been
putting pressure on the forest cover of the country since more people require
more land to live on and cultivate. So the pressure is not only on the tribal
people but also on animals that require a certain amount of forest cover for
their existence. Today, India is the only country where the Tiger and the Lion
exist though in different parts. Both animals have been reduced in numbers to
the extent that they are on the verge of extinction.
In this scenario, would
it not be a better alternative to slowly initiate the forest dwellers into the
mores of modern civilization with all its problems? The answer should be yes, because the future
of the forest and its dwellers including the tribal people and animals is
precariously poised towards destruction.
Before the problems of modern civilization reach the doors of the tribal
population and make them homeless and unfit to live in the world, it is the
responsibility of both government and peoples’ organizations to equip them with
the necessary skills to not just survive but thrive in the modern society. This
has to be done gradually and in a phased manner. The best way to start the
process would be to impart them education and that would facilitate their being
drawn into the mainstream society. That this can be done has been demonstrated
by the Christian missionaries in the North-Eastern part of the country where
every single person can speak and study in English.
In stark contrast to
this, tribal populations that inhabit Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh
and Odisha have become dispossessed of whatever lands or forests they had
control over and have been drawn into the mainstream society as labourers. Many
remain in the forest, for example the Konda Reddys, Chenchus, Gonds, and it is
just a matter of time before the relentless march of civilization will come
face to face with them and render them unlivable. In Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh, there is yet another unprecedented development which was a result of
political pressures. The Banjaras or the Lambadas as they are called in
Telangana in Andhra Pradesh are considered to be like the gypsies or nomads.
However, the story that they tell about themselves is that they are the
descendants of the Rajput King Prithvi Raj Chauhan. In Rajasthan and in
Maharashtra they are considered to be OC whereas in Karnataka they are
considered OBC. I have already written articles about the how OBC is a misnomer
because it stands for Other Backward Classes. The problem here is that when you
have called them other backward classes implicit is the notion that there are backward
classes which are already identified and it is apart from these already
identified backward classes that you are looking at the other backward classes.
However, in India, there has been no identification of backward classes and it
should be remembered that class is an economic variable, which means that you
can have the rich classes, the middle classes or the lower classes who are all
categorized on the basis of their economic strength alone.
However, the notion of
other Backward Classes does not invoke the economic position of these groups at
all. What it does is that it only invokes castes. I have written at length in
the past the only way in which these groups should be addressed is backward
castes and not backward classes. To make the murky water even more murkier
dominant social castes like the Vokkaligas and the Lingayats in Karnataka, the
Yadavs and Khurmis in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and the Yadavs and Gouds in
Telangana get classified as OBCs.
However, to return to the point about the Lambadas or the Banjaras, due
to political pressure that they were able to exert they managed to get
themselves the status of Scheduled Tribe in the erstwhile undivided Andhra
Pradesh and the present Telangana and the residuary Andhra Pradesh. Once can
see that the reservations meant for the Scheduled Tribes are totally hogged by
the Banjaras or the Lambadas. The Gonds, Raj Gonds, Konda Reddys, Koyas,
Chenchus etc have not had any access to the benefit of reservation in
educational institutions or in jobs. Only the Lambadas who cross over into
Telangana and Andhra Pradesh corner all the benefits.
In this scenario, it is
obvious that neither the government institutions or people’s groupings have any
interest in the upliftment the tribal populations. At best their efforts are
akin to the Narmada Bachao Andolan where all that is demanded is the cessation
of the construction of the dam on the river Narmada so the forest which would
otherwise get submerged would remain intact and the tribal people will also
have a status quo ante. The question is
how long would this last even if the construction of the dam were to be
stopped? The inexorable march of the
modern civilization is bound to get to the forest dwellers sooner rather than
later despite the protests against the construction of the dam.
In effect, when words
like progress and development are used they are used only in the context of the
scheduled castes because that is vote bank politics at work. The LGBT question
is raised because it is a safe bet for the urban upper caste to appear
progressive and at the same time escape the criticism of being upper caste. In
all this the tribal populations of the country (except in the North-Eastern
parts of the country) remain anonymous, undeveloped, backward and out of
everyone’s consciousness. This means that while we talk of inclusion, we do so
selectively and every inclusion creates other exclusions in Indian society. At
this rate, the goal of inclusiveness of all cannot be reached. Exclusions will
remain and worse still their exclusion will be ignored and that is the sad
truth behind the discourse of inclusion
in this country.
