Social Exclusion and Inclusion in India or how every attempted inclusion leaves behind a trail of exclusion.

The 21^st 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 5^th 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.