The ‘Invisible Dalits’: Will The Caste Sub-Categorisation Change Dalit Lives?

This incident from 2003, which was barely reported in the mainstream media, was neither an isolated incident nor the last one that showcases the impossibility of inter-caste marriages among Dalits. It also highlighted social cleavages that make dominant Dalit castes perpetuate similar violence that they have been fighting against. The internal caste divisions among Dalits came up again in the political discourse recently when a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court overturned the E.V. Chinnaiah v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2005) ruling that considered all the Scheduled Caste groups under Article 341 as homogenous. The CJI-led bench permitted the states to subcategorise SCs and STs (following empirical data and other relevant yardsticks), paving the way for sub-classification in reservations. Citing varied levels of discrimination faced by different groups within the SC communities, the bench said: “There is heterogeneity in terms of past occupation ... social status and other indicators may be different for different castes inside the Scheduled Castes. So, the degree of social and economic backwardness may vary from one person or caste to another.”

The judgment caused a political debate. While the NDA allies and social justice party leaders like Chirag Paswan and Ramdas Athawale opposed it—the former even pledging to approach the court seeking a review of the verdict—the Opposition parties, including the Congress, maintained a strategic silence. In an interview with Outlook, Paswan said that the basis for reservation in the Constitution was ‘untouchability’ that Dalits have been facing for centuries. “How could there then be subcategorisation among Dalits themselves?” he asked.

The scholars and activists who are against the judgment have also put the onus on the upper caste bureaucrats who have discriminated against Dalits and denied them reservations in the public sector. Demands have also come up to open up the private sector for reservation. However, can one historically claim that the dominant Dalit castes have not been responsible for the backwardness and inaccessibility of the lower crust Dalits who, as per Dalit scholar Chandraiah Gopani, are ‘invisible Dalits’? Can one claim with certainty that ‘untouchability’ is not practised among Dalits?

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During the 1930s, Babasaheb Ambedkar also encountered the question of discrimination among Dalits. One person from the Mang community—considerably among the lower crust of Dalits in Maharashtra—wrote: “In your organisations, there are many Mahar leaders and in villages Mahars do not allow us to enter their houses. They discriminate against us, they do not come to our marriages, there are no inter-caste marriages between us. How do you give justice to us?” Addressing such discrimination and talking about the right to representation in assemblies, Ambedkar wrote: “Weightage carved out from the share of the majority shall not be assigned to one community only. But the same shall be divided among all minority communities equally or in inverse proportion to their economic position, social statuses and educational advance.” Emphasising the morale of Ambedkar, Gopani says: “Once, in Bombay presidency, when there was only one reserved seat at a hostel, Babasaheb preferred a Mang over a Mahar”. This, nevertheless, is not just limited to Maharashtra—there are pan-India references.

In the Telugu-speaking region, the Dalit movement consolidated in the form of the Dalit Mahasabha after the 1985 Karamchedu incident where upper caste Kammas killed Madigas. However, within nine years, internal cracks started appearing. Accusing the Malas (considered to be the dominant caste among Dalits) of having taken away a large share of the reservation benefits, the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS), under the leadership of Krishna Madiga, emerged.

They gathered data on the representation of Madigas in Parliament, educational institutes and other public offices, showing how they had been at the receiving end of affirmative actions. Gopani notes that the activities of the MRPS movement was attended by lakhs of people during 1995-97. Due to political expediency, the then Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government appointed the Justice Ramachandra Raju Commission to look into these demands. According to the Raju report, the SCs in Telangana were divided into four groups—the first group represented scavengers or Rellis, the second were the Madiga-affiliated castes, the third were the Mala-affiliated castes and the fourth were the Adi-Dravida communities who were in a much better position.

In Punjab, while the Adi Dharmis or Chamars form the uppermost crust of the internal hierarchy among Dalits, the Valmikis are still at the bottom. The reason behind the distinction stems from economic conditions. During the British period, the leather business flourished, and several members of the Chamar community used the opportunity to develop a ‘socially dignified’ identity.

One of their community members, Mangoo Ram—who was the son of a relatively prosperous leader—went to the US and came in touch with the Gadhar party. When he came back to his village in Hoshiarpur, he started the Adi Dharm movement. In the 1931 Census, they got themselves recorded as a special social group. They utilised reservation post-independence and went to England for education and participated in electoral politics, whereas the Valmikis couldn’t match their potential.

In Gujarat, the situation is no different. A survey titled ‘Understanding Untouchability’—conducted by Navasarjan in collaboration with the John F Kennedy Foundation across 1,589 villages in Gujarat—found that if there were 98 types of untouchability practised among the caste Hindus on the SCs, 99 forms of untouchability could be observed among the SCs. While inter-caste marriage is opposed by 98.4 per cent of caste Hindus, the number among SCs is 99.1 per cent.

Several states formed commissions to explore possible remedies. In 2005, the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka constituted the Sadashiva Commission to look into the possibilities of sub-classification among the SCs. Though the report was submitted in 2012, it has never been presented in the Assembly. However, the press release showed that it took into consideration 101 castes within the SC communities and recommended the distribution of the 15 per cent reservation proportionately among the four prevalent caste groups.

The report of the Hukum Singh Commission that was formed by the Rajnath Singh government in UP in 2001 had data that clearly showed discrimination. Though the Chamar/Jatava caste share in jobs was 56.67 per cent, that of the non-Jatavs stood at around 28 per cent.

Pointing out this discrepancy even in the political sphere, UP-based Dalit scholar Ravi Kant says: “In UP, there are 66 jatis among Dalits and six jatis for the topmost layer. The rest of the 60 jatis—part of the non-Jatav community—can rarely be found in the political sphere. The BSP, which dominated Dalit politics in Western UP for the longest time, didn’t give representation to the Valmiki community that has a formidable population in that region.” It was the BJP that started giving tickets to the non-Jatav communities, he adds.

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However, several scholars, activists and political parties have opposed the SC judgment. The National Confederation of Dalit and Adivasi Organisations (NACDAOR)—a group said to be backed by different political parties called a nationwide bandh on August 21 and pressed for five demands. Besides asking for retraction of the judgment, they asked the government to put reservation in the Ninth Schedule to avoid judicial scrutiny. They also asked the government to release the data of SC/ST/OBC employees in government services.

Criticising the judgment, Dalit scholar Sumeet Mhaskar, says: “The SC is entirely incorrect in putting the onus for this situation on those Dalit communities who have benefited slightly better from the reservation policies.” Rather, the court should have focused on those very conditions which prohibited some of these Dalit communities from accessing the benefits of reservation policies. In doing so, the SC could have easily focused on the role of predominantly upper-caste bureaucrats who have used all possible means to subvert the implementation of the reservation policies, he adds.

Notably, the committee on the welfare of SCs and STs, in its 2023 report gathering data from 44 ministries, showed that at the DS/Director level, the total SC/ST representation lies at merely 15 per cent where only the SC representation itself should have been 15 per cent. At the joint secretary level, the percentage of the SCs is 10.3 per cent and for the additional secretary grade, it stands at 13 per cent. At the Secretary level, it is 0.04 per cent. As per the Central Staffing Scheme (CSS), these posts are deputation posts and not the cadre-based ones. The data makes it clear that the representation of the marginalised communities in the deputed posts are almost nothing in contrast to the general population. Additionally, the only place where the SC/STs are overrepresented are in Group C (excluding safai karmacharis)—18.58 per cent and including safai karmacharis, it stands at 36.9 per cent.

However, questioning those who speak against the sub-categorisation, Gopani says: “These are mostly ‘English’ university-educated scholars who have got the benefits of the reservation.” Adding to this line of criticism, Ravi Kant notes: “In Bihar, the Paswans; in UP, the Jatavs; and in Maharashtra, the Mahars will take a stand against this judgment.” But he is not confident of the ‘BJP’s intentions’. “In several cases, they declare None Found Suitable (NFS) for the reserved category seats. They have to change the system if they truly want to include the most marginalised. Even if one candidate from the reserved community appears, she should be given a chance. It gives them social mobility and pulls them up.”

Expressing similar concern, another scholar, N Sukumar, says: “The families who have availed the benefits of reservation for more than two generations need to morally and ethically not avail them further so that the provision can go to the most deserving. The court hasn’t done proper homework about the fulfilment of reservations for the past many decades. The question of backlog vacancies remains unquestionable.”

The debate over sub-categorisation is about to shape the political discourse in the coming days as well. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) survey showed that the non-Jatav votes, besides the Jatav ones, had considerably shifted to the Congress-SP alliance. Akhilesh Yadav has, in fact, left the vocabulary of the Muslim-Yadav combination and has embraced the PDA (Pichda Dalit Adivasi) to address the non-dominant castes. Will it impact the upcoming state elections? Will the ‘Invisible Dalits’ be visible on the political stage?

(This appeared in the print as "The 'Invisible' Dalits")