When class mitigates caste

Context: The lockdown experience has demonstrated that in India Individual liberties often sink below the dividing class line.

Analysing Indian Society:

• Silence over police brutality:

• The recent police brutality on an African-American sparked national outrage in the US and questions India's silence over police atrocities.

• Accepted and assimilated realities: Protests do not happen as life’s stark realities have been accepted by society due to long-sufferings ethos.

• Colonial Precedents: The police in the colonial times never distinguished between communities and castes in perpetuating its cruelty.

• E.g. Dyer didn’t separate the upper and lower caste or the Hindus and Muslims at Jallianwala Bagh

• The class divide of the colonial society was giving immunity to those in power and vulnerability of those against.

• Money as an effective deterrent against police brutality: a universal Indian experience.

• Few cases of atrocities that did get highlighted were purely based on politics and did not bring any systemic change (eg. cases of custodial murders).

• The poorest among the poor (the tribals, Dalits, and Muslims) suffer the worst treatment.

• Sinking Individual liberties: Caste and communal identities never offer succor to victims of isolated incidents as they are considered par for the course.

• The lockdown experience: India seems to be more of a class-ridden society than a casteist one

• The usual identity markers — caste, religion, language, food habits and facial features—melted to form a unique mass of people, i.e. migrants.
• No community or caste organization came to the rescue of the migrants.
• Workers have forgotten their caste during the days of distress (GB Pant Social Science Institute).

Way Forward:

• Class mitigates caste: The reverse migration provides a strong proof to relook at the impact of the colonial census process and destruction of caste mobility.