Let us begin by paraphrasing Jadunath Sarkar on the consequences of the State adopting unequal policies for different sections of the people in a diverse society. Specifically, he speaks about Aurangzeb’s
policies towards Muslims and Hindus during his long and troubled reign (1658-1707). The settled principles of Islam ended up by making the Muslims a privileged class, nourished on State bounties, naturally prone to indolence in peacetime and unable to stand on their own legs in the arena of life. The vast sums spent by the State in maintaining pauper houses and in scattering alms were a direct premium on laziness. Wealth bred indolence and a love of ease; these soon led to vice and, finally, to poverty and ruin. At the same time, the treatment of the subject people prevented the full development of the resources of the State by them. When a class of men is publicly depressed and harassed by law and executive caprice alike, it merely contents itself with dragging on an animal existence. Amid such conditions, the human hand and the human mind cannot perform at their best. When public offices are distributed in consideration of race or creed rather than merit, the affected populations are driven to conclude that they have no lot or part in such a State. The Islamic theocracy, when set up over a composite population, has the worst vices of oligarchy and of alien rule combined. The greatness of a historian, and proof, if proof is even required, that history is a social science, is provided by the fact that the analyses and conclusions of a great historian will be applicable in a time and space-independent manner, across centuries and political systems, for the simple reason that basic sociological impulses govern the behaviour of people in any society, not their immediate temporal condition. In the specific case of Aurangzeb’s treatment of Muslims and Hindus, the mental barrenness among both these sections of the population became apparent even during the course of his long reign, towards the end mostly. The overall result was the creation of a chronic antagonism between the rulers and the ruled, which in the end breaks every State with a composite population. So it was in India in 1707. So it is becoming in India in 2026. Who are the rulers and who are the ruled in today’s India? The matter of State-sponsored caste-based reservations in India has had a long and contentious history. Much of this background arose from the reservation of educational and employment opportunities for the so-called backward class communities (note that I say backward class, not backward caste) in the Madras Presidency and the Kingdom of Mysore towards the turn of the 20th century. The discussions between Gandhi and Ambedkar that led to the 1931 Poona Pact ensured that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC and ST) communities would have a pre-decided, permanent, even privileged place in the political life of the country thenceforth, and this led to the adoption of caste-based reservations for these communities in our 1950 Constitution. The forced conflation of backward classes with backward castes through the mental gymnastics of the Mandal Commission in 1979, followed by the Indra Sawhney judgment of 1992, only added to the overall confusion. Soon followed the draconian SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, which imposed an inverted lese-majeste law on the population and, when reasonably read down by the courts, was assiduously restored to its prior position in 2018. Caste was a purely British creation and had almost nothing to do with our age-old profession-based Varna and birth-based Jati system that has been the sheet anchor of our pluralistic and diverse society for well nigh five millennia, as multiple historians have taken much pains to point out. This concoction became a devil’s brew after the adoption of the Mandal Commission’s findings into law in 1992. Suddenly, the proportion of reserved places in educational and employment sectors of government institutions rose from 22.5% to 49.5%. In Tamil Nadu, this rose to an absurd 69% in 1994 with the 76th Amendment to the Constitution. Equality of opportunity for citizens that was desired by all in the Constituent Assembly, including Ambedkar, was junked, and in its place we got a presumption of the equality of outcome, a totally artificial and contrived concept, one that is more in keeping with religious doctrines of the type favoured by Aurangzeb. The Constitution of India, or should I say the judiciary’s interpretation of the same, became our Holy Book, a book that favoured some Hindus (70% in the Reserved Category) and discriminated against other Hindus (30% in the General Category). If we assume that 80% of Indians are Hindu, this works out to 56% of the population able to obtain reservation benefits, while 24% of the population are excluded from these benefits. Thou shalt test all, and award some regardless of the test. The OBC reservations that followed from Mandal are quixotic and bear no relation to any fact that suggests that these communities have been oppressed, suppressed or any such thing. In fact, the converse is true—in large part, these communities have and continue to have extensive social and economic outreach and influence, especially in the North Indian heartland. Some of these communities have enjoyed an ascendancy owing to their landowning status and have entered, or are attempting to enter, the reservation matrix solely due to anxieties that the less-landed communities are making progress in recent times, as the modern economy shifts away from agriculture and land sales. They have used the provisions of the Mandal Commission to secure economic security, which, in turn, has given them considerable political heft. It would be no exaggeration to suggest that these OBC communities have now become the rulers of India, in more senses than one. Never mind that the same community may be an OBC in one State, and not be one in another—is backwardness somehow a function of arbitrary administrative boundaries, or did the concept itself lack sufficient basis to begin with? The political class is no less culpable in this matter. Given the uncertain electoral times of the 1980s and the reality of the first-past-the-post system of our elections, political parties were desperately seeking reliable vote banks. The OBC vote bank, an outcome of the Karpoori Thakur (recently given the Bharat Ratna) and Madhu Limaye school of thought, was the result and led to the election of many retrograde ministries all over the country, with the result that the so-called caste-based reservations today have very little to do with social upliftment of depressed sections of the population, and indeed not so much even about the benefit of the SC ST communities, the original intended beneficiaries, but more about the transactional relationship between the political class and the OBC jatis. It is rank political clientelism, where State resources are channelled to dominant vote banks, much like how the vast resources of this country were first carried off to Central Asia, then used to ingratiate a hostile foreign minority under the Mughals, and then to fund Britain’s empire. The underdogs of this debilitating system are the General Category youngsters. In the simple matter of securing an opportunity for education, in a country where this has largely been a concern of the State, rather than private players, they have come up with a cropper. The demand for educational opportunities far exceeds the number of places in government education institutions. The situation becomes much worse when these youngsters try and secure government employment. The Damocles sword of extending caste-based reservations into the private sector only compounds the worries of students and parents alike. Where are these students supposed to go after they finish their studies? Many GC students go abroad to study after high school (those whose parents have the necessary disposable income), and those who cannot afford the high fees charged by private universities try to emigrate after their studies. To summarise, they no longer feel connected to the State. I will not comment on whether GC students are more meritorious than RC students. All that the GC students want is a level playing field where the best man has a fair opportunity to win. It is back to the same point—equality of opportunity has been replaced by equality of outcome. The GC sections of society have become the ruled. In a sad replay of Jadunath Sarkar’s assessment of Aurangzeb’s faulty theocratic model in a diverse society, we have a new religion. This religion is based on the infallibility of our Holy Book, the Constitution of India, and especially Article 15(4), which in the end is only an enabling provision and not a fundamental right in itself. The time has come to state clearly that caste-based reservations are not fundamental rights of citizens. Today, we see a situation of complete mental emptiness among both the rulers and the ruled. The rulers are so complacent and fulfilled that the inevitable laziness has set in. The ruled are unable to exercise any mental capability that they might have had, and they have descended into illogicality and hyperbole. In this process, we Indians seem to have lost the ability to think. Without cogent thought, there can be no productive action; without action, there can be no economic progress. Without exponential economic growth, there can be no strength, power, and outreach, especially in today’s rapidly changing conditions, when our present leaders repeatedly say we will see a new and better India. Any government where ambition outstrips ability presides over the collapse and dissolution of the State. History surely repeats itself because human beings do not change sociologically.
Gautam R. Desiraju is in IISc, Bengaluru and UPES, Dehradun. Deekhit Bhattacharya is in Luthra Law Associates, Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
