‘Sanskritisation’ upside down

The demand of the Gujjars is a demand for a level-playing field and social justice within the reservation system

MSS Pandian Delhi

Cutting across the political spectrum, all the major parties in Rajasthan, including the BJP and the Congress, have rejected the demand of the Gujjars to be reclassified as a Scheduled Tribe. Yet, their demand, which stands the 'sanskritisation' thesis on its head, will not die down that easily. It is, indeed, based on a genuine and legitimate grievance.

The demand of the Gujjars is a demand for a level-playing field within the reservation system. Level-playing field is the basic mechanism which can ensure justice to the historically and socially disadvantaged communities. Who can deny that it will be much easier for the Gujjars to compete for higher education and government jobs with the Meenas than with the economically and socially advanced Jats? Today, both the Gujjars and the Jats are classified in Rajasthan as OBCs.

The Gujjars' demand point to the fact that large classificatory categories such as the OBCs, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes tend to club together — often inevitably — unequally placed communities. The result is obvious. The advanced communities under each of these categories garner most of the benefits of reservation while the others miserably lag behind.  Such anomaly calls for a constant re-imagining and re-inventing of the reservation system in favour of the less privileged. This will include, among other things, the reshuffling of castes across different categories. The Gujjars have precisely demanded such a reshuffling which will secure better social justice.

One Indian state where such continuous experimentation with the reservation system in favour of the less privileged has been successfully carried out is Tamil Nadu, one of the first states in India to implement reservation for the backward castes. It may also be remembered that it was agitations in Tamil Nadu (then the Madras state) during the 1950s which led to the first amendment to the Indian Constitution validating caste-based reservations.

One of the major innovations introduced in the reservation system in Tamil Nadu was the establishment of sub-quota within the quota for the backward castes in 1989. This was occasioned by an agitation by the Vanniyars, a caste predominately composed of small and marginal cultivators and farm labourers. Their demand in the 1980s was similar to that of the Gujjars today.

Though classified as a backward caste for a long time, they could not compete with the advanced sections of the backward castes and hence failed to gain much from the reservation system. They sought a 20 per cent exclusive reservation in the state and 2 per cent reservation in the central services. The agitation was so intense that vehicular traffic in northern Tamil Nadu was halted for a full week in September 1987.

Following the agitation, the DMK government headed by M Karunanidhi introduced the compartmentalised reservation system by setting aside 20 per cent out of the total 50 per cent backward caste reservation for the most backward castes (including the Vanniyars) and denotified communities. Following the new system of reservation, the Vanniyars' admission to professional courses in State-run educational institutions increased by five to six times compared with the scenario under the previous reservation system.

Even prior to the Vanniyar agitation, the Tamil Nadu government has been sensitive to the idea that reservation will not deliver social justice unless constantly reworked. In 1971, the first Backward Classes Commission of Tamil Nadu, headed by late AN Sattanathan, recommended a 33 per cent quota for the backward classes in the place of pre-existing 25 per cent. Yet, the DMK government in power at that time chose to increase the backward classes quota only to 31 per cent. The remaining two per cent was added to the Scheduled Caste quota increasing it from 16 per cent to 18 per cent. The logic behind this move was simple. As much as the backward castes, if not more, the Scheduled Castes too needed an increase in the quota.

The 1990s witnessed two more major interventions in the reservation system by the Tamil Nadu government. In 1990, once again, the DMK government in power introduced a new scheme of awarding five bonus marks to applicants to professional courses whose family did not have a graduate. Significantly, the new scheme had no reference to caste; and if educationally backward, anyone from a Brahmin to a Dalit could benefit from the scheme. Since the Madras High Court struck down the scheme as unconstitutional, it could be implemented only for a year and most of the beneficiaries, as one will expect, were Dalits and from rural areas.

In 1996, soon after the DMK returned to power, it modified the reservation system yet another time. It introduced quotas for students from rural areas. As much as the 'bonus mark' scheme, this too did not have any reference to caste. The fate of reservation in favour of the rural students was similar to that of the 'bonus marks' scheme. The Madras High Court struck it down.

As Tamil Nadu patiently waits for an enlightened judiciary which will see the inherent merit of schemes like reservation for rural students and bonus marks for the educationally backward in ensuring social justice, it is contemplating further changes in the system to benefit those who have been excluded from reservation for various reasons. The present government is soon planning to introduce quotas for the backward sections of Muslims and the Dalit Christians, who are no doubt socially underprivileged but excluded from reservation because of their religious identity. At the level of popular mobilisation, Arunthathiyars, a rather marginal Dalit community, is demanding sub-quotas within the Scheduled Caste quotas. Given the history of reservation in Tamil Nadu, this demand, one hopes, will be granted.

The case of Tamil Nadu thus tells us that only a dynamic and perennially changing system of reservation can meet the ever-changing demands of social justice by constantly identifying the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the system. The Gujjar's demand justifiably seeks such a dynamic view of the reservation system.

In not paying heed to the merit of their demand and treating their agitation as a mere law and order problem, both the political parties and the judiciary has missed an opportunity to set a precedent which can render the reservation system malleable and dynamic. Instead, they have opened up the space for further social strife.

The author is a Visiting Fellow, Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi