[Reader-list] Debate on Gandhi-Ambedkar, reservations

[hpp at vsnl.com]

Dear Friends

I have been reading the series of articles and letters and rejoinders in the pages of the The Statesman, Kolkata, about Gandhi, Ambedkar and reservations. The discussion was triggered off by Prof Dipak Basu's 2-part article on affirmative action.

I am sure Sarai readers will find this of interest.

I am reproducing all the pieces below.

Best

V Ramaswamy
Calcutta
............................

Affirmative action-I

Experiments In The Former Soviet Union, Japan & America 

By Dipak Basu

The author is Professor in International Economics, Nagasaki University

“If our political progress is to be real, the underdogs of our society must be helped to become men” (Rabindranath Tagore, Letters from Russia) 

The debate on affirmative action in India tends to drag and isn’t always geared to the desired objective: creation of equality of opportunity. As with secularism, the reservation system in India has a different political aim ~ to make the system more unequal than what it is. 

Secularism, far from making the state independent of religion, is intended to provide special privileges to certain religious groups. Similarly, the affirmative system is politically designed to provide restricted, not equal, rights to some chosen people. 

The policy was perhaps started in India by Lord Curzon in 1905 by banning the employment of Hindu Bengalis in government services. The official argument was that they were too advanced and others, particularly Muslims, would be deprived of job opportunities. Later it was extended to the military services by giving preferential treatment to Muslims and Sikhs who were branded as martial races. 

Divide population

Reservations in government jobs were introduced in 1918 in Mysore in favour of a number of castes and communities that had little representation in the administration. In 1909 and in 1919 the system was introduced for the Muslims in British India. In 1935, political reasons prompted the government to provide job reservation for the backward castes. 

The real idea was to divide the population of India into several warring groups along religious, ethnic and caste lines by granting special rights so that India of the future would be divided and weak. A number of prominent politicians had acted as agents of the Raj to implement that line of action. Among them was BR Ambedkar. Although today he is regarded as a founding father of the nation, the writer of the Constitution and the cult figure of the backward castes with four universities named after him, he took no part in the freedom movement. Instead, like EVR Periyarer of Tamil Nadu, CP Ramaswamy Aiyar of Kerala, Jinnah and Mohammed Iqbal, he was a staunch loyalist of the empire, hand-in-glove with the British to divide India along caste, religion and tribal lines. The followers of the same person today include the Communists who, forgetting the essentials of the Marx-Lenin ideology, are supporting job reservation along caste and religious lines. 

Equality of opportunity is the basis of a true democracy and as such affirmative action is required to equalise opportunities among people who are endowed differently. Even in the USA, affirmative action was promoted first by President Lyndon Johnson in 1974 to promote American blacks, who were deprived of most opportunities. However, it was not a success. The countries where it was most successful are Japan, the former Soviet Union and other former socialist countries of East Europe along with Cuba and Vietnam. India should take a lesson from them to implement a proper policy on affirmative action. 

The success of the Soviet society regarding affirmative action was observed by Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote: “Throughout the ages, civilised communities have contained groups of nameless people. They toil most, yet theirs is the largest measure of indignity. They are deprived of everything that makes life worth living. I had often thought about them, but came to the conclusion that there was no help for them... In Russia at last. Whichever way I look I am filled with wonder. From top to bottom they are rousing everyone up without distinction”. 

Immediately after the revolution, Lenin proclaimed the affirmative action known as korenizatsiia to provide affirmative preferences for non-Russians, backward ethnic groups and poor Russians. To gain the support of the non-Russian, who were largely illiterate except in Georgia and Armenia, a Sovietization in three phases was developed. In the first phase, the respective cultures were promoted. This aroused their national conscience. This eventually led to the second phase which was rapprochement and finally to the third phase which was merger. Non-Russians were awarded their own administrative territories and accorded preference in educational and promotion policies. This policy led to the creation of massive educational facilities in the republics of the backward people, employment for the representatives of the ethnic intelligentsia, foundation of republican academies of science and research centres supporting ethnic unions of writers, painters and film-makers. The policy 
was applied uniformly to create elites, which, like their culture, would be national in form, but with the same content in all units of the union. 

However, there was no fixed quota in admissions to the educational establishments or in jobs. Instead, education was made free at all stages and compulsory up to certain ages depending on their ethnic background. Every qualified student was entitled to scholarship to cover his or her costs of maintenance. Education was taken to the people where they lived. Even mobile schools and libraries were established for the nomadic populations of central Asia. A certain number of students from the backward areas of the Soviet Union was taken to the very best universities and institutes of higher learning. They got separate training so that they could compete effectively with the more advanced Russian students. 

Due to this social engineering, within two decades the Soviet Union had eradicated illiteracy and had the best educated population in the world. It wasn’t a reservation system for the backward people, but completely free education and massive extension of education. Both the Soviet Union and Japan improved the lot of the totally uneducated without any formal reservation or quota system but through compulsory free education on a massive scale. 

Japanese system

The guiding principle of the Japanese system of education is uniformity, conformity and integration. There is no room for special rights or reservations in that regimented system, which is available equally for everyone. 

In the USA, the term affirmative action was first used in the Executive Order 11246, issued by President Johnson. The order called on federal government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, colour, or national origin.” However, those who were already educated or advanced financially among the blacks or Hispanics, equivalent to the creamy layers in India, got the benefits. Thus, the affirmative action could not change the basic nature of the most unequal society. There was considerable opposition to the system in the days of Reagan. Today, nearly 26 per cent of the population is functionally illiterate. Social mobility is on the decline. There is widespread homelessness and poverty among the blacks and Hispanics. In a word, affirmative action hasn’t changed the characteristics of American society.


Affirmative action-II

The Policy Comes A Cropper In India

Dipak Basu

As the reservation system India is based on caste, the government has not been able to improve the lot of the backward or the poor as they may not belong to the castes or tribes entitled to receive aid from the state. This is the major reason why Muslims and Christians are demanding reservation. The reservation system has also led to inter-caste conflict as they have to compete for the limited social and economic benefits. 

The failure of the reservation system is all too palpable. Quotas for Scheduled Castes in schools and government posts remain largely unfilled, whereas reservations for OBCs are generally filled to capacity. A 1997 study indicates that nationally preferential policies only benefit six per cent of Dalit families. It also reported that “none of India’s elite universities and engineering institutes had filled its quota for members of the Scheduled Castes.” 

The listed classes are largely unrepresented in white collar positions. For the country as a whole, members of the SC and ST combined did not receive even three per cent of the degrees in engineering or medicine, though together they add up to nearly one-fourth of the population, according to a study by Sowell (2004). 

Not enough

The government provides scholarships to SC students to attend school, but that is not enough. Even when the government provides primary schooling free of charge, the cost of books and supplies may not be affordable to the very poor. For secondary education, rural students may not always find a school nearby. Parents who cannot afford the cost of commuting or relocating, often find it difficult to send their children to school despite preferential admission policies. 

Some SC candidates do better than others, raising the demand in certain quarters for “quotas within the quota’’. A particular case in point are the chamars. In Maharashtra, they are the most prosperous among the Scheduled Castes. A study revealed that they formed 17 per cent of the state’s population and represented 35 per cent of its medical students. In Haryana, the chamars received 65 per cent of the scholarships for the SCs at the graduate level and 80 per cent at the undergraduate level. But 18 of the 37 untouchable groups in Haryana failed to get any preferential scholarship. In Madhya Pradesh, chamars represent 53 per cent of the total number of SC students in schools. In Bihar, just two of the 12 SCs in the state ~ one being the chamars ~ accounted for 61 per cent of the SC students in schools and 74 per cent in colleges. 

It’s time for the government to acknowledge that the policy of affirmative action, based on such unscientific criteria as caste or tribe ~ introduced by Ambedkar and reinforced by VP Singh ~ has failed. However, the government and the political parties, including the Communists, want to preserve this failed system and also extend it by including religion as a parameter. 

Writing in People’s Democracy, the organ of the CPI-M, Teesta Setalvad has pleaded that as Muslims are also backward, they too deserve the benefit of reservations. The Communists seem to have forgotten that class rather than caste, tribe or religion, should be the criteria for affirmative action. They have also forgotten the lesson derived from the former Soviet Union that free education on a mass scale can remove social and economic backwardness. The experience of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam also demonstrate that what India could not achieve in 60 years can be achieved within 10 years if the policy framework is designed to remove inequality of opportunity. 

To solve the problem, India should introduce reservation based on poverty and physical disability irrespective of religion, tribe or caste. As in Europe, education must be free at all levels, including universities and specialised institutes of higher learning. All students should get automatic grants. Villages should either be consolidated or mobile schools set up in remote areas. As in the former Soviet Union, villages should be equipped with public libraries and reading room to ensure that poor students get space to study. To remove linguistic discrimination and to maintain proper representation of all states, an informal system of fair representation or quota can be introduced for jobs in both the public and private sector. The caste system must be abolished by law. 

Disparities in income and wealth are central to unequal opportunities. Large sections of the rural population still depend on mahajans and money-lenders. The nationalisation of banks in 1969 was aimed at removing the money-lenders from the rural economy. But since 1991 the government has reversed the system, aggravating poverty among farmers and increasing their dependence on the money-lenders. It is essential for the government to set up a rural banking network to remove the money-lenders and extend educational and business loans to those who might be refused such facilities by private banks. 

Affirmative action is not just quota and reservation. It also envisages incentives for the poor. Such incentives can’t be provided without public banking. When job opportunities are rare, reservations for chosen sections can only lead to resentment among the unemployed in the general category who will be deprived just because of their birth. 

To quote Albert Einstein: “Unlimited competition leads to huge waste of labour. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child.” 

Unethical system

Economic reform has intensified the mismatch between the availability of jobs and the number of people unemployed. This problem cannot be solved in a market economy that depends increasingly on external forces beyond the control of the national government. Affirmative action is needed to create equal opportunities and remove discrimination. A reservation system based on caste and tribes cannot provide money to the poor students of the backward castes to travel to schools or colleges or to buy books or to have a space to study. Severe poverty exists even among the higher castes and among those who are not qualified to receive the benefits. There are Brahmins among porters and rickshawallas. There is no reason why their children will not receive any benefits. But relatives of Jagjivan Ram, Lalu Prasad, Pawan Chamling=2C Purno Sangma, Shibu Soren or Mayawati are entitled to reserved vacancies in higher education and jobs. The system that exists in India is unethical in the extrem
e. However, both the Congress and the CPI-M want to perpetuate and enhance this system of injustice.


Letters to the Editor

Charge against Ambedkar false

Sir, ~ Mr Dipak Basu’s two-part article “Affirmative action” (21-22 September) carries a false charge against Dr BR Ambedkar and some negative information as well. Should Dr Ambedkar be held responsible for social discrimination and the caste system? 

Dr Ambedkar’s fight was to free society from the atrocious caste system and to give the backward classes political power by which they could safeguard themselves from oppression by upper caste Hindus. It is true that Dr Ambedkar did not take part in the freedom movement. He feared that freedom, if achieved, would enable the caste Hindus to enslave the backwards and their plight in independent India would be worse than that under British rule. This does not mean that he was an agent of the British Raj. 

Mr Basu complains that the caste-based reservation policy has “come a cropper” and the policy cannot be accepted as an affirmative action to create “equality of opportunity”. The onus of implementation of the reservation policy rests entirely on its antagonists, for which there is a huge backlog in quota. So, majority of the backward classes are still denied the benefits of reservation. Dr Ambedkar never wanted job reservation, which, according to him, was nothing but subjugation under the caste Hindus. What he had wanted was political power which Gandhiji, the mentor of caste Hindus, opposed. 

To create “equality of opportunity” in society, Mr Basu debates against the reservation system being the affirmative action. In other words, opportunity is to be made available to all irrespective of caste, creed and religion. But, does our society have one identity in the matter of caste? Does it have one religion or one language? As the caste system is rigid in social fabrication and political powers are with the caste Hindus, how will the affirmative action for “equal opportunity law” be carried into effect. 

~ Yours, etc., Rabindranath Sarkar, 
Kolkata, 3 October. 

Vested interests 

Sir, ~ Fundamentalist Hindus like Mr Arun Shourie and Mr Dipak Basu dare to denigrate Dr Ambedkar, the messiah of dalit emancipation and empowerment. Dr Ambedkar was treated shabbily by the caste Hindus while in service and even in college where he was a successful lecturer. He pushed for a separate electorate for the depressed classes and would have been a great achievement had he succeeded. 

But Gandhiji could not tolerate independence of dalits, free from caste Hindu domination. He resorted to fast-unto-death opposing the move and forced Dr Ambedkar to sign on the dotted line of the “Poona pact” which is a permanent hindrance to dalit liberation. The Poona pact made the Dalits subservient to the upper caste leaders forever. 

To the dalits, the British appeared to be a saviour as they got the privilege of education during the Raj. They were treated as equal citizens by the British ~ a status denied by the caste Hindus for centuries. So the question of a dalit revolt against the British did not arise. 

People having vested interests are raising a hue and cry against caste- based reservation. Politicians are guided by humanitarian considerations which Mr Dipak Basu and men of his ilk fail to appreciate. 

~ Yours, etc., Nikunja Bihari Haoladar, 
Gaighata, 25 September.

Caste system perpetuated

Sir, ~ I refer to the letters of Rabindranath Sarkar and RN Haoladar (7 October) regarding my article “Affirmative action” (21-22 September). They have explicitly pointed out what I have mentioned only implicitly that Dr BR Ambedkar was a British agent, educated by the Christian missionaries, promoted by the British Raj as the sole spokesman for the backward Hindus and tribals. 

Because of the caste-based reservation system, promoted by Ambedkar in the Constitution of India, the caste system has become permanent, whereas Hindu saints and reformers like Ramanuj, Sri Chaitanya, Raja Rammohan Roy and Swami Vivekananda wanted to abolish the caste system in order to eliminate the discrimination of the lower caste Hindus. 

Ambedkar failed to understand that social inequality is the result of economic inequality and religious conversions away from Hinduism cannot help a Dalit to gain a higher status. 

A carrier of night soil would be an “untouchable” no matter whether he is a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu. The solution is to change the technology of urban waste disposal, not reservations for the Dalits in the IIMs or IITs. 

That is why a follower of Ambedkar, John Dayal, is asking for reservations for the Dalit Christians and another, Teesta Setalvad, is asking for reservations for Dalit Muslims, although there is no caste system in either Islam or Christianity. 

They do not want to abolish the caste system but want to preserve it in order to maintain an unethical reservation system in which even finance minister Mr Chidambaram, a Harvard MBA, is considered to be a backward, whereas all the Dubeys or Chaubeys carrying loads at railway stations are considered to be exploitative Brahmins sucking the blood of Dalits like multi-millionaire Mayawatis and Lalu Prasads. 

Only a totally free education system with automatic scholarships for all, along with reservations based on poverty can reduce social and economic inequality. 

~Yours, etc., Prof Dipak Basu, Nagasaki University, 
Japan, 20 October.


Derogatory remark 

Sir, ~ This with reference to the letter by Dipak Basu “Caste system perpetuated” (4 November) where he alleges that his article, “Affirmative action” (21 and 22 September) was misinterpreted by Rabindranath Sarkar and RN Haoladar (7 October), that which Professor Basu mentioned implicitly the other two pointed out explicitly, that Dr BR Ambedkar, a missionary-educated, was nothing but a British agent who spoke for the backward Hindus and tribals. This is simply a derogatory remark. 

Ambedkar understood very well the relationship between social and economic inequality in the backdrop of the caste system. Prof Basu fails to understand that the caste system was prevalent in India for over two millennium and that it has not been made permanent because of Ambedkar’s efforts to amend the Constitution to find a place for the downtrodden. Ambedkar was an architect of modern India which is progressively claiming a fusion of hundreds of castes, creed, language and cultures in one united India. 

Prof Basu is averse to reservations for Dalits in the IITs or IIMs, but fails to appreciate the tremendous efforts of such candidates to break the social and economic barriers. A free education system, along with recognition of merit, and reservation can reduce social and economic inequality. 

~Yours, etc Sures Chandra Biswas, 
Barasat, 7 October.

Gandhiji felt the same way about Ambedkar

Sir, ~ I refer to the letter by Sures Chandra Biswas (17 November) regarding my article “Affirmative action” (21-22 September). According to Mr Biswas I made a derogatory remark by saying that Dr BR Ambedkar was a British agent. I have merely repeated what Mahatma Gandhi had said about Ambedkar for good reasons. 

Ambedkar was not from a poor Dalit family; his father was in the British army. The Maharaja of Baroda had financed his education both in Bombay University and in the USA and London. Although he was the representative of only the Mahar community in Maharashtra and unknown in the rest of India, he was sent to London to join the roundtable conference as the representative of the entire backward castes and tribals of India. 

The British had the design to create Pakistan, Khalistan of Tara Singh, Dalitstans of Ambedkar and a number of tribal homelands so that there would not be any united India. That was the reason Gandhiji refused to go along with that conference. 

Right till 1946, Ambedkar was a vehement opponent of the freedom movement. He claimed with pride that he was the representative of the people who had conquered India for the British. He proclaimed that the freedom movement was a sham, a ruse, and Gandhiji was an agent to perpetuate the Nazi-like suppression of the masses, and the British Viceroy was the saviour of the depressed classes. 

In 1941, Dr Ambedkar was appointed as a member of the defence advisory committee of the Viceroy to help the British war efforts against Japan, when Rashbehari Bose and Mohan Singh had already founded the Azad Hind Fauz in Tokyo and were waiting for Netaji to arrive. 

In 1942, when people of India were facing bullets from the British, Ambedkar was enjoying a comfortable life as the labour adviser to the Viceroy. Even in April 1946, Ambedkar was telling the Viceroy, Lord Wavell: “If India became independent, it would be one of the greatest disasters that could happen.” 

We should ask for the source of finance of Ambedkar so that he could pay Rs 13,000 every month, a great lot of money in those days, to MN Roy since 1936. 

As chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution of free India, Ambedkar supported every suggestion of the British officers. On 6 September, 1949 in the Constituent Assembly, he disregarded the objections of Kuladhar Chaliha and Rohini Choudhury of Assam to make the tribal areas as separate administrative units, the mechanism of which was drafted by a British missionary, Rev Nicholas Roy, so that the Christian missionaries could convert the tribal population en masse. The result is what we are witnessing today in the north-eastern states. 

~Yours, etc., Prof Dipak Basu, 
Nagasaki University (Japan),
23 November.

More about the British, Gandhi and Ambedkar

Sir, ~ Prof. Dipak Basu’s letter, “Gandhiji felt the same way as Ambedkar” (7 December) is worth recording. No pondering is warranted because thanks to the 50-year rule relating to the intelligence reports of the UK, what Prof. Basu has said is now public knowledge. (Known at least to the churlish economist manque who had once been a piddling quill-driver of the World Bank, the sub-literate Bengali Brahmin who has been on the take since he betrayed his mentor, Ajoy Mukherjee, the la-di-da lawyer from Harvard, and the communist fatso who is the sole Pharisaic clown of our Lok Sabha ~ or, in a nutshell, known to the people who rule us). 

As my health did not permit me to write earlier, I remind readers of what Prof. Basu had observed, “Dr BR Ambedkar was a British agent. Mahatma Gandhi said the same thing about Ambedkar for good reasons. Ambedkar was not from a poor Dalit family; his father was in the British army. The Maharaja of Baroda had financed his education both in Bombay University and in the USA and London. Although he was the representative of only the Mahar community in Maharashtra and unknown in the rest of India, he was sent to London to join the round-table conference as the representative of the entire backward castes and tribals of India. The British had the design to create Pakistan, Khalistan of Tara Singh, Dalitstans of Ambedkar and a number of tribal homelands so that there would not be any united India. That was the reason Gandhiji refused to go along with that conference. Right till 1946, Ambedkar was a vehement opponent of the freedom movement. He claimed with pride that he was the rep
resentative of the people who had conquered India for the British. He proclaimed that the freedom movement was a sham, a ruse, and Gandhiji was an agent to perpetuate the Nazi-like suppression of the masses, and the British Victory was the saviour of the depressed classes.” Our rulers are silent; in fact, this criminal silence runs up and down the gamut of their parliamentary politics. 

But what keeps the entire nation mum? It’s plain fear ~ the only commodity without which the Indian chattering classes cannot survive. I am also afraid ~ I have a clutch of grandchildren to hold harmless. 

Prof. Basu in Nagasaki too is no exception. He is like a pyromaniac who sets the valley on fire and then retires to the hills. 

I am writing under a nom de guerre. Let Prof. Basu get his letter translated into Bengali and Hindi (I know one professor of Mathematics in Nagasaki who knows both Hindi and Bengali) and publish his valuable letter in the Bengali and the Hindi dailies of India. 

~ Yours, etc., Pronoti Deb, 
Kolkata, 12 December.