Suraj Yengde delivered this talk at the Idea of Democracy Conference at Chandigarh, 2023

I overheard a couple of words from the discussions earlier which resonated with me deeply. One was hunger—because I am hungry. The second was ruffians. Someone mentioned how kids these days are becoming ruffians and it made me think it is the description of who I am! The song that Rajni (Bakshi) just played, to which we all hummed along was written by the great Shailendra, the genius. I don’t know if you all know but he came from a Dalit community. So, let’s give it up for Shailendra!

This morning the workshops gave me a good insight into what students are thinking today. This institution, St Kabir Public School is named after a great man India produced—Sant Kabir. His philosophy remains a guiding force till date and holds an important place in the imagination and spiritual practice of the Sikh faith. Guru Ravidas and Guru Kabir belonged to the group of ten gurus from whom the Sikh faith draws its source. Their practices have been incorporated into practices of the Sikh faith.

I was in Nanded, my hometown, recently, and a friend told me he was planning to start a Delhi Public School there. I thought to myself how can one start a government school. It was only later that I got to know that public schools actually mean private school in India. So, all the public schools are actually private schools, while real public schools are called government schools. It is quite an interesting thing! But I am happy to be here. I wanted to come especially because I was asked to talk on democracy. Many a times we have not really fathomed how democracy operates in our lives and what it really means. So, let us break it up and give a brief primer to understand how we locate democracy and the types of democracies, and then dive into questions.

First, the prime place to exercise democracy is the classroom because it is in school where one is meant to exchange ideas freely. Second, even the seating arrangement in schools is meant to reflect how people of diverse backgrounds occupy space and interact with the teacher in a classroom. Third, you could be from any background. I don’t know about private schools—they are often exclusionary. At least in government model schools we had

people from diverse backgrounds sit together. Outside the classroom, Thakurs, Jats, Patils, Reddies and other landowning classes and castes would not necessarily sit with Chamars, Mazhabis and other lower castes. But in the classroom, they are compelled to sit together and inhabit the same space. So, the classroom in many ways challenged the rigidity of caste. Caste creates a rigid difference between people and that difference is so solid that you can’t really interact with other people because occupying the same space would be considered a form of pollution. In the classroom, the landowner or temple priest’s child is sitting next to and almost rubbing their shoulders with somebody who toils in the field as a land labourer. That is the beauty of the classroom.

But, we live in a society that has overridden many of these equitable possibilities and created alternative ways of maintaining the status quo. We see this in the statistics

produced by the National Sample Survey Organization, the government body that collects data on the demographic composition of public schools. The data showed that for school children between 5 and 14 years of age, the gross enrolment ratio (GER) is 81 per cent for children from Scheduled Castes, i.e. Dalits. Between 15 and 19 years of age, 21 per cent drop out and only 60 per cent remain. By the time they are at university, the number drops to 11 per cent. So, the democratic ethos and practice that we were trying to inculcate and implement in the classroom as a way of exercising democracy, is challenged by this sort of exclusion. And this is just the data on enrolment. Eventually, less than 3 per cent graduate or pass out with a certificate.

When we are confronted with a behemoth of a problem our approach is often to appraise how we can tackle this problem in our own lives. Thus, we might try to incorporate the practice of democracy into our lives. But this is where we are lacking. Democracy, at least what is talked of as democracy in India today, is largely political democracy. There are three major levels of democracy. The first is political, the second is social and the third is economic. Some parliamentary democracies also have electoral democracy. Now, let us break these groups down and see what they mean.

Often, we uphold the principles of democracy and the importance of liberties. It is right to value and safeguard our freedoms, including the freedom of opinion. Democracy allows us to actively participate and become agents of change. When we mention voting, we refer to the practice of political democracy where individuals, including students, cast their votes. The majority’s decision is taken into account to reach a consensus. However, is this an infallible solution? Some may argue that while the majority’s views are considered, what about the voices of the minority who were not able to vote or get elected? For instance, the current BJP government secured 30-31 per cent of the votes but what about the remaining 69 per cent of the population? Are they important, do their votes even matter? Is it still considered a democracy? Additionally, if we consider economic democracy, what does it entail? In a highly unequal country like ours, the pursuit and practice of democracy can resemble a revolution. It involves reshaping the socio-economic landscape, breaking existing barriers and reconstructing our society. Following is some statistics to shed light on this.

According to Oxfam’s 2023 report on income inequality and wealth distribution, the top 1 per cent of India’s population owns 40 per cent of the country’s wealth. If we expand the scope to the top 5 per cent, it accounts for 60 per cent of the wealth. In 2020, India had 102 billionaires but amid the tragic circumstances of 2021 and 2022, primarily due to the impact of the Covid pandemic, an additional 62 billionaires emerged bringing the total to 164. This underscores the need to pay attention to the concept of economic democracy. When we delve into this theory, we must question who these billionaires are, what their backgrounds and social statuses are and what their intentions are. In India, the underlying fabric of society is woven with caste, an unfortunate reality.

To address this, let’s analyse and understand caste and the so-called secularized billionaires. The figures are intriguing. Higher caste Hindus, who identify themselves as savarnas, representing approximately 22.3 per cent of the general population, possess 41 per cent of India’s wealth—twice their proportionate share. This reveals that the general population, often perceived as victims, actually possesses twice as much wealth as they should. While this analysis focuses on a sample representation in UP, which may not accurately reflect the entire country, it provides insights into the higher caste demographic and their socio-economic status.

Among those higher castes, Jats constitute 55 per cent, Thakurs are 43 per cent, Brahmins are 38 per cent and other caste Hindus are 37 per cent, falling into the general category. Why do we need to pay attention to this? Usually when we talk about wealth we talk about income. When we decipher economic standing, it has to do with the social consensus—how society, social status, and in this case, caste regulates an economic exchange of people. When I say ‘economic exchange’, I refer to the exchange between higher castes and the people who are serving these higher castes. And so, when wealth is produced, it is by taking away from the people who serve the higher castes. Ideas of value are not provided to them and that’s why they can usurp the wealth of these people. If we compare the data of the people at the top and not those at the bottom, it will show that 40 per cent of house owners own 3.4 per cent of the country’s total assets. In comparison, the top 1 per cent, the billionaires, own 40 per cent.

This economic data becomes more interesting if you keep on adding to the idea of how this is distributed around caste lines. If you go much deeper, one clear example emerges. The middle class that pays taxes and deposits that allow the state to run, has a kind of middle-class anxiety. This anxiety is centered around the apprehension of society being changed. The middle class is partly instrumental in preventing the social structure from changing, yet, they do not realize that they are also victims of this inevitable change. They see somebody else as victims and feel that the existing system needs to be protected because that is their only secured place.

64 per cent of Goods and Services Tax (GST) of the country comes from the bottom 50 per cent of the country’s population. The bottom 50 and not the upper 50. The bottom 50 deposited 64 per cent of whatever revenue GST had created. And only 4 per cent came from the top 10 per cent of the population. Why despite such massive amounts of poverty do we not talk about the economic redistribution of resources? We need to think about the economic distribution of resources. What belongs to the nation should be distributed equally among the citizens. But that doesn’t really happen because economic democracy hides itself by just giving doles and talking about certain welfare measures, keeping an entire population engulfed by promoting certain systems—in this case capitalist systems, to reproduce inequality in many phases. And for us, then, the new model of development is proffered where we think that capitalist enterprises are going to offer us a solution to economic problems. But every time we look at the annual reports, poverty keeps increasing and the people who have been historic victims of the traditional caste system continue to be the primary victims of the burden of caste.

Now that we have talked about economic and political democracy, let’s talk about social democracy. What is social democracy? For any democracy to exist we need a parlance, support and foundation of social democracy. Without social democracy, no democracy can succeed. Because without the social aspects that contribute to democracy, we will have absolute authority. And because we have democracy we need social democracy. Dr Ambedkar’s piercing analysis and inputs offer a guide about what democracy means. Democracy is not just limited to political voting rights. Democracy also means “associated living”. Ambedkar borrows this word from his teacher John Dewey, another great practitioner of democracy in America. Democracy means we have to learn to live together. Alongside associated living, he uses the term, ‘co-joined experiences’. It means, each one’s experiences have to be co-joined with others. It is not about individual or singular experiences. It is much deeper, spiritual and profound. One needs to take part in this experience to have a democratic experience in reality.

Now, the kind of exposure that some of the kids sitting here get cannot be co-joined with the experiences of kids in the rest of the country. It is hugely differentiated demographically, class-wise and caste-wise. And this is the education that we are supposed to offer. My worry is for the younger generation of students and their teachers who are mentors. How equipped are they to educate not just the mind but also a thought that will proffer change—change from within the self? Change is expected to happen at a neighbour’s place and usually thought of as a charitable exercise. Change has to mean relegating your privileges to the service of somebody who does not have the same privilege as you. And the understanding and recognition of privilege comes from co-joined experiences and associated living. The neighbourhoods that we live in are deeply segregated. Certain neighbourhoods just have a certain kind of people living in it. And these are vast, exclusionary spaces.

I came from a slum named after Dr Ambedkar and after school hours my friend would not come and spend time with me because I lived in the marked neighbourhood. Though an equality is propagated, exclusion is so stark that despite wanting to have these common experiences one cannot have them. If we think about how caste democracy works in this system we need to look at the fourth point right now which is electoral democracy. It simply means a representative democracy. One kind of democracy is a direct democracy and the other is a representative democracy. Direct democracy is basically where everybody votes. Let’s say we have a bill, each citizen is given a right to vote and when you vote you have a response to that bill and depending on the referendum the bill passes or fails. But in India—a parliamentary representative democracy—there are representatives who argue for the citizens. Within this domain the representative democracy, electoral democracy consisting of elected representatives, come as a disguise. The question is, will that elected representative be an absolute messiah for all? It is not guaranteed.

Democracy cannot guarantee the protection of freedom and protection of minority rights. And one of the starkest examples is this government’s utter failure towards protection of the rights of minority communities of India. The graph of their treatment towards Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims in this country show that electoral democracy never necessarily provided protection against discrimination. The question we need to ask is: What is the status of minorities? Dr Ambedkar worked towards upliftment and protection of the minorities because the quality of democracy depends on the life and conditions of the minorities of the country. Unless they are protected and made to feel a belongingness, democracy just becomes a practice and exercise of the elites who talk about democracy but usurp and absorb the resources created by the subaltern community of India.

The Pew Research Center in the USA did a sample survey which showed how caste functions and where the violence comes from. Caste, as a system, is not just a status. It is not simply an identity or tradition, it works as an exclusion. And when it works as an exclusion, it practises

discrimination. But caste doesn’t stop there. It procures and promotes violence. So, caste discrimination is equal to violence to anyone who is unable to free himself from the grips of this society. And for them, violence is an everyday treatment. The National Crime Record Bureau says, every day, by the time we go to bed, ten Dalit women are raped in this country. That is the graph we need to deal with. Last year alone, 51,000 crimes were committed against Scheduled Caste communities and the previous three-year record shows that 1.39 lakh Dalit people have been oppressed under this Brahminical caste regime. Therefore, we really need to think about procuring, promoting and eventually inhabiting democracy in our lives. For this, we need two things—they come from the great legacy of our ancestors and also practitioners of our Constitution who gave birth to this new republic—the idea of friendship, fraternity, understanding and considering each other as occupying an equal status.

Dr Ambedkar says fraternity is very important and this idea goes back to Sant Kabir and Guru Ravidas who believed in maitri—the concept of friendship and kinship developed over the common cause of understanding the vulnerability of others, putting yourself into that vulnerable position and thinking of creating a new world. What we do is we construct the world with the perspective of what we have seen and visualized about it. The other world for us is a world that needs to be despised because I have not had the privilege of that world. The person who is poor will always hate the rich. That is fact. But the rich have also not done anything to transform this hatred. The rich participate in the system that makes the poor poorer and to this, the response of the poor is violence. Many times, in many senses they take revenge and that revenge is seen through a political and electoral democratic lens. The rise of the right wing across the world can be credited to the poor and outcastes of each society who feel they have found somebody that advocated for them—again, a lie.

Trump, a fraud billionaire, thinks he is representing the poor people and if you think about Hungary or India, the same examples of machismo and jingoism we have under the name of democracy gets subjugated by the new models and eventually we find that democracy that is being practised in this sense is actually supporting the ruling class that has always been privileged. And the best example is looking at the meteoric rise of Adani’s wealth, who also happens to be Gujarati. We know about Ambani as well. We also know the frauds who committed the crimes by taking people’s money from major banks, absconded and took refuge in other countries across the world. These are the same people who then tell us where to find democratic excuses. Where do you find them? You find it amongst the most vulnerable population. A victim is already victimized, and we just need to point out that this person is the problem. We have not investigated if he is actually the problem. Therefore, when we think of democracy we really need to stop thinking about democracy. We need to act democracy, and to act democracy is really to discern how identities are constructed in this nation, and in this process identify oneself and think about what privileges one has had.

Once we recognize that privileges are the interlining factors for discrimination and undemocratic processes, then we can think about various other models. Now I, for sure, especially in the American experiment where there have been in the ivory towers amidst the intellectual elite who have easy access to certain capital, have seen this playing out. Funnily enough, Indian elites believe that owning capital is often a marker of having complete access to resources. The reference point is the American film industry. The culture, the accent the Indian elite try to mimic, the food and nomenclatures they try to track, and the eventual dream for the elites is to immediately migrate to America, have access to the Western capital and be part of that stream. There is nothing wrong with that but exercising your elitism when you go and transpose yourself onto a different geography leads you to start identifying yourself as a victim because there’s somebody else who is your daddy—superior when it comes to capital and colour. And in this process the immediate victimization becomes a reason for you to say that I have been a victim of this situation, without realizing that you might also be an oppressor when you go back to your own geographical and spatial location. That is the kind of democracy we need to think about in India.

You might ask how caste functions in this. Now, Pew Research asked various questions to people from various caste groups. The question was about the kind of friends they had. About one quarter, 24 per cent of Indians said that all their close friends belonged to their caste. 46 per cent said most of their friends are from their caste. 76 percent Muslims and 74 per cent Sikhs say that all or most of their friends share their caste. This might have been an accidental thing that hasn’t been decided upon but it shows how kinship is developed. From childhood, if one’s friend is somebody who belongs to his/her caste, the economic status and social capital he/she possesses and the cultural cues he/she gives out translates into the making of ‘friendships’ and the channelling of a discourse that seeks to be maintained. But what we don’t realize is—by missing out on various diversities, various people from different backgrounds, we are undereducated about the true character of the Indian society. You are only a representative of your own caste character. You just have to have an Indian passport. And that is why these friendships also transform into the important aspect of caste-based endogamy or marriage. That is the prime example of not just what the caste is but also what the sub caste of the person you would like to marry is. For example, if someone is marrying into the Khatri caste, questions arise as to which type of Khatri is it—Arora Khatri, Malhotra Khatri or some other. These subdivisions go deeper.

While talking about various instances of how supremacy operates, we must also talk about absolute ownership of resources. People with ownership of resources do two things. One is, of course, accumulate non-moveable fixed resources, i.e. land. Land is where people draw their prestige from. And when they are drawing their prestige from this land, people have no hesitation to identify with the identity of a landowning caste. Case in point is the supremacy of the Jat population despite being a minority, yet occupying a majority slot of 34-35 per cent of the Scheduled Caste population. Why, then, is Jat supremacy perpetuated culturally, politically, and economically when their faith has preached equality and egalitarianism through the profound words of the Sikh gurus and the Guru Granth Sahib?It means that caste identity here is so strong, that we don’t even realize this has been part of a culture. The idea of giving names such as ‘Singh’ and ‘Kaur’, further added by Singh x-wale or Kaur x-wale, shows how the idea of caste still retains itself. This is why caste is of such a sticky nature and doesn’t remain confined to the Hindu Brahminical system. It has translated into other faiths and religions. 85 per cent of India’s Christians are Dalits who are converted. Nearly 16 per cent of Indian Muslims are so too and if you consider OBCs and Adivasis, then over 86 per cent of them belonged to the Muslim oppressed caste. And these statistics can be further ascribed to other religions in India.

About marriage, the majority—at least 79 per cent of Indians said, men should not marry outside their caste. And 80 per cent women felt the same. That means the idea of intra-caste marriage is held so spiritual and central to existence that 80 per cent agreed that they should not marry outside their caste. And of course, there are various justifications to that but this is the kind of reproduction that happens when we reproduce a certain cultural ethic where annihilating or eliminating caste doesn’t really register with the new form of revolution that we might think of. So, 64 per cent Hindus and 74 per cent Muslims said that it was very important to prevent women from marrying across caste lines. It is not just a Hindu problem but also a Muslim one and concerns other religions too, which think that mixing and reproduction should occur only within certain castes. Interesting part of this is that in the central part of the country 8-10 per cent said it is very important for men and women to marry within their own caste. Fewer in South India—one-third said so.

This is a legacy of activism in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu which had progressive activism under the leadership of Periyar EVR Ramaswamy. The idea of Dravida culture still remains strong there. But central India is still in the grips. Interestingly, the researchers also asked questions to older people. So older Indians and those without a college degree are most likely to oppose inter-caste marriage. Tradition and education, if both are not equipped enough, we will have problems. And respondents with a favourable view of the BJP are also much more likely than others to oppose such a marriage. For example, 69 per cent of the people who had favourable views of the BJP felt it was important to stop women of their community from marrying across caste lines. Eventually this makes caste communal, translating it into becoming a religion. This is where the concept of love jihad originate. That is why I am inviting your attention to think that the problem of India really has a central thesis. Whenever you think about Dalits and Adivasis you should have a responsible education.

You need an educated response to think about this population group who have toiled in this country and never received fair compensation. The Dalits and Adivasis have toiled for nearly 109 generations in this country and never received any form of wealth or regularized income in return. Now if these people would like to have an equal share, immediate fear is created, for which caste is equated with merit. And merit translates into becoming a reservation issue. You should understand that it is a very small piece of the pie that this population is asking for. Like Rajni (Bakshi) was mentioning, if people start demanding justice for it, it will be chaotic. The most peaceful people in India are the Dalits and Adivasis who have maintained the status quo of the Republic. They have every reason to blow up the foundation of the Republic, not only because they have been assaulted but also because they have never received fair wages. And if they start demanding payment for every grain that they grew from out of this soil, India will be bankrupt. Instead, what we get is a Constitutional share into the national powers and the power is political, educational as well as a professional responsibility.

Many of you sitting in the class might not have that experience of marginalization. Your marginalization might be related to gender, not being able to speak the English language, sexuality and class but you might not necessarily have the experience of what it is like to be born a criminalized victim in a society where your existence is a mere reflection of other people’s miseries. And you are then seen as a mirror of someone else’s failures. Therefore, when you fail at something, you will hate that something. Sometimes in the house if we are in a cranky mood, we yell at somebody, maybe our mother, father, brother or sister. This most vulnerable marginalized population has become an easy butt of jokes. And that is why when we think, act and develop a new model for our democracy we need to think what it really means to make India a caste-free nation. And once we make a caste-free nation, it will be a true practice of democracy and through this we may be able to then participate in the economic democracy and social democracy that would certainly translate into electoral democracy.

What we see in today’s context is the politicization of democracy. Whenever, wherever we step outside we have to find how many Dalits are our friends and how many of them we keep as important assets of our groups, kinships and communities. Are their experiences guiding us towards certain liberation? The vision that was provided to liberate all has been incorporated into the geniuses of our own tradition; the name of this very school is the representation and emblematic of the Dalit genius Sant Kabir. What will it take to follow all these ideals and what are we missing by not including them into our space, not sharing our food and ideas and breathing the same air that they do and see how fruitful it is. That idea of representation can work very well by your own self fulfilment. So teachers need to pay attention to this: what would it take for pedagogy to critically self analyse but also liberate at the same time. When you are being self-critical, you are participating in the methods of liberationin certain ways. And if I am trying to lose the burden of my patriarchy I need to find a space to give to the central understanding of women’s issues. Most of the times I don’t need to be there. I need to create the space and observe. So that I can slowly loosen the burden   that patriarchy has loaded onto me. This is not charity, it is self-help. You will do the greatest self-help to yourself and the forthcoming generations by annihilating caste.

Question and Answer Session

Audience Member 1: Why do you think reservation is important and why has it unfortunately become a negative burden in today’s times?

SY: Good question. It’s basically lack of education, simply because there are certain things we don’t understand. And for that we need to understand the reason for it. For example, if we think about democracy, reservations would be the central understanding of it. Why is there so much insecurity about it? What has happened here is that, let’s say that you are the son of a landlord who owns vast land. You might have 100 people working on the field who are basically your serfs. They salute and obey your orders because they rely on you. And now your parents have thought of educating you in a good school. But the parents’ aim is only to care for their son and not anybody else’s. But democracy and Constitution says that one looks after not only one’s own son but everybody’s sons. That’s how it is and that’s how you rule a country. In this way there will be no feudalism. So when we have equality, all of a sudden the landlord is thinking, hold on, this person who cleans the stable and the horse shit—how come his son goes to the same school as mine? So the immediate tension is because this is not what is expected. But you are going there with a supposedly clean mind and in school as well as at home, you are being trained to think in certain ways. All of a sudden, you guys are being educated and going to school together and you have to see the difference between your life and the other person’s life—who comes from extreme deprivation, and now for you the competition has increased. This is where people have a very skewed understanding of what representation is and what reservation is.

You have to understand that reservation, first of all, is meant to be a representation of people because it is a democratic society and everyone is equal and should participate in the making of a nation A nation cannot progress with a handful of people desiring to lead all citizens, educate some and leave the rest—that is not how it works. The practical reason is that more people present in the workforce will lead to more money in the state’s treasury and the treasury becomes rich and the country eventually puts that money into the development of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That is the simplest reasoning any country will want because you don’t want an entire mass of people relying on the state. For example, we are paying taxes—I don’t know how much it is here, let’s say 25 per cent of your income—why are you paying that much? There are many people who are unable to pay tax who are not in the labour force. But if there are enough people like you, your tax might reduce from 25 per cent to 10 per cent or 5 per cent.

So in many countries, especially in highly developed countries, the taxation is made in certain way that people can then participate and draw from it. So, reservation creates an immediate insecurity and fear about what is going to happen to my future. What you do is then you compete from an unequal plain to reach a common goal. It is like we are swimming in a competition where there are ropes tied to your back and pulling you backwards and somebody is swimming with bricks tied to their stomach and somebody is just swimming with the help of a floater. Now who do you think will be successful? The person who has not been deprived and has easy access.

Many times, we don’t realize that we are sitting on that easily accessible plain which is so instrumentalized in our feeling that we don’t see that there are other people who are having it much worse. And there is always this case of this one Dalit friend who is rich. There is always this excuse and I always say, please find that one person and let me talk to him because that one person is creating difficulty in explaining what the system is. So the problem with reservation is that people are yet to understand the beauty of equality. Indians are not used to equality because it is a very recent thing and in these few years we are just trying to adjust ourselves. And whenever somebody talked about equality they have been tortured, and made an enemy. General caste people have this very wrong notion about reservation and this is why we need re-education. I encourage schools to have a course or at least extended classes to explain the merits of reservation and what the system stands for—because if competition is increasing, it is because more people from your background are competing for the same place. It is not the people who have less seats who are competing against you. It doesn’t work in that way. And then they say that people are taking our seats; no one is taking your seats, your own people are taking your seats because the competition within one’s own category has increased.

Have you ever seen the Dalits and Adivasis complain about these problems—that they are competing against their own pool of candidates. But the people who feel that they are not getting equal opportunities, instead of finding ways to create more resources, more opportunities, more institutions, they find it easy to target and blame an already victimized community. And that is why reservation becomes the reflection of a failed mind—whoever fails finds an excuse in reservation to prove that he was smart enough but he didn’t get in because of it. If you were smart enough you would’ve gotten in any way. Why do you need to blame someone else? This is why people who are not yet prepared to compete in open competition should be educated and this education is the responsibility of parents, teachers and the school curriculum. If for example, there is only 21-25 per cent of the general category population in India but the seat percentage allotted to them is 51 per cent, they already have twice representation than their population. You are already being benefitted by twice the number and even then if you don’t get admission within that, who are you to blame? You have to blame your own people—I mean, you should not blame, I’m just saying that the scope of reservation needs to be metricized to fully fathom it. People are just victims of unfortunate propaganda about it.

Audience Member 2: Mahatma Gandhi didn’t agree to Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s idea of creating a different nation for the Dalits. I would like you to share your thoughts about what impact it would have had in India if Dalits were given a different nation like Muslims and how would the Dalit nation be different from current India?

SY: That is a very good question. There is a famous dialogue between Gandhi and Ambedkar in Poona, where Gandhi says I have much more sympathy for you. And the dialogue goes where both are competing against their vision of India and situation of untouchables. Dr Ambedkar says to Gandhi, what nation are you talking about, I have no nation. The way we are treated is worse than cats and dogs. We are not allowed in temples, we are not given any rights, we cannot drink water from pots. And in a few instances Ambedkar did threaten that we will break away but his idea of India is basically an inclusive state, based on respect and protection of the outcastes. You have to understand that if he were to create a separate nation, how would he do it? This nation is what it is and the idea of India that Ambedkar is propounding is rooted in his ancestral heritage. So he goes back to Buddha and that legacy. Punjab was a Buddhist republic way before the rich legacy of Sikhism, Pakistan and so on. So Ambedkar wanted a greater stake in the nation because it is his nation. People also say that he thought that conflict would start if the Muslim League got more electorates, especially after the separate electorate debate but Sikhs, Muslims and another group got the separate electorate, only Dalits and Anglo-Indians were not given separate rights. But many leaders after Ambedkar threatened the government to create a separate ‘Dalitstan’ because if you are continuing the atrocities then what is the point of our living? So the fear of the state is if the workers toiling in the streets and cleaning sewers and other stuff—if they go away, what will happen to the whole republic? Who is going to clean our toilets and other things? That remains the biggest fear. So that’s not going to happen and if it does, I doubt the Brahmins will come and clean toilets of other people.

Audience Member 3: So, Article 15 of the Constitution guarantees no discrimination but what can be done if the safeguards of the law itself discriminates because these are the guys who will select who will be in their place in future. If people in these posts discriminate, what can be done about that?

SY: For that you will have to go to the professional course and that is a legal responsibility. I think the essence of your question is when people not having power get into power, then what is the guarantee that they will not discriminate? Is that what you meant by your question?  

Audience Member 3: I meant that Dalits are discriminated by those who safeguard law like the police officers but they are the ones supposed to protect the law and prevent it from happening, so what would you say about that?

SY: That is why the whole question of violence arises. People want to rebel because the system that is supposed to preserve and protect the values of the Constitution—which is a promise and a social contract you have signed as a nation, is the one that discriminates. The problem is that the aspect of moral responsibility has not come in yet. When I was talking about caste, many people were not happy here because they are just not ready to salvage what has happened. It is so protected and impersonal that the moment you personalize it, people are immediately offended. I think in this sense when we talk about the moral question of what needs to be done, I think we have a collective responsibility and the law has to take its due course. We have a stringent law—the Prevention of Atrocities Act—according to which we cannot commit any atrocity against Scheduled Castes and Tribes but the presiding officer is hesitant to file a complaint if a person is complaining because at the end of the day, they have a community and caste-based interest. And so they feel, what do we do with this? Policing in India is communal. It is not neutral, neither at the local and nor at the higher level. They are protective of self-interest and that is how repetition of crime happens. Frankly I don’t know what is to be done, we have to educate people who will be going into positions of power to have that sense of responsibility. No matter what my parents and scriptures have said, if it is wrong and inhuman then I don’t have to follow it, rather create a new perspective of thinking—and that I think is the answer to this question.

Audience Member 4: My question is that your idea of collectivization and redistribution of resources sounds to me a lot like Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward and I think anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics and history knows how it went. I have a second question if you would allow me. I have a few statistics about Jat supremacy. 52 per cent of Jat-Sikh households are indebted. Farmer suicides have been increasing for the past three decades, so I do not know how much responsibility a Jat-Sikh holds towards Dalits.

SY: I think it is a very good question and you have to understand that the tenure of land and landlessness is where caste violence is coming in. And so, if you even have possession of land, you have authority. You might be a minor or major farm holder but that just translates into a culture. Now you switch a TV and look at popular Punjabi songs, what caste do they celebrate? What does it really try to tell in the face of people that are non-Jats. And this is in the face of egalitarian, anti-caste thought given by the Gurus. They were these really radical people who didn’t care of traditions when it came to injustice and that is why there has been no outwardly Brahminical presence in the province of Punjab. The statistics you are saying are certainly worrying. And that is not to side with the fact that this might not exist. Certainly, the indebtedness and atrocity within the Jat community that has been committed is part of that. But having an understanding of history is important. Originally the Jat population was a peasant group, a very agrarian group and it eventually transited to becoming a case where they have established their own superior race. This has to be questioned. Even with this understanding of a new religious ethic and political economy, few questions still remain: What do we do about groups who still have separate gurudwaras, where does that problem come from, why are there still Mazhabi Sikhs if they are all meant to be the same Sikhs, why would someone identify as a Jat-Sikh, what does it mean, etc.  It means that I have a certain status in society, I am from a land-owning community—personally I might not have land, but that gives me a cultural privilege to identify with a group that will give me easy access. If you switch on your TV and see a name such as Malhotra, you already know what identity that is. Suddenly, there is a name that you are not used to, you have a difficulty in understanding what’s happening here. That’s the cultural context.

Your question about collective redistribution of resources—this is not just Mao, even Ambedkar and Gandhi and the movement of landless led by Vinoba Bhave so it is not just one person, everybody wants collective redistribution of resources. If people become poor they will kill the owner. And the poor have a famous saying: ‘eat the rich’, because they can’t eat the food. We don’t want that to happen. And to not have that violent response we should have a really conciliatory understanding that we have to develop together. So I have two rotis and I am enough with one, what is the second one doing? Ensuring that I can eat it tomorrow when I am hungry. But what if I give it to that person who is hungry right now and then make sure that both can do collective farming and feed each other? That idea has been subjugated and restricted. Instead we have inherited certain wealth and resources meant to be kept transferring generation onwards. There was a policy that Indira Gandhi also followed, land needed to be equally distributed and there was a ceiling—you cannot have more than that. Now, how many people here will accept that they have 100 acres of land or they know somebody who does? It is not uncommon. We hear of people having 1000 acres as well. That is illegal because legally you cannot have that much land. If you have a family of two or three or five, it has to be then distributed accordingly but then what they did is they found a way around the law. A new rule in rural economy has been created by which you will have separate areas or neighbourhoods belonging to certain castes. I don’t know about northern Punjab. Certain caste people live in the centre and the periphery is occupied by lower castes and for them to access basic resources they have to go out. Land is not just about money but about dependency. You are depending on somebody and that person you are depending on, if they feel they want to control you, they will make sure that you do not progress. They can do anything and that is why free exercising of violence takes place on farmlands. That is why most of the times their daughters are being raped by the landlords. Not many of these incidents come to light. You might want to watch a movie called ‘Bandit Queen’ about how Phulan Devi blew up the entire Thakur clan, representing woman power of a lower caste who had undergone serious sexual abuse and caste violence. It is not just economy, it is also social status and dependability, from where we create an existing society. Democracy doesn’t exist in that parlance.

Rajni Bakshi: What is your vision for the next 50 years? Give us something to hope for. We haven’t been wealthy for 75 years, there have been movements and your work talks about that too. So what are some of the things we can hang on to as we go forward?

SY: Anybody who does work that advances justice is a work of hope. Without hope I would have advocated violence and told to take up guns. We should put justice in the centre of whatever we do. Are our actions bringing justice? It could be justice in the sense that the other person is valued. If justice is absent from all our actions, we become a cheap model of a second-rate individual. We don’t want to be that. We want to be first-class people who have stature. For this we need to centralize justice and understand how love takes precedence when we deal with things. These are not just lofty ideals, you have to inculcate these values. Loving someone is very difficult especially if you have a prejudice towards that person. How do we challenge ourselves? I think each day if we have to keep pushing our limits of comfort that has made us blind to alternatives and created a demagoguery of what we already have. For us to confront this, we have to think about our background, position and privilege, that allows us to get things our way. Considering, there are certain contours along which we can advance, how can we participate in influencing the family, society, institution, school, community and even politicians? That is the question we have to ask, and this role we have to take upon.

If you are thinking 50 years from now, think of what your biography will tell you—like a letter to fifty years from now. That letter of your desire will always be committed to yourself. During that development of the self you will realize that the self is but one that is conditioned by many others who are part of a circle where you can join hands, extend friendships and become part of that group. And to create that we need to leave certain things behind and release the burden that lies on our back. It is as if we are climbing a mountain with a rucksack loaded with bricks on our back. It is difficult. What will you do with the bricks? Fill in the caste criteria? Just throw that, go up and see. This burden that you are carrying on your back is not yours but given to you by somebody who was packing your bag at home, school or somewhere else. So you have to realize that if I am losing something, I am creating a space for gaining something else. Because if my hands are full, I will not be able to taste the new food on the buffet menu. If I am creative and think of justice, I will be practical about it. Let me just try some of this. And I will create more space for other people to cherish as well. Something similar happened to me as well. There was a fellowship for which there was a competition between one woman and myself. I was shortlisted but the committee said we need a woman for this fellowship as well. So I received half of the fellowship amount. Personally, it hurt, but in the long term I thought that there has been no woman in this position and if I am able to share it, there is no harm in it. I needed all of it but I got some of it and the rest went to a cause I truly believe in. I really want to also contribute to gender justice. If I have lost something, I have also gained something internally. That victory is nothing like anything. If you want to do good to yourself you have to leave something behind. I am not advocating this. In Rang de Basanti—one of my favourite films—at the end of the day the actor goes and kills his corrupt father. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to execute terrible ends. But what we need is to call out the problem when we see it. Most of the time we don’t say it when we see it, whether it is a caste problem or any other problem. And it doesn’t mean you will be rusticated for it. You will realize how beautiful an experience it is to see. To create a better world, you have to choose a path between following your own ideals and following the criminals who have mentored you into becoming what you are.