Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, has appealed for peace in his home state of Gujarat after paramilitary troops were deployed and a curfew imposed to quell a violent caste protest.An estimated half a million Patels earlier brought the main city of Ahmedabad to standstill for a rally where their firebrand young leader demanded more government jobs and college places for the Patidar caste. But after Hardik Patel was arrested, stone-throwing protestors torched cars, buses and police stations as the rioting spread to other cities and towns. Three protesters were reported to have been shot dead in clashes with police, while several officers were injured. The protests are rooted in the complex and highly-sensitive world of the Indian caste system and the government’s job and college quotas for disadvantaged communities. Some analysts have warned of the dangers of a “caste war” if the tensions are not eased. The Patidars are traditionally viewed as an affluent and privileged caste from land-owning classes. Gujarat’s chief minister and several state leaders are Patels. But they claim that they are the victims of positive discrimination as they struggle to compete for jobs and college places with less privileged castes from the official-designated “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs).
Over the years, both the number of groups categorised as Backward Classes and the percentage of reserved spots has increased multifold, with more than sixty percent of India’s population classified as ‘backward’. Thus as more and more disenfranchised communities came to benefit from quotas, the reaction from the privileged castes and classes of India has always been to cry victim at the perceived shrinking of their influence.
Though it is easy to critique the Patel movement in Gujarat as a privileged caste making a mockery of the quota system’s purpose, a critical look at the facts will reveal a more complex picture. In principle, the concept of affirmative action is completely valid, and in a country beset by stark inequalities it is necessary for the state to play mediator. However, though the protesters may be Patels, they are not all the rich businessmen and political players that the image of a ‘Patel’ conveys. The grievances that cause them to protest are real as India’s urban youth is suffering from massive unemployment, regardless of education levels. The fundamental problem with the movement though is very clear, as the lack of prospects is not a Patel problem but a countrywide class problem. The reason such grievances manifest themselves as infectious and deadly communal politics is because the quota system has not evolved and continues to be based on an essentialist paradigm of castes and communities. This framework limits the imagination of politics and the quota system effectively perpetuates caste politics, as it is to the benefit of groups to play up this aspect of their identity. The true solution to curb the politics of demagoguery lies in the re-evaluation of the reservation system, as it should exist to benefit economically deprived people irrespective of an imagined identity of victimhood.
pk.shafaqna.com
