India’s continuing tryst with the annihilation of caste has been long and diverse. This was made evident by two contrasting positions taken by two different institutions in recent times. In the first instance, in response to the Allahabad High Court’s order to obliterate the glorification of caste in a bid to create a society that is free from stratification, the Uttar Pradesh government issued a notification banning mobilisations along caste lines. This move has been rightly criticised for being impractical, discriminatory and superficial. Caste, it cannot be denied, is the fuel that propels India’s electoral juggernaut. In fact, caste arithmetic has been pivotal to government formation in Uttar Pradesh over the decades. This holds true for Yogi Adityanath’s government as well. Furthermore, a ban on caste rallies, several small, caste-based parties — some of them are, ironically, allies of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh — have pointed out would be tantamount to being a ploy to legitimise the suppression of the downtrodden by influential upper caste constituencies. This allegation is serious and deserves scrutiny. For it reveals an intent to weaponise a seemingly progressive agenda — the eradication of caste mobilisation — to institutionalise discrimination. This kind of duplicity is dangerous in a representative democracy.
An alternative — enlightening — strategy to battle caste has also come from the Allahabad High Court in a different case. In a directive, the high court underlined the urgent need to include specific pedagogical content in the school curriculum that is revealing of the evils of caste. The court went on to make another important point. The government’s emphasis has, the court pointed out, always been on affirmative action: the dismantling of subtle, seemingly mundane caste structures has not been a priority. It needs to be. One way of going about it, as the court pointed out, would be to sensitise young minds through an education that responds to the everyday, lived experiences of caste. The two approaches, the one endorsed by Mr Adityanath’s government and the other underlined by the Allahabad High Court in the second instance, differ in another — fundamental — way. The political strategy relies on the instantaneous and on optics. The judiciary, on the other hand, is advocating a patient, substantial, albeit slower, transformation. In some instances, the slow and the steady still win the race.