Media Bytes and the Caste Dice

The recent debate in the media over the inclusion of caste in census merely exposes the double standards.

Caste a term which evokes heightened anxiety in the social sphere with various sections of the society deliberating and berating its utility in polity and public policy. Recently an icon of the silver screen lamented over the premium caste commands in the Indian society and went to blog that if he is asked about his caste, he would emphatically state Indian for an answer.

While a section of the metro city based progressives and radicals talk about the dangers fraught upon by this move, the political class based on primordial groupings, a byproduct of the social movements in the countryside vehemently assert that caste has always been an innate part of our socio-political discourse. So refusal to address the issue of caste by shying away from the ‘ground reality’ would harm the cause of social justice with the social division and deprivation remaining entrenched.

The decision still remains in animatedly suspense with deep divisions within major political parties. Media finds the issue quite challenging in its manifestation with hordes of politicians, social activists’ and retired bureaucrats biting the media bait. The series of debates in the print and visual media were trying to arrive at a judgment about the prevalence of caste and the need to erase it from the social sphere notwithstanding the fact that caste remains an anchor of solidarity not only in the countryside infested with khaps and infected by honour killings but in urban and metropolitan environs. Caste in other words continues to influence the grammar of social interaction, be it the Indian bureaucracy or in social echelons.

The new media that has brought Facebook and Twitter, gives jitters to the conventional media and questions the state control over communication waves, has transformed and sustained caste based loyalties and solidarities through its digital social networks. The classic vindication of modernity of tradition is the prevalence of online matrimony sites wherein the process of match making is guided by software which takes note of the innumerable socio-cultural variations in terms of language, caste, clan, regions or horoscopes. Hence caste has its own significance in terms of the social behaviour of various groups and can’t be relegated to the background on the modernizer’s plea. As Shiv Vishwanathan very succinctly states that caste is information and it would be foolhardy to suppress that piece of information in a knowledge society.

The larger issue missed by various idealists in the media, is that the information on the status of social groups helps the policy makers to review the performance of various developmental projects designed and implemented by the state. This certainly calls for a sociological understanding of the human society, which would envisage an objective assessment of socio-economic development of the citizen. While caste remains an idiom in the polity, it also has the propensity to negotiate with the polity for seeking social and economic empowerment. After all didn’t the nation witness a change in the profile of political leadership after the advent of the green revolution – it was akin to no votes without political representation of groups in the structure of governance. The census is not an exercise to resurrect the demons of the past but an attempt to know our present for evolving a better future. This certainly highlights the role caste can play in social mobilization, notwithstanding the hullaballoo about the resurrection of caste which ironically has firmly withstood through out the sixty years of our independence.