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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s tribulations over caste

- DINESH NARAYANAN

David C Mulford, then the US ambassador to India, sent a confidential cable to Washington, DC in 2005, titled, “Socioeconomic Future of Indian Dalits Remains Bleak.” This was a status note on the condition of Dalits in the country. Ram Nath Kovind, the current president of India but then a Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Uttar Pradesh, was interviewed by American diplomats, and told them that open discrimination against Dalits had reduced dramatically in the preceding decade. However, he also predicted that caste based discrimination would exist for at least the next fifty to one hundred years in India. Kovind suggested that since the Hindu religion condones caste, it would take longer for the Indian government to end caste discrimination than for the US administration to eradicate racial discrimination in its country. The true basis of discrimination was economic in nature rather than caste-based, he argued, as the haves discriminate against the have-nots and use the caste system to perpetuate differences between economic groups. Comparing the caste system to the trade guilds in feudal Europe—in that certain groups performed specific jobs—Kovind said that under the caste system persons acquire their trade at birth, while the guilds allowed job mobility. Caste factors were used to protect jobs and livelihoods more than anything else.

While Kovind was right that caste discrimination would remain for a long time, his reading of the nature of that discrimination was grossly inadequate, as events have frequently borne out.