Why should India condemn Apartheid?
Answers
By Rajeev Dhavan
IT IS no disservice to the heroic struggle in South Africa against apartheid to compare it with the struggle of Dalits and tribals to fight the cumulative injustice of centuries. In doing so we salute the struggles of all peoples to fight rascist and related ideologies which imprison and brutalise their lives.
Durban is concerned with the fourth agenda to confront the ideological social enslavement of entire peoples through ideologies that viciously discriminate against them under conditions of hate and endemic social disadvantage. This is an continuing evil. Indians should know better; look at the plight of Indians abroad. In 1968, Indians were thrown out of Kenya. In 1971, Idi Amin unleashed a reign of terror against Uganda's Asians. In 2000, in Fiji, a Prime Minister of Indian origin was dethroned whilst his community lived in terror. In 1968, in England, Enoch Powell, provoked and predicted that `rivers of blood' would flow. They did. In 2001, riots took place in the north of England. John Rex's research shows how housing patterns of immigrants perpetrate permanent disadvantages. In America, `dot-busters' attack Indian women who wear bindis on their forehead or Indian clothes. Of all peoples, we cannot afford to ignore racism-related phenomena being the pointed target of the global agenda.
Why do we resist the inclusion of casteism in this global agenda? For this we have to understand the global agenda; and, indeed, India's own. We are concerned here not with race but racism. Not caste but casteism. Racism is not just a socio-biological phenomenon but a colonial legacy. Like casteism, it is a social construct. It exists amongst and within White communities. Spielberg's Schindler's List reminds us of the struggle of the Jews in our time. The English outcasted Anglo and other mixes. The Dutch did not. The Durban Conference is directed against entrenched racism and related practices which contain the following characteristics: (i) a socially constructed ideology; (ii) founded on notions of superiority (or, inversely, inferiority); (iii) directed against entire peoples; (iv) on the basis of descent, ethnicity, colour, or physical characteristics; (v) manifesting violent expressions of hostility, including vicious and violent attacks, hate and bias; (vi) to perpetrate endemic social disadvantage; and (vii) effect inter-generational injustice.
Sociologists may quibble - as, indeed, Prof. Andre Beteille and others have - over academic dissimilarities between `race' and `caste' as heuristic `ideal types' to thrown the baby out with the bath water. But apply the seven tests which, perforce, underscore the global agenda. Caste is based on descent and birth. This is recognised as part of India's human rights constitutional dispensation in its equality provisions (Articles 15 and 16), the abolition of untouchablility (Article 17), the temple entry provision (Article 25), special provisions for an SC and ST Commission (Articles 330-342 and 46), and in the scheme of Indian federalism (Articles 164 (1), 371 A-G, Vth and VIth Schedules). Thus, the Indian Constitution has a priority constitutional commitment to fight a descent and birth based struggle against casteism and tribalism.
Our Constitution recognises that `casteism' is a centuries-old vicious ideology founded on hate, violence and exclusion from equality, opportunity, empowerment and resources. The Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955-1976 and the SC and ST (Atrocities) Act 1989 underlie this commitment. Yet, after 50 years, despite affirmative action and other agendas, casteism continues. Rapes, beatings and deprivations reflected in Government reports are the tip of the social inferno. Temple entry is accompanied by purification ceremonies before and after entry. Humiliation accompanies violence. By inclusion in the global agenda, the fight against casteism will be enhanced.
It was at India's insistence that `descent' was included in the Convention against Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 1969. By 1996, India argued that `casteism' was not part of CERD, but was, in effect, overruled by the U.N.'s Human Rights Committee. Today, India flounders. It does not want to admit that `casteism' is India's apartheid which will continue in its most vicious and persistent forms for decades to come. Even if India's stance is linked to its quest for a seat in the Security Council of the U.N., this cannot mortgage human rights priorities for Dalits and tribals.