For the UPA
Government in New Delhi, industrializing the country means, Mandalising
the country. Mandalising the country means Communalising the country on
the basis of an artificially and even criminally contrived
superstructure of Quota based raj.
To quote the brilliant words of Arun Shourie from his eye opening book
on the communal politics of reservations titled 'Falling Over
Backwards': 'How far have we descended! Today progressives dress
up their casteism as secularism'.
As
politicians and political parties have been less and less able to
commend themselves on the basis of their performance, they have deployed
a standard technique: look for a grievance, for some measure by which it
can be shown that the target group has been left behind; when you cannot
find the grievance, invent it; stoke the sense of being discriminate
against; frighten the group into believing that others are out to take
away even more of what is its right ;and present yourself as the only
savior. Inevitably, in each succeeding round, two things have happened.
On the one side, the grievances that have been stoked have been more and
more far-fetched. On the other, the group at which the rhetoric has been
directed has been narrower and narrower. In the end, politicians pass
laws.
They
appoint Judges as much as Vice- Chancellors and IGs of Police.
Hence, the ultimate responsibility lies with them. But they have
received much help from others - the 'Progressives' who have
dominated public discourse, for instance, a handful of 'progressive'
judges for another. Arun Shourie rightly indicts these
'progressives' as Aiders and Abettors. For some of them, he says
that the right word ought to be Instigators.
Bindheshwari
Prasad Mandal of the Mandal Commission has been an Aider, Abettor and
Instigator in this sense in which Arun Shourie has used those terms in
his essay against 'Reservations' and 'Judicial Populism'. 'Judicial
Populism' is quite distinct from 'Judicial Activism'. Judicial Activism,
devoid of party politics, can often help in making the Rule of Law
prevail over long established social conventions and prejudices. On the
other hand, Judicial Populism functions as a hand maid of communal and
party politics and only leads to the de-thronement of the Rule of Law,
Rule of Equality before the Law and the Rule of Overriding Majesty of
Law. Many petty and unscrupulous Judges, interested only in advancing
their career prospects, by falling head over heels at the feet of
communal politicians, have almost succeeded in destroying these three
classical Pillars of Law in India. This ugly phenomenon has been clearly
brought out with factual details of men and matters by Arun Shourie.
The Mandal
Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party
government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to
'identify the socially or educationally backward.' [1] It was headed by
Indian parliamentarian Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal who considered the
question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste
discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational
indicators to determine 'backwardness.' In 1980, the commission's report
affirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby
members of lower castes (known as Other Backward Classes and Scheduled
Castes and Tribes) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of
government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended
changes to these quotas, increasing them by 27 per cent to 49.5 per cent
[1]. The report, released in 1980, was the source of great controversy,
and its implementation in 1990 was the ultimate cause of India's Prime
Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh's resignation.
The Mandal Commission raised its superstructure of caste based
reservations for the Other Backward Classes based on the lists and
figures of castes in the 1931 Census. All the ICS officers who were in
charge of the Census of 1931 had uniformly reported that it was
impossible to give a precise definition of Caste. To quote the words of
the Census Report of 1931: 'The term caste needs no definition in
India.' Could it be that we can get a definition of the other two
categories that the Census uses - 'tribe' and 'race'? Can we get a
definition of caste by looking at what it is not?
'Tribe was provided to cover many of the communities still organized on
that basis in whose case the tribe has not become a caste,' the 1931
Census recorded. In a word, a 'tribe' is that thing which has not become
the thing that needs no definition.
As for 'Race', the 1931 Census said, 'no attempt was made to define the
term 'Race', which is naturally used so loosely as almost to defy
definition.' The same Census went on to clarify as follows: 'Nor is it
intended to do anything so rash as to define it here, while in the
Census Schedule its very looseness enabled it to cover returns which,
though not strictly referable to the same category, were quite adequate
for the purpose intended, which was primarily to obtain a return of
Indians to whom the terms 'Caste' and 'Tribe' are inapplicable and a
means of identifying Anglo - Indians whose birthplace might be an
inadequate means of identification'.
Even a cursory perusal of the 1931 Census Report will clearly show that
there was a great degree of conceptual confusion even at that time
regarding the precise meanings and definitions of the terms 'Caste',
'Tribe' and 'Race'. Thus the British officers in charge of that Census
followed the slippery procedure of definition by residuals, by
presenting many problems, and were very honest and candid about them,
quite unlike the fraudulent Mandal of the Mandal Commission who has been
guilty of gross and blatant concealment and fabrication of facts and
figures, derived tangentially from the 1931 Census.
For instance, the Census Commissioner of 1931 Census took special care
to point out that Indians who had been classified as 'Tribals' formed a
very heterogeneous group. Even the simplest step � that of comparing
these figures with what had been reported in previous enumerations, the
Census Commissioner wrote, 'has been made very difficult by the
irritating practice of some missionaries to induce their converts to
abandon their tribal name and return themselves nondescriptly as 'Indian
Christians', as though they had some cause to be ashamed of their
forefathers�. The Census Commissioner openly declared that some
religions like Islam and Christianity foreswore Caste in a brash manner
even after conversion. They are doing so even today with the willing
co-operation of all our Pseudo Secular Politicians.
All the rabidly communal politicians of today, assert with pompous
arrogance about the continuing rigidity of the caste system even today
being as frozen as in the days of Manu. These politicians would get
frozen by the following telling observations of the Census Commissioner
of 1931: 'There is apparently a tendency towards the consolidation of
groups at present separated by caste rules. The best instance of such a
tendency to consolidate a number of castes into one group is to be found
in the grazier castes which aim at combining under the term 'Yadava'
Ahirs, Goalas, Gopis, Idaiyans and perhaps some other castes of milk
men, a movement already effective ever since 1921'.
M W M Yeatts (Thank Periyar that he was not a Brahmin!!), the
Superintendent of Census Operations in the Madras Presidency in 1931 and
who later became the Census Commissioner of India wrote as follows:
'Several of them 'induviduals and groups' manufacture 'cacophonous
combinations'. Sorting by caste is one of the most complicated of all
Census Operations. Sorting for Caste is really worthless unless
nomenclature is sufficiently fixed to render the resulting totals close
and reliable approximations. Had caste terminology the stability of
religious returns, caste sorting might be worthwhile. With the fluidity
of present appellations, it is certainly not' 2,27,000 AMBATTANS have
become 10,000 (!!) 'Navithan, Nai, Nai Brahman, Navutiyan, Pariyari
claim about 1,40,000 - all these ever fluid and ever changing terms
unrecorded are untabulated - Individual fancy apparently has some part
in caste nomenclature. For example, an extremely dark individual
pursuing the occupation of waterman on the Coorg border described his
caste as SURYAVAMSA (!), the family of the Sun. Many of the claims and
appellations used for Castes recall irresistibly the ruse of that hero
of W S Gilbert's who christened himself 'DARWINIAN MAN'. Energy expended
in pursuing euphemistic Caste synonyms bears a strong resemblance to
that involved in hunting a will-o'-the-wisp and is as profitable or
useless. Censuses can deal usefully with facts, not with fashions'.
There has been no Caste-wise enumeration since the Census of 1931.The
great Mandal of the Mandal Commission used this Census as his Bible
which has been rejected by the Supreme Court of India. Even the English
Regional Census Commissioners from all parts of India had reported in
1931 itself that they all felt shaky and uncertain about the Caste-wise
enumeration. All of them had reported that Caste Lines were getting to
be disregarded and new and technological developments were upsetting the
very basis of Caste divisions. By stark contrast Pseudo Secular Mafia
Men of Mass Media today write with Biblical Authority that such and such
exit poll shows that all the Kurmis have deserted BJP or Congress and so
on!! Politicians talk the same way. Even some of our Supreme Court and
High Court Judges think that India is what it was, in fact what some
Text collated over 700 years says it should have been 2500 years ago!!
As early as in 1921, the English Census Commissioner for Baroda State
had warned with a clairvoyant vision that in the face of change all
round, 'Caste may soon adapt itself and be content to remain as if it
were the Election Agent of the new Democracy'. The Mandal Commission was
the final culmination of this vicious process.
–
Continued
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April 10, 2007
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