** persistence «• The Khairlanji Murders & India's Hidden Apartheid ANAND TELTUMBDE This book exposes the gangrenous heart of Indian society. ARUNDHATI ROY © Anand Teltumbde's analysis of the public, ritualistic massacre of a dalit family in 21st century India exposes the gangrenous heart of our society. It contextualizes the massacre and describes the manner in which the social, political and state machinery, the police, the mass media and the judiciary all collude to first create the climate for such bestiality, and then cover it up. This is not a book about the last days of relict feudalism, but a book about what modernity means in India. It discusses one of the most important issues in contemporary India. —ARUNDHATI ROY, author of The God of Small Things This book is finally the perfect demonstration that the caste system of India is the best tool to perpetuate divisions among the popular classes to the benefit of the rulers, thus annihilating in fact the efficiency of their struggles against exploitation and oppression. Capitalist modernization is not gradually reducing that reality but on the opposite aggravating its violence. This pattern of modernization permits segments of the peasant shudras to accede to better conditions through the over-exploitation of the dalits. The Indian Left must face this major challenge. It must have the courage to move into struggles for the complete abolition of caste system, no less. This is the prerequisite for the eventual emerging of a united front of the exploited classes, the very first condition for the coming to reality of any authentic popular democratic alternative for social progress. This book provides a wonderful analysis towards this understanding. I would hope to see it read by every Indian activist and also foreigners who do not see how odious the caste system is. —SAMIR AMIN, Director of Third World Forum, Dakar, Senegal Teltumbde has created a solid corpus of work that bears witness to the degradation of Indian democracy, and to the capacity of Indian socialism. India's revolution... is sharpened on the anvil of Teltumbde's thoughts. —VIJAY PRASHAD, author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World the contemporary dalit and Left movements. He is a member of the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai. Author of Anti-Imperialism and Annihilation of Castes among other books, Teltumbde writes a monthly column, 'Margin Speak', for the Economic and Political Weekly. THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE THE KHAIRLANJI MURDERS AND INDIA'S HIDDEN APARTHEID Anand Teltumbde ©Zed Books The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India's Hidden Apartheid Contents was first published outside of South Asia in 2010 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and Room 400,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www. zedbooks. co. uk Not for sale in South Asia 1. Introduction CASTE: A HISTORICAL OUTLINE 9 Originally published in South Asia by Navayana Publishing 155 Second Floor, Shahpur Jat, New Delhi 110049, India 2. Beyond Varna CASTE IN THE 21 ST CENTURY 40 Copyright © Anand Teltumbde 2010 3. The Political Economy The right of Anand Teltumbde to be identified as the author of this work THE SHAPING OF THE MACABRE SPECTACLE 54 has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 4. Anti-Atrocity Law MITIGATION AND ITS MALCONTENTS 7 7 Typeset by Tulika Print Communication Services, New Delhi 5. The Khairlanji Murders Cover design: navayana.org GENEALOGY AND AFTERMATH 90 Printed and bound by Sanjiv Palliwal, New Delhi, India 6. Post-Khairlanji Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan A CHRONICLE OF REPRESSION 117 a division of St Martin's Press, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA 7. Mass Media All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, MASSIVE PREJUDICE 13 7 stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior 8. Atrocities by the State permission of Zed Books Ltd. NEOLIBERALISM, NAXALISM AND DALITS 15 0 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 9. Exploding Myths Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available GLOBALIZATION, CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE BAHUJAN 17 3 ISBN 978 1 84813 448 5 hb Index 189 ISBN 978 1 84813 449 2 pb ISBN 978 1 84813 450 8 eb Introduction CASTE: A HISTORICAL OUTLINE Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster. B.R. Ambedkar India's caste system has always bewildered the world. Much has been written about it; more still awaits the writing. Many scholars have tried to fathom its origins but have ultimately contributed only further conjecture. Many have tried to define it but have failed to capture its complexity. For most, it was a relic of Indian feudalism which, it was thought, would disappear once capitalism was established. Writing in 1853, the year the railways were introduced in India, Karl Marx prophesied that the new mechanized transportation system would catalyse the collapse of caste. Today, India has the world's second largest railway network and has created, since Independence, a sizeable infrastructure for capitalist industry. But all that could not kill caste, which proved more than capable of adjusting to the new reality. After Independence in 1947, rural India was transformed through a modernizing project that included, among other things, land reforms and the capital- intensive technologies of the Green Revolution in agriculture. Capitalist production relations came to the villages and seemed to shake the caste structure to its roots - but caste survived nonetheless. 10 THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE INTRODUCTION 11 Since the mid- 1980s, a now neoliberal India has taken remarkable Indian government has always managed to successfully oppose the strides towards globalizing its economy and, with an impressive terming of caste-based discrimination as racism - this would perhaps recent growth record, has increasingly been projecting itself as an have been different had there been a more widespread emerging superpower. The world is dazzled by its success. Caste was comprehension of the issues at stake. expected to fall away under pressure of the global order. That has Caste is neither so 'country-specific' nor, from a Western not happened. On the contrary, it appears to have grown far more perspective, so distant an issue as maybe thought. It has been carried vicious, if caste atrocities are taken as a proxy measure. far beyond the borders of the subcontinent with the spread of the Indeed, caste has showed an amazing resilience. It has survived Indian diaspora.3 Wherever Indians have gone, it has followed them; feudalism, capitalist industrialization, a republican Constitution, wherever they have settled, caste has also established itself. Some and today, despite all denial, is well alive under neoliberal scholars hold that it is Hinduism - an 'ethnic religion', unlike other globalization. major faiths - that is a key element in defining the Indian diaspora.4 Arguably, this 'key element' can be discerned as caste, which other Caste and the Indian Diaspora scholars unequivocally name as providing a more enduring marker In the globalized, transnational world of the twenty-first century, of diaspora identity than religion.5 The important thing to note is the need for an accurate understanding of this vicious institution that caste in the diaspora is not confined to intra-community can never be over-emphasized. A call for international recognition relations alone; it notionally extends, in the minds of its practi- of caste as a racist violation of human rights has been addressed to tioners, beyond their boundaries to incorporate the population the world community, not once but twice in the last decade - it native to their adoptive place of domicile. went ignored in both the resolution adopted by the 2001 World The manifestation of caste within the diaspora depends upon the Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and position occupied by the dispersed groups within the hierarchic Related Intolerance held in Durban and in the outcome document caste continuum. Where dispersion happened at its lowest band, as of the Review Conference held in 2009. The United Nations High in South Africa, Malaysia and other countries where those of Indian Commissioner for Human Rights, Nävi Pillay, declared in 2009 that origin are largely descended from colonial indentured labour, caste 'the time has come to eradicate the shameful concept of caste,' and manifests least as compared to places that received dispersion at that 'the international community should come together to support higher strata. In South Africa or Malaysia, for example, caste 1 these efforts as it did when it helped put an end to apartheid.' identities are not dominant - among other reasons because their It is such international pressure that led to the introduction of maintenance was of little value to the migrants to these places, drawn the Equality Bill in the UK parliament in March 2010, a bill that as they were from the lower ranks of the caste hierarchy.6 That, outlaws discrimination based on caste and is likely to become the however, did not prevent the small segment of higher caste migrants first piece of legislation in the world to treat caste as an aspect of from keeping their distance from the 'lowly'