Caste-Based Oppression and the Class Struggle TU Senan CWI-India
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Caste-based Oppression and the Class Struggle TU Senan CWI -India 24 December 2014 Leave a comment In 2013, the British government agreed to include caste- based discrimination as an amendment to the Equality Act (2010). An alliance of Tory MPs and caste-based ‘community leaders’, however, successfully stalled its implementation to after the general election. What is behind this opposition? What role does caste play, both in South Asia and Britain? Why is it an important issue for socialists today? The caste system in South Asia is one of the cruellest forms of oppression that exists today. Cold-blooded murder, sexual violence, untouchability, bonded slavery and other feudal forms of horrific discrimination are used against people from the most oppressed caste. People challenging this oppression face brutal violence, including being driven from traditional lands or the burning down of whole villages. More than half-a-billion people in India are subjected to discrimination based on their caste, which is determined by hereditary membership and marriage within the caste. Higher castes dominate certain professions, businesses, etc. Beneath this hierarchical system are more than 200 million (Dalits and others) who face the most severe forms of discrimination. Traditional castes cut across class and class loyalties, although the leaders of the higher castes are a significant component of the ruling class. Caste oppression is also present in other parts of the world where South Asians live, travelling with the migrations of populations over time. From Malaysia to Europe, caste divisions have been maintained. At least half-a- million people of South Asian descent face caste-based discrimination in Britain. In April 2013, the British parliament debated the issue. True to their class interests the Con-Dems tried to place obstacles in the way of outlawing caste discrimination in the workplace. The Commons and Lords played ping-pong with the issue. Eventually, the government was forced to amend the Equality Act 2010 by adding that caste is an ‘aspect of race’, although the Tories, working with the Hindu elite, have kicked the issue into the long grass. A final drafting of the legislation has been postponed to the summer of 2015 – after the general election. Looking at the different ways that opposition to the caste system emerged in India and Sri Lanka can help shine a light on what strategy we should adopt today. The ‘left’ has in general opposed all forms of caste discrimination. However, the leaders of some of the mass left organisations failed to develop adequate perspectives and strategy, eventually leaving the wider population who faced severe caste-based discrimination with no organisational weapon with which to fight back. Opposition to caste in Sri Lanka In Sri Lanka, caste discrimination was present among the majority Sinhala population, of all religions, though not at the same level as among the minority Tamils. It was particularly prominent wherever poverty existed. Those who are most oppressed by caste discrimination are also kept in less privileged economic conditions. In Sri Lanka they were also minorities in terms of population, within each ethnic group, and faced various barriers to getting involved in the struggle to improve their conditions. Nonetheless, the relative economic improvement which took place among the oppressed Karava (Sinhala) and Karayar (Tamil) castes, due to their involvement in businesses such as fishing, the sale of alcohol, etc, created a certain confidence and enabled them to challenge the domination of the ‘upper’ Kovigama (Sinhala) or Vellalar (Tamil) castes. These oppressing castes did not involve themselves in these businesses initially as they saw them as ‘lower-caste activities’. This also contributed to the emergence of organised opposition to class oppression. The Karava caste dominated the leadership of the first political party to be formed in Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), set up in 1935. The LSSP immediately took on an anti -capitalist character opposing all sorts of oppression, including caste-based discrimination. The Karava or Karayar castes were prominent in the leaderships of almost all the resistance groups to emerge in Sri Lanka – not just the LSSP, but also the JVP (People’s Liberation Front, founded in 1965), the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, 1976) – and even a section of the SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party, 1951). In Sri Lanka all the left parties and formations consistently opposed caste- based discrimination, at times leading the struggle of the oppressed castes. Whenever they organised on a class basis, they were able to pull the oppressed masses behind them. For this reason the left organisations became the first port of call for the oppressed castes to fight back. The LSSP in particular played a formidable role in its early stages. However, its initial success among the super-exploited workers in the tea plantations of the hill country, where there was massive opposition by the oppressed caste against class exploitation, led the LSSP to assume wrongly that this could be a generalised mood among Tamils. At that time, the Tamil elite from the north and east, where most Tamils live, were almost exclusively from the most dominant Vellalar caste. The LSSP was correct in predicting that there would be a revolt of the most oppressed caste against Vellalar dominance, but it was wrong in assuming that it would be an automatic process. Caste-based frustration and mobilisation does not travel automatically towards a class-conscious position. It can find its expression in a number of ways, including through religion. Alternatively, owing to their extreme deprivation, oppressed caste workers may not even participate in the struggle, initially at least. Without a conscious intervention, making an appeal to the wider working class, mobilising their opposition is not possible. A socialist a nd workers’ party that understands caste and opposes all oppression and exploitation can help speed up this understanding. There was a need, therefore, to draw a parallel and link the caste and class anger in a mobilisation against the Tamil capitalist and petit- bourgeois elite. The LSSP failed to do this. At the same time, class opposition can be built through seriously taking up the fight against caste, race, or gender discrimination. A section of the Communist Party in Sri Lanka broke away and formed a Maoist-influenced pro-Beijing wing, establishing significant influence among the Tamil workers and poor in the north and in hill country tea estates through its participation in the struggle of the oppressed caste. However, its failure to understand the developing national question, and the caste/class composition of the Tamil community, led to the situation where the Tamil elite was able to side-line the left. Though every armed Tamil group formally stood for ‘socialism’ – without a deep-going understanding of what that meant – they were not able to link up with the existing left organisations, such as the LSSP, as the LSSP had by then abandoned a consistent struggle against capitalism. Indeed, later on, the LSSP mistakenly formed a coalition with the capitalist and Sinhala nationalist parties. These were the parties the radicalised Tamil youth saw as their enemies and oppressors. Consequently, oppressed-caste Tamil youth, who instinctively looked towards the left, flooded the ranks of the armed guerrilla organisations. Caste in India Under the influence of Stalinism, maintaining an independent class position was abandoned by the communist parties in India – the Communist Party India, and the Communist Party India (Marxist). Instead they adopted a popular front policy of submerging themselves in alliances with capitalist parties. Their stagist approach – arguing that, firstly, a stage of capitalist economic development was required before a second stage of socialist revolution (at some indefinite future time) was possible – led them to give in to ‘Hindu nationalism’. They gave up on internationalism. Unlike in Sri Lanka, the oppressed-caste masses could not turn to a left party to express their anger. These mistaken ideas and approach cut those parties off from people suffering caste -based misery and led to the emergence of various experiments in resistance, including ‘low-caste’ people changing their religion en masse, forming caste-based parties, etc. The communist parties in India, despite having a mass base, were never able to wage a class-based opposition in such a way that would also express caste anger, due to their continuous collaboration with the oppressing caste. The partial land reforms which were implemented under Communist Party rule in Bengal or Kerala did have some impact on caste relations, but their effects were limited in many ways as the majority of oppressed-caste people remained landless. What took place in the late 1960s and 1970s in Sri Lanka, with the mass left parties abandoning the struggle against capitalism, had existed in India since post-independence. Those who were outside the Congress Party and communist parties began to play a significant role in mobilising the most oppressed. Like the leaders of the civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s, these leaders – such as Ambedkar and Periyar – were often forced to draw the conclusion that a fundamental change of the economic system was needed to fight the caste system. Frequently, however, they came into conflict with the communist parties. In the Stalinist sectarian tradition, the communist parties dismissed other forms of struggle and operated without democratic discussions within and outside the party. At the time of the initial emergence of caste-based groups, the communist parties began to change but not to the extent of leading the struggle. They started to talk about ‘equal rights’, and making inequality ‘punishable by law’, etc – as in the CPI programme (1951), and the CPI-M programme (1969). They believed that the ‘agrarian revolution’ would remove the caste relations and, as a second stage, the development of industrialisation and the working class would see revolution emerge.