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By and large, there was no There But For Fortune, Go You Or I sense of ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’ “ Mohan Rao before the 18th century. After all, there was little to unify the THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH: ON INHERITED SOCIAL INEQUALITIES By Namit Arora Malabar Mapilla with the Meo Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2017, pp. 291, R395.00 in Rajasthan, the Awadhi ghazal singer, or the North n old ballad sung by Joan Baez many years back went something like Indian Bhishti. Athis: Show me the prison/Show me the jail/Show me ” the hobo/who sleeps down by the rail/ And I’ll and again, religious fundamentalism of all show you a young man/With so many reasons hues, and of diverse political parties, has why/There but for fortune, go you and I. shown how a good principle like democracy may be appropriated and hollowed out for a Baez was gently telling us, in her beau- darker, more sinister purpose. tiful, elegiac voice, that we are made not by Thapar does not mince words in this genes alone, but by contingency and above section, and her hard-hitting diatribe against all by our environment. Around the same religious fundamentalism—Hindu, Muslim, time, erupted a nasty debate called the Bell Sikh—is perhaps necessary to arouse to ac- Curve debate when psychologist Richard tion the middle and upper middle classes, J. Hernstein and political scientist Charles who have been lulled into a complacent slum- Murray argued that human intelligence— ber by the allure of consumerism. Time and and therefore employment, incomes, involve- again, she indicates that anger or fear or help- ment in crime etc.,—is largely an outcome lessness cannot be the appropriate response of inherited factors and went on to discuss to the state’s assault on democratic freedoms. racial differences in intelligence. Even dur- In her writings, Thapar has demonstrated ing Trumpsian times of political incorrect- the importance of critical research, argument ness, it is doubtful if such claims could be and reasoning to oppose evils like religious made today. and caste intolerance and atrocities. What Yes, slightly modified, it is commonplace philosopher Hannah Arendt calls ‘the banal- to hear arguments in India that only slightly ‘Careless motherfuckers. Who asked ity of evil’ really points to the fact that evil recast those scientifically discredited asser- them to get in the way of the truck?’ (Roy has no profundity or depth. tions of prejudice. Who does not remember 2017: 259)1 is another way of looking at these The narrow scope of this book is belied photographs in the national dailies at the deaths. by the author’s wide sweep of ideas. Thapar time of the Mandal agitation showing up- What Roy is alluding to is a feeling of is not just a Marxist or Left liberal writer. per-caste medical students at the prestigious not just arrogant privilege among the middle Such labels would not only constrain a uni- All India Institute of Medical Sciences shin- and upper middle classes in India, over- versalist thinker like Thapar, it would ren- ing shoes in protest against affirmative ac- whelmingly upper-caste, but how pervasive der her parochial. Readers who are unfamil- tion for the OBCs? What were these students, these ideas are among those who ought to iar with Thapar’s books are likely to sense considered some of the most intelligent in know better, in the media, in the judiciary the free-fall of astonishment on encounter- the country, so unselfconsciously, but sym- and indeed in academia, also predominantly ing some of her brilliant insights. Those that bolically saying? Who has not heard the ar- upper-caste. This is called victim blaming know them a little better will experience the gument, from so-called meritocrats, that res- and elides what is called structural violence. contented glow that accompanies the plea- ervations of seats in higher education for lower To understand what is structural violence sure of the familiar—like listening to a castes compromises merit? Political correct- and what causes it, is this remarkable book favourite piece of music, or meeting a dear ness of course demands that they do not say of essays, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited old friend. Either way, this book is bound to that Dalits, adivasis and the OBCs are ge- Social Inequalities. Namit Arora is an unlikely add tremendous value to the reader’s library. netically less intelligent than themselves. writer of a book such as this, and thus is all Arundhati Roy in The Ministry of Utmost the more convincing. A graduate of IIT, who Happiness, in an aside of no particular sig- gets into IIT on the basis of a high all-India Nalini Rajan is Professor and Dean of Studies at nificance to the plot, notes that three men rank in the notoriously difficult entrance the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. Her had been crushed to death in India’s bur- exam, he goes on, as many from IIT do, to edited works include Covering and Explaining geoning capital city as they lay down to sleep the USA, where, with financial aid, he ob- Conflict in Civil Society, Orient BlackSwan, 2014, exhausted after a day’s labour, on the side of tains a Masters degree from an American and (with V. Geetha): Religious Faith, Ideology, Citi- the road. New immigrants to the city, ca- university and then finds economic success zenship: The View from Below, Routledge 2011. sual workers with no assured work or wages, in that land of milk and honey, Silicon Val- She is presently working on an illustrated volume, they could have died of the heat, or dengue The Story of Secularism from the 15th Century to fever, or any one of the misfortunes that make 1 Roy, Arundhati (2017), The Ministry of Utmost Happi- the 21st Century. the lives of these millions. ness, Penguin, New Delhi. 24 The Book Review / July-August 2017 ley. Most people, he notes, would see this as Arora looks at the data on rape in India cluded some of Ambedkar’s dolorous views a just reward for his knowledge and hard and as reported by the Department of Jus- on Muslims and the Partition of India. work. tice in the USA. Delhi in 2012 reported 4 When voices are being silenced, when But as Arora notes, ‘If I’m honest with rapes per 100,000 population; the rates were debate is being stifled, we need more argu- myself, I can’t take much credit for it…. I 107 in Minneapolis, 88 in Cleveland, 58 in mentative Indians than we have. Namit happened to be born in an upper-caste Philadelphia, 43 in Boston, 36 in Houston Arora’s brilliant book has contributed to this, household, inheriting eons of unearned privi- and so on. The US average was 29 rapes per and we must thank him for that. I only lege over 80 per cent of all other Indians, I 100000 population in 2009. London had wished the cover did not feature a painting was a fair skinned boy raised in a society that rape rates 13 times higher than New Delhi, by one of the most prominent painters of lavished far more positive attention on fair which was christened the rape capital of the India, M.F. Hussain, although he was skin and boys. I neither suffered any caste world. hounded out of his beloved country by discrimination, nor faced any social and What is even more significant is that Hindutvavadis primarily because he was a physical restrictions on account of my gen- about 40 per cent of reported rapes in India Muslim. The works of not so well known der or sexual orientation’ (p. 6). What both- involve consensual sex between consenting artists, who happen to be Dalits, such as Savi ered him was that life’s outcomes depended unmarried adults. These young people have Savarkar or J. Nandkumar might have been ‘on the lottery of birth, where people were, violated caste codes in forging relationships more apposite. Both of them bring startlingly marked in the womb for worldly success and and thus find themselves in criminal courts refreshing ways of seeing Gandhi, and failure, based on their accidental inheritance with rape charges filed by young women’s Nandkumar, like Hussain, has a penchant of caste, class, caste, gender, region, religion, parents. For what these young couples had for horses and Hindu goddesses. sexuality, language, and more’ (p. 7). violated were endogamous caste codes of This book of essays is on inequality along marriage. Of the remaining cases of reported Mohan Rao is Professor at the Centre of Social the various axes of caste, class and gender in rapes, the vast majority had been commit- Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal the country, on the distortions these impose ted by family members, neighbours and so Nehru University, New Delhi. on Indian democracy, on the writings of some on, people known to the victim. Stranger of the people who have suffered the indigni- rapes were a miniscule proportion. ties that are mounted on pre-existing in- This of course explains the poor convic- ‘Politics Of equalities and on those who have attempted, tion rate too as victims frequently refuse to with varying degrees of success and disen- testify against family members they are de- Performance’? chantment, to overturn this unjust order. pendent on. So caste, class and gender in- The essays argue that these are indeed man equality are built into and shape not just Ashutosh Kumar made, not divinely created. They have been the occurrence of rape but also how it is re- published for the most part in an on-line ported, if at all, and how long and tortuous THE DEMANDS OF RECOGNITION: STATE journal 3 Quarks Daily over the last seven the road to justice is.