INTRODUCTION 11

1

Introduction UNDERSTANDING CASTES TO ANNIHILATE THEM

Khairlanji. An obscure village in the unheard of taluk of , . Suddenly, in 2006, it became the newest addition to the series of names that have become synonymous with violent crimes against dalits in post- independence —Kilvenmani (44 dalits burnt alive in Tamil Nadu, 1968), Belchi (14 dalits burnt alive in Bihar, 1977), Morichjhanpi (hundreds of dalit refugees massacred by the state in Sundarbans, West Bengal, 1978), Karamchedu (six dalits murdered, three dalit women raped and many more wounded in Andhra Pradesh, 1984), Chundru (nine dalits massacred and dumped in a canal in Andhra Pradesh, 1991), Melavalavu (an elected dalit panchayat leader and five dalits murdered, Tamil Nadu, 1997), Kambalapalli (six dalits burnt alive in Karnataka, 2000) and Jhajjar (five dalits lynched near a police station in Haryana, 2003). The incidents listed here may not figure in any history of post-independence India. Most Indians may not even have heard of these places. Khairlanji, too, may soon be similarly forgotten. This book is an effort to ensure that it will not be easily erased from memory. As Milan Kundera says, the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. 12 KHAIRLANJI

Khairlanji ignited dalit anger and spawned agitations all over Maharashtra and beyond—spontaneous protests that erupted on the streets and were led by ordinary people, sans leaders. It was unlike anything Maharashtra had seen before. This book chronicles the massacre and its genealogy; tracks the anger and disgust that was uncorked among that dalits and the brutal state repression that ensued; looks at how and why ordinary people fighting the state–corporate nexus are being branded as naxals and attacked; offers an analysis of the content and the prejudice of the mass media when it comes to crimes related to dalits; surveys the limitations of the constitutional measures to mitigate the sufferings of dalits in the face of systemic inertia and societal indifference; examines the political economy and mechanics of atrocities; and finally looks at how Khairlanji blasts many myths about caste, including the belief that globalization and neoliberalism are weakening the hold of caste. Khairlanji was not catapulted to the national stage all at once. The incident of 29 September 2006 – that devastated the world of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange – came to light only a month later. Bhotmange’s entire family – wife Surekha (40), sons Roshan (21) and Sudhir (19) and daughter Priyanka (17) – were lynched by a mob of caste Hindus of the village. It was not simple murder; it was the worst display of collective and premeditated sadism that could shame humanity anywhere— gang-rape, public humiliation and torture, culminating in the lynching of four lives at the village square. Yet, all this was effectively covered up for over a month. It was purported to be the violent end to an illicit relationship between the mother (Surekha) and a man (Siddharth Gajbhiye), for which not only the mother but her children had to pay with their lives. The lynching was made out to be not a criminal act but an instance of ‘moral outrage’ on the part of ‘simple villagers’ who could not stomach such ‘immorality’ in their midst. The atrocity was projected by the locals, and initially by the media too, in such a way that a majority of Indians would have sympathized with INTRODUCTION 13 the mob. The logic is similar to the public sympathy that is orchestrated when instant ‘justice’ is meted out in countless cases of ‘police encounters’, and the public admires the police and condemns the victims of violence without caring to know the facts of the case. Khairlanji was similarly packaged as an act of public-spirited ‘moral justice’ where the real crime could well have been buried and eventually forgotten. But for the indignant interventions of a few ordinary people and independent activists – who forefronted the heart-rending facts of the case against all odds – the truth about Khairlanji would perhaps have never been exposed. At one level, Khairlanji is not unique. It seems to be a reen- actment of a primordial punishment to the subordinated castes that Manu had ordained over two millennia ago. The crime of the Bhotmanges therefore was simple—they were dalits who asserted their independence and dignity. Khairlanji is not a one- off incident—an unfortunate aberration in globalizing, shining India. Every village in India is a potential Khairlanji. If most villages wear a veneer of peace and tranquillity, much celebrated in textbooks and tourist brochures, this owes to the tacit compromise – and reconcilement – dalits have made with their demeaning conditions. It is the same compromise that has carried India through centuries of having been bestowed with utterly undeserved attributes such as tolerance, nonviolence, and love of peace. Whenever this compromise has collapsed, the inherent violence of this society has reared its ugly face to brutally suppress any possible eruption of the wrath of the wretched. The history of this country underscores this bitter reality. Such violence is not a feudal relic, as many of our intellectuals would like to theorize; it has been well assimilated not only by capitalist India but also by globalizing India. Indeed, Khairlanjis are not confined to villages—the feudal cesspools of everything backward. They are manifest even in our towns and cities, sections of which have clad themselves in metal and glass in recent years. The surface calm persists so 14 KHAIRLANJI long as a tacit compromise operates. The moment it is broken, all hell breaks loose. Such moments of rupture may not always leave behind the brutalized, naked corpses of Priyankas and Surekhas to tease middle-class sensibilities into bemoaning the fate of dalits. They do not always find space in the corners of our newspapers and become scrolls on our television channels. But such moments are always around us. They continue to happen daily. Every day, millions are crushed and killed in spirit; ever so often some of them are killed physically as well. While the public sector – where dalits are accommodated owing to binding statutes (mandatory reservation) – has become a veritable graveyard of dalit aspirations, the corporate private sector stubbornly keeps them out. The reason given is familiar: dalits genetically lack merit. The truth is they have been wronged. It is an injustice no less grave in cumulative terms than what happened in Khairlanji. No dead bodies around. No postmortems for the living corpses of dalits in urban India. They just get buried deep down within the system, reduced to be lesser than what they are—the living dead. Khairlanji represents the quintessence of caste India—that people have to observe their ascriptive statuses; stay put in their place. They cannot cross caste boundaries. If they do, they could be punished. Khairlanji lays bare the self-righteous arrogance of the caste Hindus and their assumptions about and demands from the subordinated castes. Paradoxically, Khairlanji also represents their vulnerability. It represents resistance, defiance and struggle – howsoever feeble – of the subaltern castes. While caste oppression can be said to be embedded in the system, a caste atrocity is invariably the result of a defiant response from the victims. Khairlanji demonstrates that the caste system, howsoever oppressive, is essentially a self-regulative system that expects people to conduct themselves according to its code. It causes no harm to those who do so; instead, it is supportive of them. However, those who do not accept its diktats are not spared. In this sense, a INTRODUCTION 15 moment like Khairlanji represents the breakdown of that wicked equilibrium that has held this subcontinent in a historically frozen state. If what happened in Khairlanji accords with many of the features of the caste system, it also demolishes quite a few myths and stereotypes around it. The foremost stereotype is our understanding of caste itself. Although it could be argued that caste society has staved off changes at the structural, macro level, in reality it has under- gone many changes in its composition and character. These changes can be largely identified with the influence of ‘invasions’ from the seventh century onwards, and the impact of ruling- class ideologies from the eleventh century onwards – such as Islam – that were not premised on caste. Changes that have crept in during the British colonial period and thereafter, during the last century, have been momentous. The classical association of the caste system with the shastras may not be fully irrelevant but it has weakened considerably. The ritual base of the castes, likewise, is encountered only as an exception. Today’s castes cannot be understood, much less fought against, simply along the dimensions of religion or tradition; they have become far more complex with the influence of the political economy that characterizes our times. The so-called ‘secular democratic’ politics and ‘socialist’ economic policies that our ‘republic’ implanted over an iniquitous social base over the last six decades have given a new lease of life to the caste system. The manifestation of castes today represents an indeterminate outcome of the interaction between the psycho–social–cultural residue of the past and the political processes and economic strategies followed by the state in favour of certain classes. It is sheer intellectual inertia to continue blaming the traditionally privileged castes (brahmins and other dwijas) for the caste system as it obtains today. While their hegemony over the state as well as civil society appears intact (given their preponderance in the higher echelons of virtually all the wings of the state—the judiciary, the legislature and the executive), it 16 KHAIRLANJI cannot be denied that their hold is steadily declining. Obviously, other social groups have ascended to seize their share. Also, the traditionally privileged castes, with their initial cultural advantage, have shifted to the capitalist and globalizing sectors of the economy, whereas these ascending social groups are still entrenched in the traditional sectors, not yet fully divorced from the conventional social structure. It is the ascending social groups – shudras/Backwards Classes (BCs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) – that are predominantly associated with and implicated in caste discrimination and atrocities. There were no privileged castes – the twice-born dwijas – in the conventional sense in Khairlanji. The aggressors belonged to the shudra castes—the kunabis and kalars listed as OBCs. In fact, right from Kilvenmani (where 44 dalit agricultutaral labourers were locked inside a hut and burnt alive by a naidu landlord on 25 December 1968) to Khairlanji (2006), in all these infamous atrocities and mass murders over the last four decades, there was no direct involvement of the brahminical castes. Rather, it can be said that the manifestation of caste violence as atrocities is a post-1960s phenomenon that is connected with the rise of the BCs and OBCs.

The Role of the State Let us now turn to the role of the state in creating this phenomenon. The state’s role in shaping castes and caste contradictions today is not adequately understood. It is not the scriptures or Manusmriti (of circa 200 BCE) or even the capricious behaviour of the traditional elites that are the sources of sustenance of today’s castes. It is the modernist state that has given it a new lease of life; it is also its fountainhead. Its policies and institutions have increasingly reinforced castes and accentuated their viciousness as never before. It is the modernist project undertaken by the Indian state, supposedly to dampen the importance of castes but without adequately planning for the mitigation of its consequences, that has caused this anomaly. INTRODUCTION 17

While the processes of modernization have undermined and marginalized the traditional occupations – such as weaving, leatherwork, rope-making, toddy-tapping – thus rendering the subaltern castes vulnerable, development policies like the Green Revolution (a capitalist strategy to modernize agriculture based on capital-intensive technology) resulted in empowering the landowning castes in villages. Not only did it generate huge surpluses for these castes, it also commoditized the rural economy and demolished the old jajmani production relations— in which each caste group in a village was expected to provide certain hereditary services to other castes. Jajmani underscored mutuality, notwithstanding its oppressive content. The traditional elite, having migrated to urban areas, left the villages in the control of these neo-rich shudra castes. In the absence of any provision for protectionism in the state-induced development policies, these nonbrahmin, nondalit castes tended to take advantage of the traditional jajmani relationship without any of its obligations. The economic empowerment of the landowning shudra castes slowly raised their political aspirations and impelled them to create a viable constituency for themselves by consolidating other similarly placed castes. Since even small caste groups could have disproportionate impact on electoral results, due to the first-past-the-post system, this led to the increasing salience of castes in politics and to the inevitable polarization of castes or caste groups. In turn, this led to the emergence of new caste-based regional outfits that extended their influence from villages to states and the centre, inaugurating the era of coalition politics by the mid-1970s. The modernization approach had validation from the colonial intellectual tradition, which considered caste a precapitalist, premodern institution. The decline of the relevance and potency of the caste system was therefore predicated upon the process of modernization of the economy and society. According to this view, the institution of caste would lose its basis with the consummation of the modernist project. After the transfer of 18 KHAIRLANJI power from the British to the nationalist elite, the bourgeoisie landlord-state that came into being represented a compromise between the interests of the bourgeoisie in undertaking modernization and those of the landlords in preserving their control over rural India. Although under the stewardship of Nehru the state had gained an overriding modernist character, it could not disturb this balance beyond a point. A modernist Constitution provided a distinct vision for the state to pursue, but it was restrained in implementation by the imperatives of power dynamics. Capitalism had already adjusted itself with precapitalist institutions such as caste, religious bodies (temples, madarsas) and tribal customs. Rather than confront them, it skillfully made use of them. Capitalism made significant inroads into the countryside – piggybacking on policies like big dams, farm subsidies, the Green Revolution – but left the precapitalist institutions untouched. The spread of modern education, urbanization and industrialization had their impact but only in modifying these institutions, not in annihilating them. These institutions, particularly caste, thus could comfortably coexist with modernization. And caste did. Most people visualized such a trajectory of transformation as an answer to the problem of caste (and even communalism) in Indian society. After all, modernization meant displacing traditions, removing fetters and pushing the country on to the path of progress. The European model of development and progress was there for everyone to see. There was unanimity of sorts, therefore, in endorsing the Nehruvian project. Even the Ambedkarite perspective, though differing from the majority viewpoint in holding caste as an institution specific and central to India, had placed emphasis on state intervention to reduce caste oppression. Thus modern secular education, state institutions and rapid industrialization came to be important in post-independence India. Contrary to expectations, however, these modernist measures did not impact caste. The relevance and significance of caste in society remained unaffected; rather, INTRODUCTION 19 some of the modern institutions gave caste a new lease of life. Caste has been an important factor in the functioning of demo- cratic institutions of the modern Indian state, and especially the local arm of the state represented by the panchayat raj system in the post-independence period.1 Castes placed at different levels of the social hierarchy have responded differently to the process of modernization and democratic politics at the local, regional and national levels.2 This process of modernization was bound to fail. The state in India represented the compromise between the feudal lords and the emerging bourgeoisie. The state settled for moderni- zation because the feudal classes also saw prospects for their advancement through it. It is for this reason that we see the state weaving an intricate web of protective and developmental policies in favour of the oppressed castes but not touching the economic base of the shudra castes, which lay in the land question. Some scholars fault this state-driven modernization basically because of the intrinsic incapacity of the state. As K. Srinivasulu perceptively puts it: In belated capitalist societies such as India, it is the state rather than class that has assumed a preeminent role in the process of economic transformation. Weak civil society, inadequate channels of communication on matters of social significance and the inability to provide society with ideological and intellectual leadership all demonstrate the capitalist class, historical and structural limitations. The question of socio-economic transformation was left inadequately addressed. The state cannot, due to its historical limitations and bureaucratic logic, undertake such an enterprise—and even if it does, it cannot fully succeed.3

Beyond Obsolete Varna Any discussion of caste typically begins with or bases itself on the classical fourfold varna system. As we just saw, the present- day caste situation does not have much to do with the varna system except for deriving from it a broad ideological frame- 20 KHAIRLANJI work. Since the 1960s, the shudra castes have emerged into a dominant position in the production process and have successfully translated this into the political and cultural domains. It has given rise to a series of serious contestations. In the earlier period, the contest was between the brahmins and the peasant castes. Now, it is increasingly seen between the landowning peasant castes and dalits as landless labourers. Yet, intellectual approaches to the caste question have persisted with the rhetoric of the classical, ritualistic caste system (‘brahminism’ used as a shorthand to explain and understand every caste-related problem), refusing to take note of these transformations. Anticaste activism too has reflected and reinforced the worse stereotypes, identifying foes and friends in obsolete varna terms. While mouthing the Ambedkarite dictum that they are against brahminism and not brahmins, and that brahminism is not confined to brahmins alone and could well be afflicting dalits, in reality anticaste activists have failed to differentiate between brahmins and brahminism and identified people with their caste identities. Electoral compulsions had prompted the imagining of an amorphous identity called ‘bahujan’ (the oppressed majority)— bracketing dalits with the so-called OBCs, sweeping under the carpet many a contradiction between them in the village context.4 Many of the landowning castes are part of this caste conglomeration. Even if they were excluded, and even if some of the shudra castes were in no better state than the dalits, their traditional social and economic ties with the landowning castes gave them a certain social edge, and they cannot be bracketed with the socially stigmatized dalits. There cannot be any dispute about the desirability of the unity of dalits and shudras, but it must be realized that caste cannot be the basis of such unity; only a class approach can achieve it. Indeed, the caste situation today has become so complex that the caste idiom is proving increasingly futile, and the earlier one thinks of substituting it the better. To think however of discarding caste as an analytical INTRODUCTION 21 category altogether would be like throwing the baby with the bathwater. What is needed is to sharpen our understanding of caste dynamics as they exist. Today the concentrated expression of caste is to be found in the cleavage between savarnas (caste Hindus) and avarnas, non- dalits and dalits. This is where social osmosis breaks. Even classical scriptures and mythologies talk of varna-based castes and appear to treat shudra as the lowest caste. Dalits fall outside this caste system. Hence this point of division becomes the target of the dalit-led anticaste movements. Both sides of this divide, the savarnas and avarnas, have managed to blur the contours of caste to a large extent and have social osmosis among them- selves. However, even today the few intercaste marriages that happen are seen mostly within the savarnas; marriages between dalits and nondalits are rare. While this divide is pervasive, the contradiction between dalits and nondalits surfaces violently in rural areas. This contradiction mostly derives its material sustenance from the contradiction between their roles as landless labourers (dalits) and dominant landowners (shudras), but may not be defined exclusively in economic terms. The most overriding factor here remains the deep-rooted sociocultural contradiction between dalits and shudras based on notions of ritual (varna) hierarchy.

Crime and Conviction An atrocity is an extreme manifestation of this contradiction. What leads to its manifestation? It is difficult to give a unique answer to this question. How do people turn into beasts that kill hapless fellow beings? How do they become such brutes as to mass-rape women in the most gruesome ways? In Khairlanji, fact-fnding reports indicate that bullock cart pokers were stuck into the vagina of Priyanka Bhotmange; a local Bharatiya Janata Party leader is said to have raped the corpse of Priyanka in full public view. In 2003, in Thinniyam village in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchi district, two dalits were forced to feed each other dried 22 KHAIRLANJI human excreta by thevars, an OBC community. What drives people to commit such inhuman crimes? There may be a combination of factors and aberrations that leads to such behaviour. However, certain factors hold the key. The foremost is the conviction that what one is doing is right. The perpetrator of the crime believes that he or she is justified. Religious ideology, culture and tradition could be the sources of such conviction. Howsoever self-righteously a person or persons of a caste develop the conviction to inflict harm on others, one has to overpower the other. Which means, it is the relative weak- ness of the other that reassures the perpetrator that he can commit the atrocity. If this equation is broken, the atrocity cannot materialize. Then, there is the assumption that the crime would not be taken cognizance of. Lastly, even if the crime becomes cognizable, there is the assurance that they would not be punished. In every case of atrocity, these factors can be clearly discerned. The first factor stems from the caste ideology that dalits are lesser humans and ought to behave as such. If they do not, they could be punished. The second factor is the confidence of the perpetrators of the crime that their social and political power would deter the victims from complaining, and even if they do, the conviction that the consequences can be managed. The third and most important factor is the justice- delivery system, which gives the impression to the victims that even if the worst atrocity is committed, the criminals may go unpunished. The police investigation, the process of public prosecution and the eventual delivery of justice—the crime can be ‘managed’ and justice subverted at any of these nodes. The poor rate of conviction in cases of atrocities betrays such an assurance.5 If this most brutal manifestation of caste power could be curbed, the expression of caste in terms of atrocities could be arrested. There may be several strategies to accomplish it, depending on where and how one decides to block the process. It may be at the source level—at the level of caste ideology. If INTRODUCTION 23 one could strip down its halo with a counter-ideology, or by any other means, we may be able to prevent an atrocity by impacting the mindsets of the potential perpetrators. This is akin to the strategy of the classical anticaste movements that diagnosed the roots of caste as lying in the religious scriptures and set out to confront them. One can tackle atrocity also in its physical form. The basic reason for the increasing atrocities on dalits is simply their relative weakness—numerical, physical and social. What are the ways and means of removing this relative weakness? The strategic options could be in terms of strengthening dalits from within or supplementing their strength from outside. If dalits are perceived as being strong enough to retort, no one, howsoever determined in their minds, would be able to inflict an atrocity on them. In Karamchedu, Andhra Pradesh, where kamma (BC) landlords had killed six dalits in 1984, the case was headed nowhere. After all, the main accused Chenchu Ramaiah was the father of Venkateswara Rao, chief minister N.T. Ramarao’s elder son-in-law, who was also the then the state health minister. A squad of the People’s War Group shot Ramaiah at his Chirala home. The killing had such a pronounced effect that there has not been a major atrocity in that area since then. If the caste Hindus perceive that the naxalites are with the dalits, they will think twice before attacking them; though this may led to reprisals and counter- reprisals as we have seen in Bihar. There may also be a statist strategy to handle such crimes—sternly dealing with the crime after it has taken place. If one could devise the surest way of arresting the criminals and ensuring exemplary punishment, we could assume is that it would act as deterrent. These could be the strategic ways of dealing with the increasing incidence of atrocities. Another meta-strategy would be to eliminate the basic source of differential power in a rural scenario—to take away the basic resource of land from the domain of private property. The ruling classes deliberately conceived of ‘land reforms’ that dealt with 24 KHAIRLANJI land in superficial, quantitative terms. The real solution lay in the nationalization of land. If the state had nationalized land as proposed by B.R. Ambedkar in his States and Minorities,6 instead of implementing dubious land reforms, one can reasonably argue that the base of the caste system would have been shaken. Of course, it can be equally reasonably argued that the state is intrinsically incapable of accomplishing such revolutionary tasks. It requires an unconditional revolution to transform the state before it could undertake such tasks. Given the nature of Indian society and polity, it must have been a veritable feat that the euphoria of ‘independence’ was effectively used to adopt an egalitarian Constitution that directly or indirectly facilitated the creation of democratic institutions. If the ruling elite had sincerely nurtured these institutions, many of the problems associated with identities that afflict us today would have not surfaced. But that was not to be. The Indian state never really had the urgency to usher in genuine transformation. Caste, in its essence, is infinitely divisive. Castes are not confined to a few hundred definitive castes or the thousands of multiple sub-castes. Sociologists and anthropologists have provided laborious ethnographies of jatis/castes treating caste as a complete, rounded category. However, castes and caste- like identities are still being formed. The hindutva inroads into adivasi/tribal areas have essentially casteised them. Castes have always evolved in the past and they continue to do so to this day. They evolve by splitting themselves like an amoeba.7 While in relation to other castes they tend to contract inward and form a new caste, they also seek to establish their relative superiority. Once this external pressure for asserting superiority is released, the castes look inward to locate or discover hierarchies within. Thus, the ‘dalit’ identity could be founded with motley untouchable castes coming together to fight brahminism under the leadership of Ambedkar. But once this pressure was gone – both of the imperative of fighting brah- minism and that of a commanding leadership – even the core INTRODUCTION 25 mahar caste tended to discover subcastes and claim hierarchical superiority for their own. Quite a few undesirable developments in the dalit movements could be traced to this dynamic. Caste, in essence, is an individualistic attitude that constantly seeks to assert superiority. The divisive ideology of caste does not even stop at the family; it can narrow down to the level of an indi- vidual. Even family members, in the absence of any external pressure, would discover notional hierarchy and assert an imagined caste superiority. Our entire cultural paradigm could be framed from an essentially caste perspective. The corollary of this formulation has far-reaching implica- tions. Individualism is a credo that is intrinsically favoured by the elites (the privileged castes and classes in India). It suits the privileged castes since they believe that their pelf, power and prestige are well deserved; that it is their merit. Individua- lism, a complement of social Darwinism, would deny weaker individuals or any community the right of survival. It is the privileged castes who favour the free market because it assures them, as a class, their domination without any moral baggage. It is they who are the ardent votaries of globalization, for it gives them unhindered freedom to maximize profits globally. Such individualism, grounded in caste, explains their insensi- tivity to fellow beings. Celebrations over India becoming a superpower in the face of the epidemic of farmers’ suicides or the unashamed display of hedonism in the face of Jhajjars and Khairlanjis therefore become commonplace. Khairlanji is important because it is a wake-up call. It should not be viewed as a mere ‘caste issue’ to be dealt with by dalits alone. It is an issue of much larger import that relates to the destiny of the people of this country. It is not the misdeed of some uncultured barbaric monsters; it illustrates the state of the entire country. Khairlanji transcends the context of time and space and interrogates our claim to be humans. It is a mirror that shows us for what we are. 26 KHAIRLANJI

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1 See Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 2 See K. Srinivasulu, “Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh: Mapping Differential Regional Trajectories,” (London: Overseas Development Institute, September 2002). Available at http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/ working_papers/wp179.pdf. Last accessed on 1 September 2008. 3 Ibid., 33. 4 The origin of ‘bahujan’ goes back to Guatama Buddha, who advocated the mantra ‘bahujana hitaya, bahujana sukhaya’ (welfare and happiness for the majority) and in modern times to Jotiba Phule (1827–1890). As a conscious political strategy the origin of ‘bahujan’ should be credited to the late Kanshi Ram. For him ‘bahujan’ comprised of dalits, backward castes and religious minorities. Kancha Ilaiah prefers to qualify this combination as ‘dalit-bahujan’. See his Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy (Calcutta: Samya, 1996). 5 The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, mandates that special courts be set up to hear cases registered under the Act. Yet, according to the figures given by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) in its 2005 annual report, the conviction rate under the Act is 15.71 percent and pendency is as high as 85.37 percent. In contrast, the conviction rate for cases registered under the Indian Penal Code is over 40 percent. See, http://socialjustice.nic.in/schedule/welcome.htm. For a detailed discussion, see Chapter 6. 6 In States and Minorities (1947), envisaged as his own draft constitution for independent India, writing which he was not hamstrung by caste Hindus as he was in the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar argues that ‘agriculture shall be State Industry’, and that the ‘State shall acquire the subsisting rights in such industries, insurance and agricultural land held by private individuals, whether as owners, tenants or mortgagees. . . . The State shall divide the land acquired into farms of standard size and let out the farms for cultivation to residents of the village as tenants.’ Most crucially, ‘the land shall be let out to villagers without distinction of caste or creed and in such manner that there will be no landlord, no tenant and no landless labourer.’ See, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 1 (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1979), 408–09. Such a radical ‘socialist’ agenda was not of course acceptable to the bourgeoisie-landlord oriented state and was jettisoned by the establishment. 7 The agari in Maharashtra were a tribe and not a caste. They are now a caste, and are staunch supporters of hindutva. Tribal communities in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and now in Orissa are being mobilized into the Hindu fold. And you cannot be a Hindu without caste.